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Pole to Pole with Will Smith - Season 1 - Episode 04: The Himalayas
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00:13For most of my life, I felt really confident that I could build anything I wanted.
00:22I built all of the dreams that I ever dreamed.
00:30But a couple of years ago, after the Oscars, I realized that nothing can last forever.
00:43That shook me a little bit.
00:46So what do you do?
00:48Collapse?
00:51Dissolve?
00:52I began to ask myself the question,
00:58how can I be happy knowing that everything falls apart?
01:05Which I can be happy knowing that everything falls apart?
01:40for the next leg on my pole-to-pole journey i've landed in the kingdom of bhutan to join a
01:48scientific expedition in search of one of life's most elusive treasures the secret to happiness
02:09yes heading up the expedition our bhutanese writer danker cheering the road trip begins
02:17and dacre keltner one of the world's leading professors in the science of happiness
02:26how did you make your way to the study of happiness i got interested in it because i think it's
02:34one of
02:34the biggest questions we can ask about life you know are you happy i've been studying happiness
02:41and emotions for 30 years in that time the data tells us people are getting richer people live
02:50longer but what's astounding is that for many of us our sense of well-being is actually going down
02:59because it doesn't matter who we are we have a lot of bad ideas about what makes us happy
03:06i haven't been this excited in a long time this is coming at a really interesting time in my life
03:13you can have a lot of successes and it just doesn't bring you a lot of happiness yes definitely be
03:19interesting to get a sense of why that is right so what do we do you come to bhutan we
03:25come to bhutan
03:30bhutan is very different compared to the rest of the world everything we strive for is people's
03:37happiness in our country we measure our development through the well-being and happiness of the people
03:45here you measure the wealth of a nation by the happiness of the people that is beautiful
03:54and there's even the village where the happiest people live they have been living in the mountains
04:01for centuries at 13 000 feet we're actually heading to layah layah yep it's literally at the top of the
04:13country it's like one of the highest settlements in the world so i want to show you what's going on
04:19in
04:19that community this is like the perfect disney movie the journey to the top of the mountain to find the
04:26secret of happiness
04:41oh yeah i'm ready let's go
04:46on our journey up to layah i'm going to introduce will to some of the most important principles of
04:51happiness by putting him to the test in some extraordinary experiments i thought it was really
04:58wise to start with the most simple source of happiness where people very often run into trouble
05:11what is pleasure to me
05:17you know the big three money sex power
05:28you know when i set out i told myself i wanted to be the biggest movie star in the world
05:33and i was going to have as much money as i could have and i was going to be happy
05:39all the time
05:40as you can imagine uh that idea came crashing down
05:46so i'm hoping you got something for me yeah we're going to need to explore pleasure in the body
05:52oh love it what's it feel like in our heart what happens in our brain all right let's have some
05:57fun
05:58yeah
06:05we're stopping
06:11here we are jeez
06:14all right so what are we doing so in this exploration of pleasure
06:22we are wired to go out into the world and find exciting things we seek out sex we seek out
06:46delicious
06:47foods and even extreme sports very often we find pleasure in pushing our body to the limits
06:56we're going to track your heart rate and your breathing all the way down through the whole
07:00experience so go right across there yeah that's right
07:05decker went out on a limb you just can't ask somebody to jump off a bridge when you first meet
07:11them
07:14your parents would say that to you if your friends jumped off of a bridge would you do it and
07:21apparently yes
07:26oh check that out
07:31how's that heart rate doing the heart rate is certainly up
07:34you'll be fine not ready not ready
07:45ah
07:48oh
08:12will
08:32all right now it's starting to get beautiful
08:36will are you coming up anytime soon i certainly hope so
08:44this was a radical experiment he's falling through space
08:48and we're gathering measures of you know down to the millisecond of what his heart is doing and what
08:53his respiration is like so here's your heart clipping along you're kind of nervous and then you step up on
09:00the ledge and your heart is almost 160 beats per minute wow and then you jump and as you start
09:06to
09:07reframe this acute stress like i'm not dying the ropes worked that then activates dopamine
09:14dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is activated by sources of pleasure
09:22pleasure we have this quick high and then by design our body calms down
09:28it's how we are chemically constructed pleasure is not meant to last
09:33this is the hedonistic view of happiness we could call that the villainistic view
09:41i've lived most of my adult life here climbing the mountain of success climbing the mountain of money you know
09:50sex and power and fame
09:53and i absolutely believed that would bring me happiness that wasn't the case
10:05i got a deeper understanding about the concept of pleasure
10:10it's like drinking salt water it just makes you thirstier
10:21so will yesterday we explored pleasures of the body and you chose to jump off a bridge and yeah
10:27you got a lot going on in your life and what about your mind gets in the way so the
10:32second part of the
10:33happiness equation is stress
10:42my father was military so i was raised with that military mindset and i've always felt like you know bring
10:56it i'll handle whatever but i'm starting to look at it as something
11:02that's damaging to my health i can always tell when i'm stressed
11:10i'll usually wake up and my neck will be locked
11:14you know and i'll be looking around corners like this
11:18here we are sir
11:25you're going to swab this around your cheek to get cortisol which is a stress hormone
11:29a stress hormone right and we're going to read your cortisol levels and see how you're doing up or
11:35down as you probe me through the day yes exactly right cortisol prepares your body to deal with
11:43threats and struggles of life the problem is when it's chronically high we tend to suffer in terms of
11:51our mental and physical health
11:58people call me the happy farmer hello mr will hey people think i'm a very positive person
12:05so i heard you're exploring happiness here yes and i can feel your energy already so i want some of
12:11that
12:12i want some of that from you too happiness for me is having right relationship with nature
12:20and to drinker nature has a profound effect on our mind which helps us to overcome any stress that
12:26we may be carrying in our body can i invite you for nature bathing nature bathing okay yeah let's do
12:33that i don't know what that is but i'm with you you can join me i want to remove my
12:42shoes and want
12:43to feel the ground remove your shoes and feel the ground would you love to do that i wouldn't but
12:49i will
12:51i'm a city boy so i was resistant to the nature bathing i'm in nature sometime without any clothes
13:04i was like old boy better keep his robe on
13:11i'm in nature okay
13:17ow
13:19stand this side
13:23you can join me
13:32really maybe we can lie here
13:34it's a real test to just stop you should relax
13:44it's almost like my mind's a thousand miles per hour you can't just sit there uh you got to take
13:52a
13:52walk your back hurts well get them stand up stretch the energies of my mind almost attack
14:05it's like mr will many years ago i live in the city i had nine to five job
14:13so my mind was full of negative emotions but i was looking for peace
14:21so what happened in 2009 i had an auto car accident
14:26wow i was disabled i could not move my whole body was casted from there how did you discover
14:37here i was bedridden for around nine months nature is a place where i go find myself
14:46when i was in physiotherapy i went to many natural spring waters i was there for months soaking in nature
14:54it was a very profound experience for me i was able to let go of the stress in my life
15:03i'm gonna get well to live a life in harmony with nature
15:10listen
15:14sound of river down the valley
15:19research is finding that any relationship to nature can calm the body down
15:26bird song and the wonderful sounds of running water have positive effects on mood
15:36the sense of smell the flowers and trees
15:41it makes you better able to focus open your eyes
15:47you don't need to radically transform your life
15:51just 20 minutes a week can deactivate stress but with a butterfly
15:59and you're going to be happier
16:06i think we heard you howling out there i know yeah how'd it go in there it was interesting i
16:14realized
16:14when my mind is going it's like my eyes and ears are off yeah right yeah and then i relaxed
16:20into it
16:21i could see and feel why it was beautiful let's take a quick look at these data um stuff we
16:27gathered
16:27from the cheek swab what you see is as you hike up the hill to get ready for your forest
16:33bathing you
16:34see a rise in cortisol that's exactly what you would expect and then remarkably after being in nature
16:41you drop precipitously in cortisol yeah i certainly felt that but like when you look around here
16:48it's a whole lot easier it's a whole lot easier to manage your cortisol than in traffic on the 405
16:54in la
16:55my friends used to say that i only had one gear and it was go all the time
17:06it's now pretty clear to me that for most of my life i didn't have a release valve
17:16i was a cortisol bomb just ready to explode i just wish i could have known that long ago
17:33this is the last stop before i tried to liea
17:42so here you are
18:00it's like from a different era
18:06so we'll on our search for happiness we've kind of covered pleasure yep and then stress
18:10but um there's a lot more to happiness than the individual body it's about meaning you know how
18:17we find purpose in life and so what we thought is you know we bring you to a place where
18:23they've been
18:23thinking about this for hundreds of years so here you are the monastery
18:34for most of my life i've had absolute purpose
18:41you know i was striving to be the biggest movie star in the world
18:47i set very high standards for myself signing every autograph and shaking every hand and kissing
18:55every baby and this is our dog i had a relentless focus on outward perfection
19:06but it certainly didn't turn out as i had planned
19:13um
19:17first of all sitting like a monk is very difficult
19:26it's really difficult that's why i couldn't be a monk
19:32so for you what is happiness how we find happiness is by realizing like everything that
19:40happens outside is impermanence everything is changing and we use many examples we can be rich
19:48and poor sometimes we can be very popular and sometimes not i know about that personally
19:55i tasted the top of my success fame
20:01money and then watched it fall apart i'm trying to find ways to stop worrying about that
20:13all the attachment you have is never going to lead you to happiness so by trying to hold on
20:22to those things so hard becomes the actual source of my unhappiness that that's um
20:43i can see the emotion in in you in your face yeah and that is actually the starting of our
20:50wisdom
20:50when we encounter a very bad moment or incident in our life there is no other way to find happiness
20:57within within yourself within me where
21:05when you don't do it you wouldn't have something to raise
21:10when i'm sure
21:11when i'm sure you don't have anything to do it you don't have anything to do it you don't have
21:18anything to do it
21:20i've never really thought about death or dying what is the the theory behind death
21:43so turn your full attention to the idea of your death to contemplate what's important
21:53what's important and what's unimportant
22:02we would like to offer you the monk's robe
22:06thank you
22:10it's funny talking about death
22:13my death i just don't think about it i feel like i might maybe i'm hiding from it a little
22:18bit
22:22my death that's a heavy thought for me
22:33unlike bhutan one of the real shortcomings in our western view of happiness
22:41is we ignore death and i am like a classic example
22:49rolf was my younger brother we really did almost everything together
22:58five years ago he uh
23:06so rolf got colon cancer
23:12so i get a call drive two and a half hours to his house
23:19he was in a unconscious state
23:24and then passed away at 6 a.m i think
23:30and i was blown off the map
23:35i was at my low point in life
23:39nothing made much sense
23:42and so i went to the mountains
23:49and i talked deeply to the brotherhood of monks
23:54reflecting upon death changed my life
23:59and i sharpened my sense of what really matters
24:04and for me that's helping people find happiness
24:09and i wanted will to find his own sense of understanding
24:14so we had to put him to the test
24:32we believe that when we die we see everything in our lives
24:41the mock stands is a presentation of death
24:45where you face the demons in your life
24:54you see your true self
25:05i have a very active imagination
25:10when the mask dance started i was like oh no
25:15this is it
25:20the music the fire
25:25those frightening masks and darker energies
25:31i know that it's set up and it's a ritual
25:35but it forces you to look deep down inside
25:47will smith
25:48gremie-winning rapper one of the biggest movie stars in the world right now
25:51i make this look good
25:52let's welcome will smith
25:54i was always attractive when i was back
25:57like in the studio it's almost triple platinum now
25:59while the other guy's sleeping
26:02i'm working you have this phenomenal career
26:06as long as they scream at will i'm cool
26:09the infamous slap at the scene around the world
26:12at your highest moment
26:14unacceptable
26:15stunned
26:15you blame it forever
26:17that's when the devil comes for you
26:35so last time we saw you
26:37you were going into the monastery man
26:38yeah
26:40and the dance what was that like
26:42i was like
26:43yo this is scary for real
26:47and at the same time it's your own mind
26:50yeah yeah it's like what you're scared of is you
26:53and i know this is so weird
26:56after the oscars
27:01i mean that night was brutal for everybody
27:05but for me i had a bizarre sense of relief
27:12that the image of will smith was dead
27:17and it was like
27:20and i was like
27:21i can be
27:21i can be me
27:22right
27:22somebody who's actually flawed
27:25mm-hmm
27:25and scared
27:27right
27:28and
27:29embarrassed
27:30yeah
27:31and staring down your fears of death
27:35mm-hmm
27:36introduces you to that space of freedom
27:43after my time
27:45after my time at the monastery
27:47now when something presents itself to me
27:50i'm like
27:51am i going to care about that on my deathbed
27:56and if the answer is no
27:59then i'm not going to let myself care about it now
28:04we're good to go
28:05i think we got two miles ahead of us
28:06this is going to be a real walk
28:15hey watch it
28:18i was very eager to take will to lia
28:22because i wanted him to discover what happiness looks like high up in the himalayas
28:27in one of the most remote communities
28:34we've begun our ascent into lia
28:39it's the highest settlement in bhutan
28:41yes
28:42i'm the happiest
28:43so it's high in multiple ways
28:48as we were walking up the mountain towards lia
28:52it just felt mythological
28:55this hard road climbing to
28:59the highest altitude i've ever been
29:05it feels very
29:07hard to breathe
29:09this is the road to these people's town
29:12i don't know if you can see how little that road is
29:15is it going to get colder or warmer as we go up
29:18super cold
29:19it's going to be super cold
29:20we're heading into trouble man
29:30we are here uh
29:34at mid camp
29:37um
29:39it is
29:4229.9 degrees
29:47that's not enough degrees
29:51we're at 12 000
29:53right now
29:55can't even tie my damn shoes without getting winded
29:59but tomorrow we're going to 13 000 feet
30:03what makes people live up here
30:08and they the happiest people in the country
30:12they're going to let's show me
30:31there you go sir
30:34wow
30:38every five years there's a nationwide happiness survey
30:42and the happiest people have been in lia
30:49today we regard them as the guardians of the mountains
30:52finally we're here in lia
30:55thank you for for your beautiful song
31:04thank you for for your beautiful song
31:30that's beautiful
31:33wash your hands
31:35wash your hands okay
31:42and i don't cook much and by much i mean like not at all
31:51we went quickly from hey how you doing nice to meet you to come in my kitchen and cook with
31:59me
31:59la is yes yeah yeah la la it doesn't happen in philly like that
32:06okay
32:10all right let me try it let me try it and i'm scared because i don't want to chop my
32:12finger off
32:15how am i doing we need more how many people are we cooking for
32:21how many people are we doing we need more
32:25a hundred people should hurry up
32:41i feel like i'm good at this
32:43good good very good good good you can say that's hot that's hot that's hot you are hot
32:55kumpa sang you know i could tell she thought i was cute she was happy i was there
33:07i am so intrigued by lia and the joy that you exude how did you learn this way growing up
33:21in the year
33:22the
33:24the
33:26the
33:26the
33:30the
33:31the
33:33the
33:42the
33:47is
33:49the
33:49perm
33:49it
33:49it
33:51it
33:51it
33:51it
34:07So, you're here, um, alone.
34:30Oompa Sang has suffered excruciating circumstances.
34:38I don't think that it's a coincidence that life in Laia is difficult, yet they are some
34:49of the happiest people on Earth.
34:53I don't totally see it yet, but I can definitely feel that there's a correlation.
35:15Life in Laia, it's cold, and it's remote.
35:23Electricity only recently arrived, there's no running water.
35:28It is hard.
35:32But it's the way this community faces these challenges that I think is essential to their
35:40happiness.
35:47Festivals are very important here, and central to festivals here is archery.
35:56In fact, it's the national sport.
35:58It brings people from all walks of life to witness the match.
36:03You have your team set there waiting for you.
36:06Oh, my team?
36:07This is our team.
36:08Our team.
36:08And this is our worthy opponent.
36:10Okay.
36:10The game of archery in Bhutan is very different compared to the rest of the world.
36:17Instead of shooting at one direction, the archers actually shoot across each other.
36:25Wait, we shooting at each other?
36:28Is this tournament to the death?
36:30No.
36:32Tell me the truth.
36:33When was the last time somebody accidentally got hit with an arrow?
36:36Tell me the truth.
36:37Be honest.
36:38Maybe a month ago.
36:40Oh.
36:40In another part of the village.
36:42I was okay.
36:43I was making a joke.
36:49Let's have some fun.
36:51I am a very competitive person.
36:59Good shot.
37:01People say it's not whether you win or lose.
37:05It's how you play the game.
37:07It's your turn.
37:11Growing up in America, you would only say that because you lost.
37:23Oh.
37:25But I did love that hit for Miss We All Dance.
37:37Oh.
37:45Oh.
37:47Oh.
37:54Oh.
37:55Oh.
37:59This is crazy, you know, sir?
38:02This is wild.
38:04The event is being called because of the wind.
38:08does that mean we win no it's not fair to say that we won the matches damn it
38:17oh that was fantastic you know the wind shut us down it was one to zero and so somehow in
38:24Bhutan that's a draw I saw you bust out some moves in a dance after that archery it's so funny
38:30I
38:30wasn't even thinking about that but it's like all of a sudden I felt accepted right right I'm a part
38:37of the group if they're letting me do the dance and learning the words but it's like
38:45wow okay so something just dawned on me
38:50it's collective harmony yeah yeah it's about togetherness yes it is what do you make of that
38:57of course I want that I want you know everybody wants a tight-knit family but you certainly can't
39:04do that if your priority is something else yeah agreed you know as a scientist I really take heart
39:11in what Charles Darwin wrote a lot of people think he was all about dog eat dog survival of the
39:17fittest
39:17and he wasn't right Darwin was really about survival of the kindest or friendliest yes
39:23it's a mentality yeah I had a goal I had a mission I wanted to be the biggest movie star
39:30on earth
39:31right but I'm not one of the best friends on earth I'm not one of the best fathers on earth
39:38it was my kids that started making me aware that my heart wasn't as available yeah it's a big part
39:46of
39:46why I'm here yeah I got work to do or you look up and your kids are 28 and they
39:51don't come home for
39:52Christmas the lives people are so happy because they spend enormous amounts of time together
40:09they share food they revel with dance they are kind and warm to each other
40:25so they're doing all the things that we are hungering for
40:36we have a need to belong
40:41when you're deprived of that it's like being deprived of food or water or sleep
40:48I guess we're going in one two three right left right
41:04it dawned on me we might be asking the wrong question
41:08how can I be happy but it seems like the question might be
41:14how can we be happy that's the question they ask in life
41:39I just got a chill today is my father's birthday
41:43he would have been 81 today 81 he would have been 81
41:49that's great all right I'm ready let's go
42:15we are all dropped into this existential
42:23confusion and given the job to figure it out
42:30now I'm kind of realizing you know if you let life lead
42:37it'll take you really interesting places
42:41walking up to the highest point to have the flag reach for the heavens
42:49as an honor to those who have passed on it's a beautiful ceremony
43:24morning
43:25we were connected by letting go
43:45I never really thought of letting go as being a part of happiness
43:56my mindset was always about gaining and keeping
44:00everything but there's something in surrendering that is ecstatic
44:31I'm not a great swimmer I don't care I want you to get underwater right now
44:36I don't know
44:40how can I just see it
44:40you know I'm not a great swimmer I don't care about this
44:42I'm not a great swimmer I don't care for the
44:42but I think with the person I would have to go that way
44:42I'm not it's okay but yeah I know it's okay
44:58I'm not a great swimmer I don't care for you
45:00I'm not a great swimmer I don't care for you
45:03I don't know.
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