I was wrong, success doesn’t bring happiness.

Happiness is something I spend a lot of time thinking about, and recently a very weird Paradox became present in my life. This is going to be hard to explain, but I'm going to try my best. Society tells you to set goals and accomplish them. That's what I told myself, so that's what I did, and then I accomplished many of those goals and I became so many of the things that I ever wanted. Show more

It sounds a bit strange, but I don't feel like it made me any happier. Part of me feels like I shouldn't even be allowed to say that, but at the same time it's a feeling I can't shake. There seems to be a bizarre and counter-intuitive relationship between success and happiness, and all of it is making me question my very definitions of these words. Already, in my search to learn more about how humans navigate and Find meaning in life, I've traveled to the Netherlands, Iceland and the United States, and this time, in episode 4 in this series on happiness, I'm returning to a country I used to live in and, having set foot in in years, I've come here to find answers. [music]: may I first describe to you what I think is the problem here. I have a big appetite. [music]. I live to eat, and I eat for pleasure. The Italians have a word for this. Let me excessive Indulgence often to describe the consumption of food or drink. Show more

It isn't food that I actually struggle to control myself with. This is more of a commentary on my relationship with all of life. I fill my plate to the brim with just about everything. This is how I work. It's how I tackle my projects. I want it all, I want it on full blast and I want it now. Gluttony is said to be one of the seven deadly sins. Now I know I'm a sinner and I know that if there is a hell, I'll probably be going there, but this deadly sin in particular is just not fair. Show more

There are too many things that I want to do in life and so little time. How can you blame me for my feelings of urgency, for my desire to squeeze the juice out of life? Here's where my gluttony gets me in trouble. There are certain things that make me feel good and they don't serve my higher purpose: chasing, empty chasing- and start chasing shiny things, possessions, status, validation. They make me feel good in the short term, but chasing endlessly, it's a bit of a rabbit hole and I fall into the Trap of doing things for the wrong reasons. That, my friends, is how you end up in the rat race. The Paradox of success was deeply troubling me, and it always leads me to the same line of thought over and over again. Every day, I have a choice. Every single day, I choose how I see the world, and the world can be a beautiful place or an ugly one. We think the world is just the way that it is, that it just happens to be ugly or beautiful, but that is a lie. Your perception of things matters. Now, if it sounds like I'm trying to tell you how to live your life, I'm not. I think this is just how it works. I'm telling myself how to live my life because I'm here to live a joyous one, and recently I forgot that I had this power to choose. I started treating life like this endless list of to-do's: there are always more problems to solve, more money to be made, more Milestones to be crossed. I got a little lost. I forgot why I was doing what I was doing. But isn't that what life is? Is it forgetting and remembering again, and forgetting and remembering again, figuring out over and over again what we're here to do and why? So? Here is how I'm reminding myself of the things that matter, that life is indeed very beautiful, because I am the one that chooses to see things this way. Show more

Thank you, [Music]. Wow, I have not stepped foot here in almost three years. It's just hitting me with memories. I've just been standing here in the center of just take it in the beauty, and remembering where I was in life when I used to live here. So what am I here to do? I went to help my friends, Thomas and Eric Hunt, for a house to buy for one Euro. Yes, one single Euro. This is part of a program that Italy launched a few years ago to attract investment in small, abandoned towns around the country. I went without a firm objective or that. I need to get anything in particular out of the experience to see how that would make me feel. What, try this? Whoa, whoa. I didn't go to buy a house for myself. [music]. As we drove into the Tuscan Countryside, I tried to wrap my brain around what the hell we were trying to do. We are interested buyers. We have a dollar with us. You have it with you. I haven't. Okay, you brought a dollar. Yep, if it's my dollar, is it my property? I need to get somewhere for this. Show more

That is one of the one Euro houses like we're looking at right now. That's the pile of rocks right there. That's that's one of the houses, but the view is pretty ridiculous. This is real, this is. We're in a simulation right now. What exactly is going on? Right now we're at this incredibly beautiful view in the middle of nature. I talk a lot about the subject of happiness with my friends, especially on our travels. I think all of us are trying to figure out what it means in our own individual ways. So I asked the guys their thoughts: like: what does that even mean? Yeah, what is successful? Right, like we? Just for People Like Us, successes synonymous with our career. But, like you know, you could be really unsuccessful in your career. But like a really successful father, where do you want to be successful? And so then just changes everything. I just constantly Wonder: to be successful, you have to be somewhat miserable. Show more

Not 100, but a pretty high percentage of successful people are miserable because they're trying to fill a void, and that's why they put all their energy into trying to achieve something, prove something, and then ultimately realize that everything they've done has not fulfilled whatever they're missing. Show more

So I have that fear, because I find myself a lot of times thinking I need to be more miserable or I need to have a tougher life to be able to be a better artist, and I feel like that's probably not the healthiest mentality. I love how we're having this conversation as this food's arriving. I [ __ ]. Love this right now. Oh, my God, are you kidding me? Nathaniel Bourdain, who is considered to have had the best job in the world, is actually miserable and like seemed to have not really enjoyed any part of the process. He seemed to be more of a writer and like an introvert who didn't like the attention was somehow ended up on television. It's just that, I think, the reason we struck up that conversation, because so many people that I met that are like Pinnacle of success to me are more miserable or, like you know, experiencing a lot of, like other torment, but that often is the case, right? Show more

But that's what he was making, the point that He was discussing whether every successful person has that- oh wow, grateful for food, that we can arrive at a place and you can point at something that's written on a piece of paper and then they bring it what? It's pretty fascinating. What a luxury to have. But the thing that I find super fascinating too, about success and what's you know the fact that so many people who are successful are driven by this void potentially- is that you can fill it in a healthy way if you're lucky enough to put your energy into the right thing that actually fulfills you right. Show more

But the thing that happens is a lot of times, if you have this energy from a young age, the moment you see opportunities, you grab them and you move and you move and you move, and it's hard to see the big picture of what you're doing because you're starting to see success in, you know, monetary success or with YouTube views or whatever it is, and people are paying attention to you and it takes so much time for you to then actually step back and be like, oh, like I didn't actually want to be successful in this thing or I don't actually care about what I'm doing. I found that these kinds of conversations require a lot of looking inwards and, although I am traveling a lot to create this series on happiness, you don't really have to travel physically very far to begin to change your own definition of Happiness. Show more

I'm a very big believer that the biggest trip any of us will ever embark on is the internal one, but that's a bit of an abstract idea and a lot of people that I meet struggle to know where to begin, what to do about that, how to go on that journey, and that is why I am beyond thrilled to be working with headspace for the sponsor of this video. Their mission as a company is to improve the health and happiness of the world, which I could not resonate with more deeply. I feel strongly that the moments that I take to reflect and to slow down make me a better person and help me have the vocabulary to explore these sorts of abstract ideas. Show more

Headspace offers tools for managing sleep, stress, focus and much more. Headspace is actually the app that I used to begin building the habit of meditating, because they offer some really wonderful guided meditations and years later I'm still meditating and it feels like a pillar of my life. Show more

The design and quality of their content is phenomenal and Beyond the guided meditations, they've actually got a whole bunch of other things like sleep casts, material for waking up, mindful movement and exercise. With over a thousand pieces of Premicontent, headspace continues to help me build life-changing habits. Show more

It's so worth it making the investment in yourself and your own well-being, in my opinion. So if you're interested in checking them out, you can sign up for a free headspace trial today. I'll leave a link in the description below- and signing up with them actually helps support my work as well. So if you do check them out, I really appreciate it. And now I want to share with you some of the conclusions that these conversations have led me to. Show more

I've been reflecting a lot on patterns in my own behavior, and conversations like these helped me see elements of myself that I might not have noticed before, and the subtle thing that I'm trying to express and also pay attention to in my own life here is that ambition isn't evil. Making money isn't evil, having things isn't evil, but too much chasing is dangerous. I start to lose sight of the point when I get into conqueror mode and only play to win. Show more

I stop enjoying myself- and it's such an obvious thing to say- and yet forget. I guess you feel like ambition is not a bad thing. I think ambition is great. Life would be extremely boring if, like you, just sat at home and drank your coffee, and I think there's so many people that love it- though, yeah, and I think everyone's different. I think the people who love sitting at home and are satisfied like just living a slower life. I think that's incredible and I wish I could be that way. But since I was a child I've been extremely active, like I just love being active and coming up with new ideas all the time and coming up with Wacky Adventures to do, and I think I would be bored to death if I just sat at home and tried to just be content with just sitting at home and not doing anything, you know. So for me, Ambition at this stage in my life is: can I find a creative or intellectual challenge that really pushes me in a way that is positive, just like you can get out of your comfort zone in a way that's growth inducive? You can get into the Panic zone of ambition where you're not sleeping, you're not seeing friends, you're not like you can't have time for anything else in your life, and that's when it gets toxic, and I think it's about finding how far you're willing to go and how important the other sides of your life are. But I think when you become successful and you're not deeply connected to what you're making or you've built yourself a lifestyle, that is completely unsustainable and you feel trapped in that lifestyle. Show more

We're like it's the middle of the day and it looks like we are in an underground cave. Then, yeah, that can be debilitating and it can be demoralizing, and in my experience, I've met many people who arrived at that point where they thought that happiness would cure their internal existential crisis, and then we're extremely disappointed- I'm included in that- and then I think you have the opportunity to diverge and shift your priority and instead point it towards something healthier. Maybe the sin that I'm committing isn't the fact that I'm hungry for life, or even that I'm taking big bites, but rather that I'm not taking the time to enjoy my meal. Show more

That's what I would call a waste of food. Perhaps my error is not in what I'm doing, but how I'm doing it and how much I'm rushing. Haste makes waste. The advice that I received the most often for many of the people closest to me in my life is to slow down. I always wondered why they'd say that to me, but I think I'm beginning to see why. One million subscribers didn't unlock unlimited happiness for me, neither did buying a home. These things have certainly opened doors for me, but have they made me happier? I don't think so. I'm realizing it's been something else that makes me happy all along. Spending time with the people of this area in Tuscany was an absolute Delight. We spent a lot of time with the mayor, a man who was always laughing and playing with everyone else is. Do you think it's actually a good thing for people to go through realize, like trying to chase that success, maybe realizing that that the version of success they were chasing wasn't the right one, and then being able to recalibrate like, do you think that's a healthy step or do you think that one should just do? You think it's possible, because some people have heard people say, yeah, but I just need to get there and find out myself. You know why do we need to go through making the mistake ourselves to realize the thing that everyone's already telling us? I'm super grateful for what I went through in the past couple years. It's been like a huge recalibration and I'm still super grateful for everything I did because I was enjoying it while I was doing it. It's just that moment where you go, oh, this isn't the thing that feels kind of stressful, but then you, you'll, you'll have an appreciation for the next thing that you do and then you'll re-pivot. I think it's constant pivoting you. It's hard to figure out. From day one you know what that thing is. But I used to have so many conversations where I'd be like, damn, every single person I look up to just has like equivalently just as many problems as I do, so like maybe I should just become a real estate agent, like do some basic work and like, have fun and have a good family. Show more

Like why, why am I trying to prove anything or achieve anything? And then at the end of the day, my answer was like the thing I'm trying to do now is just, it brings me a lot of advice. As long as I can try to do it, great, and if it works, it works. If not, pivot and create a good life everywhere else. You know, the more I dig deeper on this journey of figuring out what makes life beautiful, the more I'm reminded by how extraordinarily Universal these questions are. Show more

I might think that I'm the first to have these thoughts or be alone in my confusion on the subject, but I'm not. We're all trying to figure this out. This is all a journey without a destination, but I want to share with you an idea that helps me feel a little clearer on where I stand as I craft the life that I want to live now. I've heard a few times that Steve wozak is one of the happiest people out there. He's one of the co-founders of apple and just an all-around simple dude. He got interviewed on what makes him so happy and he answered with this: I thought about my philosophies when I was about 20 years old: how do you become a good person? If I died and had all this wealth and Yachts and all this stuff, would I be as happy as when I laugh? And I thought about pranks I played and jokes I had told and music I would hear that would make me smile. Show more

And I came up with my formula that life is about happiness. So here is that exact formula: happiness equals miles minus frowns. H equals s minus F. That is such a simple formula that it's actually a little hard for me to wrap my brain around it. Like, can it really be that simple? My biggest takeaway from him is not the formula itself, but rather the idea of creating a formula to take the time to actually think about the things that consistently give you that feeling, not just acting blindly or reactionarily. I'm going to use the word Joy instead of happiness because somebody once described it as being internal, while happiness is external. Joy for me is always having the time and space for the people that I love to wonder, to learn and to create. Show more

For Simplicity, I like to call it time and space, which I need for four simple things. So my formula is: J equals t plus s. This is the thing that all of us forget because we get caught up in the past. For the future. We get caught up in whatever is next on the to-do list, because time and space are the first to go when we feel we have to do something, when we have to solve problems, instead of being curious or approaching life just an experience to be had. Show more

And that's what so much of this is about. Isn't it slowly finding our way back to ourselves? At least that's how I see it- not letting my gluttony take me too far away from my internal Journey. Maybe that's why it feels good to slow down. From time to time I get a chance to remember what I care about, and if it takes making a formula, then so be it. Time and space are important to me because they make room for something else: a feeling of connectedness, and I tend to feel a sense of Joy when I'm connected with myself because I'm doing things for the right reasons. My hunt for a house for one Euro took me places I could not have expected. One thing that really struck me about our journey in Italy was that it felt like we kept delving deeper and deeper into the country and its culture. Soon we were in the middle of the Tuscan Countryside. One afternoon we were taken up into the mountains, where there were hardly any roads, and met a couple that had bought several homes there and were turning them into something of an idyllic Paradise of Simple Pleasures. I had forgotten how beautiful life is when I slowed down. In fact, I realized that I had forgotten to take breaks, to take care of myself in the last few months, and no wonder. When you're worn out, the way you see the world changes. You grow blind to the beauty all around you. But it's there, waiting for you. It's always there, and it was there that I was reminded that it was never about the house in the first place. [music]. We have our time here on this Earth and that we'll be gone will make many mistakes while we're here, but I'd like to think that our success is best measured by how we lived and what we learned, not any of the silly material things that we spend so much time chasing. Show more

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