The Happiness Doctor: This 4 Minute Rule Will Improve All Your Relationships - Dr Andy Cope

0:00Dr Andy Cope: Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, dead. For a lot of people, that is their life. And that was my life for a long time as well. We're going round and round in circles looking for this elusive best self. We see it on Instagram. Oh, that's the version of me that I want to be. And then we chase it. And by the time we've got there, it's gone.

0:18Alberto Zandi: If someone listening to this is fully committed to be happy in their lives, where should they start? Dr Andy Cope is a world-renowned positive psychologist, widely known as the Happiness Doctor. He studies what makes people thrive, from happiness and resilience to performance, and is the best-selling author of The Art of Being Brilliant

0:34Dr Andy Cope: and creator of the Spy Dog Children's book series. Have we created an environment that is not conducive to human well-being? It's almost like harder, I think, to be happy now than it has been for a long time. But within the craziness out there, we don't have to go crazy in here. There are things that we can take charge of, mostly our thought processes and our daily habits.

0:52Alberto Zandi: By this charge just to be happy, it's an unconscious decision. We unconsciously think it will make us happy, but logically I'm pretty sure everyone knows those trousers won't make you happy. Those trousers won't make you happy, no. What would you advise me and my audience to be able to be more present? The ultimate top happiness tip ever is...

1:15Dr Andy Cope: Andy, who are you and what do you do? I call myself a doctor of happiness, which I know sounds a little bit cheesy and a little bit... but I mean it's better than Dr. Field which is the alternative to that so basically what I am is I'm a positive psychology researcher so we'll get into that in a minute I'm sure but that flips psychology on its head away from illness towards wellness so from a while I try to look away from what's wrong with people to what's right with people so human flourishing basically so I got a PhD out of Loughborough University about 15 years ago now and I didn't know I was going to be on podcasts or writing books or doing keynotes on it but that's what my life has now become is a speaker and author on human flourishing happiness at the heart of it all is happiness

2:00Alberto Zandi: the happiness doctor i love that we need more happiness doctors well i honestly i think happiness

2:05Dr Andy Cope: is happiness is the goal of all your other goals right so we took you know everybody is working we've just been talking off air about we're working super hard and everybody's sort of close to burnout but they're doing that because they're seeking something they're trying to get somewhere and what they're really wanting is happiness and as a psychologist when did you realize that you

2:27Alberto Zandi: wanted to become a happiness doctor and not any other yeah yeah um accidentally really i call

2:33Dr Andy Cope: myself an accidental author and an accidental doctor i never set out i mean i studied like all the other psychologists traditional psychology so if you get psychology now is 150 years old as a subject and it's always been about illness so every lecture i ever attended as a psychology student phobia it was named after an illness phobias disorders anxiety depression paranoia schizophrenia burnout trauma so what we would do is we would learn about what was wrong with people which was really useful because then once you've got a diagnosis you can help them here's some therapy here's some counseling here's some medication so you've got 150 years of applying that model to a population and i did and that was great i i've got no problem with that i think it That's super useful.

3:17Dr Andy Cope: However, everybody watching or listening to this, if you think about the last 15 years, despite the best efforts of psychology, that's the best therapy, the best counselling, the best medication that we can come up with. The truth is, the lived experience of most people, is that mental health is getting worse, not better. So it seemed to me about 15 years ago that we're missing something. What are we doing wrong? If we're working super hard to try and fix people, there now literally are too many people to fix. right if you i mean get personally but if anybody watching this if you've got a teenage daughter with mental health issues you try to get an appointment and there'll be two years because there's so many people now needing help so it got me thinking about okay so what are we missing what there must be something obvious that we're missing somewhere and what i realize is almost for the entirety of a of like traditional psychology 150 years we've almost never ever studied people who are already happy okay which makes me smile because because think about everybody watching this you can all think of in your life i bet a handful of people probably a single handful of people in your life who are who've got something extra now people like yourself who've got an energy they've got a passion they've got a smile on their face they they seem to love mondays like everybody else loves fridays in the workplace easy work colleagues who go the extra mile you don't need to ask 10 times it's built into them they create strong relationships they they rock up at a meeting with an open mind and a willingness to, well, shall we try it?

4:43Dr Andy Cope: Everybody says, that'll never work. So who are these people with this extra energy, this passion, this love of life? Because we've literally, I mean, we're in London today doing this on the tube. There's not many of those on the tube today. Not many people with everybody sitting there with headphones on and just, you know, the world's not a very happy place at the moment. So positive psychology, I'm not suggesting I invented it. it came out of the US in the late 90s, but I jumped all over it at Loughborough Uni. So what I set out to do in my PhD, who are the people who already feel amazing? What are they doing that allows them to feel amazing?

5:18Dr Andy Cope: And thirdly, that I think hopefully we'll unpick a little bit here is, what might we then learn from them that we could apply to the wider population? Well, we could apply to ourselves, actually, so we might also fall back in love with Mondays.

5:30Alberto Zandi: Lovely. I love this conversation and this topic. And before we deep dive into the ramifications of why we're happy, what makes us happy, unhappy, I'd like to start from the most basic question, but perhaps the toughest question. What is happiness?

5:47Dr Andy Cope: What is happiness? Oh, I love the little pause before you asked. I knew it was coming. It's a really difficult... It took me... First of all, I need to make a claim here. It took me 10 years to get a PhD. All right. It's just a long, long time. and it took a long time because i spent an awful lot of time trying to work out what to study because happiness most psychologists don't study happiness happiness is seen as a bit woo-woo a bit um a bit too simple a bit too easy so so psychologists wrap it up in subjective well-being or positive affect they will call it something different whereas i fought really hard with my supervisors to actually just study happiness now what is it happiness is really hard to define but essentially if you keep it super simple it's just a feeling that's all it is it's an emotion there's a whole there's a thousand emotions out there and happiness is one that we want more of the time it's the one that most people want more of um but of course happiness there's a whole if you describe happiness there's a continuum of happiness a whole range of happiness emotions so the at the strong end it's like uh joy and woohoo that's happiness you know the the wedding, the 21st birthday happiness, the partying all night happiness.

7:01Dr Andy Cope: There is that, but that's high energy. And I can't do that now at my age. But so happiness is all the way from there down to this beautiful quiet end here, which is contentment, which is kind of again, what we were talking about off screen, really, about being at peace with who you are and what you've got in your life and i think that um i think maybe that so happiness for me is all of those things it's that whole range of emotions but i think the secret sauce really is is down at this end is this quiet contentment this mindfulness being peaceful happy in this very moment because this moment's all we've got that's another thing we might go into later

7:40Alberto Zandi: i i was to be honest i was not expecting that answer because and and please i'd like to to get your take on this so the way i was viewing happiness with those two different examples so the short-term happiness which is that night out or or that birthday celebration versus the long-term contentment and and quiet happiness feeling feels more long-term so for me it was a difference in between having fun and pleasure versus happiness yeah and i feel like a lot of

8:09Dr Andy Cope: people confused both yeah yeah they do there's i mean if we go back to the ancient greeks they talked about hedonism so hedonistic happiness is instant happiness it's some pints of beer it's a pair of new shoes it's a a night out so we can get happy quickly dopamine well yeah yeah and everybody can get a big bar of chocolate a glass of wine we're instantly happy but that's not really sustainable so the the i mean i think it was aristotle he spoke about so that's hedonistic but then there was eudomania which is this sort of quite a complicated word but that's this long term happiness it's a slow burn it's the good life it's the contented life and I think that maybe in the modern world we find ourselves looking on Instagram and people thinking that we need to be happy all the time maybe this is a problem with the modern world is we're led to believe I think that if we're not happy that we've got a problem and therefore we because everybody else on Instagram seems to be happy and they're happier than us and therefore we get really anxious about not being happy whereas of course the truth is nobody's happy all of the time Again, off air, we spoke about football, right?

9:14Dr Andy Cope: I support a team called Derby County. And it's really hard to be happy at five o 'clock on a Saturday when you support a team that isn't Real Madrid. You know what I'm saying? So I think that I wouldn't want to be happy all the time if you think about it. In fact, I used to do a lot of work in schools. I used to ask school children, give them this challenge, if there was a pill here, right? So these kids are 10 years old. You could take this one pill and you will be happy forever. You would never have to feel sadness again. Would you take the pill? and first of all the kids are like oh yeah yeah give me the pill i'll take the pill and then some after a minute one kid would say uh but what about uh if my grandma dies or what about if i fail an exam or and so gradually the kids begin to realize that happiness isn't what we want all the time we want it more of the time and we can learn to feel it more of the time but we certainly don't want it all the time so i don't think in fact you can be overly happy as well i don't know if you want to talk about sort of yeah you know so many things that are going through my head that we could talk great let's go i'll wait a few questions i won't problem but you can be too happy let me just mention it while it's in my head so toxic positivity so um i don't i'm not as a doctor of happiness people say first question i bet you're always happy they know you and of course no i'm not always happy i'm happy very often i'm happy quite often but but not all the time but you can be too happy we all probably know a couple of people in our life who are sort of faking it or pretending to be happy or you know the jazz hands on a monday is too far it's like woohoo that's not real certainly not in the uk that's that's not true happiness i'm talking about genuine authentic feeling happy more of the time that's what positive psychology studies

10:54Alberto Zandi: and also give you some clues to how to achieve that i think you've mentioned something that i personally believe is quite critical and although you've mentioned it i would like for you to reinforce that message again so our community our audience really really hears that in very simple terms so i think a lot of people and i include myself in that basket we are our life's purpose our life's goal the ultimate goal is to be happy and it's almost like you want to achieve that feeling and stay in that feeling but what you're saying is it can't be like that so you're going to be happy and unhappy and the reason why you know happiness is because you have experienced unhappiness yes so we should not be seeking forever happiness no i think we're back to that

11:41Dr Andy Cope: contentment that we started with i think that's a nice place you can you can get to learn to feel that a lot more of the time um but i think everybody it's okay to not be okay i think that's the truth of it as a doctor of happiness it's okay to sometimes not be happy and and uh but I think it's this learned behaviors. What I was genuinely looking for at Loughborough was what I call intentional strategies. So my PhD really was about what not, it's less about what's going on outside of you, less about your external world and more about what your intentional strategies are the things that you can take charge of within the maelstrom, the craziness of the world at the moment, because it's, I don't know when people are watching this or listening to this, but wow, what is the world doing to itself, right?

12:24Dr Andy Cope: It's in a really difficult situation, difficult place at the moment. It's almost like harder, I think, to be happy now than it has been for a long time. But within the craziness out there, we don't have to go crazy in here. There are things that we can take charge of, mostly our thought processes and our habits, our daily habits.

12:42Alberto Zandi: I'd like to talk about the components that make up our long-term and quieter happiness, because I believe that many of us can relate to the short-term happiness and how we can induce that happiness, as you've mentioned. Chocolate, a night out, perhaps having sex. But it is harder to pinpoint what are the factors that contribute towards that quiet, long-term happiness.

13:05Dr Andy Cope: Yeah, well, so often that is foregoing the instant happiness. So you actually have to maybe, because chocolate every night or a glass of wine every night isn't going to be good for your long-term contentment. You might not even be here long-term if you're doing that. You know what I mean? so I think looking after your physical health and this kind of eat move sleep getting the basics of your physiological um molecules right in the first place um but the long-term stuff comes really from a set of learned behaviors around I'm I've been kind of binge listening to the podcast since I knew I was going to be on it and you've got I don't want to repeat too much of what's been already said but some of the most obvious things around happiness are around gratitude and a ground mindfulness i'd really like to kind of maybe touch on that in a few minutes and around being being in this moment without we're all if i'm allowed to say the word we're all what we call musterbating with a u so i can say it so musterbation is when you turn things you think you'd like to have into things you things you must have so every instagram post and every advert on the tv is designed to make you unhappy or uncomfortable or anxious with it's not good enough so i need the product to be happy i need um to have some cosmetic surgery to be happy i need the glass of wine to be happy and i think that what what we're really doing is we're chasing i mean i drive all over the uk you know to various events and i keep driving past these huge self-storage warehouses they're all over now yeah and every time i drive past one of those i think i do a double take because i think that what what we have now done is we've accumulated so many possessions that have failed to make us happy that we're now renting somewhere to put them to create some space at home so we can buy some more stuff that's ultimately going to fail to make us happy so we're all masturbating we're all chasing the next thing whereas really what i'm talking about is well what really gratitude really is is one of the key things about happiness is just learning to be comfortable and happy with what you've already got if you want to chase more chase more fantastic but before you do that just look at where you already are and what you've already got and just be peaceful with that and be grateful for that so it's a small little wins there i think they're kind of obvious but i'm not not the first one to tell you that but it's despite us telling audiences they still chase more chase more pursue more wannabe um you know get the next thing but we're drowning we're drowning in glut we've got so much stuff we're like literally we people are renting places to

15:36Alberto Zandi: store their stuff so crazy i think we've heard multiple times that money doesn't buy happiness what is money when it comes to happiness do we need it do we not need it we do well money's

15:48Dr Andy Cope: really important um if you didn't have any money so again back to some of my sessions that i run i give people a choice of five five things right and you put these in order money health relationships happiness and success so put bm is on a big powerpoint so money health relationships happiness and success what would be your one two three four five running order and quite often people put put money towards the bottom of that um but if you're asking schools young children tend to put teenagers particularly will put money at the top i need the money sir give me the money i'll buy the success i'll buy the relationships i'll buy the happiness and as you get a bit older you begin to realize it doesn't really work like that.

16:31Dr Andy Cope: Now money is important and if you didn't have any money money would be your top priority. But everybody listening to this these people who are drawn to this podcast are people who I think are driven to just want to be their best self. Yeah it's that small improvements they can make to either at work or at home this fabled best self that we're all looking for. And I think money so probably money isn't the number one issue for your listeners but maybe health and relationships and success and happiness will be but i will put happiness at the top of that list because what you can prove over a lifetime of doing positive psychology is that happiness is the starting point for all those other things so happy people tend to achieve more they get promoted quicker they achieve more success happy people tend to take more risks which is basically what you've done entrepreneur you kind of go go for things happy people tend create stronger relationships and happy people tend to earn more money so it's a bit like dominoes if happiness is the first domino to go and if you were happier all those other things will become easier to to come by so but most people put happiness at the end they think that happiness will be the end point of when i have a relationship then i'll be happy when i earn the money then i'll be happy but actually counter-intuitively i know it's people struggle with this but it's the starting point.

17:49Dr Andy Cope: So if you could learn to be happier now, then actually success will follow from that.

17:56Alberto Zandi: That is, I can relate to that profoundly. Myself, so many of my friends for so many years, we used to quietly share with each other that once I achieve that, I'll be happy. Once I get, I don't know, I open that business in my case, or my friends get that promotion or buy the house or get the car or get the girl everything will make sense i will be enough and then you achieve it

18:21Dr Andy Cope: yeah and it's fleeting it's very fleeting it goes it doesn't feel like you imagined and it doesn't feel that it's called destination addiction so destination addiction is basically this um happiness is this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that we're chasing it all the time and we learn it from little kids right so when you're when your kids go to primary school if you wear really hard in primary school you'll get really good sats results when you get those great results guess what then you'll be happy then you go to big school and you work super hard you'll get great exam results then you'll be happy then you'll have a job you'll have a sales target hit your sales target then you'll be happy or you'll be happy when you meet your perfect partner and walk down the aisle and get married and we're all chasing that fantastic pot of emotional goal called happiness at the end of the rainbow happiness is something i've got to earn i've got to pursue it i've got to chase it and make it mine whereas really what i'm saying is happiness is a starting point what if that's a big mis-selling scandal and happiness actually is at this end of the rainbow so if we go back through the examples what if it's the happiest kids that get the best results so if you were happy you learn more you rock up at school with an open mind you put your hand up more often you do your homework better what if it's the happiest salesperson that gets the most sales because it will be yeah what if what if being happy now is the key to finding your perfect partner and walking down the aisle so actually what if the big thought really that we're pursuing here is in terms of the happiness rainbow what if we're looking for happiness at the wrong end of the rainbow right and if we could bring it back now and it's slightly controversially but what if happiness is already here it's already right where we are right now but we're so busy looking for it somewhere else that we're missing it we're back to this moment again we're missing it in the only moment there ever is which is the present moment so if through our upbringing we've

20:10Alberto Zandi: been nurtured yeah to feel like happiness is something that we need to earn yeah for many parents right now that are listening to this what would you advise them for them to not make that mistake and help their kids become or have a healthy relationship with happiness uh we could

20:28Dr Andy Cope: spend a whole hour talking about um parenting and children um let me let me give an example let me give you an example of um most of the habits that you pass on to your children they're caught not taught which means that kids just catch things off mum and dad so you don't formally teach them they just look at you and they learn give you an example of that right so the average lifespan is 4 000 weeks which is terrifies me i'm just about to become 60 years old 4 000 weeks is um if i announce that in a primary school the kids are like oh 4 000 weeks that's like forever fantastic fantastic i announce it in a corporate keynote and well it's not so many it's not so many weeks i've used a few but let's go back to when i was say five years old and about to start school so my dad when you're five your parents are your hero so my dad's my hero um and i look at my dad my dad i'll tell you what never happened in my house my dad never pulled me aside and sat me down had this discussion and said right little andy sit down tomorrow you start in school what What you need to know is that Mondays, they're terrible.

21:30Dr Andy Cope: Nobody likes Mondays, absolutely awful. Tuesday, not much better, really. Tuesday's no man's land. Wednesday morning, a bit grim. Then it starts to go downhill from... So it's a bit easier. Wednesday afternoon, a bit better. Thursday's a bit better than Wednesday. Now, Friday, mate. Friday, little Andy, five-year-old. Friday, you go to school. I go to work. But actually, it's an early finish. And Fridays are okay. Now, Saturday, best day of the week. Because you don't go to school. I don't go to work. We'll have lots of fun on a Saturday and Sunday. They're all right till about six o 'clock at night.

22:01Dr Andy Cope: And then you'll start getting anxious about school. I'll start getting worried about Monday. And what you're going to do, you're going to do that about 4 ,000 times. And then you're going to die. All right. So that conversation never happened in my house. Because we didn't need to because my dad's my hero. And he would leave the house on a Monday like, off we go to work. And he would come back in on a Friday. Yay, it's Friday. And I'm five years old. and he's my hero he's subconsciously teaching me the rules that mondays are bad and fridays are good and that and that's just one little example of parenting where your habits will seep into your children so remember it's caught not taught so and the other one i think a really so role modeling what actually a positive upbeat vibrant passionate human being actually looks like consistently right so being that best version of you and the other one that i really like in terms of children and grandchildren is you should praise them for effort not talent which is i'm not sure how many people know this but i think it's really powerful so this is carol dweck's research on growth mindset so apparently children who are praised for talent just when the going gets tough they just give up real easily where if you're praised for your effort then kids when the going gets tough which plot spoiler it will do at some point children will persevere so if you give an example um if you're watching your children or your daughter play football on a saturday morning for her team and she puts a ball in the top corner from the edge of the area what you shouldn't say is a goal of the season it's a worldie what you shouldn't say after the game is oh my gosh you're the next ronaldo you're the next lionel messi you are born to play football what you should say to your daughter is that's what Thursday night practice gets you.

23:47Dr Andy Cope: That's what rocking up every Thursday, playing your heart out at training. That's how good you get. Similarly, if your son comes home from school with a picture that, and it's brilliant picture from art, you shouldn't say, oh my gosh, you're the next Picasso. You're the next, you know, you're going to be an artist. You were born to be an artist. You just should say, wow, that's what all that practice, that effort gets you is great pictures so all the time we're praising for effort rather than talent so i think that's two things for parents right really role model what i've got somebody who falls in love with life actually looks like so you're not faking it you're genuinely um in that zone and praising your children for effort rather than talent i feel like for the dad or mom to be able

24:29Alberto Zandi: to do that either they need to fake it because they don't feel great with the monday morning because they don't know their job or they need to feel it because they love their job or their business. They need to be purposeful. How much does our job, our professional life, matter when it comes to our happiness?

24:49Dr Andy Cope: It does matter. I mean, again, not my research, but there's lots of research into whether you're doing a job, a career or a calling. So if you're doing a job, well, you've probably done all three. I've done all three. so a job tends to be something that's paid reasonably low pay it's an hourly thing you rock up because you need the money all right a career tends to be something that's got some long-term progression so your salary will go up and you feel invested in you get paid for holidays and it's a bit more you feel like you might be getting somewhere but a calling a calling is something you wouldn't tell the boss but you do it for free because you feel drawn to it and quite often things like the health service and doctors and nurses and they're they're not in it for the money they're in it because it is what they genuinely feel um driven to do and i think you're happy if you're is there only about 18 percent of people who are actually doing a calling so there's 18 percent of people in the planet well i i that's off the top of my head that

25:47Alberto Zandi: might not be quite right but not enough people yeah are drawn to but if you're doing your calling

25:53Dr Andy Cope: it doesn't matter if it's a Monday morning or if it's a drizzly day you you're doing you're you're living your purpose and therefore you're much more likely to rock up with that spring in your step most days of the week yeah so if you're not doing your calling if you're stuck in a job and we all thing is we normally all I've done jobs in the past that I've had to do to earn the money to pay the weekly rent or whatever um and if some people get stuck there forever so I think if you're stuck there then the progression out of that is to work out what your calling actually is and then work out a route into that because and again it sounds like a cliche but that's when work doesn't feel like work yeah so trying to trying to engineer which is what you you said again off off air you said uh you're unemployable you know you you don't want a job by somebody else telling you what to do so you've created this life this set of businesses that um allow you to well i'm guessing that's your calling.

26:47Alberto Zandi: I'm guessing that's what you set out to do. I want to go back to the money question, because I feel like working and money, as you mentioned, they are very much related, whether it's a job, whether it's a career, maybe not so much in the calling aspect, but I've read an article, and this was a few years ago, so maybe we would need to adjust this to inflation and so on. But I think it was in the UK, if you earn about£75 ,000 a year, anything on top of that you're living on bonus land but it will not add an additional unit of happiness so every extra pound will not give you an extra additional units of happiness yeah it

27:25Dr Andy Cope: seems again it seems counterintuitive i'm not sure what the modern it's around about 75 000 pounds so whether you earn 75 grand or seven and a half million theoretically doesn't make a great deal of difference to your happiness which even i can't get my head around that right because you would think surely but actually what you'll find is like a really big salary brings additional pressure and additional stress anyway so money can't buy your happiness but it can buy choice and it can buy peace and it can buy security actually so it does it's helpful um in that respect but it can't buy happiness so happiness is much less correlated with the job that you do and much more if you did meta-analysis which is analysis of all the analysis that's ever been done then it would be close personal relationships that would be the number one thing that would allow you to be happy so you can be under 75 000 pounds but in a really beautiful tight-knit family with the person you love and you will feel like a millionaire

28:29Alberto Zandi: let's talk about then about those close personal relationships so what are they made up of so are we talking about parents close friends romantic relationships and

28:39Dr Andy Cope: how do we how do we need to nurture them yeah well there's uh some something called dunbar's number so dunbar's number basically means again it's off the top of my head without the research in front of me but something like you will spend about 40 percent of everybody watching this you'll spend about 40 % of your life with about a close circle of six to eight people so these absolute core family and friends a very small number of people you can spend 40 % of your life with them and there's another slightly wider circle of another six to eight people that you spend another 20 % of your life with so Dunbar's number basically means that you will spend about 60 % of your life with about 12 people, which again is like, wow, yeah, yeah, right.

29:24Dr Andy Cope: Now, therefore, your happiness and their happiness, your well-being and their well-being is much more closely correlated with close personal relationships with what I call your dearest dozen, your 12 people. And you'll be able to know who, almost who they are straight away, your really closest family and friends. But of course, what the modern world is really, so investing there, right, investing in those people investing if you're going to be in the room with them be in the room with them get off your phone and be there with them fully but of course what the modern world does is encourages chase people beyond there we're chasing 10 000 followers we don't even know or 50 000 friends on on instagram who are not they're not friends yeah they're followers but so well all the time we we are led we're musterbating really about wanting more followers and we're chasing people way outside of our 12 to 15 people.

30:17Dr Andy Cope: So my message is get back to your inner core and invest time there.

30:24Alberto Zandi: And how can we develop and nurture and maintain those relationships in a way that is contributing towards our happiness? Because when I was thinking about my 12 people, some of those are by choice, right? So I've chosen them based on their characters and I feel like it's like a puzzle, right? Their characters and their lifestyles, they match with mine. So it feels like effortless and me spending time with them feels fantastic but some others i love them dearly their family members so how definitely it seems that uh happiness or the contribution towards happiness it depends on how much time you spend with these people's time is really the key factor here so if i'm still bound to spend so much time with these six or five other relatives that not necessarily have similar traits or personalities to me how can i work with them so it provides the maximum happiness we are well said well you've said that beautifully because i think i know what you're really what i hear it all the

31:19Dr Andy Cope: time where people are saying actually really difficult not difficult people but the people uh close family sometimes can be and you haven't got a choice they're family they're close family you can spend a lot of time with them um i think this is more about how you it's not about them because i would spend i spent ages trying to work out um how i should be with people who aren't positive right should i because i i in my early days of being a positive psychology i thought i'm gonna be super positive with everybody and then everybody will respond and of course those people who aren't necessarily they're not depressed or anxious but not everybody's demonstratively positive and and so i was trying to be overly positive with people who aren't very positive and it was just annoying them okay they were back to being overly there's an old english word a grinergog.

32:07Dr Andy Cope: A grinergog is, back to the 17th century word, is somebody who's so happy you want to punch them on the nose. So I think I was becoming a grinergog with people who aren't naturally happy, and I was trying to make them happy. And I think letting go of that responsibility, that's not my job. My job isn't to, I mean, there are things you can do to influence people, but you can't make anybody else happy. And I think we have to find, in positive psychology, the intentional strategies that I spoke about earlier, about what we can do to create stronger relationships. It's not being happy all the time.

32:40Dr Andy Cope: And if people have had a bad day at home, me going home through the door being overly positive is not really what they need. They need me to be, emotional intelligence tells us that we need to find a way of connecting with that person at their level. So sometimes it's okay to bring yourself down to a level, work with them, and then

32:58Alberto Zandi: maybe raise them back up again and if someone listening to these after counting these 12 people in their lives they realize that two or three of them unfortunately they've drained their energy but they need to be with them and they've tried so many things to change their relationship with them they may be thinking that they need to cut some time with them and maybe replace these people within their like their inner circle would you advise them to do that so they become happier

33:23Dr Andy Cope: if it's close family no no i mean close family a close family and you've got to spend some time with them the challenge i think with people i used to call them mood hoovers right so we've all got them in our lives in fact that's a global phrase most it'll translate right so mood hoovers are people who are you can get stuck in just going through the motions and being a slightly gloomy doomy the weather's bad the traffic's bad and the world is doing this to us right and i spent 40 years in what i call the curse of mediocrity which was just a very average version of me the town i grew up in which i love dearly but if i stop 100 people in my hometown and say how are you the response will be well i'm not too bad considering or mustn't grumble or i'm i'm or the new i'm i'm living the dream is what people but in that tone of voice yeah so i did that as well, for 40 years, I just thought that's what you had to do.

34:19Dr Andy Cope: So I think it's raising yourself out of that. So the mood here is that people like I used to be, who are stuck in habits of negativity that just drain the happiness out of everybody else. So in my research, I spoke about, I put people onto a graph of wellbeing, right? And you'll love this, right? Because you'll be at the top of it. But if we measured everybody's happiness in the workplace, then what I found was that far too many people get stuck in this bottom third of the graph. So people are paid a salary to be at work, but they'd rather, if you didn't pay them, they wouldn't be there. They'd rather be on the golf course or on holiday.

34:51Dr Andy Cope: So what happens is most people in the workplace get sucked into this slightly low level of, is it home time yet? You know, is it Friday afternoon yet? Which is fine. I did that for 40 years as well. It's not depression, it's not anxiety, it's not sadness, but you can get stuck in being mediocre, the average version of you. What I was interested in on my graph of happiness was there's a small percentage of the people at the top that I nicknamed the two percenters. So about 2 % of the population, when you put them on the graph, they're right at the top. They're statistically significantly happier.

35:24Dr Andy Cope: Statistically significantly more energy, which is interesting, right? Nearly 35 % more energy when you're at the top of that graph. So what I was interested in is psychology spent for 150 years looking at the people who fall out the bottom of the graph into depression, anxiety, and where they need help. And what psychology does, they work with people who are really, really in a bad place to get them back in to not being ill, back into where they started. Whereas I'm much more interested in, well, who are the top of the diagram? Who are the ones who are flourishing? Who are the ones with the aliveness and the passion, the positivity?

35:58Dr Andy Cope: And what I was looking at is the two percenters. Who are they? What are they doing? And what can we learn from them so we can move that way? Now, And that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be in that top 2 % all of the time. But what positive psychology does is give you strategies to live there more of the time. And if you're there, if you can be there without being over the top and jazz hands and faking it, if you can genuinely be in love with life, then what you will do is influence people. And you will gradually move people towards the top. You will improve their well-being as well.

36:30Alberto Zandi: and those two percenters are they they're out of a consequence of nature or nurture

36:37Dr Andy Cope: nature or nurture um a bit of a mix uh i would think mostly it's learned behaviors though so i looked at their parenting uh it was not a massive deal in a phd you can't look at everything if you went back you'd look at things differently but i looked at there wasn't a massive correlation so some of the two percenters had had mood hoover parents but they used that negativity to say well I don't want to be like that. So they'd use that to say, so I'm going to be different from mum and dad. But quite a few of the two percenters did have parents who were really positive and really super positive. So it's quite a learned, they'd learned it early on, I think, overall.

37:17Dr Andy Cope: But the issue, again, with learning behaviours is quite often we've got so many habits grooved into our heads that we have to unlearn those first. And if you've got 40 years of negativity grooved in, That doesn't just change in one day, right? You've got to work super hard at getting into good habits because you've got to unlearn that first before the new habits and pathways get grooved in. So I had 40 years of unlearning and human beings, we're really bad at unlearning. We're super good at learning new stuff. Give your listeners 10 things to do and they can do them, but it doesn't make any difference if you've still got the old habits ingrained.

37:53Dr Andy Cope: So unlearning that, that's the

37:54Alberto Zandi: hard part. Before we talk about the unlearning and all the different tips and solutions that you'd recommend us to become happier. I'd like to talk about the brain. So what's happening in our brains and what's happening from a neurochemical point of view when we feel happy?

38:13Dr Andy Cope: What's happening is, it's not my area of expertise, but basically when you're feeling happy, a different set of chemicals will pump around your body. It's almost as simple as that. So the endorphins and all the feel-good factors pump around your body. And what that does is that makes you more, well, actually, interestingly, it makes if something painful happens, so you get stung by a nettle, it hurts less if you're happy. And it hurts more if you're not. So actually pain, it affects so many aspects of your life. But there's something by Barbara Fredrickson called Broaden and Build. And I like Broaden and Build because basically what it says that when you're in that 2 % mode that I spoke about at the top of the well-being graph so you put these behaviors into play then actually um your brain switches on so um let me do it the opposite way so when you're not in a good place when you're at the bottom of the well-being diagram stuck in that low-level grumbling i used to call it irritable bastard syndrome if i'm allowed to use that but there's a lot of it out there you know on the tube in london there's a lot of people looking pretty angry about life and that's highly infectious what one person in your team gets that then everybody's got this IBS you know everybody's grumbling about the world but when you're stuck in that bottom third your brain will literally narrow down and will only be able to look at the problems so you literally get this single-minded focus you look at the weather you look at the politics you look at your job and everything seems really bad okay you can't you don't think creatively you don't think about you just like stuck in this mire when you're in that two percent that I said earlier broaden and build basically says that when you're there your brain literally what happens in your brain it literally lights up with possibilities it begins to see opportunities up here that you can't see when your brain is stuck in that bum so you're seeing you're saying well we could try this i could do that maybe try this you become creative you become solution focused and actually the world looks differently when your brain is because your brain can see a future whereas down here it's like oh it's just a bit rubbish so actually broaden and build i think is really good that's the almost the evolutionary purpose of happiness is for us to be able to see a bright future and go for it

40:18Alberto Zandi: and that's the definition and and the feeling of happiness evolve over time so 20 the 20 year old version of myself would have a different definition and feeling yeah well that's interesting yeah

40:30Dr Andy Cope: again it's a really interesting one i mean i've got a one and a half year old granddaughter now who is just permanently wired for happiness and joy you know that end of the spectrum of like wow everything is new and novel she's not learned that mondays are bad i'm not teaching her i'm never going to teach her that right i'm going to be really careful but she's she because everything is new she'll jump in every single puddle going but you look at the adults walking on the streets we could walk around the puddles she's through the puddles in them jumping like that right and so we have this from about zero to about seven this unbridled joy of life then between about seven I think maybe nine actually nine and eleven your brain becomes a bit more sophisticated and you start to have opinions and you make judgments about people which is okay for a little while until you realize that those people are also making judgment value judgments about you and as soon as you realize that that's called self-consciousness and you start to hide you're going instead of being the jumping in puddles chasing the ducks in the park version of us that we all truly are we all start out like that with joy we start to become the person we think we need to be to fit into society which is different that's why teenagers they start to fit in they don't jump in puddles anymore they'll have the same haircut as their mates they listen to the same music as their mates they become part of a tribe part of a clan and therefore what happiness changes there and then happiness has got a big dip about where i am in in in late 50s there's a u shape where we get to a point you most people will get to a point in their mid-50s where they've got a senior they've worked hard got a senior position in an organization with a lot of pressure and they've got children maybe still at home they're looking after and maybe ill parents or grandparents so all these responsibilities come between 50 and 60 so there's a big dip in happiness um globally in between the 50s and 60s and then in retirement it should come back again so there's all these peaks and troughs and dips but i think truly my little granddaughter is proof that we all start out

42:35Alberto Zandi: happy and then the world does its thing i have a bizarre and strange question but are there any studies that reveal if people with kids with children uh versus people without children are happier or less happy um happier generally yeah it's because it's part of your

42:57Dr Andy Cope: 12 people i think happier generally although i think in the early years the sleep deprivation again i can think of a graph i'm not going to draw graphs you know but in my head there is a dip immediately when so when you're a new parent i'm sure you'll have this to come one day but um there is this dip for about a year where you get no sleep right and you just the graph goes down but it does over the it should pay back the kids should pay back later so sleep is very important sleep is important i know you've done sessions on sleep before and i'm not a sleeper expert but But I do think that a big part of my happiness comes from looking after myself physically.

43:32Dr Andy Cope: And that includes sleep. And we're so sleep deprived now. It's crazy. Like we're busy leaving, leading such busy lives that the first thing that we give up on is sleep. We sleep cheat. And I think if you can just get your regular eight hours, then you should, it makes you sure. If there's just one habit that you could change, it would just be get to bed an hour earlier.

43:53Alberto Zandi: and what about other habits like eating drinking alcohol yeah i think eat move sleep again in not

44:01Dr Andy Cope: not key areas of my expertise but i think everybody's clever enough to understand that actually they're the basics if you're not feeling great physiologically if you're eating the wrong foods and if you're not getting any sleep and you're drinking too much alcohol then you're just gonna not feel great anyway so i think give you i always think it's almost um harming yourself by eating the wrong foods and but again the modern world there's this i don't know if you've heard the word zookosis i've just got i've got a book coming out in the summer that zookosis is quite a big part of it so i if give an example i went to a took my kids to a zoo many years ago now and the kids didn't notice but i noticed the animals behaving strangely so the the elephants were rocking and the the monkey the big silverback scratched himself he was bleeding and the bears had paced up and down so much there was a there was a path in the concrete in the so I noticed all these animals behaving strangely and I googled it and I got home and the word zookosis so zookosis basically means that the animals um and actually animals in zoos quite often they're medicated so they medicated the elephants and they medicated the bears um but zoo so they're medicating the animals to make them feel better but actually it's a non not a medical problem the problem with the animals is they're in captivity if you put the bears back into the Ural Mountains, they'd be fine, but they're locked up.

45:21Dr Andy Cope: So actually all these weird behaviours come from the environment and we're medicating the animals. There's a big thought coming in a minute, right? We're medicating the animals for a non-medical problem. Now, my question here is, have we created human zookosis? Have we created an environment, just walking through London right now, create an environment that is not conducive to human well-being right are we eating the wrong foods there's a fast food chain every 10 yards there's there's alcohol on every you know everywhere there's uh everybody if we're five and a half hours now scrolling on our teenagers five and a half hours scrolling that's not good for anybody's health so are we actually medicating for a non-medical problem and a really big i've really i've probably got some people really angry with this we talk about adhd and people have got adhd my thing is i'm beginning to think that maybe society's got adhd we've created an environment that is actually messing with our heads wow i mean so so therefore learning to flourish in that crazy world that's where positive psychology becomes really important sorry

46:29Alberto Zandi: yeah no but i was i was analyzing my life and the life of the people around me and And I agree. It seems like societies or the world's priority number one is economics. So economics mean economic growth, which is led by consumerism, which means they need to sell more, sell more of whatever it is, whether they are digital experiences like through social media or consumer goods and services. and if we're consuming many of these things then by default we're constantly being stimulated and that's our precondition for us to feel happy and we are constantly being pushed towards towards the short-term definition of happiness and we're not allowed or being able to unlock the long-term definition of unhappy of sorry of happiness yeah this is my analogy or my assessment that's

47:28Dr Andy Cope: beautifully analyzed yeah i think that we are super busy doing the wrong things yeah that the modern world as you as you've said that the modern world has made it so easy to get into bad habits which is we're back to zucosis are we medicating you know i better not say where but i was in a school um in the north of england and they said that in the year five so what they take kids who are nine or ten years old three quarters three quarters of their kids in that in their school have got some sort of diagnosis for some sort of disorder three quarters so it's almost like uh unusual not to have a diagnosis now so either there's something going on in that town that's causing people to be messed up or there's something bigger going on society and i think and now have we accidentally created a society that the zucosis is messing with our heads or has it been deliberate is another you know this has the pendulum swung so far towards materialism we are chasing things and if we if we live in a consumer society where we are where we think that having more stuff will make us happy then it makes sense to chase more stuff and i think the vast majority of people do think that having more stuff will make us happy so they're musterbating they're chasing this more stuff whereas really what where i'm coming back is we're back to peace and contentment and gratitude and looking at what you've already got and learning to be happy with that, then I think that's quite a big tick in the well-being box.

48:57Alberto Zandi: But what I find fascinating is that I personally believe, and maybe have a different opinion, but I personally believe that almost everyone knows that another pair of trousers won't make them happy. So it's like from a conscious and logical point of view, they know the answer. This will not lead to happiness. But it's almost a feeling. It's almost like it's an unconscious decision so i'm acquiring things not knowing why because i see that people in movies and tv shows and in social media they have these great things and then they seem to be very happy with them but where i'm leading to is that it seems to me that all of these different external factors are conditioning us towards a feeling of happiness that is unconscious we're not making a logical decision to buy these trousers to be happy it's an unconscious decision we we unconsciously think it will make us happy but logically i'm pretty sure everyone knows those trousers won't make

49:55Dr Andy Cope: you happy those trousers won't make you happy no but we are are we being manipulated into thinking that we need more stuff because we're not everybody watching this you've got a really clever audience right they know they know the truth they know but and yet we're still busy doing the wrong things we're still there's too many people burnt out too many people chasing the wrong things too many people eating fast food too many people drinking too much drink um and chasing the hedonistic happiness yeah the purchase the the the new shoes the amazon delivery woohoo then we'll be happy and actually it is learning to be a little bit more sophisticated than that but it almost goes against what society is trying to get you to do so society is trying to push you towards materialism um i mean maybe we need to swing back towards mindfulness i'd love to have a take because i know that you you really love mindfulness and without going all woo woo and sitting on a gluten-free cushion and sitting for three hours arming we don't need to do that but i do think that mindfulness is um this understanding that um that well where do we go with it where do we go with mindfulness i mean i went i went to india for three months to learn about all this and i came back and um i would suggest that in mindfulness in its purest form is there's no past or no future which kind of blows your mind if you've not heard this before this is quite mind-blowing stuff right so mindfulness is in its absolute essence is there's only the present moment so everybody's life is lived in the present moment it's always now o 'clock and so the past again in pure mindfulness pure buddhism really is that the past, you can only think about the past from the present moment.

51:35Dr Andy Cope: So the past doesn't exist anywhere except now. And the future, when you get that holiday in six weeks that you booked, when you get on that holiday, that will also be a present moment. So actually what mindfulness really says is that, again, controversially, happiness is already here, but where are you? Our brains are so busy being directed into the past, worrying about what happened in the past, or panicking about the future that we are literally our brains are time traveling to every fake moment and missing the only moment there ever is which is the present one and what mindfulness therefore does is bring us back to this moment the only moment that actually is real is happiness is here and bringing it into here so instead of trying to get out of the moment and rushing 100 miles an hour to get out of the moment mindfulness brings you tries to get you into it slow down to that slow down to the to the only moment there is notice it's about noticing really so what you're

52:28Alberto Zandi: saying is that i'm trying to make a connection between mindfulness and happiness but yeah happiness lives in the moment it's not in the future when i achieve this or that or or when i build up this beautiful picture and i accomplish it or from a fantastic past and a memory happiness lives in the present and that's where where we need to seek it yes well everything lives in the

52:51Dr Andy Cope: present uh yeah happiness is happiness is now uh happiness is always available to us but i think we're being we're back to the modern world what my point is we're the modern world is messing with us so much that we're looking for happiness everywhere else we're we're putting it off for the future the destination addiction or we're looking at how happy we used to be in the past and we're literally missing missing now we're missing the only moment there ever is which is the only real one and i think that you know the link between happiness and mindfulness it's interesting now if you look at the where mindfulness came from which is kind of the over in the east in the china and india they've gone massively materialistic there now i went to india everybody's chasing stuff they want products they want a motorbike they want some so even in the cradle of mindfulness they're now becoming consumed by consumerism and i think mindfulness now is showing up in the west where we're drowning in so much stuff that we're trying to find a solution to it and it's actually maybe we there's a body of people now who are really into mindfulness in the uk as the antidote to the busyness the craziness that that um that our lives have become just find try and peace in this moment because this moment is all you've ever got what would

54:02Alberto Zandi: you advise me and my audience to be to be able to be more present um there's a beautiful there's

54:10Dr Andy Cope: lots of ways um i don't know if you've heard of the japanese concept ichigo ichi ichigo itchii is super cool it's so simple um it's got a history to it if you just let me go for it so back in the 17th century japan um every village would have a tea ceremony so quite famously all the workers would meet in the village hall for this tea ceremony at a certain time during the week and itchii literally translates as one time only so the thinking was while we're all together in the village hall for this tea ceremony is itchigo itchie it's one time only so we're going to be fully present right so yeah there's going to be a tea ceremony at the same time next week with the same people in the same village hall but next week is a different vibe in a different atmosphere this tea ceremony right now itchigo itchie one time only fully present now how does that map across to to where we are now if you take that to me in my house let's just take and then extrapolate it out to to everybody so i've been married for lots of three decades now 33 years and I love my wife, but if we're not super careful having breakfast with the same person for 33 years, if you're not careful, that's just breakfast.

55:21Dr Andy Cope: It's such a non-event. She'll sit there, she'll have white coffee, black coffee, we eat. It's just 15 minutes at peace. It's totally bland and quite boring after 33 years if you're not careful. But Itigur Ittii basically says that breakfast time with my wife today is one time only, right? And therefore, I'm going to be fully present. Now that, being cognizant of that changes everything. So instead of now being on my phone at breakfast time, she's on her phone, not anymore, not got the TV news on anymore, listening to what's going on in the world, trying to be present with that person for that 15 minutes.

55:57Dr Andy Cope: And what you'll find, because it, so breakfast time tomorrow will be a different breakfast time. And this breakfast time here is one time only, being fully present. And what I can tell you, it's really hard, because I want your viewers to just put it into practice in their own lives. It's hard to describe how powerful it is, because what you'll find is a connection with a person that wasn't there previously for scrolling. You'll find a connection with the present moment, and the whole thing comes to life instead of just being a boring set piece. So that's tea ceremonies in India, Andy having breakfast with his wife.

56:29Dr Andy Cope: What about in the big wide world out there? well I think in business meetings how many meetings have I been in where everybody's got their phones out their iPad their laptops out and nobody's really listening to each other we're just waiting for their turn to speak and I think if you can be in a work situation in a meeting situation where everybody is being fully present you feel that you will really feel I'm not saying it's easy because you've been so distracted but you're really good at it right but but I think it's is if you can say same with the kids back to children if your children you go home from work and your children's like can i show you this picture i've done at school and you're going well i've just got to do this i've got to do my emails i've got to cook the tea show me later if you get it he says show me the picture show me the picture right and what you will find there whether it's in a meeting with your teammates whether it's with your kid whether it's your partner having breakfast you'll find a connection with the human being you will be present in your presence instead of being distracted and the world is so good at making us absent in our presence we're so distracted now Ichigo Ichi I think is really really uh the easiest way that I found of just bringing my attention to the people in front of me and the simple tip

57:43Alberto Zandi: to embrace Ichigo Ichi in our lives is by reminding ourselves of the uniqueness of that moment so this is a unique breakfast that's a unique meeting beautiful yeah that's what I was trying to say

57:54Dr Andy Cope: You have this way of summing things up better than I. It took me five minutes to explain that. That's exactly it. It isn't going to happen again like this. This is a special, this is a one-time only. Well, we're back to the present moment. Every moment is different. And this is a one-time opportunity to be present with this moment and this person. So it's super powerful because most people aren't present. Most people are so distracted, right, that they're not present. So when you are present, people notice because you're, it's almost a superpower i think in the modern world

58:30it seems to me then that being present is a choice which then it begs the question

58:37Dr Andy Cope: is happiness a choice uh i no i don't think no um despite what instagram tells you i'm a bit nerdy on this right happiness happiness is an emotion and the best you can do with happiness you can't choose it you can open up to it and let more in you can open it up and you can let more happiness into your life but you can't choose to be happy because it's an emotion however positivity being positive is not an emotion it's an attitude and these are quite closely related you can choose to be positive and what i found in my research is this conscious and deliberate choice and the effort is quite often in effort involved in having a great attitude it's easy to have a bad attitude so easy to walk around with a bad attitude but a conscious and deliberate decision and choice as you said to have an attitude that works in your favor that's the biggest single thing that came out of my research but it's a decision you have to make now that it's not happiness it's positivity but by being more positive you more happiness should be allowed into your life but it's not a choice to be happy it's a choice to be positive technical detail but

59:47Alberto Zandi: it's important if someone listening to this is fully committed to become happier to be happy in their lives and then want to start this week where should they start uh this week i would start with

59:59Dr Andy Cope: um gratitude just write down 10 things you really appreciate but take for granted um and actually people will be on there and then a little weird stuff but actually that's really obvious and simple let me give you something that's maybe less obvious um i like steve mcdermott's point he calls it the four minute rule so if you want to be happy and positive you want to be happier you've only got to be that best version of you just for four minutes this is so good right because you're not going to be it all day but the four minute sets the scene so if you can be interested in the person in front of you uh like genuinely attentive being present being positive with a slight smile on your face just for four minutes not only will you feel great but that will transmit to the people in your meeting or the people at home.

1:00:41Dr Andy Cope: So the four minute rule basically means that the first four minutes of any interaction with another person becomes super important. The first four minutes of breakfast time, the first four minutes of going into the office, the first four minutes of a meeting, the first four minutes of going home to your family. If you can just bring it within yourself to be positive just for four minutes, then that affects everything. Because you go home, that first four minutes lights up the whole family. So let me give you the old and the new version of me. So the old version of me, little kids, I would go home.

1:01:10Dr Andy Cope: My habit was, how was school? And the kids would say, boring. And I would say, what did you learn? And they say, I can't remember. And that was it. Day after day, I'm going, I'm asking a terrible question. Four-minute rule changed everything because I started to go home and say, how would the best dad in the world go through this? Which is a super powerful question. So I knew the answer. I was like what you said. It's obvious what the answer is, but I wasn't doing it. So I decided I'm going to do it. And I decided I'm going to be the best dad. So the best, and they were only little kids at the time.

1:01:39Dr Andy Cope: So I went, instead of saying, how was school? I'd say, how was school today? Was it good, fantastic, or brilliant? And I said it with real enthusiasm. How was school today? Was it good, fantastic, or brilliant? And they would go, oh, it was really good. Actually, Dad, I'll upgrade. It was brilliant. And you're in. That's your in, right? What was brilliant about it? And then literally four minutes later, they're sharing the highlight of their day. And your job as a parent, tell me more. No way. You're kidding. Wow, that's amazing. Four minutes later, you've come home. you've added some value you've created and that you've got to the top of the well-being diagram and everything's different from there right it's not just four minutes the four minutes meal time's easier homework's easier bath time's easier bed time's easier because you've come home and added instead of coming home through the door rolling your eyes going oh let me tell you about my train delay right so even though this is obvious the vast majority of people do the wrong first four minutes they share the low light of their day with the people they love the most and i did that for years as well so the four minute rule if you want to start today right now then after this podcast just go and interact with somebody in best self mode for four minutes

1:02:43Alberto Zandi: and see what happens and what does that what does that look like with an adult because with the kid maybe it's slightly bit easier if you just narrow down the options for them so let's say going back to the initial example i'm having breakfast with my partner with my romantic partner first four

1:02:59Dr Andy Cope: minutes of the day yeah well i mean it's just about talking about the highlight of well going going home from work i mean um i think going home i would start to share the highlight of my day i start to ask my wife what's the best thing that's happened today tell me because she's a teacher right so there's loads of bad stuff and we used to focus on that you know and we'd spend 40 minutes almost having a competition to see who's had the worst day so she's telling me all the bad stuff and i'll be going this before i knew about positive psychology and i'm trying to listen to her but i'm you know off she goes again and i'll be waiting for my go and when she pours her breath let me tell you how bad my day my day's been worse than your day we used to have a competition for about 40 minutes she's had the worst day now going home asking let's just share the highlight the bad stuff if we really need to talk about the bad stuff we can it's gonna have happened but actually let's talk about the good stuff which just gets the evening off to a better start but breakfast time it's the same thing it's what what are you looking forward to most today yeah what are you excited for today?

1:03:57Dr Andy Cope: So it's just a slightly different play on words. Positive questions. It's positive. I mean, it's kind of obvious, but most people don't ask. Well, most people don't talk at the breakfast table. They scroll.

1:04:06Alberto Zandi: I think that's very powerful because it's particularly in this day and age, a lot of people, they were stressed and busyness, like a badge of honor. So you ask someone, anyone, how are you? How are you? So busy, so stressed. I have so many things to do. And that's almost like, but they say it with a bit of pride right like like if you tell someone um if someone asks you how are you and you say i'm doing pretty well you unconsciously think that the other person maybe might be thinking well you're not doing enough you know something like that but that's wrong that's so wrong it is wrong

1:04:37Dr Andy Cope: but again we're we are it's a zookosis again we think that you said busyness is a badge of honor how are you oh you know keep him busy like it's a good thing but actually you know i read a quote in fact, I put it on Twitter the other day. It was just a quote. It said, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, dead. I'm like, okay, for a lot of people, that is their life. So you just be careful. And that was my life for a long time as well. And I'm busy. I've just said, I've just flown in from San Diego, you know, and I'm, but most of my life now is under control. And I'm working really hard at not being too busy.

1:05:11Dr Andy Cope: But building a business, like you're building a business, I'm building a business, running a business, there is an element of you can't not be busy because you've got things that you do want to achieve but if you're doing your calling we're back to your calling you're doing your calling and i'm doing my calling and if work doesn't feel like work and you enjoy it then i've got no problem with being busy but i think if we're being super busy doing the wrong things and what should we do when things are not going well in

1:05:35Alberto Zandi: our lives but we still want to maybe be happy yeah i think i accept that things aren't going

1:05:40Dr Andy Cope: to go well all the time but you know life is there are ups and there are downs and i think positive psychology isn't again i don't want to sound like a broken record here it's not about thinking you should be happy all the time it's about acknowledging there are times when it's it's okay to have downtime what positive psychology helps you do is to bounce back into that best version of you in fact let me let me just add in a story off the bbc it always makes me laugh i began starting keynotes with it because i think it's a really funny story but it's true so there was i'm trying to get off my phone you know when you go on your phone and you legitimately looking for something and then 45 minutes later you're still there you know scrolling on the feed and it's oh the algorithm you're like oh no why have i done this again so i'm not doing that anymore but there was a bbc headline it's about maybe two years ago now i knew it was clickbait but i had to click on it there was the headline said it said man joins search party looking for himself i'm like well that's a weird headline right so i clicked on that took me to a story in turkey and i'm assuming it's the bbc so it must be at least half true so there's this guy who lives in a village in turkey and he went away for the weekend and he didn't tell everybody he was going away so when he came back on sunday night all the villagers were in the woods looking for somebody and it looked really important so he joined in the search not knowing that they were looking for him which i think it made me laugh i saw it's just so such a cool story right two hours two hours and it made me laugh and it was about it just made me laugh and then it's about two days later it really made me think and thinking like metaphorically isn't that what everybody's doing we're going round and round in circles looking for this elusive best self we see it on instagram we see we we know what we get glimpses of what we want oh that's the version of me that i want to be and then we chase it and by the time we've got there it's gone and I think it's quite elusive we go 4 ,000 weeks I think most people will die looking for this elusive best self and I think hats off to you what you're trying to do on this podcast and what I'm trying to do in my keynotes is it would be really cool if the search was over if we could actually inhabit the amazing version of us even on a Monday morning when it's drizzling outside that is when the search is truly over and i think really where my work and i think what this podcast is about and what the whole of positive psychology really is about is is helping people be comfortable with who they are you found yourself that best version of you and we're back to where we started that's the contented quiet contented version of you that doesn't really need to pursue more it's just a little nod to appreciative where you are and let's say let's assume that we achieve

1:08:23Alberto Zandi: that state of mind, that feeling, that long-term happiness. We found ourselves and we're happy with who we are, but perhaps most importantly with who we are not. Does that mean that then we achieved it and we're going to feel great and, you know, accepting for the rest of our lives? And we need to still practice these daily things that you've mentioned.

1:08:41Dr Andy Cope: Yeah, I think the daily, well, the daily things, again, back in the conclusion of my PhD, is there's a word habituation. Habituation basically means that if you do anything for a certain amount of time, it starts to become normal the effect wears off um so it's like it's like drinking beer you know first two beers really good six beer eight beer ten beers less good yeah or the new pair of jeans you've got five pairs of jeans really good 50 pairs of jeans the effect wears off and i think with all of these even with gratitude right there's research that says that actually if you keep being grateful you write your gratitude list every day after six months the effect of gratitude wears off.

1:09:18Dr Andy Cope: So I think that working, keeping the top tips fresh. So the four minute rule, fantastic. The four minute rule, I've been doing that for about 18 years and it still works for me. But most of the things, if you do them over time, they gradually will wear off. So actually, which is again, I'm not trying to sell your podcast for you because it's fantastic, but what you need to be doing is getting fresh top tips and trying things that are different. yeah so one of my big breakthroughs that i did for years but the effect has now worn off in terms of gratitude i i read a book on mindfulness and it said what you need to do is wake up in the morning being really grateful that you've not got toothache and i thought that that sounds a bit stupid but i'll give that a go so and i didn't just do that once i did that in 2008 i did that every single day for 365 days as an experiment in my head so picture the scene right so waking up in the morning 6 a.m on a monday i'd rather stay in bed but i've got responsibilities to get out of bed so i'd wake up hair all over the place the alarm would go i'd be like oh here we go again but oh hang on a second oh fantastic no toothache again what a great start to the day so just bear with me right because not having the awareness of not having toothache puts me in a great place so 15 seconds after waking up i'm out of bed like a ninja i'm going wow no toothache fantastic so when my kids came down for breakfast so little kids in those days because dad's in a good place i've got some music on i may be dancing around the kitchen serving the toast with a smile kids are happier they went off to primary school and absolutely smashed it they were brilliant that year they were happier they were learning more they were making good friends they were happy because dad was happy i was happy because i didn't have toothache and nobody knew because it was a game in my head i did that every day for a year and it was amazing right it rewired my brain and i started so the next year i thought oh i can't just do toothache forever i'm getting bored with it so i next year was kidding the kidneys getting out of bed giving my kidneys kidneys still working thank you guys and if i you know look down the camera and ask your viewers when did you last thank your kidneys right and probably never not until they're not working then we're desperate for them and i think therefore that's an example of habituation so the toothache worked for about a year and then it started to wear off so i changed the body part now i don't have to do it at all anymore because it's ingrained in my head but keeping your top tips fresh um i think stops you from stops them from getting stale and habituated yeah i'm loving these daily habits and tips do you have any others oh i could go forever i mean how long have we got

1:11:45Alberto Zandi: have we as long as you want just give me the most important ones the most effective ones can i give

1:11:49Dr Andy Cope: you can i give you ones that um i think that work at work and at home um so i love the again it's not really my area of research but it's a beautiful thing called the lasada line it might have been touched on in previous um podcasts la sada line basically says that positive and negative don't weigh the same so what you should be is you should be three times more positive than you are negative in terms of how you speak so it's not three to zero so you can be negative you can go nightmare or disaster or oh my gosh this is rubbish but every time you say something negative you should balance that with a minimum of three positives so if but but that's just the minimum in fact if relationships at home go three to one the other way they're going to end if you look at john gottman's research on that if it's three negatives at home for every positive that's a root goodness struggle big time but three to one positive to negative is the minimum that you need for a relationship to gain any traction right but we're not trying to be minimum we're trying to be maximum in this podcast so if you listen to high performance teams in the workplace their ratio is six to one so in terms of positive psychology what you should be is listen back to yourself you should be six times more positive than you are negative so that if i was in let's take it into a team so if i was working in the team i could hear six bits of praise six bits of encouragement six bits of good news six thank you six catching a work colleague doing something well and telling them for every negative i'd be fairly sure that team is buzzing got some energy um but in if you got kids or grandkids then this is again carol dweck's research really is the ratio is around eight to one at home which is quite a bit it's a big number right so eight to one so if i was in your house and i could hear let me give you an example so if your child is doing their homework at the kitchen table and you not ask them to they're just doing it out of their own volition then what you've got to do as a parent or grandpa is just notice you just walk past you go oh my gosh you're doing your homework wow i've not even asked you to do that that is so helpful thank you for making my day it doesn't take five minutes it takes five seconds you've noticed and you've gone the thing is the child knows that you've noticed such a small win and if i was in your house so if i'm in your team it's six to one if i was in your house i could hear eight bits of love eight bits of caring eight thank yous eight thanks for not bringing your phone to the tea table thanks for playing so nicely with your little sister thanks for being so lovely with your grandma if i could just hear that in your home environment then your home will also be flourishing as well so i think that's just such a simple thing i think the four rule uh not having toothache and the six to one eight to one ratio i think are really easy they don't cost anything they just require you to be um put a little bit of effort into putting those into practice do you have any others i'm really loving these tips let me give you something that again it's maybe sometimes i use in a keynote but i think it's funny but really not funny i think it's quite serious there's something called enclosed cognition i'm not going to bore you with what that actually means, but basically this is what it's all about.

1:14:45Dr Andy Cope: And it's a tip for everybody watching this about their underwear. Okay, because after you've listened to this podcast, what I want you to do is go upstairs to your bedroom, I want you to open your underwear drawer, and in that underwear drawer, there'll be some knickers or pants that you don't really... Emergency underwear, you know what I mean? Last resort pants. Girls, guys, we've got them, yeah? Bad pants. Either you're out of shape or the pants are out of shape, but they don't deserve to be worn, but they're still in your drawer. So you open the drawer, there's half a dozen pairs of bad underwear.

1:15:15Dr Andy Cope: I want everybody watching this, listening to this, that underwear is gone from your life. You're going to put it in the bin, you're going to burn it, you're going to bury it in the garden, you're never going to wear those knickers again, right? Then tomorrow morning, you're going to get dressed for work, you're going to get showered, get dressed for work, you're going to open your underwear drawer and in that drawer tomorrow, there will also be your special underwear. And I want everybody watching this, listening to this podcast, wearing their special underwear for work tomorrow, right? And what that should mean is that if it's in London, I should see you walking across London with a little bit of a spring in your step, a little bit of a swagger, because you knew you got your best underwear.

1:15:53Dr Andy Cope: Now, that sounds like some sort of cheap gag. It's not a joke. It's not even a joke, because we take you back to where we started earlier in the podcast, is that what we find in terms of that happiness rainbow and destination addiction, what people do is they end up reserving their happiness for a special occasion. i'll be happy the weekend i'll be happy on a night out i'll be happy on holiday i'll be happy when i retire and in the same way we end up reserving our special underwear for a special occasion whereas really link it all back to that 4 000 weeks that special thing we have called life nobody gets out alive so therefore if you've only got 4 000 weeks it seems to me if life is the ultimate special occasion which i believe it to be then maybe the ultimate top happiness tip ever is to quit waiting.

1:16:37Alberto Zandi: I really love particularly this last one because I've done something very similar years ago. So many years ago, I used to wear my special clothes for special occasions and then my less nice or less special clothes every single day. And then one day I woke up and I felt like, God damn it, that means that today is not special. So it's not as important as that future day that it may never arrive also, right? that future day and how many of those future special occasions will I have I don't know 20 30 my whole life if you're lucky a bit more but that means that my whole life is narrowed down to those very few moments what about everything else and I changed it um I'm not saying for everyone to go shopping and just buy the nice things to wear the nice things every single day but it was just not about I didn't buy more I was just wearing more of the things that I was just keeping yes for the good days fantastic well that's exactly the same point you've done it again

1:17:33Dr Andy Cope: you've summarized my point again to put it into real language but with it's your underwear whatever it is you're wearing i think what i said at the start is enclosed cognition actually means that when you when you wear it's like when a doctor puts a white coat on they feel like a doctor it's what you wear affects how you behave so it makes perfect sense there for if to wear your best stuff more of the time yeah because like what are we waiting for what are we waiting for especially if every day literally is a special occasion because there were people you know who don't survive today. So the fact is that I'm 60 years old.

1:18:07Dr Andy Cope: If I can wake up in the morning, there's no coughing there. You know what I mean? I'm still alive. I'm here. In fact, little kids wake up, they go, well, I've got another day. And I think we forget how valuable life is. Yeah, so treat every day like a special occasion. Because it is.

1:18:23Alberto Zandi: Because it is. This brings me to an example that I've discussed with a dopamine expert that I think it very much relates to happiness. we draw a lot of dopamine from alcohol and almost, you know, a lot of people they only drink on the weekends, right? They tend or try not to drink during the week which means the following that if you are naturally cutting down on alcohol because that's healthy for you and you're only doing it on the weekends you're getting a dopamine spike on the weekends which means you have a dopamine low during the week which by default it means, or by design you're going to be less happy during the week.

1:18:57Alberto Zandi: yes and and we keep doing this over and over again so if we're doing a tuesday dinner with a friend if we get to do that versus a friday dinner with a friend unconsciously we're thinking that the tuesday one is less relevant less important yeah less fun and on friday is going to be fantastic so we were wasting that dinner we're wasting that tuesday we are we are but how

1:19:20Dr Andy Cope: many i i it makes me laugh now but how many tuesdays have i wasted in the past the old version of me i didn't know all the stuff i've spoken about today hadn't crossed my mind i was going through my life i was perfectly okay i was fine but fine seems quite a low bar if you've only got 4 000 weeks then fine is a very low bar so i think it's it's breaking out of this curse of mediocrity into the extraordinary version of you um that it's perfectly possible to learn these habits and learn these behaviors and be that amazing version of you more often than i think there's a little bit

1:19:54Alberto Zandi: of effort involved but the payback is times a million um and my last question is is a bit of a tradition now that we have on the show and it's my favorite question regardless of who i am talking to because i guess you'll see now why if you had to compress only our knowledge into one essential piece of advice yeah that we must implement in our daily lives yeah what would it be um

1:20:22Dr Andy Cope: Well, all the stuff that I've mentioned, plus I think I give you a personal favorite of mine. Are you a hugger? Do you like a hug? Because I'm not, or at least I wasn't until I learned this. So your audience will be split, the huggers and the non-huggers. I love the idea that the average hug, if you are a huggy person, the average hug lasts 2.1 seconds. OK, so if you watch huggy people, it will be like one, two, finished, right? Which is better than nothing. but for the love to transfer between two people a hug needs to last seven seconds or longer right now for non-huggers that's whoa this is uncomfortable and i'm not talking about strangers in the car park we're back to the 12 people that you know in your life your dunbar's number so even if you're a non-hugger my top tip would be to actually hug the people you love the people closest to you you're you're 12 people for seven seconds or longer and the beauty of that is, that's an I love you hug.

1:21:17Dr Andy Cope: So you don't have to say I love you. A hug is just seven seconds is just long enough for the person to instinctively intuitively know that you love them. And obviously, don't count out loud. That's what I learned. If you're like one, two, that's going to kill it. And also they do start wriggling on about four trying to get away. But just seriously, without any humour, just bring your loved ones in for seven seconds. I can't give you a top tip that would be create more oxytocin than that across the planet. And how many viewers do you get of your podcast we could create a real oxytocin blast with seven second hugs across

1:21:48Alberto Zandi: the world here today yeah andy i i really really really enjoyed this conversation um thank you so much for coming on to the show i as we were discussing earlier i think we need more doctors like you because i believe that everyone's ultimate goal in life their purpose in life is to find meaning and happiness. Yeah. That's it. Nothing else. Everything else is to contribute to these two things. Yes, I said happiness is the goal of all your other goals.

1:22:18Dr Andy Cope: Yeah, so we, yeah, I agree. I agree. But I think it's what the beauty of positive psychology, the beauty of what I know is that most of it is so simple. We already know it, but we're not doing it. So this podcast is a nudge towards taking action.

1:22:34Alberto Zandi: Exactly. So I'm very thankful because this episode, I'm hopeful that this episode will bring nothing more than consciousness, which is what we need towards happiness. What is it? What is it not? Where can we draw it from and where we can't, which is what we all need. So thank you. And I think we should do this again, maybe in a year from now. I think we should do this almost like an annual thing because people need to hear this more often. Anytime. So thank you for having me. Thank you.

1:23:07you