Tal Ben-Shahar: Co-Founder and CLO of The Happiness Studies Academy

This episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee sees Coaching.com CEO Alex Pascal dive deep into the topic of happiness with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, a bestselling author and happiness educator who lectures internationally on topics such as leadership, education, and ethics.

In this episode, Tal explains how life as a child athlete, a young man in the military, and a dissatisfied computer science student eventually led him to the “happiness business.” He provides information about his accredited MA program in Happiness Studies (the first of its kind) and goes into depth about his influential SPIRE model for living a happier life.

As an analytical academic, Tal is interested in how change can be affected systematically from the neurological and individual all the way to the organizational level. He provides his definition of happiness as a sustainable state incorporating struggle, and he takes time during this episode to explain to Alex how businesses can successfully turn stress into growth.

Alex asks Tal to reflect on what the pandemic has meant for people’s well-being, and Tal gives his perspective on why this is the perfect time to start implementing meaningful societal change. He explains why he believes returning to pre-pandemic “normality” won’t be straightforward and why it’s now necessary for organizations to integrate flexibility and wellbeing into their practice.

Another topic that Tal addresses in this episode is the relationship between morality and happiness. Bearing in mind the heightened levels of polarization in modern society, Tal clarifies what he means by morality and proposes ways to live in alignment with our values in a world where what’s “right” is so hotly contested.

When it comes to the longevity of the coaching industry, Tal raises some important points about the need for lifelong learning and strong links to evidence-based practice. In this episode, he also shares his unique vision of what an effective coach should be using Emerson’s “beautiful enemy” concept.

To learn more about Tal’s perspective on happiness, business, and the coaching industry, listen to this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee.  

Tal Ben-Shahar: https://talbenshahar.com/

Happiness Studies Academy: https://www.happinessstudies.academy/cihs/
 
Potentialife: https://potentialife.com/

Happiness Studies: An Introduction: https://www.amazon.com/-/he/Tal-Ben-Shahar/dp/3030648680

Happier No Matter What: https://www.amazon.com/Happier-Matter-What-Cultivating-Resilience/dp/1615197915

Choose the Life You Want: https://www.amazon.com/Choose-Life-You-Want-Happiness/dp/1615190651/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1349517753&sr=8-4&keywords=tal+ben-shahar

Transcript

(interview blurb)

Tal: If my expectation is to lead a happy life, a consistently happy life, a constant high, in other words, then I’m in for disappointment. If my expectation is a relationship where we’re always smiling, laughing, and making love together, then I’m in for disappointment because in the best of relationships, there are hard times and in the best of lives, there are challenging times.

(intro)

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex Pascal, I’m the CEO of coaching.com, and this is Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee.

My guest today is a well-known author, professor, and consultant on topics such as leadership, ethics, happiness, self-esteem, resilience, goal setting, and mindfulness. He taught two of the most popular classes in Harvard’s history, Positive Psychology and The Psychology of Leadership. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages and have appeared on bestseller lists around the world. His latest books are Happiness Studies and Happier, No Matter What. He’s the co-founder and chief learning officer of the Happiness Studies Academy. 

(interview)

Alex: Please welcome, Tal Ben-Shahar.

Tal: Hi, Alex. It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Alex: It’s great to have you, Tal. So, as you know, we ask all our guests to choose a drink, it doesn’t have to be coffee, so tell us please, like what did you — I think we have a funny story of your selection.

Tal: Yes. So I actually chose, given that it’s quite early in the day, I chose my smoothie, which is a combination of tons of fruit as well as vegetables as well as nuts and grains. It’s my daily breakfast.

Alex: That sounds very healthy. The bio for today’s podcast actually said that you had chosen a shandy so I was like, well, you’re in the East Coast, I’m in the West Coast, I thought, well, maybe like noon makes sense for that drink so I guess I have a shandy, it’s almost like a smoothie, because you have grains, just like you have some grains in yours, and I have lemons so it’s basically a smoothie. I’ve never had a drink like on a work day at 9:42 AM, I think, so I’ll just stay with my smoothie today.

Tal: Yeah, we’ll see where this goes, if you have this drink.

Alex: Well, I’m going to be happy, which is on point with, on brand with your work.

Tal: I know. The reason why I did choose shandy is I go back — I used to play professional squash and traveled to England because England is really the center of world squash, all the top players congregate there and then, from there, we go off to tournaments. And in my club, everyone was having beer but beer — I never liked beer, but shandy, I could look cool because it looked like beer and it was sweet. So, for me, it was a win-win. I’ve remained a fan 30 years hence.

Alex: I can totally empathize with that because, especially when you’re exercising. I used to play soccer a lot and beer after soccer is fantastic but if you put a little lemon in it, maybe it’s a little sweet, it makes a lot of sense to drink it. So, I actually did like a skinny version of a shandy so it’s just basically lemon juice and then German pilsner. I don’t think the Germans would really like when you put lemon on their beer, but it’s more of a British thing, I think, but, when in Rome, I guess.

Tal: Yeah. Well, cheers. And I want to tell you a bit about my smoothies. 

Alex: Yeah, I would love to learn more about that. 

Tal: So, my wife says that if I ever decide to move away from the happiness business, then I have to open a smoothies bar because she says it’s very rare for her to see me as happy and content and in flow as I am when I make smoothies. For anyone, obviously, for the family, for the kids, but also guests, almost the first question right after, “How are you?” is “Would you like a smoothie?” and I like experimenting so I think it’s my creative side as well as my nurturing side, perhaps, and the fact that I’m obviously into health and its relation to happiness. So, the smoothies, in many ways, brings all these together. It’s a one-stop shop for me. 

Alex: Love that, and so much to unpack already, which is — I mean, the happiness business, the idea that we have that maybe there’s something we do for our careers but then one day, once you make enough money or we have the impact that we have in the world, hopefully both, that we might do something that is different, that is really what makes us happy. So, I think that’s like a very human thing to think about. Well, in five years, I’ll be ready to professionally do smoothies all day long and I’ll be super happy.

Tal: I’m game, yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing what I’m doing, being in the happiness business, so to speak, but maybe I can do both. I’ll have to think about that.

Alex: Balance, right? So, tell us more about the happiness business. So interesting.

Tal: Yes, I got into this world of happiness because of my own unhappiness. I was initially, as I mentioned, a professional athlete, I played squash, and while I was very passionate about squash growing up, I started playing when I was about 11 years old, I was very passionate about it. I don’t think I could say that I had a happy childhood. It was a very stressful childhood and self-imposed stress, not from my parents, not from the environment. My father always said, “My biggest surprise in life was that my children are” — and all of us were — “were athletes,” because he was anything but. I remember one day, he came to visit the squash courts and tried to hit the ball, with an emphasis on tried, and one of my friends, they were watching him play, he said to me, “Tal, if you didn’t look like your dad, we would have questions now.” 

Alex: It was that bad.

Tal: It was that bad. How could I come out being a professional squash player from him? 

Alex: That is hilarious. 

Tal: So he’s — and he always said that. He would tell this story. He would always say, “I don’t know how my kids became athletes.” But, anyway, so there was no pressure, zero pressure on us, but it was self-imposed. I somehow became a perfectionist. Maybe I breathed it in with ether and self-imposed pressure from the time I remember myself, and then that later translated into the same experience when I was in college. So I got into Harvard, was very happy initially but then the pressure returned. And, again, that so much defined from my childhood and early 20s as well. And it was because of that, because of my unhappiness, that I turned to the field of happiness.

Alex: And you grew up in Israel, which is a very — it’s a different place to grow up and you did your education in the US so there are certain pressures that come with growing up in Israel so do you think that has something to do with that?

Tal: Yes, and no. So, yes, later on, at the age of 18, I served in the military and that’s, at times, obviously, very stressful, but it didn’t start then and my childhood in Israel, in so many ways, an ideal childhood. You play out on the streets. So there was siesta time, two to four, and then at 4 PM, someone would shout, “Tal, hide and seek,” or tag or soccer or whatever we played and I would run down the stairs and then at around eight, someone else, “Tal, dinner,” and I would run up. That was my childhood. So, in that respect, there is no pressure and it’s a very free childhood. And yet, I took on the perfectionism. Later, I understood that it was a form of perfectionism. Then, of course, I didn’t know. I just knew that I experienced a lot of stress a lot of the time, whether it was in school or in sports.

Alex: So your journey of growing up in Israel, moving to the US after serving in the military in Israel, you get accepted to Harvard, you move to Harvard. Tell us a little more about your experiences that led from that unhappiness, that focus on perfectionism, to the realization that you wanted to focus on happiness. So I know you studied philosophy, you then did a PhD in organizational development with a focus on happiness and you’ve written several books that we’ll talk about in a few moments, but tell us more about that journey. When you get to America, you’re thinking about what you want to study, how did that progress all the way to a PHD with a very specific focus on happiness?

Tal: So I started off actually not in philosophy, I started off in computer science, for a very simple reason, because that’s what I was good at. Throughout the year — my dad’s an engineer, my mom’s a microbiologist, I’ve always been good at math, started programming very early on in life and very early on in the life of personal computers.

Alex: So I’m guessing your smoothies have very specific rations of different ingredients.

Tal: You know it. You know it. Many people who hear me give a lecture in psychology say, “We can tell you were a computer scientist.”

Alex: And that’s a compliment, right? 

Tal: For good — I was going to add, for good and ill. Sometimes I could lighten up a little bit, but it is systematic and clear, usually. So I started off as a computer scientist and then, one day, this was my sophomore year, I just found myself doing very well academically, I did very well in squash, I played for Harvard, I did quite well socially and I was miserable. 

Alex: It sounds like you had a lot of the ingredients for happiness. 

Tal: I checked the boxes. Yeah, I checked the boxes. And four years before that, when I was in the military, I had very good excuse for not being happy. Now less so. I was in a wonderful place, wonderful friends, great professors, and miserable.

Alex: I spent two weeks in the Israeli military when I was like 15, 16 years old. So I’m Jewish, I grew up in Mexico City and I went to a Jewish school, and when you finished ninth grade, you’d go to Israel for a month and then we spent, I think it was two weeks in the desert and two weeks of that was enough for me to realize it’s hard to find happiness when you’re a soldier. So, yeah, I get that.

Tal: Yeah, so no more excuses. When I was at Harvard, I was in my early 20s and I said, “Okay, it’s not them, it’s me.” It’s not the world, it’s me, and that’s when I turned to philosophy and psychology. And this became my focus. I then studied that as an undergrad, went over to the other Cambridge across the Atlantic, to the UK, studied education there and then back to Harvard to do organizational studies.

Alex: How did you settle on organizational studies? Because I’m an organizational psychologist and I feel like everyone has an interesting story about how they found, not today, today it’s more popular, but 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago, a lot of people didn’t really know about this as much.

Tal: Yeah. So now I can reveal that story because the powers that be no longer have power over my graduation. I’ve already graduated. It’s done. The reason why I went for organizational behavior — well, various reasons. One reason, because there was a great faculty there in the form of Richard Hackman and Philip Stone and Ellen Langer, but the main reason is because it was a joint PhD, meaning it was offered by both the psychology department, which is the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Harvard Business School. Now, many people said to me, “Oh, that means more work because you have to satisfy both.” For me, it was the opposite. Because it meant that I could get away with more. Because if I did something that psychology didn’t like, well, I’m also in the business school and if I did something that they didn’t like, well, I’m also in psychology so I just felt like I could have more leeway, which absolutely was the case. There was a great deal of freedom, being part of that program. And it’s an amazing, again, amazing program, mainly as a result of the faculty who teach it and I feel very fortunate to have had this education

Alex: And aligns very much with I think a lot of the patterns that you see in your career, combining sciences with the arts. So, it’s that balance.

Tal: Yes and. So, it absolutely combined sciences with the arts. I also, at that time, focused on business ethics, which is a philosophical inquiry. And the other thing is that it looks at different levels of analysis. So, again, I draw on Richard Hackman, who’s a great organizational psychologist and he always said when you study a phenomenon, study it on the organizational level and on the team level and on the individual level and on the neural level. So go all the way from the smallest particle and all the way up to the largest organization.

Alex: I like that. I mean, I think it comes up a lot in our podcasts that I love integral theory so really thinking about systems, how they come together, and, yeah, the individual. I mean, that’s why — I mean, a lot of our audience are coaches, right? So one of the very interesting thing about coaching is that it is typically one on one or there’s team coaching as well but let’s focus on one on one coaching. One on one coaching operates at that one on one level, yet, if it’s done properly, it has a cascading impact in the organization. It’s one of those fascinating components of coaching. When you put it out in the wild in an organization, it can really shape a lot of the way the organization operates when you’re doing coaching systemically. Yeah, that way of thinking around systems, it’s very powerful for our profession.

Tal: Alex, I’m so glad you brought that up. So, one of the products, actually our main product that the Happiness Studies Academy offers is a certificate in happiness studies. The first lecture is about happiness in general, defining it, understanding what it means and how to pursue it. The second lecture of a year-long program is around systems thinking.

Alex: Yeah, it’s very powerful. 

Tal: Because it’s so important to understand and the basic idea there is that everything is interconnected and if you want to impact one, you need to take consideration of all. If you want to impact all, you have to look at the one. And, of course, systems thinking, the main idea there is looking for the leverage points and you may find the leverage point on the individual level, on the dyadic level, you may find it on the organizational level.

Alex: Yeah, this idea of finding order within chaos is so important in today’s world where there’s so much noise, it’s almost like we’re drowning in information. Information is so powerful, but when there’s so much of it, it’s hard to make sense of it. And starting to find these patterns, I think, that’s what I’m hearing you say which I agree, it’s super important. Now we have like the only — I believe it’s the only master’s in happiness. You have an MA program within the Happiness Studies Academy that is focusing on guiding people through basically getting a master’s degree on happiness studies. I would love for you to tell us a little bit more about that and then we can unpack what happiness is, what are the common misconceptions and take it from there.

Tal: Great. So, yeah, this is the thing that I must say too that I’m most excited about. So for the past 20 years, it’s been a dream of mine, it was a dream that was initially ignited by my mentor, Professor Philip Stone, when I was still a graduate student, and he passed away and I inherited the dream in many ways, to create a master’s degree in happiness studies. And just very recently, a couple of weeks ago, we became accredited and so we’re working, the Happiness Studies Academy is working with Centenary University and, together, we created the world’s first master’s degree in happiness studies that is about educating leaders in the field, leaders who will, through that, increase their levels of happiness and then help others do the same, whether it’s leaders in the education system, whether it’s business leaders, because we know that you increase levels of happiness, performance, business performance increases, school performance improves. Yeah, it’s an 18-month long program where students receive the science of well-being and learn how to apply it in professional and personal settings.

Alex: Congratulations for that. I know there’s a lot of work that goes behind the scenes to get a program accredited at the master’s level so congratulations. That’s really exciting. So, let’s roll back to what is happiness?

Tal: There are about more or less 8 billion definitions of happiness so we’ll start with the first and then move to the rest later. Yes. So my definition, and, again, it’s certainly not the only one and also not necessarily the right one, but my definition which I found useful is that happiness comprises five elements and these five elements that make up the acronym SPIRE, are spiritual well-being, the S of SPIRE, physical well-being, intellectual well-being, that’s the I, relational well-being, and, finally, the E stands for emotional well-being. And, Alex, if I can just go over each one of these very briefly.

Alex: That’d be great. It is really fascinating. I’d love to hear more.

Tal: Great. So spiritual well-being, of course, we can find through religion. However, we can find spiritual well-being elsewhere. For instance, in finding a sense of meaning and purpose in our work, in our personal lives, or wherever. So a sense of meaning and purpose, that’s part of spiritual well-being. Another element of spiritual well-being is being present, being in the here and now. Albert Einstein once purportedly remarked that there are two ways to look at the world. One way to look at the world is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle. Now, when we’re really present to any phenomenon, it could be a tree, a flower, it could be a person, it could be an Excel sheet that we’re really focusing on, when we’re experiencing it, in the here and now, when we’re in flow, this is a spiritual experience. This is spiritual well-being. So it’s either through meaning or through being present. Physical well-being is about physical exercise. It’s about nutrition, that of course is tied to happiness. It’s about touch. It’s about recovery and rest. So these are elements and I’m happy, of course, to elaborate on any or all later. So this is physical well-being. It’s about the mind-body connection, which is not always recognized and appreciated for what it is. Third, intellectual well-being. This is about curiosity, for example. Alex, a recent study that came out shows that curiosity doesn’t just help us become more successful or happier, curiosity actually helps us live longer. So curiosity kills the cat? Does the opposite to humans.

Alex: Interesting. 

Tal: So curiosity is part of intellectual well-being. Deep learning, whether it’s deep learning of a text or deep learning of a work of art or deep learning of nature or of relationships, whatever it does it for us, deep learning contributes, again, not just to our success but to our overall well-being and happiness. It’s an important part of living a full and fulfilling life. Then we have relational well-being. Number one predictor of happiness, quality time we spend with people we care about and who care about us. This could be with a romantic partner, it could be with family, it could be with friends or with colleagues. Who the relationship is with matters less. What does matter is that it’s a close, intimate, supportive relationship. Number one predictor of happiness. Under relational well-being is also kindness and generosity. One of the best ways to help ourselves become happier is to help others do the same. So, the self and other are intimately connected in a web of empathy. So generosity, kindness, charity, these are all means of increasing levels of happiness. And, finally, emotional well-being, and here we’re talking about dealing with painful emotions, which, in order to best deal with them, we first need to accept and embrace them rather than reject and suppress them. And then cultivating pleasurable emotions, like gratitude, like love, like joy, like excitement, which are, of course, part, only part of a happy life.

Alex: So when you think about a person, let’s say, like their SPIRE chart, they all have different components at different levels so you might be doing a great job of living a life that has a lot of the physical happiness components, well aligned, but perhaps the emotional or the spiritual, let’s say, lines of development are not as developed. So how does that impact someone’s ability to have a happy, fulfilled life?

Tal: Yeah, that’s a very important point because it’s not possible to have it all. It’s not, like, okay, now you need to focus fully on spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotional well-being and then, and only then, will you be happy. So the first thing is happiness resides on a continuum. It’s not about becoming happy, but it’s about becoming happier. Second, it’s important to understand that happiness as a construct is a system so everything affects everything else. And I can enter the system through any or all of the channels. So I can decide to focus on physical exercise and introduce that into my life, if it hasn’t been part of my life, and that will affect initially physical well-being and then every other element of SPIRE because when I exercise, I’m also calmer so, emotionally, I’m feeling better, less anxious. You can be sure that I’ll be nicer with my kids or my partner or at work; hence, my relational well-being will improve. There’s a lot of research showing how, after exercising, not during, after, our memory improves. Our brain actually becomes more plastic, more flexible, we become more creative so intellectual well-being benefits as well and we’re much more likely to be present when we exercise, spiritual well-being. So, we can enter the SPIRE, enter the matrix in any way that we desire. Now, there may be things that are holding us back and I may feel, in one of the exercises that we do is what we call a SPIRE check-in, I may go over the SPIRE elements and decide this really needs work because I’ve been neglecting my relational or I’ve really been neglecting — I’ve been so busy that I haven’t been developing intellectually and that is affecting my happiness so we can decide to focus on one or two of them that need more work, perhaps, but it’s important to keep in mind that they are all interconnected and you change one, you change all. It’s a system.

Alex: Are there some that are more important to focus on than others? 

Tal: Yeah, great question. And, yes. Which ones are they? It depends on you. So, for me, for instance, intellectual is dominant, which is why I chose to be an academic and reading and learning is a requirement of my professional and for someone else, it may be physical that’s the strongest and they may choose to be professional athlete or run the marathon where they have to spend a lot of time. Now, so to different degree, different people need different points of focus. At the same time, in neglecting one to a great extent will affect everything else. So I may be very, very interested in learning and studying intellectual well-being but if I don’t also cultivate relationships, I’m certainly not going to be happy, and vice versa.

Alex: So when you work with clients, how do you use SPIRE?

Tal: So, the first thing that I do is I highlight for them why it is important —

Alex: And this is individual clients, group clients, organizational? Tell us a little more about your consulting work.

Tal: Yeah, so the answer is both. I do work — most of my work is for larger clients and giving lectures to an audience. At the same time, I also do a lot of work one on one, which is more of a coaching role that I play, but whether I’m speaking to 100 or one, my focus initially is on the WIFM, what’s in it for me. If I go into an organization and I say to them, “Why don’t you introduce more happiness into your company?” they’ll say, “That’s wonderful. Why don’t you come for our Christmas event and you can speak then?” But if I tell them, “Why don’t you increase levels of happiness, and when you do that, innovation levels will go up. When you do that, you’ll see more productivity, more engagement, teamwork will improve. Bottom line is that the bottom line will improve.” In other words, that happiness pays, that it’s a good investment. That’s a whole different story, then I’m not just invited for the end of the year party. So the first thing is to convince them through data, research, that increasing levels of well-being is a win-win for all, for all stakeholders. Second, I then talk about how increasing levels of well-being even by a little bit can have a big difference. And then we talk about how to do it. And, for example, in organizations, the main reason today, again, during COVID, hopefully soon post-COVID, the number one reason why I’m called in to speak is because of stress, the rising levels of stress around the world, and organizations are absolutely not exempt from this rise, neither are schools, neither are family. So what do you do about the stress? Well, I talk to them about the research and what the research shows is that actually stress, in and of itself, is not a problem. That, in fact, stress potentially is good for us. Because think about the following analogy, you go to the gym and you lift weights, you’re stressing your muscles. Not a bad thing. That’s how you grow stronger, bigger, and healthier. The problem in the gym begins when you lift weights and then more weights and then more weights, an hour later or a day later, you go back and you lift again and again and again. That’s when you get injured. That’s when you get weaker rather than stronger. So the problem is not the stress, the problem rather is the lack of recovery. Because if you have sufficient recovery, whether it’s in the gym physiologically or in life psychologically, the stress becomes beneficial. It actually becomes a trigger for growth. And then we talk about, okay, so what does that recovery look like in your personal life? What does it look like for your team? How can you introduce rituals? And that’s a key word that I use over and over again, how do you introduce rituals in your organization that will allow sufficient recovery and therefore growth?

Alex: Yeah, I think the concept of slowing down to speed up is very applicable to organizations and that focus on well-being, one of the good things that came out of the pandemic is that focus. We’re hearing more about well-being than perhaps we’ve ever heard. So how has the pandemic affected people’s ability to be happy? We’re here on the bright side as people now appreciate more their space, where they live, they get to spend more time there, lots of home improvement, and people enjoy the flexibility. Some people maybe not as much. Organizations have different perspectives. “We have to bring people back to work immediately,” or, “Now, we’re a fully remote company.” Like how does these, hopefully post-pandemic or getting to that endemic, post-pandemic state, how will this shift the way people are able to find fulfilling, happy lives? What’s changed over these two years?

Tal: My mentor whom I mentioned earlier, Professor Richard Hackman, said that the best time to bring about change is when all the balls are up in the air. Well, all the balls are up in the air right now. If you try, and obviously, we do it as researchers, when you try to evaluate and understand what is going on in the world today, what you find is a mess because what you find, overall, again, on average, anxiety levels have gone up. On average, depression levels have gone up. Now, of course, when you have a messy system, there is a great deal of variance and there are people who have become happier as a result of the pandemic and there are people who have become miserable as a result of it and understandably so. The question is what do we do with that mess and how do we shape or reshape our world? So, we’re not going to go back to where we were before and organizations who try to do that, by and large, will struggle. So, what’s that, that new world? That new world is a world of flexibility. That new world is a world where there is a lot more concern for the well-being of the employees. The great resignation comes as a result of employees, millions of them saying, “Enough, I don’t wanna go back to pre-COVID reality,” and so if it was a competitive advantage before the corona to focus on well-being, which it was, it was still something that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Today, it’s absolutely necessary, because organizations are not going to be sustainable without that focus. And when I say organizations, I mean, of course, individuals within the organization so managers and leaders will need that kind of coaching. How can they help themselves as well as others increase levels of well-being? It’s essential. And only then will organizations capitalize on this change but the attempt to go back is futile.

Alex: In complex systems, oftentimes, something might happen that is terrible, like the pandemic have had a tremendous human death toll, we’ve had supply chain shortages, like there’s a lot of really terrible things that have come through the pandemic, and when you think about it from a system perspective, longer term, it may actually lead to some changes that produce an ecosystem that’s more conducive for flourishment and happiness. So that’s kind of what I’m hearing you say, that there is this focus now on well-being because it is so connected to performance, which is the language that organizations speak, so the pandemic somewhat has reshuffled the deck a little bit in a way that organizations are more receptive to pay attention to happiness, employee happiness, culture, so that we can have better performance.

Tal: Yes. And the way it works is that change very often happens, in the words of John Carter, when your platform is burning. And for the past few years, the platform has been burning. And that expedites the process. To draw an analogy, I read an article, the beginning of the pandemic, that for 30 years, schools have been talking about digitization, about technology, about some form of hybrid learning and doing more with this kind of online education. Well, fast forward, after the 30 years were over, fast forward 30 days and more was done in the first 30 days of the pandemic than in the previous 30 years. Why? Because it’s a necessity. Because it was no longer nice to have optional in the future something abstract and theoretical. It became real. And this is what’s happening also in the field of well-being in organizations. The old platform burned, we have to create a new one. No choice.

Alex: Absolutely. Nothing to instigate change like pervasive need and crisis. I mean, they say in crisis, you find opportunity, like in stock market terms, Warren Buffett, when people are selling, buy, and when people are buying, be careful. So it’s like there’s certain inflection points that accelerate the need for change and we’re seeing that. One of the other problems with humanity in today’s modern world is that there are a lot of problems that are more like the boiling frog, like things don’t seem as urgent so maybe we’re not doing as much about it, like maybe one of them is climate change. We’ve been talking about it for 40 years and that’s probably something we need to pay attention to but climate change is so slowly, although we’re accelerating it, the problem doesn’t seem as pervasive and that’s the disconnect, perhaps, between the lack of action, really pervasively at organizational levels. And we’re seeing more and more of it, for sure. But it doesn’t seem that our sense of urgency is very connected with the urgency that the scientists have when they analyze the patterns that are manifesting based on the human activity in the planet. So that’s an interesting —

Tal: It’s an interesting parallel and the question is, what will trigger the radical change that is absolutely necessary, absolutely necessary? And when you think about climate, this is where my hope lies. There’ll be a technological change, because changing billions of people daily life to the point of not being as demanding on the environment, that’s going to be hard to impossible to implement. So just like technology got us into this, hopefully, technology can get us out of it. But I’m saying hopefully is problematic when we’re talking about literally the future of our species and so many other species,

Alex: Definitely. I want to talk a little bit about like the state of the polarization in the world. So, as I’m talking about climate change, I run a tech company, we are very explicit around being neutral when it comes to any kind of political takes, like we think it’s important for companies to have values but we don’t necessarily think we have to have an opinion in everything that’s being discussed in society. So I’m talking about climate change, I’m like sensitive the way I talk about it because even that’s become politicized to the point where you’re like too leaning on talking about it in a way that is like the most important thing, or the other side is like, “Is it even real?” So like, as I’m walking that line that I will try to walk as the CEO of coaching.com and making sure that we stand for like being in the middle and staying to the facts and not really stirring any controversy because we’re here to serve our clients, no matter where they are in the spectrum. So that makes me think about like how does happiness interplay with living in a world where truth is more and more less easy to understand, what’s real, what’s not real, there’s a lot of political polarization, people that have different perspectives don’t talk to each other, which is usually what leads to prolonged progressive change, like having some entrenched views that have been there for a long time, people see things differently, and then the balance that comes from normalizing progress with what’s worked forever, it seems like we don’t have that. So how does that impact one’s ability to find happiness in this modern world? 

Tal: Yeah, there’s certainly a lot around that. In general, morality and happiness go hand in hand, in general. There are there are some exceptions. But, for instance, we know that honesty pays, that people who are dishonest or immoral pay very high psychological and emotional price for their immorality, for their dishonesty. We also know that when we increase levels of happiness, we’re much more likely to be generous and kind towards other people. So, in that respect, happier life is also a more moral life. Increase happiness, you get more morality. Increase moral behavior, you’ll get more happiness. It’s potentially an upward virtuous cycle. So we do connect our work to happiness. At the same time, will I ever tell my students, “You should vote right or left”? Never, of course, but what I do encourage is an open conversation, not just for happiness, also for morality.

Alex: How do you get to morality? Because I think what we’ve lost is that line of like what’s the beacon of directionality as to what something is moral, because the whole thing that creates that division between people is it almost seems like there’s two different strains of morality and we’ve lost the idea of like there’s one thing or there’s a set of values that align with morality. If we identify those, then we can say, the more you align with that, the happier you’ll be. When we can’t agree on what morality is or when we see the other side being immoral with anything that disagrees with us, that’s what I’m worried about in the world that we’re living in today. So, what do you think about how do we recalibrate things to agree on kind of what is moral? Where is morality? Like someone that studied ethics, I’m sure this is a tremendous interest. So how do we recalibrate?

Tal: Yeah, that’s a great question because it’s certainly not about, okay, so I identify certain endpoints, certain dogmas as moral and then anyone who would like to be part of the whatever, Happiness Studies Academy, has to align to those. So we don’t talk about outcome, we talk about process, creating a moral process, that is most likely to lead to moral outcome, doesn’t guarantee but most likely to lead. So what does the moral process look like? A moral process is an open process where there is argument and dissent, where there is openness to conflicting ideas, not necessarily agreement but openness to different ideas. Why? Because we’re fully human when we think, when we exercise our rational capacities, not when we’re told what to think. Now, if we’re told what to think, that may be the right thing but if we don’t get there through the right process, we’re not fulfilling our potential as rational animals. So what do I mean by creating that process? Back in 1841, I believe, Ralph Waldo Emerson published an essay on friendship, 1841, essay on friendship, and in his essay on friendship, he wrote, “In a friend, I’m not looking for a mosh of concessions, a person who will agree with everything that I say. Rather, what I’m looking for is a beautiful enemy, a beautiful enemy, a person who will challenge me and who will help me in my apprenticeship to the truth,” and this idea of a beautiful enemy is very powerful because if you think about it, what kind of friend do you want? A yes person who will agree with everything that you say or a person who will challenge you? What kind of coach do you want? And when you think about a beautiful enemy, there are two elements there. The enemy is the person who challenges you. The beautiful is the person who cares about you. And if you can have these two elements of both challenging, both being true to myself when we’re speaking, not trying to please you, true to myself, and at the same time caring about you, not there to put you down or really interested in the apprenticeship to the truth, then when beautiful enemies meet, and, again, some people, some of my students don’t like the word “enemy,” they think it’s too harsh, but someone who will challenge you and who’s also looking out for you, is on your side, having that combination is ideal. Now, to create a conversation between beautiful enemies, what you need are certain conditions in place, such as openness, such as thinking, such as being not just open to the other person but also being open to being wrong. So, these are the kinds of conditions that we can put in place. These are also the kinds of conditions that you want in place for a healthy coaching relationship or in a healthy family or organization, for that matter. It’s what Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School talks about as a psychological safety.

Alex: Absolutely. I mean, it’s a lot about process that if you do it right, it leads to truth and I like that, I mean, that quote is fantastic and I love how enemies working together, like friends, frenemies, that are able to have a dialogue, although they don’t agree with everything, that leads to truth and so the truth can only emerge when you put your values out, they’re out there and you’re trying to understand, do I really believe exactly what I believe? Or does this person challenged me to see my perspective a little bit differently, which will make my perspective more in line with reality? Because it’s based on what they think as well and I’m open to understand that, and we’ve lost that. So that is, I think you’re hitting to the heart of that question around how do we come back to some semblance of shared morality and directionality. Thank you for that.

Tal: And, Alex, one more thing, you used the word “dialogue,” which is critical here. It’s about — so what’s moral here is having the dialogue.

Alex: Yeah, and that’s what you can’t do when you think the other side’s always wrong. And we’ve seemed to — it’s been happening for a long time. I mean, I love Ken Wilber’s work and I was listening to a recording from 20 years ago and he’s talking about the culture wars. When you’re looking academically at some of the developments, you’re able to see way in advance where things are headed, and I think the culture wars were out there in the 90s, there’s always political coalitions that don’t agree, but like the level of polarization we have today is not what it was 20 years ago so it’s interesting to see how you can see that lack of dialogue accelerating as we go on. And the other thing that we have today is the acceleration driven by technology, where everything happens so quickly, like we’re all connected to these networks and information spreads like wildfire and just that accelerates the speed of progress.

Tal: And it’s not just information that spread like wildfire, it’s information that reinforces what I already believe. 

Alex: Absolutely. 

Tal: So if I have this certain political position, the algorithm knows what I want, what I’m looking for. I will not get articles written by potential beautiful enemies.

Alex: No, you have silos because you have a network that probably sees things the way you do, and a lot of people, if you see something you don’t like, you start like maybe unsubscribing, unfollowing some people, over time, you end up with these silos that you’re talking about so very powerful. So, let’s talk about coaching. So, for coaches, like I think — let’s say you’re someone that’s looking for a coach, like you may be looking for performance improvement, more well-being, finding some balance, connecting that to your performance at work, there’s so many reasons why you’re looking for a coach, but underlying the idea of working with a coach I think oftentimes comes to happiness, like if you work with the right person and you get the right outcome, that will increase my happiness. So, what’s the role of a coach in kind of shepherding someone through the coaching process to end up in a place where there’s increased happiness or a focus on what could be a happier life? How the coaches become more educated and more aware around the SPIRE and like the general concept of happiness as we think about like the outcomes that their clients are looking for with coaching,

Tal: So about 10 years ago, maybe even more than that, I was invited to give the keynote at the yearly ICF meeting and the idea that I spoke about there was the future of coaching depends, meaning the future of coaching means is it built to last or will it become a fad like so many fashions have? Is it built to last? It depends on whether coaching ties itself intimately with research, with evidence-based practices, and whether it’s drawing on research or whether it’s doing research on coaching, meaning, so as a coach, I can draw on research and use research from psychology and then I can also research my coaching practice, whether that’s effective, and both are important. And to a great extent, the coaching world, and, again, not because of what I said but because I think it was common sense and that’s what the powers that be recognized from the very beginning, the coaching world has, to a great extent, tied itself to research. And yet I think it can do even more. And the reason why it’s so important is because 200 years ago, a priest, and the priests were our coaches or the rabbis were our coaches, could go up to people and say, “God said you should do that,” and the community did that. Today, you go to businesspeople or billions of people around the world and you want to convince them to do something, you need to have data behind what you say. That is what will convince them today. So, if only for that, you need to be able to draw on research, not to mention the fact that the reason we do research is to identify best practices, to basically distinguish between what works and what doesn’t. So, as a coach, first and foremost, I would focus on knowing my research, understanding the relevant studies, being able to communicate this data, first and foremost. Second, especially when you’re talking happiness, lead by example, because whether on the conscious or subconscious level, people, whether it’s your students, your coachee, your children, or your colleagues, people do what you do much more so than what you say. So you may have it down and be able to deliver the perfect oration, but that’s not enough if you don’t walk your talk. And I don’t mean that all coaches who teach happiness have to be happy, have to be ecstatic. No, but you have to be working on becoming happier. You have to have experience going through the motions, struggling with these concepts so that you can better teach it. And, finally, and this is of course important for all teachers and coaches are teachers as well, is — actually not finally, I have a finally, but before the finally, is to be able to tell stories. So, yeah, data is important, research is important, but ultimately what people remember are stories, and stories coupled with research, whether it’s research told as story or separately, research with stories has the rational and the emotional elements and they’re both necessary. And, finally, the ability to listen. So this goes back to the 1970s with research by Robert Greenleaf on servant leadership where the number one characteristic of servant leaders was the ability to listen and this is important when we look at the work of coaches or therapists or parents or managers, first listen.

Alex: Absolutely. That’s why I always laugh a little bit when I see someone’s LinkedIn profile that says, “I’m a servant leader,” but I’m like, I always think like, “Are you?” because if you put it on your LinkedIn profile, I feel like that doesn’t align very much with actually being a servant leader because it’s like you don’t talk about it, you just act in a way that is aligned with that. So it’s like, yeah, hopefully, I’m not offending too many people that are listening to us. But, yeah, I always laugh about that.

Tal: If they walk their talk, let them put it on. 

Alex: Hey, but now you have to walk it real, real good because you have it up there on LinkedIn. That’s funny. And, by the way, I am like enjoying drinking as we’re talking because it is —

Tal: I hope I haven’t started a new habit in you or a trend in others. I’m all for —

Alex: Yeah, I know.

Tal: Yeah. 

Alex: Balance. I do whatever the guest does so whatever is in that form, I’m going to drink. 

Tal: Blame it on me, Alex.

Alex: I will blame it on you, Tal, and I’ve been waiting for the person that’s going to decide to do a tequila shot and it’s going to be like a 9 AM shoot or something like that so we’ll see. I try to keep it healthy like you so I’m like — but part of balance is sometimes doing something that is not what you do every day. So, as I hear you talk about happiness, one of the things that comes to mind is the difference between a state and a stage. So you can have a euphoric moment or period of time but it might not necessarily calcify into these or solidified into this sustainable growth-oriented pattern so it’s more of a state versus a stage where you really have lived your life in a way that allows you to have this base of like happiness. So how do we differentiate the moments in time or experiences that we’re going through with like some semblance of a longer term, sustained approach to life that leads to a happy life?

Tal: Yeah. So, we go back to definitions here, Alex, because some people equate happiness with pleasure and they say, “You know, I was so happy lying down on the beach or having my ice cream,” and for them that defines happiness, whereas many other people, me being one of them, define happiness as something which is much more than pleasure. Yeah, pleasurable emotions are part of a happy life, but so are painful emotions and so is a sense of meaning and purpose and so are deep, intimate relationships and so is curiosity and learning and spirituality. So happiness is a multifaceted construct and when it’s such, then it doesn’t just depend on enjoying that ice cream, or, for that matter, on having this argument with my partner that of course will make me enjoy far fewer pleasurable emotions at the moment, but I can still lead an overall happy life while having struggles and disagreements with my beautiful enemy. And it is important to expand our understanding of happiness because if we don’t do it, then that can be a source of a great deal of unhappiness. If my expectation is to lead a happy life, a consistently happy life, a constant high, in other words, then I’m in for disappointment. If my expectation is a relationship where we’re always smiling, laughing, and making love together, then I’m in for disappointment, because in the best of relationships, there are hard times and in the best of lives, there are challenging times.

Alex: Absolutely. And this just made me think of Susan David’s work on emotional agility and how to read and interpret your emotions properly and a lot of the ways in which we, at the societal level, talk about emotions may not necessarily align with the way we actually have to interpret our emotions.

Tal: Yeah, and what emotional agility requires is, first and foremost, embracing those emotions. First and foremost, accepting that they’re natural. One thing to keep in mind, going slightly back to our conversation around ethics and morality, there are no good or bad emotions. There are no moral or immoral emotions. I’m not a bad person, if I experience envy towards my friend, it simply makes me human. Envy is a natural emotion. How I act on this emotion, that’s a whole different story. If I hurt my friend because of the envy, well, that does enter the moral domain, but the emotion itself is neither good nor bad, just like the law of gravity is neither good nor bad, it’s simply part of nature. And, paradoxically, and this is interesting, the paradox is that when I suppress and reject an emotion like envy, that emotion only intensifies, it grows stronger, whereas when I accept and embrace it, paradoxically, it’s likely to dissipate, to wane, to disappear.

Alex: Absolutely. When I’m thinking about like coaches and their focus on their client’s happiness and happiness being such a multidimensional construct, it seems like it should be like a practice for coaches to pay attention to a lot of different dimensions and try to understand, both for like more scientifically and methodologically but also intuitively, get a sense for where their clients are across, like the SPIRE kind of model and to understand are there certain aspects that I need to focus on to help this client live a healthier life, and it also makes me think about how often you ask the client what they want to work on and they might tell you what they want to work on but that’s not what they should be working on or what they actually want to work on and when you add that layer of happiness to it, I think it might be a little overwhelming for coaches to get out of their process and the way of doing things and start paying attention to some of these multidimensional components, but it seems so important for coaches to have some sort of awareness around how does this coaching relationship lead to someone living a happier life, not just better performance at work, increasing communication, like how does it all come together to make coaching — I like the idea of coaching as a holistic process that ultimately improves the person, the people around them, the organization, but it’s holistic, like what are you having for breakfast, and I feel like a lot of coaches don’t necessarily focus on that but it’s like, well, maybe you’re having way too much coffee during the day and I feel like only a small subset of coaches think outside the box in terms of, let’s say, nutrition and how that plays into someone’s well-being. 

Tal: Oh, yeah.

Alex: So have a beer, just tell them to have a beer during their coaching.

Tal: That’s right. There’s always a tension between simplicity and complexity. There’s a beautiful quote, it’s attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, but he actually never said it, we don’t know who did, but the quote is, “For simplicity on this side of complexity, I would not give a fig. For simplicity on the other side of complexity, I would give my life.” Now just to break down this quote, in other words, just something simple and banal, I would not give a fig, I would give nothing, but for simplicity that is on the other side of complexity, in other words, after I’ve chewed and digested and analyzed the complexity and then arrived at a simplicity, for that I would give my life. And, in many ways, the reason why coaches need to be lifelong learners is because their goal, their objective is to reach as much as possible in every session the simplicity on the other side of complexity. So to really understand the impact of nutrition and then the simple advice can be I have two cups of coffee instead of seven a day, that’s simple, but it’s on the other side of complexity because they really understand why and what it’s doing to the whole system, to the complex system, that it’s affecting the way they wake up in the morning, interact with their partner, and that in turn affects the way they are with their client or colleague and so on. Or a simple advice can be, “You know, why don’t you start exercising three times a week?” Well, that’s very simple but it’s the other side of complexity because we know how much physical exercise impacts our brains on the neural level in terms of how we think, what we think, our energy levels, our anxiety levels, so it’s important to understand and then there’s weight behind those sayings, to read simplicity on the other side of complexity, another way of thinking about it, when I asked that same Richard Hackman who was an extraordinary teacher, I asked him for advice when I became a teacher, he said, “Prepare, prepare, prepare, and then be spontaneous.” 

Alex: Love that. 

Tal: And in many ways, this is the way for a coach to approach, you need the preparation, you need to digest and work on the complex issues because the human being is very complex and that’s why, yeah, you go through a coaching certificate program, that’s not the end of it, that’s just the first step of a 1000-mile journey. Continue to be a lifelong learner. Learn about nutrition and then learn about exercise and learn about leadership and learn about systems. And then when you’re with the other person, be with the other person. And then patterns emerge. When you really listen, patterns emerge.

Alex: Love that. Love your characterization of coaches as lifelong learners and that’s part of why I love to do what I do, because having come together with WBEX, just the programs that we put together are so powerful, and, to me, it’s so powerful that coaches, just this eagerness of coaches to consume world-class content, like you’ve spoken at our events, like you’re speaking in the Summit this year, like to have so many people come and listen to a session to learn more about a particular topic and to have a community of coaches that are so — to me, it’s so beautiful because coaches ultimately are these conduits for change for other people and I just love the coaching community, like the coaches that are so driven to learn so that they can prepare, prepare, prepare, and then be in the moment with someone, you’re really defining what good coaching is. It’s people that are great listeners but it seems simple, you make something difficult seem simple when you’re doing great coaching because it comes from all that preparation that you’ve done for years and years and that orientation towards understanding all these complex dynamics and, at the end of the day, you’re just sitting there listening and asking a question or providing some sort of directionality to your client in a very elegant way, like there’s so much complexity in delivering effective coaching and it all comes from preparation. And I love that quote about the fig and the other side of complexity. It makes me just think of this kinds of quote as well, that is before you’re enlightened, that’s a chair, and then after you’re enlightened, the chair is still a chair. Like the enlightenment process doesn’t — you’re like, “Oh, that’s a chair,” and then you’re enlightened, and, “It’s a chair,” but it’s a very different chair, but it’s still a chair.

Tal: Very much so.

Alex: That’s awesome. So I’m curious, what are some of your favorite books? Like in general, like any topic, fiction, nonfiction, like what are some throughout your life that — you read a lot, you’re an academic, you read for living, basically, so what are some of your favorite books, especially those that might be of interest to coaches?

Tal: Yeah, so I have a few. I read a lot. I love to read because it’s my way of spending time with great minds. So, to me, the father of field of happiness studies is Aristotle and he wrote about —

Alex: Eudaimonia, I don’t even know how to pronounce it.

Tal: Eudaimonia, he wrote about. So, he wrote about so many of the elements of SPIRE more than 2,500 years ago. He wrote about sense of meaning and purpose, an end, telos. He wrote about arete, excellence and a deep sense of excellence. He wrote about the importance of friendship and contemplation. He wrote about — he defined us as rational animals. So, Aristotle is the father.

Alex: The unmoved mover, I love that concept. 

Tal: Yeah, the prime mover, exactly. And then there is Lao Tzu, on the other side of the world, actually before Aristotle, talked about the importance of accepting and embracing emotions so that they can flow like water. Beautiful imagery and brilliant, just brilliant psychologically. 

Alex: The tao, so powerful. 

Tal: Yes, yeah, exactly. And fast forward, my favorite author is actually Mary Ann Evans who changed her name to George Eliot because in the 19th century, being published as a woman, being taken seriously as an author was difficult. To my mind, the greatest literary mind in history. So, my favorite book is Daniel Deronda by Mary Ann Evans or AKA George Eliot. Now more to professional books, even though these I do see them as professional books, reading Lao Tzu, you’ll get so many ideas for coaching. 

Alex: Love it. 

Tal: So, there’s a book that I love by Sara Orem called Appreciative Coaching, which very much brings the whole field of positive psychology or appreciative inquiry into the coaching world. In my coaching practices, I use that. I use that approach and also teach it as part of our coaching certification as well as of our master’s degree. So this is a book that I really have enjoyed and used and recommend, Appreciative Coaching. I’m also a very big fan of and in great debt to Nathaniel Branden. So Nathaniel Branden was never a traditional academic, even though he did teach in academic institutions at times. He was a psychotherapist and he wrote a book called The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, and I ended up writing my dissertation on self-esteem on his work and also had the opportunity of being a student and later a coachee of his. So many of his techniques I bring into my coaching practices.

Alex: You’ve had some great mentors. 

Tal: Yes. One of the things that I feel is lost in today’s world because people want everything fast is the whole apprenticeship method of learning. In the past, you were a painter, you studied with a great painter and could be for 20 years before you went on your own. Doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have painted great things then, but you were an apprentice, you were a student. And today, we don’t have time for that, even though life expectancy is significantly higher. We live longer, we seem to feel like we have less time and it’s unfortunate. For six years, people hear about my class, positive psychology, the biggest class at Harvard, they think it came out of nowhere. But it did not. For six years, I was the teaching assistant of Professor Philip Stone who was the first to teach positive psychology at Harvard. I was a TA, which meant grading papers and preparing slides and, once in a while, being given a lecture and then being — and then he was my beautiful enemy, telling me how that lecture can improve, appreciating what worked and telling me what can be improved. And for six years, he trained me and then a few more years training on the job, so to speak. Processes, they take time, and, at times, trying to hurry processes backfires.

Alex: Prepare, prepare, prepare. If you keep it at one prepare, it’s not going to be the same when you’re just going with the flow. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Tal, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a fascinating episode. I’m looking forward to sharing it with the world, the coaching community. Thank you for your time. Very generous and fascinating conversation. Appreciate having you today.

Tal: Thank you, Alex, and I want to take the opportunity to thank you, to thank coaching.com for the important work that you’re doing in cultivating lifelong learners and the coaching community because our world so much needs coaches, so much needs beautiful enemies. If there were more competent, moral, ethical coaches in our world, our world would be a lot better. So when I interact with the coaching community, I must say I feel optimistic. Thank you.

Alex: Thank you so much. Couldn’t agree with you more. I’m sure we’ll have you back and we can explore that in more depth so thank you so much for being with us today and for the kind words. 

Tal: Thank you, Alex.