AMERICANS ARE NOT HAPPY! THE LATEST RESEARCH ON HAPPINESS

➡ Dave Hodges, host of the Common Sense Show, discusses various topics including a new show called Hips, a product called Ageless Multicology, and the science of happiness. He explains that money can only buy happiness up to a certain point, and that social connections are more important for happiness than wealth. He also emphasizes that happiness can lead to career success and better civic engagement, and that religious involvement is often correlated with happiness. Lastly, he mentions that performing, receiving, or even witnessing acts of kindness can boost happiness levels.
➡ Dave Hodges, in his show ‘The Common Sense Show’, discusses how simple actions like doing kind things for others can boost mood levels, especially for those with light depression. He criticizes psychiatrists for often resorting to prescriptions instead of suggesting non-medical interventions like exercise. Hodges encourages more use of non-clinical interventions and self-monitoring of mood changes. He also teases more content about happiness training on his TV show.

Hello America! Dave Hodges here. I’m the host of the Common Sense Show. We are the show that is Freeing America, one in slave, mind at a time. Thank you so much for joining us. Really, really good to be with you. Please share far and wide for a couple reasons. One, we got to wake people up, too. We’re not getting much bump from recommendations. I don’t mean from my audience. I mean from the powers that be. So please share far and wide. Also, too, we have really interesting development here. We have a new show called Hips, hiding in plain sight.

And we’re looking at a variety of things, psychology, sociology, hidden history, repressed technology. Yeah, we have the Hitler thing up on, oh, it’s pretty cool. It’s getting rave reviews right now. It is really kind of correcting the missteps of Malay’s release. The president of Argentina yesterday on the Nazis in Argentina. It’s largely true, but it’s got some errors in it, and we corrected some of those errors. But we really are going to just bust it all out with exclusive programming there. And then, of course, we’ll have our geopolitics and so forth. The commonsenseshow.tv is where you want to be.

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Interesting. Happiness. Recent studies have shown us, and this is from recent studies. Not going to give you the full bore here. We’re just going to tell you what’s been found out recently from new research. Can money buy happiness? That’s a question people ask. Well, to a point, money can buy happiness up to about $75,000 a year. After that, it has no significant effect on our emotional well-being. It makes the life a little easier and more convenient in some ways, but not necessarily happier. The lack of money can make you miserable. Food, shelter, clothing, so forth.

Yeah, you lack those things. That’s a problem. And so what we can say accurately is the lack of money can make you miserable, but an abundance of money doesn’t make you any more happy. Middle-class, upper-class, happiness levels, no difference. Most of our happiness is not determined by genetics. People ask me, Dave, I was just born this way. You’re born with predispositions in some ways, but your day-to-day experience is what’s the determining factor here. And that research is from Lebroski at 2005. Okay, now, should you go search out happiness? No, it’s kind of the same thing I used to tell my athletic teams in coaching basketball.

Don’t talk about winning. Talk about the process that gets you to winning. And the same thing is true here. Trying too hard to find happiness has the opposite effect and can lead us to be overly selfish. Just focus on the process of the things that work. Pursuing happiness through social means. Material versus the social. This is the big question. What tends to make you happier? Well, as I said, if you fulfill your minimum money requirements, it clearly points to the social. Family, friends is more likely than other methods. Isn’t that interesting? And you know what we don’t teach in school? One, how to make money, and two, relationships, unless you were lucky enough to take my psychology class.

Okay, now, what’s interesting is, does happiness have carryover effects to society? The answer is yes, it does. Happiness makes us better citizens. It’s a good predictor of civic engagement. Isn’t that interesting? The researcher Fang and others in 2018. Does happiness lead to career success? Well, let me ask you a question. If you’re a boss, an employer, who would you rather be around? Happy people or sad people? Who’s going to bring more to the table? Well, it’s obvious. Happiness leads to career success and it doesn’t have to be natural happiness. Researchers found that experimentally happening or enhancing positive emotions contribute to improved outcomes at work.

Okay, there’s an old saying that fits here. I’ll believe it when I see it. No, that’s not really correct. You’ll see it when you believe it, and that leads you to the next step beyond thinking and cognition. Now you go into an action step. You’ll see it when you believe it, and then fake it until you make it. And you’re putting different roles in your work. Act like you’re the best. Believe you’re the best, and start acting that way. Let me give you a really silly example, but it’s not silly when you look at it, that really portrays this fake it until you make it.

When I was a college basketball coach, we would have players who transferred. We’d have to sit out a year. They didn’t meet the eligibility requirements or whatever it would be, but they were on our practice squad, and we would have them run the plays and imitate the personnel of the team that we were going to play. And invariably, you could take really pretty average college basketball player, and if they were imitating a superstar, all of a sudden they’re doing amazing things. There’s a relationship there between that and the placebo effect, but fake it until you make it.

That’s what they were doing there. And I remember I said to a couple of guys here until I started to really understand what I was seeing, why is it you’re doing so great here against what we ordinarily think are players that are better than you, and then you don’t do that on a day-to-day basis? And then it hit me, I answered my own question. You could do this. You just have to believe in yourself. You have to imagine you’re this person with a skill set. Fake it until you make it. This is really an important aspect of happiness or in skill achievement as well.

Okay, now people ask me too, are religious people happier? There’s a linear relationship between religious involvement and happiness. Now it’s more of a correlation effect. It’s not necessarily cause and effect, although there are cause and effect studies that show that this is true. Linear means, as one variable goes up, religious belief, happiness, and the two go together. They co-vary together. Correlation is the term that we hear. Higher worship attendance is correlated with more commitment to faith, and commitment to faith is related to greater compassion and empathy. There’s more compassionate individuals are more likely to provide emotional support to others, and those who provide emotional support to others are more likely to be happy.

Whoa, hold on here. Here’s what we know. Serotonin is a chemical that is associated with many things, but one of them is happiness levels. And what they have found in research is that random acts of kindness research, I should say, is that when you go out and you actually do a random act of kindness for somebody, your serotonin levels go up, and I’ve measured this in clinical studies. You feel good about being generous. Now, does it stop there? No. Here’s what’s interesting. Being the recipient of a random act of kindness also gives you a boost.

I remember when I had this experience once, I have to admit I was doing something bad for myself, but this is years ago before I became more health conscious. Pulling up to the drive-through lanes in two different directions, and I let the guy go for sale. Go ahead. Go ahead. I’m in no bakery. And the guy goes ahead and he paid for my meal. I remember how I felt. Wow, that’s really cool. I honked at him, waved on the way out. Pretty cool. Now, it doesn’t stop there. There’s if you just watch a random act of kindness, you get the same boost.

This is how I’ll be like certain kinds of movies. We’re watching sometimes really wonderful things happen. I go, oh man, that’s so cool. And you get that serotonin burst. It’s pretty cool. One of the things with people with light depression, I used to tell them to do in therapy besides exercise, which lists your mood levels. Avoid certain foods like sugar, which can deplete your mood levels. I would tell them to do kind things for people and don’t expect anything in return. That has effects too. Now, it’s interesting. Psychiatrists could be doing this too, and it should be an adjunct to their therapy.

But the first thing you do when you see a psychiatrist, they pull out the prescription pad. Now, a clinical hour with a psychologist is 50 minutes, and then you have 10 minutes to write up your case notes and then it’s on to the next client. With a psychiatrist, their average case is about 20 minutes, unless they’re doing intake on first visit, but it’s about 20 minutes prescription. They’re not giving you things that are non-medical, non-pharmaceutical. Now, a few do. A few will say, you know, let’s try some exercise with what we’re giving you.

And I know unless someone was hopelessly depressed and it was really interfering in their life, I would say, let’s try some non-clinical interventions before we send you off to the psychiatrist. And then I’d have them journal their results. How do you feel subjectively? Scale of one to five. We should be doing more of that, shouldn’t we? RFK Jr. I’m Dave Hodges. This is the Common Sense Show. Now, do you want to see more about happiness? We have a lot more to offer you. We’re going to put it over on the commonsenseshow.tv, how to train your brain for happiness.

I gave you a little teaser about random acts of kindness, but there’s more. And we’re also going to look at the elements that correlate to happiness, which we didn’t do in this piece. And I told you, we’re going to start doing more with this kind of stuff over on the TV show. We’re going to put that up manana tomorrow, how to train your brain for happiness. The commonsenseshow.tv. Go over there and sign up today. We’ll see you back here again next time. God bless everybody. Thank you for joining us. [tr:trw].