How to be Happy with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar
In this episode, you'll hear:
The elements of happiness and how to be happier
The role that rest plays in reducing stress and the importance of exercise as medicine
“Perfect” vs. “good enough” and why the ego is stopping us from being happy
Advice for when comparison makes you unhappy

Today, we are doing a podcast swap with Learn From People Who Lived It, hosted by our co-host, Mathew Blades! You can find the 
Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar joins us from his home in New Jersey, where he recently launched the world's first fully accredited master’s degree program in happiness at Centenary University. Tal is an expert in the field, having received his BA in Philosophy and Psychology and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard. He tells us that, as a young man, his squash training informed his understanding of what it takes to become an expert and excel throughout his life. Tal's dedication to the sport led him to play squash professionally and, eventually, to win the Israeli National Squash Championships. After being injured during his time in the Israeli Army, he left professional sports but was soon recruited to play at the amateur level for Harvard. There, he won the U.S. intercollegiate squash championships and eventually returned to his alma mater to become a lecturer.
Tal first began thinking about the nature of happiness when he found that success in Squash was not bringing him happiness. Years later, the same realization came to him again when he found that success academically and socially in college was not causing him to feel happy either. This situation made Tal do the unthinkable… leave his computer science program and move to philosophy and psychology. He had to figure out, “Why aren't I happy? And how can I become happier?" This move kicked off what would become an incredible career and a lifelong dedication to studying the science of happiness. 
Dr. Tal has become an accomplished writer, with his books on positive psychology and leadership being translated into more than thirty languages and appearing on best-seller lists around the world. In addition to what Tal has achieved at Harvard, he has also taught happiness studies at Columbia University, consulted and lectured for companies like Microsoft, Intel, and Google, and given expert interviews on programs like NPR and Armchair Expert.
Throughout his career, one thing Tal has found to be true is that success has nothing to do with happiness. Rather, happiness will lead to success. One way we can see this happening is with the “flow state." When you are in the "flow,” you are having “peak experience” and “peak performance." Flowing can make us feel happy, but before we can know if we are happy, Tal tells us it’s important to define happiness. 
Most people equate happiness with pleasure, but it is so much more than that. Pleasure is one element of happiness, but there are others as well: spiritual well-being (meaning and purpose), physical well-being (exercise, nutrition, and rest), intellectual well-being (curiosity and lifelong learning), relational well-being (time spent with others and impact on our community), and emotional well-being. Emotional well-being is the element that encompasses pleasure but also requires being able to deal with painful emotions. Dr. Tal says, “The first step to happiness is allowing in unhappiness.”.
Many of us are missing one or more of these elements. There are billions of people worldwide experiencing burnout, and Dr. Tal tells us this is not due to their being more stressed, but rather that there is not enough rest time to take care of all of these aspects. Oftentimes, people just feel like busyness is just a fact of life. Still, by evaluating what we really want in life and understanding that perfection is not realistic but good enough is good enough, you can change your expectations and, in turn, shift your perspective. There is a time for the highs and a time for the lows, but most of the ti