Original subtitles

For most of my life,

I felt really confident

that I could build anything I wanted.

I'd built all of the dreams that I ever dreamed.

But a couple of years ago, after the Oscars,

I realized that...

nothing can last forever.

That shook me a little bit.

So, what do you do?

Collapse?

Dissolve?

I began to ask myself the question...

..."How can I be happy knowing that everything falls apart?"

For the next leg on my Pole to Pole journey,

I've landed in the Kingdom of Bhutan

to join a scientific expedition

in search of one of life's most elusive treasures,

the secret to happiness.

Hey, Will. Welcome to Bhutan.

Hey!

- Dacher and Denkar. - Yes.

Absolute pleasure, man.

- Off to explore. - Yes!

Heading up the expedition are Bhutanese writer Denkar Tshering...

The road trip begins.

...and Dacher Keltner,

one of the world's leading professors

in the science of happiness.

How did you make your way to the study of happiness?

I got interested in it because

I think it's one of the biggest questions

we can ask about life.

You know, are you happy?

I've been studying happiness and emotions for 30 years.

In that time, the data tells us people are getting richer,

people live longer,

but what's astounding is that for many of us,

our sense of well-being is actually going down.

Because it doesn't matter who we are.

We have a lot of bad ideas about what makes us happy.

I haven't been this excited in a long time.

This is coming at a really interesting time in my life.

You can have a lot of successes

and it just doesn't bring you a lot of happiness.

Yes. Definitely be interesting to get a sense of why that is.

- Right. - So, what do we do?

-You come to Bhutan. -You come to Bhutan!

Bhutan is very different compared to rest of the world.

Everything we strive for is people's happiness.

In our country,

we measure our development through the well-being

and happiness of the people here.

You measure the wealth of a nation

by the happiness of the people.

That is beautiful.

And there's even the village

where the happiest people live.

They have been living in the mountains for centuries

at 13,000 feet.

We're actually heading to Laya.

- Laya? - Yep.

It's literally at the top of the country.

It's like, one of the highest settlements in the world.

So, I wanna show you

what's going on in that community.

This is like the perfect Disney movie:

The Journey to the Top of the Mountain

to Find the Secret of Happiness.

Oh, yeah.

- I'm ready. - Let's go.

On our journey up to Laya,

I'm going to introduce Will

to some of the most important principles of happiness

by putting him to the test in some extraordinary experiments.

I thought it was really wise to start

with the most simple source of happiness,

where people very often run into trouble.

What is pleasure to me?

Oh.

You know, the big three.

Money, sex, power.

You know, when I set out,

I told myself I wanted to be the biggest movie star in the world.

And I was gonna have as much money as I could have.

And I was gonna be happy all the time.

As you can imagine, uh, that idea came crashing down.

So I'm hoping you got something for me.

Yeah, we're gonna need to explore pleasure in the body.

- Oh, love it. - What's it feel like

in our heart, what happens in our brain.

Alright. Let's have some fun.

Yeah.

We're stopping.

Here we are.

Alright, so what are we doing?

So in this exploration of pleasure,

I need you to jump off that bridge.

Oh, my God.

See, 'cause you said we were doing pleasure.

I don't think you understand pleasure.

We are wired to

go out into the world and find exciting things.

We seek out sex.

We seek out delicious foods, and even extreme sports.

Very often we find pleasure in pushing our body to the limits.

We're gonna track your heart rate and your breathing,

all the way down through the whole experience.

So go right across there?

Yeah, that's right.

Dacher went out on a limb.

You just can't ask somebody to jump off a bridge

when you first meet 'em.

Your parents would say that to you.

If your friends jumped off of a bridge, would you do it?

And... apparently, yes.

Oh, check that out.

How's that heart rate doing?

The heart rate is certainly up.

You'll be fine.

Not ready. Not ready.

Will!

Whoa! Ho-ho-ho!

Yes, Will!

Whoa! Whoa!

There you go!

I think I pooped.

Wow! That was exciting! He did it.

Alright, now it's starting to get beautiful.

Will, are you coming up anytime soon?

I certainly hope so.

This was a radical experiment.

He's falling through space.

And we're gathering measures of, you know,

down to the millisecond of what his heart is doing,

and what his respiration is like.

So, here's your heart, clipping along, you're kinda nervous.

And then you step up on the ledge,

and your heart is almost 160 beats per minute.

- Wow! - Wow!

And then you jump.

And as you start to reframe this acute stress,

like, I'm not dying, the ropes worked,

that then activates dopamine.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter

that is activated by sources of pleasure.

We have this quick high,

and then by design, our body calms down.

It's how we are chemically constructed.

Pleasure is not meant to last.

This is the hedonistic view of happiness.

We could call that the Will-onistic view...

of, of, of happy...

I've lived most of my adult life here,

climbing the mountain of success,

climbing the mountain of money, you know,

sex and power and fame.

And I absolutely believed

that would bring me happiness.

That wasn't the case.

I got a deeper understanding about the concept of pleasure.

It's like drinking salt water. It just makes you thirstier.

So, Will, yesterday, we explored

the pleasures of the body, and you chose to jump off a bridge.

Yep.

You got a lot going on in your life,

and, what about your mind gets in the way?

So, the second part of the happiness equation is stress.

My father was military.

So I was raised with that military mindset,

and I've always felt, like, you know, bring it.

I'll handle whatever.

But I'm starting to look at it

as something that's damaging to my health.

I can always tell when I'm stressed.

I'll usually wake up and my neck will be locked,

you know, and I'll be looking around corners like this.

- Here we are, sir. - Okay.

You're gonna swab this around your cheek

to get cortisol, which is a stress hormone.

-A stress hormone? -Right.

And we're gonna read your cortisol levels and see how are you doing.

Up or down as you probe me through the day.

Yes, exactly right.

Cortisol prepares your body

to deal with threats and struggles of life.

The problem is when it's chronically high.

We tend to suffer in terms of our mental and physical health.

Hello!

- Hello, everybody! - Hey, hey, hey.

- Hey. - Hey.

People call me the happy farmer.

Hello, Mr. Will. Hey!

People think I'm a very positive person.

So I heard you were exploring happiness here?

Yes, and I can feel your energy already.

So, I want some of that. I want some of that.

I want some of that from you too.

Happiness for me

is having right relationship with nature.

And to Denkar.

Nature has a profound effect on our mind,

which helps us to overcome any stress

that we may be carrying in our body.

Can I invite you for nature bathing?

-Nature bathing? Okay. -Yeah, let's do that then.

I don't know what that is, but I'm with you.

You're alright.

You can join me.

I wanna remove my shoes and I want to feel the ground.

Remove your shoes and feel the ground.

Would you love to do that?

I wouldn't, but I will.

I'm a city boy.

So I was resistant to the nature bathing.

I'm in nature sometimes without any clothes.

I was like,

old boy better keep his robe on.

Surrender.

Okay.

Ow.

Smell the soil.

You can join me.

Really?

Maybe we can lie here.

It's a real test to just stop.

Just relax.

It's almost like my mind's

a thousand miles per hour.

"You can't just sit there. You gotta take a walk.

Your back hurts, Will. Get up, stand up, stretch."

The energies of my mind almost attack.

Like Mr. Will, many years ago,

I live in the city.

I had a 9:00 to 5:00 job.

So, my mind was full of negative emotions.

But I was looking for peace.

So... what happened?

In 2009, I had a auto car accident.

Wow.

I was disabled.

I could not move. My whole body was casted.

From there,

how did you discover here?

I was bedridden for around nine months.

Nature is a place where I go find myself.

When I was in physiotherapy,

I went to many natural spring waters.

I was there for months soaking in nature.

It was a very profound experience for me.

I was able to let go of the stress in my life.

I'm gonna get well,

to live a life in harmony with nature.

The sun.

The sound of river down the valley.

Research was finding that any relationship to nature

can calm the body down.

Birdsong...

and the wonderful sounds of running water

have positive effects on mood.

The sense of smell, the flowers and trees...

makes you better able to focus.

Open your eyes.

You don't need to radically transform your life.

Just 20 minutes a week can deactivate stress.

Look at the butterfly.

And you're gonna be happier.

I think we heard you howling out there.

I know. Yeah, yeah!

How'd it go in there?

It was interesting.

I realized when my mind is going,

it's like, my eyes and ears are off.

- Yeah. Yeah. - Right.

And then I relaxed into it.

I could see and feel why it was beautiful.

Let's take a quick look at these, at these data.

Um, stuff we gathered from the cheek swab.

What you see is as you hike up the hill

to get ready for your forest bathing,

you see a rise in cortisol.

That's exactly what you would expect.

And then remarkably, after being in nature,

you drop precipitously in cortisol.

Yeah, I certainly felt that.

But, like, when you look around here,

it's a whole lot easier to manage your cortisol

than in traffic on the 405 in LA.

You know.

My friends used to say

that I only had one gear, and it was go.

All the time.

It's now pretty clear to me that for most of my life,

I didn't have a release valve.

I was a cortisol bomb just ready to explode.

I just wish I could have known that long ago.

This is the last stop before our trek to Laya.

So here you are.

Wow.

It’s like from a different era.

So, Will, on our search for happiness,

- we've kinda covered pleasure. - Yep.

And then stress.

But, um, there's a lot more to happiness

- than the individual body. - Mm-hmm.

It's about meaning, you know, how we find purpose in life.

And so what we thought is, you know, we'd bring you to a place

where they've been thinking about this for hundreds of years.

So here you are. The Monastery.

For most of my life,

I've had absolute purpose.

You know, I was striving to be

the biggest movie star in the world.

I set very high standards for myself.

Signing every autograph, and shaking every hand,

and kissing every baby.

And this is our dorm.

I had a relentless focus on

outward perfection.

But it certainly didn't turn out as I had planned.

Um...

Uh, first of all,

sitting like a monk is very difficult.

It's really difficult.

That's why I couldn't be a monk.

So, for you, what is happiness?

How we find happiness is by realizing,

like, everything that happens outside is impermanent.

Everything is changing.

And we use many examples,

we can be rich and poor.

Sometimes we can be very popular and sometimes not.

I-I know about that personally.

I tasted the top of my success,

fame, uh, money,

and then watched it fall apart.

I'm trying to find ways to stop worrying about that.

All the attachment you have

is never gonna lead you to happiness.

So by trying to hold on

to those things so hard,

becomes the actual source of my unhappiness.

Tha-that-that's, um...

pretty accurate.

I can see the emotion in, in you, in your face.

- Yeah. - And that is actually

the starting of our wisdom.

When we encounter a very bad moment,

or incident in our life,

there is no other way to find happiness

than within yourself.

Within me where?

It is important to ask yourself this question,

"When will I die?"

Death.

I've never really thought about

death or dying.

What is the, the theory behind death?

If passengers are having a quarrel on an airplane

and the pilot suddenly announces that the airplane might crash

they will set aside their differences, come together and help each other.

So turn your full attention to the idea of your death,

to contemplate what's important and what's unimportant.

I think you understood very well.

We would like to offer you the monk's robe.

Thank you.

And it's funny talking about death.

I just don't think about it,

and I feel, like, I... maybe I'm hiding from it a little bit.

Um...

My death.

That's a heavy thought for me.

Unlike Bhutan, one of the real shortcomings

in our Western view of happiness...

is we ignore death.

And I am, like, a classic example.

Ralph was my younger brother.

We really did almost everything together.

Five years ago...

he, uh...

So, Ralph got colon cancer.

So I get a call,

drive two and a half hours to his house.

He was in a unconscious state...

and then passed away at 6:00 a.m. I think.

And I was blown off the map.

I was at my low point in life.

Nothing made much sense.

And so I went to the mountains.

And I talked deeply to the brotherhood of monks.

Reflecting upon death changed my life.

And I sharpened my sense of what really matters.

And for me, that's helping people find happiness.

And I wanted Will to find his own sense of understanding.

So we had to put him to the test.

We believe that when we die

we see everything in our lives.

The masked dance is a presentation of death

where you face the demons in your life.

You see your true self.

I have a very active imagination.

When the masked dance started, I was like, "Oh, no."

This is it.

The music, the fire,

those frightening masks and darker energies,

I know that it's set up and it's a ritual,

but it forces you to look deep down inside.

Will Smith!

Grammy-winning rapper,

one of the biggest movie stars in the world right now.

I make this look good.

Please welcome Will Smith!

I was always attractive when I was young.

It clicked in the studio, it's almost triple platinum now.

While the other guy's sleeping, I'm working.

You have this phenomenal career!

As long as they're screaming "Will," I'm cool.

The infamous slap, it was seen around the world.

Not your highest moment, Will.

- Unacceptable. - Stunned.

Has he blown it forever?

That's when the devil comes for you.

So last time we saw you,

you were going into the monastery, man.

Yeah.

And the dance, what was that like?

I was like,

"Yo, this is scary for real."

And at the same time, it's your own mind.

- Yeah. Yeah. - It's like,

what you're scared of is you.

- And I know this is so weird. - Right. Right.

Um...

after the Oscars...

I mean, that night was brutal for everybody.

But for me, I had a bizarre sense of relief...

- Right. - ...that the image

of Will Smith was dead.

And it was like, "Whew...

- I can be me." - Right.

Somebody who's actually flawed and scared...

-Right. -...and embarrassed.

- Yeah. - And staring down

your fears of death,

introduces you to that space of freedom.

After my time at the monastery,

now when something presents itself to me and I'm like,

"Am I going to care about that on my deathbed?"

And if the answer's no,

then I'm not gonna let myself care about it now.

We're good to go?

I think we've got some miles ahead of us.

This is gonna be a real walk.

Hey, watch it.

I was very eager to take Will to Laya

because I wanted him to discover

what happiness looks like high up in the Himalayas,

in one of the most remote communities.

We've begun our ascent into Laya.

It's the highest settlement in Bhutan.

Yes. And the happiest.

So it's high in multiple ways.

As we were walking up the mountain towards Laya,

it just felt mythological.

This hard road climbing to...

the highest altitude I've ever been.

It feels very... hard to breathe.

This is the road to these people's town.

I don't know if you can see how little that road is.

Is it gonna get colder or warmer as we go up?

Super cold.

It's gonna be super cold.

We're heading into trouble, man.

Yeah, jeez.

We are here, uh...

at mid-camp.

Um...

It is 29.9 degrees.

That's not enough degrees.

We're at 12,000 right now.

I can't even tie my damn shoes without getting winded.

But tomorrow, we're going to 13,000 feet.

What makes people live up here?

And they the happiest people in the country.

They're gonna have to show me.

There you go, sir!

Wow.

Every five years,

there's a nationwide happiness survey.

And the happiest people have been in Laya.

Today, we regard them as the guardians of the mountains.

Finally, we're here in Laya.

Hello, Aum Passang, are you well?

Yes I am, you have all come here!

Thank you for, for your beautiful song.

She's, like, "You're handsome."

My name is Passang Wangmo.

I was born and raised in Laya.

Please come to my house. Please come.

Oh, absolutely.

That's beautiful.

Wash your hands.

Wash your hands? Okay.

Tomorrow there is an archery match.

I've been preparing some dumplings and other items.

I'd be very happy if you would help me.

I-I don't cook much.

And by much, I mean, like, not at all.

We went quickly from,

"Hey, how you doing? Nice to meet you."

to, "Come in my kitchen and cook with me."

-La is yes? -Yeah, yeah.

La. La.

It doesn't happen in Philly like that.

This is how you do it.

Alright. Let me try. Let me try.

And I'm scared 'cause I don't wanna chop my finger off.

How am I doing?

We need more?

Yes.

How many people are we cooking for?

There will probably be a hundred people at tomorrow's match.

- A hundred people? - Hmm.

We should hurry up.

Everyone comes together.

We happily share what food and drink we have.

I really like cooking.

- I feel like I'm good at this. - Good, good. Very good.

Very good... Good, good?

You can say, "That's hot."

-That's hot. That's hot. -That's hot.

You're hot.

Aum Passang, you know,

I could tell she thought I was cute.

She was happy I was there.

I am so intrigued by Laya,

and the joy that you exude.

How did you learn this way growing up?

I was always playful.

When I was eight to nine years old,

I used to dance, play, and look after the cattle.

My parents used to love me a lot.

Even if they didn't have good food,

they would borrow from others for me.

During winter here in Laya,

it's difficult, we struggle a lot.

We must collect a lot of firewood beforehand.

If we do not collect firewood

we'll get cold in the snow and die.

Due to heavy snow and cold weather

four of my older siblings passed away and only I survived.

Then my father passed away.

So, you're here, um, alone?

Our life is like the mountain snow.

It could melt at any time.

Aum Passang has suffered

excruciating circumstances.

I don't think that it's a coincidence

that life in Laya is difficult,

yet they are some of the happiest people on Earth.

I don't totally see it yet,

but I can definitely feel that there's a correlation.

Life in Laya, it's cold,

and it's remote.

Electricity only recently arrived.

There's no running water.

It is hard.

But it's the way this community faces these challenges,

that I think is essential to their happiness.

Festivals are very important here.

And central to festivals here is archery.

In fact, it's the national sport.

It brings people from all walks of life to witness the match.

You have your team set there waiting for you.

- Oh, my team? - This is our team.

-This is our worthy opponent. -Okay.

The game of archery in Bhutan

is very different compared to the rest of the world.

Instead of shooting at one direction,

the archers actually shoot across each other.

Wait, we shooting at each other?

Is this tournament to the death?

Tell me the truth. When was the last time

somebody accidentally got hit with an arrow?

Tell me the truth. Be honest.

- Maybe a month ago. - Oh.

At the end of the part of the village.

Oh, okay. I was making a joke.

Let's have some fun.

I am a very competitive person.

Good shot.

People say it's not whether you win or lose,

it's how you play the game.

It's your turn.

Growing up in America,

you would only say that 'cause you lost.

Argh!

But I did love that,

hit or miss, we all dance.

This is crazy, no, sir?

This is wild.

The event is being called because of the wind.

Does that mean we win?

Uh, no, it's not fair to say that we won the matches.

Damn it.

Oh, that was fantastic.

You know, the wind shut us down.

It was one to zero,

and somehow in Bhutan, that's a draw.

I saw you bust out some moves in dance after that archery.

It's so funny. I wasn't even thinking about that.

But it's like, all of a sudden, I felt accepted.

-Right. Right. -I'm a part of their group

if they're letting me do the dance

and learning the words.

But it's like...

Wow. Okay.

So something just dawned on me.

- It's collective harmony. - Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

-It's about togetherness. -Yes, it is.

- Mm-hmm. - What do you make of that?

Of course, I want that.

You know, everybody wants a tight-knit family.

But you certainly can't do that

if your priority is something else.

-Mm-hmm. Agreed. -Yeah.

You know, as a scientist,

I really take heart in what Charles Darwin wrote.

A lot of people think he was all about dog-eat-dog,

- survival of the fittest. - Mm-mm.

- And he wasn't. - Right.

Darwin was really about survival of the kindest or friendliest.

-Yes. It's a mentality. -Yeah.

I had a goal. I had a mission.

I wanted to be the biggest movie star on Earth.

Right.

But I'm not one of the best friends on Earth.

I'm not one of the best fathers on Earth.

It was my kids that started making me aware

that my heart wasn't as available.

Yeah.

It's a big part of why I'm here.

Yeah. "I got work to do."

Or you look up and your kids are 28,

and they don't come home for Christmas.

Aw.

The Layans people are so happy...

because they spend

enormous amounts of time together.

They share food.

They revel with dance.

They are kind and warm to each other.

So they're doing all the things

that we are hungering for.

We have a need to belong.

When you're deprived of that, it's like being deprived

of food or water or sleep.

I guess we're going in.

One, two, three, right, left, right.

Come on, turn it up.

I know.

It dawned on me we might be asking the wrong question.

How can I be happy?

But it seems like the question might be...

how can we be happy?

That's the question they ask in Laya.

Good morning. Good morning.

Today I'm going to hoist a prayer flag

for my deceased father.

I came here to request you could join me.

- I just got a chill. - Really?

Today is my father's birthday.

-He would have been 81 today. -Ohh.

-Eighty-one? -He would have been 81.

Let's go to recite prayers and hoist flags.

Please, let's go.

- That's great. - Alright, I'm ready.

- Alright, let's go. - Let's go. Okay.

The reason we hoist our prayer flags up in the hilltops is because

it is said the souls of the deceased will be happy.

We are all dropped

into this existential confusion

and given the job to figure it out.

Now I'm kinda realizing, you know, if you let life lead,

it'll take you really interesting places.

Walking up to the highest point

to have the flag reach for the heavens

as an honor to those who have passed on.

It's a beautiful ceremony.

My beloved father left this world.

In that moment of suffering and loss,

we were connected by letting go.

I never really thought of letting go

as being a part of happiness.

My mindset was always about gaining and keeping,

but there's something in surrendering

that is ecstatic.

Papua New Guinea is the land of the unexpected.

We are renowned for being cannibals.

-Okay. -Me especially.

Alright.

Let's go.

Beneath us is a whole new world.

-I'm not a great swimmer. -I don't care.

I want you to get underwater right now.