The Invisible Psychology Of Happiness & Meaning - Lionel Page - #873

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Lionel Page. He's a professor at the University of Queensland and an author. Lionel is one of my favorite writers in the world. So I had to bring him on to uncover the invisible psychology which drives our happiness. How can we optimize for wellbeing in a world full of distractions and pressures? Why does persistent happiness remain so elusive? And what shifts can help us build a healthier and more sustainable relationship with it? Expect to learn what everyone gets wrong when thinking about happiness, the most important mechanisms that drive our wellbeing, how the role of comparison on social media contributes to our overall happiness, why evolution didn't design us with the ability to simply feel greater and greater levels of satisfaction, the role of a meaningful life, why we overestimate the importance of our future success and much more. This episode is so good. It is classic, modern wisdom, human nature, insightful stuff. I adore it. Lionel is fantastic. His sub stack is amazing and there is so much to take away from today. I really hope that you enjoy this one. If you've got an idea for a business, you probably want to get into the business of selling, not the business of building and designing a website and understanding how to manage inventory. That is where Shopify comes in. Shopify is the platform that is quietly powering 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. That includes Gymshark, Allbirds and my little creation, Neutonic. You handle the creativity and they handle the grunt work. Trust me, they don't care about whatever you are selling. You could be selling left handed spoons for all they care and they would still help you crush it. They've got the best converting checkout, 36% better on average compared with other leading e-commerce platforms that helps you turn browsers into buyers. It's like having a business partner who is always available and unbelievably reliable. Plus, they've got award winning support that's always ready to help every step of the way. Right now, you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period at the link in the description below or by heading to shopify.com/modernwisdom or lowercase. That's shopify.com/modernwisdom now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. This episode is brought to you by WOOP. WOOP is a 24-7 health and fitness coach that tracks your sleep, strain, recovery, stress and more to provide personalized insights that help you reach your goals. Each morning, WOOP gives you a recovery score that act as your daily guide for how much you should exert yourself. At the end of the day, you get a recommendation for your ideal bedtime. You can also track over 140 different habits and behaviors to see how they impact your overall health. It basically means you can stop guessing about what's happening inside of your body by wearing a small thing on your wrist that tracks absolutely everything. Plus, you can join for free, pay nothing for the brand new WOOP 4 strap. Plus, you get your first month for free and there's a 30 day money back guarantee. So you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you do not like it after 29 days, they will give you your money back. Right now, you can get that free WOOP 4 strap and that 30 day money back guarantee by going to join.woop.com/modernwisdom. That's join.woop.com/modernwisdom.
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Dude, I am in love with your sub-stack. I subscribe to a lot of different sub-stacks, and yours is maybe my favorite one from this entire year. Oh, wow. You're absolutely fucking destroying it, dude. It's so great. It's evolutionary lens on things, big picture questions that everybody's already asking. I think it's awesome. So when it comes to, I guess, what are the problems about how happiness is typically thought about or studied? What is missing from that?