Tal Ben-Shahar

Ambitious people are incredible at setting goals and terrible at arriving at those goals.

Tal Ben-Shahar calls this the arrival fallacy, the belief that once you get there, wherever there is, you'll finally be happy.

And then you get there, and you don't feel any different because getting somewhere cannot change your internal state very long.

That's why athletes can win a championship and then the next day be depressed because they thought all of their problems would be fixed when they arrived at the goal and won the championship.

I've never heard that.

So that's Dr. Ben Shahar who teaches the Happiness class-

Yeah

... at Harvard.

But what, what I will say from my own personal experience is, as someone who has gone through life having moments of not feeling happy, not feeling joy, it, uh, very much so allows me to be aware when I do feel joy.

And, and Tal Ben-Shahar, who is somebody who's written extensively about happiness, he really is a happiness guru, he said that there are two paradoxes about happiness.

Paradox number one is that the pursuit of happiness leads to a lack of happiness, and paradox number two is that you-

Wait, wait.

So that's one paradox that I think is really provocative just, and makes me wonder, like, when am I pursuing what I think is happiness in a way that ends up just being, like, leaving me empty, you know, and just almost being counterproductive.

What's the second paradox you were referring to?

The second paradox that Tal Ben-Shahar talks about is he says that you actually need unhappiness in order to achieve happiness.

Okay, whoa, whoa.

The golden rule, remember it, see if you can apply it today.

Related in the note, I talk about what Tal Ben-Shahar, the great positive psychologist who taught one of the two of the most popular classes in Harvard's history, in his book Happier, check out those philosopher's notes, he says, remember the golden rule, but remember the platinum rule as well.

He says the platinum rule is don't treat yourself the way you would never treat others.

In other words, treat yourself with kindness.

I'm certainly susceptible to that as well.

The guy that coined that phrase or that concept, Tal Ben-Shahar, he was my college professor.

And I remember sitting, he had this packed auditorium called Positive Psychology, one of the most popular classes at Harvard, I think.

And we would just sit there and I remember him talking about that because he'd experienced it himself.

We look at others who we perceive as having more than us and we wish for more, more money, more things, more respect from others.

In his book, Happier, Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar calls this the arrival fallacy.

It's the belief that when you arrive at a particular destination or achieve a specific goal or obtain a certain thing, you will be happy.

Sadly, the exact opposite is often the result.

Then Brad has a great section on goals that is one of my favorite parts of the book as well.

He talks about Tal Ben-Shahar.

And Tal and Brad both use the same metaphor of a mountain.

So when you're setting a goal, you want to set the goal and have that mountain peak in sight.