Name: 私たちが幸せについて間違っている理由 (Why We’re Wrong About Happiness)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T06:27:05.000Z
Duration: 9 min 58 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

Would you rather win the lottery or become a paraplegic? Now it seems very obvious that

the day after, you'd much rather have won the lottery. But they've done studies of both

of these groups--the lottery winners and people who have become paraplegics. And what they

find is after one year, they both rate their lives as the same amount of HAPPY.

Now, this is called the "impact bias." The fact that we think, obviously, the lottery

winners can be much happier, is due to our tendency to overrate both the intensity and

the duration of the happiness that we'll experience when we get what we want. Now this wouldn't

be a big problem if we're just a _ of lottery winners, but it's all of us, right?

I'm sure you've had the experience. Maybe you went out for a job or got a promotion

that you were desperate for. And when you finally got it, you spent a few weeks really

happy with it, and then, it was just every day drudgery, right? It stunk.

Or there was a product that you needed, it was the iPhone, a car, a new watch. And for

the first couple of weeks, yes, every single time you touched it, you felt good. But then,

after a while, it just started to blend in with the rest of the things in your life.

This is very common. The things that we pursue take a lot of time and energy, but the happiness

that we get out of them is miniscule. Now this is a trap that I want to help you avoid.

I spent, literally, years studying happiness, the people who have it, the people who don't,

and then applying those lessons to my own life, to see which actually work from experience.

And what I can tell you from my own experience is that there's this thing called The Happiness

Ladder. And there's five rungs to it. If you focus on the bottom rungs of this ladder,

you're almost guaranteed to not find happiness no matter how successful you are at getting

When you focus on the upper rungs of the ladder, you're almost guaranteed to find happiness

that lasts. So, what I want to do is, hopefully, in this video, help you skip ahead to those

higher levels, so that you don't get stuck with the things that are basically guaranteed

So the first thing is this, the bottom of the rung, that we all tend to start with when

we're younger is "stuff." When I was little, I wanted the right Power Ranger. Then when I

got the right Power Ranger, I wanted the new video game, and after the video games, it

And the truth is, stuff is nice. These things made me happy. But none of them, no matter

how many video games or Power Rangers I had, led to any sort of lasting happiness. And

that's true of all stuff. Stuff is nice, it's necessary, but it cannot create lasting happiness.

And the problem with stuff is that it's very, very easily corrupted. There's so much advertising,

we oftentimes will buy stuff to brand ourselves. And this is where we're almost guaranteed

This is like negative one on this ladder. If you're buying things like expensive brand

in clothes, jewelry, cars, electronics, whatever, for the sole purpose of being perceived in

a certain way by your peers, then you are in trouble. Because, then, your happiness

is dependent on the opinion of other people, and that is always a precarious position to

So, as quickly as we can, most of us realized that we need to get out of stuff if we want

to be happy. We need to move to the next level. And the next level for many of us is "experience,"

So, all of a sudden, rather than spending our time to accumulate things, we want to

just, we want to see the world, and I see experience gone wrong most often in people

who are first time backpackers. They want to travel but they don't want to do anything

deeply. They want to go for 30 days and see 25 different cities, right? They want to see

every monument, take every picture, eat a local dish once, and then, get back on the

airplane as soon as they can, so that they can tell their friends all about it.

The experience, again, just becomes a proxy for the thing. It's about branding yourself.

This is when experience goes wrong. Experiences can be amazing, just like stuff. I love escape rooms.

I don't take pictures of all of them. I do them for me and to spend time with my friends.

If you had to do it, do an escape room, they're amazing. But, if you are focused on the experience

simply for the Instagram photo, that's a problem.

Not long ago, I went on a hike with a friend of mine, and it was a 45-minute hike, and

all the way up, she complained. It was the heat, it was everything was wrong with this

hike; we didn't have enough water, the time of day. We finally get to the top and then

for three minutes, she was all smiles when the camera came out. She took a yoga pose,

it's this pose, it's that pose, different combinations of people; probably 60 different

pictures and then posted a couple of them, and felt good about those pictures.

If that reminds you of your self or anyone you know, you're spending your life for the

photo that you get or the story that you get, cut it out. You are guaranteed to be unhappy,

because you are going to spend 45 minutes feeling miserable, and then, three happy,

and then, finally living vicariously through the likes that you get on social media. That

After experience, we tend to move up to the next level, and I see a lot of people here.

This is where I spend a lot of time myself. It's great--GROWTH. So, I first, the first

time I went abroad was when I was in college, and I did exactly what I said. I went to Spain

and took all of my student loan money and I travelled like crazy.

In three months, I saw six different countries, went to a ton of different cities, got tons

of pictures, saw wonders of the world. It was really cool. When I got back, I couldn't

speak Spanish. I didn't really know anything about the culture, and I had not made a single

So after that, I said, "You know what? I'm gonna do something differently." This time

I'm going to Costa Rica. It's a way less exciting Standing Program in a small town. It's not even on

the beach and I'm going to enroll directly into the local university.

Now, I don't have as many pictures. I didn't see any wonders of the world. I didn't leave

the country in the 10 months that I was there. But while I did that, I learned Spanish, I

learned to dance salsa, and I made local friends. And I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.

And even more than that, the person that I became, the fact that I can now enjoy going

out salsa dancing, years later, I can communicate with someone in Spanish. That impacts my life

often. Growth is the first rung that I think leads to lasting, on-going happiness. But

it's not the end all, be all, because I got kind of obsessed with this for a time.

Self-improvement can be addictive. If you're on this channel, maybe you've gone through

all of our videos here, like "I got to get better. I got to get better." I know that

feeling, but I've had days where they were perfect on a self-improvement standpoint.

I spent no time doing TV, no time on the bad things, and like 10, 12 hours solid practicing

music, language skills, building my business, going to the gym, all good things for me.

But I still felt a little bit empty at the end of the day. And what I realized is that

every single day that I have needs to have some form of connection or contribution.

Here's the fourth rung, and I think that this is where people really, really want. The whole

thing with the branding and the status, a lot of that is really just a stepping stone

for what we truly desire, which is to connect with other people. But we don't think we're

enough, so we think if we have these clothes, then we'll be enough. If we have interesting

stories, then we'll be enough. Or in my case, if I am a cool enough, well-rounded enough

person, with all of these how be's and activities that I'm good at, I will be enough to connect.

And what I'm here to tell you is that you can shortcut that. You can connect. You can

contribute today. Your time, your attention, your praise, your focus, that can be enough

for some people, right? To make friendships, that is plenty. Now continue to grow. Continue