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00:00Well, how many people here want their kids to be happy?
00:04That's not possible.
00:08On our flight home from our honeymoon, we get on the plane.
00:12We take off, go above the clouds,
00:1350,000 feet above sea level.
00:15She goes to the tiny little airplane bathroom.
00:18She comes back to our seats, and she looks me in the eye,
00:21and she says, I'm pregnant.
00:26It's funny to you.
00:30She bought the pregnancy test in the Malaysian pharmacy
00:33airport.
00:34It wasn't just I'm pregnant.
00:35It was like, I'm pregnant.
00:36See?
00:37How many people here are parents in this room?
00:39Show of hands.
00:41Lots of people.
00:41How many people here want their kids to be happy?
00:46We all do.
00:47And you know what?
00:47Even people that aren't parents, which is amazing.
00:49She says to me on the plane, she's like,
00:51I just want my kids to be happy.
00:52And you know what I said?
00:54That's not possible.
00:56I had all these books come out, all this stuff,
00:58and I wasn't happy during that.
01:00I wasn't sleeping.
01:01I had lost 40 pounds due to stress.
01:03And you know what everybody at work was saying to me?
01:06You look great.
01:08And so I said, you can't make yourself happy.
01:10It's random.
01:11And I start a nine-month research project.
01:15When you go to Google, which is, as you can tell,
01:17where I begin all my research, and you type in how to be,
01:21what do you think the first suggestion is?
01:24You're right.
01:25Happy.
01:26How's the society?
01:27Are we there yet?
01:28Our wealth?
01:29We're three times richer than we were.
01:31Technology, better than ever before.
01:33Education, higher than ever before.
01:35Anything related to abundance is up, except for one thing.
01:39Happiness, flatlined.
01:42It hasn't moved from 1955.
01:45It is still about 20% of people in society
01:48say that they are happy or very happy.
01:50So wait, we want it more than anything else.
01:52We don't got it yet.
01:55Can we get it?
01:56Our parents told us this.
01:58My mom and dad, they said to me, Neil, if you do great work,
02:02then you'll have a big success, and then you'll be happy.
02:04Does this sound familiar?
02:05If you study really hard, then you'll get good grades.
02:08And if you're East Indian, you become a doctor.
02:11But our parents were wrong.
02:12If you be happy first, then you do great work.
02:17The average lifespan today in the United States
02:21is 30,000 days.
02:23You can press a button called happiness
02:26and live 3,000 more.
02:28It's a powerful button, but how do you press it?
02:31Emmons and McCullough actually did an incredible study.
02:33At the end of each week, they said they had students
02:34write down five gratitudes.
02:36Another group wrote down five hassles.
02:39And another group wrote down five events.
02:41Can you guess what happened after 10 weeks?
02:43People who wrote down the gratitudes were happier.
02:45And if you want to make it even easier,
02:46I'll give you a little game you can play
02:48right before you turn off the lights at the end of the night.
02:50If you're with a partner,
02:52you do a game called rose, rose, thorn, bud.
02:57My wife Leslie says a rose from her day,
02:59which is a gratitude.
03:00I say one back.
03:01She says another rose from her day.
03:03I say one back.
03:04She says a thorn from her day.
03:06Something that didn't go well
03:07because she doesn't want to sleep on the problem.
03:09So let's get it out, okay?
03:11Then she says a bud,
03:14which is something she's looking forward to.
03:16Something she's looking forward to.
03:18And I say one back.
03:19Rose, rose, thorn, bud.
03:20As long as the thorn doesn't turn
03:22into a 45 minute argument.
03:24And then the big success comes later.
03:26We're the only ones with agriculture, architecture,
03:29jewelry, democracy, books, buffets, radio waves.
03:32We've got so many things to be thankful for.
03:34So many things to be happy about.
03:36Yet somehow that little line I showed you at the beginning
03:40hasn't budged at all.
03:41It can be difficult to remember that every single day.
03:45But we know how to get it.
03:46We know what to do.
03:48The glass is not half full or half empty.
03:52It's what we all grew up thinking it was.
03:53In fact, the glass is refillable.