Making Fun a Habit and The Pursuit of Joy | Dr. Mike Rucker

Michael Rucker (0:00)

I mean, once you understand that you can take ownership of at least part of your day, that's when you start to see the world through a lens that I have control, and I can create moments of joy, essentially, on demand. And that creates a very optimistic space.

Michael Gervais (0:30)

I'm the host of the podcast show, and welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. I'm really excited to welcome Dr. Michael Rucker as our guest for today's episode.

Mike is an organizational psychologist, a behavioral scientist, and a charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association.

Now, I've had the pleasure of knowing Mike for about two decades now, and I am so stoked to introduce him and his work to you. He's currently taken a deep dive into the science of fun. In January 2023, he'll be publishing his first book called The Fun Habit, How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life. Mike, it is great to have you on. How are you?

Michael Rucker (1:18)

I'm doing well.

This is really exciting for me. I think we're going to get into it, but you are part of my origin story, so to be able to kind of see this book come to fruition and be able to explore some of the topics on your podcast means a lot to me. So we're going to have a good time here.

Michael Gervais (1:39)

That's really cool. And I think as we share our stories, that the origin story will come through. But before we get to that part of it, can we zoom in on a particular phase in your life? It was specifically, I want to go back to 2016 And you're coming off two entrepreneur events, one that had a meaningful exit, which usually is code for like, you did pretty well.

And then the second one, it offered you a strong learning curve, which usually is code for like, financially, it didn't work the way I wanted. But then can you, so that's just a little context setting and there's obviously many more details of your life, but can we zoom in into the heart of what you have shared publicly about being one of the most challenging phases of your life?

Michael Rucker (2:30)

Yeah, absolutely. So I like system design thinking, right? And so up until that point, I had used all of these tools from psychology and the quantified self movement to really almost over optimize my life. And that's easy to say in the rear view mirror, but at the time, you know, it seemed like I had everything. And I was doing quite well. I was really enjoying endurance activities. And that was the way that I made a living.

I was on the talking circuit. I had a great marriage with two kids and really was pursuing happiness in this very organized, deliberate manner.

And then in June 2016, my younger brother passed away quite suddenly from a pulmonary embolism, and it just knocked me on my butt. And a few months later, they're not correlated at all. I found out that I had advanced osteoarthritis, and basically I lost the labrum in my leg. I had just run my fastest tap marathon. It was the way that I mitigated my anxiety and was basically told, you know, especially at such a young age needing a hip replacement, that I would never run again.

And then this isn't an unfortunate event, but my wife who had just backed up me during my doctoral pursuits, which I did pretty late in life. So she had, you know, essentially carried the family for six years, got a great opportunity in North Carolina, which moved us away from our psychological support network of family and friends in California. And so I was like, but I got this, you know, and so I kept trying to use all these tools that had been helpful before to will myself to be happy, right? Because I thought that was possible. And paradoxically, the more that I tried to figure out how to be happy, I was becoming miserable. And I guess long story short, serendipitously, around that same time, there was a lot of research suggesting that I wasn't the only one, that this Western pursuit of happiness was leading not just to despair, but to mental illness. A lot of this research comes out of, or some of the research that I admire the most comes from Dr. Iris Mouse out of Cal Berkeley, but she has colleagues that have replicated her work. And that is not necessarily people that value happiness, because I think we all should, right? I don't want people to flourish and wanting that for yourselves and others isn't necessarily what we're talking about here. But it's those that are overly concerned about, you know, why am I not happy or I want to be happy more, and are kind of stuck in that introspection.