The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane

Episode 105 Understanding the Science of Happiness

• Fiona Kane • Season 1 • Episode 105

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This episode unveils the surprising truth about happiness, positing that it is less of a fleeting feeling and more about achieving a stable baseline through meaning, satisfaction, and enjoyment. I explore the genetics of happiness, the role of faith, family, and friendships, and practical steps for enhancing our happiness levels.

• Understanding hedonic adaptation and its effects on happiness 
• The role of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning in lasting joy 
• Genetic predispositions and how they shape our happiness 
• The significance of faith in a greater purpose 
• Family as a pillar for emotional support and connection 
• Friendship that fosters true connection over transactional relationships 
• The importance of meaningful work and contribution 
• Practicing gratitude as a tool for enhancing happiness 

The talk I referred to and referenced in this episode is available here: Harvard Professor reveals the Science of Happiness in 15 minutes | Arthur Brooks https://youtu.be/w8a0T5XLrXc?si=_ZwWBGY_3A369Gne

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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Credit for the music used in this podcast:

The Beat of Nature

Music by Olexy from Pixabay



Fiona Kane:

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection Podcast with Fiona Kane. I'm your host. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about happiness. So I have talked about this before, but I'm always reading and watching talks and getting new knowledge, and I wanted to share with you some of what I learned about today. So there's a few things that I learned and I will reference them towards the end so you know where I heard about these things.

Fiona Kane:

So the first thing I wanted to talk about is, when we talk about happiness, there's an interesting thing that I have talked about here before, which is called hedonic adaptation, and what that is is, say, when you win some money or you get a job or you have a new car or something that makes you happy, you're happy for a while, but then eventually you go back to whatever your kind of standards place is. So we all kind of have a, I suppose, what would just be like our standard setting for happiness, and then something will happen that's great and we'll be happier for a while, but then we'll go back to our standard setting and it's the same the other way around, as in something bad might happen or something that will make us sad, but then over time we just sort of go back to our natural setting. So the question isn't about changing, like fixing the big things. It's more about, well, how do we change that natural setting, that all of the time setting? Because what we do know is that it wears thin, it wears off. When it's kind of about the exciting things and the exciting things are wonderful, but for sort of happiness, that long-lasting happiness, it's actually more about that baseline happiness that you have, being better overall and the more that we can change that, the better off we will be. And there actually was a study, and it was a study of lottery winners, and it's Brickham 1978 is the study, and apparently what they saw. They looked at lottery winners and they looked at accident victims who lost their ability to walk, and what they looked at is they looked at their level of happiness or unhappiness. And then they checked back with these people later and what they found is they both kind of went back to their natural setting, whatever their natural setting was, and so it wasn't sort of that different to each other over time. So over time we do tend to just go back to the factory settings, as it were. Is what I was just talking about then.

Fiona Kane:

So I saw a talk today and this talk is part of the ARC Conference, a-r-c I think it's Alliance for Responsible something I can't remember now, but anyway it's worth checking out and this talk was all about happiness and it's a Harvard professor, and what he was talking about is he was talking about what happiness actually is and therefore, how to achieve it, and essentially, it's about that baseline happiness that I was talking about a moment ago. So he said that happiness isn't a feeling. So we perceive it as being a feeling, but it's not a feeling. And he explained that the feeling of happiness is a bit like the smell of dinner it's evidence of the dinner, right, so the smell is evidence, but it's not the dinner itself. So happiness, a feeling of happiness, is not happiness itself, but it's just a feeling of happiness. And so what he described, what he explained it actually is, he explained that happiness is a combination of three macronutrients, and those three macronutrients are enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. So that's enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning, and they are the things that create real happiness, and this is what determines your baseline, these things, right?

Fiona Kane:

So the person who did this talk, by the way, his name is Arthur Brooks and Professor Arthur Brooks. So he explained that you know, enjoyment isn't the same thing as pleasure. Pleasure is more of an animal thing, where enjoyment is where you kind of add people and memory to make it it's like makes it uniquely human. And then he talked about makes it uniquely human. And then he talked about satisfaction and how we get satisfaction. And the satisfaction is essentially the joy you get from accomplishing something that's hard and something hard and you struggle right. So you struggle and you achieve something and that's satisfaction. And it's only humans that want that. And it's important to consider this when we actually think about making life too easy for especially young people, children and young adults that when we take away struggle from people that don't get satisfaction. So remember that an important part of satisfaction is that we have some struggle and we achieve something that's difficult, and that's actually where we get the satisfaction, and a lot of our belief in ourselves and our trust in our own abilities comes from that. So don't underestimate the importance of satisfaction and of where it comes, from, which it comes from. The struggle comes from doing something hard ourselves, not someone doing it for us. So he talked about you know that we need meaning in our lives, and so there has to be some sort of coherent purpose, some goals, something significant in your life, something that matters.

Fiona Kane:

And then he was talking about some identical twins, right? So there's a study done on identical twins. They were separated at birth and then they were reunited when they were 40. And they did all these personality tests and things just to see what the differences were and what the similarities were. And with this testing, what they found out is a few things. So they found out that the 50% difference in happiness is genetic. So essentially, genetically, we get 50% of our happiness genetically. So from our mother, maybe our mother and father as well, I don't know, but genetically we do get 50% of our happiness, standard, happiness level. Genetically. We also get things like addictive tendencies, like alcoholism, that sort of thing, about 50% again from parent, from genetics. And that doesn't mean you will become alcoholic, it just gives you the information that you need to know. Hey, it's probably a good idea you don't drink because you know that there's a high chance that you could become alcoholic. So it's just this information, it's data, it's not destiny, it's just data, right? However, what they also found is okay, the 50% is genetic.

Fiona Kane:

After that 50%, the next 25% is circumstantial, so it depends on what's happening for you in life at the moment, and that's the transient thing. It's the new job or the new car, or the new new relationship or lack of whatever those things. But that happiness, that boost in happiness or reduction in happiness, comes from these kind of transient things in life and from circumstantial things. So whatever's happening in your life at the time, it'll go up or down by that 25%, and then there's the last 25% of happiness and that's the bit that is in your direct control. And that is about that set point. I was talking about that set level, that standard level of happiness that we have. And also, when we have this information, it allows us to manage those genetic. You know, if we've got genetic challenges, this helps us override that because we've got this 25% influence. And so this professor was talking about, based on neuroscience, what the four main habits are, the four main things that we need to know, that we need to have to achieve this happiness and this sort of this base level of a good quality sort of happiness.

Fiona Kane:

So the first one is actually faith, and when he said faith he referred to your faith, so it doesn't necessarily mean, like in his case I think he said he was a Roman Catholic it's not necessarily about faith in the church. It's more faith in something that's bigger than you. So it could certainly be your religion and your God. It could also be things like being in nature, or might be music going classical music or something but essentially it's like to be in awe of something and to not be caught up in the narcissism and to sort of see yourself as smaller rather than see ourselves as bigger. So just hold on for a moment. Sorry about that. So essentially, what I was talking about was the faith in all thing, and it was something that just allowed you to see how small you are, that there's sort of bigger there's a universe, there's a planet, there's a God, there's whatever, there's nature. But it's sort of to get us out of our narcissism and out of our head and to see that we're part of something bigger. So faith was actually really important.

Fiona Kane:

Another one is family. Family is number two and family is really important and that's why I think in our society of recent times, we have moved away from faith and we've also moved away from family, and actually we've moved away. I'll keep going through this list. We've moved away from a lot of these things and family is really important and we've sort of been encouraged not to have children, that there's better things you can do and you should focus on your career, and no, family is really important. Now, I didn't end up having children, so I'm not making any judgments on anyone around that, but I do understand the importance of family and um, so I do have very close relationships so with my siblings and um and uh, good relationships with my living parents, that sort of thing, uh, and some other relatives, cousins and that, and that, uh, family is really important and that family is really important. And family is important for lots of reasons, but they kind of know your story. They have your back. Obviously, the only reason you wouldn't have a relationship with family is if they were really dangerous to you psychologically or physically, if they were harmful to you.

Fiona Kane:

That does not include someone with a different political opinion, by the way, and that's a big issue that we see now in society. We've got such strong views and strong opinions about politics, but what's happening now and I see it with all these recent elections is essentially people and there's even psychologists who've been going online and saying, oh, if your family voted for this person or that person, you've got a justifiable reason not to talk to them. Don't be ridiculous. It's really not true and in fact, it's a really good thing to practice talking to someone with a different opinion of you, a different opinion than you. Be respectful and be interested in their opinion. You don't have to agree with someone, but just listen to them, because you'll find a lot of the time. Most people are well-intentioned, they care about other people, they want the best, just have different ideas about what that looks like or who can achieve that or what politics works or whatever it is. But please don't use politics as a reason to not talk to people. It's happened in my life and it's really unfortunate when a person can't just have a different opinion with you, uh and uh, and it's so a really important part of learning how to think, learning how to understand the world, is actually through conversation and um and talking things through and been allowed to get it wrong, and I've been allowed to have different opinions and learning right. So please don't let politics be the reason you don't talk to people, especially your family.

Fiona Kane:

Family is really important. So the first one was the faith. The second one was family. The third one is friendship, and this is like about real friendship. These are the people, not the people, not transactional friends. Friends like I'm friends with this person because I can get something out of them or they can do something for me. It's more, he described it as being in the nicest possible way, but people who are useless to you, and not useless as in worthless, not the same thing but I just mean people who there's no transactional benefit from this person, as in they can't get something for me, do something for me, give me something, but they can be my friend and they can be there for me. It's that person who can be there for you, but there's no transactional element about it. And so it is important to have those kinds of friends and so real friends as opposed to a transactional friend.

Fiona Kane:

And I was interesting because another talk that I saw today, there was a woman talking about dating and she said that she was and she was talking about technology and how we're doing too much technology and not enough like real life and real people stuff. You know, yeah, she said she was on a bus in London and she saw these two couples sitting next to each other. They weren't a couple but like a young woman and young man, and she noticed they were both engrossed in their phones and so she kind of just a bit of a sticky beak and had a look to see what they were both doing. And they were both on dating apps. And she said it was really interesting because they were both on dating apps and they were looking at people that were quite similar to each other. And she said they had this whole bus trip where they looked at the dating apps and were looking at these people on the apps and then they got off the bus at the other end and never actually saw each other and never noticed each other.

Fiona Kane:

And you know, once upon a time that's where we met people. We met people on the bus, we met people on the train, we met people at work. I met my husband at work but we met people in real life. And the sad thing is we're not even seeing the people in real life because we're so stuck in our phones. So, yeah, uh, friendships are really important, uh, and and maybe putting down our devices a bit and looking around and just being present, because if we look around and we're present, we'll have time to have awe and see that the world's a bit bigger and get out of our narcissistic heads. But also we might see people and meet people and make friends and partners and things like that. So friendship is really important.

Fiona Kane:

And the fourth one, in regards to happiness, was work. So work was really important and what the reason it was important was a number of things. So I it's about so, so one it's like we need to earn our success. If we earn success, we feel feel good about ourselves, and that could be about earning your paycheck, uh, but also it could be about that you do something that changes the life for somebody else, and that could be it doesn't have to be, you know like you don't have to be the Dalai Lama or whatever. You don't have to do stuff like that. I mean, it's great if you can do wonderful things and if you can be some great figure. That makes great change. But the support it could just be that you support someone in their small business to succeed, and that can be the great thing that you do every day for someone and still a beneficial thing.

Fiona Kane:

So the essential thing is that you do something, you're creating value of some sort, you're earning some money and feeling good about yourself and you're doing something that affects other people in some ways. You're doing something on merit. So it's very much about merit as well. So that whole success thing and that whole satisfaction thing, it's merit. It's like I've done this thing, I've worked hard, I'm doing this thing, I've had success because of me, you know, as opposed to something got handed to me or whatever, and so essentially what it required is, you know, the dignity to the dignity is like being needed, and the essence of despair is, if you like, a liability that nobody cares about, or so the people are managing you. So you know, dignity is really important and the dignity of having a job cannot be underestimated. Having a job and being needed make a huge difference.

Fiona Kane:

So our work makes a huge difference, and that's whether or not your work is being a famous psychologist or doctor or a garbage man or anything in between. It's actually not about one's not lesser or whatever. They're just different. And the main thing is that you achieve these feelings of satisfaction, happiness that you're making a difference, and I'll tell you what clearing rubbish off the streets does make a difference. We'll soon find out if Garbo stopped doing it. So everyone plays their role and we're all different cogs in the wheel and we do different things. And just because someone's like a so-called professional, it doesn't mean their role is more important. In actual fact, if the plumber stopped doing their job and the garbo stop doing their job, uh, not that plumbers are, um, in any way not qualified or not educated, but you know, if those kind of more uh, what we service, uh based uh, or what do you call blue collar workers or whatever, if uh tradies and stuff, if they stop doing their job, we're in a world of trouble. So, uh, so yeah, it's not just about oh, oh, you're making a difference because you're a brain surgeon. Yeah, of course a brain surgeon does make a difference, but there's lots of ways that you can make a difference and feel good about yourself and be achieving something. So just keep that in mind. That it's not about the job itself necessarily. It doesn't mean you can't try for something different or do something different if you feel drawn to do something different, but it's not like a job that's better or worse from that perspective. So, anyway, that's what he said.

Fiona Kane:

If we practice these four main habits, then that is what achieves that sort of baseline of happiness to be higher and that's how we ultimately achieve that happiness. And so remember, with all of these things whether it be things like friendship, real life, friendship, real people and not just transactional friends, and you know, work doing something, and if you can't find paid work and you can find voluntary work, we can get a lot out of that as well. So it's not to say paid work is the only way, it's just the satisfaction of showing up and making a difference right, and I've done volunteer work in the past and I've really done well out of it, sort of emotionally, physically, but also then ultimately helped me get paid work in the long run. So you know it was worthwhile for that purpose so, but also just for the difference it made my life every day, as well as the people I was helping, so sort of.

Fiona Kane:

Have it in mind that essentially, we need sort of good habits, a system of good habits, to achieve that baseline happiness that we all would love to have or that we would love to improve. And they're the things, that's your faith, your family, your friendships and your work. They're all important and they all play their role, and so it's important to consider all of those in um in the factor factoring happiness. Uh, the other thing that's really helpful, of course, is just any level of gratitude which they would all bring that level of gratitude. So gratitude for the friends you have, for the friendship and um, and you know, gratitude for having a job, if you're lucky enough to have one, if you're for the friendship, and gratitude for having a job If you're lucky enough to have one, if you're lucky enough to have family, gratitude for that, even if they drive you nuts sometimes, you're lucky you have them, because one day you might not or one day you probably won't. So it's just gratitude can be part of this as well.

Fiona Kane:

So, anyway, that was from the ARC conference, arc 2025 conference. Most of it came from that, and it was Professor Arthur Brooks who I was referring to and his talk, which was really well done and really interesting, and I highly recommend that you check it out as well. But remember that happiness well, 25% is very much in your hands, and that baseline happiness is something that you do have a lot of control over. So focus on the bits. Like I always say, focus on the bits that you can control, and they are the bits that you can control and that will help improve your happiness. Please like, subscribe and share and rate the podcast as well, and if you're on Rumble or YouTube, you can comment. I'd really love to hear from you and please. It makes a big difference the more people that hear about the show, the more I can share these strategies and learnings that I have, and my goal is always to have important conversations about things that matter. So, anyway, I'll see you again next week.

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