happy person
© kati / Global Look Press
Happiness is ill-defined, elusive and fleeting. Yet, it is relentlessly pursued by millions of people all over the world through classes, 'happiness counselors', workshops and cruises. Entire bookstore sections are devoted to this topic and a whole branch of psychology -- positive psychology, or 'joyology' -- is dedicated to its study and propagation.

Numerous studies have been conducted on happiness. In some, people choose money over well-being, others say that love and friendship are the keys to happiness. Still, other studies show that a person's level of happiness always returns to baseline despite tremendous suffering or episodes of intense joy. Some researchers consider happiness a state of mind that can be cultivated while other lambast the pursuit of happiness and positivity as a denial of reality and lying to the self.

Join us on The Health and Wellness Show as we discuss the topic of happiness and whether seeking it out is even worth the trouble. And stay tuned for Zoya's Pet Health Segment on the topic of emotions in pets and finding happiness in nature.

Running Time: 01:23:35

Download: MP3


Here's the transcript of the show:

Jonathan: Welcome to the Health and Wellness Show everybody. Today is Friday, July 21st, 2017. My name is Jonathan. I'll be your host for today. Joining me in our virtual studio from all over the planet we have Tiffany, Doug, Gaby and Erica. Hi guys.

Tiffany: And Elliot.

Elliot: Hello.

Jonathan: Oh and Elliot is here. Awesome.

All: Hellos.

Jonathan: Hey Elliot. So today we're going to talk about the misguided quest for happiness. Happiness is ill-defined, elusive, it's fleeting but it's relentlessly pursued by everybody. Of course there's the stock phrase "the pursuit of happiness" or the pursuit of liberty. I think originally it was the pursuit of liberty and then they changed it to happiness which is kind of BS. So we're going to delve into that today.

So let's get started and maybe just go with the baseline. So when you guys think about this, when you think "happiness" do you think fulfillment? Because in my mind fulfillment comes with some suffering too and so I wonder how many people have different definitions of happiness.

Tiffany: I think there's tons of different definitions of happiness. Nobody really agrees.

Doug: I think that different people have different definitions for happiness too. Fulfillment is definitely a big part of it for a lot of people but I think that some people are happy to just hang out with friends or veg out on the couch or whatever the case may be. It's kind of a subjective thing which is always difficult to define.

Jonathan: I would agree with that. There's definitely not a standard definition of happiness.

Elliot: It's a highly subjective thing. I think because so many people have different ideas of what it is to be happy then when there is some sort of external thing that is claiming that if you do it and it says that you're going to be happy then a lot of people can identify with that. But in terms of the objective meaning of happiness, I think that's a hard one to define. I don't know what I would say was happy, probably an association or a conglomeration of different positive feelings and emotions. But then is that just a superficial thing? Is that a superficial sort of interpretation of the word happy and is there some deeper level of fulfilment that comes with that as a result of suffering or whatever? It's a difficult one.

Jonathan: It just occurred to me that we might be able to objectively define happiness in itself as a state of mind but that what's subjective is what causes happiness.

Tiffany: There's one definition that I found and whoever wrote this article said that "Many neuroscientists and psychiatrists and behaviourists and monks {laughter} agree that happiness is more like a feeling of satisfaction or contentment. It not necessarily being happy as in bursting with glee. There are steps and deliberation to it and it involves living a meaningful life, using your gifts and your time and living with thought and purpose." I thought that was a pretty good definition but I don't know that the average person would give that much thought to it. They just think people who are happy are smiling and laughing and always positive all the time.

Doug: We said in the show description that happiness is ill-defined, elusive and fleeting and I think that definition doesn't sound elusive and fleeting at all. It sounds like how you would define maybe a happy life as opposed to happiness which can be very transient. You can be having a conversation with somebody and you're having a good time and then all of a sudden things turn for the worst and suddenly it's an uncomfortable situation. That is quite fleeting. So I like that definition but I don't know if it's applicable to every situation that you would necessarily apply to happiness.

Erica: I think a lot of people get stuck in the expectation or also in the past, what made them happy in the past and they disregard all the other aspects. So it's interesting how, as it says in our show description, how it's relentlessly pursued by millions of people and people take classes and buy books in the self-help section and yet it is elusive.

Doug: This is probably a by-product of our society and advertising. People have an expectation of happiness. It's kind of like the expectation is that somebody is just going to be happy all the time. If you're having a good life, then it means that 24 hours a day you're happy, you're in a good mood, you don't get challenged by things or have disagreeable moments. You're surrounded by all this advertising and stuff where people are participating in different activities and they've got different products that are obviously making them blissfully joyous. I think that expectation is actually nonsense and that it puts forward an unrealistic expectation of what it is to be happy.

Gaby: Yes, it's imposed from external forces, "If you have this life, this car, this house, you will be happy" and people come to expect all these things in order to make them happy. And does it really make them happy once they achieve it? I don't know.

Erica: I think they said they know.

Doug: There was that one article that talked about how it was the pursuit of these things that usually have more emotion attached to them than the actual getting of them. You really want something and it's the achieving of getting it is where all the emotion is and once you get it you're excited for a little while but then you go back to your baseline level of happiness. It's just you've got this new thing as well. So I would say no.

Tiffany: They gave the example of that guy who worked really, really hard for a long time to write a book and then once he wrote a book he felt like "I'm the guy who just wrote one book". {laughter}

Erica: Well again, it's that expectation of some future reward. You're not happy now, you're not happy for the 20 years that you worked your job, but when you retire then you may be happy. Maybe.

Tiffany: I think there's a big aspect of selfishness in it too. You're basically just concentrating on what's going to make you feel good or what's going to make you feel better and you're totally avoiding living in the present moment. You're just thinking about some nebulous future reward and you ignore everything else.

Gaby: Some people are actually very active in the pursuit of this happiness. They're in overdrive. I know a guy who has taken 20 different martial arts disciplines because one was not enough and he's just going to the next, the next, the next. I was like, when are you going to stop?

Doug: Dopamine addict.

Jonathan: Everybody's so unique. Some people might have drives and seem obsessive but their happiness comes from pursuing things while a person who looks the same way from an external perspective might also be just really psychologically damaged and obsessed. I feel like it's so unique, again, it's very hard to define but I think that where we can distinguish two or a single digit number of camps of people who think certain things about happiness, like in our description that there's one side that consider happiness a state of mind that can be cultivated. Other people say that it's complete BS and that you're totally lying to yourself if you pursue that. Trying to find a balance between those is really key no matter what you do.

It's really hard to say. I find myself struggling with it too. The guy who drinks a case of beer a day, he may be in a stupor and certainly doesn't know himself intimately, but is he happy? Does he feel happy on a consistent basis as long as he drinks that beer? And if it's like an x/y condition. I'm not justifying it, I'm just saying that there are psychopaths that probably pursue their own form of happiness by harming other people and that there are other people who, in their pursuit of happiness, harm themselves but that they don't really deserve to be judged for that. I guess that's where I was going with it.

Tiffany: Like people who drink a case of beer every night or shoot up heroin or eat a whole bag of potato chips and a whole bag of cookies, they're all reaching for some fleeting sense of happiness or feeling good but they're not happy, really.

Jonathan: Not deeply, right.

Tiffany: They just get these bursts of dopamine or whatever, feel good chemicals in their brains and that sustains them in between periods of monotony and drudgery.

Jonathan: I could certainly say that I would wish for them what I consider to be a different form of happiness but maybe they're not ready for that either. It's hard to say. Now I'm starting to feel cocky. {laughter}

Tiffany: There have been lots of studies speculating about what can actually help people achieve happiness or a greater sense of well-being and the thing that keeps coming up a lot is doing things for other people, being generous or altruistic, even if it's not anything that you consider huge, like donating tons of money to some cause or something, but just doing a small act for somebody else. Whether that's kind of selfish because people get a reward, they feel good, that's the reward for helping people, or if it comes from a different place, or does it even matter.

Gaby: One of my favourite quotes is "Shared joy is increased.'' When you help other people and are thankful, everybody's happier.

Jonathan: When you accomplish something as a group it's pretty cool for sure.

Elliot: This one study which I think you were alluding to Tiffany, was about how they could find out whether being altruistic or being generous to other people could make people feel happy in and of itself. They found that it did increase the overall happiness of the participants of the study, just by giving something small to other people. And what I found most fascinating about this study was that they showed that it wasn't about the amount that was given. So it wasn't a quantitative thing. It didn't really matter whether someone gave a lot or just gave a little. It was the act of giving something to someone else that made them feel happier in themselves. One of the quotes is that "You don't need to become a self-sacrificing martyr to feel happier. Just being a little more generous will suffice." I thought that was really interesting.

There was another aspect to that study as well that actually showed that simply making a promise to behave generously activated the same area of the brain that is associated with happiness. I'm not saying make loads of promises to be generous and then don't follow through with those promises. {laughter} That wouldn't be very good. But I guess the idea of it, in your brain, it activates the same sort of circuits. So I guess what may be lacking in people's lives is an ability to give to other people. I guess if you look at our world now, we're fairly segregated from one another. We're isolated and we live in these houses and it's very different to how the community used to function even 100 years ago or so. Everyone's just gradually becoming more and more isolated from one another. I guess what that does is limits the opportunities for someone to reach out and give to other people. I guess it's not an excuse because if you really want to give you could say that someone might go out and give to charity or they might go out and help the poor or something but generally in day-to-day life we don't have as many human interactions, I would say. That's not based on any evidence but just from my life I know that I go to work and then I come back and sit in my house all day from then on and go to bed.

Jonathan: That would make sense that now you would have statistically fewer chances to be generous because you run into less people.

Elliot: That's kind of the way I see it.

Jonathan: So yeah.

Erica: There was another interesting study in the Journal of Positive Psychology which makes you wonder, but they asked nearly 400 Americans ranging from 18 to 78 whether they thought their lives were meaningful and/or happy, their self-reported attitudes toward meaning, happiness and other variables like stress levels and children and spending patterns. They did it over a month period and they found that a meaningful life and a happy life overlap in certain ways but are ultimately very different.

So leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a taker while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a giver. The authors figured out that happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed and even selfish life in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided. So it's a very big difference. I think that whole idea of the pursuit of happiness, what is it, again? What is it, for selfish means.

Jonathan: We had an example here that happened in my hometown recently. We have some road work construction going on and some people - nobody knows who - were throwing stuff at the workers because they're slowing down all the traffic and it's become a huge pain in the ass to drive through town. But this came out in the local paper that this had happened and immediately they were flooded with lunch and umbrellas and water and everybody was coming down with signs like "support the road crew" and it turned into this whole thing. And you could see when you drove through that everybody was happy and smiling. People had come together to help somebody that they saw as being persecuted.

Now if they could apply that logic to the whole planet that would be awesome but we'll start with the hometown. That's good for now.

Gaby: Yeah. (pause)

Erica: And there's our show. {laughter} That was your hometown.

Jonathan: I'm wondering if there's a Journal of Negative Psychology.

Doug: I think every journal is a journal of negative psychology.

Tiffany: So if everybody is pursuing all this happiness all over the planet, why does it seem that people are more miserable than ever? Antidepressants are the top selling big pharma drugs and anxiety is now the most common emotion. Is that what that article said?

Erica: Yeah, we carried an article recently on SOTT Anxiety Overtakes Depression as Most Common Mental Health Issue for Americans. It focused on college kids but I think it's across the board.

Gaby: Every place.

Erica: Yeah. Data from the National Institute of Mental Health suggests the prevalence of anti-anxiety medication, anxiety disorders may be as high as 40 million or about 18% of the population over the age of 18, making it the most common illness in the nation.

Gaby: Well that makes me think that people are just simply out of touch. Their body or their adaptive unconscious is telling them that everything in this reality is pretty bad but they are so engaged in this pursuit of happiness and self-denial that the mismatch between what they see unconsciously and what they force themselves to believe is so out of touch that it creates mental illness.

Erica: And it seems like a lot of the article focused again on college students, but even children, so pushing that idea that if you just do well you'll be happy. If you just graduate college you'll be happy. You'll make money, you'll have a job. I think the reality is that people go through all that and they're still in the same place but now they're in debt and they have to get a job to pay their loans or whatever it is. So it's a false premise and then you realize, probably around 25, wow, I'm not happy. It was all a lie. Everybody lied to me.

Tiffany: I'm going to go back to school for another degree and then maybe I'll be happy. {laughter}

Erica: Become a positive psychologist.

Gaby: Maybe that will do it.

Jonathan: I have to admit that I was wrong earlier about the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". That is actually the quote. Wikipedia in the entry about this phrase says there's a debate about what the word happiness may have meant in 1776. {laughter}

Erica: It's still being debated today.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Gaby: Is this some kind of American motto?

Jonathan: Oh I'm sorry. It's from the Declaration of Independence.

Gaby: Oh!!

Jonathan: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Tiffany: Is that ever a lie! {laughter}

Jonathan: I know. But it says here...

Doug: Well you're allowed to pursue it.

Jonathan: ...in the happiness section "Current usage focuses on pleasant, positive emotions and having needs satisfied whereas in 1776 the common meaning may have been prosperity, thriving and well-being.

Tiffany: That's interesting because they did another study where they compared a group of American modern day people and a group I think from the UK. They talked to them in 1938 I believe and they said a lot of similar things, like what makes them happy and fulfilled is spending time with family, seeing their kids after a long day of work, having a loving relationship with their spouse and the modern day people said pretty much the same thing. So I think that people get not necessarily what they would define as happiness but things that give their life meaning and purpose.

Jonathan: It's interesting that Jefferson took that phrase from John Locke in 1689 in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. "The highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness."

Gaby: He mentioned the truth.

Jonathan: Yeah he did. "Careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness.'' That makes sense to me if you want to put all of those words together.

Doug: I don't know. {laughter} Maybe this is me just poorly defining happiness, but it seems like happiness is often thought of as the absence of whatever negativity, discomfort, things that are difficult, and it seems like in order to pursue that - maybe I don't have this well thought out - but it seems like there's a real difference between meaning and happiness I guess. I think the pursuit of meaning is something that's going to inherently have challenges and it's something that's going to inherently cause suffering to a certain degree. It's a conscious suffering. It's something that you're pursuing whereas pursuing happiness is almost like wanting to alleviate those feelings, like "I don't want to be challenged. I don't want to not feel good." So I wonder, maybe it is a difference in the way the term was used in different time periods.

Tiffany: Pursuit of meaning makes more sense if you think about it. If you want to get to a place in your life where your life has meaning and your life has purpose, it requires a lot of suffering and failures and struggling to get to that point where your life has meaning and as a by-product you experience more moments of happiness.

Elliot: In line with that point there was an interesting quote by Albert Einstein and this really made me chuckle, but it makes a lot of sense. He said "Happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig." {laughter} "The ideals that have lighted my way are kindness, beauty and truth." I think in line with the pursuit of meaning and truth in the world, I guess you could say when a pig finds some food and starts eating the food he's probably really happy. But if you just want to be in this state where - I can't get my words out.

Doug: It's kind of like just having your immediate needs met versus pursuing maybe a larger aim.

Gaby: Your animalistic needs.

Jonathan: I feel like along those lines this ties in to knowledge too. I'll give a really pedantic example. If I'm fishing on a river and I haven't been to the spot before and I go through a swampy area, and I step in a hole. There's holes there that I don't know about so I step in one and I hurt my ankle and that sucks and I'm kind of pissed for minute but now I'm happy because I know more about my surroundings because I assimilated knowledge and I know not to go that way and I can go a different way. It's a super simple example but to me that plays into "I'm happy because I'm more knowledgeable about what exists around me even though I hurt my ankle."

Tiffany: Does the average depressed person have that particular outlook?

Doug: No.

Tiffany: People who want to achieve certain goals know on some level that there's going to be some struggle involved. But there are people who have this outlook that everything bad that happens to me makes me a bad person. I'm not worthy, I'm stupid, I'm lazy, I can't do anything right. There are some people who feel that way and I hate to say that they'll never be happy but that's kind of what it is. Some people are born more optimistic, have a more optimistic outlook on life and other people are negative Nancys.

Gaby: There's also some research that suggests that people with very low self-esteem are more comfortable receiving negative feedback. Good feedback really makes them feel at odds, because it's not coherent with their self-view, so are they really happy or not.

Elliot: There was an article called the Happiness Conspiracy {laughter} and there's a couple of interesting quotes in there that I just wanted to read out. They made a lot of sense. It says

"A society's dominant value system dictates how happiness is measured. The native Navajos in the southwest of the US saw happiness as the attainment of universal beauty whereas personal satisfaction is the most common way of measuring happiness in today's society. This mirrors the supreme value that consumer culture attaches to the romancing of desire and the satiation of self. When measured this way, almost everyone seems pretty happy even if it's primary false needs that are being satisfied. A high percentage of depressed people even end up happy when personal satisfaction is the yardstick."

The way that I interpret that is basically it's saying that as long as we measure happiness as personal satisfaction, which you can get from minor things in life and I guess this is one of the reasons why people binge out on drugs, eat junk food and like you said before, you may buy something and you think that you're going to be happy when you buy that but then when you buy it you realize that you've just got another thing and you're still in the same position as you were. That's because it's personal satisfaction and I guess that applies on multiple different levels.

But this article is pointing out that personal satisfaction may be a part of happiness to some degree, but it's not the full picture and it's not something that we should aim for consistently. In today's world, think this whole phenomenon is part of the human condition in general and it has probably gone on for as long as humanity has been in existence. But I think especially now, in today's society, in the way that we are exposed to the advertising and the media and propaganda and all of this stuff, and that we're isolated and segregated from other people in our society, I think we're particularly vulnerable to adopting this kind of view.

You mentioned earlier Tiffany, that apparently wages have increased by twice and we've got all of these new consumer goods, all this technology, and we have access to all these cool new things, but it shows that that doesn't actually bring happiness. It may bring personal satisfaction but ultimately people who indulge that personal satisfaction, if you asked them, they're not happy in the long run. So we have to sort of acknowledge that this base-level satisfaction thing that we tend to do a lot, should be mixed up with what may be true happiness.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Gaby: Yeah.

Jonathan: If you get to know people, not just on the surface, but the happiest people you meet I think that you meet are people who have suffered significantly. Then you see a lot of people who haven't suffered in their life and of course that's subjective too. I live in the United States. My suffering is not the suffering of the rest of the world and that's just a fact but a lot of people that have gone through hardship do seem to be happier on a deeper level and those who have been coddled are more petulant or selfish, harder to please.

Elliot: I've just got a little anecdote here about that and I think that's a true assessment Jonathan. It's something that my mum used to say to me a lot when I was younger, when I was being a bit of a spoiled brat, first world sort of problems when you don't get your own way or you don't get the toy that you wanted or whatever. It's the sort of stuff that kids experience today which probably can't really be likened to genuine suffering. But nonetheless we went on a family holiday to the Dominican Republic when I was I think six years old and we went on some tours around the countryside, the rural areas and we got to meet some of the children and families who lived in these rural villages. One thing that struck me and I was really young at the time - as I said I was six years old - but it still stuck with me today, how these people had barely anything in terms of material value. They were literally walking around barefoot and living in a hut. But the smallest thing would put a smile on their face and there was a distinct sensation that these people were so well bonded with one another...

Gaby: Yeah!

Elliot: And clearly they hadn't got anything. They didn't have cars or TVs or mobile phones or anything like that that we see as important in our side of the world, but they seemed to have some degree of contentment and I guess possibly genuine happiness to some extent. After that point when I was growing up and my mum was trying to teach me certain lessons she would often bring that up and she'd say "Remember those children. They're happy. You don't need these things to be happy in life. Often it makes you unhappy if you have too many of these things."

Jonathan: Totally! I have an example along similar lines. I follow this hunting and fishing show called Meat Eater. If you haven't seen it, I recommend checking it out. It's on Netflix. The host is really great, super compassionate, intelligent dude. But he travelled to Guyana for this fishing trip and he's very culturally aware so he's trying not to leave a footprint and all that kind of stuff. This is also from his podcast that I heard this whole story.

But the native people there are called Chumanay and they are like you described Elliot. They make their own arrows. They make their own bows. Everything is from scratch. The only first-world thing they had in their system of hunting and fishing was machete blades that they would break up and use as arrowheads that they had gotten from other places.

But now they're doing fishing tours because they get money from people who come in and watch to catch these giant fish called dorado. So this guy goes there and they're going down the river and he gives them these polarized sunglasses and they try to look in the water with these and he's amazed because you can see everything in the water with polarized sunglasses. Long story short, you come back a year later, everybody's got polarized sunglasses and he just kind of goes "Oh shit! Maybe I started something that I shouldn't have started here."

Then he had wanted to show them his compound boat and he was really struggling with that because he felt like that, no fault of their own, they would just adopt it because it's higher tech and then lose the way that they had of making their own stuff. So he was making similar observations on happiness. They were completely happy. He was talking about the sunglasses with his fishing guy and saying "I'm really nervous that I gave you guys these sunglasses because I don't want to screw up your culture." And he said "What are you talking about? We want more of this stuff." And he said "Yeah, that's the problem. You really don't. Trust me." Then they were going back and forth.

Gaby: That's interesting. I also had similar experiences in Costa Rica. I remember visiting very poor neighbourhoods and in some houses even though they didn't even have a proper floor, you can enter in and you can feel the joy of their lives. It's all by human connection. And out there in the "modern world" what is sold to people is psychopathic official culture basically and it's so out of touch with basic human values that it's no wonder there are so many unhappy people.

Tiffany: There are some researchers who call that kind of phenomenon the hedonic treadmill where you get on this never-ending cycle of wanting stuff and then getting stuff and then getting a little bit of a fix from getting that thing and then that fix goes away and you want stuff and then you get stuff and you just keep doing this over and over again throughout your entire life.

Erica: It's interesting because the Centers for Disease Control did a research project about Americans discovering satisfying life purposes and they found that four out of ten people had not discovered it but also that 40% do not think their lives have a clear sense of purpose or are neutral about whether their lives have purpose. So nearly a quarter of Americans feel neutral or do not have a strong sense of what makes their lives meaningful. So again it's back to that American way of pursuing happiness, that if you think you have money you can buy all these things. I think that's where that treadmill happens, "Well if I just buy a house or if I just buy a car" and the satiation wears off quickly. We see that time and again with women shopping with this shoe obsession. "If I just buy another pair of shoes then I'm going to be happy."

A long time ago I had a therapist who I spent time with as a child and she said "You know what it really is, is that women in particular are going to the malls and they're looking for bonding experiences but because of the American culture of buying they figure that if they buy something that they'll feel satisfied. But they never do." Then you feel worse if you spend a lot of money on a pair of shoes that you didn't really have money for, then you feel bad about it and you never wear them anyway. What was interesting in the Centers for Disease Control research project, the research showed that having purpose and meaning in life increases your overall wellbeing and your life satisfaction, your mental health, your physical health, your resiliency, even your self-esteem and it decreases your chance of depression.

Tiffany: And yet there are people who would choose a very, very stressful, high-paying job that only gave them six hours of sleep. They choose that. People think that buys happiness. It doesn't, but to a certain extent it can in just that it gives you comfort and you're free from stress and worry about meeting your basic needs. But after a certain amount of money you get, any more money on top of that really doesn't matter.

Jonathan: Money is energy, right? So if you misuse it you're going to be miserable. If you get a lot of money then if you have in mind what you want to do with it and you can do meaningful things I think that would then result in happiness.

Gaby: You don't have the time. I was just going to point out that one of the greatest regrets of the dying is "I wish I would not have worried that much".

Erica: It's almost like that single-minded pursuit of happiness leaves people less happy because maybe they work their entire lives and then they die and like you said Gaby, they have all this regret. "I wish I would have spent more time with my children. I wish I would have gone outside more or spent time appreciating what I have." And it becomes an addiction.

Jonathan: Yeah. If I may refer back to the Chumanay people in Guyana, one part of that story was that they hunt and fish and then they live and that's what they do. Now they're getting more into commerce. They used to go out and catch this fish. They'd take a 12-day trip and they'd come back with enough meat that they would sell for US$75. Now white guys from the states are going down there and paying $7,000 to catch one of these fish and then throw it back so it's still there. And of course they're like "That makes you guys happy? Sure, we'll take your money." {laughter}

But now relative to all the other regions of Guyana, this one particular area has become super wealthy because people are paying them to catch this fish. So it's kind of interesting that along with that comes rivalries between different groups of people because they're jealous. So is that helping or not? I don't really know.

Erica: It's interesting you mention that because I wanted to share like Elliot did. At a very young age I didn't get to go to another country, but I did watch a movie about the Kalahari bushmen in Africa called The Gods Must Be Crazy.

Elliot: Yeahh!!!

Erica: And I really recommend it for anyone, especially for kids. Essentially a man throws a Coke bottle out of his airplane window and these Kalahari bushmen find it and they're very happy before they find this Coke bottle and then this Coke bottle is the prize possession in the village. Everybody's using it to tan hides or to dig tubers and all these things and the head man of the tribe realizes that yes this is a great tool, but it has really caused a lot of problems. The kids start fighting and one kid hits the other kid with the bottle and his journey now is to throw the Coke bottle off the edge of the earth. I really recommend it because it's such a great parody. I think it came out in the '80s. I was pretty young, like seven when I watched it. 1980. It was a pretty life-changing movie for me I will say. It was like "Wow!"

Tiffany: That reminds me of people who win the lottery and they think "All my dreams have come true. I've got all these millions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars and then they find out it brings so much more trouble and their lives become miserable and all their families start arguing and bickering over money. Some of them wish that they just never won the lottery because it made their lives a misery.

Jonathan: Sure.

Elliot: I think one part that plays into that it's hard to value something if you haven't worked for it, as well. I think this is like a common theme in our world now, especially in the western world. We have things offered to us on a plate. We are completely disconnected from the process of how something is manufactured, for instance, a table. We just go to the shop and buy a table or whatever and then put it into our kitchen. But you completely neglect the whole reality of the situation where the tree has had to be cut down, the wood had to be chopped and it had to be manufactured, put together, tanned and all that stuff. This can apply to any type of thing, with our food or with anything that we have readily available access to. I think that when you don't have to put much effort into something, when there's very little work that's gone into something and you have it offered to you on a plate it's fairly difficult to really see the value in it.

And this is one of the things that perhaps contributes to their happiness of these cultures or the poor people in these cultural regions of the third world is that for them to be able to do something they have to put a lot of work into it. If they're going to make a meal, they have to go and cut down a branch from a tree and let it dry and then stick it on the fire, and skin the meat and everything that goes into that. I guess it's like they see the value in that and I guess it's the process and acknowledging the achievement.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Elliot: Perhaps that is one thing that contributes to genuine happiness, the process of having to work for something. And then I guess there is a degree of personal satisfaction that comes with that but it's in an objective sense that you deserve some satisfaction because you put loads of work into it so you should give yourself a pat on the back and you should be thankful for what you've got. But because we generally don't have to do things like that, it's easy to fall into the trap of this wanting more and more and more and more and more.

Jonathan: I think you're 100% on point there. If you were to grow your own basil versus going to the store and buying a sprig of basil for $5.00. Growing your own and picking it and eating it is much more satisfying. I find the same thing with fish. I know I'm on fishing today. I'm sorry. {laughter} But brook trout are relatively small. A big one is a foot long but you work really hard to get them. They're really hard to catch and then when you come home your dinner is not what you would normally think of as a dinner but it's super satisfying and it all just goes into that effort.

Erica: There's also more appreciation for it. Like you were saying Elliot, when you spend an entire day making a meal you're benefiting everyone and everyone has worked collectively together and that's where the satisfaction comes, the meaningful experience of being with other people and working together and then everyone shares the rewards.

Jonathan: One of the topics we touched on when we were talking before the show which I was curious about what you guys think about it in relation to happiness, is comedy and comedians. It's kind of closely tied. You go to a comedy show or you watch comedy, you laugh, you feel happy. But I'm a comedy fan anyway but lately I've been delving into comedy a little more and finding new comedians online. By and large most comedians are totally miserable people. {laughter} So it's funny that they would be the ones who would have these observations that would then make other people happy. But again it's super subjective. Some styles of comedy that I don't particularly like, for instance roasting. I think it's hilarious. A lot of it is really fun but it's such a fine line. It can go into that realm of "No, you're just being super mean". But there's a camp of people that think that crossing that line is funny.

Doug: Yeah.

Erica: Well it's all the things that people aren't daring to say, I think.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Erica: They're thinking that and now all of a sudden somebody is saying it.

Gaby: They're thinking and concealing it.

Erica: Had that thought.

Jonathan: There's something about two people who have an agreement that "you can say what you think about me, I'm still going to laugh". When they have that agreement, then it's funny.

Tiffany: Yeah.

Jonathan: But then when you're just ripping on somebody and they're not into it, it doesn't become funny anymore. Then it's a tragedy and happiness is no longer the outcome.

Doug: There is also that style of comedy that is all about being uncomfortable. There are certain movies out there where it's a comedy movie and a lot of people seem to find it hilarious but it's a kind of comedy that I don't like at all; when the protagonist is crapped on for the entire movie. One thing after another happens to them that's absolutely terrible. People are sitting there laughing at this. Things are so uncomfortable that I'll laugh because I don't know what else to do with it. I don't like that style at all. Maybe I'm just too sensitive on these kind of things.

Gaby: You don't like Groundhog Day?

Doug: Which?

Gaby: You don't like Groundhog Day?

Doug: Well no I did like Groundhog Day. Specifically I'm thinking of that Ben Stiller movie called Meet the Parents. {laughter} Where Ben Stiller goes to meet the parents of his soon-to-be wife and they're terrible people and they treated him badly the whole time and he's just excluded from everything. I was sitting in a theatre full of people when it first came out and I thought "I don't find this funny at all." I just felt really bad for the guy.

Erica: It was painful.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Doug: Exactly, that painful comedy.

Jonathan: That's even the lighter side of roast comedy.

Doug: Well yeah.

Jonathan: That's where I think you have to have that agreement. That's different than what you're talking about in a comedy movie where the character is ripped on. I agree. There's a lot of that that makes me really uncomfortable. But I have a super thin skin.

Doug: Me too.

Jonathan: I have friends who will pick on me, good-naturedly, they're not being mean, it's all part of the joke but I have a hard time with it, thinking "I'm not taking this well." [laugher] I know I should.

Erica: Are you offended Jonathan?

Gaby: At least you're realizing.

Jonathan: I just get locked up. I don't know how to interact that way but that's why I'm not a comedian.

Gaby: But you like comedy.

Jonathan: I do. I love it. But I think that it's a really interesting area to explore the idea of happiness because of that juxtaposition. What gives most comics the observations that are funny about the world is their misery.

Gaby: It's funny because it's true.

Doug: Yeah, I think it comes down to that in a lot of ways. One example is Robin Williams who obviously was quite miserable because he committed suicide but he had an insight, especially during his peak where he was very good at the observational kind of humour but meanwhile he was a miserable guy. So I often wonder if they just have this power of insight to see the world and take situations for what they are without getting wrapped up in them and then offering that up as a tool for comedy. But really it's actually affecting them more deeply.

Tiffany: So do you guys think that people can talk themselves out of being unhappy or do you think that happiness can be synthesized in your own mind? It's more about your outlook on things versus some objective sense of happiness or unhappiness?

Jonathan: I think the latter.

Tiffany: Yeah.

Jonathan: Talking yourself out of unhappiness sounds like a loop, it just wouldn't work. Doug, what were you going to say?

Doug: I don't have an answer necessarily but I think of people who get really wrapped up in negative thought loops and are very prone to have a negative outlook, that there might be cognitive behavioural tools that they could use to get out of that.

Gaby: And snap out of it.

Doug: It's not necessarily talking yourself out of unhappiness. Maybe it's the difference between suffering versus conscious suffering in that if you are just prone to this negative outlook, I think there is something that can be done about that. But whether that means that suddenly you go from being a generally unhappy person to being blissfully happy person, I don't think that's really the case.

Tiffany: I listened to one of the presentations of a Harvard professor and he conducted a study where they presented people with five different Monet prints, works of art, and they had them pick which one they liked the best and at the end of the study they gave it to them. They had two choices and they gave them one. Then they went back a few days later and said "Well, we want you to re-rate these Monet prints" and initially they might have rated the one that they got lower but after the study was over and they came back and asked them to rate it again, they rated the one they had at home as the best of the Monet prints. So he was saying that people can synthesize happiness and convince yourself that what you have right now is better than what it was that you wanted before and didn't get.

He used Pete Best, the initial drummer with the Beatles before he got replaced with Ringo Starr and how Pete Best says he's totally okay with it. He's still a musician. He works as a studio musician and he doesn't feel slighted in the least and he said he probably would have been better off if he'd never been with the Beatles and he doesn't feel like he suffered at all from not being famous or anything like that. So what this guy truly happy with his life? Because most people will say "Oh, he's just saying that. He doesn't want to feel bad because he wasn't a part of the Beatles."

But can people convince themselves that what they have is really better than what they had an opportunity for? They have no other option but to accept their lot in life and so it really makes no sense for them to lament what they missed out on.

Jonathan: I kind of disagree, only because if anybody's ever been to Los Angeles or Las Vegas, knows that what you said is absolutely true. He's way better off never having been in that world. {laughter}

Doug: Yeah, I'd say that's true. But that example aside, I think that people do have a remarkable capacity for talking themselves into not feeling bad. Anything that would cause some kind of cognitive dissonance, they just have to find a way to get rid of that so will adopt an attitude that makes it so it doesn't matter.

Jonathan: Sure.

Gaby: Even at the expense of reality.

Doug: Yeah, exactly. People have a way of idealizing the past and forgetting about all the bad stuff that happened and only remembering the good parts. So maybe this goes back to Tiffany's question about whether somebody can talk themselves out of being unhappy. Maybe happiness is so subjective and - I'm having trouble wording this exactly...

Jonathan: Malleable, right?

Doug: Malleable. That's a good word for it actually. Happiness just seems to be more about an attitude than anything else so maybe it is really easy to just talk yourself out of unhappiness into happiness.

Tiffany: I don't think it necessarily means that you're denying reality. How many of us have been in a relationship with somebody and then broken up and was totally miserable and then a few years later felt like "Breaking up with this person was the best thing that happened to me"? {laughter} "I'm so glad!"

Doug: Yeah.

Tiffany: Sometimes it can be reality based and it really was the best decision but at the time you didn't feel it as being that way.

Erica: Emotions are elusive too so with experience comes that "Well that was the best thing that happened" but when you're mired in the moment of those chemicals overriding your brain it tends to be like a downward spiral if you just start to focus on all the things that went wrong. But then like you were saying Doug, looking back on the past, you have to have a realistic perspective about it like, "Yes, that was hard and that was painful but I'm where I'm at now because of it."

Tiffany: They've even done studies on people who had horrible accidents and became paralyzed. After the initial event where they had to cope with being paralyzed all of a sudden, they might have had this real low point but then eventually they get back to the same baseline level of happiness that they had throughout their lives.

Elliot: I think an important question to ask here also is, is it actually necessary to talk yourself out of unhappiness? I think this is context-dependent because of this whole positive psychology movement and being constantly bombarded with messages that we should always be happy, then we tend to neglect or we tend to shy away from the periods of our lives where there is suffering and there are unpleasant emotions. When you are in this state of unhappiness, is it actually appropriate to try and talk yourself out of that. I think this can go two ways because if you are a type of person who is particularly vulnerable to negative thought loops and negative thoughts that don't necessarily correspond with reality then I think sometimes that is appropriate to pick yourself up and say "Well actually I'm just falling into these negative thinking patterns again and technically this is a waste of energy. I objectively analyze the situation by using my intellect" yeah? I think sometimes that is called for. However I think for a lot of us - and this is me included a lot of the time - is that when I am feeling unhappy I will attempt to come up with a way to take myself out of that but without actually dealing with the originating emotion. It's kind of a way to neglect that or to essentially block out those feelings.

I think it links in with the idea that a lot of us have although we're told that we should always be happy. So when you are feeling unhappy or when you're feeling depressed that it's not always appropriate to take yourself out of that. We should actually try to learn to deal with those feelings and not shy away from them, not try to block them out, not try to run away from them because they're also useful to help us navigate our reality, yeah?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Elliot: So sometimes feeling unhappy is okay.

Jonathan: Totally.

Elliot: And it's really good to do that. So I don't believe that it's necessary to always try to run away from that or to block that out because it can teach us a lot about ourselves.

Tiffany: I think a lot of that is conditioned in childhood. You get attention for being happy and bubbly and joyful and all that stuff but as soon as you are angry or frustrated or you're sad people are like "Oh, just cheer up. Put on a happy face." And we learn throughout life to just block out all those negative feelings but those negative feelings are just as valid as feeling happy sometimes and by blocking them out you're doing yourself a disservice. You should just let those feelings sit with you and accept and try not to talk yourself out of it or distract yourself from that feeling. It's okay to feel bad sometimes because that's just a part of life, just as much as being happy is.

Elliot: There was a really, really good book called Inviting a Monkey to Tea by Nancy Colier. That book in particular deals with what we're talking about here and she lays out a framework of wellbeing. The main point of the book is the aim to be happy is never going to be accomplished and that it's fundamentally neglecting the other half of reality, the human existence that we face. Half of it is negative and what we see is negative but actually by acknowledging both sides or all of those emotions, the whole range of emotions that we experience, that leads to wellbeing. She talks about wellbeing a lot and she says that that should ultimately be an aim. It should be to accomplish a greater sense of wellbeing and that encompasses both the positive and the negative whereas the aim of being happy is never going to be accomplishable.

Jonathan: Totally. That makes sense to me. Essentially what we're saying throughout this whole conversation is that what causes happiness and happiness itself are both subjective because it depends on how you define it. A junkie who is laid out on heroin is ostensibly happy or they think they're happy perhaps, where as well, a person who may be clean and sober and doing something wholesome that makes them happy also feel that. They feel a similar way but in a completely different context and one is harming themselves and the other is not.

So there are all these different things. The guy who jumps out of planes in a wingsuit is happy but I think he's crazy {laughter} and I would never do that. It doesn't sound fun to me but to him that brings happiness. It's completely subjective across the board.

Erica: Or it's just an adrenaline junkie.

Gaby: It depends who you are.

Jonathan: But I do think though that what we're lighting on is this idea of fulfilment, not necessarily satisfaction but fulfilment and meaning and community, that those things bring what we makes more sense to call happiness than other things.

Tiffany: Do we want to play this clip now that we have?

Jonathan: Oh yes please. It's awesome.

Tiffany: It's by JP Sears. It's called The Terrorism of Happiness. It's not the usual snarky JP Sears. He's actually said a lot of good things in this clip and it'll be a good wrap up for what we're trying to say during this show.

"Hey there friends. Today I'd like to talk with you about the terrorism of happiness. Hmmm. Sounds terrible, you say. I don't know why you say that. I don't know why I say that you say that. But the terrorism of happiness. I'm borrowing this term from a friend of mine, Garrick Brennan and I love the term "terrorism of happiness".

Why? Because I think when we try to make our lives only happy, when we try to be happy all the time I think it actually does terrible things to us. I think it actually makes us incredibly unhappy to try and pursue 24/7, happiness. That seems interesting, you say JP. And again, I don't know why I say that you say that. But anyway on with the show.

The terrorism of happiness. When we try to be happy all the time to me it's like looking at a rainbow and saying "I wish there was only blue in that rainbow. I wish that the whole rainbow was the colour blue." Blue might be our favourite colour, happiness might be our favourite emotion, but there seems to be a reason why life puts six other colours in the rainbow. There seems to be a reason and my opinion why life puts many other emotional frequencies in our body to experience, but why do we try to block all of them out but happiness? Why would I try to erase all of the colours out of the rainbow except for my favourite colour?

This is kind of a public service call to embrace everything in us that's also not happiness. That's what I'd invite you to do. By all means, please do embrace happiness. I personally want deep and profound happiness in my life but I don't want my life to be only that. Even if I did want that I don't think I could get it. I think I could probably cause a lot of suffering trying to get only deep and profound happiness in my life.

So what I find, when we try to be exclusive with just happiness, it causes us to have a lot of shame about our other real, authentic feelings and emotions. We look at Facebook, we look at other people in our life where we see other people just presenting happiness. They hide their other stuff. They've got it. They don't show it to us. We pretend like they don't have it but they've got it. So they just show us their happiness probably because when they were children just like us they were validated when they were happy and they were probably invalidated when they weren't happy.

It's like a little boy or girl sitting on the floor acting happy, mom and dad say "Ah, good boy! Good girl!" But when they're sad, when they're angry mom and dad are trying to get them to feel something other than the sadness, other than the anger, other than the fear, other than the shame. So that's what we learn as kids. Therefore that's what we kind of see adult children doing, only presenting happiness because we feel as though 'I can be validated when I'm happy but I'll be invalidated, I won't matter when I'm not happy'.

So we see this trick society plays on us. We see other people being happy all the time, or at least that's only what they show us, so we start to think "Oh, that's what I should be." Therefore when we have these other authentic feelings that come up, sadness, depression, we start to have shame about those. I do think that does us an injustice. When we have shame about our non-happy emotions it's like we revoke permission to feel them.

And I would dare say, that pursuit of happiness that causes us to shame ourselves for being authentic and real with our other emotions, can make us pretty damn unhappy. Hm. I would also dare say one of the other elements of how the pursuit of exclusive happiness can make us very unhappy is this. We live in a relative world. You need to know hot before you know cold. You need to know sadness if you want to know happiness. You need to know hate if you want to know love.

So with that said, when we are pursuing exclusive happiness, oftentimes we do that at the expense of denying our sadness - in this case. So the more we deny our sadness, the less we're able to go into our sadness and the less we're able to go into our sadness, the less we're actually able to go into our happiness because we're relative creatures. The depth of my tears determines the depth of my laugh. As sad as I can get, that's how happy I can get.

So when I deny my sadness because I say "JP, you can only be happy", that actually limits the depth of happiness that I can go at. So when I don't allow myself to get sad that starts to make my experience of happiness more and more shallow and as my experience of happiness gets more and more shallow, it makes me want to pursue exclusive happiness even more, which means I'm probably denying sadness with more force, which means my ability to be happy gets even more shallow.

So, because I love happiness, that means I also have to learn to love sadness, fear, anger, guilt, grief, jealousy, shame. I've got to learn how to love those. It doesn't mean I have to like them. It means I have to learn how to accept them and embrace them. To the degree I can give myself permission to be real with my sadness, even though it feels crappy and sad in that very moment, that's what fertilizes my ability to grow genuine happiness to likely a new degree.

And, this is not an indictment that you need to go out and make yourself sad, that you need to go out and break up with your spouse so that you can just have an excuse to feel sad so that you can then oscillate to the other polarity of newfound happiness. I don't think we need to go out and seek and create new sadness. I think all we need to do is embrace the sadness that arises. We don't need to find sadness. It finds us. When we have an experience in life that essentially the triggering of sadness, it comes up. It finds us. All we need to do is learn how to look at our sadness in the eyes and say "It's okay that you're a part of me. I feel sad and it's okay. And I'll keep feeling sad until I'm not sad anymore and that's okay."

It'll feel like crap in the moment. It's not going to be my favourite emotion, but if I want to be genuinely happy at times, then I have to be genuinely sad at times.

That's something to think about. Happiness is my favourite emotion and if it was left to my greedy little ego would probably say "Yeah, I want to be happy all the time". But luckily for me, I don't get everything I want. Screw that. I would guess, most of the time if you and I got what we want all of the time, it would be one of the worst things for us because we have to think "What part of us is wanting this want?"

Our spirit self is probably sitting there pretty whole and complete, doesn't have a whole lot of wantingness - at least I want to believe that. Our ego probably comes from a place of lack, void and therefore generates a lot of our wants. I'm not saying it's bad to pursue our wants. I'm just saying it's probably good that we don't get everything we want all the time. I want to be happy all the time. Follow that breadcrumb trail of our ego, I want to be happy, and paradoxically it probably ends us in a lot of unhappiness.

My favourite food is ice cream. It's probably a really good thing that I don't always fill up on my favourite food, probably a good thing I don't always fill up on just the pursuit of sadness. Happiness is what I meant, sorry guys I screwed that up.

And in this moment I'll just be real with you; I'm not really happy in this moment. I actually feel sad. I don't need to give you or me a story to justify why I have the right to feel sad. Emotions work without logic. I would daresay any story that you and I start to create about our sadness begins to disconnect us from our sadness. Our stories about why we're sad probably start to suppress our sadness. I'll tell myself a story about my sadness to try and leverage me towards happiness, which means I'm leveraged away from my sadness which means my depth of happiness is going to be shallow relative to what it would be if I allowed myself to deep-dive into my feeling of sadness without a story. We don't need to prove we have the right to feel sad. All we need to do is feel sad when our sadness finds us. And I would daresay, when we can do that, we'll no longer be terrorized by happiness.

Sit with that. How can happiness terrorize your life? And how can paradoxically pursuing permission to be sad amplify your happiness? Is the purpose of life to experience one colour or is the purpose of life to experience every colour of the rainbow? It's a good question."

Tiffany: Good question. That's how it ended.

Jonathan: I don't know if I can handle JP giving real advice! {laughter}

Elliot: I think his actual occupation is that he's a life coach or something like that and that's a genuine thing but he's also really good at comedy.

Jonathan: That was great. Honestly I'm not sure what to add to that. He summed it up really perfectly there.

Tiffany: That's why we saved it for the end. {laughter}

Jonathan: It would have just ended the show if we had started with that. Should we go to Zoya's segment? She has a segment for us today, so let's see what Zoya has for us and then we will come back and wrap it up afterwards.

Tiffany: Okay.

Zoya: Hello and welcome to the pet health segment of the Health and Wellness Show. Today I would like to share with you two recordings on the topic of emotions and happiness. The first recording has to do with emotions and if animals have them. Well, we know they do but there are some facts that perhaps you don't know about. And the second one has to do with humans and how watching animals in nature documentaries makes us happy and content. Enjoy and perhaps after this radio show watch a couple of funny animal videos or simply hug your pet. Have a great weekend and good-bye.

"Many animals shed tears to lubricate the eyes and wash away dust and debris. However, recently the story of Zhuang Zhuang, the newborn elephant who cried inconsolably for five hours after being violently stepped on and kicked by his own mother, has many wondering if those tears come from the same emotions people feel.

Experts in animal behaviour say that some animals may cry as we do from emotions like sadness or stress. Similar to human babies who cannot communicate in other ways, cries may be from desires for touch, attention or other needs. According to studies, chicken, mice and rats all showed the complex ability to feel another's pain. Similarly more than 50% of dog owners report that their dogs try to comfort them when sensing the owner's distress. More than 70% of dog owners said their dogs had demonstrated separation anxiety by whimpering or howling. Another study confirmed rats, dogs and chimpanzees also laugh.

If animals do feel emotions like happiness or sadness, to what extent do they match what people feel?"

*****

"What is happiness? Can we find it in a new pair of shoes, a fast car or a bigger house or does real happiness lie somewhere else? Hundreds of studies have proven that spending time in nature can make us feel better both in mind and body in a way that nothing else can. We wanted to find out whether simply watching footage of the natural world could have the same effect. Last year we partnered with Professor Dacher Keltner, an expert in human psychology and emotion at the University of California, Berkeley.

For this project he has reviewed over 150 scientific studies that explore the positive effect of nature on humans. We also asked over 7,500 people in six countries to tell us how they were feeling before and after watching Planet Earth II clips. This data showed significant increases in joy, contentment, curiosity, awe, amazement and wonder and clear reductions in fatigue and no energy. It even reduced stress, especially among younger viewers. These findings reveal that wildlife programs can cause viewers to experience positive emotions.

Dacher Keltner: My study of human happiness has revealed that these emotions, amazement, wonder and awe are the foundations of a powerful form of real human happiness. Real happiness is a deeper, less transient form of happiness that can positively affect our health and wellbeing.

So by simply watching incredible footage of our natural world you too can experience these uplifting emotions, helping you to be more connected with this amazing place we call home."

Gaby: If you guys want to experience the message of this pet segment, you guys have to watch Tiny Giants. It's from 2014. It's a documentary adventure.

Jonathan: That sounds cool.

Gaby: It's great.

Jonathan: Well thank you for sharing that with us. That made a lot of sense. I've had similar experiences myself with being in nature.

Tiffany: Watching cat videos certainly makes me happy. {laughter}

Jonathan: I don't have much else to add right now. Do you guys have any other observations?

Tiffany: I guess that there's nothing wrong with feeling happy but to pursue it at the expense of all other emotions, is folly.

Jonathan: Cut and print. Alright, thank you to our listeners and our chatters. Thank you Zoya. Be sure to listen to the SOTT Radio Show on Sunday at noon eastern time. If you're not in the eastern time zone everybody should go to radio.sott.net and on there the airtime will be shown in your local time zone. So be sure to check that out and we'll be back next week.

Tiffany: Thanks for listening.

All: Good-byes.