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  • So, I have been reading this fascinating book called "The Upside of Your Dark Side."

  • Two pioneering researchers in the field of psychology show that while mindfulness, kindness, and positivity can take us far, they cannot take us all the way.

  • In fact, Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener argue that psychological health means wholeness rather than happiness, and the two highlight the essential role played by our negative emotions.

  • I think this book is great, 'cause I've been very vocal about how I'm, like, fed up with the happiness hype in popular psychology, and you know that I love confirmation bias backed by science.

  • So, here we go, three science-backed reasons that trying to be happy is actually fucking up your life and making you stupid.

  • One, happy people are less persuasive.

  • So, according to Kashdan and Biswas-Diener, happy people tend to focus on the bigger picture at the expense of tiny details.

  • As a result, their arguments are less nuanced and concrete.

  • In fact, your happiness can interfere with your performance and accuracy.

  • Several studies were performed asking happy and unhappy people to create arguments about issues from the allocation of tax dollars...

  • Community, everyone benefits!

  • ...to the existence of soulmates.

  • And then what, your soulmate dies, and then you're alone forever and then you just have to die alone? Really? Is that fair?

  • And in all of the studies, unhappy people's reasoning was judged as 25 percent more convincing than the happy participants.

  • So, my grumpy attitude not only gives me, like, a stellar sense of humor, but I can convince everyone else to be grumpy as well.

  • Two, happy people are more easily deceived and likely to "recall" false facts.

  • So, in one study, participants were asked to identify who was a liar and who was honest in a series of videotapes.

  • The tapes showed people denying that they had stolen something, and about half of them were telling the truth.

  • Happy people identified liars only 49% of the time, whereas unhappy people detected 62% of the frauds.

  • So, if not being able to have a stronger bullshit detector is a good enough reason for you, also consider that in other experiments, people had to recall facts or words that they'd been presented with before.

  • The happiest among these people were the most prone to recall items they'd never even been shown.

  • So, so far, happy people are less persuasive and more gullible.

  • I now understand why the best lawyers are miserable.

  • And finally, people who focus on achieving happiness often get less joy out of pleasurable experiences that are supposed to create happiness.

  • In one experiment, people were divided into different groups prior to listening to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."

  • One group was asked to rate their happiness level while listening, and to try to willfully increase their pleasure from listening and estimate how well that worked; the other group was told just to listen.

  • Who ended up being happier?

  • Those who only listened, enjoying "Rite of Spring" 7.5 times as much as those who were instructed to try to be happy and to evaluate their happiness.

  • So, striving to be happy can make you unhappy.

  • And the researchers argue that this pursuit of happiness over all else is inherently self-centered and that this focus on your own happiness could actually distract you from other people's needs, thus diminishing your relationships.

  • So, for instance, you might constantly avoid a friend who is troubled because you really don't want their negative vibes to affect you.

  • But this friend will eventually see your avoidance as a lack of attunement, and the longer that this continues, the more likely that friendship will end.

  • Plus, mind-blowing fact, research indicates people who value the pursuit of happiness actually feel lonelier than other people.

  • And paradoxically, relationships are like the highest factors for happinessfriendships, romance, family, these are the sources of our happiness.

  • But happiness consciousness often puts valuing happiness itself over relationships, thus, they are lonely.

  • So, there you have it, three reasons to be justified in your grumpy ways, and to view your unhappiness, not as like some kind of defect, but a necessary discernment to be a more persuasive, less gullible, more present, and more attuned human being.

  • I'm supremely unhappy, and thank you to patrons who supported today's video and thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring today's episode.

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So, I have been reading this fascinating book called "The Upside of Your Dark Side."

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