Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's that guy who saw you see him
Speaker 1: bump his head and then you smile at each other
Speaker 1: like that's okay. Ali Ward back with an episode of Ologies.
Speaker 1: It's going to fix your whole life. Just kidding, Actually
Speaker 1: maybe not. It very well might fix your life. I
Speaker 1: love the life fixer episodes, and this ologist is someone
Speaker 1: I've had in my sites for a few years. We
Speaker 1: mentioned her work in the Oesomology episode with Neil Pazica,
Speaker 1: and instead of just citing her, we're essentially interrogating her
Speaker 1: now to shake her for brain science. So she got
Speaker 1: her bachelor's in psychology and her master's and PhD in
Speaker 1: cognition and Brain behavior from Harvard University and is now
Speaker 1: a cognitive scientist and a psychology professor at Yale, where
Speaker 1: she has taught the course Psychology and the Good Life. Oh,
Speaker 1: she's been a ted speaker, she was named one of
Speaker 1: Time magazines leading campus Celebrities, and she hosts a podcast
Speaker 1: called The Happiness Lab. So it's been a wonky few
Speaker 1: years we all know. And as one person who wrote
Speaker 1: a review this week of Ology said, it always brings
Speaker 1: a smile to my face when I hear people talk
Speaker 1: about their passions. I'm grateful every day for ologies and
Speaker 1: giving me my life back. Aj Buxton who left that review,
Speaker 1: I'm very glad you're here. Thank you for leaving that
Speaker 1: fresh one. Thank you to all the patrons who left
Speaker 1: questions for this ologist. You too can join that club.
Speaker 1: Cost twenty five cents an episode at patreon dot com. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's get into it. You demonology. Will I say
Speaker 1: it right even one time? This episode? Stick around to
Speaker 1: find out. So this is the science of happiness, and
Speaker 1: it's been on the ology books a long time. It
Speaker 1: comes from you deemon, which is Greek for a benevolent
Speaker 1: demon or a good spirit, and it was a term
Speaker 1: used by nineteenth century humanistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, and he
Speaker 1: called you demonology the art of ordering our lives so
Speaker 1: as to obtain the greatest possible amount of pleasure and success.
Speaker 1: But we're talking about the science of this art. So
Speaker 1: how to shed the very comfortable, crusty shell of dissatisfaction
Speaker 1: and anxiety with some good steps that have been proven
Speaker 1: by research people to make your brain less of a
Speaker 1: miserable bummer. So press pause on your sad inner goblins
Speaker 1: and open your ears to hear about wanting versus craving,
Speaker 1: being happy in your life, being happy with your life,
Speaker 1: How happiness is even measured, Lottery winter statistics, the wealth
Speaker 1: of free time, the power of a walk wheelbarrows of distractions,
Speaker 1: When does positivity become toxic? How to get around the
Speaker 1: achiness of the word gratitude, and some practical tips to
Speaker 1: enjoy life on planet Earth before You're a pile of
Speaker 1: forgotten bones with cognitive scientist, psychology professor, happiness Lab host,
Speaker 1: Yale researcher, and you demonologist, doctor Lori Santos. Hello, doctor Santos,
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm great? Thanks.
Speaker 1: I'm sure as a happiness doctor, as a as a
Speaker 1: professor of happiness, you probably are inclined to say I
Speaker 1: feel great. We're off.
Speaker 2: You'd think I'm inclined to be honest, because one thing
Speaker 2: that happiness science shows is that being honest about our
Speaker 2: negative emotions is important too. So when things are tough,
Speaker 2: I'm like, you know it's tough, but you know today's
Speaker 2: been a good day.
Speaker 1: That's great. I'm already learning so much. Can I have
Speaker 1: you say, really quick, your first and last name and
Speaker 1: your pronouns.
Speaker 2: Sure, I'm Laurie Santos and my pronouns are she her.
Speaker 1: You have been on my radar for years actually, and
Speaker 1: so I'm really stoked to talk to you because this
Speaker 1: is an ology that I've wanted to do, or I
Speaker 1: think since before I even started the podcast. Do you
Speaker 1: are you familiar with this? That word we homology? What amology?
Speaker 1: What a monology?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Maybe that word.
Speaker 2: It's uied eo Oh sorry, yes, eudomology, maybe eutomology, yes,
Speaker 2: like you diamonia is the yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I guess this is the study of that
Speaker 1: feeling or that state. And you're the perfect person to
Speaker 1: talk to you, because obviously you have your podcast and
Speaker 1: you teach courses at Yale about this. So can you
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about your background. How did
Speaker 1: you start studying cognition and feelings? Where did it start?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I've I've been a psychologist, you know, forever.
Speaker 2: I think I've always been interested in the human mind
Speaker 2: and how it works and things. But you know, before
Speaker 2: I get into the study of happiness specifically, I was
Speaker 2: really interested in the origins of cognition, so the origins
Speaker 2: of how we think, and I study that by looking
Speaker 2: at non human animals. I studied how monkeys and dogs
Speaker 2: think about the world, and that was kind of my
Speaker 2: day job until I took on a new role on
Speaker 2: Yale's campus, where I became what's called a head of college.
Speaker 2: And so Yale's kind of like one of these weird
Speaker 2: schools like in Harry Potter, where there are like colleges
Speaker 2: within a college, you know, like kind of Gryffindora Slytherin
Speaker 2: sort of thing. I'm I'm head of Syllomon College and
Speaker 2: that means I live on campus with students. And when
Speaker 2: I started the role, I was expecting it to be
Speaker 2: you know, like you know, rainbows and parties and just
Speaker 2: like happy students all the time. But when I got there,
Speaker 2: you know, I was really seeing the college student mental
Speaker 2: health crisis up close and personal, you know, with so
Speaker 2: many students reporting feeling depressed and anxious, and you know,
Speaker 2: even if they weren't you know, at clinical levels of
Speaker 2: mental health dysfunction, they were just kind of feeling stressed
Speaker 2: and sort of fast forwarding their life, you know, and
Speaker 2: just feeling overwhelmed and really busy. And so I kind
Speaker 2: of wanted to do something about it, you know. I
Speaker 2: didn't like being in this culture where so many students
Speaker 2: were stressed and depressed and just kind of not enjoying
Speaker 2: their time in college. And so I thought, well, let me,
Speaker 2: you know, figure out what my field of psychology says
Speaker 2: about this. And psychology gives us so many tips that
Speaker 2: we can use to feel better. And so I thought,
Speaker 2: all right, great, I'll you know, I'll do what professors do.
Speaker 2: I'll make a whole class on this. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I prepped this class that I christened Psychology in the
Speaker 2: Good Life, and you know, slapped it together, thinking, you know,
Speaker 2: thirty or so students would take it. And you can
Speaker 2: imagine my surprise when a quarter of the entire campus
Speaker 2: enrolled the first time I taught it. Yeah, we couldn't
Speaker 2: We couldn't fit the class anywhere. We had to teach
Speaker 2: it in a concert hall on campus because that was
Speaker 2: the only place it would fit. But you know, that
Speaker 2: showed me students are voting with their feet. They don't
Speaker 2: like this culture of feeling so overwhelmed and stressed, and
Speaker 2: I think they really wanted, you know, science based strategies
Speaker 2: they could use to feel better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, much different I think than just Instagram quotes on
Speaker 1: a page. Here, you've got someone who studies the brain.
Speaker 1: Who study psychology, you're probably people go into it with
Speaker 1: a little bit of faith that you'll have some evidence
Speaker 1: based information.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. And you know, I mean, I think, you
Speaker 2: know what, one of the things that's interesting as we learn,
Speaker 2: as you look into the science, you learn that, you know,
Speaker 2: some of those ancient pieces of wisdom were quite accurate.
Speaker 2: You know, some of the platitudes we see are quite accurate,
Speaker 2: you know, but some not so much, right, And I
Speaker 2: think that's why we need an empirical approach. Right, we
Speaker 2: can just ask scientifically, okay, if we find happy people,
Speaker 2: what are they doing differently? What are their strategies, how
Speaker 2: are they spending their time? And then we can let
Speaker 2: them not so happy people copy that and really test
Speaker 2: you are they feeling happier? Are they feeling less depressed?
Speaker 2: And you know, these days, we have almost you know,
Speaker 2: two decades worth of scientific work that's done that in
Speaker 2: this field of positive psychology, and you know, we've learned
Speaker 2: a lot. There's lots of evidence based tips out there
Speaker 2: for what you can do to feel better.
Speaker 1: Okay. So the term positive psychology was popularized by doctor
Speaker 1: Martin Seligman, who felt that the contemporary psychology was just
Speaker 1: too deeply focused on what's fucked up about us, not
Speaker 1: how can we live better? So it focuses on things
Speaker 1: like self discovery and a sense of purpose and expressing
Speaker 1: yourself through creativity and authentically. So we're going to get
Speaker 1: to more of that in a bit. But first, from
Speaker 1: small hairy primates to larger, slightly less hairy primates like us.
Speaker 1: And you know where did you make that jump from
Speaker 1: non human primates and dogs into humans? Did you find
Speaker 1: that a lot of the research just correlates based on
Speaker 1: what our brain structures are, how our neurons work.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting. The work I was doing with dogs
Speaker 2: and monkeys was more kind of figuring out, you know,
Speaker 2: how they decide what they know about the world. But
Speaker 2: there was a rich similarity, which is that when you
Speaker 2: start looking into the happiness science work, you quickly realize
Speaker 2: a big way that we get things wrong, which is
Speaker 2: that we have some really bad theories about the kinds
Speaker 2: of things that make us happy. You know, I talk
Speaker 2: to my students and on my podcast, I often say,
Speaker 2: you know, our minds are lying to us about the
Speaker 2: sorts of things that will make us happy. You know,
Speaker 2: we think it's money and changing our circumstances and you know,
Speaker 2: getting the perfect accolade or the perfect grade. But those
Speaker 2: things seem not to work. And that tied really nice
Speaker 2: to some of the work we were doing in animals,
Speaker 2: where we showed that some of the deepest irrationalities we
Speaker 2: have in our species might be evolutionarily old. They're kind
Speaker 2: of built in. And I think the same thing about
Speaker 2: some of the things we get wrong about happiness. Like,
Speaker 2: even knowing these studies, it's hard for me to change
Speaker 2: my intuitions. You know, I still think, well, if I,
Speaker 2: you know, hit powerball today, oh man, I'd be so
Speaker 2: much happier. Or you know, if it just wasn't raining today,
Speaker 2: I'd be so much happier. If you know, we could
Speaker 2: change my circumstances drastically, that would really improve my well being.
Speaker 2: But I know the scientific work that suggests that's probably
Speaker 2: not the case.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I looked into some data on if powerball
Speaker 1: winners are happier, and it's a mixed bag of money.
Speaker 1: So one thing for sure, people do take more vacations
Speaker 1: when they win the lottery, And by contrast, sixty percent
Speaker 1: of Americans take zero vacations a year and Apparently, one
Speaker 1: thing that pleases us so much about vacations is just
Speaker 1: having something, anything to look forward to. So just start
Speaker 1: bring your calendar with any excursion you can, even if
Speaker 1: it's just like a nice bowl of soup next Wednesday
Speaker 1: or a hike next weekend, pack a picnic. Leisure time
Speaker 1: on any scale is apparently worth a million bucks and
Speaker 1: tax free. So hey, is happiness more about being happy
Speaker 1: with ourselves and accepting ourselves or external circumstances or is
Speaker 1: it mission base like you're on the right path to
Speaker 1: doing something that you believe in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a few of all of those things. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think one thing in terms of our circumstances. You know,
Speaker 2: it's worth noting that if you're in really dire traumatic circumstances, yes,
Speaker 2: getting different circumstances will really, you know, improve your well being.
Speaker 2: You know, if you're living below the poverty line, or
Speaker 2: if you're in an abusive relationship, you do want to
Speaker 2: change those circumstances. But for many of the people privileged
Speaker 2: enough to listen to this podcast, who can you know
Speaker 2: put food on the table you know, has a roof
Speaker 2: over the head and so on, you know, changing your
Speaker 2: circumstances might not affect your happiness as much as as
Speaker 2: you think. For many of us circumstances, isn't the changing
Speaker 2: our circumstances isn't the fastest path to feeling a little
Speaker 2: bit happier.
Speaker 1: So is it? Mind over matter? This is where you
Speaker 1: ask smart persons and do fee questions.
Speaker 2: Often it's more about changing our mindset, which incorporates a
Speaker 2: lot of the things you mentioned. You know, it's about
Speaker 2: changing the way we see the world, changing the way
Speaker 2: we see our circumstances, changing the extent to which we're
Speaker 2: present with our circumstances and our emotions. And it's also
Speaker 2: you know, tapping into things that give us meaning in life,
Speaker 2: you know, giving us us a sense of purpose. You know,
Speaker 2: so all of those things seem to matter a lot
Speaker 2: more than what our salary level is or for my students,
Speaker 2: you know, the last grade they got on their midterm
Speaker 2: and things like that.
Speaker 1: Backing up a little bit, what is happiness? How do
Speaker 1: you even define it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Tricky? I mean we could take you know, many
Speaker 2: many podcasts episodes up, you know, fighting over a definition
Speaker 2: of happiness. You know, social scientists tend to try to
Speaker 2: be simpler than philosophers, so they go for a definition
Speaker 2: of happiness. It's pretty easy to measure, and so most
Speaker 2: social scientists think about happiness as sort of being happy
Speaker 2: in your life and with your life. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: being happy in your life is just having lots of
Speaker 2: positive emotions, right, you know, like you have experienced joy
Speaker 2: and laughter and fun and less often things like sadness
Speaker 2: and anger. Not that those aren't there at all, right,
Speaker 2: because a full and complete life includes some negative emotions,
Speaker 2: but you know, the ratio is pretty good. That's sort
Speaker 2: of being happy in your life. Being happy with your life?
Speaker 2: Is that meaning that sense of purpose? It's the answer
Speaker 2: to the question, all things considered, how satisfied am I
Speaker 2: with my life? And those two constructs are ones that
Speaker 2: scientists measure separately, and it's worth noting that they do
Speaker 2: sometimes dissociate, you know that. I think if you go
Speaker 2: on Instagram, there are a lot of people who are
Speaker 2: happy in their life. They're aiding these hedonistic meals on
Speaker 2: some plane somewhere. But if you know, if you look
Speaker 2: at how they're feeling with their life, I bet they're
Speaker 2: feeling pretty empty. And you can also have cases of
Speaker 2: the opposite. My Dean who I live with here in
Speaker 2: the college. You know, she and her wife recently just
Speaker 2: had a base and newborn baby. You know, you're really
Speaker 2: happy with your life. Oh my god, this rich sense
Speaker 2: of meaning being a mom. But in your life dirty
Speaker 2: diapers and not sleeping, and so they can dissociate. But
Speaker 2: best case scenario is that you're feeling pretty high on
Speaker 2: both of those.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna pause us for a second just to ponder,
Speaker 1: how do you feel in your life? How are your
Speaker 1: days to days? Maybe some nice tea in the morning,
Speaker 1: some supportive coworkers, maybe some evening knitting or a walk
Speaker 1: with a friend, or do you hate your coffee maker?
Speaker 1: And you don't know why you started rewatching the Big
Speaker 1: Bang theory for episode one. You're tired, go to bed. Now,
Speaker 1: what about with your life? Do you feel a sense
Speaker 1: of purpose? Are you proud of your life? Do you
Speaker 1: feel authentic? Just think about it for a second. It's
Speaker 1: totally okay if you're like some of U's good, some
Speaker 1: of it sucks eggs or I'm very fortunate. Why am
Speaker 1: I such a grumpy walrus?
Speaker 2: And there are lots of different hacks that we can
Speaker 2: do to improve both of those constructs.
Speaker 1: In terms of emotions themselves. Is happiness and umbrella lah
Speaker 1: for things like joy and relief and satisfaction and contentment?
Speaker 1: Or are those all individual separate emotions?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it kind of depends. I think, you know,
Speaker 2: we we and sometimes scientists, philosophers, you know, all of us.
Speaker 2: You know, we can get really kind of tied up
Speaker 2: on the specifics, right, you know, is joy a subcomponent
Speaker 2: of happiness or is it bigger than happiness? What about
Speaker 2: contentment and things like that. I'm more of the opinion
Speaker 2: of you kind of know them when you see them, right,
Speaker 2: you know. I want a construct that's easy enough that
Speaker 2: if I give people some sort of self report measure
Speaker 2: that they can tell me about it. But beyond that,
Speaker 2: I don't want to get into a big fight about well,
Speaker 2: is it joy, is it contentment? Is it forty five
Speaker 2: percent or is it fifty per You know, I think
Speaker 2: you kind of know it when you see it, But
Speaker 2: but we could probably dig in. I mean, there's nuance there,
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of calm contentment feels different than
Speaker 2: a kind of manic, excited happiness than you know, a
Speaker 2: deep sense of joy. You know, these these are different constructs,
Speaker 2: And maybe importantly so, but overall, what we're going for
Speaker 2: is as many of those as possible.
Speaker 1: And what about you in particular? I know that you
Speaker 1: said you can read the studies and understand and know,
Speaker 1: but sometimes it's it's hard to do. You know, how
Speaker 1: has your life changed since you switched a little bit
Speaker 1: of your career focus on this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's definitely, like, statistically speaking, made me much happier.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm a nerd, right, So I take these
Speaker 2: surveys myself about you know, how satisfied are you with
Speaker 2: your life on a scale of one to ten and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, and you on most ten point scales
Speaker 2: of both kind of happiness in my life and happiness
Speaker 2: with my life. I've gone up at least a point
Speaker 2: since focusing on this stuff. But it's not like magic, right,
Speaker 2: it's in part just because I'm I'm doing the things
Speaker 2: that I keep telling my students to do. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm practicing gratitude, I'm improving my social connection, I'm meditating more,
Speaker 2: I'm exercising like, I'm doing all this stuff in a
Speaker 2: big list of Hey, if you do these things scientifically,
Speaker 2: seems like you'll feel better. And now doing those and
Speaker 2: I'm feeling better, so it kind of makes sense. There's
Speaker 2: also something wonderful about being the happiness professor because you know,
Speaker 2: I have a whole host of students and podcast listeners who,
Speaker 2: you know, if I'm not doing the right thing, will
Speaker 2: probably call me out.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: You know my students, you know, oh has it gone?
Speaker 2: Like oh, I'm so frustrated. You know, it's such a
Speaker 2: and they're like, oh, you know, but my students call
Speaker 2: me head of College Santo's. So it's Hak Santo's. It's
Speaker 2: what it's abbreviated. You to be like Hawk Santo's. Are
Speaker 2: you supposed to be practicing gratitude?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, yes, you're right. You know, so I
Speaker 2: will get called out if I'm not practicing this stuff.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like your friends come to you for
Speaker 1: more pep talks or fewer because they just look at
Speaker 1: your published work instead.
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know, I think my friends are my friends, right,
Speaker 2: you know, they don't necessarily see me as a happiness expert,
Speaker 2: you have anything. I think the happiness expert thing can
Speaker 2: become a little bit you know, annoying at times of like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, I have a podcast on that you know,
Speaker 2: it's like, no, they just want me to be their friend. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so try to separate the two a little bit.
Speaker 1: Shit, Am I not supposed to talk about podcast episodes
Speaker 1: with my friends? Because I've told a lot of people
Speaker 1: about wildfires and how lizards have two dogs? Let's change
Speaker 1: the subject. Well, let's get into some of those factors,
Speaker 1: because I know that you rattle them off, and it's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that we feel like we know,
Speaker 1: but we don't necessarily know. Why are the mechanisms of
Speaker 1: how that works? You know, exercise, practicing, gratitude. Can you
Speaker 1: run me down those things and in a nutshell tell
Speaker 1: me why do they work?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, you know, there's different kinds of categories
Speaker 2: of them, you know, one whole set of categories, or
Speaker 2: there's a whole host of things that make us happier
Speaker 2: that are about connecting with other people. Right, literally being
Speaker 2: around other people is considered a necessary condition for high
Speaker 2: happiness and a lot of studies and that's true even
Speaker 2: for introverts. So just literally connecting with and being around
Speaker 2: other people super useful for happiness. But another way that
Speaker 2: you connect with other people is to focus on what
Speaker 2: makes them happy. Lots of evidence that doing random acts
Speaker 2: of kindness, spending money and time on other people, that
Speaker 2: makes us feel happier. And in some cases, especially with
Speaker 2: spend money, you're happier spending money on others than you
Speaker 2: even are spending on yourself, you know. So this, this
Speaker 2: attitude of social connection and doing for others, you know,
Speaker 2: a powerful set of practices to make us feel happier.
Speaker 2: Another set of practices really has to do with our mindset.
Speaker 2: You know, do we have a mindset of kind of
Speaker 2: griping and complaining or are we focused on things we're
Speaker 2: grateful for? You know? Are we paying attention to the
Speaker 2: negative things in life or are we focused on delights?
Speaker 2: Are we present enough to savor some of the good
Speaker 2: things and just you know, present in general to notice
Speaker 2: our emotions and notice things. There's evidence suggesting that a
Speaker 2: wandering mind is an unhappy mind. So just the act
Speaker 2: of a mindset of being present can be really powerful
Speaker 2: for happiness.
Speaker 1: So for more on a daily practice of looking for
Speaker 1: things that aren't the fucking worst, I linked the awesomology
Speaker 1: episode in the show notes. Also learning this next term
Speaker 1: killed me. I'm dead, I'm a fucus now.
Speaker 2: And then there's just a whole host of things that
Speaker 2: I think we kind of know are good for our
Speaker 2: physical health, but we forget can be so important for
Speaker 2: our mental health. You know, things like taking time to exercise,
Speaker 2: taking time to sleep, which is a huge one, and
Speaker 2: just having like some time off. There's lots of evidence
Speaker 2: that something called time affluence, the subjective sense that you
Speaker 2: have some free time, is much more critical for happiness
Speaker 2: we than we realize. And so, you know, all of
Speaker 2: those things as I say them, you know, we can
Speaker 2: go through the scientific studies and so on, and you know,
Speaker 2: your listeners might be thinking like, well, I kind of
Speaker 2: know that. And what I like to say is it's
Speaker 2: you know, it's common wisdom, but it's not common practice.
Speaker 2: You know how many of those things that I just
Speaker 2: rattled off aren't things that you're doing right now? You
Speaker 2: know that. And then that's why I think it's really
Speaker 2: critical to know the science, because as you hear the
Speaker 2: science of say, nutrition, you think like, oh, maybe I
Speaker 2: should eat healthier. I think as you hear the science
Speaker 2: of how things like social connection and exercise work, you
Speaker 2: start thinking, oh, maybe those are things I really do
Speaker 2: need to get in more of. You know, I kind
Speaker 2: of knew it, but now that I see the evidence,
Speaker 2: this does seem really important.
Speaker 1: So connecting with people talking face to face is better
Speaker 1: for us than just text. The phone works too, FaceTime
Speaker 1: is even better than the phone. Also helping others when
Speaker 1: you can looking for lovely shiny things amid the compost
Speaker 1: pile that can feel like life. Also sleep and exercise.
Speaker 1: It can be immediate or like exercise, it can be
Speaker 1: a few weeks before these habits really take root and
Speaker 1: you start to feel better. So don't give up. Give
Speaker 1: it a few weeks, especially since it's free. Are you
Speaker 1: feeling lazy and annoyed? Don't worry. A lot of us
Speaker 1: feel that way when we start doing something that will
Speaker 1: keep us alive and happy. So I asked doctor Santos
Speaker 1: for us, Why am I like this? Why do you
Speaker 1: think from some sort of evolutionary standpoint, when we're bummed out,
Speaker 1: it's harder to do the things that would make us
Speaker 1: less bummed out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, super frustrating, Like the mind is designed in like
Speaker 2: a really stupid way. You know, we know this, you
Speaker 2: know from other evolutionary studies, But definitely when it comes
Speaker 2: when it comes to happiness, that's the case. In one
Speaker 2: of my upcoming episod SO is of the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 2: I talk about this really stupid design feature of the
Speaker 2: brain where there's just a different, like a whole different
Speaker 2: brain system that codes for what we like, you know,
Speaker 2: so the things we really enjoy versus the things that
Speaker 2: we want, the things that we're motivated to go after
Speaker 2: or that we crave. The simplest example is like, you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes when I'm having a bad day at work, I
Speaker 2: just like crave like plopping down and watching Netflix, or
Speaker 2: like eating a cupcake or having like a huge glass
Speaker 2: of wine. But like, if you actually look at how
Speaker 2: much I would like that, the Netflix is going to
Speaker 2: make me apathetic, and the cupcake is going to give
Speaker 2: me the jitters and the wine, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: sleep very well. Like ultimately, the liking has this disconnect
Speaker 2: from the wanting, and you get it in the reverse
Speaker 2: direction too, Like I don't after a long day at
Speaker 2: work crave a really hard peloton ride or like you know,
Speaker 2: like a really hard yoga class, or like taking a
Speaker 2: long walk with a friend. I don't. I don't have
Speaker 2: like the same motivation I have for that that I
Speaker 2: do for like the cup cake or the loring relaxing
Speaker 2: thing or a hit of social media. But even though
Speaker 2: I don't have the wanting, if I actually engage in
Speaker 2: that practice, I'll feel so much better. And so this
Speaker 2: is a dumb way to design a brain when you
Speaker 2: think that wanting would kind of go with liking, but
Speaker 2: it just sort of doesn't. And that means we spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time craving and easily going after things
Speaker 2: we won't really like. And it means we don't have
Speaker 2: mechanisms except very kind of rational, you know, push ourselves.
Speaker 2: We don't have these kind of low grade craving mechanisms
Speaker 2: to go after things that really will benefit our happiness
Speaker 2: but we don't realize we want them.
Speaker 1: How do we hijack that? Like, how do we trick
Speaker 1: ourselves into doing the thing that we don't think that
Speaker 1: we want to do but we like doing it is
Speaker 1: good for us?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's you know, there's two ways to do it.
Speaker 2: You know. One is this very rational force yourself way,
Speaker 2: which which I harness a lot, which is like, Okay,
Speaker 2: even though I don't really feel like calling anyone right now,
Speaker 2: I know the science and if I talk to someone,
Speaker 2: I'll feel better, right you know, So kind of the
Speaker 2: force yourself approach, right, but the force yourself approach works
Speaker 2: best if it's paired with the second practice, which is
Speaker 2: forcing yourself to notice what you like. Because the wanting
Speaker 2: system can update, it just doesn't do it naturally. But
Speaker 2: after a really hard yoga class or after calling that
Speaker 2: friend when you didn't feel like it, take time to notice,
Speaker 2: like does this feel good? And you're like, yeah, this,
Speaker 2: actually this actually feels nice. I had this, you know,
Speaker 2: pre COVID when I was going to a yoga studio.
Speaker 2: This wonderful yoga instructor right at the end of a
Speaker 2: hard class would have you take this moment. We're like, okay,
Speaker 2: now take a moment to notice. Notice how you feel
Speaker 2: after this class, Like notice how this made you feel?
Speaker 2: And after you're like, damn, that was great, Like I
Speaker 2: want more of this feeling. You know.
Speaker 1: So when you pick the salad and stop pretending that
Speaker 1: diet coke is water and you go for the slowest,
Speaker 1: sweatiest shuffle around the block, but you do it, take
Speaker 1: a minute and absolutely relish how wonderful and brave and
Speaker 1: heroic your efforts were and how you feel.
Speaker 2: We deserve this, but we tend not to be present.
Speaker 2: We tend not to mindfully notice. And that's true for
Speaker 2: this stuff you really crave, but you might not like
Speaker 2: after you, like you open the fridge four times and
Speaker 2: grab that thing to eat that you didn't really feel like,
Speaker 2: take a moment to be like, am I satisfied? Now?
Speaker 2: Not really? You might want to grab something else, And
Speaker 2: once you notice that, your wanting system can be like okay,
Speaker 2: kind of duly noted, got it, got it, Let's take
Speaker 2: note of that for next time. So kind of forcing
Speaker 2: yourself to ignore your wanting system and just act through
Speaker 2: this very rational path, but then also mindfully noticing what
Speaker 2: you really like. Those things can start to update your
Speaker 2: craving system at least a little bit. But the systems
Speaker 2: are always going to be disconnected, unfortunately. It's just our
Speaker 2: minds are not really designed that well for wanting all
Speaker 2: the things that we like.
Speaker 1: What about like our self image? How much does that
Speaker 1: play into our happiness? And how much does monitoring our
Speaker 1: likes and our social media and you know, looking at
Speaker 1: pictures of our face through a distorted camera lens, how
Speaker 1: much is that affecting our happiness and how we see
Speaker 1: our lives?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, one another dumb feature of the way our
Speaker 2: minds work when it comes to happiness is the fact
Speaker 2: that we don't necessarily think of the good things are
Speaker 2: in our life in objective terms. We think of them
Speaker 2: in relative terms. And that means that seeing ourselves on
Speaker 2: social media, seeing what's going on with other people on
Speaker 2: social media, that can really affect our happiness in some
Speaker 2: dumb ways. But take your body image for example, right,
Speaker 2: you know, you might objectively think you have a certain
Speaker 2: you know body that's good or not so good or whatever.
Speaker 2: But we don't necessarily think in terms of our objective sense.
Speaker 2: We think relative. And so as soon as you go
Speaker 2: on Instagram and you look at, you know, the bikini
Speaker 2: pictures of someone else, or take your objective sense of
Speaker 2: how good your vacation was or how rich you were,
Speaker 2: how nice your house is, then you know, you watch
Speaker 2: the celebrity you know, TikTok feeds and you're like, oh, like,
Speaker 2: my house isn't that good or my vacation sucked and
Speaker 2: things like that. We're really susceptible to social comparison when
Speaker 2: it comes to evaluating anything in our life our abilities,
Speaker 2: our amount of money, our salary or a house whatever.
Speaker 2: And that means that we can easily start feeling bad
Speaker 2: even when we're in objectively a good situation. My favorite
Speaker 2: extreme example of this was a study that looked at
Speaker 2: the emotions of different Olympic medalists. So probably gold medalists
Speaker 2: probably feeling pretty happy, like, you know, makes sense, they
Speaker 2: just want a gold medal, Yeah, But what about silver medalists,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe slightly less happy. But what researchers find
Speaker 2: is that if you look at the emotional expressions this
Speaker 2: silver medalists show on the stand.
Speaker 1: Auxana Bayoul has won the gold.
Speaker 2: In backstage, Nancy Kerrigan and Shann lu exchange congratulations and
Speaker 2: consolations for silver and broad, they're not just slightly less happy,
Speaker 2: They're actively feeling awful. They're showing signs of extreme sadness, contempt, anger.
Speaker 2: Like it's not just like slightly less happy, it's actively negative.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: If you think about what I just said, it it
Speaker 2: sort of makes sense, right, because the silver isn't thinking
Speaker 2: I'm objectively the second best in the world, I objectively
Speaker 2: beat like the other seven billion people like whatever. They're
Speaker 2: just thinking about one reference point that makes them feel awful,
Speaker 2: the gold. They were almost there and they didn't get it.
Speaker 2: So they feel like a loser. But what's striking is
Speaker 2: if you look at the bronze medalist, you see something
Speaker 2: completely different because their reference point isn't the gold right,
Speaker 2: like they were I don't know, like you know, thirty
Speaker 2: seconds off, or they like lost two matches or something.
Speaker 2: Their reference point is like, if I just messed up
Speaker 2: a little bit more, I would go home completely empty handed, right,
Speaker 2: Like I wouldn't even be on the stand at all. Right,
Speaker 2: And so they're showing signs of true ecstasy. In some cases,
Speaker 2: they're showing expressions that are even happier than the gold
Speaker 2: medalist because their reference point is like, whew, look how
Speaker 2: lucky I am, Like I'd almost totally screwed up.
Speaker 1: So Nancy Kerrigan displayed a famously sour face receiving the
Speaker 1: silver in nineteen ninety four, and then in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: a study was published in the Journal of Personal and
Speaker 1: Social Psychology title quote, when less is more counterfactual thinking
Speaker 1: and satisfaction among Olympic medalists. Counterfactual thinking, huh, that is
Speaker 1: the sinking, gnawing feeling of what could have been or wow,
Speaker 1: A fudged it up. So one researcher doctor Andrea Lewangrath,
Speaker 1: a University of Iowa marketing assistant professor, did follow up
Speaker 1: studies on metalists to confirm that first study, and recently
Speaker 1: said in an interview that you don't have to be
Speaker 1: the second best out of eight billion. There are always
Speaker 1: going to be people who we can compare ourselves to
Speaker 1: that are better, faster, smarter, or whatever, and that can
Speaker 1: make us feel relatively bad. So what is the lesson here?
Speaker 1: Think twice before you get a no regrets tattoo and
Speaker 1: maybe consider a counter your counterfactuals tattoo instead, And once
Speaker 1: the sting wears off, celebrate your silvers. You did it.
Speaker 2: And I love this metaphor because you know, it shows
Speaker 2: us that it doesn't matter what's going on objectively, it
Speaker 2: matters who we're comparing ourself against. That means sometimes we
Speaker 2: can be an objectively a really good spot but feel
Speaker 2: kind of awful about it.
Speaker 1: And what about chemicals? Where are just the chemical hands
Speaker 1: that we were adult? When do those have the reins
Speaker 1: on the amount of happiness we feel?
Speaker 2: So, you know, we could think about the chemicals we're
Speaker 2: dealt in a couple ways. Often we think about it
Speaker 2: in terms of, you know, our kind of genetic lottery,
Speaker 2: right you are you naturally a happy person or you
Speaker 2: naturally a kind of down in the dumbst person, And
Speaker 2: just like circumstances, what we find is that there is
Speaker 2: a genetic component to happiness, you know. So there, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're born from a long line of overly optimistic people,
Speaker 2: you're more likely to be overly optimistic. But the amount
Speaker 2: of that heritability is tiny. What you know, it's probably
Speaker 2: tinier than something like height or weight in the US,
Speaker 2: and especially with like weight, we know that that's something
Speaker 2: that obviously your environment can shape a lot. And so there,
Speaker 2: while there is some heritable component to happiness, it's much
Speaker 2: tinier than we think. And this is really good news, right.
Speaker 2: You know, it would suck if you're like, hey, you're
Speaker 2: just born to be happy or born to be not
Speaker 2: so happy, and that's it. What the science is really
Speaker 2: telling us is that there's some heritable component, but there's
Speaker 2: a lot of action that we can take through our mindsets,
Speaker 2: through our behaviors to change things around. And that's great
Speaker 2: because you know, putting this all together, it means our
Speaker 2: genetics don't predict our happiness that much, and our circumstances
Speaker 2: don't predict our happiness that much like we don't, you know,
Speaker 2: necessarily get to control whether we're born into you know,
Speaker 2: complete luxury or born into poverty. We don't necessarily get
Speaker 2: to control what our genetic heritage is. But we all
Speaker 2: can completely control our mindsets and our behavior. So it's
Speaker 2: good news. The bad news is that changing those mindsets
Speaker 2: and behavior, as you probably guess, takes a lot of work.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you ever have students who either come to
Speaker 1: you or who you hear about who aren't quite sure
Speaker 1: if it's time for medical intervention or is it time
Speaker 1: for just trying to hack their habits? How do we
Speaker 1: as individuals make that call?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I think you brought this up because I
Speaker 2: think this is really important. You know, so many of
Speaker 2: the hacks you know, we are talking about today are
Speaker 2: ones that really can improve your well being. But you know,
Speaker 2: there's some points when you needed a hack, and there's
Speaker 2: some points where you you know, need something you know
Speaker 2: that's much deeper. And the analogy like to use is,
Speaker 2: you know, imagine you go into your doctor and you say, hey, doctor,
Speaker 2: I have high blood pressure. You know what should I do?
Speaker 2: Your doctor might say, hey, you know, get on the
Speaker 2: treadmill and exercise a little bit more, you know, eat,
Speaker 2: you know here, eat these fruits and vegetables every day
Speaker 2: or something. But if you walked into your doctor's office
Speaker 2: and you're saying, doctor, you know, I'm having chest pains,
Speaker 2: I'm having a cute cardiac arrest right now, your doctor
Speaker 2: wouldn't be like, well, get on the treadmill, you know,
Speaker 2: like for half hour day, like your doctor would. You know,
Speaker 2: an emergency intervention would take place. And I think it's
Speaker 2: worth recognizing that our mental health works the same way.
Speaker 2: The kinds of things I'm talking about are in some
Speaker 2: sense preventative medicine. You know, they're there so that you
Speaker 2: don't wind up in a state of kind of acutely
Speaker 2: feeling clinically depressed or suicidal or something worse. Right, you know,
Speaker 2: you they're there so that you can protect your mental
Speaker 2: health so you don't get to that point. But if
Speaker 2: you're experience and saying true depression, you know, hard for
Speaker 2: you to do your daily activities, or anxiety so powerful
Speaker 2: that you're experiencing panic attacks, that's a sign that you
Speaker 2: might need professional help. All the hacks I mentioned are good,
Speaker 2: you know, once you get out of that acute state.
Speaker 2: Just like the heart attack person, as soon as you
Speaker 2: get out of experiencing cardiac arrest, the next step is
Speaker 2: going to be to go back to so some of
Speaker 2: those preventative measures once you kind of get out of
Speaker 2: the hospital. And I think the same thing is true
Speaker 2: for clinical parts of these diseases. You might also want
Speaker 2: to go back to experiencing gratitude and meditating in these things,
Speaker 2: but it is important to get acute care if the
Speaker 2: mental health situation you're in is acute.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's great to know for people. You may know
Speaker 1: when you hit this level because your friends will say,
Speaker 1: I think you should see a doctor, dude, which is
Speaker 1: what happened to me when I was going through the
Speaker 1: hardest parts of my life and also had a couple
Speaker 1: medical conditions that turned my brain into bees. The doctor
Speaker 1: was like, well, shucks, you need more than a car wash.
Speaker 1: Let's check under the hood there, buddy. But yes, what
Speaker 1: is the technique for sloughing off persistent, crusty, muddy feelings
Speaker 1: when it comes to things like gratitude and meditation? How
Speaker 1: much is effective? Like how much can we get away
Speaker 1: with if we're feeling reel down to the dumps, but
Speaker 1: we're low on motivation. How much gratitude is enough, how
Speaker 1: much meditation is enough? How much exercise is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think you know. One of the
Speaker 2: nice things about this being all this stuff being evidence
Speaker 2: based is that allows you to kind of do your
Speaker 2: own experimentation. Right. The answer of how much meditation you
Speaker 2: you know, particular podcast listener need might depend on all
Speaker 2: kinds of things, right, and so the key is to
Speaker 2: sort of try it out. One thing we know, though,
Speaker 2: is that sometimes it takes less than you really expect.
Speaker 2: Take something like gratitude, there's evidence that just scribbling down
Speaker 2: three things that you're grateful for every day that can
Speaker 2: be enough to significantly boost your well being in as
Speaker 2: little as two weeks, Like doesn't take that much time.
Speaker 2: There's evidence, for example, from Hetty Cobra's lab at Yale,
Speaker 2: that even as little as ten minutes of meditation a
Speaker 2: day can really start to improve your well being and
Speaker 2: some mental health symptoms. Right.
Speaker 1: For more on this, feel free to peruse paper such
Speaker 1: as Brief Mindfulness Meditation improves attention in novices and Let
Speaker 1: It Be Mindful Acceptance down regulates pain and negative emotion,
Speaker 1: both published by doctor hettikober So. Scientists in lab coats
Speaker 1: have dedicated their research and their grant money budgets to
Speaker 1: proving that yes, meditation does help. It's free, it takes
Speaker 1: less time than making a sandwich. We can do this.
Speaker 2: Let's do this, and so it doesn't take long. What
Speaker 2: it takes is some consistency. And so my instinct is like,
Speaker 2: because sometimes we hear these tips like all right, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna drop everything and do you know like seventy hours
Speaker 2: of meditation, It's like no, no, no, just start really small.
Speaker 2: Allow yourself to do these baby steps and test it out.
Speaker 2: How are you feeling? Are you feeling better? Is making
Speaker 2: is it making things better? Is it making things worse?
Speaker 2: And so allowing ourself, the self compassion to engage in
Speaker 2: these baby steps, I think is really important.
Speaker 1: I think that's so true. Whenever I get out of
Speaker 1: the habit of running, which is now I'll go do
Speaker 1: a lap at the red but I'll have to just
Speaker 1: tell myself the first couple of times I do it,
Speaker 1: the first month, even as long as I just get
Speaker 1: around the reservoir, even crawling is fine, you know, like
Speaker 1: expecting yourself to get back into running at a certain
Speaker 1: pace or doing things you know whole hog can be
Speaker 1: so intimidating you just want to give up right away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think you know, we're not good at
Speaker 2: understanding the amount of self compassion we need to motivate ourselves.
Speaker 2: I think again, this is a spot where I think
Speaker 2: our minds get it wrong. We think the right way
Speaker 2: to motivate ourselves is to become these horror drill instructors
Speaker 2: and like yell at ourselves in our head in a
Speaker 2: way that we'd never speak to a friend or a
Speaker 2: child or someone we cared about hopefully right, But that
Speaker 2: kind of just doesn't work. That convinces us that it's
Speaker 2: not good to try. We end up setting our standards lower,
Speaker 2: We end up procrastinating. More self compassionate turns out, can
Speaker 2: actually allow you to engage in new habits better and
Speaker 2: more effectively and with less procrastination. That's not our theory.
Speaker 2: We like go for the drill sergeant approach. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: we'd be better off kind of, you know, my fully
Speaker 2: paying attention to what's going on and recognizing that we're
Speaker 2: just human and giving ourselves a little bit more of
Speaker 2: a benefit.
Speaker 1: Of a doubt. Yeah, Like I never want to obey
Speaker 1: a dick who's yelling at me, So why do I
Speaker 1: do that to myself? Right?
Speaker 2: And we're like, you know, the dickiest of dicks is
Speaker 2: often the person in our head, right. You know, It's like, wait,
Speaker 2: I would never say, you know, that thing I just
Speaker 2: said to myself in my head. I would never say
Speaker 2: that to another human. Why am I talking to myself
Speaker 2: that way?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I would want to slap my own self for
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, Like I'm yeah, I'm the hardest
Speaker 1: on myself more than I would ever tolerate in somebody else,
Speaker 1: Which is so funny that we do that. But you know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the term positive psychology before, and I'm so
Speaker 1: curious about that because I feel like I can't tell
Speaker 1: if it's flimplam or not that positive psychology is totally
Speaker 1: like a legit practice or is it something along the
Speaker 1: lines of like toxic positivity at all costs? Where what
Speaker 1: is positive Psychology's? What do scientists think of it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the term positive psychology began when scientists
Speaker 2: Marley Seligman, who kind of invented the field. There's thought
Speaker 2: that the founder of the field, you know, really had
Speaker 2: this intuition that so much of psychology is about, you know,
Speaker 2: what he called kind of below baseline, right like I'm
Speaker 2: trying to cure depression, I'm trying to cure anxiety or
Speaker 2: something like that. But he realized that we didn't. He have,
Speaker 2: as he called it, a good science of kind of
Speaker 2: going above baseline. You know, there's baseline, and then there's
Speaker 2: feeling like you're flourishing, you know, then there's getting social
Speaker 2: connection and life, feeling really present, experiencing joy. And so
Speaker 2: he really christened this name of this field positive psychology,
Speaker 2: in order to focus on those things. But I think
Speaker 2: positive psychology gets the wrong rap. I think there's this
Speaker 2: idea that like you have to only be positive. But
Speaker 2: you know, if you look at what this research is
Speaker 2: really showing, there's a lot of evidence that a real,
Speaker 2: true happy life, a successful life, a healthy life involves
Speaker 2: experiencing negative emotions allowing those not running away from them.
Speaker 2: There's you know, lots of evidence suggesting that there are
Speaker 2: different techniques you can use to navigate those emotions and
Speaker 2: sort of feel them without getting like destroyed by them.
Speaker 2: And so I think, you know, when you hear these
Speaker 2: terms positive psychology, positivity, they can kind of feel a
Speaker 2: little cheesy and get a bad rap that it's like positive, positive,
Speaker 2: positive all the time. But but that's not really when
Speaker 2: you dig into the field, what it's showing my sense
Speaker 2: is that you know, the whole goal is to get
Speaker 2: to you know, this idea of you, Diaminia, this rich,
Speaker 2: meaningful life. And you do that not through you know,
Speaker 2: putting blinders on and being a Pollyanna and like you know,
Speaker 2: trying only to experience happy, happy, happy, no matter what.
Speaker 2: You do that by having a full life which is
Speaker 2: rich with lots of emotions and experiences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's such a good point about letting yourself
Speaker 1: feel those negative emotions but not necessarily like succumbing to them,
Speaker 1: you know, not letting them win all the time. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think we, you know, we get that wrong.
Speaker 2: Like I think our instinct again is this idea that well,
Speaker 2: there's some negative emotion I should run away from that,
Speaker 2: or the right move would be to sort of suppress it,
Speaker 2: you know, stiff upper lip. But there's evidence from James
Speaker 2: Gross at Stanford that the act of suppressing our emotions
Speaker 2: can lead to things like increased cardiac stress or even
Speaker 2: can cause us to have some problems with memory and
Speaker 2: decision making. You do worse on a memory test when
Speaker 2: you're trying to suppress some negative emotion, so it has
Speaker 2: negative costs. We're much better off if we can find
Speaker 2: ways to regulate and allow those emotions right to experience them,
Speaker 2: give them some time, and then be self compassionate and
Speaker 2: nurture ourselves through them.
Speaker 1: Are there any myths about happiness that you find yourself
Speaker 1: constantly having to bust.
Speaker 2: All the time? I mean, you know, as we've been
Speaker 2: talking about, like, our minds lie to us all the
Speaker 2: time about this stuff. I mean, the biggest one, the
Speaker 2: one that my students fall prey to so much, is
Speaker 2: that happiness is about circumstances. You know, that happiness is
Speaker 2: about money. In particular, my Yale students, we're all thinking
Speaker 2: about what job they want to get when they get
Speaker 2: out of this Ivy League university, and what salary they're
Speaker 2: going to get in things. You know, you tell them
Speaker 2: that after a certain reasonable middle class income, money doesn't
Speaker 2: matter for happiness anymore, and they want to fight you
Speaker 2: on it. They're like, well, you know, what what if
Speaker 2: I spend it differently, or what if I went on
Speaker 2: vacation to these places over and over again, you're like, Nope,
Speaker 2: doesn't count. Like or at the very least, it's not
Speaker 2: so much that money doesn't matter for happiness. It's just
Speaker 2: there are so many other things you could focus on
Speaker 2: that matter much much more.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Maybe yeah, you know, if you go up like that
Speaker 2: minuscule amount, if you put all this work in and
Speaker 2: all this time in to earn more, maybe you get
Speaker 2: a teeny bomp. Maybe maybe not, But like if you
Speaker 2: just wrote down three things you're grateful for, that would
Speaker 2: work way more effectively. Like we know that empirically.
Speaker 1: Is there a test where people can go figure out
Speaker 1: how happy I am? I?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also different spots online where you can do that.
Speaker 2: In fact, Marty Seligman, who we mentioned this, founder of
Speaker 2: Positive Psychology, has a website called Authentic Happiness. If you
Speaker 2: kind of google the authentic Happiness test.
Speaker 1: So yes, I checked this out, and if you google
Speaker 1: Authentic Happiness you can help fellow you demonologists by taking
Speaker 1: scored questionnaires. They have Authentic Happiness Inventory, the General Happiness Scale,
Speaker 1: Positive and Negative Effect Questionnaire, the Four Dice Emotions Questionnaire.
Speaker 1: I myself opted for the classic the Authentic Happiness Inventory
Speaker 1: and on a scale of one to five, Jared, what
Speaker 1: do you think I got three? You know me too, yeah,
Speaker 1: three point oh eight. So maybe I'll meditate a bunch
Speaker 1: and then I'll take it in a few months. Also,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what all those different tests do,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure that the scientists know, and that's all
Speaker 1: that matters.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't need a fancy test. It's really
Speaker 2: kind of all things considered, how happy are you with
Speaker 2: your life? And this is the beauty. There's not for
Speaker 2: bitter or for worse. There's not a thermometer that we
Speaker 2: can use for happiness as scientists where we put it
Speaker 2: in like boop, you're ninety eight point six, you know happy?
Speaker 2: You know, you just have to answer it for yourself.
Speaker 2: And that kind of feels, you know, a little bit,
Speaker 2: not as legit scientifically, but in practice, that's what we're
Speaker 2: really trying to get at. We're trying to get at
Speaker 2: your own perception of how things are going, and if
Speaker 2: things are going well, then they're going well. Uh.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you some listener questions? Sure, But before that,
Speaker 1: let's aim a money canon at a worthy cause. This week,
Speaker 1: doctor Santos chose DonorsChoose dot org, which lets teachers list
Speaker 1: their classroom needs and then regular Jabroni's like you and
Speaker 1: me can make their dreams come true. So donors Choose
Speaker 1: has fulfilled one point seven million classroom projects from butterfly
Speaker 1: cocoons to robotics kits, to pencils and paper and books
Speaker 1: with diverse characters. So in doctor Santo's name, we funded
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Speaker 1: schools MS McCormick's stem lab kits and LA's Missus B's
Speaker 1: kindergartens class with printer cartridges for craft projects at handouts.
Speaker 1: So that is donors choose dot org. I had never
Speaker 1: heard of them before this. They seem awesome. Our donations
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Speaker 1: about now, okay, happy to ask your questions for Doctor
Speaker 1: Santos Okay. Ariol Reagan wants to know do animals experience happiness?
Speaker 1: Are they happier than people? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Truly hard to ask animals about their happiness because you
Speaker 2: know I can do the self report measure with you
Speaker 2: it's harder to do that with a banana slug or
Speaker 2: a banobo or something. Physiologically, we know they go through
Speaker 2: a lot of the same states as humans, but it's
Speaker 2: hard to know for sure if those physiological states correlate
Speaker 2: with this subjective state. I only know that you have
Speaker 2: the subjective state because you tell me. And so even
Speaker 2: though everything we can objectively look at like suggests that it,
Speaker 2: you know, we were feeling the same thing subjectively, it's
Speaker 2: really hard to know for sure.
Speaker 1: So one thing some scientists try to observe is play
Speaker 1: behavior like hopping around and running, chewing on stuff. My
Speaker 1: tiny poodle Angel she rubs her butt against stuff like
Speaker 1: a tire or my shoe. That's her version of typing.
Speaker 1: Hashtag blessed Fortney Gratziana wants to know can anxious people
Speaker 1: be happy?
Speaker 2: I think anxious people can definitely be happy. I think
Speaker 2: there are a lot of strategies we can use to
Speaker 2: regulate and allow our anxiety. I think part of the
Speaker 2: problem with anxiety is that we try to run away
Speaker 2: from it, that we like, you know, try to avoid
Speaker 2: it at all costs. But that's yet another emotion that
Speaker 2: I think we can kind of sit with like feeling
Speaker 2: really anxious right now, it's eight out of ten. You
Speaker 2: can sort of surf that anxiety urge and get to
Speaker 2: the other side and then do some work to sort
Speaker 2: of nurture yourself. So I think you can be anxious
Speaker 2: and happy, just like you can be sad and happy,
Speaker 2: and you can be angry and happy. You know, to
Speaker 2: have a truly happy life requires experiencing all those emotions
Speaker 2: but finding ways to kind of navigate them so they
Speaker 2: don't take over.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, oh, that's really well said. Aiden Paco and
Speaker 1: Meg g want to know, is it flim flam that
Speaker 1: smiling actually makes you happier or is that a truth fact?
Speaker 1: Meg says and laughing, and a lot of other folks
Speaker 1: looking at you, patrons say see demos one oh one,
Speaker 1: Alexis Wallack and Ashley Herbal wa No, can you fake
Speaker 1: it till you make it?
Speaker 2: There's a lot of feedback that we get from other
Speaker 2: people's emotions, from like our own feedback from our own
Speaker 2: like actions, you know, so pretending you're happy, acting like
Speaker 2: you're happy can often put you in a happy state,
Speaker 2: in part because it puts the people around you in
Speaker 2: a happy state. And we know that there's a lot
Speaker 2: of evidence for what's called emotional contagion. Right, just like
Speaker 2: if I'm around happy people, I'm just going to catch
Speaker 2: the emotions of that happy person and the reverse, right,
Speaker 2: if I'm around those negative nelly is like that I'm
Speaker 2: gonna catch that too, And so there is a kind
Speaker 2: of fake it till you make it. There's associate with
Speaker 2: the people who have the emotions that you want to experience.
Speaker 2: It's a powerful way to kind of use your situation,
Speaker 2: your social environment to build in well being.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you can do for a friend who
Speaker 1: is feeling really unhappy to help them out as well? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think you know. The way to do it, I
Speaker 2: think really is to try to bring some of these
Speaker 2: practices in naturally, right. I mean, first of all, give
Speaker 2: that friends some social connection, right, just the very act
Speaker 2: of you talking to them, being around them, spending time
Speaker 2: with them is going to improve their well being. I
Speaker 2: think you can also bring your attitudes of that are positis, right.
Speaker 2: You know, if you're expressing things that you're grateful for,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're savoring things and feeling a little
Speaker 2: bit present, you know that that kind of thing is
Speaker 2: naturally going to rub off on them because of emotional contagion,
Speaker 2: because of behavioral contagion. But the biggest thing you can
Speaker 2: do is, I think, check in, you know, check in
Speaker 2: and allow yourself to be present and be there for
Speaker 2: someone who needs you. Really powerful way to use your
Speaker 2: happiness to positively affect others.
Speaker 1: So if you ever think, why would I check up
Speaker 1: on someone I don't know how to fix things, don't worry.
Speaker 1: Just be alive and in their orbit and listen or
Speaker 1: tell them about how lizards have two dicks. That's what
Speaker 1: I do. Patrick Javrooni says, first time question asker wants
Speaker 1: to know happiness and the microbiome connection. What can we
Speaker 1: do to improve our microbiome is their connection? What's the deal?
Speaker 2: Yeah, great, great question, And it's something that we don't
Speaker 2: have that much good data on yet. You know, everything
Speaker 2: we know suggests that microbiome effects all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2: It would be surprising, I think, in some ways if
Speaker 2: it didn't affect our well being and our happiness. But
Speaker 2: you know, this is just a new area of work
Speaker 2: where we're learning new things all the time and we
Speaker 2: don't really have a great verdict yet. But you know,
Speaker 2: if you want to throw research money onto something that
Speaker 2: I think will be really telling in the next ten
Speaker 2: years of happiness science. I think microbiome might be a
Speaker 2: spot to do that.
Speaker 1: Nice. You can just get in on poop on the
Speaker 1: ground floor. Let's ride this thing to the top.
Speaker 2: Every poop samples from very happy people. I'm in.
Speaker 1: I think that you literally can buy poop like on
Speaker 1: the black market for your own at home, like of
Speaker 1: fecal transplants ps. Of course I looked this up and
Speaker 1: getting an enema with someone else's poop. It's called fecal
Speaker 1: microbiotic transplantation. And in the Microbiology Gut Biome episode from
Speaker 1: November twenty eighteen, we go into detail about how our
Speaker 1: microbiomes are suffering from processed foods and artificial ingredients and
Speaker 1: overuse of antibiotics for things like viral infections that don't
Speaker 1: need antibiotics. So, given that up to ninety percent of
Speaker 1: our serotonin is synthesized in our simmering pooh filled guts,
Speaker 1: diy fmts, do it yourself. Fecal microbiota transplantations as are called.
Speaker 1: They're getting more and more common as doctors are still
Speaker 1: reluctant to shove poo up our butts even when we
Speaker 1: ask nicely.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: According to an American Journal of gastro Entrology article called
Speaker 1: Understanding the Scope of Do it Yourself fecal microbiotic Transplant,
Speaker 1: eighty two percent of folks who tried it felt better afterwards,
Speaker 1: and ninety two percent of those knew their stool donner
Speaker 1: who I don't know. I guess you find by asking
Speaker 1: your friends who seems chill and has good poops? So
Speaker 1: you can ask a doctor to screen a donor sample
Speaker 1: and see if they'll do it. Otherwise, there's plenty of
Speaker 1: instructions on the internet. Apparently you buy a blunder, a
Speaker 1: goodwill or something, and then you maybe burn it later.
Speaker 1: None of this is my beeswax. Ask your doctors, don't
Speaker 1: sue me or make me a smoothie later. I'm good.
Speaker 1: Rahala wants to know first time question asker, is there
Speaker 1: any truth to the notion that people who are generally
Speaker 1: happy tend to live longer? And I want to say,
Speaker 1: My dad has can or and his oncologists were saying,
Speaker 1: just positivity is really helpful for patients in general. Do
Speaker 1: we find that statistically sound?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there're actually some strong evidence that happiness
Speaker 2: seems to affect our longevity in super interesting ways. One
Speaker 2: of the most famous studies on this looked at a
Speaker 2: group of individuals that had really similar lifestyles. Because if
Speaker 2: you think about it, this is a hard study to do, right,
Speaker 2: we want to ask, like, our happier people living longer,
Speaker 2: but of course there's lots of things that affect whether
Speaker 2: you live longer. And so the researchers tried to find
Speaker 2: a population that had like reasonably low risk factors and
Speaker 2: a really similar lifestyle, and they hit upon studying nuns.
Speaker 2: The way they did this was that they went back
Speaker 2: to nuns journals that they had in their twenties. I
Speaker 2: guess nuns, at least in one of these convents kind
Speaker 2: of did some journaling when they first joined the nunnery.
Speaker 2: So you go back when the nuns are in their
Speaker 2: twenties and you look at their journals and you do
Speaker 2: like a text analysis, like, you know, you run the
Speaker 2: text of their journals through something that pulls out all
Speaker 2: the happy words and pulls out all the kind of
Speaker 2: negative words or just like any emotion words whatsoever, and
Speaker 2: then you use those textual analyzes to predict how many
Speaker 2: of the nuns live into their eighties and nineties. And
Speaker 2: what you find is that the happier nuns are just
Speaker 2: living surprisingly longer, you know, in some cases, like decades
Speaker 2: longer than the nuns on average who are just sadder,
Speaker 2: which is really quite striking. It suggests that happiness right
Speaker 2: might really be affecting like how long we live. So yeah,
Speaker 2: important important to focus on, not just because happiness feels good,
Speaker 2: but it might make you live longer too.
Speaker 1: Patron Anika Callen asked why are feelings of happiness stronger
Speaker 1: when you're younger? And RL Shaoul pelegg Page and r J.
Speaker 1: Deutge wanted to know if happier people tend to be
Speaker 1: of a certain gender or age. RJ wants to make
Speaker 1: sure they don't become a grumpy crank who hates everyone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder do do we find that people get happier
Speaker 1: as they age or crankier as they age?
Speaker 2: Yeah? On average, the data really suggests happier. There's some
Speaker 2: interesting like life span work on happiness. You know, you're
Speaker 2: kind of happy when you're young, and then as you
Speaker 2: become like an adult in middle aged, especially after you
Speaker 2: have children. In fact, you know, happiness tends to dip,
Speaker 2: but then as soon as you kind of go back
Speaker 2: to empty nesting, you know, when the kids go off
Speaker 2: to college, then the slope of happiness kind of goes
Speaker 2: back up. And so it's something to look forward to
Speaker 2: as you age. On average, older people tend to be happier, how.
Speaker 1: You know, I wasn't sure about that and kids, and
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought to ask that. But I have friends
Speaker 1: who have kids. I have friends who don't have kids.
Speaker 1: I myself have a daughter. She's a dog, and that's
Speaker 1: which she's probably the only kid I'm going to have,
Speaker 1: and she's an animal. But I don't know, like in general,
Speaker 1: is that the case is just the stress of having kids,
Speaker 1: but then the satisfaction that you did it later, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a like it balances.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is one of the spots where
Speaker 2: those two constructs of happiness can be so powerful, the
Speaker 2: sort of happiness in your life and happiness with your life.
Speaker 2: Lots of evidence that kids kind of boost the happiness
Speaker 2: with your life. You get this sense of meaning and
Speaker 2: so on. But if you look at people's time budgets
Speaker 2: in terms of what they spend their time on, the
Speaker 2: thing that often feels the most miserable is spending time
Speaker 2: with your kids, like in your life, you know, when
Speaker 2: you're picking up you know, the toys and dealing with
Speaker 2: the dirty diapers and things. That is the thing that
Speaker 2: people seem to on average enjoy kind of the least.
Speaker 2: It ranks up there with like commuting and like shopping
Speaker 2: for groceries. You know, not like a heavy endorsement, but
Speaker 2: that's kind of complicated. I think that's one of these
Speaker 2: reasons that you know, these constructs are kind of helpful.
Speaker 2: There are certain things that you do for meaning that
Speaker 2: in the moment don't feel great, but they wind up
Speaker 2: giving you meaning. And I think the tips are powerful too,
Speaker 2: because there hacks you can do to enjoy your time
Speaker 2: more with your kids. Right, if you have strategies for
Speaker 2: managing stress and negative emotions, that can probably make your
Speaker 2: time with your kids even happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm so in awe of people who do have kids,
Speaker 1: just because it seems so challenging. And I know myself,
Speaker 1: I'm like so scatterbrained that I feel like I just
Speaker 1: don't necessarily feel like that would be my strong suit.
Speaker 1: But there are some people who love kiteboarding and others
Speaker 1: who are like no, thank you, Like I would rather
Speaker 1: be on the beach reading a book. So it really
Speaker 1: depends on what you like, you know.
Speaker 2: And I think you're doing it right because there's a
Speaker 2: lot of evidence that the furry babies, especially dogs, there's
Speaker 2: more research on dogs, really do have a significant effect
Speaker 2: on happiness. But again that research is interesting because it's
Speaker 2: not the dogs per se, it's kind of the benefits
Speaker 2: that we get from dogs. So dogs get us out exercising,
Speaker 2: dogs allow us to make more social connections. They are
Speaker 2: a social connection, but then they also let us socially
Speaker 2: connect with people. They make us more present. You know,
Speaker 2: when you're with your dog and you know you're playing
Speaker 2: fetch with your dog, it's hard to like be distracted
Speaker 2: or checking your email, right, And so it seems like
Speaker 2: dogs don't necessarily inherently make us happier, but they make
Speaker 2: us do a lot of the practices I've mentioned that
Speaker 2: lead to higher happiness.
Speaker 1: First time question asker Alana Rickman asks has the rapid
Speaker 1: development and technology in the last few years had an
Speaker 1: overall increase or decrease in people's happiness and patrons Diana
Speaker 1: ash Gelhouse, Jenna Mandola Lucas O'Neill, Nicole Kleinman all echoed that,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I wonder too in terms of being in
Speaker 1: the moment, is being on our phone does that take
Speaker 1: us out of the moment? Is that take us into
Speaker 1: a kind of another like universe or galaxy of what's
Speaker 1: happening in this digital realm versus what's happening around us.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean when you think about technology, it's worth
Speaker 2: remembering we can do technology for We can use technology
Speaker 2: for all kinds of things, right, you know, we could
Speaker 2: use technology to scribble in a gratitude journal, or I
Speaker 2: could pick up a phone and call my mom right
Speaker 2: and have a social connection. Often we're not using our
Speaker 2: technology in ways that boost happiness. We could, but often
Speaker 2: we're checking social media. You're getting this sort of nutri
Speaker 2: suite social connection, but not real stuff. I'm distracted and
Speaker 2: not paying attention to the real things in life. I
Speaker 2: could be present, looking at the trees or talking to
Speaker 2: the people around me, but you know, I'm scrolling through,
Speaker 2: you know, some dumb thing on the Internet. And so
Speaker 2: it's not that technology in and of itself is bad,
Speaker 2: it's just that the way we use it often is
Speaker 2: bad and it's kind of built to make it harder
Speaker 2: for us to use it. Well, you know, every app
Speaker 2: is in some ways competing for your attention, right, They
Speaker 2: want to notify you of stuff and have the dings
Speaker 2: that sort of give you a little burst of reward
Speaker 2: every time you get some new piece of information. And
Speaker 2: that means that our apps and our technology is kind
Speaker 2: of constantly competing with real life, you know, for our attention. Sadly,
Speaker 2: I think there's domains in which the technology is sort
Speaker 2: of winning, you know, which which makes sense. You know.
Speaker 2: At my podcast, I talked to the University of British
Speaker 2: Columbia researcher Liz Done, and she had this lovely quote
Speaker 2: where she's like, you know, imagine if to your next
Speaker 2: you know, like dinner date with your husband, like you
Speaker 2: took a big wheelbarrow, and in the wheelbarrow it was
Speaker 2: you know, DVDs of every movie you've ever seen, you know,
Speaker 2: a big pile of CDs of every song in the universe,
Speaker 2: like printouts of every family reunion ever, like you know,
Speaker 2: printouts of all your emails, like you know, big piles
Speaker 2: of porn, right, Like you know, if there was a
Speaker 2: wheelbarrow with all that stuff next to you. You'd be
Speaker 2: distract You'd want to be going through it the whole dinner.
Speaker 2: I'd be like, oh, let me go back to my
Speaker 2: family reunion.
Speaker 1: Dada.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But like what she says is like, your brain
Speaker 2: isn't stupid, Like your brain knows that on the other
Speaker 2: side of your iPhone is all that stuff. So there's
Speaker 2: something constantly in your brain that has to be like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: pay attention to this conversation because you know, don't check
Speaker 2: your email, don't check your email, and that kind of
Speaker 2: is constantly a little bit depleting. It's definitely distracting, but
Speaker 2: it's a little bit depleting as well.
Speaker 1: Just this weird real marrow.
Speaker 2: I mean when you think about what's on the other
Speaker 2: you know, like weather predict you know, like printouts of
Speaker 2: weather predictions, every every TikTok video and the history of
Speaker 2: the internet, right, I mean, it's a huge, huge slot machine.
Speaker 2: And sadly, you know, I mean, I love my husband,
Speaker 2: we have some great conversations, but is every conversation with
Speaker 2: my husband more interesting than literally everything on the internet,
Speaker 2: you know, not necessarily, And what that means is we're
Speaker 2: so tempted by that stuff. Over in real life social connection,
Speaker 2: even though we know that the in real life stuff
Speaker 2: is going to make us so much happy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's such a good way to look at it,
Speaker 1: is to understand just what our brain is sort of
Speaker 1: grappling with why it's difficult. It's not like a personal
Speaker 1: failing that we sometimes look to that. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: definitely find that when I'm looking for something to sort
Speaker 1: of boost my dopamine or happiness, I'll go to my
Speaker 1: phone and then I'll after an hour, I'll go, like
Speaker 1: I was, think, that really did the trick. If I
Speaker 1: had practiced some things I knew might be longer lasting.
Speaker 1: But at least I can't blame myself for why I
Speaker 1: was looking. Anthony had a great question asked, what if
Speaker 1: certain aspects of your happiness or the pursuit of your
Speaker 1: happiness cause others you care about to be unhappy, thereby
Speaker 1: making you unhappy. What about those circumstances where you're worried
Speaker 1: that your happiness might make other people dislike you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think again, you know, if we're really
Speaker 2: going for true happiness, my guess is that those cases
Speaker 2: are occurring probably less often than you think. And by
Speaker 2: that I mean what you know, the real happiness seems
Speaker 2: to come from doing acts of kindness for other people.
Speaker 2: Real happiness seems to come from focusing on the happiness
Speaker 2: of others, right, you know, so already you know, we're
Speaker 2: kind of in a bind of like, well, other people
Speaker 2: aren't happy, then that's probably going to mean we're not happy.
Speaker 2: Rights we've talked about, happiness doesn't seem to come from
Speaker 2: our circumstances, So it's not like we're trying to be
Speaker 2: other people or go after these accolades. Right, happiness comes
Speaker 2: from being grateful and present from what you have. And
Speaker 2: so my guess is that more often than not, if
Speaker 2: you're pursuing happiness correctly, right, you know, based on what
Speaker 2: the science suggests, you're just not going to run into
Speaker 2: situations where you're sort of competing or hurting other people's happiness,
Speaker 2: because other people's happiness is part and parcel of getting
Speaker 2: true happiness.
Speaker 1: And if you're worried someone in your life will be
Speaker 1: upset at your happiness, just know it's your life and
Speaker 1: it's okay to feel good. If anyone has a problem
Speaker 1: with it, that is their own baggage to address. I
Speaker 1: highly suggest some of Melanie Baty's writings about codependency. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to leave that suggestion right there for you.
Speaker 1: Ben de Wurst says, I'm just finishing up my MBA
Speaker 1: and in one of my classes they talked about how
Speaker 1: optimism is actually an attribute of emotional intelligence and can
Speaker 1: be learned as an optimist. To myself, I'd always considered
Speaker 1: it more of a part of my personality like extrovert
Speaker 1: or introverted and unteachable. So how would someone go about
Speaker 1: learning and training to be an optimist and what's the
Speaker 1: relationship there? Also, is there a relationship between happiness and
Speaker 1: emotional or just like IQ intelligence, I feel like there's
Speaker 1: some badge of like if you're unhappy, it must mean
Speaker 1: that you know more and therefore you're smarter.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. I don't know of any data that have
Speaker 2: specifically at IQ and happiness. My guess is there's probably
Speaker 2: not the relationship that you're looking at, but there is
Speaker 2: definitely a relationship between happiness and optimism. Obviously, I think
Speaker 2: sort of optimism is sort of part of our general
Speaker 2: happy life. And the good news according to based on
Speaker 2: this question, is like you can in fact learn these
Speaker 2: kinds of things. You know, the fastest thing to do
Speaker 2: is really try to just train your brain to pay
Speaker 2: attention to good things out there. Our minds are naturally
Speaker 2: tuned to negative things, you know, the yucky stuff out there,
Speaker 2: the griping. But we can tune our minds towards positive things.
Speaker 2: You can focus on what you're grateful for. Another practice
Speaker 2: that I've been into lately, which I talk about on
Speaker 2: the podcast, is focusing on delights. Sometimes gratitude can feel
Speaker 2: sort of cheesy, but you can just focus on like
Speaker 2: things that are delightful out there, you know, like you know,
Speaker 2: the sunshine and like that's delightful. The fact that coffee exists,
Speaker 2: that's delightful. You know, I don't know, some funny video
Speaker 2: on the internet that's delightful, right, Like training your brain
Speaker 2: towards things that you really enjoy that kind of cause delight.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if the term gratitude journaling conjures up visions
Speaker 1: of sickly sweetened camera lt, just opt the term delights,
Speaker 1: which is just like a straightforward good cup of coffee. Actually,
Speaker 1: for years, my husband Jared has a short taally of
Speaker 1: favorite things. His are lavender soap, coffee, and sandwiches. And
Speaker 1: he says just thinking of those three things and letting
Speaker 1: his mind wander to more helped him during a really
Speaker 1: deep depression. So gratitude journaling, delights, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it. Jarrett calls his his do Not Kill Yourself List,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like the Miami Cola Bang Energy
Speaker 1: drink of a gratitude practice branding. Would you agree that's
Speaker 1: my favorite Bang flavor?
Speaker 2: Is it really Miami Cola that's on the list. Again,
Speaker 2: your brain is going to focus on whatever you give
Speaker 2: it data for. So if you give it data about
Speaker 2: things that you're feeling really grateful about or that are
Speaker 2: really delightful, that's what your brain's going to start noticing.
Speaker 1: I love that you just are. You're constantly filling evidence
Speaker 1: folders for like things are shitty and things are good.
Speaker 1: It's like what are you putting in your evidence folder?
Speaker 1: Pretty much?
Speaker 2: And it's not just like you know what you're picking,
Speaker 2: it's like you're training your brain to look for that stuff.
Speaker 2: In my podcast, I interview this fantastic guest, Rossquay, who's
Speaker 2: a poet and an essays to is this book called
Speaker 2: the Book of Delights, And he decided that for every
Speaker 2: day for a year after his birthday, he would write
Speaker 2: an essay about something that delighted him. And he talks
Speaker 2: about how at first he was like really worried, like
Speaker 2: am I really going to find things that really delight me?
Speaker 2: And he said that, you know, even just a week in,
Speaker 2: like he'd kind of tuned his mind to find these things,
Speaker 2: you know, a walking down the street' be like, oh,
Speaker 2: that dude's T shirt is delightful, Like oh that like
Speaker 2: kat on the street is delightful. Like he just he
Speaker 2: just kind of shifted his perception and tuned his mind
Speaker 2: more towards the good things than the bad things. Our
Speaker 2: brains evolutionarily are naturally tuned towards the bad things. Make sense,
Speaker 2: you want to see the tiger that's going to jump
Speaker 2: out at you. But we can control that tuning and
Speaker 2: just by you know, like taking some explicit work to
Speaker 2: pay attention to the things we're grateful for, to the
Speaker 2: things that delight us, to the good stuff out there.
Speaker 1: So yes, Ross Gae the Book of Delights and again
Speaker 1: check out Neil has reached his word and his osomology episode.
Speaker 1: Another fun project. Start a private Twitter just for yourself
Speaker 1: and chronicle delights of your own or a private Instagram
Speaker 1: account or something. Also, I should note that in recording
Speaker 1: this episode, the internet dropped out a few times, so
Speaker 1: I had to email doctor Santos a new link during it,
Speaker 1: and she has an auto reply message explaining that she
Speaker 1: may not write back, and it explains that she gets
Speaker 1: more than one hundred emails a day and it reads
Speaker 1: in part quote keeping up with that many questions slash
Speaker 1: requests meant that I was hurting my own time affluence
Speaker 1: and having less time for the important projects I really
Speaker 1: should be prioritizing. And so I am currently trying my
Speaker 1: own personal wellbeing experiment. I'm going to try to practice
Speaker 1: what I preach and reduce the amount of time I
Speaker 1: usually spend on email. Thanks for your understanding as I
Speaker 1: try not to overcommit and protect myself from burning out.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: I love her totally solid major props for walking her talk.
Speaker 1: She is the best, and in respecting her time, we
Speaker 1: wrapped it up. Last listener question, I saved it because
Speaker 1: it was juicy. Oh, it's so juicy. Bailey Ricketts wants
Speaker 1: to know how do we find a balance between being
Speaker 1: happy and living in the moment while acknowledging all the
Speaker 1: hurt and suffering going on in the world, essentially guilt
Speaker 1: over being happy when you know that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of bad shit out there, how do we do it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, tough. I mean, this is like a really
Speaker 2: real one, right, because there's a lot of bad stuff
Speaker 2: out there right now, you know, structural racism, horrible global pandemic,
Speaker 2: you know, like the list goes on. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: I think one thing that helps me is recognizing that
Speaker 2: if I want to be the kind of person who's
Speaker 2: an ally for all that stuff, all the yucky stuff
Speaker 2: in the world, who wants to have the resilience to
Speaker 2: fix it, I'm not going to be able to do
Speaker 2: that if I'm incredibly anxious and overwhelmed and burnt out.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be able to do that best if
Speaker 2: I'm really in a happy state, if I'm really kind
Speaker 2: of feeling good, like if I kind of have put
Speaker 2: my own oxygen mask on first. Right, And in fact,
Speaker 2: there's evidence that so many of the things we were
Speaker 2: talking about that are parts of a happy life help
Speaker 2: for doing hard things. My favorite one is that people
Speaker 2: who are grateful are better at what's called self regulation.
Speaker 2: They're better at, you know, doing the hard thing today
Speaker 2: to help their future self, whether that's you know, saving
Speaker 2: for retirement or eating healthier, or you know, putting work
Speaker 2: into hard scary problems like that just require a lot
Speaker 2: of hard, scary work. And so for me, it's made
Speaker 2: me feel like if I want the world to be
Speaker 2: a better place, I can't afford to be down in
Speaker 2: the dumps, you know, freaking out about it. I really
Speaker 2: need to put energy into doing these practices for myself
Speaker 2: so that I'll be, you know, hopefully one of the
Speaker 2: people that has the bandwidth to help with some of
Speaker 2: this stuff. So far from feeling guilty, I feel like
Speaker 2: we might want to feel guilty for the opposite thing, right,
Speaker 2: you know, do what we can to kind of fix things.
Speaker 2: It really does require not just working on these structures,
Speaker 2: but working on our emotions so that we have the
Speaker 2: bandwidth to fix those structures that might be messed up.
Speaker 1: That just I'm sure gave so many people permission to
Speaker 1: pursue happiness who feel maybe guilty about it. And I'm
Speaker 1: by so many people I mean me specifically, but no,
Speaker 1: that's really help. Well, last two questions I asked before
Speaker 1: we go, worst thing about your job, worst thing about
Speaker 1: being at model of doologist and the best thing.
Speaker 2: There's lots and lots of good things, but you know,
Speaker 2: if I have to shift towards negativity, you know, I
Speaker 2: would say the hardest thing is that, you know, they're
Speaker 2: one of the things I really try to pay attention to,
Speaker 2: is is this phenomenon of time affluence, this subjective sense
Speaker 2: that I have a lot of free time and being
Speaker 2: a happiness guru, especially in an age where there's a
Speaker 2: lot of bad stuff going on in a global pandemic,
Speaker 2: it keeps me pretty busy because you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of people want advice, a lot of people want help,
Speaker 2: and that means I have to put a lot of
Speaker 2: work into protect my time. So the hardest thing is
Speaker 2: protecting my time in the midst of everything else going on.
Speaker 1: I can totally understand that I just got your auto applied.
Speaker 1: That was like yo, I get like a one hundred
Speaker 1: emails a day, thank you so much. But I got
Speaker 1: to stick to my principal here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's hard, right, because you know, I get
Speaker 2: into my mox. I'm like, oh, that listener has this
Speaker 2: really cool thing to say, or that student has this
Speaker 2: really cool question. But I also know that if I
Speaker 2: answer all those that means I'm not spending time with
Speaker 2: the people I care about, and I'm not just having
Speaker 2: time to meditate an exercise. So it's hard prioritizing the
Speaker 2: right stuff. But time affluence is definitely something I need
Speaker 2: to work on prioritize.
Speaker 1: I never heard those words before, Butler loved them. Best
Speaker 1: thing about your job, best thing about your career.
Speaker 2: Oh man, there's so many best things. I mean, I
Speaker 2: honestly think the best things are my students. I love
Speaker 2: them so much. I love interacting with them. They teach
Speaker 2: me so much, and I'm so privileged to get to
Speaker 2: work with them.
Speaker 1: That's great. I'm I am so happy to talk to you.
Speaker 1: I have been a fangirl for a year. So ask
Speaker 1: smart people happy questions or bummer questions. They are wonderful
Speaker 1: and they're great at sharing their knowledge. Obviously, get more
Speaker 1: of doctor Lori Santos with her podcast at Happiness Lab.
Speaker 1: Her socials are linked in the show notes. She is
Speaker 1: great if you can take her course, take it. It's
Speaker 1: also available on Coursera for free, so look for that.
Speaker 1: I will link all of those on my website too,
Speaker 1: which is at aliward dot com slash ologies. We are
Speaker 1: at ali Ward with one l on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: We're also at ologies on Instagram and Twitter. Find us
Speaker 1: there be our friends. Thank you to Aaron Talbert, who
Speaker 1: moderates and admin's Theologies podcast Facebook group and is excellent
Speaker 1: at that. Thank you Shannon Feltus and Bonnie Dutch who
Speaker 1: are of the podcast You Are That Comedy podcast and
Speaker 1: they manage our merchant ologiesimerch dot com. Thank you Emily
Speaker 1: White of the Wardery. She is a professional transcriptionist who
Speaker 1: makes transcriptions available. She's great. Hire her, She's wonderful. Caleb
Speaker 1: Patten bleeps our episodes. Those are available on our website
Speaker 1: for free. The links in the show note. We also
Speaker 1: have smologies, which are episodes we put out once every
Speaker 1: two weeks. They are cut down versions of classic ones
Speaker 1: that have already ran. They are cleaned up and kid friendly.
Speaker 1: They're ready for the classroom. Solo persmologies too if you
Speaker 1: have smologites. Thank you to Noel Dilworth and Susan Hale
Speaker 1: for helping me take care of all the Ologi's business
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. Thank you to Stephen Ray Morris and
Speaker 1: Zeke Rodriguez Thomas who are also working on Somemologies and Wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thank you to editor Jared Sleeper, and also thank you
Speaker 1: to Gremy. We are actually recording this in the car
Speaker 1: as I'm on my way up to see my pop
Speaker 1: for his birthday, and I recorded this at five in
Speaker 1: the morning this morning before I hit the road, and
Speaker 1: then I realized that my mic gain was all the
Speaker 1: way down, so I had to rerecorded on side of
Speaker 1: the road, which is what we're doing. Ehoo. That's one
Speaker 1: secret of the episode. The other secret is, you know
Speaker 1: how sometimes it'll be like, if you need to clean
Speaker 1: a screen, just use a microfibercloth, and you're like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: what do I use to clean it with? Though, like windex,
Speaker 1: what are we talking here? Water? What do I use?
Speaker 1: At the microfibercloth? So I just tried just the microfibercloth
Speaker 1: like you're supposed to use, and it cleaned the shit
Speaker 1: out of my laptop, Like my monitor's never been so clean.
Speaker 1: All he did was use one of those microfiber too
Speaker 1: soft on your hands cloth and apparently they're good at
Speaker 1: what they're supposed to be used for, so go figure, okay, bye, right. Pacodermatology,
Speaker 1: hobiology or doe zoology, lithology, zoonology, meteorology, cool peratology, nathology, zeriology, selenology.
Speaker 1: This is a sound of my dog drinking water in
Speaker 1: the car