#255 BITESIZE | The Surprising Truth About Happiness | Professor Laurie Santos

In one study, they just measured people's positivity in general—are you a positive person or not so much? And then they shot people's nostrils up with rhinoviruses. Rhinoviruses are the viruses that cause the common cold ... Three times the number of people get sick in the, kind of, not-so-positive mood category as in the positive mood category.

Research shows that if you just engage in practices of gratitude, just the simple act of, at night, scribbling down 3-5 things that you're grateful for, research shows that that can start significantly boosting your well-being in as little as 2 weeks.

Write a letter to somebody that you really should have thanked a long time ago but you haven't had a chance to, and then show up and read that letter to the person, like meet with them in person and read it ... You can see signatures of boosted well-being for over a month after people do this gratitude visit.

Social connection and feeling socially connected is a necessary condition for very high happiness. You just simply don't find highly happy people who don't also feel socially connected.

Happy people tend to be more grateful, and grateful people tend to be happier. Happy people tend to spontaneously count their blessings. They tend to spontaneously notice all the good things, not the bad things in life.

The simple kinds of interactions we have with, you know, the grocery store teller or the person who works at the coffee shop, even those weak ties, the research show, matter for happiness. We need to build in a lot of that social connection that we've lost, and we need to do it more intentionally, because it's not happening as naturally as it used to.

One of the biggest behaviors that works super well for improving well-being is social connection.

If you're satisfied with your life, it might make it easier to make choices that allow you to protect your health in a way that can make you healthier and allow you to even live longer.

There is evidence suggesting that the act of expressing our gratitude to other people can be incredibly important for boosting our happiness.

There's all these ways where we think that changing our circumstances is going to boost happiness, but in fact, it just doesn't work.