The Science for Real Life Happiness with Professor Paul Dolan

Podcast

Show Notes

Happiness. That’s all most of us want, right?

We’re all on our own journeys to achieve it, but is there a real science behind it that we could all follow? That’s what we discuss with Paul a behavioural scientist at LSE, who has been called the Professor of Happiness having written books including Happiness by Design” and “Happy Ever After”.

Paul’s work focuses on the measurement of happiness, its causes and consequences and the implications for public policy. He was appointed Chief Academic Advisor to the UK Government Economic Service on Economic appraisal aka he advises governments on behavioural science and wrote the questions that are being used to monitor happiness in the UK. We explore how finding the one, having more money, education and career success is in fact not the route to happiness and why. How single, childfree women are happiest and actually how it is the balance of purpose and pleasure is of up most importance, when it comes to happiness.

Topics we cover:

What is happiness?

How is it measured?

Is happiness a choice?

Social Narratives Is happiness subjective?

Four common myths of happiness

Past experiences

Purpose vs pleasure

How can we design our environment to impact happiness?

How can we retrain our mindset around happiness?

What does LWBW mean to Paul?

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Time Stamps

03:39 Do genes play a part in our happiness?

05:16 What have you changed your mind on in the last 10 years?

05:48 What is happiness?

07:31 How do we measure happiness?

10:10 Helping Others: Impact on happiness?

12:35 Social Narratives & Happiness

17:49 4 Common Myths

27:25 Pleasure & Purpose (Finding your purpose)

29:20 Evaluation & Experience & Judgement

35:23 How can we become more accepting of other opinions?

40:15 How his book came about? Writing popular science

41:05 Can we design our own happiness?

45:00 Are single, child-free women happiest?

48:37 Children - honesty

52:57 Luck and happiness

57:04 Perseverance & Perfectionism

57:49 Age & Happiness

1:00:00 3 Tips for implementing happiness in their lives

1:04:00 What does Live Well Be Well mean to you?