You came back, you came back again to, we can do hard things. It's a freaking Miracle. They tell you. Thank you. Alright, so, I am very curious about what the hell is going to unfold in this episode. And that is because today we are talking about happiness, and I have a very complicated relationship with happiness. I'm honestly kind of against it, okay.
I just for so long have resented the fact that we seem to have some kind of Unwritten cultural happiness mandate that it's just like, accepted that all women, must be happy all the time and then because of that, it feels to me when I'm out in the world that the world is just teeming with happiness bullies, but happiness, Gatekeepers and I stand against them.
Okay, I stand against them wherever they are, but I might suggest that many of them are at the airport for some reason. Insisting that women. They do not know smile at them for no reason. Okay, but honestly, they're everywhere and I guess we're all happiness believes to some extent starts. When we're born every time, a child expresses something other than happiness. We can not take it. We just bully
The unhappiness away. Turn that frown upside down. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. Can we just pause for a second? Why in the Sam Hill? Do we tell people? Not to cry? Don't cry. Don't cry. We say to our friends. We say to our kids. We don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. It's like saying don't sneeze or like don't pee because crying is a physical freaking release and it's also a spiritual release. It's like organic baptism. It's like
How we wash it all away and begin again. So, I Stand For Crying. You stand for lots of crime, right? Even though I myself cannot cry because for some reason, I feel the feel the, the crying feeling. And then the Lexapro like stops the tears, right? At the ducks. Like, it doesn't
come out. That's exactly right. No water involved in your tear
ducts know. So, I literally have to say the words to my people. I'm crying. I'm crying because they can't see it. Okay, so you're an anti happiness.
Pro Lexapro Warriors, arrested wrapped i-i'm a clinically depressed motivational speaker. All right, so I literally motivate people to go ahead and feel sad. I stand against toxic positivity in all its oppressive form. So at first, I was hesitant to dive into the work of Our Guest today and then as soon as I did,
I got hooked. Okay, I got hooked.
Dr. Laurie Santos is not a happiness, bully. Okay. I am going to admit to my beloved pod squad that dr. Santos makes me.
Happy. Okay. Dr. Laurie Santos is a professor of psychology and head of Silliman college at Yale University. What? Which if you haven't heard of, it is a fancy-ass place. Okay. Okay. Dr. Santos is an expert on human cognition and the cognitive biases that impede, better choices. Oh Jesus, please tell us all the things, her course psychology and the good life teaches students what the science of psychology says.
About how to make wiser choices, and live a life that's happier and more fulfilling her class is, Yale's, most popular course, in over 300 years and has been adapted into a free Coursera program that has been taken by. Over 3.3 million people to date. One of whom is my wife. She'll tell you about that doctor Santa's. She's a winner of numerous Awards, both for her science and teaching from institutions such as Yale and the American Psychological Association. She
And featured as one of Popular Science, brilliant 10 young minds and was named times leading campus, celebrity her podcast, the happiness lab launched in 2019 has over 48 million downloads, but to be fair, dr. Santos. 47 million of those are for me in the last two weeks. So I am so excited to talk to you. Dr. Santos. Thank you for being here. I feel like this is a happiness expert, meeting a sadness expert. And I
Just want to know who's going to win. I think it might be you because of yeah. Well, how did you become a happiness? Professor? Yeah. Well it actually all
started by me seeing like just how stressed out and depressed my students were. So I've been teaching at Yale for a very long time like over a decade, which makes me feel super old, but in just the last couple years, I took on this new role as ahead of college on campus. And so, Yale is one of these funny schools, like Hogwarts and Harry Potter, where there's like a Gryffindor and Slytherin. Like, there's these, like, colleges within like the college.
I'm head of Silliman College, which means I live on campus with with students. So I like eat with them and the dining hall and I like hang out with them in the coffee shop and I was expecting college life to be like, you know, party party party. A little bit of work here and there, you know, maybe with some adjustment because it's Yale, but like what I saw was this college student Mental Health crisis up, close and personal like so many students reporting that they just feel depressed and anxious, you know, asks how it's how's it going? Seems like oh if I could just get to the weekend if I could just get through midterms. I'm like
Like you're 19 and you're like fast-forwarding, your life, you know, and so I started digging into this Mental Health crisis and it turns out this isn't just like stressed out. Type A Yale students. This is a national issue, right? So right now, nationally over 40 percent of college students report being too depressed to function, most days over sixty percent say they feel overwhelmingly anxious. And more than one in 10, his seriously considered suicide in the last year. Like this is not like a couple of snowflakes who are having a tough time? Like this is a real
Isis. And so, you know, I'm a psychologist. I was like, okay there has to be some strategies that these students can use to feel better. And you know, if I'm being honest I'll say you as I was worried about them. I was partly worried about myself, right? I was, you know, kind of doing this sort of motherly thing that you do and ahead of college. Well, where I cared about my students, but the sad thing is, I was seeing myself and all of their answers, you know, they'd be like, oh if I could only get to Friday and I'd be like, yeah, dude me me to me, like, you know,
your schedule. It sounds like, wait, what
is going on that? We're kind of
And, you know, really striving for happiness. You don't all the ways you talked about with this toxic positivity, but like, we're clearly getting it wrong. So what can we do to do better? And so, yeah, so I started this new class like it was totally new on yells campus. I figured like 30 kids would take it because, you know, just this like random class but then we had to teach the class in a concert hall because a quarter of the entire campus tried to enroll. Oh, bless their
hearts. Yeah. Okay, so I'm so
People do you because I was a teacher you taught at Yale. I taught at am Dale. Terrace Elementary School. So they've saved. Yes, but I always felt like, why aren't we teaching these kids? How to human, how do people teaching ice, spend weeks, teaching them hieroglyphics, but not like how to feel their feelings or find Joy. So in your course you teach about the misconceptions about happiness. Okay, so, can you just share with us? What are those? What are we thinking? Wrong about happiness? Because yeah,
Yeah,
I mean so many ways, right? Because the sad thing is like, so many of us are working towards happiness. You even if you hate happiness, you don't want to be miserable, right? If you're trying to do things to feel better. The problem is that we go about it all wrong. You'll, for example, we think happiness is all about our circumstances, right? We think if I could just get that next promotion or get that new relationship, or just get to the end of the week or something, then suddenly I'll be happier. But in practice what the science shows like people with really fantastic circumstances, are totally miserable.
You know, like full hedonic Pleasures that just find their life empty and people in like totally crappy circumstances. Are often feeling good, right? Or at least feeling like the things that they're going through our building resilience or building strength and so on. And so that's like the big one, right? Is that we want to change something about our lives to feel happier. We want to buy something or do something new or get the next career thing. But in practice, those things just don't make us as happy as we think we kind of have these incorrect theories about what will bring us happiness.
Okay, so if those things aren't going to make us happy, then what does make people happier? Yeah, dr. Santos, what's not? It's
like when you hear it, you're kind of like, oh, well, yeah, I guess I kind of knew that it's like common wisdom but not necessarily common practice. Right? So one of the big things that affects happiness is social connection. It doesn't sound right when you're feeling kind of like, you don't want to deal with people, but every available study of happy people suggest that happy people are.
Social, they spend more if time, like just physically spend more time around other people and then they print a prioritized time with their friends and family members. There's also lots of evidence that happy people aren't really focused on self care, you know, in the toxic positivity world, we hear a lot about, treat yourself like self-care, self self self. But if you look at happy people, happy people are doing for others, their volunteering, their time. Controlled for income, like, happy people donate more money to charity than not so happy people. Like they're kind of doing self care through.
Through like other care and then, you know, happy people just tend to have a really different mindset. You know, they have a mindset of gratitude as cheesy as it sounds like they're not focused on the gripes, you know, they have an attitude and a kind of mindset of presence where they can just kind of be, you know, they're not like waiting for their Outlook to paying them are going to the next thing because there's so anxious about it. They're just like there and allowing the present moment to be just as it is. And so the key the cool thing and this didn't have to be the case, but the cool thing is that like
Behaviors, we can engage in and mindset changes. We can go towards that will make us feel a little bit happier. It's under our control. We're just like doing it wrong. Mmm.
Can I ask you about? I think some of the tyranny of happy is like this this Pursuit that like we should be happier. I have been an advocate for the hedonic adaptation Theory because I'm like, I was not depressed by that. I was so liberated. This idea that like you're just about as happy.
Appease your going to be, so just give up the struggle and settle in because welcome to your level of happiness, is that, can you talk about that? And whether it's, like, just the idea that there's happiness out, there could be part of what's making us unhappy? Yeah, and also and also, can you define happy for us? Hmm, But I think we need to talk about. What are we talking about? Yeah, when I start their, let's start there
because I think that's really important. So, I mean we could have very, very, very long podcast about what happiness.
As I mean, like whole ancient philosophers, spent their whole career is talking about happiness, and eudaimonia, and all these big Greek words and so on social scientists, like have to kind of figure something out in a really reduced form to try to study it, and to be fair. That's what they've done with happiness. But social scientist tend to think of happiness in two ways being happy in your life and being happy with your life. And so being happy in your life, is that you have a reasonable number of positive emotions at least relative to your negative emotions. So you have laughter and joy,
Oi, it's not that you don't have sadness, anger, you know, all those things, that's toxic positivity. It's not no negative emotions. It's just making sure the ratio looks, okay, right? Like the, you know, it's not all, it's that zero positive. That's kind of being happy in your life. But being happy with your life, it's different. It's like all things considered. You know, how satisfied are you with your life right now? My Dean and her wife. They just had a new baby and like, you know, they're so happy with their life, right? Like the sense of meaning of being new moms together, but then,
In their life, like kind of you know, like there's poop and there's no sleeping and there's like, I don't know what happened to the laundry like it's just a mess right? But but those things dissociate right but but the best case scenario is you have a life where you're happy with your life. You have a life of meaning and purpose, you're satisfied with it. And you get as much positive emotion as you can yardley's. Kind of get the negative emotion mixed in with some joy and laughter here and there
is one more important than the other. Like, can you be if you're not happy with your life, is the
Be happy in your life, not like doesn't endure or vice versa.
Yeah, I mean, you kind of want both, right? I mean, you know, people in each category, you know, I've used the newborn mom, like you're the mom of the newborn as the example of, like, you know, so happy with your life, but in your life, it's kind of is a little bit of a struggle that was going to get better, but it is just like, you know, short-term things but like it's tough, right? But the reverse is maybe even worse, right? We all know those people who, you know, they're super rich, they have every hedonic pleasure possible. Like
In their life, it's like pleasure, pleasure pleasure, but with their life, they feel hordley empty. And so, you know, best-case scenarios you have both. But I think if you want to maximize one you want to go with kind of satisfied with your life
because ultimately the more you
have that it makes it easier to kind of end or a little bit more of the like Not So Satisfied, you know, we inside your life in the moment.
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So what do you think about what sister was saying about that? What's the theory says? Yeah. So this is this
this idea of hedonic adaptation, which I love, I can tell everybody's taking my class and they're learning all the vocabulary words, but like hedonic adaptation is just a very fancy way of saying that we get used to stuff. So, you know, you like, let's pick a just like dumb, buying things example, right? Like you get the new iPhone, right? And your
Like the first time you get it, you're like, oh my gosh, he's got all these new features a camera so much better like for day you're like playing with it and it seems all like glossy an amazing but then two weeks later. It's just your phone. Like you do not derive any more pleasure from it. We kind of get that with material objects, but we forget that with like big Life Changes, right? Like you get this new promotion or you get a new salary or you get into a relationship at first. Yeah. It's amazing. But then over time like it's just, you know, you just get used to it and this is hedonic adaptation.
Titian all the best things in life. We kind of just get used to overtime. My colleague, Dan Gilbert at Harvard talks about the first time your child says Mommy. Right. When you're like that first moment. It's like yeah, but like last week when your kids had mommy like nobody cares like that was really good for us. The first time your partner says I love you. Like that's like a moment, right? But you know, you know kiss on cheek. I love you out the door like no no no and so Glennon. You still feel that
way I do, but I was just thinking about how
The kids used to go Mommy Mommy. And I literally would think if say mommy again, I dare you say it one more time. Like it was it felt so aggressive at a certain point
and this is this is the sad thing is like the stuff that could give us the most joy in life. We get bored with right. My Yale students in my class. One of the many weird things they do is that when they get their admissions decision, they like film it and put it on YouTube. So this like moment of like potentially sheer. Like the biggest shame and embarrassment. They like got a phone of like, all right. I'm going.
Click on the link. Now. Did I get into Jelena and the ones that do get in right? Then, post this video of like, screaming and their parents crying and all the stuff on YouTube, right? It's like the sheer like if you want to see a video of like sheer happy emotion in the moment, like look at kids getting into you, right? But then I show these videos to my students on like some random Tuesday in the middle of the semester. And I'm like, did you wake up in the morning? Screaming like that? Like, you're still at Yale, Riley, you've been in jail for two years, but like, no, you got used to it like that first moments, great, but it kind of goes away. This is
hedonic adaptation, which you could think sucks. Like, this is a crappy feature of our mind that, like, the good stuff doesn't stay good. But hedonic adaptation also has a very good side, which is that the same is true for negative emotions, right? You know, you have a horrible breakup, right? You're super sad that first day but, you know, six months later a year later you're fine, right, you know like you get really bad job news or really bad Health news. Like you kind of adapt to that and surprisingly we adapt much more quickly than we.
We think, in fact, the add up hedonic adaptation for negative stuff, actually kicks in faster and better than hedonic adaptation for positive stuff. Right? We get used to the bad stuff even more quickly, which kind of makes sense. We like, there's real processes there. We like rationalize it. We have friends who show up with ice cream for us here. Like there's things that kick in for that but that means we're much more resilient than we think. Like we don't realize we don't like take risk because we think, oh, if that happens like, you know, something bad will happen and a bad outcome.
Um and how horrible that will be. Well, your brains just going to adapt to it anyway, so, you know, put yourself out there.
The part that's liberating to me about it on a cap. A temptation is that I always have to like look I have healthy kids. I have this wonderful partner. I have this job. What the hell is wrong with me? I should theoretically be so happy. But when I learned that from you, I was like, oh no, I shouldn't. I'm just adapting properly to my Baseline, huh?
It's like I don't feel the guilt on top, which I think has been liberating to be.
Yeah, it makes total sense. Right because it's like this is just a normal process. Like it doesn't mean you don't love your job or your partner, whatever. That's just kind of what happens. But then the sad thing is like, okay, what are some strategies? We can use to get that Joy back, right? You know, like my Yale student that moment she found in. There was a reason she was so excited to go to Yale. Like, how can we re harness that and there are a few strategies we can use. One is a really Ancient One in fact.
Ancient stoics like back in the day, talked about it. They called it - visualization. So the stoics thought, literally when you wake up in the morning, you should have this little meditation. We think today I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to use my spouse. I'm gonna get ostracised, ostracised like a big deal, but I can agree like, like, every crappy thing that can happen to you. You think it's going to happen? Not like you dwell on this for hours and hours. You just do this for five minutes in the morning, and then you open your eyes. And then all those terrible things didn't happen. And you can kind of have this little appreciation of it. I do this.
Is when I give talks for parents. I say, you know. That like Mom, Mom Mom, like everyone has that phenomena, but I'm like, imagine. That's the last time you ever hear that word, like, whatever. Horrible scenario, you want to stick in there go for it. But that's it. Never going to hear that word again. My guess is the next time you hear. Mom. Mom, you're gonna and
grab them in like like what
takes us? This one s of kind of breaking that adaptation up and we can all do that, you know, and we have it naturally, you know that was talking about the adaptation, you get
Um, your phone like occasionally, I like, I'm like really bad and misplaced of all the time and so occasionally, like my phone is gone. I like must have left it at some restaurant is like, never gonna see it again. Oh my gosh, all my photos. All this stuff. I haven't packed anything up and then you find it and you have this like incredible gratitude, like my dad embrace it, right? So we can kind of create those little mini - moments for ourselves and it doesn't take long, but it does bring back the appreciation
because relief reminds me, there is no better. Don't tell me about
Just tell me about George, whatever relief is the ultimate happiness to me. Like when I think something horrible is going to happen and then it doesn't happen. That's my biggest Joy. Is there anything better than
relief? No, and in fact, that's in part because of another feature of our minds, which is, you'd think that we'd evaluate our life in objective terms, right? Like, whatever's happening, right, but we don't we really think relative to expectations. So if you think something bad is going to happen and it doesn't even if whatever
Wasn't that great? You're like it wasn't the most horrible thing ever, like awesome. Like it turns out our expectations matter. The problem is that not everybody has like reasonable or appropriate, expectations for stuff, you know, we expect, you know, for example, as mom's we expect our kids to be perfect. Perfect. Perfect to Never Cry, you know, don't cry. Don't cry. Oh my God, there's crying something. Horrible is happening. Like, that's an unreasonable expectation for our human. But we kind of have that, you know, same thing in our lives. Like we just tend to look towards whoever
Life has stuff better than us, and that really affects our judgment. One of my favorite studies on this. Tried to look at people who like objective. Really, really awesome. But might have had somebody to compare themselves against. And so they went out and they studied Olympians people who just won medals at the Olympics and like so the gold medalist, they got the gold matter. The super excited, you know, Happy on the stand. Question is, what about the silver medalist? And what you find is? Instead of like slightly less happy, what they're showing is like
Of emotions and contempt. Disgust deep sadness like they're not just like slightly less happy. They're like actively miserable. In fact, some silver medalist say was the worst moment of their life their second best in the world. They're better than like literally billions of people, they're bringing home a medal for their country, but they feel like crap because they didn't win. They didn't win silver. They lost gold. Exactly. Where is what's funny though is, if you look at bronze medalist, you might think the same thing. You might be like, well, they lost silver and gold like how a terrible but no,
It turns out if you analyze their expressions, they're super happy. Why? Like, they're Salient comparison Point. Wasn't it? Gold or silver, you know, maybe with silver. But like definitely wasn't gold. That was super far away. A very Salient comparison for them is like, if I just screwed up by a couple more points or a couple more seconds, I would be going home empty-handed. I would even be up here. So they were just like by the skin of my teeth like reasonable and metal old and like, thank goodness. And that is such a message for us. Right? Like, there's not really that much objective difference.
But our vision, our expectations, make it, so you're doing the strategy like great, right? Which is like, you want to set your expectations, not low, but like reasonably because you can get this like, awesome boost and happiness that comes from, you know, Meeting those expectations and even in some cases, going Beyond
them, adding I often will say, okay, what's the worst thing? That could happen? Hmm, and I've always felt kind of, like, like I'm being negative when I do that because, you know,
But actually super helpful because it's like, when we're scared were scared of this nebulous thing that we don't know. But when you say, okay, what's the worst thing that can happen? First of all, everything's uphill from there. You're like happy. Except it's like, Jackson you're
dead. Right?
But that's also, you know,
there's an Acceptance in peace to that too. But yeah,
but that's
literally, you are stealing a strategy out of like an ancient Playbook. That's like that over a thousand years old, right? Like this is what the stoics thought you should do. And they were kind of just like you were, they
They weren't so much like obsessed with happiness and like being happy, but they kind of just wanted to be even killed, like they wanted to, like, experience the negative emotions, but not get messed up by them. It's like they're, they're like, will allow them and accept them, but not kind of be in them and ruminate in them. I think that that's really interesting. So my question is a little bit about relationships. So my setting is happy. I'm I'm what we would call on this podcast. I am like 2 p.m. I'm like Sonny. I'm like, I
see the
Even the world had glass half full and my
wife setting is and I wouldn't say sad. That's not what I would call it. I would call it. She's contemplatively.
How does Sonny people and moon people
love each other? Well, like if you have these difficult because truly, I mean we do a great job, but I think our listeners would love to hear if you have a partner that doesn't have
The same,
like, like some default default default. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, we do have these different defaults. I mean, it's worth noting that there are these interesting like probably genetic differences in our kind of natural set point for happiness is not as deep a genetic difference. As you think it doesn't mean like people are set and that's it and they'll never change. All these things that were talking about, can change you around, but people do have a set point and I actually think that there's something to be said for people with slightly different set points, right, you know.
I think, you know, the toxic positivity is a thing, right? Like you need to experience negative emotions, especially right now, right? Like if you're going around in like, you know, the world filled with a global pandemic, structural racism, all this stuff in your like everything's hunky-dory, like Pandora, like, that's not normative. Like there's something wrong with that. Like you think you're paying attention means, you got to feel some negative emotion. And so you kind of don't want to be too off in the toxic positivity side, but the flip side is that, you know, sometimes like you need a little reminder of things to be great.
44 of things to be optimistic about it is the case that we can reshape our mindset towards more things that are joyful or delightful it not in a Cheesy way. But really, and I like attention setting way like our brains are just more tuned to the good things. And so I think that like couples who have you know to like to folks who are like slightly different can really help one another because you know, maybe she can kind of tune you more to the like, you know Moonlight things in their Moonlight things and use intuitive appreciate them. But by the same token, you know, maybe you might
In like back towards the positive in a different way.
So yeah. And this idea of like what is happiness? I think is so important to me because to me, happy happy happy. I mean, I'm from a recovery background to right, so sometimes people who are smiling and happy all the time, looks fake to me. It's like what's it feels like you've just had a lot of Red Bull or something. Like, it doesn't feel real. You know, I mean to me, happiness, is kind of just like a
Like an alert.
Paying attention and like being open and grounded, but it's not like a hyper.
It's like not like Tigger.
Yeah, you
know, but it's not like Eeyore either. It's like piglet. Yeah, it's like they got that. Yeah. Yeah, and they think
happiness gets a bad rap, right, you know, I mean, literally, if you Google, if you do a Google image, search for happy, you get like horrid like happy emojis, like super smile, smile, smile, yellow face, you get pictures of people jumping and you often get like Pharrell and like pictures from that video, which also have people jumping and emojis.
But like that's not what it's about. Right? I mean, it's about kind of again, being sort of happy in your life, which involves this kind of combination of negative emotions and being happy, sort of with your life, which you can't do that. If you're kind of pollyannaish Lee going through things, and ignoring the bad stuff, right? Like a true, good life of flourishing involves recognizing negative, emotion. It involves a kind of moral life as the Greeks used to think about where you're sort of solving the big problems of the world. And so I think the like happy happy, you know,
Jets. Its it is culturally kind of problematic. And this happens to me a lot, like I go on podcasting. I give talks and you all didn't do this, but sometimes it's like, they'll be playing like, Bobby McFerrin. I'm like, don't worry be happy. You're like, you happy, happy life. Happy clappy and you're like, that's not what this is about. Like this is really about kind of acceptance and coming to terms with what's going on and finding a way to make peace with things and so yeah, it doesn't have to be like revved up Red Bull, you know, Emoji happiness. I think, you know, true.
Ooh, happiness doesn't look like that
and I just have a question because I've
traveled the world and what I find to be very interesting is Americans especially have this, this need to be happy, right? And in fact, I had a teammate one time sitting in a locker room. She was from Norway and evidently she brought to our attention that Americans we Americans.
We say that's funny but then we don't laugh.
Still like and I do that. I'm like, that's funny. She's like, but then you don't laugh. Like I don't understand.
Like what your what Your
so my question is,
culturally speaking. Are there other cultures in the world that get this more right than maybe we do here in America? And I think I think definitely an empirical data bear this out. I mean, just culturally Americans are obsessed with happiness. Like it's literally in the Declaration of Independence like life, like not getting killed like freedom and like what something like
Happiness? Yeah, right. Like, it's like the top three but we don't do it. I think, as we go out, we go about it all wrong. And then you look you, when you look cross-culturally. What you find is that, you know, there are lots of other countries that self-report being way happier than the us. And then you can ask like, okay, what are the factors one? You might expect. It's not wealth. It's actually inequality in wealth. So the u.s. Is a pretty wealthy country, but we really unequally wealthy country and that's kind of a hit against happiness, but the other is just like whole
Mauritian of behaviors that are the kind of thing I talked about before, you know, social connection gratitude and other one we haven't mentioned is just like exercise. Moving your body being in nature. If you look at the countries that are taking off high on happiness and Norway's up there, Denmark is usually like the highest. It's countries that just naturally, culturally prioritize, that stuff like in Denmark, people walk to work like they're moving their bodies, their out, their present. They have a shorter Work Week. Another thing I bet we'll talk about is this idea of having more free time, like,
That matters a lot for happiness, not feeling time, famished. Like they go to work at four. They have hobbies and friendships. Like it's just weird in Denmark, not to like have a ton of friends who are doing weird Hobbies with you. They kind of just have this like like reaction against talking about your accolades. Right? Like you just don't brag about stuff at work. You know, it's like you don't ask, like when you meet someone for the first time it's not like well, what do you do? It's like, well, that's just not, that's not part of your identity in the same way. And so it's not so much that I'd like, you know, in Denmark everyone's genetically more.
To be happy, they just have a whole cultural infrastructure to do the stuff that makes them happy, you know, now cut to the us where we don't, you know, we give your so time famish. We don't even have like maternity leave. You're working a billion hours. Like, you know, we don't get social connection because we're too like time strapped to do it. Most of our Leisure is not walking around and moving around with other people. We care about, it's like, plopping down and watching TV like we're just culturally doing stuff that's not as good for our happiness. And so it's not surprising that we're kind of on average less.
Happy because it's like all we do is work really hard and then rest crash. But there's like a whole nother. Third, right? That is like Joy rest is not necessarily fun and joy in
life and it's also weird. Like the evidence suggests. We're really crappy arrest. Like first of all, we don't get very much of it. Right. We westry breast with our phone near us right? Where it's like pinging us in our out. Looks just like humming around in the background and when we do finally get rest, we don't do things that feel like engaging. We're usually
Exhausted that we just like flop and like watch TV, which is not social. It's not moving our bodies. It often doesn't even feel engaging. One of my favorite studies has this funny thing where they survey, how people how happy people are feeling it just in terms of positive mood when they're at work and when they're home. And so, when you survey people at work, they often actually report that they're kind of sometimes happy, right? Because it work. We often get flow. You know what you all are at work, but we're having this nice conversation. It's kind of enjoyable, right? Like most a lot of people's work.
Work has some element of flow or time is like flying by and you're feeling engaged, your legs doing something right. Then they survey people when they're at home and they say, how are you feeling? And they often like, you know, catch people when they're you on screen number 47 of Netflix. Real like what am I want to watch a movie? Maybe secondary. And they say how you feeling? You feel like I feel gross like kind of apathetic and just like whatever but then if you ask people, would you rather be at work or rather be at home, people like home like definitely a home. I want Leisure Time, which of course makes sense. We don't always want to be at work all the time, but
Prom is like we don't we don't we're not paying attention to the fact that we're not using our Leisure Time. Well, like we'd feel more rested and relaxed if we actually used it appropriately
like how tell me what? Because I want people who are out there to be thinking, like what can people do, they're tired. They did all their things. What can they do to? That? Will inevitably eventually increase their happiness? Yeah. Well, we actually. So, this is
something I struggle with a lot.
A lot as a busy Professor. I'm often find myself, incredibly time, famish, incredibly exhausted. And my instinct is to do exactly what I just said like makes you feel like crap which is to like plop down and like look at TV or if I'm even too exhausted for TV, like the Netflix willing to seems too much. I'm just going to pull out my phone and look at whatever feed is there and it's like, I don't even have to work. I'm just going to scroll through the feed and then afterwards, I feel like now I feel gross like now I feel super us whereas I'd be better off doing something. That was a little bit challenging challenging like in a
I like just doing a reasonably a reasonable yoga class, not even hardly yoga class, but just like one that move my body calling a friend and connecting with somebody like, taking a walk out in the world, right? Engaging in some sort of like, hubby that like feels good. Like even something silly like Duolingo or like learning a new language or something like that. Like these things are going to feel better. But our mind tells us that they're not one of. We talked about a couple other stupid features of the mine, but the feature of the mine, I hate the most the stupidest feature is that
That if you think about the kinds of things, we like the kinds of things, we really enjoy that. Give us pleasure the way, the brain processes. Those is different from the things that we want the Things We crave the things that we naturally have these motivations to go after, right? What are some things We crave? Like if you're is addicted to your phone, as I am, like the email. Ding is something you crave like you want to get to that next screen of your inbox. There are mechanisms that are telling you to do that. I personally don't have mechanisms to tell me to get on my yoga mat. I like a
Words, I feel great. I really like it. But I don't crave my yoga mat. Like, I crave like a glass of Chardonnay or like, I could have a good cupcake or, like, I crave anything to do with technology or interacting with screens. Like, but then I end up doing the thing I crave, and I don't really feel good. And so this is a really dumb feature. This this feature of our mine goes, really bad in in cases of addiction you re talking about being in recovery, right? Like you can have incredible craving for alcohol or a drug like that is not going to
To make you feel good. And in some cases of drug addiction, you can have a drug that you're completely habituated to, but you still have this incredible craving for us. Even when you get, it doesn't make you feel as good as you're expecting. But these wires are also kind of not connected up, even in people who don't experience addiction it
speaks to, you know, discipline because I feel like discipline has such a tie to happiness, my version of Happiness, which is just like a low humming of like acceptance.
Because it's like all day, you have to not think it. What am I craving? But you have to make yourself. Do the thing that, you know, makes you feel better afterward instead of
worse. Yeah, and that's, you know, they this again, I feel like you were like, we're part of the Greeks, like, maybe you're like, reincarnated from the Greek times. Like, this was Aristotle's idea of Happiness. Like what Aristotle thought was that you happiness required? Setting up, the right habits and the right situations, like the world's always going to move you around. You can't trust your own virtue.
What happiness is is like practicing the right stuff and setting up, so it's easy. Now he actually thought that's what virtue was. Generally not just for happiness, but he thought like being a good person meant like setting up the situation so you wouldn't mess up. And so, I feel like we get away from this. Now in the like Protestant, like work ethic, you know, like founding fathers, who had Pursuit of Happiness and there they thought like it should be hard. Like it should feel really difficult and that's how you push yourself. But actually Aristotle's, like, no, it shouldn't feel hard because it feels hard. You're gonna screw.
Up all the time, but you're gonna make bad choices. Like just make it easy for yourself and get the right habits in there and then you'll be
fine. The he's is part of the joy. It's like also our culture screws us up. You say dr. Santa's, you say moving your body. Yes. That is correct. Except our culture Twisted that so much for me and twisted it. So twist it so much for women that I turned the joy of moving my body into this barbaric like work eating disorder.
Do it so hard until you like, it's a punishment.
Totally. I had to quit that we do this with so many things, we do this, even in our Leisure, you know, one of the reasons that the Netflix is of the world, kind of make us feel. So gross. Is that we've packed it with so many choices, right? Like if there's just like one show that was reasonable. It was just like, Ted lasso. That was the only thing you watch when you turn it on and be fine, right? It just that's it, but we don't want a world where there's one show. Even if it's good. We want like a billion choices.
And then we like exhaust ourselves. So we like end up setting up these structures that make it worse for ourselves, assuming that, that's what we want. And that's what's going to make us happy. But in practice, it just gets all messed up.
This is why the monks have three versions of cereal and why happy people don't have forty thousand million pieces of clothing to decide from every morning because we overwhelm ourselves with all of these little choices. And then we can't make the big choices
President Obama. For example, had just like a whole set of the same shirts and ties. Just so
Just would never have to make a decision. And he, apparently claimed, you know, allegedly that like I was like, I got big decisions to make when he was president. Like I don't need to be thinking like the blue tie or the light blue tie today. Like, we literally spend our income to purchase this stuff to give ourselves Choice overload as it's called this idea that we're like exhausting ourselves from too much
choice.
Huh?
Many of us are looking for ways to be more productive, more creative happier, healthier and Gretchen Rubin is the number one best-selling author of The Happiness Project every week. She shares insights and practical Solutions, in her happier podcast, with her sister. Elizabeth Craft, a TV writer, and producer, you know, I have a soft spot for podcasting sisters. Each episode of happier is
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What what what interview did you do that? You were like, actually I'm going to do that thing and that has made me happier.
Well, I'm involved right now and it is what I'm calling, a fun prevention, a fun intervention, where I'm trying to have more fun because as I just mention right, like my job is really busy. It can be the case that I just feel exhausted all the time. And I think it's it can feel tough to prioritize fun. Right? It can feel really tough to prioritize enjoyment. And so the
Ask that change me. The most is this woman Katherine price. She's a journalist. She's amazing. I first met her because she has this wonderful book called How to break up with your phone, where she argues that you don't have to break up with your phone. But you need to take it to couples counseling so you can get some sort of like agreements about when the phone's going to be there and what its deal is she's she's more recently. Gotten obsessed with fun. She's just lovely book called The Power of fun. And you know, she's really tried to take this like empirical approach to like what is fun. What do we get wrong? And how can you build
Add more of it into your
life. Uh, I love it. We've talked a lot about fun because Abby has told me that I am. I have no fun that. I'm 0 fun. You have a
great sense of humor. I love being around you, but I don't think that you take any time in your life to figure out what is actually fun for you.
'Yeah, it's like a hierarchy to me like a pyramid of needs and I'm still in the middle. Just trying to not lose my shit. And that's all the discipline things, like the yoga and The Meta fun feels to me like like
Yale level life. But this is, this is, I
think I mean, I'm with you, this is a misconception that so many of us have, but if you look at the research and is Katherine of use this, in such a lovely way, in her book what she finds is like, actually, if you put in more fun and makes the productivity part better, like what there's tall. Many surprising benefits of the fun and funny like reduces your inflammation. It like, you know, improves your like, heart condition. Like it can improve your relationships. It actually stimulates brain growth. This is why what
Like like very young, kids play a lot and like baby animals play all the time because, like, play and doing fun, things can actually increase brain growth, but it also has a surprising effect on your productivity. Why? I mean, you get it, right? Like if you've ever had a like a like, super fun activity, right? Like a super fun vacation or something you kind of go back a little bit more ready for the like BS of life, right? You're kind of a little bit more energized. And so we forget that it can it's not just like good for us in general and fun, but it can like help us with this bottom.
I like it can help with the productivity and the forming good habits part
and then is part of Happiness. Also, just rejecting that idea. Like, I not Ministry has helped me a lot with this, but it's like I hate the idea of my, all of my rest. All of my joy, all of my just actually being another way to get back to work and produce more. Like, isn't that just like a capitalistic exhausting? I resent it. Yeah, I resented to,
but it's like the way I can sell my Administration on running, okay.
Okay, class for your students, right? She's like
no. Don't ruin it for me. Don't Don't
Really Wanna corporate money Matt? No.
No, but really this this is
like fundamentally problematic. That the only way like we should value. For example, fun is to say like oh it can help me with my productivity. But the point is like actually it does, right. So it's like it didn't have to be that way. So it's kind of like a win-win. But yeah, I know it's hard, but I think it's worth it. I mean, so Katherine defines fun as this kind of combination of playful.
Connected flow. So play is just like, you're just in a playful mood. You're kind of joking around. Like something that I bet you could do a lot, right? But you have to kind of have that in the space where you're trying something out, which means you can't be like beating yourself up saying I suck at this, like being self-conscious about it for me, whenever like, like information about my body is activated like my body Identity or something like that. Now I'm like, oh God. Do I look? Okay, like that kills playfulness flow is just this sense of like time flying by you, just present and it involved.
Alt. And that means you can't be distracted. You can't be trying to like, I'm going to have fun for this 4 minutes before I have my zoom call. Like like that doesn't work. You can kind of get into flow, you know, and this idea of connectedness is that like most of the time we're having the most fun when we're with other people, right? But but again, our Leisure is so like split up in the day and we are times and sometimes we feel so exhausted. We don't realize the benefits, we can get from other people. So she argues, if you can get that kind of Bullseye connection of playfulness.
Inflow, then then you'll achieve some fun. And there's also, I've heard you talk about this, this kind of place where fun happiness, playfulness intersects with hedonic adaptation where it's like you don't, you know, like if you're going away for a seven day Vacation by day one, you're like I'm used to this. Here. I am that like splicing in the ability to get the the
maximum.
Like initial Buzz where you can actually feel it from the fun actually argues
for smaller
slices. Mmm of that stuff rather than what Americans do, which is like, be miserable for 51 weeks of the year and then have that one and hope it lasts
you. Yeah, and she Catherine talks about these like, you know, fun inoculations right, where we get these, like, little mini do so, you know, kind of like a little dose of fun that can kind of get you through the week. And I think, you know, that's a thing that we should think about.
Right. I mean, you know, Americans in general don't take their vacation. The number of like vacation days that are left at people just don't use is really depressing. But sometimes when we do get a vacation, it's like we can horridly kill ourselves. No breaks throughout the week even weekends. And then we go on this one vacation that we have like such high expectations for getting back to expectations where like I must be perfect. No one will cry. They will be known bringing and everything's every could it be perfect and then like we're miserable and I was like, well that didn't really work whereas if we allowed ourselves to take wheel.
X get some what's called time affluence in where you really feel like you have a little bit of breath of time. You'd feel so much better. Hmm.
Go ahead says, I won, I've heard you before. Tell the parable of the second
Arrow, which
I is also subtitled the story of my life. So do you can you tell us that?
Yeah, I can't be the story of your life because it's also the story of my life. But yeah, I mean, you know,
Is this gets back to kind of this idea that, you know, we have more control over the stuff than we think and that there's ways to kind of navigate when you're not feeling good. Right? That happiness isn't all about, you know, perfect, you know, happy emojis times, but it's really about, like, navigating and allowing the negative stuff too. And so, the way the, the parable of the second arrow goes, is Buddha is talking to his followers. And he says, you know, if you're walking down the street and you get hit by an arrow, is that bad? And the followers are like, yeah. Sucks sucks to get hit by an arrow. And he's, all right. Well, if you're walking down,
The street would have says and you get hit by not just one Arrow, but two arrows is that worse than just getting hit by one arrow and the parable, you know, the his followers are like, yeah, you know, two arrows suck even more. Also, just like bracketed. It's very strange. Like, I don't know what was going on in Buda times, really careful seems like flying many people, but whatever, but Buddha goes on to say, you know, the first Arrow, you can't control that's like the circumstances in life. That's like, you know, if your partner leaves you or if you get a bad medical diagnosis, or if there's a global pandemic,
That's just circumstance. But he says the second arrow is your reaction to it. It's whether you, you know, react to the global pandemic by being like piss to your kids for like, you know, the next six months or are you react to the break up by liking a gorging yourself ice cream and never seeing her friend, right? Like the second arrow is usually our reaction to the suffering and the bad part is the baby good and bad part is, he says, that's on you like a lot of those S arrows, you are jamming yourself with. And, you know, it's the parable of
Of my life too. Because like, I do this all the time, right, you know, I'll have a coworker at work who make some mistake. I like, you know, that's annoying. But then, like six hours later, I'll find myself, like, complained by has been like, did you know what? That person at work did. Oh my God, they did it. And it's like, we're having dinner. Like we could just be enjoying the dinner. That's not the arrow of, you know, the co-worker messing up. That's like me stabbing myself with it. And so often, if we think about the things that get us it's like this is my reaction, too.
This is my lack of understanding that. I am human and like bad stuff happens. This is my like, you know, thinking that I'm supposed to be special and none of this is supposed to happen to me, but it's like all on us and so powerful to realize the second arrow and we do the end. And that's our fault, right? Yeah, like we could have had a better strategy, you know, and then the question is, like, what's the better strategy? Right? Because it's one thing to realize you're not supposed to react to these negative things and then it's another to like do it. And you know, that's where I think all the principles you talked about in recovery.
So this idea of allowing and like we're just going to be with this and I'm not going for happy. That's not the Baseline. You know, I'm that's not perfect. Perfect that we're going for we're going for just present with what is like, those are just some strategies you can use to deal with
it. And I love that too because I think part of our second arrowing is like just a few justifying and make sure everyone's on boarded with the Injustice against us and there's a, there's a difference between being compassionate to yourself acknowledged.
And being like that. Wasn't okay. That feels bad. But any more than any more of your time and energy and emotion that gets backed up into proving out. That point really just goes in the bucket of what you're talking about with the happy in your life because you're like now that thing that could have been processed in five minutes with me acknowledging, it was wrong. I have given three hours of my time and negative emotions, so I have not enjoyed my
Today because I've been feeding that fire and if it's just three, if
it's just three hours, honestly, with your second Arrow. You're making it out. Good. Well, like I got arrows that like three years ago, man. It's like I'm still like and then that person did. It's like what they're, you know gone like, you know, yeah, we can hold on to these things from. So and it's just our ego, right? It's our ego and our need to fulfill the story or the narrative that we are. We are constantly writing in our mind about what our life is rather than just accepting what actually is.
I think that that's something. I know that I definitely
do. We talk about that. Like are we, are we accepting this are we changing this? Because it's one or the other. What we're not going to do is talk about it for 7 years. Like either we're going to say this is what it is and I accept it or we're going to do something and change it. And even at last even that last
second thing of doing something. It's just going to be so much easier to do something if you're not like in the negative emotion space.
Yet. Last night. I had some friends coming over and I was like, like slightly time famishing frantic and I made this like little, like tray of hors d'oeuvres or something. And I went to put on the table and the rug was in the right spot and I was moving the table and the tray of hors d'oeuvres fell on the know, right? Fella Miller and it's like, okay, I need to fix this, but it's going to be a lot easier to fix it. If I wasn't like then, you know, slamming the Jesus like angrily, you know, like yelling at my husband while I'm doing like if I'm like, oh it just fell. Thanks. Paul.
Buddy, total force of the universe. This is a thing, like, just going to clean it up. Like that's very different than the typical reaction to something like that, which is making it so much worse with your biggerson's. They also Lori, is
there. Is there something to be said, for one of the things that keeps my sanity, which is my happiness. My version is just deciding that whatever just happened is something that just happened. It's not on yet, another example, so if, that's if my hors, d'oeuvre, tree falls.
I am looking at that tray and thinking. Yep. This is what happens to me, then, of course, this is just like when I was 15 and this happened, and this is, this is the pattern of it. And the story The hors d'oeuvres are now metaphor for my entire life. Okay, and I think only do this all the time, I
think women do this more. I had this interesting conversation with one of my faculty colleagues whose like an incredibly competent human. She's like a Dean here and she was expressing like deep, shame over. The fact that she'd bought this.
Learn she hadn't had time to cook and had gone bad in her crisper. She was like, I'm the kind of person that like Wiese food. And I'm like, I'm like, the corn was two bucks, like throw the fucking corn away. Like no one cares when you mix the car, but but again, like you said, it's like, this is just a pattern. I'm like a person who doesn't like it's every single trigger and bad thing you ever thought about yourself. It's a lock to this piece of vegetable that you could have just tossed away. And so, we do this all the time and this is a spot where I think practices, like, self-compassion can,
Really help us out. You know. It self-compassion is, it's a bunch of different things. A researcher Kristin Neff defines it when three parts which is kind of a mindfulness or recognizing. Wait a minute. I'm beating myself over the corn again. Kindness, like stopping yourself from doing that finding strategies for more positive self-talk, but the most important one with the cornice, like this idea of common Humanity, which is like you're not the only person that left, you know, like I'm not the only person that accidentally dropped an order of stray. Like, at some point like gravity happens. Like I'm not the only person
Forgot what vegetables I have in my crisper. Like I'm just human and that doesn't mean I'm a bad person. It's just like the way it
is. And also that is so helpful in relationships because our relationship changed completely. When I stopped coming to the conflict and attaching what just happened to 40 million things that happened in the past. So saying, we did this happen to us yesterday. We got a little conflict and staying like this is about what just happened and it's not like this is how you always do it.
I think this is really powerful right? Is that, you know, we want to stay not in the lake. Now in space, like you are this kind of person you are a and it's like this is just what happened. We want to be in the event space, right? We want to being like this is just a thing that happened. I mean, the other thing is, it's not just things that happen. It's often our thoughts about things that happen, right, you know, like I could drop the hors d'oeuvres on the floor and have the thought, like, this sucks. I've wasted these orders, whatever I can have the thought of like, you know, I'm privileged enough that if I drop that food, I'll just find something else.
To put out like they're just as good as other thoughts
and our thoughts, create our emotions,
correct, right? And so if you think, like this is the worst thing ever. Your body is naturally going to react to it as though you've experienced a threat. Right now, that order of tray, falling on the floor becomes a sort of proverbial tiger and The evolutionary sense because it activates our fight-or-flight response. Now, I'm pissed off now. I'm like wanting to go inward because I feel like a loser for dropping the thing and like like we're literally changing our physiology with our thoughts.
It's, which is kind of incredible and it's not just changing your emotions. Right? Like once you activate your fight-or-flight, you're releasing stress hormones, you're putting your cardiac system under stress your literally shutting off, your sexual function, your digestive function. Like you've changed the physiology of your body because of your interpretation of an event and getting control over. That is probably pretty good.
So our thoughts are our interpretation of an event. So if we interpret it,
In a positive way or meaningful way than our emotions will follow, okay.
If you had to pick one thing that people could do today, that would increase their happiness and we need it to be not that hard of a thing. Okay, it's called me do cardio remedial like ten minute window. Yeah. Yeah, we're tired. Our pod squad is tired and they want to know what's this easy thing. They can do. That
will increase their happiness. Just like 1%. Yeah. Well, Justin sweet.
Was talked about the fight or flight system and since so many of us are running it. So often one really easy thing we can all do right now. We can do it. Together is to shut off that fight or flight system through our breath. And so one thing to know about the fight or flight system is like again, it's engineered. So like tiger pops out your body's like crap run and you either run or fight it or like freeze. So you don't move it's built to like get out of threats quickly, but we run it constantly. I mean, we've all been running it in the context of this pan.
Gemma constantly, I think we run it with like, low-grade stress about our kids and our careers. And what's happening in our relationships is just like on finding these little often pretend imaginary Tigers all the time, but when we're running our fight or flight system are sympathetic nervous system. That means we're shutting off. What so, called the rest and digest system, the parasympathetic nervous system. That's what would normally just be ongoing, digesting your food, building your body tissues, like the normal maintenance stuff. And normally like, that's
Done this, the fight or flight systems built to act like just on a stimulus. So if a tiger popped out you couldn't be like no fight or flight system, don't go out like I can just turn on, but there is one way, it turns out that we can consciously, shut it off and it's good. That nature gave it to us and it's our breath. The breath is kind of connected to this vagus nerve that when you kind of take a really big, especially deep belly breath in
and then out,
what that does is it activates the vagus nerve and as you're doing that your body somewhere in your brain singing like
Well, there can't be a tiger there. If you're taking a really long deep breath, like you're not running away from it. So like, all right, switch back, rest and digest, let's do it. So, to turn on your parasympathetic nerve season. Take a deep in breath way into the belly.
And then slowly out.
And we just did one, but I think if you're mindfully noticing what that feels like, it feels different than three seconds ago. It was one breath. Like three seconds. It probably took us, you know, I guess we did like a couple seconds in a couple seconds out. But like that's awesome. That's a way that you can activate the rest and digest system of your body. And now we'll have a whole cascading set of effects on. You know, how easily you're going to stab yourself with that second Arrow. Because you're just
Yourself a little break. It all kind of cause your reactions to be different because you're not like running your stress hormones on. Like, red alert all the time, super useful. You all seem really calm or I'll say
thank you guys so much better. I buy that I am with that. I agree with that. I fully support breathing and that is going to be our next, right thing for today. Everybody. Relax your jaw.
Relax, your face. Drop your shoulders. Deep breath. We can do hard things. We're going to be back with more from dr. Santos. We're not letting her leave. Thank you for being here. When things get hard. This week. Deep breath. We can do hard
things.
I give you Tish Milton and Brandi, Carlile.
I came out the other side, I chased it is. I am sure. I made sure I got one smile and I continue to believe that I'm the one for me.
We need to be. No can do a heart.
Start a problem, sometimes things fall and I continue to be the best.
Yes, people are free and it took some time, but I'm finally fine.
A heart.
We need to, we can do.
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