How to be the happiest person you know with Ali Abdaal

are you happy oh yeah absolutely I I think I'm I'm  I'm probably the happiest person I know I've been mind blown by all the things that you're doing  it's always fun it's all about building building the life that you love hey do you need an intro  do you want to introduce yourself hi my name is Ali and I'm also a YouTuber I guess yeah and we've  just met in London for the first time and you've been on my podcast yes Holly why do you wake up  happy every morning oh why do I wake up happy every mo

rning and how does one go about waking  up happy every morning so I think the biggest shift for me was well there was a big shift when I  when I quit my job and became a YouTuber full-time but I feel like that is sort of a level above be  like Beyond where a lot of people are at yeah um a big shift for me was in changing the way that I  approached my work okay because I remember when I was when I was a medical student um I would often  wake up happy and a lot of my friends wouldn't but I feel li

ke there was some sort of difference  in the approach to the work or I was just a lot more chilled out about it and a lot more like  hey University is supposed to be fun let's try and enjoy the journey as best as we can because I  think often the experience of enjoyment is like a choice that you can make rather than a position  that you find yourself in I don't know if you Vibe with that at all okay well so how does one  go about oh dear so how does one go about having that mindset and actually

believing the words  that you're telling yourself but being like yeah University is supposed to be fun how do you  actually believe what you're saying instead of just saying it yeah I think a lot of people try  to like work with affirmations or things like that so then they just don't believe themselves  sure saying that so I think for me it's always been about finding a way to uh make things fun so  so or like if we if we take a step back it's like if you're doing something and you're finding i

t  not fun then is it an option to not do the thing because if that's an option you can choose to just  not do the thing but for a lot of people let's say you're a student and you have to do certain  subjects even though you don't necessarily like them it's like okay cool now that I know that  I'm doing the thing how do I find a way to make it more enjoyable or make it more energizing and  I think the word energizing is better than the word fun or enjoyable because like not everything  can be fu

n all the time okay but generally I find that there are lots of things we can do to make  stuff become more energizing rather than draining because draining stuff is not fun at all yeah  okay so how does one start let's say that you yeah let's take university university as an example  where does it want to start and even thinking okay how can I make this thing be more enjoyable  or more energizing yeah someone who doesn't even know like do I buy nicer books or do I study with  my friends like ho

w do you even go about coming up with ideas for making things more energizing  absolutely so I think um I mean I can't advise other people but the way that I do it is I look  through everything I'm doing and I ask myself does is will this thing energize me or will this thing  drain me and I generally have a pretty good idea um or if I don't then I'll I'll try it out  and see how did I feel about that afterwards so I found at University for example going to  Anatomy lectures at like nine in the m

orning was super draining because I was always super  tired and I just chose not to go or for example going to practicals where it was compulsory and  I couldn't choose not to go was then it was a case of like okay this thing currently drains my  energy how do I Engineer in a way that it becomes more energizing okay and certainly doing it with  friends is one one strand of this okay and I sort of have like a three-part method for this yeah  we can if we want to go into that yeah totally so essen

tially it's just three p's there are  three PS that make anything energizing four but like three other ones that people we can think  about power play and people oh yeah okay the three p's of energy well how does that work okay  so oh wait sorry is this applicable to anything like work everything oh thanks yeah 100 everything  can be made more energizing by incorporating power playing people oh I love that okay what is that so  power is uh so if we take a step back a bit like um you know there's

this idea in Psychology  like in intrinsic and extrinsic motivation like extrinsic motivation is when you're doing  something because of the reward you're gonna get for it like I'm studying not because I enjoy  the thing but because I want to get a good grade because that's the thing I care about yeah versus  intrinsic motivation which is sort of what you and I have for making videos which is that we're  doing the thing because you enjoy it yeah and you can kind of manufacture intrinsic motivat

ion  by incorporating power playing people into making something sufficiently energizing and fun that  you actually want to do it rather than feel feel like you have to do it and some of this is like  you know a bit of mindset shifting like you can choose to tell yourself the story that instead of  I have to do this I get to do this and that's one way of feeling more power in a situation okay so  it's about feeling like you have the power yeah like having yeah exactly having the feeling of  powe

r autonomy and control okay like no one is forcing me to do this it's not mandatory yeah I  have the power I'm choosing this exactly and so part of that is actually just genuinely telling  yourself that enough times so that you believe it um like hey I don't have to do this I get to do  this or I choose to do this okay um but another thing you can do to get power in a situation is  like I mean if we use a student example like find a way to craft your own curriculum so like when I  was younger I

had a bunch of friends who had piano lessons and they all hated their piano lessons  because they had to follow the defined curriculum they had to do what the teacher told them to do  but the ones who I knew who enjoyed playing the piano and this is why I enjoyed learning the piano  is because I I just craft my own curriculum okay um and John Mayer talks about this when a term  when it comes to learning music theory music theory is really boring to learn but his thing  is like look just find a s

ong that you love to play and then try and understand why the song  was constructed that way and now you're teaching yourself music theory and you have more power  in that situation because you're choosing your own curriculum and we can do that with you  know you know an anatomy in medical school where I can choose to not attend the lecture and  actually just find a way to teach it to myself in a way that's more fun for me rather than by  following the textbook and there's always like multiple w

ays of skinning the cat Okay so part  of it might then be to think outside of the box yeah absolutely and just just thinking a bit more  creatively about how you can how you can feel more of a sense of autonomy or sense of choice a sense  of power in a situation right just immediately makes the thing more energizing because autonomy  is one of the drivers of intrinsic motivation like generally no one likes doing what they're told no  but if you have to do the thing anyway you need to find a way

to make it seem as if you're doing it  off your own back yeah or like doing your own mini project within it or even you know fine I have to  learn Anatomy but you know what I'm going to draw little pictures of each each nerve or I have to  do Anatomy but you know what I'm gonna color code in my notes so that I I feel the sense of Pride  that I'm taking in this thing I feel more power makes anything more energizing anything in the  world is Magic I've never thought of it like that because I feel

like a lot of people we  just assume that things should be let's say learned the way that you're told they should be  learned yeah I've never thought of it like that yeah they don't they're not interested in making  learning fun for you they're interested in like I like you know I used to be a physiology tutor  at Cambridge and you know I was very interested in how do I make this fun for the students but if  it's a professor and they've got they've got their research commitments and they don't r

eally want  to teach because the teaching is a bit of a faff for them and they just have this two-week period  where they have to get through the lecture course they're probably not thinking creatively about  how to make this fun for the students and so you've got to do the creative thinking  for yourself make it fun for yourself or power so how do you distinguish or when do you  let's say you're trying to make your job more fun when do you know that it's time to actually  change something compl

etely yeah whereas I can actually make this more fun because that  can be a bit difficult it can be like how do you know okay I can actually make my work a  bit more fun if I just change these things and give myself more power or this is a sign that  I should actually switch Majors or creators like how do you how do you define that yeah it's really  hard um and it is massively like context dependent um like people who are in a if you have  like a big safety net with your family or whatever it's

it's a lot easier to  make the switch yeah almost at a whim um the way I would think of it is that if you're  doing something that you don't enjoy have you taken the steps to try and make it more fun or  more engine energizing have you Incorporated power playing people into the thing once you've  tried all those things and it still doesn't work at that point you're like all right cool let  me let me think about changing jobs okay but I don't like a lot of the narrative that you hear  in on in li

ke books and YouTube sometimes which is if you don't enjoy your job it's quit your job  and find your passion because I think that's just like you know if yes if you have a silver spoon  in your mouth then yeah it's easy for you to play a guitar for fun but like generally not great  advice yeah like realistically yeah we have to do things we don't necessarily enjoy but we can  find a ways to make it make it energizing okay so that's power that's power what's the next  piece the next p is play ok

ay what is that uh this is almost directly maps to this idea of  making things fun um this is the idea that if you can approach things in the spirit of play then  it just becomes way more energizing what does that mean so the spirit of play um essentially the  that feeling that we have when we are playing like playing with friends or like playing an instrument  or it's not quite gamification which is a bit more like I was gonna ask yeah I think I think there  are aspects of gamification that are

useful like having a point score or something like that for  like for example a friend of mine used to work at a McDonald's drive-through and he was like  right this is boring how do we make it fun and basically added a leaderboard to the sort of the  drive-through area where it was like a bit of a competition between all of the workers to see who  can get the bag out the window before the car gets there okay because normally you have to drive  up and then they give you the bag but it's like ca

n we can we make this into a bit of a game oh  okay and just automatically everyone had more fun because now they're sort of competing against  each other it's a bit of fun they're sort of playing around with this a bit um this same guy  when he was working at the drive-through he he made he said he set himself challenges like every  time and so this is the thing that you can do you can set yourself personal challenges for example  this friend his name is Matthew in the in in the drive-through e

very day he would try and upsell  the customers on a different source so he might be like would you like barbecue sauce with that  and they'd be like no I'm good and he'd be like it's really nice and then usually they'd be like  hey all right then and so he would he would just have a bit of fun with that um similarly when I  was working as a doctor you have to write a lot of discharge letters which is basically where  you write a letter to the patient's GP General general practitioner explaining

what happened  to them in hospital okay and this involves going through all the notes and it's generally kind  of boring because you have to do it a lot you have to do a lot of reading and just type a lot of  stuff up but I set myself the challenge of can I make the doctrine on the other end smile and so  I'd include a little bit of banter comment that it was lovely hearing all about Mrs Mrs Smith's  cat or just something like that that you wouldn't normally hear in a discharge letter and then 

that was fun for me because now I've added a personal satisfaction challenge to it which makes  it feel more like play and it puts a smile on the person reading on the other end because they're  like oh this is nice and what do you tell people who might be scared doing something like that  like let's say just writing emails sometimes when someone writes an email and they write me  something witty or funny you're like oh that was so nice but sometimes you want to do that but  you're like oh what

if that's too much or what if it's gonna be like how do we allow ourselves  space to dare to play with the risk of someone not appreciating it yeah yeah I think there is  always a little bit of a risk yeah but often often the risk is a lot lower than we think okay um and  to use it and to use a different a different kind of example I find that generally when people are  giving presentations at work if you're not good at public speaking you tend to default to being more  formal and a bit more st

iff and a bit more like I must memorize my lines I must like make sure I  know what totally but the people that are really good at public speaking relax the audience they  crack a couple of jokes yeah they take it less seriously yeah and one of the well one of the  mindset shifts that I like is something that the philosopher Alan Watts talks about which  is the difference between sincere and serious and like if you play a board game with someone  but you take it too seriously no one no one likes

that it's just it's a bit draining it's kind  of annoying it's boring but you want someone to play sincerely you want them to actually be  trying the best but to keep in the back of the mind that this is just a game at the end of  the day yeah and there's something about that mindset sincere and serious like if you approach  an email and you're writing it very seriously um compared to if you're writing it sincerely and  maybe adding a little bit of a casual twist to it yeah most people apprecia

te that yeah and if  they don't hey it's not a big deal it's not a big deal No One's Gonna complain yeah so think about  on my flight here the pilot was quite funny hmm you know when he was when they're talking on the  yeah my thing he was like oh time flies by when you were having fun and we're almost arriving in  London and just he was just so relaxed and it yeah it just made it more enjoyable yeah whereas some  Pilots you are just obviously just like yeah the weather was looking nice and we'r

e about to arrive  so I think definitely adding a bit of play is yeah it makes everyone's experience typically like like  you say not everyone is going to appreciate it but typically I think it's appreciated yeah and it's  way better for the for the pilot he's done sort of 5000 flights he gets a bit bored yeah he's like  you know what I'm gonna have a bit of fun with this most people most people appreciate it yeah I  think so the final P the final p is people this is basically where we get you k

now we're all social  creatures even self-confessed introverts yeah uh to a degree you know we all have different degrees  of how much like how introverted retroverted we are but generally we all benefit from the energy  of people in some way yeah so for example for me when I was studying um I would just get a bunch  of friends together and we'd just go to go to different libraries and that's nice because we're  all doing different subjects but we're all doing our sort of the same uh Pomodoro se

ssions so  25 minutes of work and then a five minute break 25 minutes 45 minute break yeah and there's  something super nice about that that's one way of incorporating people if you can find a way to  work with your co-workers or even with I mean this is why co-working spaces and libraries are great  because you just automatically tap into the energy of the people around you okay um another way of  incorporating people is to kind of you know this is a bit harder like I've Got a Friend working  i

n retail uh who um you know has a great thing where he like working in retail is kind of boring  you have to kind of stack shelves and stuff but he made it a point that anytime he saw someone he  would find a way to to sort of he would he would find a way to crack a joke that would make them  laugh uh and then in a way that was a bit of play it became a challenge for him but it's also people  because one of the other things that really drives intrinsic motivation is when you feel that your  work

has an impact on someone else and so if you can just remind yourself of the impact your work  is having on others Maybe by sharing or kind of teaching other people as well like you can do as  you as a student it just makes it more energizing so we've turned this boring ass Anatomy memorizing  flashcards into something fun because we're doing it our own way through Power into play because  we're approaching it with the sense of lightness and ease and this is actually fun and you try and  incorpo

rate people by maybe sharing notes with their friends or helping our friends out or you  know oh how about I test you on this flashcards and you test me or even just working with people  around us and I think a lot of people make the mistake at least at University of thinking I must  Focus I must be on my room on my own yeah isolated you get isolated energy drain like no one likes  that and you know in in some doses so how do you because obviously I want to talk about the people  thing a bit mor

e yeah people are very fulfilling having them in our lives in so many ways but not  everyone is a natural at talking to people and asking people to join them or to a lot of people  struggle with that to making friends and all of that so you feel are you natural likes having  practice I've practiced yeah what do you feel um so before I got to University I was like  really awkward socially awkward and I I read books about it when I was just before entering  University I read all the books about Ch

arisma and social skills and there's a great book called  superhuman social skills by Tainan which is great okay uh there is charisma on command the YouTube  channel which is also a book um so I read the book initially in like 2014 before they started  the YouTube channel uh there's the Charisma myth there's all these books about learning  this how to win friends and influence people um there's all these books about social  skills that genuinely are really helpful if you struggle talking to peop

le like I  did or struggled being friendly struggle making friends so is that what initially  helped you going from being awkward to where you're at yeah the book's really helped  and I think also when I got to University I was like okay I there was a friend who was a bit older  told me something he said that you never need to worry about making friends if you can just become  the organizer of events and so it's like No One's Gonna invite me to a party because like you know  why would they get l

ike you know I'm not I'm not interesting enough to invite to a party but if  I host a movie night in my room for the Game of Thrones whenever it's out and I just message my  friends being like hey Game of Thrones tonight happening in my place 7pm I'll provide pizza or  we'll be having pizza some people are going to say yes to that and then the value you add to the  group is in being the organizer because everyone wants to do social stuff but no one but everyone  struggles to organize yeah so the

n you don't need the skills of a social extrovert you just  need the skills of an organizer and generally I find that introverts tend to be good at organizing  things and so yeah that's a value add to the group wow yeah organizing study sessions making  a WhatsApp group be like hey if you fancy joining study sessions every now and then join  the WhatsApp group so how do you deal with I guess just taking that initial step of  let's say you're someone who let's say you're at school or I work and y

ou want to talk  to your co-workers or you want to talk to other students and but there's this barrier of what  if I say the wrong thing or what if they don't like me or I don't have anything interesting  to say do you just do it anyway or do you like is there a mindset that you can use of  like a mantra or something that you tell yourself that kind of helps you take  that step yeah I actually do have one of those mantras the thing I tell myself is  everyone is friendly but you have to go first

everyone is friendly but you have to go first  that's so good and I made this point that I'd say anytime I'd sit next to next to someone new  in lectures I'd be like everyone is friendly but you have to go first and be like hi I don't  think we've met yet my name's Ali and they'd be like oh hi my name's Chloe or Tom whatever and  then you know usually at University there's a few follow-up questions oh what college you are what  subject are you doing oh like you know I haven't seen you around lik

e right there's there's  some generic questions that are easy enough um but even just that like hi my name I don't  think we've made it my name's Ali it comes across as so friendly and natural and confident  and the other person feels great yes great vibes I love that yeah everyone is friendly but you have  to go first I'm gonna use that for myself because everyone is gay everyone's thinking the same thing  everyone is terrified of kind of making that first comment but some people just look so n

atural  and confident that it can be quite intimidating even if most people have insecurities and most  people aren't as confident as they might seem I think when you see other people who just seem  so effortlessly yeah friendly and cool and you know social that can be quite scary but I think  just reminding yourself that yeah part of it is do you believe in faking it till you make it oh  absolutely yeah there's no difference between real confidence and fake confidence I will explain  that like

there's just there just isn't it just presents us exactly like people have this view  that oh if you fake confident people can just tell that you're like faking it no one can tell  maybe your mum can tell because she knows she's known you which is why like which is why it's  so hard to be a new person around your existing friendship group because they know like my  friends from school when we're all together everyone reverts to their school selves when  I go home to hang out with my family I rev

ert to my teenage self true but when you're in a new  environment no one can tell the difference between whether your confidence is real or fake and so you  can simply choose to act as if you're confident and all it takes is hi I don't think we've met yet  my name's Ali or something like that well that's true because some people are very much against  the concept I've come to learn of baking until you're making it because of what you said like  it's going to be transparent and people are going t

o know when yeah yeah it's it's it's like it's  so unlikely to meet someone and think they're just faking that confidence and if you do like  like it is kind of weird thing to think yeah I don't think I've ever thought that of anyone yeah  I've almost never thought or or if I have it's it's it's kind of like everyone thinks Botox  is really bad because the only people you see are the ones for whom it's gone really really  really really really really bad but actually like 100 of celebrities have

botox but when it's done  well you can't tell it just yeah they just look good and so when you see someone who's faking  confidence the one in a thousand people you might see who's like being way too much with it  or just kind of goes up to a good it's like super weird like yeah that really colors and you and you  but you've you forget that 900 people you've met last week are all faking confidence but you just  have never noticed because there's no difference between real and fake confidence rig

ht why do  you think so many people struggle with confidence I so this is not an original thought so that so  back when I was 16 I was a bit of attention but it's it's going somewhere I was 16 and we just  got on our GCSE results so this is one of the exams you take like high levels and me and my mum  went to see the Headmaster because he was like oh congratulations you've got all these good grades  blah blah blah blah blah and he was like what do you want to do at University and I said I want 

to apply to medical school and we had a bit of a chat and afterwards he said to me like look I  need to give you some feedback you're not gonna like to hear this but like it's important for you  to hear because no one else is going to tell you and he basically said that in the based on the way  that I presented to him I would have no chance of getting into med school he said you've got the  grades but you don't come across as a confident charismatic likeable person which is the sort  of person t

hat they want to have in med school and he was like you've got two years to change  that because you're applying it two years okay and so I decided at that point that I was going  to start taking more risks I was gonna I made a point that every single class I was going to put  my hand up and ask ask a question every time we went to a talk or a lecture I would put my hand up  and ask a question and helped me Flex that muscle of being a bit more a bit more out there but I  also started doing close

-up magic and kind of performing at like you know I volunteered at the  local nursing home and you know these old people you know they were they were a captive audience  and so but they liked it you know I was a kid 16 17 years old doing like card tricks but the reason  I mentioned all that is actually there's there's two points there one point is that three years ago  I went to a YouTuber conference in Ireland where Peter McKinnon was on stage and there were a lot  of people on stage and every

talk I would ask the question and I was known as the oh oh he's the guy  who asked the question really and loads of people were saying to me oh I wanted to ask that question  but I felt shy like you know how did you have the confidence to ask a question and I think just  having worked on it for like a decade of making it a point that anytime I'm doing something I have  to ask a question helps me engage with the speaker more and helps relax my confidence vessel but the  second point there is that

one of the magicians that I used that I learned from was a guy called  James Brown who has like this I had this YouTube video at the time or something around how to be  more confident because as a magician you know I was one of the things I did was I'd perform at  parties and you had to go to a group of people and like say I am a magician do you want to  see a magic trick that's really freaking scary that's way scarier than like hi you know this is a  lecture what's your name he had this thing

called um I I can't remember what it was called but his  whole model was that confident like the reason like this is how it relates to your question  the reason why we feel unconfident is because we mistakenly feel that confidence is a thing  that has to be earned that you have to acquire confidence somehow by doing stuff and like what  is that stuff for I don't know I mean repetition or whatever whatever but what this guy said  and he used to train magicians he was like you can simply choose to

see confidence as a thing  that you turn on or off it is not a thing you need to acquire it's another thing you need to work  towards you can simply choose to be confident and he's the one who said there's no difference  between faking it and like real confidence and fake confidence okay and so I think the reason  part of the reason people struggle with it you know social anxiety aside because that's  like a separate issue but outside of those like situations people struggle with it because we 

think it's a thing that you have to that you have to struggle with and again this is why you know  the power of the mind and neuroplasticity simply by changing the way we feel about confidence and  that that really helped me in leveling up my own well how much you think is because one thing  that gives me confidence is simply knowing what I'm doing yep like learning the material  or practicing the speech or whatever it is but some people I feel like some people don't  even need that and like le

t's say they're having a speech and they haven't practiced enough but  still they go up there and they just kind of freestyle and they come up with whatever and it's  harming everyone and everyone is believing it do you feel like like is that something that you  think can be practiced where you can just yeah making that switch in your mind uh I can do this  despite the circumstance yes so I think when it comes to going on stage and giving a speech  that's like a an actual skill that's not a thin

g that like if I put someone on the team who's  not hasn't had that much experience just on stage and said you know talk to me about X it would be  hard like that's a that's a tangible skill um I think I'm pretty good at that having practiced  it a lot um of like and uh who was I listening to uh there's a chap called Brendan burchard has  a book called high performance habits which I was I was I was reading the other day he actively as  he talks about how like intentional Mastery is a thing that

can be achieved with public speaking  through just like repetition and like actively practicing the skill and for example the first  time you do a speech you try and memorize it the next time you do a speech you try and just have  a few notes in front of you the next time you do a speech you have no notes at all and you're  slowly putting yourself outside your comfort zone there are some people that just come out of the  womb knowing how to give a public speak that that's that's unusual yeah mo

stly people who  are good at speaking have practiced the skill of speaking um so in that sense when there's  a skill then it's it's hard to just fake it um but when it comes to like speaking to people  in school or work that's yeah I think I think that's also a skill so I think everything  is a skill and everything can be learned um you have to practice but you have to practice  and taking that first step is a thing you can just choose to do and I find that remembering  that there's no differenc

e between real and fake confidence is just really helpful at least  for me and what's your mindset for being okay with embarrassing yourself like if you were  to walk up to someone and they're just like hi I'm not interested or kind of like uh yeah not  responsive and not interested how do you because some people would take that and overthink it and  be like I embarrassed myself and now they're gonna think I'm a weirdo how do you just do you brush  it off or how do you react when you're approach

ing someone or just when you feel like this was quite  embarrassing do you brush that off yeah I mean again this is this is really hard like a very few  people have that just such thicker skin and the ones that do are complete like sociopaths because  like I've been doing a bunch of research into this for my book um like the whole evolutionary thing  you know the fear center of the brain the amygdala is very attuned to social threats because yes  if you have a tiger running at you fine you've go

t to run away but actually back in the day  in our evolutionary past uh being ostracized from the group was basically a death sentence  yeah and so if if the alpha male didn't like you or if you've had a falling out with the rest  of the group you're screwed like you know you're eaten in the next event in the next prowling of  the lion and so we're so attuned to these social threats that when we feel like embarrassed  or we feel like ostracized from the group in any way it feels really really re

ally really bad  yeah and getting over that is is generally about practice this is why you know guys like dating  advice for guys is generally look just like go and talk to a lot of people because  you need to inoculate yourself against rejection and the more you do that the more  immune you become to social threats and social embarrassment and it's it's it's  really hard I'm still not great at that um I haven't practiced very much but I know  people who have who who made it a mission to go to s

trangers on the street and ask for the  time or go to strangers on the street and ask for directions yeah and slowly build up the courage to  go to a girl on the street and and ask them out on a date and just sort of slowly baby steps becoming  immune to rejection yeah but that's usually that that's the sort of thing that most people don't  do I think there's definitely something to be said about practicing because I know like for me  filming in public has always yeah you too yeah and so but I'v

e been thinking like when I'm traveling  and stuff I want to be able to Vlog and so I have to get to a point where I'm comfortable enough  where I can do that and now I've gone from just you know when you're holding a camera kind of  like shy like you'd normally hey guys and uh to now yesterday I was having dinner and I was by  myself and I set up the camera on my gorillapad and I was just filming myself eating and like  three months ago I would have never done that so there's definitely somethi

ng to be said about just  practicing and practicing and then things just you're just gonna stop caring yeah somewhere along  the way absolutely everything's a skill everything can be learned yeah totally so okay building  a life that you love waking up to you what are some routines that you think are adding value to  your life that more people should do or consider that are like where you think  I cannot this is something that I have to do this is like non-negotiable for me so I think in general

I don't like having  non-negotiables um kind of like how you we were talking about how you don't like having  labels because it boxes you into a somewhat unnecessary way of thinking like if if I think my  I mean I have a morning routine where I wake up make a coffee have a shower I do some meditation  I do some journaling but if I don't do that one morning I don't want to feel like my whole day's  shot which I'm which I might do if I was overly attached to that routine I think journaling is  li

ke super helpful there's some of the stuff you talk about check out Nana skillshare class on  journaling oh thank you uh journaling has been one of the big level UPS in my life in helping me  like I I often do ask myself the question of like am I uh you know I phrase it different ways  but this idea of am I building a life that I love or you know how how content do I feel with  life on a scale of zero to ten and if the answer is anything but 10 out of 10 I think okay why is  that and then I try

and drill down to is it sort of work relationships Health generally those  are the three big three big areas uh cool what can I do to get my own contentment levels up and  again I think so much of it is even when I'm in a situation where I don't have much control the  way that I approach it allows me to feel more content with it okay to which my mom would say  I'm just telling myself a story that's making me feel better to which I'd say that's literally  the point of course I'm telling myself a

story it's gonna make me feel that's not a bad thing  yeah um but if you were to share some practical um routines or rituals or just who because  especially as someone who I mean you seem like you have a reasonable amount of you know  discipline and like you're getting for your day doing you know managing a team and doing a lot of  things and yet you remain seemingly happy and yeah very excited about life so what do you think are  some things that are making you stay grounded and energized espec

ially because you seem like  you're someone who has a lot of energy and yeah honestly I think I think it's just those three p's  like whenever I find something whenever I have to do something that is going to drain my energy  or that does drain my energy I think this is a problem let's change it let's either change the  situation or change my approach to the situation because one of those things I can control or  at least one of those things I can control do you want to show we talked about on t

he  podcast about the what are some things about identifying things in your life that you want to  fast forward oh yeah this is because I thought it was so interesting and that's something  that I want to do yeah for myself so this is a strategy that sociologists use to run studies  where they try and understand is someone's life worth living in their View and so one way of  doing that is being like hey Lana is Your Life currently worth living twitch you'd probably  be like that's a really weird

question like but yes of course it's worth living and you know  you would tell me to go away but another way of doing that is by saying hey Lana you know you're  taking part of my study I'm going to ring you up at like 20 random points throughout the day and  I'm going to ask you what are you currently doing and then I'm gonna get I'm going to say like if  you could press a button to fast forward to get to the end of this experience without experiencing it  would you choose to press the fast fo

rward button and then you look at what percentage of  people's days would they choose to fast forward and most studies tend to find that at least  office workers in the US would fast forward most of their work day yeah and that means that  like I don't know 50 like 30 40 of your life you would you you would rather not experience it  than experience it that's so much and so yeah that's a lot yeah and that's I think it's pretty  pretty Grim yeah um and so this is something that I have a particular

allergic reaction to that  whenever I feel like I'm doing something that I would choose to fast forward I think hang  on can I either change this thing or can I change my approach to this thing to make an ex to  make it into an experience that I actually enjoy and sometimes that's like little things like you  know I can't be bothered to do the dishes but it feels a bit wrong to hire to Outsource it so  you know what let me mindfully do the dishes and like really paying attention and really tryi

ng  to be like again taking power okay playing uh doing the dishes with friends with music in the  background it just makes it into a bit more of a fun experience and maybe still I choose to fast  forward it but like I'm I'm at least enjoying it a little bit more so do you think would you  say that the goal or one way of living a life that you truly enjoy is to have as few things  as possible that you would fast forward yes I think that's what's up I love that yeah and  then it's so easy to iden

tify you just look at your calendar and be like or anything you're  doing what I choose to fast forward this like I wouldn't choose to fast forward this because  this is just fun yeah and so if I can build my life around experiences that I would not choose to  fast forward you know like most parents wouldn't choose to fast forward spending time with their  kids yeah you wouldn't choose to fast forward spending time with your dog no but you might  choose to fast forward editing a video yeah maybe

or at least some aspects of it and that would be  a thing I'd be thinking huh could I Outsource at least the bits that I don't like so I can spend  my time playing with a dog instead or reading a book instead or doing memo journaling instead okay  thank you potentially yeah just saying that so how much of our lives do you think is like because  what I'm thinking right now is is it really possible making everything enjoyable like is it  okay to have a portion of Our Lives that is just isn't much

fun and that we would want  to fast forward and that we can't make yeah more enjoyable like is there do you  think there is not a ratio necessarily but a portion that is just like it's fine to have 10 of  your life being kind of mundane and that you can't make or yeah that you can't make more enjoyable  oh do you really genuinely believe that everything even making the dishes or doing the dishes just  can be more fun I think it's something to Aspire to okay whether you hit 100 is almost irrelev

ant  but like at least for me that's that's my goal and I know that like obviously this math only depends  on your circumstances a lot of times people will have things in their life that they just have to  do even though they would fast forward it because you've got to support the family like we all  have to play with the hand that we're dealt yeah um but this is at least at least how I'm thinking  about it and yeah if I if I would choose to fast forward an experience I have two options either 

change it or change my approach to it and if both of those don't work then okay fine I'm like  yeah yeah at that point your hands are tied are you happy oh yeah absolutely I think I think  I'm I'm I'm probably the happiest person I know but I was interviewing someone called Cliff who's  a friend of mine last week on the Pod and he's he said that he was the happiest person he knows so  he and I often share thoughts I share um notes on what what habits and routines that we do that  drives our happ

iness can I be part of that group of course yeah sounds amazing are you the happiest  person I don't know yeah no absolutely I don't think so no I wouldn't say I'm the happiest person  I know but what makes you what makes you so happy like if you had to identify yeah I mean or is it  things or is it just what do you think is driving that happiness I think there's some  level of good fortune in terms of you know accidents of birth and having the  right amount of genes that lead to happiness and h

aving sufficient privilege in my life that I  haven't really had anything majorly bad happen to me but so many people have all of that and they  would not identify as the happiest person they know maybe so I mean yeah of course those are  so important yeah so important but I mean what else is there too I only have dolls happiness I  I suspect I I I okay I have definitely read more books about happiness than anyone else I know do  you think that's contributed to oh yeah absolutely it's like you k

now you and I have probably watched  loads of videos about how to make YouTube videos right compared to people in the audience if  someone's sitting there thinking I want to start a YouTube channel they probably haven't  watched a thousand videos on how to do YouTube or how to edit and so the fact that we you and  I consume this information means we do the thing similarly I have found that reading books about  happiness reading books about social skills reading books about confidence reading boo

ks about  stoicism all of these things yeah I apply I mean when when someone writes a book generally they do  a lot of like a lot of research goes into a book yeah you would know because you're writing yeah so  you're getting like literally years of someone's effort in a thing that you can read in maybe a  day or two so the ROI on those is just incredible um but I think it's one of those weird  things like you know if someone is unhappy the the jump to okay let me read books about  happiness and

figure this out it's a it's a bit of a weird jump most people would think it's  because of my situation it's because of XYZ um but of course I I have a very sheltered and  privileged life so okay so what's one book you would recommend on happiness um Happy by Darren  Brown is my favorite which is basically about stoicism it's a little bit hard to read  because it's quite like dense and long it's really good but it's a bit dense and  long so William Irvine's the guide to the good life okay which

is about stoicism would  be second on my list especially if you can't sit through Darren Brown's Pros so it seems  like a lot of stoicism oh yeah I think so yeah yeah I first discovered stoicism I think  when I was like 17 or 18 and that just really helped me get tools for maintaining happiness  even in more stressful times okay again with a caveat that I haven't really had anything bad  happen to me so yeah yeah I'm just I don't think I've ever heard anyone identify as the happiest  person the

y know so I'm very fascinated about that and I feel like I have a lot of questions  where I feel like I want more of an answer to to because I think everyone would love to feel  like that yeah like everyone would love to wake up and be like I'm the happiest person that  I know ah okay so I would love to wake up and have six pack abs okay but I put zero thought  and effort into it okay I don't think happiness is effort yeah I mean beyond the Baseline of  like even it's sort of like with working o

ut unless you take steroids you are capped by  your genetic potential as to how big you can get and uh but there's a lot you can do to get  to your genetic potential I think similarly at least from what I've read about the happiness  research there is like a genetic Baseline um but there is stuff you can do you can do to  relative to your genetic Baseline to phrase to raise that number okay and that and those are the  practices the Gratitude journaling the journaling is like I think there was a

study that showed that  like just writing down five things you're grateful for is the equivalent of doubling your salary in  terms of the amount of Happiness points it adds to your life um that's crazy yeah it's mental  thing and most people don't Journal it's just free happiness I think also like anticipating  events like actively looking forward to things um we talked about the importance of alone time  yeah but when I schedule it in my calendar and this is the thing I started doing last  week

I'm just like sick the fact it's in my calendar means I can look forward to it and  that's just that's free happiness points and I was just saying this to the team guys I've just  discovered a hack for more free happiness points and like I don't know anyone else who thinks about  happiness points in that way other than my friend Cliff who is also the happiest person he knows so  the scheduling things do you think that's a good way of looking forward to things in your life  of having them actual

ly put in a calendar yeah so for example this evening I have a dinner with  Tommy who's sitting over there and we're going to talk about some YouTuber Academy stuff that's in  the calendar and so every time I look at my phone I see oh that's coming up and so it just gives me  a little bit of happiness points in looking at it yeah anticipation is free happiness it's like  again there's a some kind of study that showed that the two weeks before a holiday give you  more happiness points than the ac

tual holiday because I think I heard that somewhere yeah a  lot of the valuable holidays and they're looking forward to it um this is something my English  teacher used to say when I was like 12 that the key to a happy life is to have something to do  someone to love and something to look forward to I think it's great advice from Miss  Mansion back in back in year eight can you remember her name I love that amazing so one question is how do you stop comparing your  life to others oh I think that

's a big happiness Thief yes that reduces happiness points it does  comparing your life do you do it uh I do I always catch myself when I do okay because I recognize  that feeling of Envy when I have that feeling um of like oh that person's life seems really  cool so what is it typically that you compare like what things make you feel like oh I wish I  had that so these days the things I compare are if essentially someone is running a  business that's doing better than mine or someone has sold a

business and has just  made tens of millions of dollars overnight um I my my instinctive response there is to think  oh that's cool I want that but I think as we talked about in the podcast beyond the instinctive  response which we can't control we can choose our subsequent responses and so I'll recognize  that thought pattern in myself and be like do I really think that like do I really want to  go for a startup that has a 50 million exit maybe one day but not right now right now I'm enjoying 

this YouTube thing and I can change the story I tell myself about it okay I think this is how  things like CBT work you you can you catch a thought process and then you pause and then you  reframe it and reframe The Narrative and this is how people get over like like really intense  trauma as well it's just the same basically the same thing but just with the professional  guiding the process because it's a lot harder um yeah okay changing the story okay so I feel  like a lot of things for you w

hen it comes to happiness is the story that you tell yourself  and the story you tell yourself about the things that you're doing and the way that you're  thinking so really it seems like narrative is important when it comes to yeah I think feeling  happy yeah I think I think a lot of our experience of the world is colored by the story that we tell  ourselves about it um and yeah just choosing that narrative I think is just a ridiculously powerful  thing which Darren Brown talks about in happy w

hich a lot of the stoicism like stuff talks about  um so so much power in that and even in the most even in the even in the absolute worst situations  like you know if Victor Frankel's book Man's Search for meaning or he's he was he was in  Auschwitz and he was a holocaust Survivor talked about yeah I talked about how you know  even in those absolutely insane circumstances the way that he and people that he knew kind of  go through it was by kind of finding a story that gave them purpose yeah an

d finding a way to be  useful to other people and feeling as if they had a thing that they were there for um and  so like in our lives which are ridiculously privileged in comparison yeah it can absolutely  change the story We Tell ourselves about how that co-worker reacted or how that person was  a bit mean to us or whatever that might be well love that I could be wrong about all of  this maybe I don't know something bad will really happen in my life that will test this is probably  not but yea

h hopefully not I think also practicing while things are good is also a good thing oh yeah  yeah for a win for yeah inevitably when things get bad yeah so one of the things stoics do is sort  of um kind of premeditating adversity or kind of you know one of the things I think amputators used  to say this that when you're kissing your daughter good night remind yourself that you could die  overnight that's terrible uh it's it's not it sounds morbid but by reminding yourself that like  my daughter

could be dead tomorrow morning it makes you appreciate the experience so much more  you're like I really should like instead of having that thought of that email I need to answer in my  mind I should be fully present with my daughter right now while I'm reading her the bedtime  story because it might be the last time that I do and that's just incredible like I I wish  I had that thought process more often but it's a thing that the stoic's new um it was a  great thing for increasing your happines

s points well yeah do you have any final words on  increasing happiness points just read books about it I think I I every every single thing I say has  just been stolen from books that I've read yeah um and so if you are genuinely interested in  doing a thing then reading lots of stuff about the thing is a very good place to start yeah um  and I think it's like that thing like I don't I don't really want six-pack abs because if I did  I'd actually take it seriously and put in the practices and r

outines to get there similarly I I  know a lot of people have the desire to be happy but don't connect that that to intentions and  actions and habits and you can find those in all the books like happy or like Willy mobile and  stuff or in Ryan holiday stuff about stoicism or in man's social meaning or in the Happiness  Advantage or in 10 happier or in all of these books which are all really good but people  think it's weird to read books about happiness I think a lot of people assume that it's 

just going to be repetitive stuff like eat well and exercise and yeah all that all that  stuff is true as well like a lot of evidence that exercising every day is good for your happiness  yeah I think but I think we often look for like a magic solution yeah and we don't really listen  to advice that sounds too basic like we don't actually I think oftentimes the reason people  don't like hearing that is because they think it's too easy there's no way just going to  the gym three times a week is

going to make me magically happy there has to be something more  to it so I think we often don't when in reality things like eating while sleeping while having  good relationships exercising yeah are actually things that are the Baseline I think of happiness  and yeah Health like it's really hard to be happy if you're not sleeping well yeah and so fixing  your sleep is a very important thing yeah and then some people would be like oh but like my  sleep is just bad it's like why is your sleep jus

t bad you spent eight hours a day sleeping like  let's let's sort it out let's look at the 80 20 of what makes sleep good lowering the temperature of  your bedroom sleeping at the same time and waking at the same time every day not eating a few hours  before bed not necessarily exercising feel like there's not having caffeine after 3 P.M there's so  much evidence-based stuff around how to optimize these things and most people also don't imagine  their sleep is a thing that they can and they can

in fact optimize why do you think people don't why  do you think so many people kind of accept things as they are like what makes you be someone who  is like okay I have a problem here I'm gonna read about it and figure this thing out whereas other  people are like oh this just is the way that it is what differentiates um so Carol dweck talks about  in a growth mindset and fixed mindset and I think I've been blessed that by default from a young  age I was very growth mind City but also I had so

I had some good childhood experiences of being  like a top performer in my school and I would find that if I okay if I apply my brain to this  thing I will get good marks in the exam a lot of people have had bad worse childhood experiences  where for example a teacher says that oh Johnny you're just not good at maths and that's like  incredibly damaging for Johnny because now he tells himself the story repeatedly I'm just  not good at maths I found myself doing this this was like two years ago a

nd I remember I  remember this distinctively because I think I was writing like an email newsletter or something  to to the audience and I said something like uh as someone who's not very good at languages  I felt and then I was like wait a minute why did I just think I'm not very good at languages  oh it's because I was in the middle set French in year seven when I was 11 years old I didn't  do very well in the French exam and then I was in Middle set rather than top set because I was a  top se

t for everything else and I just told myself The Narrative I'm just not good at languages I was  like what the hell is wrong with me like of course I can choose to change that narrative that's  such an old narrative and we a lot of us hold on to these older patterns of thoughts which are  no longer serving us and this is what therapy does yeah if they you know you tackle these things like  huh why do you think that about yourself it's like what do you think about it about what do you think  in y

our past cause you to feel that way um oh is that still is that still helping you nope can you  just change it yeah why not love that and then how would I act as if I were actually good at learning  languages well I'd be much more open to learning Japanese or learning Mandarin great what's the  next step let's get the audiobook perfect that's how I taught myself Japanese a little bit um and  I've started teaching myself Mandarin through an audiobook wow you're doing that too uh just very  very c

asually obviously like you know that's quite cool very basic yeah okay so narrative seems to be  one of the keys narrative mindset the power of the Mind neuroplasticity all that stuff like that or  do they kind of overlap with happiness um yeah I think it does overlap with happiness so so Cliff  this friend of mine he runs the big company he's this happiest person he so he actually said when I  interviewed him on the podcast the book mindset by carol dweck which is about this growth and fixed  m

indset he said it is the most important book that's ever been published in the English language  oh wow and I was like whoa that's a strong that's a very strong recommendation did you read it I  found it a bit dense to get through but also I was so familiar with the concepts of growth mindset  takes mindset by that point that it didn't really hit me but for him he said that that book changed  his life because it made him realize the power of mindset okay and I mean it might be worth it might  be

worth reading a book about growth versus okay yeah nice that's amazing guide to happiness in  the 21st century I love that well thank you so much do you want to share any projects things  you're working on you have classes you have all these things I'm actually going to watch your  pass on skillshare uh because I'm curious about your Memoir journaling strategy because when we  were talking about it on the pot I was like oh that sounds really fun yeah so it'll be  amazing we'll put a link to tha

t down in the video description and for I know you have some  resources for aspiring YouTubers and all of that oh yeah share some of I teach a course a few times  a year that helps people be YouTubers and you're going to be a guest speaker in the next one thank  you for agreeing agreeing to that um we'll put a link to the waiting list down below if you want  to check it out yeah yeah for sure and all of his links and everything is going to be down below and  that's it thank you this was great th

ank you oh and check out the episode that we did with Lana on  Deep dive podcast yeah which might be well it'll come out around the time of this maybe around the  time of this week yeah ish yeah ish amazing cool