Most Replayed Moment: The Direct Path To Purpose And Happiness! These 2 Decisions Matter Most

**Steven Bartlett** (0:04)
What do you think I should say to my future son about the world that he's growing up in, in terms of the mismatch between our evolution and his natural hardwiring?

**Gad Saad** (0:19)
Wow, what a great question. So there is something called the mismatch hypothesis in evolutionary theory, which basically says that many problems that we face today arise out of a mismatch of a phenomenon that was adaptive in our ancestral past, but is no longer adaptive in our contemporary modern world. Classic example to stick to food. We've evolved the gustatory preferences as a response to caloric scarcity and caloric uncertainty. Therefore, being attracted to fatty foods, gorging on a lot of food makes perfect evolutionary sense when we don't know when our next meal is coming from. When we live in an environment of plentitude, then that exact phenomenon becomes maladaptive. So if you look at, for example, I think the top eight or nine killers on the World Health Organization thing, they can all be attributed to the mismatch hypothesis. So I would tell your son, knowledge is power to our earlier point of view getting that degree. You never lose in knowing more. You being aware of the mismatch hypothesis, dear son, will allow you to hopefully not fall as easily into behavioral traps.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:35)
And what are the most important, because you have a book here called, Happiness, Eight Secrets For Leading The Good Life. If I was to give him advice on how to live a happy life, what are the most important things that I should be aiming at?

**Gad Saad** (1:45)
So I look at both decisions that we can make for happiness and mindsets. So let me maybe discuss a few of each. So by far, the two choices that will either impart upon me the greatest happiness or the greatest misery, is choice of spouse and choice of profession.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:04)
Okay.

**Gad Saad** (2:04)
And let's break it down very simply. If I wake up next to a person in the bed and I go, oh, God damn, not this one again. I'm not off to a good start. If I wake up next to that person and I go, oh my God, how did I pull that off? What a delight to wake up next to this person. Well, that's good.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:23)
Have they empirically measured this?

**Gad Saad** (2:26)
Not in the way I'm explaining the anecdote. Now, if I go off, after I woke up to this lovely person, I go off and do things in my day to day activities that make me do existential glee. Oh boy, what a great day I have lined up. I'm gonna be working on my next book.
I've got a diary of a CEO. That's gonna be super fun. A lot of new people are gonna hear about some of my ideas. Then I'm gonna maybe have a chat with a graduate student on some really exciting research I'm doing. So wow, but yeah, I mean, there's a lot of stress, but it all gives me a lot of purpose and meaning. And then at night, I returned to that lovely person. I've cracked the happiness code, right? Now, of course, the question is the devil is in the details. What can I do to maximize my chances that I make those right choices? I explain in the book contrary to 99.9% of the quote self-help prescriptive books, where they tell you exactly with guarantee, here are the eight steps. I explain that life is a statistical game, right? They are statistical vagaries. So all I can do is increase your odds of obtaining happiness. I can't guarantee anything, right? You could never smoke and get lung cancer, but not smoking certainly reduces your chances of lung cancer greatly. So earlier, I mentioned birds of a feather flock together versus opposites attract. Overwhelmingly, if you want to increase your chances of a happy marriage, remember the maximum birds of a feather flock together. Complementarity works really nicely in the short term. It doesn't sustain a long-term marriage. The butterflies, the hormones don't last when you've been in a marriage. That doesn't mean you're not still sexually attracted to your partner 25 years later, but that's not going to carry the train.

**Steven Bartlett** (4:15)
Okay, so but just to give a little bit more, I guess, specificity and nuance to this, because my partner, she's really into spiritual stuff. She's really into crystals and lots of things that I'm not into. I think we have a great relationship. We've been together a long time. I'm into Manchester United and soccer. She's not into that.

**Gad Saad** (4:34)