Solving the Happiness Equation - with Mo Gawdat

[carolgass]

June 11 2023 Mo I have been listening to you for a couple of months now and I totally addicted to finding happiness. Your many podcasts are a gift to me. I have never been happier. Your Stanford Solve for happy podcasts set me on the Happiness journey. My goal is to share my happiness with my daily encounters. Thank you for being you and sharing your brilliance with the world.❤

[mlowe]

Thank you Mo. . This talk was very informative. I continue to learn much from your book Solve fir Happy

[jafrasar]

Can honestly say I felt happy for months after attending a Costa Rica yoga retreat-maybe because I met my sister there, but I wanna go back to this Blue Zone!

[robbykiller]

One self help book that actually helped me SFH. Big Thanks Mo 👍👍👍

[ajmarr]

A New and Different Equation for Happiness from Affective Neuroscience
In affective neuroscience, it is well known that behaviors that involve continuous high and positive act/outcome discrepancy (gaming, gambling, creative work) correspond to elevated dopaminergic activity and a feeling of arousal, but not pleasure. However, for many individuals engaging in similar activity, a feeling of pleasure is also reported, but only when their covert musculature is inactive (i.e., a state or rest). Because relaxation activates opioid systems, and tension inhibits them, it is postulated that dopaminergic activity further stimulates opioid activity, but only during resting states.
This hypothesis can be easily tested and is described in greater detail below. If correct, it will demonstrate for the first time that elevated and sustained arousal and pleasure, or ‘eudaemonia’ or ‘happiness’ can be induced easily through simple modifications of abstract perceptual properties of behavior that anyone can easily do throughout the day.

THE CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT OF POSITIVE AFFECT
AFFECT AND MOTIVATION
Opioid and dopamine systems represent bundles of neurons or ‘nuclei’ in the mid brain that are respectively responsible for the affective states of pleasure and attentive arousal, and sub-serve the neural processes that govern motivation.
OPIOID AND DOPAMINE SYSTEMS ARE ACTIVATED BY DIFFERENT STIMULI EITHER VIRTUAL (COGNITIVE) OR REAL
Eating and drinking, having sex, and relaxing or resting all activate opioid systems, whereas the anticipation or experience of positive act-outcome discrepancy (or positive surprises or meaning) activate dopamine systems.
OPIOID AND DOPAMINE SYSTEMS CAN CO-ACTIVATE EACH OTHER
Taking our pleasures increases our attentive arousal, and increasing our attentive arousal accentuates our pleasure. If these systems are concurrently activated both are accentuated or affectively ‘bootstrapped’, as both pleasure and attentive arousal will be higher due to their synergistic effects.
OPIOID AND DOPAMINE SYSTEMS CAN BE CO-ACTIVATED THROUGH THE ARRANGEMENT OF SPECIFIC ACT-OUTCOME EXPECTANCIES OR RESPONSE CONTINGENCIES
As characterized by the well documented ‘flow response’ (pp.82-86), consistently applied contingencies that elicit pleasurable resting states and consistent attentive arousal result in self-reports of heightened pleasure and energy. This emotional experience can be easily replicated by simultaneously applied contingencies that elicit rest (mindfulness protocols) and meaning (imminent productive behavior and its uniform positive implications). To achieve complete rest and accentuate positive affect, these contingencies must be applied for periods of at least a half hour or more. Just as one sets meditative sessions to last for a set time period and frequency to be effective, so mindfulness and meaning sessions must be similarly arranged, with cumulative sessions if possible charted to provide proper feedback of efficacy. Finally, the intensity of positive affect will scale to the importance or salience of moment to moment meaningful behavior, with the more meaningful the task the higher the pleasurable affect.
IMPLICATIONS
Affect is as much an aspect of how information is arranged as what information is, or the abstract rather than normative properties of behavior. It follows that as a positively affective state, happiness is not just a product of what we think, but how we think, and derives not only from our pleasures but also from our incentives. Positive incentives can accentuate those very pleasures that we wish to maximize, and conversely, associated pleasure will increase the ‘appetitive value’ or ‘liking’ of incentives (or in other words, increase the value of productive work), and all sustained by simple choices within our grasp, as is ultimately happiness itself.
I offer a more detailed explanation in pp. 47-52, and pp 82-86 of my open source book on the neuroscience of resting states, ‘The Book of Rest’, linked below.
This above book is based on the research of the distinguished neuroscientist Kent Berridge of the University of Michigan, a preeminent researcher and authority on dopamine, addiction, and motivation, who was kind to vet the work for accuracy and endorse the finished manuscript.
Berridge’s Site
also:
Meditation and Rest
from the International Journal of Stress Management, by this author

[joycewagner]

Almost turned off ; didn’t like the “make me a promise…”

[kangsoonhee]

안녕하세요?
Mo Gawdat님!
나 1천억원,
언제 지원해 주시나요?
저는 강순희입니다.
답변 기다리겠습니다.
God bless you!
Shalom!
Dear!

[edwindeleon]

ideas as long as long ass you dont hurt anybody.

[edwindeleon]

wo who call evil good and good evil. good ideas only