In this Art of Charm podcast episode, Russ Harris, an ACT therapist and author of The Happiness Trap, explains that happiness is not feeling good all the time but living a rich and meaningful life guided by chosen values, while making room for the full range of human emotions without a struggle.
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Key Takeaways
- Treating happiness as a good feeling sets people up for failure, because good feelings do not last; Russ Harris asks how long a happy feeling lasts on the happiest day of your life before frustration, anxiety or disappointment shows up.
- Emotions are discussed in the episode as being like the weather: they change continually, and a full human life includes fear, sadness, anger and disappointment as well as pleasant states.
- Russ Harris suggests redefining happiness as living a rich and meaningful life in which we feel the full range of human emotions without a struggle, which shifts the focus from feeling good to doing good.
- In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, values are defined as desired qualities of action, usually expressible in one or two words, and they differ from goals because a goal can be ticked off while a value can be lived right now.
- Values are not virtues or rules: virtues include a judgement made by a group, while values are chosen by you, held flexibly, and can sit in the background or move to the front depending on the situation.
- Mindfulness is described as being present with whatever you feel, not as relaxation or feeling good, and the episode stresses that mindfulness without values is like a ship without a rudder.
- Reality gaps are the small distances between the life we want and the life we have, and reality slaps are the big shocks of grief, loss or crisis, and asking what you want to stand for in the face of them is an empowering question.
- If choosing values feels stuck, the episode recommends experimenting with two or three values for a day or a week, noticing the results, and then translating values into short-term goals, longer-term plans and step-by-step actions.
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Who is Russ Harris?
Russ Harris is an ACT therapist, which means he works in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and the author of The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living. He also wrote ACT Questions and Answers: A Practitioner's Guide to 150 Common Sticking Points in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. He joined the episode from Australia and described how The Happiness Trap was written about ten years earlier to challenge popular myths about happiness. In the conversation he mentions that the World Health Organization contracted him to write an ACT protocol for refugee camps, which was being rolled out in places such as Uganda and Syria. The hosts watched two animated videos while preparing for the interview, Mindfulness Myths and The Choice Point, both listed in the episode resources, and one of them was narrated by him.
Episode Chapters
- 00:31 Why happiness myths backfire
- 05:35 Negative emotions and real connection
- 07:09 Redefining happiness as meaning
- 08:39 What mindfulness really means
- 13:15 Turning toward painful emotions
- 15:49 Values versus virtues and morals
- 17:52 Values versus goals in daily life
- 24:08 Values as a compass for anxiety
- 31:53 Reality gaps and reality slaps
- 36:02 Choosing values without overthinking
- 40:12 Choice points and the magic wand
- 43:47 Hierarchies, time and action plans
What are the biggest myths about happiness?
Around 00:31 in the episode
Russ Harris names three linked myths: that happiness is feeling good, that happiness is the natural human state, and that if you are not happy you are defective. Together they lead to the biggest trap, which is trying to avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings.
Russ Harris explains that his book is called The Happiness Trap because popular myths about happiness will make you miserable if you base your life on them. The first and most common myth is that happiness means feeling good. He points out that a dictionary definition such as a state of pleasure or contentment leaves no room for lasting happiness, because a good feeling simply cannot last that long. He invites the hosts to think about the happiest day of their lives and asks how long it took before frustration, anxiety or disappointment showed up.
A second myth, linked to the first, is the idea that the natural state for human beings is happiness, as though food, water, shelter, work and a good social structure would automatically produce a happy person. He says he tells clients that emotions are like the weather. It would be strange if every day were a warm, sunny spring day, and in the same way we should expect fear, sadness, anger and disappointment as part of a full life.
The third myth builds on those two: if you are not happy, something is wrong with you, and you should think positive and not worry. To illustrate how clinical language is drifting into daily life, he tells the story of his twelve year old son, who came home and announced he was depressed because a teacher had confiscated his fidget spinner. His point is that pathological terms are replacing ordinary phrases such as feeling a bit down or a bit sad.
These myths feed the biggest trap of all, the belief that to be happy you must avoid and escape difficult thoughts and feelings and replace them with pleasant ones. Russ Harris adds that, for the first time in human history, happiness is being defined as feeling good, whereas for most of history it was understood as doing good, living your values and doing what is meaningful. That leaves people struggling with the fact that life is painful and difficult, without teaching them how to handle the painful emotions that come with a rich and meaningful life.
Should you avoid negative people and negative emotions?
Around 05:35 in the episode
Russ Harris argues against labeling people as positive or negative. We are all humans with a full range of emotions, and loving, intimate relationships require making room for painful feelings and responding with empathy.
The conversation turns to how self development is now easier to access online without people feeling stigmatized, yet people are still reluctant to talk about difficult feelings in a healthy way. The hosts describe how losing community leads people to internalize negative thoughts and hold onto them until they feel like their identity. The episode frames community as the thing that helps you realize you are not broken, that you do not have to be happy all the time, and that it is acceptable to feel sad.
Russ Harris takes on a popular idea he sees in his own country too, that you should surround yourself only with happy, positive people because negative emotions are contagious. He says he would rather get away from labeling people as positive or negative at all. A person is simply a human being having a human experience, with a whole range of emotions. The hosts add that positive people can sometimes steer you in the wrong direction too.
The practical consequence concerns relationships. If you want to build loving, caring, intimate relationships with other people, you have to make room for the painful emotions that will come. Part of an emotionally intimate connection, as discussed in the episode, is being able to be real about your feelings and trusting the other person to respond with empathy and compassion when you are hurting or struggling.
The same theme returns later when the episode argues that calling emotions positive and negative is itself unhelpful. Russ Harris prefers words such as painful, difficult or challenging. He says that if you had no capacity for fear you would be a psychopath, and if you had no capacity for sadness you would miss out on much that matters in relationships. The aim is to embrace the whole range rather than treat part of it as an enemy.
How does Russ Harris define a happy, meaningful life?
Around 07:09 in the episode
He avoids the loaded word happiness, but if forced to define it he describes living a rich and meaningful life while feeling the full range of human emotions without a struggle. That means connecting with core values, engaging fully in what you do, and learning to let painful feelings come and go.
Asked what listeners can actually do once the myths are dispelled, Russ Harris says the first step is to redefine happiness. He notes it is a word he tends to stay away from because it is so loaded, but he offers a working definition for the show and breaks it into parts.
The first part is to live a rich and meaningful life. That means getting in touch with your core values, what you want to stand for in life and what you want to be about as a human being, and using them as a compass. He calls this getting back to happiness as doing good rather than feeling good, doing what is meaningful and life enhancing.
The second part is learning to engage and put your full attention into what you are doing so that you can appreciate it. The third part is learning to feel the full range of human emotions without a struggle. Most of us are comfortable with pleasant emotions, he says, but the skill is to feel painful ones, let them flow through us, let them come and go without getting caught up in them, and step out of the fight with them.
As the conversation wraps up, the remark is made that there is no simple solution for a happy life, but there is a complex way to have a rich and meaningful life, and the hosts say they like that definition of happiness. It reframes the goal away from constant pleasant feelings and toward a life that feels worthwhile even when emotions are hard.
I would define it as living a rich and meaningful life in which we feel the full range of human emotions without a struggle
Is mindfulness the same as relaxation or meditation?
Around 08:39 in the episode
No. Russ Harris says the core of mindfulness is being present with whatever you are feeling, not relaxing or feeling good, and that you can practise it without meditating. He adds that mindfulness without values is like a ship without a rudder.
When the hosts point out that this sounds like living in the present, Russ Harris agrees that mindfulness is at the core. He mentions that when he first wrote The Happiness Trap, about ten years earlier, he did not use the word mindfulness until about a third of the way through, because not many people knew what it meant. Now the word is everywhere and has picked up unhelpful connotations, such as being equated with relaxation or feeling good.
The hosts joke about mindful coffee and mindful coloring books, and note that the word often suggests switching off and unplugging. Russ Harris counters that the core is being present with the full range of emotions that come with the life you are living in this moment. He says mindfulness meditation is only a tiny subset of the many kinds of meditation, and there are many ways to learn mindfulness skills without ever meditating.
To illustrate, he describes Australian Football League teams where the whole squad is trained in mindfulness. The players do not meditate on the field, but they can lift weights mindfully, do their warm-ups mindfully and play the game mindfully. Running out in front of eighty thousand spectators without knowing whether your contract will be renewed naturally brings anxiety, and you can still play mindfully while anxious.
He gives a second example: meeting a black bear in the Alaskan backwoods. You can respond mindfully by taking control of your arms and legs and doing what you need to do to survive, but you will not be relaxed or happy. He adds, with a caveat not to quote him, that the advice is to stand still, stay silent and move slowly backwards. His summary is that mindfulness and values belong together, because mindfulness without values has no direction.
Why is avoiding difficult emotions harmful?
Around 13:15 in the episode
The default setting for most people is to turn away from, distract from or run from painful emotions. The episode explains that this avoidance hides the damage it causes, and that mindfulness and acceptance offer a way to step back and watch thoughts and feelings come and go.
The hosts connect the discussion to the early steps of defusion in The Happiness Trap, which involve watching thoughts come and go like a spectator. They also raise stoicism, though Russ Harris says he is not an expert on it. He notes that ideas about living in the present, accepting pain and living by your values are ancient, appearing in Greek philosophy, Buddhist philosophy and in all the world religions.
The hosts then point out how easy it is, whenever a negative emotion appears, to bury our attention somewhere else. Because mindfulness is not widely preached, they say, we do not notice the damage that comes from avoiding these feelings. Russ Harris agrees that the default setting for most of us is to turn away, distract, run from the emotion, and do anything to make it go away.
One of the hosts links this to a theme from the previous month about habit building: when everything becomes routine it turns dull, and in the same way, if every day is happy then happy loses meaning. You cannot fully understand the difference without having gone through the opposite, pain and suffering included.
Taken together, the segment makes a simple case for acceptance. Russ Harris describes emotions such as sadness, fear, anger and anxiety as useful and part of a full human life, and says we want to be able to embrace the whole range. Trying to eliminate them removes part of the human experience.
What is the difference between values, virtues and morals?
Around 15:49 in the episode
In ACT, values are desired qualities of action: how you want to behave toward yourself, others and the world. Virtues carry a group's judgement that a quality is good, and rules such as commandments tell you what you can and cannot do.
The hosts note that values get bandied about a lot, can be confusing, and are tied to religion for many people in their youth, so they ask Russ Harris how he defines them. He first says there are many definitions floating around and he cannot claim a single correct one, but in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, the model The Happiness Trap is based on, values are defined simply as desired qualities of action. With clients he describes them as your heart's deepest desires for how you want to behave as a human being: how you treat yourself, others and the world around you.
The difference with virtues, he explains, is that virtues include a judgement. If your values are loving, kind and caring, they only count as virtues if the group you belong to says they are good. He gives the example that in some Asian cultures assertiveness is not seen as a virtue, so a person could hold assertiveness as a value while belonging to a group that does not. You might even belong to a family or organization whose stated virtues do not fit your values.
He offers a rule of thumb: you can usually say a value in one or two words, such as loving or kind. If it needs a whole sentence, it is probably not a value. A commandment such as one forbidding killing is a rule telling you what you can and cannot do, and the value underneath it is probably something like loving.
One of the hosts shares that they were raised Catholic and felt values were hoisted on them with judgement attached, and that they appreciate how ACT treats values as one hundred percent up to you. The hosts say each person has their own values, sometimes they align with others and sometimes not, and that self-acceptance includes being fine with that.
What is the difference between values and goals?
Around 17:52 in the episode
A goal is something you can achieve and tick off a list, while a value is how you want to behave right now, tomorrow and in a decade. You can live a value in tiny ways today even if a goal never arrives.
Russ Harris says nearly everyone confuses values and goals. Goals are what we want to get, achieve or complete, and you can tick them off. Values are about how you want to behave in this moment and in the future. He uses marriage as the example: getting married is a goal, which can be completed, whereas being loving is a value that you can live at any time.
He points out that you can be loving even if you never achieve the goal of marriage, and even without a boyfriend or girlfriend. You can be loving toward yourself, a neighbor, a pet, plants or your community, in tiny ways and big ones. He also jokes that someone can achieve a goal, such as another marriage, while neglecting the value of being loving, which shows the two are separate things.
The hosts describe an online challenge in their private community where one task is to define your values. They say it looks simple but trips many participants up, either because they struggle to narrow the list to a handful or because they stop after one or two. They also mention that once people commit to their values, they face a choice about whether to act toward or away from them, and that their days and weeks start to look different.
Russ Harris agrees that the values conversation is new for most people, notes that the word is often misused by politicians, and says it takes time and is worth the effort. He then introduces a practice he calls flavoring and savoring: in the morning pick two or three values to bring into the day, sprinkle them into interactions with a neighbor or colleague, and then savor the difference they make.
How can values help with anxiety and feeling lost?
Around 24:08 in the episode
Russ Harris says values do not remove anxiety but give it direction. Anxiety can show what matters to you, and being willing to feel it lets you act on a meaningful activity and even use it to perform better.
The hosts suggest that rampant anxiety and depression today may be linked to a loss of talk about values, which seemed more of a staple for earlier generations. Russ Harris says they are joining dots that are there, but adds a qualifier: values as spoken about in earlier generations often came with rigidity, a sense of the right way and the wrong way to live them. In the ACT model the aim is to help people be very flexible in how they live their values. Once you start telling yourself what you should and must do, you are moving away from values into rigid rules.
He then uses the interview itself as a live example. He says he felt anxious during the recording, with sweaty hands, a racing heart and knots in his stomach, but he cares about the messages and is willing to have the anxiety in order to do something meaningful. Being willing, he says, means he can use it. He refers to research showing that when anxiety is too low during a performance task, performance drops, which psychologists call relaxed incompetence.
The point he draws is that values are not a way to get rid of anxiety. They are a way to ask what the anxiety is telling you matters, what it says you want to do, and how you can use the limited time you have well.
The hosts mention the early 1990s slacker generation and feeling lost, and the idea of replacing fear of missing out with the joy of missing out, where knowing your values makes it easier to skip the party that would lead to a hangover and neglected work. Russ Harris adds that feeling lost happens in every decade of life, whether it is starting families in the thirties, a midlife crisis in the forties, aging in the fifties or retirement in the sixties, and that values give direction when you are lost.
What are the reality gap and the reality slap?
Around 31:53 in the episode
The reality gap is any small distance between the reality you want and the one you have, while the reality slap is a major shock such as grief, loss or crisis. Both are part of life, and values let you ask what you want to stand for in the face of them.
The hosts ask about two concepts Russ Harris often discusses. He explains that little reality gaps open up all day long, and that is when we tend to feel uncomfortable emotions: whenever there is a gap between what I want and what I have. He also talks about the reality slap, the big moments when reality slaps you in the face and turns you upside down, such as grief, loss, crisis or something you never thought would happen to you. These are much harder to deal with.
Both gaps and slaps are part of life, he says, and they give rise to the difficult emotions we all feel. The empowering thing about values is that they let you ask, what do I want to stand for in the face of this? He calls it an immediately empowering question.
To show how far this can be taken, he describes work for the World Health Organization, who contracted him a couple of years earlier to write an ACT protocol for refugee camps. It was being rolled out in places including Uganda and Syria, in camps with hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom have lost loved ones and may stay for years. You cannot wave a magic wand and think positively, he says, but you can live your values in the camp: choosing whether to come out of your tent, how to treat the people nearby, and whether to join community singing, dancing and prayer or isolate.
He says these choices do not magically fix the situation or get anyone out of it, but they alter quality of life within it. One way people were helped to find their values was by asking whom they admire and what qualities they see in that person. Russ Harris adds that although values are not right or wrong, some, such as love, kindness and caring, show up widely across cultures and history.
How do you pick your values if you feel stuck?
Around 36:02 in the episode
Experiment. Russ Harris suggests picking two or three values for a day or a week, tracking what difference they make, and changing them as you learn. Values are not a lifelong commitment and may shift as you get older.
The hosts acknowledge that narrowing down to five values is tricky. Russ Harris says if you are really stuck, experiment: pick two or three values for a week, play with them and see what difference they make, then change them the next week. You can even pick two or three for a day. The values that truly speak to you tend to be more fulfilling and rewarding, giving a sense of being true to yourself and closer to your heart.
He shares a story about a client who could not pick. He gave the client a list of fifty values and asked them to label each very important, quite important or not so important, and they labeled everything very important. His suggestion was to flip a coin three times, work with whichever three values came up for the week, and repeat the following week. Pretty soon, he says, you start to get a sense of which ones fit.
He uses the saying that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. You can analyze values until the cows come home, he says, but it is better to get out and try them, track the results and notice, with mindfulness, whether you are being more like the person you want to be and how it influences others.
The hosts note that people into self development often worry about picking the wrong value, and they like the message that you are not married to your values and can try them on for a day or a week. Russ Harris adds an important caution: living your values will not necessarily make you feel good. It may pull you out of your comfort zone into challenging, anxiety provoking situations, yet it brings a deeper sense of fulfillment from being true to yourself and living life your way.
What is the choice point and the magic wand question?
Around 40:12 in the episode
The choice point is a fork in the road where anxiety pulls you away from your values and your values pull you toward a challenge. The magic wand question asks how you would treat yourself and others if every goal were achieved, so you can start living those qualities now.
One host describes the animated Choice Point video, in which a fork in the road shows that uncomfortable feelings can pull you in a direction you do not want to go in order to avoid them, while your values pull you toward the challenge. The host's reading is that the anxiety is a signal that you have a choice to grow in that moment, and that choosing toward your values makes it easier the next time.
For listeners who are very goal oriented and chasing fame, money, respect or love, Russ Harris suggests the magic wand question. Imagine waving a wand and achieving every goal: the fame, the money, the status, the body. Then ask how you would treat your friends, your children, your neighbor, your own body, and someone you love who is suffering.
He then asks whether you want to wait until you have achieved all of those goals to start living those qualities, or start right now. He observes that the media is full of rich and famous people who treat others, and themselves, in pretty horrible ways. His assumption whenever he sees destructive behavior is that it is not motivated by values, since we have all done destructive things to ourselves and others when we were hooked by thoughts, feelings and desires.
The practical takeaway is that values do not depend on external achievement. The magic wand question helps separate the destination from the way you want to travel, and lets you begin acting on the qualities you care about without waiting for outcomes that may or may not arrive.
Should you rank your values and turn them into goals?
Around 43:47 in the episode
Russ Harris cautions against ranking values in a strict hierarchy because it makes them static, and suggests thinking of them as continents on a globe that rotate to the front as situations change. Values then become goals and action plans so they do not stay abstract.
The hosts mention a debate with a coach about whether five values should be put in a hierarchical order. Russ Harris says that for most people a hierarchy feeds a more static way of looking at values. His preferred image is a globe of the world where the values are continents: you can never see them all at once, some are at the front and some at the back, and they move. Love might be at the front with friends and family, while other values come forward in work situations. The ones at the back are still available and can be brought in at any time. He does not say never to rank them, but warns of the danger of thinking you must live one value first.
He also clarifies other misconceptions. Values may not make you feel good, there is an infinite number of ways of acting on any value, and you always have a choice in any moment. Values also do not have to involve physical action: if your value is self compassion, it might be saying something very kind to yourself when you are in pain and acknowledging that this is really hard.
On time management, he says people often say they have a values conflict, such as work versus family, when it is really a time management conflict. Whether you spend one hour or fifty hours a week with your family, your values of being loving, caring and available do not change, and the question is whether you are present and engaged during that time. The same applies to values at work, such as being productive, effective and reliable. Values can be lived regardless of what is going on in your life, but they will not solve time management for you.
Finally, he says to translate values into goals and action plans. Beyond flavoring and savoring, there is a time and a place to set goals: short-term things you will do to live the value, longer-term plans, and then the step-by-step actions needed to put it into play. The hosts close by encouraging listeners to list their values, noting that engaging with them weekly improves daily life.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Russ Harris?
Russ Harris is an ACT therapist, meaning he practises Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and the author of The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living. He also wrote ACT Questions and Answers, a practitioner's guide. In this episode he joins from Australia and mentions writing an ACT protocol for refugee camps for the World Health Organization.
What did Russ Harris say about values, happiness and acceptance on The Art of Charm podcast?
He argued that happiness is not a permanent good feeling and that chasing it leads to struggle. Instead he described a rich and meaningful life guided by chosen values, with the willingness to feel the full range of human emotions without a fight. He also explained values versus goals, reality gaps and ways to pick values.
What is the happiness trap?
In the episode, the happiness trap is the belief that to be happy you must avoid and escape unpleasant thoughts and feelings and replace them with pleasant ones. Russ Harris links it to myths that happiness is feeling good, that it is our natural state, and that being unhappy means being defective.
How does Russ Harris define values?
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, he defines values as desired qualities of action: how you want to behave toward yourself, others and the world. They can usually be said in one or two words, such as loving or kind. He distinguishes them from virtues, which include a group's judgement, and from rules and goals.
What is the difference between a reality gap and a reality slap?
A reality gap is any small distance between the reality you want and the one you have, and it happens all day long. A reality slap is a big shock, such as grief, loss or crisis. Russ Harris says both give rise to difficult emotions and that asking what you want to stand for is empowering.
What is the magic wand question?
It asks you to imagine every goal achieved, including fame, money and status, and then consider how you would treat your friends, children, neighbor, body and someone who is suffering. The idea is to notice that you can start living those qualities now rather than waiting for goals to be achieved.
Is mindfulness the same as meditation or relaxation?
No. Russ Harris says the core of mindfulness is being present with whatever you feel, including anxiety, and that meditation is only one small way to learn it. His examples include football players training mindfulness and handling a bear encounter, where you act mindfully but are not relaxed.
How do you choose your values if you cannot decide?
Russ Harris recommends experimenting: pick two or three values for a day or a week, notice what difference they make, and change them as you go. He describes having a client flip a coin to select three values from a list. Values may change over time, so the aim is to try them rather than get them perfect.
Resources Mentioned
- The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living
- ACT Questions and Answers: A Practitioner's Guide to 150 Common Sticking Points in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
- Mindfulness Myths
- The Choice Point
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