Ted Audio Collective.

Collective.

You're listening to How to Bea A better Human.

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.

I am your host Chris Duffy.

Here's a strange thing that I have noticed

about my own brain. Often the times that I feel the happiest are where I have a lot of

irons in the fire. There's all these possibilities and there's this sense that

exciting things might happen.

But the thing that's weird is that I often feel happier in that moment where the irons are in the

fire than when they actually come out and become a real thing. Right? Like, even if I have accomplished something

that feels really big and special

like we finished recording a season of this show

or I did a big live show and it went well,

I crash so hard that night or the next day as soon as I've done the thing

that I thought that I really wanted to do. It's like I have a happiness hangover.

I'm confused to be honest about why it is that accomplishing the things that I thought I wanted to

accomplish often don't make me feel very happy at all. In my experience, happiness is

kind of a slippery fish. When I try my hardest to grab a hold of happiness,

it just flops out of my fingers and slides away.

But when I ignore the fish and I focus on other things,

sometimes out of the corner of my eye, I see that, hey, that happiness fish is swimming

...