Shownotes:
What if happiness isn’t about eliminating stress but about learning how to recover and grow from it? In this episode, Tal Ben-Shahar, bestselling author and pioneer in happiness studies, reveals how small daily shifts can boost well-being, why true resilience is about more than bouncing back, and how rethinking expectations can change everything.
Thrive Global Article:
Connect with and learn more from Tal Ben-Shahar
Website: TalBenShahar.com
Happiness Studies Academy: HappinessStudies.academy
Books: Happier, No Matter What; Happy Habits (December 2025); and many more.
Classes: TalBenShahar.com/classes
LinkedIn: Tal Ben-Shahar
About Our Guest:
Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar is a globally renowned teacher and bestselling author whose work challenges the myth that happiness is about ease or avoidance. He taught two of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history and is the founder of the Happiness Studies Academy, where he created the world’s first Master's Degree in Happiness Studies.
His message is clear: happiness is not the absence of hardship—it’s the presence of tools, mindsets, and meaning that help us grow through it. This is resilience 2.0, the kind that doesn’t just help us bounce back, but brings us back stronger.
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, emotional intelligence, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Instagram - @LainieRowell
LinkedIn - @LainieRowell
X/Twitter - @LainieRowell
Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available here! And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!
Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.🙌
Just fill out the forms linked above and someone will get back to you ASAP!
Transcript:
[00:03:43] Lainie Rowell: Well, hello Tal how are you today?
[00:03:46] Tal Ben-Shahar: Hi, I am doing well. Thank you. Great to see you, Lainie.
[00:03:49] Lainie Rowell: Well, I have to show you something 'cause we were together a few weeks ago and you turned me onto something. Can you see?
[00:03:56] Tal Ben-Shahar: Matcha?
[00:03:58] Lainie Rowell: Matcha for my friends who are listening? Yes. This is matcha. I don't know how I missed the boat on this, but when we were together, you convinced me to give it a try. I've had one every day this week.
[00:04:09] Tal Ben-Shahar: Yeah.
So I was convinced by David Sinclair. You know, the Harvard Longevity expert who swears by it, and I started drinking it and now I must say in a very positive way, I've become addicted to my daily matcha. I actually just had it literally half an hour ago.
[00:04:26] Lainie Rowell: Well, I appreciate it. I have found it is just the right amount. 'cause I'm not a caffeine person. I think I was born caffeinated. You don't want me to have a lot of caffeine. And I find that matcha, you said it had a little and I looked it up. You're right. Just a little. And I think it's actually the perfect amount where I hopefully don't turn obnoxious.
TBD, you can, you can let me know at the end of this conversation. Thank you for that health tip, and there's so much that you've taught me. It goes way beyond matcha and I'm so excited to get started with this conversation if you're up for it. How about we start with your latest book?
[00:05:00] Tal Ben-Shahar: Great. So my new book is coming out in a few months and, it is about a concept called MVIs so MVIs is a take on, a paraphrase on, so to speak, on the MVP idea, not MVP from sports, but MVP from business, which is a minimum viable product. And basically an MVP is the beta version of a product that an organization puts out that's good enough to be out there, but not quite fully cooked yet.
And I took this idea and applied it to personal development. So MVI rather than MVP is minimum viable interventions, and minimum viable interventions are the smallest, shortest. Units of practice that we know because there is evidence, there is research on it, we know actually help contribute to our wellbeing.
And the argument is that if we introduce enough of these MVI, minimum viable interventions, which we can actually in a significant way shift the needle, in other words, make ourselves happier or healthier. Lainie, if I can give a couple of examples,
[00:06:17] Lainie Rowell: I would love that. Please do.
[00:06:18] Tal Ben-Shahar: So right next to me, there is one of those small trampolines, and the reason it's here is so that I want to, to make it accessible, and visible, so that throughout the day, as I spend most of my day in front of this computer, either, you know, doing Zoom calls or or writing.
Every couple of hours I get up and for 30 to 45 seconds jump up and down. And this is, you know, a high intensity and it's movement and it's healthy and I don't sweat after 30 seconds so I can go right back to work refreshed. That's a minimum viable intervention. Another could be maybe, you know, doing my, my pushups.
Another one could be focusing on my breath for for three deep inhalations and exhalations. Another one could be expressing Gratitude. Your, your land and doing it, what for one minute, two minutes. And what an impact that can have, or a hug is a minimum viable interventions. So wherever we look, yes, of course it's better to go to the gym and exercise for an hour, you know, daily and, and do our yoga session for another hour.
But short of that. There are many practices and interventions that go a long way. And you know, the mantra that I repeat to myself and to my students is that small changes can make a big difference when consistently applied.
[00:07:54] Lainie Rowell: I think that focus on consistency over intensity is so important because what we do often is what's gonna really matter and it's great if you can make it to a yoga class, but if you can only make it to a yoga class once a week, what are the other things that you could be doing? And I think that is really accessible. And I have to say one of the many glowing reviews we had received from your keynote was how practical and actionable you make things and I think that's always so important for bridging what we know from the research to our daily lives, and thank you so much for giving us that.
And when did you say the book's gonna come out? Do you have a date or a, a rough date
[00:08:37] Tal Ben-Shahar: coming out December of 2025.
[00:08:40] Lainie Rowell: Oh, nice. Okay. Ooh, I cannot wait. Sounds like a great holiday gift for us. Well, let's talk about the book before that, if you don't mind 'cause there's actually many they can come grab a copy of right now. But the one that is most recently published, happier, no matter what. And you share the S.P.I.R.E. Model, and that's really foundational for resilience and happiness. Could you take us through S.P.I.R.E.?
[00:09:08] Tal Ben-Shahar: Sure. You know, when I, when I started off in in this area of happiness and when, when, when it became more than just a personal pursuit, but I actually wanted to teach it, I had to formulate or come up with a definition for happiness. And initially I thought, well, happiness is just about meaning and pleasure. And then over the years, as I looked at the research and, and many of the writings, on happiness in particular by three scholars and they are Aristotle, Lao Tzu, and Helen Keller.
I realized that happiness is a multi-dimensional construct that comprises five elements and these elements, the elements of S.P.I.R.E., that's the acronym, are spiritual wellbeing, the S of S.P.I.R.E., physical wellbeing, intellectual wellbeing, relational, the are of S.P.I.R.E. And finally, emotional wellbeing. So spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotional.
And each one of them matters a great deal for our attainment of happiness. And each one of them can be broken down into practical, actionable parts. So for example, when we talk about spiritual wellbeing, yeah, of course we can experience spirituality in a house of worship through religion. At the same time, we can also experience spirituality when we're doing something that is meaningful to us or even more accessible when we're focusing on the present moment.
And that could be through a, you know, one minute brief meditation practice, or it could be through an hour long yoga class where the essence of those practices is present moment awareness. So that's spiritual wellbeing, meaning and mindfulness, or presence and purpose. Physical wellbeing? Well, that's about the mind body connection.
You know, we know there's so much research on the importance of physical exercise, not just for physical wellbeing, but for psychological wellbeing. Physical wellbeing is also about nutrition. That matters a great deal. It's about rest and relaxation. You know, there's a great deal of research on the importance of sleep and recovery.
So that's physical wellbeing. Then there is intellectual wellbeing. That's about curiosity. You know, curiosity is interesting because we know that people who are curious, who ask many questions are more successful. There's a lot of research on that. We know that for an organization to not just survive but thrive, it needs to be a learning organization, but curiosity.
It turns out also contributes to the quality and quantity of our lives. Meaning we're happier when we ask questions. If we're curious. We also live longer, which goes against the, you know, curiosity kills the cat notion for humans, it does the exact opposite, makes us live longer. Deep learning.
One of the things that I advocate and, and talk about a lot is the importance of reading and rereading, delving into a text or going to a museum and standing in front of a work of art and assimilating it, becoming one with it, deeply engaging with it, or going out to nature and deeply engaging with nature.
So these are all elements of intellectual wellbeing. Again, curiosity and deep learning. Then there is relational wellbeing. We know from a lot of research, number one, predictor of happiness, quality time we spend with people we care about and who care about us. It's about kindness, giving, generosity.
Now, one of the best, if not the best way to increase our own levels of happiness is to help others increase theirs or in some other way, contribute to their wellbeing. Then there is emotional wellbeing, and when it comes to emotional wellbeing, there is a great deal of misunderstanding because. Many people believe that to master the art or science of happiness means to be happy all the time.
Or what they actually mean is to experience a constant high, whereas we know that painful emotions such as sadness or anger or frustration or anxiety or fear they're part and parcel of every life, including a happy life. And what we need to do paradoxically, is embrace these emotions rather than reject them.
So embracing painful emotions, and of course, cultivating pleasurable emotions such as Gratitude, such as joy, such as excitement and fun. These are all of course, important pillars of a happy life.
[00:14:22] Lainie Rowell: When you talk about the S for spiritual, I love how you're so clear that it could be tied to religion, but not necessarily, if you're not a religious person, you can still be a spiritual person.
You can still have that richness in your life. And I won't go through every letter 'cause I could just glow and rave about all of them. But one of the things that I love when you talk about the intellectual is that leaning into curiosity. I think that's something that we really want to promote more in our learning communities because I think if we are not intentional, it's very easy to get into someone telling us the information, rather than us going on a journey to find those answers to the questions that we have. Mm-hmm. Because that's how we connect to the material. So I really love that you're leaning into that curiosity. And then also for the, I, I would say deep learning, that's why I do what we're doing right now.
This is how I dig in. I read your book, I reach out, say, can we have a conversation? And then I'll go write an article about this too. And for me that's deep learning. This is one of the best learning experiences I've ever had, is to be able to have these conversations with the people who my heroes like you.
And so thank you for that. And then the other thing I wanted to ask you, because we've had conversations about gratitude, but not specifically related to where exactly does gratitude fit into the S.P.I.R.E. Model? Is it fair to say that it doesn't just belong in one of those?
[00:15:54] Tal Ben-Shahar: Yeah. So first of all, it's important to understand that the S.P.I.R.E. Construct is a model.
It's not real life. Meaning, in life, things are not divided, you know, neatly and, and, and perfectly into models. It's messy for good and for ill. So for example, if you take gratitude, gratitude can fit in, I, I put it under and I teach it under emotional wellbeing because, you know, gratitude, appreciation is one of the, pleasurable emotions. At the same time, we know that people who express Gratitude also enjoy higher levels of spirituality. I mean, if you think about religion, you know, it's strewn with expressions of appreciation. We also know how much gratitude contributes to relationships. We also know that appreciation very much plays an important role in our ability to, to learn, to be curious about the world is to appreciate its beauty.
You know, arguably one of the most curious people in history, Albert Einstein once said there are. Purportedly said it's attributed to him. Yeah. He said, there are two ways in which we can live our life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle. And in this quote, he brings together the idea of curiosity.
Oh, how fascinating. It's a miracle. And of course, appreciation. Yeah. It's a miracle. I'm grateful for it. And we also know how Gratitude contributes to physical health. Right. You know, the research of Robert Emmons shows that very clearly. So Gratitude, yes. I teach it under emotional wellbeing, but it's deeply rooted in the DNA of each mm-hmm.
Of the S.P.I.R.E. Elements.
[00:18:01] Lainie Rowell: My thinking and I just, I'm really happy that you explained it so beautifully and I had Dacker Keltner on here who is all about awe. I mean, he's about many, many things. Not to say it's just awe, but his recent book about awe, I do love that connection to Gratitude as well, and that.
Quote you shared is so perfect. Nothing's a miracle or everything's a miracle. Well, I heard you in your keynote. I got to listen to the whole thing. I was backstage. We have a little speaker. It's a weird, we're in that big arena. I don't know if you could tell how the acoustics are kind of odd.
So the people who are in front of the stage, they hear it beautifully. If you're backstage, you actually get this echo, but I sat right in front of this one speaker so I could hear you and I loved everything you shared. One of the things that I think is really important for people who are listening to this or reading the article is you talk about the problem isn't stress. What is the problem?
[00:18:59] Tal Ben-Shahar: Yeah, so there's a wonderful TED talk that I would refer everyone to by Kelly McGonigle from Stanford who talks about how she, for many years. Identified stress as the enemy and talks about the fact that she was misleading herself and others down that path.
And I like her and like many others made a similar mistake. Seeing stress is the enemy. It's not far from it. And the analogy that brings this idea home best is a physical analogy. You go to the gym and you stress your muscles. What happens is a result of that stress over time, you actually grow stronger, healthier.
So, and whereas if you go to the gym and you put no stress on your muscles, the opposite will happen. You'll actually grow weaker. Your muscles will atrophy. In other words, we need stress for survival, for surviving, and even more so for thriving. So stress is not the problem, not physiologically nor psychologically.
What's the problem? The problem begins when we have no recovery. So if we go to the gym and we lift weights and then more weights and more and more without any time for recovery, of course we'll get injured. Of course, we'll grow weaker rather than stronger because it's actually during the recovery period, the in-between sets or the in-between sessions.
You know, with our days off that our muscles grow, but they wouldn't grow without the stress, nor will they grow without the recovery, and we need to have both. A healthy, happy, and successful life. A life where we fulfill our potential is a life where there is stress, there is struggle, there is difficulties, there are hardships, and there's also time for recovery.
And when we have the combination, that's where we have growth, development, fulfillment of potential.
[00:21:13] Lainie Rowell: I think this is a good time to talk about anti fragility, and I think I've heard you say a couple times, and I truly appreciate this. It's not that we don't want to have those unpleasant feelings when it comes to gratitude.
I say, it's not that we ignore what's hard, it's that we refuse to overlook what's good and mm-hmm. I think the way you talk about anti fragility, your work around that is really powerful to me, and I'd love for you to, to share with us what do we need to know about resilience and anti fragility.
[00:21:49] Tal Ben-Shahar: Yeah.
So anti-fragility is an idea that I learned about from Nassim Taleb and Nassim Taleb, originally from Lebanon, today teaching at NYU. Introduced this idea and the way I understand it, I see it as resilience 2.0. So let's begin with resilience 1.0. Traditional resilience, a term that comes from engineering, it simply says that if certain material is resilient, it means that when you put pressure on it and then release the pressure, it goes back to its original form.
So you take a piece of rubber, you squish it. If it's resilient, it goes back to where it was before, or a ball, you drop it. If it's resilient, it simply bounces back up to where it was before. That's why we talk about resilient individuals as bouncing back. So that's 1.0. What's resilience 2.0? What's anti-fragility?
Takes this idea a step further. You take certain material, you put pressure on it, stress it, you let go. After you let go, it doesn't just go back to where it was before. That would be resilience 1.0. It actually grows bigger, stronger, better as a result of that stress that's anti-fragility or a ball. You drop it.
Resilience 1.0, it bounces back up to where it was before. Resilience 2.0, antifragility, it actually bounces back higher than it was before, and it turns out that there are antifragile systems all around us and within us. I gave an example of one a few minutes ago. Our muscles, we put pressure on them, stress on them.
As a result of that pressure and stress, they actually grow stronger, bigger, healthier. And it doesn't just apply to our muscles Psychologically, we can experience growth as a result of hardship even, and this is the extreme case, even as a result of trauma. That's where the concept of the idea of PTG comes in post-traumatic growth, and this is the work of Tedeschi & Calhoun.
Who showed that in more cases than we experienced PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, we experienced PTG post-traumatic growth. In other words, we have the potential within us as a result of hardships difficulties, challenges, stressors, even traumas, we have the potential within us to grow. Does this mean that we'll grow every time for trauma?
Of course not. However, there are certain conditions that we can put in place, certain things that we can do. One of them being express Gratitude that will help us grow from those difficult, challenging experiences and experience anti fragility.
[00:25:09] Lainie Rowell: When I earned my degree, this is where I'm dating myself, and I just turned 50.
But when I was getting my psych degree, that was just when we were starting to have more conversations of what is now positive psychology. But a lot of my program was still rooted in how can we talk about what's wrong with people, how can we diagnose and tell people what's wrong with them? And when I now think about this post-traumatic growth and the fact that we're not stuck, which I appreciate that so much.
I think because of being on the cusp of when positive psychology was really starting to take root to come back around in this part of my life and realize like, oh wow, there's so much more that we can do. We're not stuck is a really powerful thing. And that's probably why I lean in so much to writing and talking about Gratitude is 'cause I do want people to know that there are all these things that are within their control.
Obviously professional help is sometimes needed, maybe even needed more often than not. But that there is things that we can do is really, really helpful. Speaking of positive psychology, you have just really taught thousands around the world about happiness studies, and you have the Happiness Studies Academy, and I'd love to hear from you kind of, how is the happiness studies, how is that the same as or different from positive psychology?
[00:26:39] Tal Ben-Shahar: Yeah. So I, I've been on the path of positive psychology from the very beginning. I was a graduate student in 1998. Which is when Marty Seligman and Barbara Fredrickson and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi were introduced this idea. My professor whose picture is right here on my wall Philip Stone was a friend of Marty Seligman and he was part of the the founding fathers and mothers of the field.
I remember when he came back, I think it was from Akumal in, in Mexico where they all met. He, he decided to teach a class on positive psychology. I think it was the second class in the world after Marty Seligman's class. And I became his teaching assistant. So that's when my love affair with positive psychology started.
So this was 1998. Fast forward 17 years, you know, I'd been working in this field after a, a professor Philip Stone retired, he handed over the class to me, and that's when I started teaching it. And so I've been involved in that field for, you know, 17 years. 2015, I was on a flight. Transatlantic flight.
And a question came to mind as I was, you know, falling asleep uncomfortably. And the question was, how is it that there is a field of study for psychology, which is what I studied, and philosophy and history and medicine and biology and literature and geography, and you name it. And there is no field of study for happiness.
Yeah, there is a positive psychology, but that's just the psychology of happiness. What about, what philosophers like Lao Tzu and Helen Keller and Aristotle had to say about happiness? What about what theologians had to say about happiness? You know, there's a great deal of wisdom in, in the religious text, whether or not you're religious.
What about what movies or literature? Or neuroscience or economics can teach us about happiness. Why isn't there a field, or rather an interdisciplinary field of study that looks at happiness from the different lenses, perspectives and helps us better understand, pursue, and attain happiness? And on that flight, you know, I was ex exhausted when this question came to mind. And right after I couldn't fall asleep and for literally days I couldn't stop writing and trying to design, put together a blueprint for a field of study, an interdisciplinary field of study around happiness. It was two years later that I co-founded the Happiness Studies Academy. And a few months after that, we launched our first product, so to speak, which is a certificate in happiness studies.
Fast forward to 2022. We launched a master's degree through Centenary University in happiness Studies. And fast forward till, today, which is when we're launching the world's first PhD in happiness studies, in the hope of educating scholars and practitioners who will become the pillars of this new field.
[00:30:16] Lainie Rowell: I think that's so exciting and I really wanted to make sure to get to this question because I think if someone didn't get to hear that beautiful explanation from you, and they heard happiness studies versus positive psychology. They might actually think it was a subset that it was like a narrowing, but it's actually not, as you said very beautifully, it's interdisciplinary.
So it is focusing on this area that is very broad, but in a lot of different lenses. Is that fair to say?
[00:30:48] Tal Ben-Shahar: Yes. And, positive psychology is a very important part of the field of happiness study. So our students, you know, learn about the research by, you know, Emmons and McCullough and, and, and Seligman and Peterson and, and, and Frederickson, and the list goes on.
In addition to that, they also read Marcus Aelius and they read Shakespeare and they read Marianne Evans and they read Chinua Achebe and they look at happiness from those different perspectives because I think it's important for our understanding, our pursuit and our attainment of happiness, to also know what artists can tell us about happiness.
You know, poetry, there's so much that we can learn from it. It can touch us in, in, in deep ways That alongside not in opposition to alongside research, can help us go deeper.
[00:31:55] Lainie Rowell: I think one of the lovely things about that interdisciplinary approach is that that gives multiple entry points for someone who may be leans towards philosophy or leans towards neuroscience to be able to come into it like, oh, I can't wait to learn about the neuroscience of it, but then also see, oh wait, here's what the philosophers are saying. Here's what the artists are saying. I love to see this evolution that it's come to this. So thank you for putting that out in the world. And we're recording in August and the phD program starts...
[00:32:28] Tal Ben-Shahar: the last week of August.
[00:32:29] Lainie Rowell: Last week of August. Can I ask you something? This is just me being somewhat maybe selfish, but I just really wanna dive into something about post-traumatic growth. Years ago, I heard Marty Seligman kind of summarize the, the research again, this was years ago, and he would explain resilience as like on a bell curve and that the vast majority of people are going to respond to trauma with some form of resilience.
And then the way he explained it is like the tails on the end, the. Two and a half percent would maybe be post-traumatic stress, and then 2.5% on the other half would be post-traumatic growth. But I heard you say earlier that even more people could actually be on the post-traumatic growth. Is that a shift? Is that because we're seeing so much awareness about how we're not stuck and we can make these changes? Yeah,
[00:33:29] Tal Ben-Shahar: so with the research by again, Tedeschi and Calhoun shows is that potentially twice as many people can experience post traumatic growth as post-traumatic stress disorder. If, and this is where it's just the potential if, first of all, they know about the possibility they're off, you know, earlier you talked about the reason that you gravitated towards this field was that you appreciated that not feeling stuck in the, the pathology or in whatever state we are. Instead having hope, instead being optimistic. Now, how do you generate hope? How do you generate optimism? Well, you show people that there is a way out.
Now, if I've just experienced trauma and all I ever hear about is PTSD, then this is my realm of possibilities and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In contrast, if I know about concepts such as PTG. Or ideas such as anti-fragility or resilience 2.0., then a whole different conversation goes on internally, and it makes it much more likely that I will actually grow from that trauma.
It doesn't guarantee it, but it makes it more likely. Second, it's not just knowing that it's in the realm of possibilities, it's also knowing what we can do to make it more likely, for example, to express Gratitude, for example, to seek more meaning, for example, to seek support relationships. We know that all these things, in fact, each one of the S.P.I.R.E. Elements individually and in tandem can contribute to the likelihood of growing from or through trauma.
So we don't just need to be, passive victims or passive recipients?
[00:35:38] Lainie Rowell: Yeah,
[00:35:39] Tal Ben-Shahar: we can be active agents because you see, we all experience hardships and difficulties. Many of us multiple times even experience traumas throughout our life and we don't just need to. Experience at best passive optimism, we can experience active optimism, which is we can do something about it to increase the likelihood that we will grow.
[00:36:05] Lainie Rowell: Yes. And this is why your book, MVIs, is that the title of the book?
[00:36:10] Tal Ben-Shahar: No, it's Happy Habits.
[00:36:12] Lainie Rowell: Your work is already so practical and actionable, and I think that the minimum viable interventions is gonna be something that people really gravitate towards because we can have the hope and we can have the intent but when things feel effortful, it's really hard to lean into doing them. Right. And so I think when they're framed as the MVIs, then just hearing that minimal, it's gonna be little bite-sized, small, accessible, right.
[00:36:39] Tal Ben-Shahar: It's bite-sized interventions that are accessible that we can literally practice at any moment in our life.
[00:36:47] Lainie Rowell: The one question I always ask my guests at the end is, what is something you haven't had a chance to say yet that you think is really important for people to know? Or is there something that you've already said in this conversation but you wanna say it again
'cause it's so important. You need to make sure people hear it.
[00:37:05] Tal Ben-Shahar: Yeah, so one thing that I'm thinking about a lot recently is this whole idea of expectations and there's a real tension around expectations because on the one hand, and we even talked about it implicitly having high expectations, knowing that we can grow, knowing that we can succeed communicating high expectations to others is important.
And we know it, we know it from in psychology Robert Rosenthal talks about the Pygmalion effect and of how beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies. We know from research on hope that having high hope, high expectations contributes to success. And yet what we also know is that expectations can hurt us, for example.
If my expectation is that after I master this science of happiness, or after I read this book, or, or take this course, or or write a book on happiness and become an expert on the topic, then I'll live happily ever after. Or speaking of happily ever after, after I find the right person, then honeymoon from here on end.
Unrealistic expectations that will only lead to frustration. There is a quote, it's a, it's attributed to Shakespeare. He didn't actually say it. That says, expectation is the root of all heartache. And there's some wonderful, wonderful work by Alain de Botton and the School of Life around calm.
And what they talk about there is how expectations are actually, again, the root of our frustration. You know, they, they say in the book what drives us to fury, our affronts to our expectations. You know, that's why we sometimes can go mad when we are around the people we care about most. Whereas if someone we've never met before does the exact same thing, we don't care because of expectations.
It's not the act, it's the expectations. So in this respect, what it's saying is lower expectations, and there's a real tension there between, you know, high expectations, low expectations is it may be realistic expectations. This topic needs needs more work.
[00:39:34] Lainie Rowell: Yes. And the word you said tension. And that was a word that was in my head because I was thinking about the tension of like identity friction when it's, you know, you need to make a change, but that, well, wait, if I have to do this, does that mean I've been doing it wrong before?
Am I letting go of a person I was before? And I think there's a lot of tension around how can I have these expectations of myself that are. Lowered because I, I don't wanna be too crazy and stress myself out, but I need to be improving. I don't know if that makes any sense, but I'm just, it's, it's a tough thing.
It's like you have to tell yourself it's not that I'm not good enough, but I can be even better. Yeah. And that's maybe something for ourselves and for others. It's something that we need to be thinking about. I, oh my gosh, I could feel we could spend another 45 minutes talking about expectations.
[00:40:29] Tal Ben-Shahar: Yeah.
I, I think it's a, it's, it's, it's a big topic and I think it's a topic that we owe ourselves deep thinking. Curiosity, applying the intellectual wellbeing
[00:40:40] Lainie Rowell: Yes.
[00:40:41] Tal Ben-Shahar: Lens to it. Because it matters to how we deal with our relationships with our loved ones. Again, anything from in our best friend to our, you know, partner or children or parents, and of course our relationship with ourselves.
[00:40:57] Lainie Rowell: Yeah,
[00:40:57] Tal Ben-Shahar: it matters a lot how we, deal with it in organizations, whether it's managers or or, or ones who are being managed. It also matters a great deal for athletes. It matters you know, a great deal for you know, the, the, the boardroom, the classroom and the bedroom.
Where we need to to think about what expectations are we bringing to these places, these experiences, these situations, because they very often will determine.
What experience we'll have.
[00:41:27] Lainie Rowell: Yes.
[00:41:27] Tal Ben-Shahar: For good or ill.
[00:41:29] Lainie Rowell: You have given us so much to think about. I know I have to let you go. I wanted to ask you one more question. What is the best way for people to connect with you? Because I think they're gonna be craving more after this.
[00:41:42] Tal Ben-Shahar: So you can go on my website, which is.
My name and last name.com tal ben shahar.com and there are links there to the Happiness Studies Academy, to our various projects as well as to my books.
[00:41:59] Lainie Rowell: Alright,
[00:41:59] Tal Ben-Shahar: thank you for asking.
[00:42:00] Lainie Rowell: Of course. I'll put that all in the show notes and I know people are gonna be so excited to connect with you.
[00:42:06] Tal Ben-Shahar: Thank you, Lainie. I so enjoyed this conversation and I so, so enjoyed meeting you in person at the MTSS conference.
[00:42:13] Lainie Rowell: Well, you just crushed it with that keynote. So if you're someone who organizes events and you're listening, you need to have Tal out for your event.
Oh, I mean, and I walked him across the conference to get to a book signing and like, we couldn't go five feet without someone stopping just to share how impactful his talk was for them. So if you're an event planner, you need to get Tal Ben-Shahar at your event.
[00:42:36] Tal Ben-Shahar: Thank you.
[00:42:37] Lainie Rowell: Thank you so much my friend for this time and thank you all for listening.