Benedictine monks report higher happiness levels than the average American despite living a hard life with early rising, limited food, silence, hard labor, and no romantic relationships.

“when researchers have done and no no they're celibate there's no relationships no relationship yeah no romantic relationships um no real access to the outside world in terms of you know they're not on Facebook and keeping up with the news that way it's a lot of um their motto is Aura at labora which is pray and work right and so what's interesting though is that there's a researcher whose name is Alex Bishop who's done a lot of uh research on them and their happiness levels and they seem to be happier than the average American despite all these hardships that they face in their life despite all these sort of crazy and necessary things they seem to be doing they wind up significantly happier than us when we have access to all these things that should make us you know feel great in the moment”