Small Steps To A Happier Life

Many people spend years chasing the next goal, hoping life will feel better when they finally arrive. But what if feeling happier works differently?

In this episode, Dr Lee David is joined by Mark Williamson, Director of Action for Happiness and author of a new book about how to make life happier.

They explore why happiness is often misunderstood as something we reach through success, achievement or finally getting everything in place. Mark shares why many people fall into the trap of “I’ll be happy when…”, and how this can keep fulfilment feeling just out of reach.

The conversation looks at a more realistic path to wellbeing – including where we place our attention, the habits we build and how small repeated actions can shift the direction of daily life. Lee and Mark discuss mindfulness, gratitude and why noticing what genuinely helps matters more than chasing perfect routines.

They also reflect on the importance of relationships, kindness and listening well. Mark explains why connection remains one of the strongest predictors of long-term happiness, and how even small everyday interactions can have wider ripple effects.

This is a thoughtful and grounded conversation about creating a happier life through realistic choices, meaning and everyday moments that often go unseen.

Key moments

00:00 Kindness and ripple effects
01:21 Introduction
02:09 What happiness really means
07:45 The “I’ll be happy when” trap
12:21 Agency and values-led choices
16:29 Mindfulness in daily life
21:51 Gratitude and noticing good
29:00 Tiny habits that last
32:38 Why relationships matter
35:28 Listening and reducing conflict
43:20 Choice Space takeaway
45:04 Being interested, not interesting

About the guest

Dr Mark Williamson is the Director of Action for Happiness and has led this social movement from an idea on paper to a thriving community with over 800,000 members in 100+ countries. He was previously Director of Innovation at the Carbon Trust, Senior Manager at Accenture and worked at Hewlett-Packard Labs and Orange. 

Mark’s new book, Make Life Happier: 23 Practical Ways to Feel Better, Find Meaning and Make a Difference was published in April 2026.

You can follow Mark on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, Bluesky, TikTok and Instagram

About the host

Dr Lee David is a GP, CBT therapist and author specialising in mental health and wellbeing. Lee has written many books on CBT, mindfulness and teen wellbeing, and speaks regularly at conferences and in the media. Away from work she enjoys running, hiking, singing in a choir and spending time outdoors with her family. You can find Lee through her website and on Instagram, TikTok (@dr.lee.david), Facebook and LinkedIn.  You can find more about her books, wellbeing courses and therapy here:  https://linktr.ee/dr.lee.david 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And really noticing the good in others. And that encourages this sense of looking out for what's good in each other. I'd love to share some of my passion for this idea of kindness, not as a soft, weak, nice to have, but as a fundamental, strong, brave way of approaching life. We're bombarded with media that's wired to the negative. That's what generates headlines and clickbait. We're in social channels that amplify rage and hostility. And yet, all around us, there are millions of people living everyday lives with generosity and kindness, caring for their loved ones, looking out for each other. And we are part of that and we can contribute even more to that. And the beautiful thing about all the research on happiness is that when we are generous to others, when we make time to connect, to give back, to volunteer, to be part of our community, to share enthusiasm, to listen well. This is just such a reciprocal gift that we give to ourselves because it kind of gives us a boost, but crucially to our families, to our communities, and to the wider world. And there's some lovely studies about how our kind acts have ripple effects beyond the ones we can even see.

Dr Lee David 1:20

Welcome to the Choice Space Podcast. I'm Dr. Lee David, GP CBC therapist and author. Most of us want to feel happy, but it's not always clear how to approach that in everyday life. In this episode, we're going to explore what happiness really means beyond brief moments of feeling good and what supports developing it day to day. Where our attention goes to the actions we take, how we respond to ourselves, and how we connect with those around us. I'm delighted to be joined today by Dr. Mark Williamson, Director of Action for Happiness and author of his new book, Make Life Happier. Mark, welcome. Could you start by telling us a little more about your work and what led you to focus on happiness and a bit about your new book?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Well, hello Lee, it's lovely to be with you. I have for the last 15 years been running Action for Happiness, which is a non-profit but also a growing community or movement of people that believe that their actions can make a difference when it comes to happiness and well-being. So we take the science of what really works, and I've had the privilege of working with hundreds of leading experts in well-being, and then we try to help people apply that in their own lives, not just for their own benefit, though. And one of the crucial things I really want to get across in our conversation today is how happiness is an interdependent aspect of our lives. We are social creatures and our own well-being contributes to others, and also the way we help others contributes to our own well-being. So the fundamental idea with Action for Happiness and all of my work is how can we do things that make a difference? And also how can the little actions we take have a ripple effect beyond just our own lives to help our loved ones, to help our neighbors, our colleagues, and the people that we interact with in our lives. Because we are in a world full of uncertainty and unhappiness and so many challenges, some of which are in our control, many of which aren't in our control. The one thing we always have is the agency to choose where we place our attention, how we respond, how we treat others, and what we contribute to the little mini world that we all occupy and influence. So I've been inspired over the time, 15 years I've been doing this, to see that this stuff really can change people's lives. I've met thousands of people who were in a difficult place. We've helped them with ideas, they've tried things out, they've learned what works and what doesn't work. And what's most inspiring is that many people who have been part of this Action for Happiness journey have said things like, that's really helped me, and now I want to help others. And that for me captures in a nutshell something I'd love all of us to experience and something I've certainly found in my own life, that when we sort our own inner happiness out, we're better placed to be there for others, to be a good father, to be a good friend, to be a good colleague, to be a good neighbor. And so I think that our own happiness and the happiness of others are so closely connected.

Dr Lee David 4:22

Love that idea about happiness being something which we all experience jointly as a community rather than being something just for me, because it just feels so much more accessible and more connected. And I have a visualization of a forest where we know that trees communicate and actually they support one another, and the the growth of the forest is all of the trees together supporting different plants and animals and it's this whole ecosystem, and it feels a little bit like happiness might relate to that rather than this being a very individual process.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

I think that's really well put, Lee. And I think there's something we should get clear from the start of this conversation that by talking about happiness, we're not suggesting that life will be free from suffering or permanently happy. I think what I'm talking about with make life happier, which is the title of my book, which is just coming out. And happier is an interesting framing because of course there is no perfect happy. We will all experience loss and suffering and difficult times. And yet there are practical things we can do to move forward in a helpful way from wherever we are in our lives right now. And I think that's best done, as you've just said, in an interconnected way. And there's a sort of tyranny that comes with this commercial individualistic striving for happiness, which is like, I want to get the best stuff and be the best influencer and all the sort of personal success measures that we tend to associate with individual happiness. And it's actually a bit shallow and a bit lacking in meaning and can feel like a real pressure to be almost like superficially happy. I'm not trying to promote that way of making life happier. So many of us are not at peace with ourselves, and as a result, we're not really at peace with each other. We can see that wherever we look in the world right now. And so, really, to make life happier, we can work on both those areas and find that they become mutually reinforcing when we are able to be more at peace with ourselves by being more self-aware, by having some practices that support us, by coping well in difficult times, by building habits that help us, we're then better placed to be good humans. We can then look outwards more, build better relationships, trust other people more, contribute more in our communities. And these things become a virtuous circle where we feel better and we become better able to help and contribute. So I really like your tree metaphor.

Dr Lee David 6:42

I think there's a trap that we can fall into with a lot of areas of life where we feel like if I'm just better in this area, then that will mean I am happy and it can lead to an awful lot of comparison. And it might be success academically, success at work, it might be body image-related issues, it might be comparing ourselves as a parent or in so many different aspects. And so there's this real sense of judgment and needing to compare ourselves to others, and often we do fall short in various areas because we're just humans, and so it feels like that isn't what leads to happiness. It almost has the reverse, but it sort of pulls us in to say, if only you could do this, then you'll be happy. And I think what you're talking about is a much more lasting sense of deeper contentment, of acceptance, and something that really brings that sense of meaning and connection with others, which is very different to that short-term spike of I've done really well today, but but it doesn't last and I've got to keep it up tomorrow. And it's actually a stress rather than being positive.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Yes. So my book starts with the first chapters called Wake Up. And it's something I think we we need as almost a foundation for this journey to make life happier. And it relates to your point about so many of us are carrying a I'll be happy when, whether it's a I'll be happy when I get that promotion, when I earn a certain amount of money, when my friends like me more, when I'm in a stable relationship. It goes on and on. And and of course, that's what marketers sell us. A lot of advertising is saying you'll be happy when you get this and have this and so on. My own wake-up was realizing that I had been following what's called extrinsic motivation. So I had spent most of my life wanting to please and impress others. I feel like I'm a sort of people pleaser, maybe these days a bit of a recovering people pleaser. But a lot of what I'd been striving for in my school and my university and my career to that point, I was working as a business consultant in a commercial world full of pressures, full of supposed success. And yet I was really trying to fulfill other people's expectations. I mean, my parent expectations, the colleagues, of what was considered to be a successful life. And I may have appeared to be successful on the outside, but inside I was really struggling. I felt like my life was meaningless. I felt under enormous pressure. In my case, it was coming out as back pain. I had incredibly debilitating back pain. What was really going on for me was I was doing that classic, perhaps classic British male thing of holding my emotions inside. I was really cared what people thought of me. I really wanted to be seen to be doing well. And what wasn't coming out emotionally for me was coming out physically, hence the back pain. And when I realized that that pain, which was very real, sort of stress-induced rather than physical, that was the beginning of this wake-up for me. I learned what we now call mindfulness, but at the time was a breathing exercise. It helped me be more aware of my own physical sensations and my own emotional reality. Suddenly I could focus more on intrinsic motivation, which is like, what do I really want to do with my life? And there's a little exercise, maybe we could encourage listeners to try this out right now, that really helped me, which was to visualize yourself towards the end of your life. I don't want to get morbid about this, but think many years from now, when you're looking back on the highs and lows of your life, try and imagine yourself in that future me scenario and think, what advice would future Lee or future Mark or future whoever you are right now hearing this, what advice would your future self give you right now about what really matters? So when I took a moment to do that exercise, it became enormously clear. I found myself saying, spend more time working on things that you really care about with people that you love and let go of lots of the other stuff that you're pursuing right now. And that for me really captured that sense of the switch from extrinsic, you know, pleasing others, doing what others expect, to focusing on like what do I really value? And of course, that is my own happiness, like at an authentic level rather than how it appears on the outside. And it then makes me think, well, I want to contribute and I want to be in relation with others in a way that helps. So there's many, many more steps we could take on that journey. But that was for me, felt like the starting point, which is getting away from the I'll be happy when to say, well, let's start this now.

Dr Lee David 11:02

I really love that. And it and it I did that exercise as you were talking about it. And one of the things I was thinking about who do I want to see as that old granny lee? And it made me think that one of my values is around being strong and staying powerful through age and having that sense of growth and development. And so that actually also links into what brings happiness in my here and now because I'm thinking about the trajectory about becoming who I want to be as I age. And then I was thinking about what you said when I look back, and it and for me, it's many of the things you mentioned. It it's it's the connections, it's the people I care about. And for me, also, something I really care about is doing work that feels meaningful, that I feel contributes in some way to the world, that that is compassionate and thoughtful. And that really is something that I would want to feel has been a theme, both in my relationships with people around me and also in my working life. So I think it's so powerful to do that, and it really does influence how we then choose to live alongside our values and make these choices. Because sometimes some of these choices are less comfortable than doing what's easy. And so actually, sometimes that it makes me feel like striving for happiness is sometimes work, which is a good work, but actually it's not something that just happens to us.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Well, I think you're making a really important point about a word I really like right now, which is about agency. And what I mean by that is the sense that what we do can make a difference. And and so the striving in the sense of like I must please others is probably an unhealthy striving. But the striving of like I would like to make conscious choices about how I spend my time, what I put my attention into, who I care about, what I contribute, I have some control, agency over my life, and I'm making choices. Yes, I'm in a world full of uncertainty and challenge and sometimes fear and anxiety, and I can't always make that stop or change, but I can choose what I focus on. So, back to your point about what can we do. One important point to note is that we are all different. So, although this desire to feel happier is universal, and we in particular we really want it for our loved ones, when you ask parents what they want most for their children, the most common answer is I just want them to be happy. But we're different in terms of what creates that for us. So, one of my key ideas and one of the things we do with Action for Happiness is bringing a sort of happiness scientist mindset to how we live our lives. What I mean by that is we can try practical little experiments. One of the challenges when you work with the science of well-being or indeed any other field is that you get these seemingly conflicting headlines. You might find, well, yoga's really good for this, and like, oh, you should try intermittent fasting. There's a there's a cacophony of ideas and often contradictory ways that we can look after our well-being. And that in some ways makes sense because we're all individually different. And I like this idea of doing what's what I call n equals one experiments. So anyone who knows about scientific studies knows you have an N number, like there were 20,000 participants. If a study says that cold water swimming is brilliant for your health, but when you jump into a cold water, you don't find that it's great for you, the n equals one of your own experience matters more than what they generalized study said. I find this really empowering because it means we can look at the well-being insights that are out there. We can say, oh, I might try joining a choir, or I might try, as I have in my own life, getting out on my bicycle, or I might try mindfulness, and then I can see if it works for me. And that ability to dabble, if you like, and learn, I don't think that as that's so much as striving, as more like treating your life as a little bit of a laboratory of, well, let's find out what works, but be really deliberate about it and say, okay, well, I'm gonna notice how I feel. So probably my favorite foundational life skill for making life happier is some version of mindfulness. Now, for some people, that immediately rings bells of like, oh, meditation, I can't do that. Although meditation is a brilliant way to learn the skill of mindfulness, I think this is a sort of core life skill that we can bring into every aspect of our daily life, regardless of whether we see ourselves as someone who likes to meditate. And it's really just that sense of being able to choose where we place our attention. Uh, I experienced this when I had the back pain. I could bring my attention to where the pain was, and somehow just being able to be with the pain rather than sort of pushing it away made it easier to cope with. And over the years, I've developed all kinds of little mini mindfulness techniques, might be whenever I hear someone's phone ping instead of thinking, oh gosh, that's annoying. Okay, that's a little reminder just to pause and take a breath and just sort of notice what's going on around me, how I'm feeling. These things feel quite sort of minor, this idea of just breathing and noticing. And yet, this is the fundamental life skill to make wise choices, to see the impact of our own behavior on ourselves, like, oh, I did that, and I felt quite uncomfortable, or on a stressful day when I my brain tells me, like, I haven't got time to go out tonight. If I go and join the community choir and sing for an hour, I feel so much happier afterwards. And it was only having the mindfulness to go, oh, that's an interesting shift. I'll remember that. And it permeates everything, it permeates how we are in in a meeting with others, how we are when our partner's angry with us, how we are when we feel like we've made a mistake. That self-awareness to think, oh, I'm feeling cross right now, or I'm feeling motivated right now. That for me is the fundamental skill on which everything else can build.

Dr Lee David 16:29

Going back to your point about agency, which I really love that idea, what comes to mind for me is it's something about towards rather than away steps. Because a towards step is taking a step in the direction of our values, things we care about, things that feel important to us. And what that step is will vary on different days, on different situations, how much time we've got. So we've got a lot of flexibility about how we might choose to live out our values. Whereas when we might have maybe some imposter feelings with people pleasers, it's very much I have to do this because otherwise I'm going to feel like I'm not good enough or I'm going to feel like people will reject me. And so that's an away step because we're fearful, and so our threat system is engaged, and so we don't get that positive benefit because we're triggered. So it might look exactly the same on the outside. And it's a bit like I'll go to the gym because I care about exercise and looking after my body versus I go to the gym because I feel ashamed of my current body and I feel I'm not good enough. And they look the same. You're both going to the gym, and yet one of them is this lovely positive experience of feeling agency and power over our and values-based choices. And one of them is a sense of running away from fear and threat and shame. And it feels so important that we try to let go of some of those negative stories. And actually, then what you came on to is exactly how to do that, I think, which is create some space and use mindfulness not necessarily as meditation, but as a way to create a pause, to shift our attention, to make some space for perhaps distress and regulate. And so it's maybe having a breath and saying, I feel a bit triggered, or I'm feeling worried about my body shape today, but not necessarily then letting that run away with us as to how we then respond to it, and then come back to okay, what what matters? What matters to me, and what's what choice can I make that would support me? And and it feels like that lovely sense of bringing your attention, and it might be bringing our attention to something beautiful in our environment, or it might be something like, I need to notice that I'm finding this hard, and like is there a way to look after myself? So again, that's really varied in individual, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 18:38

It really is. And there's a combination that I really like of mindfulness, which is sort of uh noticing how things are and allowing us to recognise whether we're, you know, we might be in a good mood or we might be feeling really anxious, for example. And one of the keys, I think, to happiness is being able to be at peace with whatever is going on right now. This is the cool idea of mindfulness in many ways, sort of non-judgmental, just to say, I am feeling tired today, I'm feeling upset today. And I then like to build on that acceptance of how we are with a choice to focus on something good. And so that many people will be familiar with the idea of gratitude and the ways in which we can cultivate positive emotional states. I think that's much more authentic when we started from a space of how am I right now, even if I'm having a difficult day. And still, and I think and is an important word here, we're not pushing away the negative, we're saying, and I can choose what I do, but also what I focus on. So I have found, as well known and obvious as it might be these days, the practice of at the end of a day saying, what went well today, what's been good, has over many years helped me train myself to look out more and experience more good in my life. Uh the exercise of thinking about three good things at the end of the day helps me sleep better, helps me get out of my own way when it comes to sort of making a mountain out of a molehill or getting stuck in cycles of worry or doom loops and thinking, well, no, I am healthy or I've spent time with a loved one, or the sun came out today. And that's not suggesting that the stress at work or the challenge I'm facing financially or whatever it is has gone away, but it's saying I can also choose to place my attention on things that I very often take for granted. And when I do that, I'm better able to respond wisely. So I think gratitude and choosing to focus on what's good is a really powerful skill. But we can also bring that into our relationships. We can turn to our loved ones and say, what's been good for you today? I find that a much more helpful question to ask my children than how was your day? Because it's encouraging them to share what they're excited about. And so we can create these interactions that help people to see more of what's good, to get more of that sort of approach rather than avoidance idea that you were talking about there. And then, of course, once we've discovered some things that are helpful, we run into this big challenge, Lee, which is that behavior change is really hard. And we are creatures of habit, and we many of us have habits of behavior and emotional responses that have been wired into us through our early life experiences, the family situations we grew up in, and our own coping strategies that we developed, some of which might be positive, some of which might be not serving us so well. So, in my work with Action for Happiness, this idea of behavior change turns out to be so important. So agency is great to get you started, but the only way you keep a change going is sort of understanding what we call the habit loop. How do we form and maintain positive habits? So if we if I find, for example, as I have, that cycling is great for my wellbeing, how do I make that part of my daily life? And so there were various little tips and tricks about building and maintaining positive habits, which I talk about in the book.

Dr Lee David 21:50

That's so important. And I think gratitude is such a lovely idea. And I think it relates to the fact that you know the negativity. Of the brain, that our brain can be like velcro for all the difficult stuff that's happened, all the times we've maybe felt criticized or something's gone wrong. And our brain is wired to remember that stuff so that we, if fire as hot, we don't want to get burnt several times before we remember. We want to remember that straight away. So our brains are great at remembering things that go wrong, but the other stuff, the the lovely stuff, the positive moments, the things that we enjoyed, we're less wired to remember that automatically. So it's a bit like a nonstick pan sometimes for some of those good experiences. They just slide off and we forget about them, or we might discount them and say, oh well, that wasn't really that good. And so it feels like the gratitude is around velcroing in some of these positive experiences and recognizing them like post-it notes, sticking them on the wall, saying, Yep, this happened. And they don't have to be giant, do they? They could be lots of small ones. It's the multicoloured, small experiences that build up to create that lovely picture of variety and difference that happens over the course of a day, a week, a month. I think that feels very powerful. Just to just to start with that, do you think that the small stuff woven together makes a big difference?

SPEAKER_00 23:09

I do. And there's a couple of quotes I love on this. So John Cabert Zinn says, the little moments, or something like that, they're not little, they're what makes life big in a way. And on the subject of gratitude, one of my favourite uh ideas is enjoy the little things because one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things. And I I think so often in our little moments of everyday, there's so much potential joy and connection in moments, you know, around the breakfast table or uh bumping into a colleague or being out in in nature that feel like they're part of everyday life and not very big, and there's so much big stuff going on in the world. And yet so much of our life is spent in everyday moments. And being able to, as you say, extract the good from it and sort of weave that together helps us feel that life is going better overall and builds this sense of agency that, like, you know, there are things in my life that are good even when things feel uncertain. And that creates hope and it creates a desire to sort of build more of that. So I do think there's a there's an idea of momentum when it comes to happiness actions that we can get on a bit of a role. And when we build in a bit more self-awareness and a bit more appreciation of what's good and a bit more time with others, and a bit more letting go of some of the unhelpful worrying or the activities that don't serve us so well, it sort of really builds that sense of can-do and optimism. And I like to talk about realistic optimism because one of my worries with this whole area of happiness is there are some unhelpful snake oil sailing type gurus telling us that if only we manifest and imagine and appeal to the law of attraction, then everything we want will come to us. I think that's sort of unrealistic optimism. But for me, sort of practical optimism is to say, look, I can't control everything, but I can choose what I do, and these little moments of good together help me get more out of my own life and leave me better placed to help others. Well, I I'm an engineer by background, and I like bringing in an engineer's mindset to this challenge of living well. Happiness engineering is really like, how do I piece this together in the complex, messy reality of my life? I may not be sleeping well right now, I might be dealing with challenges in our local neighborhood, I might be really worried about what's going on around the world, and I can choose how I look after my physical health today, what I say to my loved ones, how I weave in that habit I'm trying to build in a way that becomes part of daily life. And that sort of engineers approach to like piecing together the bits that make life better.

Dr Lee David 25:46

This is the Choice Pause, a short tool you'll hear in every episode drawn from my books and therapy practice. Each time it offers a different way to pause, notice, and choose your next step. Today is a pause for appreciating this moment. Take a slow breath in and a longer breath out. Let your shoulders be heavy. Allow your face to have a friendly, kind expression. Across the day, there are so many moments that we could appreciate if we give them our attention. You might be stepping outside, walking between places, or pausing briefly before the next task begins. Often these moments pass quickly and our attention moves straight on to what's next. See if you can pause here, just occasionally. Notice where you are, the light, the space, how you're feeling in this moment. Just for a few seconds look for something that you might appreciate. It could be the way the light falls on something nearby. A patch of sky, a flower or a tree, a friendly face or a small smile. A sense of warmth or a moment of quiet. Let yourself pause and notice. You don't need to change anything, just allow it to register. This feels peaceful, that looks beautiful. I'm enjoying the taste. It feels nice to smile. There are small moments like this all around you. And when you begin to look for them, they become easier to find. And as you continue with your day, see if you can keep your attention open to small things that you might appreciate and carry that with you into what comes next. I love the idea of engineering happiness. You can't control every outcome, can you? But what we can do is put things together in a way that maximise our chances. Life is about probabilities and not about certainty. So we can do things that are most likely to be helpful. And then if they're not working, we can flex, we can adapt, we can change them. So I'm I'm really liking this idea about going back to our values and our elderly person looking back on life and saying, what really matters to me and what do I want to ensure that I'm prioritizing as I live? And then we come back to, okay, can I notice the things that actually I do value in my day-to-day life by bringing my attention to it? And then we come to, okay, what do I need to put in place? What habits, what behaviours do I need that will actually move me in the direction of these values, that will actually support me to create, to engineer this positive happiness life that we're talking about, which is so complex and has room for sadness and grief and loss and complexity, but also has got space for the things that we care about. And so, yeah, definitely. I think it would be great to then think about how do we start to make those choices that actually allow us to enact, to behave in ways that really support the things that matter.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Thank you. And there are lots of experts that I talk about in the book on things around habits and behavior. And I try and blend all of their ideas together. But some really important things to know about habits. One is tiny habits really help. So whatever the thing is that we want to build in our lives, starting with the smallest possible version and make it something that continues to happen regularly, ideally daily, but without beating ourselves up if we fall off the wagon for a day. So if the practice is I'd love to learn to meditate, don't set yourself up. I'm going to meditate for half an hour a day to start with. So I'm going to take like five mindful breaths for half a minute every morning until I've got that sort of sorted. Or if it's I want to exercise more and get fitter, I want to be healthier. Well, start with like, I'm going to get outside for five minutes, six days a week, or something like that. So something really manageable, something that even on the difficult days, we can make sure we do it. So that's the first idea and habits. I'm keep it small. The other thing is we really value the experience of feeling a sense of accomplishment, but also feel good emotions. So another great thing is every single time you do something that you know contributes to your well-being or indeed helps others, really sort of do a little micro celebration. Think, yeah, that that was great. I'm really glad I got outside. I'm really glad I took time to have that conversation. Thank yourself for having done that. Because what that does is it builds almost the dopamine hit that we get at the end of any activity. This is why computer games are so addictive and screen scrolling is so addictive. It gives us a little hit of dopamine. We can create that same idea for ourselves for positive habits by thinking, that was great and really sort of celebrating. Oh, I'm glad I paused there. And there's all kinds of ways. My other favorite habit tip is about bundling things together. So taking something you want to do and combining it with a thing you already do, if we already brush our teeth every day, we can think of things we're grateful for while we're brushing our teeth. If we always boil the kettle to make our coffee, we can do some stretching or take a mindful pause while the kettle's boiling. So building a thing you want more of in your life into a thing that you know you already do regularly is a really helpful way to build habits. And then we can also use one that uh Katie Milkman calls, I think, temptation bundling, which is to say something like, Well, I'm only going to allow myself to do this sort of guilty pleasure, like watching a favorite show, while I'm doing something I really want to build. You know, I'll only watch my favourite show, for example, while I'm cycling in the gym, or I'll only listen to that podcast I love while I'm out walking, or something that builds the thing you want more of in your life along with something you love to do. So it helps, especially for habits that we're sort of struggling to build, to make it linked to something really pleasurable. The thing that so many of us do is we make change or or this idea of happiness engineering hard for ourselves unnecessarily. So the top tip really is if you want more of something in your life, make it easier. If you want less of something in your life, make it harder. So if you don't want to eat as much junk food, get it out of your kitchen. If you want to get out walking more, leave your shoes by the door. These like little micro changes to our environment really shape how easy it is to build and maintain helpful, healthy ways of living.

Dr Lee David 32:09

Yeah, those are so, so important. I really like the idea of connecting something that we find a bit more challenging, but we really want to do with something that we already enjoy because we it will it will just change the association we have it. Maybe we have a feeling of negativity about doing activity. And so as soon as we think about it, we might start worrying about am I fit enough? And so actually by linking it to, well, I'm just gonna think about this podcast that I love to listen to, or this audio book. So I think that feels so powerful.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Thank you, Lee. I I agree. And the the thing I'm most passionate about is how do we combine self-care with other care? Because these two go hand in hand. And when we look after ourselves, we're better placed to help others. And the science shows very clearly that when we're more connected, when we contribute more beyond ourselves, when we're part of something bigger, it's enormously good for our own happiness too. So where where I think we sometimes miss an opportunity in our lives is just knowing how important relationships are. So the longest ever study of human happiness and health, the Harvard study run by my friend Professor Robert Waldinger, they have looked at the factors that affect lifelong health and happiness across a whole range of different aspects of life. And the single biggest predictor of a long and healthy, happy life is the quality of our relationships. And even just knowing that and being aware of that, I for me just changes priorities. It's like the most important thing in life is our relationships. And of course, that's with our nearest and dearest. It's with our wider circle of contacts and colleagues and neighbors. And it's also with how we relate to the others around us. We might call them strangers. I like this idea that a stranger is just a person you haven't met yet and uh, you know, a friend you can potentially make. So I've put a lot of work into this book, and the whole sort of second half of the book is about happier together. How can we be more connected? And we I cover various themes around trust, around kindness, around forgiveness, something many of us find really hard, around sort of community connection, around dealing with conflict, vulnerability, and sort of showing our real selves. But actually, before any of that, the fundamental skill for relating well is about listening and actually how we create space for each other. And there are various life skills I wish every young person had the chance to learn in their family or in their school. One of them is the self-awareness that comes with mindfulness. The other one I'd love everybody to learn is how to listen well. I don't know about you, Lee, but when I look at myself even, but certainly when I look at others, I see breakdowns in communication in families, in workplaces, and of course, as we're seeing around the world in our politics and across between nations and polarized groups, we're not very good at listening to each other.

Dr Lee David 34:54

Yeah, I completely agree. And I think sometimes it's also not just listening to the words that people say, but actually trying to hear the message that they're trying to tell us, which might be going beyond the actual words, because sometimes people say angry words, they sometimes say things they don't quite mean. And so if we're able to hear what is actually happening here, so it we need some self-regulation, I think, when we're listening, if we're feeling triggered by a challenging conversation, and so that we can approach it in a way that enables us to receive the message in a way that's kind of supportive. Do you think that's important?

SPEAKER_00 35:28

I really do. And I I think actually, even before you get to the sort of emotional understanding and dealing with sort of difficult conflicts, I think some of that problem that you've just articulated can be disarmed with the core skill of what I've called active listening, sometimes called reflective listening. I remember when I first learnt this skill and tried it out with my partner, this is many years ago, and was just amazed at how it changed the quality of our interaction. And what had I learned to do? I'd learnt to sort of paraphrase back what she had said to me just to check that I'd understood it right. So you might say something like, Well, I hear that you're feeling frustrated. It sounds like that isn't what you wanted to happen at work today. And they and the other person would say, Yeah, that's exactly it. Or they might, or they might be like, No, no, no, no, you missed my point. But by playing back what people are sharing with us, we're checking in, we're helping that they feel heard. The best way to make someone feel heard is to reflect back to them what they've said. But you're also making sure you have understood them. So much of conflict in our relationships comes from misunderstanding or diff different perspectives on the same situation where we think the other person is just completely unreasonable, but they're looking at the world slightly differently. So I would love everybody to really find out more about reflective listening and sort of how they can be more present. And that does, as you say, just involve sort of being still and tuning in and like looking at body language and trying to really understand someone. And I think one of the reasons we've lost the ability to hear each other is we've tended to conflate listening and understanding with agreement, whether it's in our politics or in our daily life relationships. Just because you help someone feel heard doesn't mean you agree with them. You can't move forward in a disagreement or a conversation if the other person doesn't feel heard. So by reflecting back, you might say, I feel like you really passionately believe in this idea. You're not saying you agree with them. You're just, you're just saying I've heard what you've said. And a model that I love, especially in the context of difficult relationships, is this idea of staying on your side of the net. And what many of us stray into in our relationships is sort of trying to describe the other person's experience rather than our own. And in any interaction, in this conversation we're having today, there were sort of three things going on. There's like, what are my what are my intentions in what I say? Then there's like the actual thing that gets said, and then there's how you interpreted it, and vice versa. And in any interaction, we only know two of the three things going on. Like I know my intention and I know what I said. I have no idea how it landed for you. And likewise, you know what I said and how it landed for you, but you don't know what my intention was or my motivation. And that humility that comes with saying, I don't have all the story here in this interaction, so I'm gonna stay on my side of the net. When you said that, I felt a bit upset or I saw that you did this, that left me feeling a bit uncertain. I'm not saying you always do that, or you don't understand me. I'm not describing the other person's emotions or intentions. I'm keeping it to me. And I cannot tell you how much this is a life changer in relationships. When we stay on our side of the net, we allow the other person to share an experience and they it immediately disarms conflict. And so I would love in our politics and in our families to have more of this wise interaction where we we own our own emotions and we allow the other person to be and to share.

Dr Lee David 38:43

And I'm just hearing also something perhaps around curiosity so that we approach the conversation with a sense of let me understand, let me listen, and let me discover, rather than a pre-formed expectation or idea. And that might be an expectation about the other person, about what they mean. It might be also an expectation about what this means about me. They're saying this, and actually it might be triggering belief about ourselves that might also be important. So we need to try not to get drawn into these automatic beliefs or responses to this means that, as much as, oh, I've heard you say this, and what does this mean? What did you mean by that? And I think we have a lot of shortcuts in our brain where we just assume this means this, this, this, this, and it's a very quick way of going about the world. And whilst it can be very helpful in certain situations, I think when we're really trying to connect and relate to people, then it can lead us to be perhaps have biases or to miss nuance and miss opportunities for connecting with people.

SPEAKER_00 39:44

I think we miss out on so many opportunities to connect. And I think so sadly, we see so many relationships. Well, I mean, in some cases, break down, but also in many cases just fail to flourish. We have parent-child relationships that feel unstable. We have marriages and partnerships that break down, we have disagreement in workplaces. So much of this comes from the baggage we're bringing ourselves and our inability to be at peace with ourselves, and our inability to really allow the other person to be and to accept them and to listen and to share and to allow a difference and again to bring curiosity rather than judgment. So there's huge opportunity for us there once we realise that to do our own work and to stop contributing our part of the difficulty. Now, we can't control the other person's behavior, but we can choose how we respond. And one of the choices I love to make is to choose being kind over being right. And that doesn't mean letting go of our values or being trampled on or sort of not standing up for injustice. I'm just saying sometimes the right thing to do isn't to prove your point, to make your case to win. Maybe the right thing to do is actually to be generous and to be kind and to be forgiving and to be tolerant and to look for the good in other people. And this idea of catching people doing good, like with children in particular, is like instead of criticizing, kind of like, I love the kind thing you did there and really noticing the good in others. And that encourages this sense of looking out for what's good in each other. I'd love to share some of my passion for this idea of kindness, not as a soft, weak, nice to have, but as a fundamental, strong, brave way of approaching life. Because all around us, there's this apparent unkindness. But we're told a false story about the world. We're we're we're bombarded with media that's wired to the negative. That's what generates headlines and clickbait. We're in social channels that amplify rage and hostility and all that's bad about human nature in the world. And yet, all around us, there are millions of people living everyday lives with generosity and kindness, caring for their loved ones, looking out for each other. And we are part of that, and we can contribute even more to that. And the beautiful thing about all the research on happiness is that when we are generous to others, when we make time to connect, to give back, to volunteer, to be part of our community, to share enthusiasm, to listen well, this is just such a reciprocal gift that we give to ourselves because it kind of gives us a boost, but crucially to our families, to our communities, and to the wider world. And there's some lovely studies about how our kind acts have ripple effects beyond the ones we can even see. You know, I might get on a bus and instead of being rude or unpresent, I could say a friendly thing to the driver who's then slightly more tolerant to the next passenger, who then goes on to have a more productive conversation with their partner later that day. These tiny little micro interactions do ripple out more than we imagine. And one of my favorites is that the choices we make, back to this idea of mindfulness, in how we use, for example, online media. So here we are in our social media bubbles and so on. We can choose what we amplify. Am I going to amplify that scary, shocking, annoying, outrageous, fearful thing? Or am I just going to let that slide, move on, and like share something really optimistic or really kind or really generous? And that's a contribution we can meaningfully make to the circles and ripples we have. And when we approached life caring about the happiness of others as well as ourselves, everything improves and we really can make things better together.

Dr Lee David 43:19

I love that so much. So just to finish, Mark, and we always do a quick choice-based takeaway at the end. For someone listening who wants to be just a little more engaged with happiness this week, what small step would you suggest that they they might take?

SPEAKER_00 43:36

I'd say be aware of moments when you feel happier and moments when you feel less happy and just notice what's going on there and be a little bit brave and try putting your happiness scientist hat on and consciously try to do something, maybe something new or something you already know works, that you know supports your happiness and will help you be a better human. And yeah, be intentional with. That recognise you have this agency, even when life is out of control, you can do something.

Dr Lee David 44:04

I love that. And I'm going to pick mine today, it's going to be linked back to your point about listening because I think that's so powerful and it's hugely connecting. And I think we often get caught in our own heads about what we're going to say and how we're being perceived. And that actually cuts us off from really listening to the other person's experience. So my quick tip would be really focus on listening. Give 10, 30 seconds to really pause, absorb what the person's saying, maybe check back in, ask a question. That's interesting. What did you mean by? Or ask a second question that really explores another person's experience. Just ask that extra little layer to really make sense of what they're saying, whether it's a negative thing, whether it's a positive thing, make a pause and explore it with curiosity.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

I really love that. And it reminds me of something, a great tip, which is to focus more on being interested than being interesting. We think we need to be interesting to others, but what we all want is people who are interested in us, and we can be that for other people.

Dr Lee David 45:04

I love that too. Brilliant. Thank you so much. So thanks for listening to the Choice Space podcast. I hope this conversation has offered a little room for you to pause and think about your next step. We've linked all the ways you can connect with Mark in the show notes and a link to his amazing book, which I strongly recommend. I've really enjoyed reading it myself. If this episode has been helpful, please download, follow, and share with someone else who might value the conversation as well. And please do leave a rating or review on whatever platform you listen on. It really does help people to find the show. This episode was edited by L. Dixon.