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Happiness Is a Skill: The 5 Skills to Create It | Declan Edwards
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SHOW NOTES
๐๐๐ฒ๐๐: Declan Edwards
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๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ผ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฎ๐น ๐ ๐ฒ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ฎ:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/declan-edwards-bu-happiness-college/ย
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/declanedwards_bu
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@that.happiness.guy
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@buhappinesscollege
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๐๐ผ๐ ๐ง๐ผ ๐๐ฒ ๐๐ฎ๐ฝ๐ฝ๐: ๐ฆ๐๐ผ๐ฝ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ฎ๐ฝ๐ฝ๐ถ๐ป๐ฒ๐๐โ ๐๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ป ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฑ ๐ฆ๐ธ๐ถ๐น๐น๐ ๐๐ผ ๐๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐๐ฒ ๐๐ ๐๐ป๐๐๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฑ – Declan Edwards, Wiley, 2026.
Book information and ordering options
https://declanedwards.com.au/declans-book/
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Declan also hosts How To Be Happy, a podcast focused on evidence-based strategies, interviews and practical tools for developing happiness skills.
How To Be Happy Podcastย https://declanedwards.com.au/podcast/ย
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BU Happiness College describes happiness as a practical, evidence-based skill set grounded in psychology, wellbeing science and human behaviour.
Timestamp:
00:00 Declan’s personal experience of chasing happiness and the โhappiness trapโ
00:30 Dr Ron introduces Declan Edwards and his work in happiness and positive psychology
01:45 What first drew Declan to the scientific study of happiness
02:10 The hedonic treadmill and why achievements don’t necessarily create lasting happiness
12:34 Why happiness is a skill that can be learned and practised
14:20 Introducing the five core happiness skills
14:54 Emotional intelligence and developing emotional literacy
18:01 Measuring happiness and understanding different emotions
20:00 Looking inwards, introspection and knowing yourself
23:22 Unstress Health community promotion
23:25 Retraining the brain and neuroplasticity
25:12 Negative cognitive bias and why the brain focuses on threats
27:00 Gratitude, appreciation and learning to savour good moments
28:40 Why introspection can be difficult
30:00 Happiness, purpose and directing your life
32:00 Happiness in the workplace
35:08 The business case for workplace wellbeing and happiness
36:01 Psychosocial safety and the changing workplace
37:33 From workplace happiness to shaping happier societies
39:01 Rethinking societal success beyond GDP
40:00 Nordic countries and lessons for societal happiness
41:29 Finland, education and the Nordic approach
42:06 Healthcare, education, equality, environment and social systems
44:00 Happiness as both an individual and societal responsibility
46:00 Relationships, connection and the ripple effect of happiness
48:07 Gratitude shared is gratitude doubled
48:33 Dr Ron thanks Declan
48:54 Dr Ron’s closing messageย
Happiness Is a Skill: The 5 Skills to Create It | Declan Edwards
Declan Edwards (00:00)
I spent a lot of years of my life wrestling with happiness. I would gamble my happiness on milestones and accomplishments and external things. I now know from the research it’s called the hedonic treadmill or the happiness trap. And you know if you’re on it, because by the way, even as a happiness researcher, as a happiness expert, I still have moments on this hedonic treadmill and in the happiness trap. And you know you’re on it as soon as you start telling yourself, I’ll be happy when.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:30)
Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.
Well, happiness. Who doesn’t want it? My guest today will tell us a lot more about it. My guest is Declan Edwards. Declan is a happiness researcher, a positive psychologist, and the founder of BU Happiness College, an award-winning social enterprise dedicated to making the science of happiness accessible to people.
And workplaces around the world. Known globally as That Happiness Guy, he holds a master’s in applied positive psychology. We’ve done many programs on positive psychology, and has spent over a decade turning cutting-edge research into real-world tools, working with organizations including the United Nations, TEDx, and the Harvard Business Review. His new book, How to Be Happy, that’s a catchy title if ever there was one, distills everything.
He’s learnt into five core learnable skills, all of which we cover today, for moving from surviving surviving to flourishing. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Declan Edwards. Welcome to the show, Declan.
Declan Edwards (01:44)
Thank you for having me.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (01:45)
Declan, what that this title of yours, the happiness guy, or that’s what you’ve become known as, is a very catchy and appealing tag to have. Good on you, well done. I was so looking forward to talking to you about this. What first drew you to studying happiness a as a kind of a scientific pursuit rather than just a personal interest?
Declan Edwards (02:10)
Yeah, I think I spent a lot of years of my life wrestling with happiness. What I found was I would gamble my happiness on milestones and accomplishments and external things. I now know from the research it’s called the hedonic treadmill or the happiness trap. And you know if you’re on it, because by the way, even as a happiness researcher, as a happiness expert, I still have moments on this hedonic treadmill and in the happiness trap. And you know you’re on it as soon as you start telling yourself, I’ll be happy when.
Yeah. Insert whatever you want at the end of that. I spent so many years of my life just thinking that if I worked hard enough and if I achieved enough, then happiness would show up. And it didn’t. And I so I kept feeling like I’d kind of got a bit of a bum deal from life, to be honest. I was like, hang on, I’m doing everything that I thought I was meant to do. I did well in school, I’ve gone to university, I’ve got a girlfriend now, I’ve lost a bit of weight, I’m looking after my fitness. Why don’t I feel happy? And this is where very fortunately I look back on this.
Chapter of my life now is introduced to some great mentors and people who could point me in the right direction. I went, Seems like you guys all have a toolkit for life that I don’t have. And they started talking about positive psychology and well-being science and all this great work being done to understand what happiness is as a skill set and as a science. And I went, When was someone going to tell me about this? Like, why am I only finding out about this two decades into life?ย
And so off I went and started learning as much as I could about it and enrolling in courses and doing postgraduate study and positive psychology and went I love this and I wish I didn’t have to spend so much time, energy and money pursuing it to try to learn about it. I wish it was a way that this was democratized. And I started going, well maybe maybe that’s my job. I even now I don’t think I’m you know other worlds pioneering and best happiness researchers. I think what I do well is translate the research and the academics into hopefully something that people care about.
And something that people can then utilise and and make a difference in their life. And I’ve been fortunate enough to do that work now for over a decade.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (04:08)
Well, if it’s only taken you two decades to come up with the answer, I think you’re doing very well, Declan. and and and you know, this only happy when is kind of part of a bigger business model that we are all part of in this world. You mentioned some mentors. I’m intrigued to know who was some of the who were some of the people. You mentioned positive psychology and it’s a topic we’ve covered, I’ve written about as well.
Who’ve been some of your mentors, some of your influences, people who’ve influenced
Declan Edwards (04:39)
The most personal one, someone I now look up to as a dear friend of mine, it’s made by the name of Sebastian Terry, also an Australian ac actually. He was the first person I’d come across in my life who was living a life very intentionally on their terms and defining what happiness meant to them. You know, I grew up my dad lifetime military, he just retired this year. His father, lifetime police force, his father’s father, lifetime military.ย
You know, I come from a long line and generation of you kind of build your identity into your career and then you do that for the next forty, fifty years, and therefore that’s what happiness is. I don’t think that’s inherently wrong, but I knew for me it wasn’t gonna work. But I was finding myself going, well, if not that, then what? And S Seb Terry was the first person I came across who basically his short story is a friend of his had passed away quite young and unexpectedly, and he found himself asking if my friend knew he was gonna pass away, would he have lived his life differently? And
He reached the conclusion that he wouldn’t his friend wouldn’t have lived his life any differently. And he then asked himself the question, if I knew I was going to pass away this year, would I live life differently? And he realized he’d change a lot of things. So he wrote a list of a hundred things he thought would bring him happiness, like a bucket list, and off he went to pursue that and chase that around the world.ย
And I remember connecting with him, just reading his blogs online and being a very insecure, unhappy, lost teenager, and just messaging him going, Hey, I’ve never had someone role model goal setting and values and the pursuit of happiness to me. Can you come to a talk at my school? And he replied and said, yes, we can make that happen.ย
And since then I’ve climbed to Everest Base Camp with him. I’ve been able to lean on him in some big changes and chapters of my life. And again, it was nice to have someone there as a role model to go, hey, happiness matters and this is something that you can learn and prioritize.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (06:31)
Mm. And how do we I mean, it is something that we are all kind of we are pursuing in in our lives. You know, how do we get down to happiness one one? How do we how do we define something that we’re we’re seeking out so desperately?
Declan Edwards (06:47)
Yeah, you’ve really nailed something there. There’s a great happiness research which I love called Daniel Gilbert, who wrote a book called Stumbling Upon Happiness. And in it he says that every goal that we pursue is in the pursuit of happiness. Be it, you know, I’m gonna get a promotion. Why do I want the promotion work? Well I want the more responsibility and more money. Why do I want the more money? Well, I that’s gonna buy me happiness. If we want the holiday, everything we do is like at some point we think this is gonna add to our happiness. So to try to take happiness out of the conversation is a moot point.
My work and a lot of my work for the last few years has been, well, if everything we’re doing is in the pursuit of happiness, why don’t we just go straight for happiness? Why don’t we lead with that and then let the rest follow? So rather than gambling happiness on whether or not we get the promotion, what happens if we practice skills that the research says, hey, when you do these things it makes happiness more likely?
So it doesn’t guarantee it. Nothing’s guaranteed in life. But there’s things that you can do and work on a practice that make it more likely that you’ll feel happy and fulfilled in life. And I’m sure we’ll talk about some of them in this conversation.
But to your question of how do we define something if we’ve been pursuing it for so long? we have been debating that for over three thousand years as a species. What is happiness? What does it mean to be happy? You know, the ancient Greeks sat around and argued one branch argued that happiness was the pursuit of pleasure. You know, if we have as much joy in our life and as much nice things and as little pain and as little bad things, well then that’s a happy life.ย
And then Aristotle and a bunch of different philosophers came along and said, Well maybe happiness is the pursuit of purpose, not pleasure. Maybe it’s about living a purposeful life and a meaningful life and a life of virtue. And I think what a lot of positive psychology and modern well being science and modern happiness research says is why don’t we do both? Why don’t we have happiness in the form of pleasure and have happiness in the form of purpose? And I think this is a common misconception a lot of people have about happiness is they hear happiness and they just think of joy.
Which is very fleeting. It’s a dopamine driven feeling. It comes quickly and it goes quickly. And so I’ve had people say before, why would I pursue happiness when it’s so fleeting? I’m like, well, it’s only one expression of happiness. Because contentment is also an expression of happiness. And it’s very slow build. It takes a long time to build, but a long time to go away. It’s much more steady. None of these expressions of happiness, pride, accomplishment, pleasure, joy, connection, contribution, purpose, for f like these are all expressions of happiness.
Think of happiness more as like an emotional umbrella term and there’s all these things that sit underneath it. And my perspective as a as a happiness coach, as a happiness expert, as a happiness researcher is what can we do to make it more likely that people experience those? And that tends to lead to a happy life.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (09:26)
It’s interesting to put those two terms purpose and pleasure and juxtapose the two because I guess life is a well, I guess life is a balance, but if the pursuit of pleasure is what is driving us primarily, and let’s face it, so much of what we are exposed to commercially is about that shortcut. We’re really up against it, aren’t we?ย
I mean, in your book, you opened up one of the observations you had was i I thought was in twenty twenty, which was a pretty turbulent year. you know. Yeah,
Declan Edwards (10:02)
You can say that, yeah.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (10:04)
yeah, understatement of the century. But anyway, one of the most turbulent years in living memory, the most surprising Google search word was happiness. So what does that tell us about our culture’s relationship with happiness, but also seen through the lens of pleasure and f and and purpose?
You know, I think that’s an interesting point.
Declan Edwards (10:26)
I think it comes back to this notion that I mentioned before from Daniel Gilbert that everything we pursue in life is for the sake of happiness. Yeah. and this is cross-culture too, by the way. So when you ask people, hey, what do you want out of life? What’s something you’re pursuing? And I’ve been doing this for years now. I’ve been fortunate to speak all around the world, to interview people all around the world, some of them are featured in my book, asking them what does happiness mean to you?ย
What’s a happy life? And then other times when I’m interviewing people or I’m speaking on stages, I say, write down a goal. Write down something that matters to right now. I don’t care if it’s a big goal or small goal, and for those listening to this, you can play along. Whatever the goal is, if I said, Why do you want that? Now of everything in the world, why does that matter? You’ll get an answer slightly deeper. This starts to tell me what your values are, by the way.
This starts to tell me what literally what you value, hence your values. And it might be a sense of security, a sense of accomplishment, a sense of variety and change in life, a sense of connection, it might be a sense of purpose and contribution. And I go, Yeah, but why do you want that? Why does that matter?
By the time you ask this enough, eventually it always lands on either happiness or love. I think these are the two things that unite all cultures, they unite the human experience. Is people fundamentally want to live a life and if you ask people also what do you want for your children? What do you care most about for your kids? I hope they live a life of happiness and love.ย
And these are the things that matter most to us as a species, but to your point, we’ve lost sight of that. And it’s easy to lose sight of and get distracted because capitalism and consumerism loves an unhappy person. If I can be blunt about it. Loves an unhappy person. So much easier to sell to and to sell that quick fix. If you buy this car then you’ll be happy. If you do this then you’ll be happy. We know that doesn’t work long term though.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (12:09)
Hmm. Yes, we do. We do know it doesn’t it doesn’t work long term, but we still get drawn into it really, don’t we? You talk about the the central premise of your work is that it’s actually happiness is not a destination or a feeling, it’s a skill, or more precisely, a set of skills. Why is it reframing s that so important?
Declan Edwards (12:34)
For me, so particularly I was mentioning before, you know, I spent a lot of my life and a lot of my years and especially formative years wrestling with happiness and thinking of it as a destination and an outcome. I found that that was one of the biggest light bulbs when I first started researching happiness and studying it and working it was this idea of, wait, I can do something about this? This isn’t like either just fully biological and I go, Well, if I didn’t get the lucky happy genes from my parents, then I guess I’m stuffed.
Or it’s also not entirely situational or circumstantial. Go, well I need to have the perfect life conditions to be happy. When I found out this was something that I can learn about and practice and stuff up like any other skill. Like I’ve not met someone I say that learning happiness is like learning to speak another language, in the sense that I don’t need to learn every word in Spanish to have a good conversation. But the more words I do know, the more likely it is I have a good conversation.
Just like you don’t need to learn every single skill or tool that science says supports happiness to live a happy life, but the more you have, the more likely it is you’re going to live a happy life. It also doesn’t mean though that you’re gonna nail it straight away. Like so many of the skills and tools of happiness, when I first tried them, I sucked at them. I wrestled with the idea of meditation for a good two years. I was reading all the research saying this is good for people’s brain, this is good for well being, this is good for happiness.
And I just I just kept not getting it and stuffing it up, and it wasn’t until I tried a bunch of different forms of meditation, different ways and approaches, that I found a way that worked for me and I went, maybe this will be part of my happiness toolkit now. And so I think there’s something quite hopeful about the notion that, hey, happiness is not just something that you gamble on hoping it shows up in the future. It’s something that you can intentionally cultivate and nurture and strengthen here and now.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (14:20)
Hmm. I know you talk about you’ve distilled a lot of research, I know that. and and you’ve talked about five core happiness skills. I love five, you know, I’ve got five stressors and five pillars, and we’ve only got five fingers on each hand, so I totally get the appeal of five. But I wondered if we might unpack that. I know you talked about emotional intelligence, looking inwards, retraining the brain, knowing yourself, directing your life. Let let’s unpack this a little bit. Talk about talk to us a little about these five skills.
Declan Edwards (14:54)
And look, as a confession, I was very cheeky when dialing into those five because at BU Happiness College, the social enterprise that I run, our curriculum is built around seventy five distinct skills that lead to a a c lead to a happy life. Like the research says, Hey, these are things that correlate to happiness. And I remember when I was starting to do this book, this book’s been three or four years in the making.
And I was pitching publishers. And they went, Declan, there’s no way you’re going to write a book with 75 skills covered well in it. Like that would be the thickest book in history. It’s gonna break bookshelves. We can’t do it. And so they said, Can you get it down to a top five? And I think so. And then I got cheeky and I bundled some together. So for example, you mentioned one of the first skills I talk about in the book is emotional intelligence. It’s one of the most well-known happiness skills. It’s been well researched for the last thirty years.
Within that bundle of skills, emotional intelligence, to be intelligent with one’s emotions. Well, there’s skills in there like emotional awareness and emotional literacy, which I talk about in the book, this sense of how do we hope to be intelligent about our emotions and manage them well if we can’t even recognize them and name them first? And for so many people, that’s the gap. That’s the first gap is you ask someone, Hey, how are you feeling lately? and they cannot give you an accurate answer.
Because they just haven’t built out the vocabulary. It’s again like trying to speak Spanish, but you only know five words. You’re not going to be able to do it. And so in the book, in that opening s like one of the opening chapters, I talk about this sense of first we need to build out our emotional literacy. We need to have more nuance to how we recognize and name our emotions. You know, if someone says to me, yeah, yeah, I’ve been feeling a bit bad lately, I’m like, what flavor of bad is it?
You know, is it more of an angry bad? Is it a sad bad? Is it a scared bad? And then we can narrow down from there. Same with happiness. Like if someone wants to feel happier and invite happiness into their life, I go, but what types of happiness? Because being real with you, there’s gonna be chapters of life where some forms of happiness just aren’t gonna be accessible. Like you’re not going to feel joy every day of your life. It’s just not gonna happen. the one that always comes to mind for me as an example is grief. You know, in times of loss.
I would never go to someone and say the goal is to find joy right now. But I might say in times of loss, can we also experience connection, love, gratitude, perspective? Like, yes, these forms of happiness can coexist. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t feel sad, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t feel grief. It just means can we feel that and have a little expression of happiness alongside it? But we don’t get to do that if our emotional range is I feel good, bad, not bad, stressed or happy.
And so I think as a starting point, just building out the language that you have to describe your emotions is such a a foundational skill for people to build. And I know in the book I talk about one of my favorite ways to do that is with a two word check-in, which is just to say to yourself or your loved ones, if you were to describe how you’re feeling right now, but you can only do it with two words, what two words come to mind? Because it cuts past all the story, it cuts past all the context, it cuts past our beliefs and our mind chatter and gets to what we’re actually feeling.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (18:01)
Hmm. So what kind Okay, that’s interesting, ’cause I know that out of Oxford they’re doing the they do a lot of work in in happiness out at Oxford University and well being. And one of one of the most compell or simplest questions one could ask oneself on a daily basis would be if I had to score how happy I was today on a scale of one to ten as a as an exercise in self reflection, how would I where would I be today?ย
And you know, that’s an interesting, isn’t it, to ask someone to quanti it’s not t quite two words, but it’s certainly a score out of ten. It’s a way of of connecting with how am I feeling? Where would I put this? Whatever that means, ’cause it must mean different things. It does mean different things to different people, doesn’t it?
Declan Edwards (18:57)
It does. And that approach of like scoring your happiness, I think can work well, but it can also backfire on people. Because if you have an underlying or inherent belief that the other emotions aren’t something that we should experience in life, that we should feel happy all the time, that it should be the primary emotion. As soon as we start saying, actually, I’ve had a few days here where I’m probably at a three out of ten of happiness, w it’s very easy to then judge ourselves for that.
And so what I find potentially a little bit more useful is what I mentioned before, like any emotion is okay to experience. It’s not always going to be happiness that is the main emotion you’re feeling. But maybe just challenging yourself to go, is there a form of happiness that’s still present here today? Even in my most stressed and challenging and frustrating days when nothing seemed to go to plan, was there a little moment that still felt quite nice? And chances are there was. And it’ll be very easy to overlook it and ignore it.
The another tool I share in the book, The Feelings Wheel by Gloria Wilcox. I’m a huge fan of. It’s just this like palette, like a painter’s palette of emotions instead of colours. And you start in the middle and you go there’s these seven primary emotions of happiness and anger and sadness and disgust, etc. And you go, Okay, well let’s look at all the ones under the happy umbrella and you start seeing these things like playfulness, curiosity, right, joy, all these different forms, and you go, Did one of these show up today?
I would argue that chances are everyone who’s listening to this has a form of happiness show up nearly every day of their life. You just need to find it. And it’s not saying that it should be the main emotion, it’s not saying it should always be there, but when you allow yourself to be curious, I think you’ll find happiness in many places.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (20:43)
Hm. Looking inwards is another one and we often talk about on this podcast that while we don’t have a chance to change people and events in our lives, we do have a chance to change the way we think about them. Is that what looking inwards is about?
Declan Edwards (21:01)
I think that’s part of it, yeah. So that would be I’d call that even taking ownership and responsibility of you know, what is ours to be responsible for and taking ownership of and what’s not, and what can we let go of? And we see that through nearly every great culture and religion and philosophy throughout human history, right? I know it’s even the Stoics talk a lot about that. I know acceptance and commitment therapy talks about that. Accept that which you cannot control, commit to that which you can. even you know, there’s the classic recovery prayer or whatever it is, you know.
God grant me the wisdom to know the difference between the things I can control and things I can’t. So Z can’t time me again. I think, yeah, ownership responsibility would be part of looking inwards. I just think, as well, as an overarching skill, we’re losing the ability to spend quality time with ourselves because we’re living through arguably the first time in human history where your attention is so valuable in monetarily terms. Right? We’re living in an attention economy. If you look at some of the wealthiest, highest-valued companies in the world, the social medias,
Netflix, right? They’re companies that have monetized and captured attention and encourage us to look outwards from ourself for answers. And I think there’s a role in that, but I think there’s also a very important role of spending time, be it through journaling, meditation I mentioned earlier, in reflect self-reflection and self-awareness, just looking inwards and looking for our own answers. Like I often say to people, like, hey, I’m referred to now as a happiness expert, but I will never be an expert on your personal happiness.
‘Cause I’ve all lived your life. Like I don’t know what what you value, I don’t know what you’ve been through to get here. My hopes people take the tools and techniques and the resources that I can share with the world and then they use those in introspect and go,
What ones resonate with me? What ones what do want to do with it? And which ones can I use to set myself up for a for a happier life? And you know, th th I I’m reminded of I think I write about it in the book this notion that everyone says to me, you know, they want self confidence and self worth and self trust and self esteem and
All these great things and all of them start with the same word. They all start with self. And how do you hope to have any of those if you don’t know yourself? Which is another one of the chapters in the book, right? If we do not introspect, we do not ever have the hope of then this next range of skills, which is getting to know yourself deeply, understanding who you are.
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Dr Ron Ehrlich 23:25
Yes. Yes, well isn’t that I mean as someone who’s a few got a few years on you, I can tell you for a fact that that’s a challenge that goes on throughout life, and I imagine you know that will continue to go on throughout the rest of my life, knowing oneself better. another one is retraining the brain. Wow,
Declan Edwards (24:54)
Yes.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (24:55)
I mean we talk about neuroplasticity and we talk about the ability to do that. What tell us talk to us a little bit more about retraining the brain because people feel so much, this is just the way it is, this is the way I am. What can I do? Talk to us about retraining the brain.
Declan Edwards (25:12)
Thankfully it’s not the case that this is just how it is and what can you do? I mean people used to think that. Like it wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things that psychology thought the brain was pretty well developed by about four or five years old. Like, you know, a lot just this mass amounts of wiring. And I guess the story at the time was like, hey, if you didn’t have a good first four or five years of life, sorry. Like good luck. This is what you’re stuck with now.
And so thankfully, since Sam, we know the brain is capable of change, it’s capable of learning, it’s capable of evolving thanks to neuroplasticity. The reason I dedicated a chapter in the book to retraining the brain is because this is probably one of the first big wake-up calls I got as a happiness researcher, which is your ha your brain actually doesn’t really give a damn if you’re happy. It doesn’t care about it. It cares that you’re alive.
That’s its highest priority. And as a result of that, it does some funny things. One of the funny things it does is something called the negative cognitive bias. Which means our brain’s really good at being a worst case scenario thinker. It’s really good at remembering the things that go wrong. It’s really good at highlighting the gaps in ourself and the things that we think we’re not performing well or comparing upwards and thinking everyone else’s life is great and we’re failing. Because it’s looking for threat. And that worked so well at keeping us alive. We’re
We are all, if you’re listening to this, you are the successful outcome of many, many generations of worst case scenario thinkers passing on their genes. But we don’t have to stay there. And so a lot of training the brain is going, how do we train it to look for happiness and marinate in it? Sometimes I say the brain really likes to marinate in the tough times of life and navigate really quickly through the good times. And we need to train it to do the opposite.
Which is to navigate healthily through the tough times, because they’re still gonna be there. Like nothing I teach or share will stop tough times from happening. They’re gonna be there. But if we train our brain to navigate through that healthily, and then marinate in and savour and enjoy the good times, rather than getting through them so quickly, we’re probably gonna feel a lot better. So the ways I recommend people do that, gratitude, really, really important. The research is so clear on this. Being able to practice gratitude and appreciation and noticing the good. Savoring which is in the moment.
My favorite way to do this is so simple, is just when you notice you’re having a nice moment in life, say that out loud. So be like, I did it just the other day, actually. my wife and I over the weekend celebrated our son’s first birthday. And we had our family around and it was sunny and it was beautiful. And I was just looking around this room filled with our loved ones. And the first year of parenthood, particularly the first eight months, was really hard for us. we had a really, really tough first six to eight months of parenthood.
postnatal depression anxiety for both my wife and I really really struggled through it. So I looked at this community of people that have held us and supported us in a chapter where happiness felt really hard. And I audibly sighed and I turned to my wife and said, This is nice. This is a nice moment. And it just allowed us to like stay there for a little bit longer and appreciate it rather than just going straight to, okay, well what needs to be done next? What are we when are we doing cleanup? When are we doing the cake? Like it just allowed us to be there.
For a second. Yeah. And I think that’s a great way to start retraining the brain. Like notice the good, be it through gratitude journaling or appreciation exercises, and then savour the good. Try to stay there a little bit longer.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (28:40)
Yeah. Yeah, being present in the moment, which we are so distracted well, given all the distractions. Which one of those, I mean, do people get most wrong, do you think? The emotional intelligence, the inward thinking, the retraining of the brain, if you had to identify which one they’d get wrong on wh what do you think the biggest p challenge there is for people as they try to r navigate this world of happiness?
Declan Edwards (29:06)
Mm. I think probably there’s not enough people practicing introspection well. Because it it requires vulnerability and courage. It’s scary to sit with yourself. It’s scary to look inwards at your thoughts and your feelings. And we’re also often sold this idea that someone out there has the answers. You know, if you just do what the influencer online is doing, if you follow their perfect five-step morning routine and you do the ice baths and
You know, you go for your run and all that, then life will be good and be happy, but their life is not necessarily going to fit into your life. And so even when I share, I’m like, hey, look, I can share you all the science, I can show you all these tools and resources, I can keep people accountable. And we’ve done great work, my team and I over the last ten years, we now have members and graduates of the college I run in six countries.
We see an average increase in people’s subjective well being of fifty seven percent over their first twelve months at the college. Like we do amazing work, but I go we can’t make anyone happy. We make it more likely.
That happiness occurs. But people need to take ownership and responsibility for that. And I don’t think that’s possible unless they look inwards and go, what does happiness mean to me? What does success mean to me? What does a good life on my definition of my terms look like? Rather than trying to just replicate and copy someone else’s.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (30:26)
Hmm. Yeah. I know you’ve been you’ve set up you mentioned this now, the Happiness College that founded the BU Happiness College in 2017. It was a social enterprise. Well done. And you’ve worked with organizations from the UN to the Department of Education, which is quite a range. What does happin unhappiness cost in in the workplace? What does it cost us?ย
You know, I mean, people don’t often I b I believe the workplace is a great place to effect change to healthcare, there’s actually a confluence of interest. Good health makes sense and dollars, whereas in the healthcare industry, good health may make sense, but sadly doesn’t make dollars. What does unhappiness in the workplace cost us and what shifts in in organizations when they take that seriously?
Declan Edwards (31:17)
Hm. I got interested in happiness in the workplace at the end of twenty nineteen. I was working with one of our members actually, at VU Happiness College, who was the head of sales for a large organization in the US at the time, and he called me one day and said, Hey, our organization’s being sold, there’s been massive changes, our team’s really burnt out, they’re really struggling with well being. I’d love for you to come here and teach them some of the stuff we’ve been working on.
And I remember saying I was like, man, I’ve never worked with an organization on this stuff before. And he goes, it’s just an organization’s just a group of people. Teaching people things. Okay, so next thing I knew, I was in Texas for a few weeks working with this organization. I fell in love with it and when hang on, we spend an in inordinate amount of time in our life at work. Which means that work, to your point, has a huge impact on whether we live a happy or unhappy life, because just so many hours.
Of our time is at work. And so I found myself coming back from that trip and went straight into my master’s work and I wrote my master’s thesis on how do you define happiness in the workplace, how do we measure it in the workplace, and what is the business case argument for it. And I was blown away as I was doing this research over two years. And I found just all these studies showing happiness, as you were saying, is an advantage to every layer of a business, be it.
Happiness is obviously good for retention and productivity and performance. We see all these impacts on the employee line. But also, happier employees tend to give a better customer experience. So now you have happier customers and clients. And then if you have happier customers and clients, they tend to buy more, refer more, churn less, which then leads to happier shareholders. Right? So happier shareholders are the lag effect of this. And I think for many years, probably the last, you know, at least over the last few hundred years.ย
The order of priority has been shareholders’ happiness first, then maybe customers happiness. And then if we have anything left over, we’ll look at employee happiness. We’ve fundamentally been doing it backwards. Yeah. And there’s now been this like push from great people like Tony Shea, who is the CEO of Zappos, wrote a great book called Delivering Happiness. But well what if we did that the opposite way? What if we prioritized the employee experience and happy employees and then let it trickle through.
And some of the best research in the world, depending on the research you look at, it’s somewhere between $2.73 to $3.23 for every dollar invested is what a company gets back. Now, if I said to you, hey, there is a stock on the stock market right now that over the next 12 months, if you put a dollar into it, it’s gonna give you $2.73 to $3.23 back, everyone is gonna run and buy the stock. That’s an insane return on investment in a year. And yet.
The idea of, well, how much are we investing into employee happiness? And when I talk about happiness in the workplace, the results of my master’s study and research was I define happiness in the workplace through the lens of high wellbeing, high engagement, a safe culture, the main culture, exceptional leadership, which is that humanistic leadership, and then high resilience, so the ability to adapt to change and challenge would be the fifth pillar. And I think a lot of organizations are looking at those five pillars
Sort of a separate, it’s like, yeah, we have an engagement strategy. We run an engagement survey once a year. Okay, what about wellbeing, culture, leadership, and resilience? Like, no, we’re not looking at those. It’s like building a puzzle with only twenty percent of the pieces. And so the organizations that I partner with that I speak for, I do learning and development trainings. I like to see when they take this comprehensive approach. It’s like, let’s look at all these parts of the happiness challenge and then build from there.
It’s like diagnose first. sometimes I use the analogy of I’d never go to a doctor and say, Something feels off in my tummy, please cut me open and rummage around. Like I’d want I’d want some scans of diagnosis first.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (35:08)
Yeah, yeah. No, no, I I look it’s a subject that I’ve been very passionate about the last few years, and you’ll be interested to know of a Deloitte study from the UK which showed a five dollars sixty or five pounds sixty return for each pound. So you know, the returns are there and as you quite rightly said, I think, you know, we focus too much I wish I could say the tide has turned on this, Declan, but we focus too much on shareholder supremacy.
I I would argue we’ve got a long way to go, but good on you for being starting to have a change. But but to to focus on the employee and I think legislation is certainly in Australia about managing psycho or mitigating psychosocial risk brings with it discussions about workplace well being and happiness, doesn’t it?
Declan Edwards (36:01)
Definitely. Yeah, I was fortunate enough to be a one of the speakers for the psychosocial safety summit that was run last year, a couple of years ago. huh. And around the time that a lot of the legislation was changed, I think the right to disconnect laws were just coming through at the time. And yeah, I went a lot of these things are starting to come in. Again, I I think we’re at an early the tide is shifting. To your point, I do not think this is a majority of workplaces by any means yet. But I’m starting to be more hopeful that maybe I’m gonna see a lot more of it in my lifetime.
I I I couldn’t say that. When I was starting to research this in twenty nineteen, like in the last, you know, seven years ago, I I I couldn’t have said that I could see it like I was being laughed out of rooms when I was talking about happiness in the workplace and now there’s definitely a lot more hunger and interest in it. So I think we’re finally starting to catch up to what the research has been telling us for a while.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (36:47)
Yes. I’ve actually thought that the government who legislated this almost handed the workplace a hospital pass. y you know, that’s a rugby analogy where you know you know you you get the ball and there is a group of forwards about to tackle you and cream you and you pass it to your teammate and that’s called a hospital pass.ย
And and and I would think given the state of mental health and well being in our community, the government has definitely handed the business world what could be interpreted as a hospital pass, but I would argue as you’re learning for sure is that it’s a wonderful, incredible opportunity.
Declan Edwards (37:33)
Yeah, and I think again it’s like we don’t need to stop there either. Like it’s good to see workplaces looking towards happiness and well being and all these topics. The it’s looking increasingly likely that I’ll be spending the next eight years of my life completing my PhD research on what I would argue as next year, which is how do we shape societies for happiness? And so this is looking at things like we fundamentally need to change the way entire countries define their success, because for the last hundred or so years it’s pretty well been exclusively through GDP.
If GDP is going up, if the economy’s going up, therefore we’re doing well as a society, happy days, good job country. But now we’re realizing that we can have GDP go up at the same time as rising wealth inequality. We can have GDP go up at the same time as worsening health care. We can have GDP go up at the same time as worsening educational outcomes. And so I think more countries, you know, Bhutan comes to mind with their measurement of gross national happiness. A lot of the scandy countries come to mind. Even New Zealand and Canada have said they’re doing well being budgets.
And making decisions based not only on economy but also on societal well being. That’s when our PhD research is gonna lie, is what would it look like for Australia as we move forward to not only gauge our success on economic growth, but also on the well being and happiness and thriving and flourishing of our citizens? Because I don’t think these two things need to be separate. In fact, so much of the research shows they can go hand in hand. If we have a happier, healthier population that tends to be really good for the economy.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (39:01)
Yeah. It i it is interesting that GDP and the gross what was the what’s the measure in Bhutan? The happiness
Declan Edwards (39:08)
Girls national happiness. Yeah.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (39:09)
national happiness. Because for example, if I was travelling to work and had an accident and my car was written off and I was in hospital for six weeks, the costs involved in that whole accident would be very, very good for GDP. And and there is in in itself what lessons are we learning from countries like Bhutan
where they are actually focusing on happiness. What what are we learning? Have you know, have you explored that at all? Have you looked at that?
Declan Edwards (39:37)
I have. I was fortunate enough I was actually whilst I was writing this book, I spent a little bit of time in Melbourne on a very short notice. I think I had about forty eight hours notice for this event and flew down to Melbourne to spend an evening in audience with the queen and crown princess of Bhutan as well as with the head of Gross National Happiness, the head of that government department that they have. And I was sitting there just going this is proof that it’s possible.
Yeah, I admittedly on a much smaller scale. They’re a smaller population. I mean, they’re also, you know,
Dr Ron Ehrlich (40:14)
Will you well think?
Declan Edwards (40:15)
Incredibly wealthy. Not a not a democracy either in the sense of like, you know, it is a royal family that can just it’s a benevolent leader who just decided one day we should be known for being really happy and well. Let’s do something about that. And hopefully it continues that way, but they’re only one non balevolent, you know, leader away from that being dismantled. And so I think we need to go, okay, this shows it’s possible.
We can also look at the world happiness rankings and see Finland’s at the top every year. Okay, well, why aren’t we learning from that? What can we take from there’s actually a fantastic book called The Nordic Edge. I forget who it’s by, but it’s by two Australian researchers. I believe one was an economist and one was a sociologist. I might be misremembering that though. But the Nordic Edge was these two ri Australian researchers who went, What are all these Nordic countries doing well? Because they’re always in the top five happiest countries. Like
Denmark, Finland, like what do they do Iceland, what are they doing? And they were able to put together this really good book that was this is what’s applicable to Australia and they spoke about everything from like economy and taxes through to gender representation and equality through to climate change and how we approach that. So I won’t try to shrink their research into a short discussion, but I will say for anyone who’s interested in this and like societal happiness and how you approach that, one of my favourite books of all time.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:29)
Hmm. But it is true, isn’t it, that they do they do come up high. We I mean we did a program because education is always high in Finland. We did a a podcast with Professor Passy Salberg from Finland who designed their program. And it was interesting to consider what made their program so successful. What are some of I mean, you mentioned it a little bit, but it it would be worth teasing out why
Nordic countries end up so high on that scale of happiness and what we can learn from it.
Declan Edwards (42:06)
I mean a lot of it is stuff that it’s funny, right? Because there’s a I personally, I lean slightly right economically. I’m a business owner, but I re lean slightly left socially. And so I’m always and I remember reading the Nordic Edge and the first chapter was here’s the argument case for why we should raise taxes. And I remember cringing a little bit and tricky being like, no, what? And they went, We need to raise taxes.
A lot of the scan countries have much higher tax rates than we do in Australia. But we need to do in a way where it’s then funneled towards these initiatives. And they speak a lot about education, you know, access to free education, high quality education, protection of nature and protection of our natural environment and area. Fantastic. they talk a lot about healthcare and access to good quality healthcare. So it’s a lot of these it’s funny, I think this leads to the discussion. For too long, the conversation about happiness has been exclusively individualistic.
It’s been what do we need to do as individuals to improve our happiness? And that’s still important. I mean, I’ve written a whole book on that. This is what you can do as an individual to increase the likelihood of happiness for you and others. But we need to also remember that happiness doesn’t exist in isolation for everyone else. We know that there’s a ripple effect happiness. We know it’s contagious. We know that I mean, even the Harvard longitudinal study, the longest running study we have on well being, the number one contributor to quality of life later in life is the quality of our relationships.
And so I think what the SEDI countries do really well is go, how do we create a system that is supportive of happiness? And then yes, within that system it is the individual’s responsibility to make choices that are conducive to their happiness and well being. We can’t force them to. But we’re gonna stack the deck in their favor and give them the best fighting chance. Yeah. I think we could do that better here.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (43:51)
Yeah. It’s interesting we’ve often quoted that Harvard longitudinal study and the importance of relationship and connection. And you mention attention has become a major economic driver. Our attention is worth a lot and and that’s been the attention economy, but we’re we’re ramping it up a little bit now. I’ve heard it said that we’re now into the attachment economy and and we’re not talking about attaching to other people.
Which is counterintuitive to happiness, don’t you think?
Declan Edwards (44:25)
Yeah, it can be, ’cause part of that be it either parasocial attachment where we’re starting to think that people we follow online care about us and they really have no idea who we are, and we have these one sided fake relationships that still meet some need. Our brain thinks we’re doing some type of social connection there, but we’re missing the depth, right? And so we we miss the real beauty of what it means to have good human relationships or attachment in the form of attachment to outcome, which is where we start seeing expectations come through.
As soon as we start expecting life to go to our plans, as soon as we start hinging our happiness on this is how the day and we do this day to day, not only in big things of like this is how I want my life to go, but think like the last time you woke up and you had this idea in your head about how the day would go,
and then something went wrong at breakfast, and your child’s now kicking and screaming to get their shoes on, and you’re running ten minutes late, and now you’re stressed because you had an expectation about how the morning would go. And it didn’t entail your child kicking and screaming and being late.
What you do in that situation? Do you get mad at life for not following your perfectly laid out plan in your head? Or do you go, okay? Acceptance tells me to practice that this is what I’ve been given. I don’t have to feel good or bad about it. I just have to decide what to do next with this. Acceptance is just the neutral acceptance and confrontation of reality. These are the cards that life has dealt me today. What do I do with it?
Dr Ron Ehrlich (45:48)
Yeah. Yeah, no, no, no, I love it. Listen, you you mentioned the ripple effect and we know that happiness can be contagious. So the idea of cultivating your own happiness is ultimately could be one of the most selfless things you can do. Nice to think about it in that for context. Can you leave our listener with listeners with one concrete step that they could take this week to start building w one of these skills?
Declan Edwards (46:17)
Yeah, I’ll say on that point, I know for a f with the happiness ripple effect and how contagious it is, I know for a fact that I am a better husband, a better parent, a better friend, a better leader, a better coach, just a better version of me when I’m practicing the skills of happiness compared to when I’m not. So I think it it is the kindest thing I can do to let my loved ones get to know the best version of me and get to experience that version of me compared to the version of me that’s, you know, buried under overwhelm or ton of stress or emotional exhaustion and fatigue.
And I think that’s the case for everyone listening to this. Like the kindest thing you could do would be to let your loved ones get to experience, you know, a happy and fulfilled version of yourself as often as possible. Not all the time, it’s not always gonna happen, but as often as possible. If you only did one thing off the back of this conversation, I hope there’s a bunch of things that you learn from the conversation that you can practice, but if people were to only do one off this, there’s a saying that I love that is gratitude shared is gratitude doubled.
We know from the research gratitude is exceptionally good for people’s happiness and wellbeing, but training their brain to notice the good we’re talking about before, to savour in it, be it writing a gratitude list or having a gratitude journal I know is very common in the literature. I think it’s very powerful to not just keep your gratitude practice in a journal that you read at night and you do because you heard about it on a podcast. But if you happen to write in your gratitude journal at a point or notice a moment of gratitude where you go, Geez, I’m grateful for that person. Jeez, I’m thankful they’re in my life.
I’m so appreciative of that thing that someone did for me recently. Regardless of how well you know them, my rule of thumb is I’ve been experimenting with it lately. If I think a kind thought about someone, and I have the ability to contact that person and let them know, either through social media, text message, a handwritten letter for all I care, send it. Don’t let that thought just stay in your head or be written down in a gratitude journal. Like let someone know what you’re appreciative of. It saddens me that often the kindest things we will say about each other we reserve to say at each other’s funerals.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:07)
Yeah.
Declan Edwards (48:07)
Which is wild, right? Like they’d say the things that we would say about our loved ones at their funerals. Tell them while they’re still here. So if you did one thing off the back of this conversation that think is fundamentally beneficial for your happiness and for the happiness of the world and you get to play your part in making the world as a whole a bit happier, tell people when you’re grateful for them, tell people when you’re thinking nice thoughts about them, tell people you appreciate them. I know it’s scary, it takes a lot of vulnerability to do that, but geez, it’s a good thing to do.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:33)
Hm, that’s a great note to finish on, Declan, and I want to express my gratitude to you for everything that you’re doing. I think this is a a wonderful thing for us all to aspire to in a in a more structured way than you’re doing. So thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us here today.
Declan Edwards (48:51)
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:54)
Well, isn’t it great to have a focus on happiness? And to know, as a message that we’ve conveyed many times on this podcast, that while we may not be able to change the people in around us and the events of the world, we can change the way we think about it.ย
And perhaps when we judge all of those things and judge ourselves most harshly of all, thinking positively and focusing on happiness is a worthy thing to be producing in your brain as neurotransmitters. We have control over how our genes express themselves and the chemicals that we produce by the thoughts we have. We’ll have links to Declan’s website and his book. I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be well.ย
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