The world's happiest man, Matthieu Ricard, is a 76 year-old, Tibetan Buddhist monk.
You may be asking yourself, how does one gain the title of the world's happiest man? Well, Ricard participated in a 12-year brain study on meditation and compassion led by Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who leads research at the Center for Healthy Minds. When Davidson hooked up Ricard's head to 256 sensors, he discovered something quite groundbreaking when Ricard was meditating on compassion.
The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard’s brain produces a level of gamma waves – those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory – ‘never reported before in the neuroscience literature’, Davidson said. The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain’s left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, allowing him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity.
Matthieu Ricard — who says he sometimes meditates for entire days without getting bored — admits he is a generally happy person. Although he feels his "happiest man" title is a media-driven overstatement. Ricard stated his feelings of ambivalence about being titled the 'Happiest Man in the World', "When asked about it, I usually reply that anyone can be the happiest man or woman in the world, provided he or she looks for happiness in the right place."
Matthieu Ricard's Advice on Happiness
Ricard's advice for how to be happy comes down to altruism. Here's his advice for how to be a happier person!
Stop thinking 'me, me, me'
Thinking about one's self, and how to make things better all the time, is exhausting, stressful, and ultimately leads to unhappiness."It's not the moral ground. It is simply that me, me, me all day long is very stuffy. And it's quite miserable, because you instrumentalize the whole world as a threat, or as a potential sort of interest [to yourself]," Ricard says.
If one wants to be happy, Ricard says they should should strive to be "benevolent," which will not only make them feel better, but it will also make others like them better. However, Ricard warns that's not to say one should let other people take advantage of them, but they should generally strive to be kind within reason.
"If your mind is filled with benevolence, you know —the passion and solidarity ... this is a very healthy state of mind that is conducive to flourishing," Ricard explains. "So you, yourself, are in a much better mental state. Your body will be healthier, so [it] has been shown. And also, people will perceive it as something nice."
Start training your mind like you'd train to run a marathon
Ricard believes everyone has the ability to have a lighter mind because there's a potential for goodness in every human being (unless you're, say, a serial killer, and there's something actually chemically abnormal going on with your brain). But like a marathon runner who needs to train before he or she can run 26.2 miles, people who want to be happier need to train their minds. Ricard's preferred way of training his is meditation.
"With mental training, we can always bring [our level of happiness] to a different level. It's like running ... There is a view that benevolence, attention, emotional balance and resilience are skills that can be trained. So if you put them all together, you could say that happiness is a skill that can be trained."
So, how does one begin training their mind to be happier?
"Start by thinking happy thoughts for 10 to 15 minutes per day," Ricard advises.
Typically when one experiences feelings of happiness and love, it is fleeting and then something else happens, and they move on to the next thought. However, Ricard says instead, one should concentrate on not letting their mind get distracted and keep focused on the positive emotions for the next stretch of time. He added that if one does that training every day, even just two weeks later they can feel positive mental results.
Neuroscience research also supports Ricard's advise—Davidson found from his study that even 20 minutes of daily meditation can make people much happier overall.
Additionally, Netflix's recent show 'The Mind: Explained' is quite informational for individuals interested in learning more about psychology and neuroscience. Their episode on 'Mindfulness' is especially instructive on how a simple act of watching our brain can bring such a revolutionary change.
'World's happiest man' says the secret to being happy takes just 15 minutes a day, Business Standard