September 15, 2022 • 30 mins
What does it truly mean to be happy? This week, Eva is joined by Yale Professor of Psychology and happiness expert, Dr. Laurie Santos, to explore the idea of happiness—including what we get wrong about it, the proven strategies to be happier, and why connection is so important in leading a happy life.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, everyone, Welcome back to Connections. I'm Eva Longoria and
today we're talking about the thing we all want most
in life, happiness. And I'm excited because I'm a happy person.
I'm like half glassful, optimistic. Yes we can, Everything's possible.
And I stumbled across this amazing podcast called The Happiness Lab,
(00:26):
and it just opened up a lot of questions, specifically,
what does it mean to be happy? What are some
of the things you can do to increase your well
being which leads to happiness, or how can you increase
opportunities to experience joy which leads to happiness. Are we
looking at a day in the future that goes, once
I get married, I'll be happy. Once I get that job,
(00:48):
I'll be happy. And so there's so many questions about
this idea, and I think connecting to what it means
to be happy and what that definition is for yourself,
is it really an important versation. So I am thrilled
to have Dr Lori Santos on the show today. She's
a professor at Yale where she teaches the psychology of happiness.
(01:10):
She's also the host of the podcast The Happiness Lab,
so she's basically the expert on happiness. So I'm so
excited to get into this conversation. Thank you for coming
on the show. Dr Santos, thank you so much for
having me. So I want to really go back to
the beginning with you, like how did you get into
this specific topic and how did Yale allow you to
(01:31):
do a whole class on it. Yeah, well, it started
when I took on this new role on campus as
a as a head of college. So for a while,
I was just a professor there. I'd you know, teach
at the front of the classroom, and I'd see students,
but I didn't really see student life up close and personal.
Then I move onto campus with students like my house
is in the middle of their quadity, with them in
the dining hall and so on, and student life was
(01:52):
not when I remember college student life being like, there's
just so much more stress and anxiety and depression. You know.
I talked to a student like, how's it going to go?
If I could just get to mid terms or if
I could just get to, you know, the break for summer,
And I was just watching students feel so stressed that
they were fast forwarding this like precious time in college
and the saddest thing was like I was seeing myself
(02:14):
and those students right, they'd asked me how I was
going up? Where could just get to Friday? And I
was like, Wow, we're not teaching our students the right
strategies that they can use to improve things like their
own depression, improve things like their own anxiety and so on.
And that's kind of are bad, right, Like we need
to teach people kind of the right ways to do
this stuff. And so that was the inspiration behind developing
this class. I was like, Okay, what does the entire
(02:35):
field of psychology say about these practical things we can
do to be happier? And so I kind of package
it all together as a new class. It was. It
was a totally new class, right. I figured, like, you know,
thirty or forty students would take it if I was lucky.
But we ended up having to teach the class in
a concert hall because that was the only spot that
the students fit. We had over a thousand students show up,
(02:55):
which is a quarter of the entire Yale campus, which
was a little surreal and kind of a logistical night mayor,
but we got through it. Um. But but it taught
me you know students are voting with their feet again.
They don't like this culture of feelings so overwhelmed and
burned out all the time. I think they really wanted answers.
I mean, like all of us, right, Like they want
to know the right things they can do to feel better. Yeah,
like me, and I'm and I'm hold, I'm not even
(03:18):
I'm not even a student. But it's so funny because
I remember fast forward in college because I just it
was something I wanted to get out away and hurry
up and get my degree so I could actually start
living my life. So I get what you're saying, but
we still do that. I still do that. I just
shot a show in Mexico, and my mantra for the
show was be be present, be here, because I was, Okay,
(03:40):
I'm gonna finish the show, and then i gotta go
to Spain because I gotta go do another thing, and
then I'm gonna go direct this thing, and okay, and
then so if I'm done by August, like I'm constantly
thinking of the next thing as I'm in this thing.
I mean, if it's with one of the biases that
we see in happisiness, which researcher is called a rival fallacy,
which is like, I will be happy when right. I'll
be happier when I finished this shoot, I'll be happier
(04:00):
when I get married, I'll be happier when I get
my degree, I'll be happier when right. So we're always
putting our happiness off in the future, and then two
things happen right. One is exactly what you're saying, like
we missed the opportunity to be the president, right. Real
happiness is in the journey. It's in the path there,
it's in what you're experiencing. It's not some like while
you're fast forwarding. But the second thing is I think
we we assume that the destination is going to be fantastic.
(04:23):
But what you find is that we are really bad
at forecasting the kinds of things that will make us
feel good. We predict this stuff is going to be amazing,
and we usually get the valance right. You know, if
I'm predicting go to Spain, that's going to be pretty good.
Root canal not so much, Like we get the direction right,
but but we don't get the intensity right. Like the
root canal probably won't be as bad as I'm worrying
(04:44):
about and the trip to Spain might not be as
good as I'm forecasting, or at least not as good
for as long as I'm forecasting. And so this is
an issue, right. It means the very predictions we're making
about the kinds of things we should be doing are
wrong not and whether or not they're going to be
good or bad, but we're getting them magnitude all messed up, right,
or we're putting all our eggs in that basket. It's
(05:04):
just put too much weight in that, and that could
only lead to disappointment, right exactly. Exactly. One of the
things I show my Yale students is these days college
students today, they're a little bit strange. They put everything
on the internet, and one of the things they put
on the internet is their acceptance videos. So they're about
to click on the link to find out did I
get into Yale or not? And they're videotaping themselves and
it's like, you know, live streaming to TikTok or something.
(05:26):
And so there are these moments when the students find out,
oh my gosh, you know, killing myself through middle school
in high school it worked right, and they scream and
they get excited. I mean, this is one of the
reasons these videos are funny or they have you know,
not so good you know, like a result or whatever.
But students will tell you that, like, yeah, I screamed
at that, but the nano a second after that video
and I like closed the browser. I had this feeling
(05:48):
of dread because it was like, oh my gosh, now
I'm just onto the next carrot. I don't have time
to enjoy. I didn't enjoy along the way, right, And
I think the message isn't to strive for that stuff
like these goals are you know, and they do bring
us some happiness, right. We get the valance right, but
we have the intensity wrong. The key is that if
all we're going is for the end result, we're just
gonna be onto one next caret and the next and
(06:10):
the next. We really just need to enjoy the ride.
So for my students, if you're studying to go to
medical school or something, but you're hating every moment, maybe
study something that's not making you hate every moment, right,
Or if you're just kind of fast forwarding your life,
can you find a way to ease off the academics
just a tad. So you can have some presents, you
can sleep, and you make these good social connections. Life
(06:31):
is happening on what's happening on the way right, It's
not the kind of end destination. I want to talk
to you about the definition of happiness, Like, how do
you measure happiness? Yeah, well, we use the definition that
a lot of social scientists use, which is kind of
the goal is to be happy both in your life
and with your life. So being happy in your life
is having lots of positive emotions or and it's not
(06:52):
having no negative emotions, because negative emotions are important signals
and they're useful for a complete and meaningful life. But
you want the ratio to be pretty good. You want
the joy, laughter, all that stuff to kind of balance
out the sadness, anger, and so on. So that's kind
of being happy in your life. But being happy with
your life is kind of how you think your life
is going. It's the answer to the question all things considers,
how satisfied are you with your life? And so the
(07:14):
idea is like, if you can tell me, like, well,
within my life, of all these positive emotions, you know,
I'm experiencing life in a positive way, and I think
my life is going pretty well, then we're more likely
to say you're happy. And it's worth noting that those dissociate, right,
my Dean and her wife, they just had a new baby,
and this is a time when it's like, you know,
with your life, oh my gosh, the sense of meaning
(07:35):
this is great, but in your life it's like dirty
diapers and no sleep. It's like, you know, the emotions
that are like maybe not as positive, right, but then
you I'm sure in the entertainment industries probably see a
lot of people who are the opposite, right, who have
every luxury in terms of in their life, right, but
with their life there's this like deep emptiness, right. And
so I do lots of talks for private wealth management
(07:57):
and all these people who are incredibly wealthy, and that's
the one question should I get. It's like, you know,
I can fly first class, I can buy the best wine,
but when I think of with my life, I feel
totally empty. M hm. And so what's your first piece
of advice to those people? Yeah? Well, I mean one
of them is that we need to remember the kinds
of things that are really going to make us happy
and what's not. And I think one of the misconceptions
(08:17):
is that our circumstances matter. You know, that we can
buy the right kind of wine, that we can switch
our job or marry the right person, and that will
lead to happiness. And if you're in a traumatic situation,
if your circumstances are truly awful, if you can't put
food on the table and so on, Yeah, changing your
circumstances will probably help. But for probably most of the
people listening to this podcast, changing your circumstances isn't going
(08:39):
to help the way you think. We need to kind
of intervene on other things. And evidence suggests that happy
people are disproportionately more social. They spend time with other people,
They prioritize time with their friends and family members. And
you know, if you know, a quick hack you can
do is just like start talking to a stranger, which
you predict might feel awkward, but in practice, the evidence
suggests it will really boost your mood. So that's kind
(09:01):
of thing number one, because just be a little more social.
Thing number two is to kind of not focus on
yourself as much. I think we If you read these
magazine articles about happiness, there's a lot of talk about
self care and treat yourself. But if you look at
what happy people are really doing, they're not doing that.
There are other oriented they're donating money to charity, they're
volunteering their time. They're focusing on other people's happiness, and ironically,
(09:24):
that is the path to our own happiness. There's a
really cute study by a researcher, Liz Done, who's at
the University of British Columbia, and she does this study
where she walks up to people on the street and
she hands them some money. So she's like, here's twenty bucks.
But the key is she tells people how to spend it.
She says, by the end of the day, you have
to spend this on yourself, or by the end of
the day, you have to spend this on somebody else.
What she finds is the people who spend the money
(09:45):
on others are actually happier, you know. And I think
we know sort of like doing nice things for others
is good, Like random acts of kindness will make me
feel good. But when push comes to shove and we're
having a bad day, that is not the instinct. I mean,
I teach this stuff and I'll say, like when I'm
having a crappy day. It's not like I'll gift my
coworker a manicure or how like, you know, send my
(10:05):
mom out to a nice dinner. It's like, no, I
want the manicure, like I want the nice dinner. And
the evidence suggests that that's just kind of doing it wrong. Yeah. Well,
I do a lot of charity work, and we built
this house for kids with different disabilities who need certain therapies.
And so there's a camp this week. My son is
going every day. My nephews are volunteering, and so we
(10:26):
went this morning, and I mean I could have stayed
there eight hours. I try to explain to people, it's
not it's not even fair how good charity feels to you.
And I feel like, should I be feeling this good
about this? I mean, this is why you're happy. If
I feel like you. You do all these things kind
of slightly naturally that all the evidence suggests, you know,
I mean drink a lot too, so that but as
(10:48):
long as you're present with the drinking, you know, enjoying
it saying no. I mean, seriously, I think one of
the things we do is we engaging these activities like
we think are gonna make us happy to eat something
delicious or have a nice glass of wine, but then
we're not present for it. You know, you're having your
lass of rose and you're checking your email on your phone.
But like we could just turn on this mindfulness, turn
on this presence, and yeah, that's one of the reasons
(11:10):
that our thought patterns matter a lot for happiness. Engaging
in gratitude right, I mean, which is hard right now,
Like it feels like the world is on fire in
so many ways, and it's really easy to focus on
all the bad stuff. But if you just shift your
attention a little bit towards the blessings in life, all
of a sudden, that attitude change can have a huge effect,
not just on your happiness, but it it can make
(11:30):
you a little bit nicer both to other people in
your future self you kind of feel like you've got
enough and you've got some to give away. And there's
evidence that people who are grateful are more likely to
eat more healthily, they're more likely to save for retirement.
So it's like this attitude change that affects not just
your well being but all these other things about how
you act in the world. It was talking to Jay
(12:00):
about spirituality, and he was saying, how how you speak
but mostly to yourself is very important. And I used
to go, I have to go to work today, I
have to work out, I have to get home to
bathe my son. I have to get home to read
him story and he goes. If you just change it too,
I get to I get to go to work today.
This is my dream. I get to go and do
(12:22):
what I've been working towards for the last twenty years.
I get to go work out today because I have
an hour. I get to bathe my son today because
I'm gonna get home early. And that has changed really
my day, which obviously changes your life. I mean, this
is so important. We can control our thoughts, like we
can control the voice that's inside our head. It takes work, right,
it takes attention and work, but we can do it.
(12:45):
And it's amazing when you start doing and you're you're
reframing the kinds of things that you talk to yourself
about to experience a little bit more gratitude, right to notice,
like you know, these things that I get to do,
they're not a given in life. They could go away.
But another thing we can change is how we talked
ourselves the way that we talk to ourselves, and I
think implicitly a lot of us, especially kind of people
who are very busy and very driven, they have this
(13:07):
kind of drill instructor model of the mind where it's like,
if I just scream it myself, if I just rate
myself for not getting to the gym on time or
not doing enough, like all of a sudden, I'll do better.
But of course, like that doesn't. Well, first all, it
doesn't feel nice, right, negatively impacts our happiness, but there's
also evidence that it doesn't positively impact our productivity. Right,
if you have someone screaming at you, it makes you
(13:29):
less likely to want to do what you're gonna do.
And so talking to yourself with a little bit more
self compassion, recognizing your common humanity. The irony is that
like that is a way to be more productive, but
it requires a shift in what's going on in your head,
how you're talking to yourself. What are your happiness strategies?
Is there like a list, Yeah, we we talked about something.
(13:49):
I mean, so you know, being a more social, engaging
in nice acts to others, changing your attitude, becoming more
present and grateful. But then there's just like really simple
acts that we often forget, things like exercise and sleep.
Sleep is another huge one. I actually think one of
the reasons my college students have so many mental health
issues is that they're simply not sleeping. I show one
(14:09):
study in class where these researchers forced people who came
in for the study to get only five hours of sleep,
and their mood levels tank. But basically by the end
of this week of five hours at night of sleep,
that these subjects look like they're clinically depressed. And my
students start laughing because they're like, that's a good night
for us, Like where that's like the max we're getting.
So I actually think we could solve a lot of
the mental health csis in our country if we just
(14:30):
got people to sleep more. I remember when when Trump
used to say, oh, I don't sleep, and like as
a pride thing, and you're like, yeah, it shows buddy, Yeah,
it's it's one of the fastest way to get to
like psychosis and some major mental health issues. So yeah,
not ideal, but I think so many of us we're
also not prioritizing right, Like how many times do we
(14:50):
you know, just as we're about to go to sleep,
pick up the phone and see that blue light and
all the anxiety provoking information and all this stuff you
have to do, and then you're up for the next hour. Right,
So a lot of us could invest a little bit
more in our sleep hygiene to feel happier. Yeah, exercise, sleep, nature, Yeah,
getting out in nature. You know, there's a lot of
work on kind of finding yourself these places that will
(15:13):
give you a sense of positive emotions. One of the
positive emotions we forget about is awe write this sense
that there's something bigger than yourself, and often we get
it from nature. We can get it from beautiful works
of art, beautiful works of literature, and so that's a
positive emotion a lot of us can invest in. And
often when we're out in nature, were like walking around
and moving our bodies. And when we say getting an exercise,
(15:34):
that doesn't mean running an ultramarathon or trying to get
a body that looks like some you know TikTok influencer.
It's really just like moving so your body feels good
and not like a gross amipa. So I think that's
important too. And with all of these things, I think
the last hack is like baby steps, right, you know
you just heard that list. You're like, all right, I'm
gonna go out and do a million nice things for
other people and increase my time and be more present.
(15:56):
But the practice is really about making small transformations that
don't require you to beat yourself up. Yeah. I think
it's the same thing with like world issues and people.
I'll never solve the environments, like, yeah, but you could
recycle your water bottle. It is. I think life is
about that baby steps everything exactly. And one thing with
(16:16):
that is that I think sometimes when we're thinking about
our happiness, especially for the kind of people that are
focused on these big world issues, it can sometimes feel guilty, right, like,
how dare I think about my happiness when there's a
war in Europe and people are starving in California is
on fire and things. But the evidence suggests that the
happier we are, the more likely we are to engage
with those issues. So happier individuals are more likely to
(16:37):
take climate action. They're less worried about climate than unhappy people,
and unhappy people are pretty anxious about the climate, but
they're not doing anything about it, right because they just
not have the bandwidth they're burnt out, they're overwhelmed. So
one of the things I tell my students is like, look,
if you care about these issues about climate, if you
care about social justice and things like that, you kind
of got to put your own oxygen mask on first,
(16:58):
and we forget that we have from to do that.
I heard that on Oprah one time when uh there
was a guy and a girl on and they were
having marriage problems and they went to a therapist and
they said, list your priorities, right, So the wife put
my kids, my husband, my job. She was on four
or five on the list, and he looked at his
(17:19):
less and he goes me, my wife, my kids, heat
complete opposite, right, Like she's like, what do you mean me, No,
it's the kids before me. And he's like, no, you
you And she's like, what do you mean you happened
you be the first one? And he said you gotta
put your own mask on before you can help others
on the plane. And so I was like, oh my god,
(17:40):
Like it was such a lightbulb moment for me to
hear that, because you go, yeah, if you pass out,
what good are you to anybody else? Exactly? And I
think we can honestly forget that. I mean, I think
we get the causal arrow of happiness backwards, right, we
think everything goes well in my life, and then you know,
I'll be happy. But but sometimes both a sing on
(18:00):
happiness can give you the bandwidth two do things more
productively at work, and give you the bandwidth to reach
out and do good things for your community or do
good things for the environment. So I think we need
to think about it backwards. I think if we focus
on our mental health in the right ways, right, not
with these kind of bad intuitions, but doing these strategies
that we really know will work, we'll feel better and
(18:21):
that will make us better people in the world too.
And have you noticed a change when a student enters
your class and then complete your class? Yeah? Well, as
a nerdy scientist, you know, I want to answer that
question with like real data, Like we take our survey
before and after, and we thought to do that, but
the class we were so blindsided with how popular the
class was, we kind of didn't get our act together
to do it. But we've now put a version of
(18:43):
the class online completely for free, so anyone in the
world can take it. It's called the Science of well
being on Corsera, and with a little bit more bandwidth,
we were able to kind of take real survey data
before and after. And what we're finding is that people
on average tend to go up about a point on
a ten point happiness skill, which is not like you're
going from zero to a thousand, right, like you're not
terribly clinically depressed, and all of a sudden, you know
(19:04):
the happiest person in the world. But there's small but
significant gains. I mean, the key is that you see
this consistency, and that's cool, right. I would rather be
a seven on a happiness scale than a six, and
I'm sure anybody who's four would rather be a five.
And these practices, when you really do them, they actually
seem to work, and so you hope and you think
(19:24):
that your students are carrying these tools with them, Yeah,
I mean anecdotally, they'll say just so many amazing stories
in the midst of a really stressful exam period. I
had a student who would scribble down in a gratitude
journal of like my grandma, Like she's still alive and
I could still call her today if I need to, So,
no matter what happens on these exams I don't care,
or students who you know, these I League students are
(19:46):
really tempted to go off into like investment banking and
all these things, and students who are like I really
started to realize that I'd actually love to live near
my family and I want to not make a decision
that's going to take me away from the people I
care about. So even though we didn't have the survey data,
I'm watching them real decisions in real time. But show like, oh,
they they soaked this up. They're using these strategies. Well,
(20:16):
do you think disproportionately wealthy people are unhappy and poor
people are happy? Is there a study on that. Yeah,
there's some data on that. There's some data lottery winners, right,
lottery winners, they're like miserable, No, totally, and they are
just unportionately. In fact, the suicide rate among lottery winners
(20:37):
is higher than in the average population, because again, they
get this thing that they've been dreaming about, and the
problems are still there. In fact, more problems are there. Um.
One of the problems for lottery winners is that it's
often harder to be social. That one thing that we
know is so important for happiness, you feel like people
are trying to take your money, or it's harder to
relate to the people you grew up with because now
you know you're a millionaire, and so they end up
(20:59):
feeling really low only, which is kind of interesting. But yeah,
there're so there. There are interesting data on the connection
between money and happiness, and and my read of the literatures,
you know, the people ask a question, does money buy happiness?
And the answer is, like it depends, like if you
can't put food on your table or a roof over
your head. Yeah, if you get some money, that's going
to buy some happiness because it's just buying you the
sort of stability for the basics in life. But if
(21:21):
you've got that, then usually more money isn't going to
make you happy. And one very famous study by these
two Nobel Prize winners back in two thousand nine found
that the threshold is around seventy five thousand U s. Dollars,
So this is two thousand nine dollars might be a
little different now, but the idea is once you get
seventy five dollars a year, doubling or quadrupling your salary
is not going to make a difference in your happiness.
(21:42):
It doesn't reduce your overall levels of stress, it doesn't
increase your positive emotion. It's just not doing what we
think and the ideas like that's at least in again
two thousand nine dollars about the amount that like, you
got the basics that you need and then once you
get that, getting more doesn't really increase your happiness. Again,
it's not what we put it. Like my Yale students
that this is the one thing they'll fight with me
(22:03):
the most about. You know, after class there's a big
line of students like but what if you spend it
different or like what if you have a bunch of
kids or you know, it's like, yes, there's nu wants
around this, but the overall message is like there's just
a threshold. Getting more isn't going to impact your happiness
the same way. So crazy. I was shooting the show
in Mexico, traveling through Mexico, but we went to Wahaka
(22:23):
and this tiny town where they make I mean, they
make mescal everywhere, but really Wahaka is a place and
not only that, this woman who is probably one of
the only women in Mescal and we interview her, We
see how she makes the mescal, and she says, well,
we make enough for our family and the community to
give away, and if there's any left over, we sell it.
(22:47):
And I go, well, that's a horrible business model, Like
are you ever going to grow your business? You could
sell more if you gave away less. And then as
she goes, why would I need more? And she was
so confused about my stupid capitalist mind question of like, yeah,
but you can make so much more money if you
did this, And she said, but I don't need more money.
(23:09):
She'd work more and make more money, and then she
couldn't do all the things that she got to enjoy,
which is like hanging out in the community and drinking
really delicious miss Golic. What else does she need? Right?
I think you know that it's not clear that, like
you know, we get a lot of culturally derived happiness
from kind of late stage capitalism, right, Like a lot
of the things that capitalism prioritizes, like keep going, you know, past,
(23:30):
pass whatever, invest in objects. Right. We we also know,
for example, that material possessions give us way less happiness
than experiences, and part because experiences are about the journey,
They're about being present. You don't just get used to
something and board of it. Over time, we're prioritizing work
rather than just free time. There's so much evidence that
happiness really depends on having what's called time affluence, which
(23:52):
is that you're wealthy in time. And this is one
of the reasons that I think wealthier individuals aren't as
happy as you expect, is that they're often surprisingly time poor.
Even though they could use their money to buy back
free time, they often don't do that. And so, yeah,
I think there's there's a lot of cultural messages we
get that are kind of leading us astray. You're taking
a year off right now, right, Yeah, So you know,
(24:14):
I was continue all my work as a residential college
head in the midst of COVID, and I gotta say,
like running a college you know, dorm in the midst
of COVID was not, like it was not on my
bingo guard. Definitely not the most fun thing. And so
I teach about burnout, right, and I was watching all
these signs creeping up where I was feeling just more
physically exhausted, right, you know, even after a great night
(24:35):
of sleep, I was just like kind of dead. Um.
I was watching myself get what's called depersonalized, which is
like your cynical, like some student asked me, like a
completely reasonable thing for a student to ask me, and
I'm like, what's their problem in my head? And I'm like, oh,
like this is not this is not good. And then
I also started to feel really ineffective in my work.
And this is a kind of third feature of burnout,
(24:55):
the sense of personal ineffectiveness, like even if my job
went well, it wouldn't matter anyway. When I'm doing isn't important.
And you know, I wasn't all the way there, but
I was noticing the seeds of this stuff, and that's
like you gotta pay attention. May We often want to
avoid negative emotions, things like feeling overwhelmed or burned out,
or or even like subtle things like feeling sad or
anxious or things like that. But negative emotions are a signal.
(25:18):
It's like putting your hand on a hot stove. Like
you put your hand on a hot stove and your
body is telling you get your hand off the hostive
there's a major bad thing going on. You need to
fix that. And negative emotions are the same way. So
when I was noticing these symptoms, of burnout. I was like,
wait a minute, this is a wake up call that
I could listen to and take a break, or I
could just ignore it and it's not going to get better.
And so yeah, I'm currently on a year off where
(25:38):
I'm taking a leave from Yell but focused a lot
on my podcast and other projects, and it's already felt
really nice. Yeah. Yeah, I noticed that too. When I'm directing.
The main thing about directing you get asked a million
questions per second, and I love it. I I'm like, yes,
cut two, I'm directing something. I don't want to be directing.
(25:59):
I want to be home with my baby. And somebody's like,
you know, even what do you want? I don't know,
Like and I was like, whoa, Yeah, it's noticing your
own emotions, right, It's like, okay, you know, like a student,
I remember there was a case where a student, you know,
the low income student, had some dental trouble. You know,
I needed to fill out some paperwork so we could
kind of get the student reinburst, and I was feeling
like frustrated, what is his problem? And I was like,
(26:22):
you know, you notice, you're like I'm not that person,
Like what happened, Like, why am I experiencing frustration and
anger and negative emotion at this request? That's completely reasonable,
and that's that's burnout, that's creeping in and so yeah,
so when you're like, you know, it's like I need
a break. I need a break. So it's a balancing
act because you've got to recognize your negative emotions, but
(26:45):
you can't let them drive you either. Yeah, this is
why the mindset of mindfulness can be really important. You
pay attention, but you do so in a really particular
way with a particular attitude, which is the attitude of
non judgment. So when I have that moment with the
student where I was feeling really frustrated, one's instinct is
to be like, oh my god, I'm a horrible person.
(27:06):
What is my problem? Your drill sargeanting in your head?
Don't feel that way. It's not right, shut it off.
It feels gross. But mindfulness is like, uh, that was
more frustration than I thought I would experience. It's not
attacking myself. It's like becoming curious about it, like what's
going on? What's happening there? And I think that's using
your emotion as a signal. You're just this kind of
scientist who's like, like, anger, interesting, what's going on? Sadness
(27:29):
and grief about this? That's interesting, what's going on? So
you're not running away from them, but you're also not
amplifying them. And we can amplify emotions in two ways.
One is the way you might expect, where you really
sink into it and you kind of you're just soaking
it up and you milk it for all it's worth
kind of thing. But there's the second way we can
amplify emotions is just by trying to pretend they're not there.
We like shove them away. And my favorite analogy for
(27:51):
emotions is they're kind of like a like a beach
ball you're trying to like shove underwater. You can kind
of hold it there and rotate around for a while,
but eventually that beach ball is going to come out,
and when it does, it's gonna like smack someone in
a face. But we do that with our emotions all
the time. We try to squash down feeling sad or
feeling frustrated and and that doesn't work, but kind of
looking at it like holding it up and be like, huh,
(28:11):
I guess I'm feeling that way. Why could I be
feeling that way? What could I do differently? That's kind
of the right way to deal with these emotions. What's
the opposite of happiness? Is that sadness? It's an interesting question.
I mean, I think the opposite of happiness, if you
take the definition of being happy in your life and
with your life, it's it's kind of like meaninglessness. So
it's really not feeling happy with your life. But then
(28:34):
in terms of positive emotion, is it's not necessarily even
having lots of negative emotion. I think it's the absence
of positive emotion. It's kind of like anhedonia, right where
this is this kind of technical term for you're just
like not really experiencing a lot of positive emotion at all,
Like it doesn't doesn't feel like anything to be you.
And so, yeah, I think what we're striving for is
like above baseline, you know, we want some positive emotions
(28:55):
and we really want to feel like we're doing something
important with our life to feel like we think our
life is going well. And to get there, it's pretty
simple to do. You just have to engage in the
right strategies. Yeah, do you think it's important for us
to be connected in our life. Yeah, I mean, I
think to be socially connected is super important. I mean,
I love what I've heard about your podcast and heard
(29:16):
the name of like yep tick, like you know, that's
why she's right, Like you know, it's such a basic thing.
But I think it's also important to be connected with
what's going on. I think asking yourself this question of
how I'm feeling right now is important. Again, not judgmentally
we're going to beat yourself up for the answer, but
kind of noticing where you are is important for figuring
out where you want to go. And all the evidence
(29:37):
suggests that we can change around how we're feeling. We
just need to put in the right effort. One last
question I ask all my guess is just a book
they recommend for everyone. I am a nerdy academic, so
it's like an impossible question for me. But I'll recommend
one of my favorite recent books, which is by the
journalists Catherine Price, and it's called The Power of Fun,
How you can Engage with Fun in your life, because
I think this is another spot that we mess up,
(29:58):
especially as adults. We you have goals, and we have productivity,
and we have relaxation, but we don't have fun like
the answer to the question when was the was the
last time you would describe as so fun? We don't
often get those, and so the book is all about
ways to find more of a fantastic book, The Power
of Fun. Wow, that's amazing. That's a really good title
(30:19):
to the Power of Fun. Well, thank you so much,
Dr Santos. I'm so happy to happy to have met you. No,
thanks so much, happy me on the show. I feel
HAPPI or already. Thank you so much for listening. I'm
happy to be connected with you. Connections with Eva Lagoria
(30:40):
is a production of Unbelievable entertainment in partnership with I
Hearts Michael Pura podcast network. From more podcasts from my Heart,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, everyone, Welcome back to Connections. I'm Eva Longoria and
today we're talking about the thing we all want most
in life, happiness. And I'm excited because I'm a happy person.
I'm like half glassful, optimistic. Yes we can, Everything's possible.
And I stumbled across this amazing podcast called The Happiness Lab,
(00:26):
and it just opened up a lot of questions, specifically,
what does it mean to be happy? What are some
of the things you can do to increase your well
being which leads to happiness, or how can you increase
opportunities to experience joy which leads to happiness. Are we
looking at a day in the future that goes, once
I get married, I'll be happy. Once I get that job,
(00:48):
I'll be happy. And so there's so many questions about
this idea, and I think connecting to what it means
to be happy and what that definition is for yourself,
is it really an important versation. So I am thrilled
to have Dr Lori Santos on the show today. She's
a professor at Yale where she teaches the psychology of happiness.
(01:10):
She's also the host of the podcast The Happiness Lab,
so she's basically the expert on happiness. So I'm so
excited to get into this conversation. Thank you for coming
on the show. Dr Santos, thank you so much for
having me. So I want to really go back to
the beginning with you, like how did you get into
this specific topic and how did Yale allow you to
(01:31):
do a whole class on it. Yeah, well, it started
when I took on this new role on campus as
a as a head of college. So for a while,
I was just a professor there. I'd you know, teach
at the front of the classroom, and I'd see students,
but I didn't really see student life up close and personal.
Then I move onto campus with students like my house
is in the middle of their quadity, with them in
the dining hall and so on, and student life was
(01:52):
not when I remember college student life being like, there's
just so much more stress and anxiety and depression. You know.
I talked to a student like, how's it going to go?
If I could just get to mid terms or if
I could just get to, you know, the break for summer,
And I was just watching students feel so stressed that
they were fast forwarding this like precious time in college
and the saddest thing was like I was seeing myself
(02:14):
and those students right, they'd asked me how I was
going up? Where could just get to Friday? And I
was like, Wow, we're not teaching our students the right
strategies that they can use to improve things like their
own depression, improve things like their own anxiety and so on.
And that's kind of are bad, right, Like we need
to teach people kind of the right ways to do
this stuff. And so that was the inspiration behind developing
this class. I was like, Okay, what does the entire
(02:35):
field of psychology say about these practical things we can
do to be happier? And so I kind of package
it all together as a new class. It was. It
was a totally new class, right. I figured, like, you know,
thirty or forty students would take it if I was lucky.
But we ended up having to teach the class in
a concert hall because that was the only spot that
the students fit. We had over a thousand students show up,
(02:55):
which is a quarter of the entire Yale campus, which
was a little surreal and kind of a logistical night mayor,
but we got through it. Um. But but it taught
me you know students are voting with their feet again.
They don't like this culture of feelings so overwhelmed and
burned out all the time. I think they really wanted answers.
I mean, like all of us, right, Like they want
to know the right things they can do to feel better. Yeah,
like me, and I'm and I'm hold, I'm not even
(03:18):
I'm not even a student. But it's so funny because
I remember fast forward in college because I just it
was something I wanted to get out away and hurry
up and get my degree so I could actually start
living my life. So I get what you're saying, but
we still do that. I still do that. I just
shot a show in Mexico, and my mantra for the
show was be be present, be here, because I was, Okay,
(03:40):
I'm gonna finish the show, and then i gotta go
to Spain because I gotta go do another thing, and
then I'm gonna go direct this thing, and okay, and
then so if I'm done by August, like I'm constantly
thinking of the next thing as I'm in this thing.
I mean, if it's with one of the biases that
we see in happisiness, which researcher is called a rival fallacy,
which is like, I will be happy when right. I'll
be happier when I finished this shoot, I'll be happier
(04:00):
when I get married, I'll be happier when I get
my degree, I'll be happier when right. So we're always
putting our happiness off in the future, and then two
things happen right. One is exactly what you're saying, like
we missed the opportunity to be the president, right. Real
happiness is in the journey. It's in the path there,
it's in what you're experiencing. It's not some like while
you're fast forwarding. But the second thing is I think
we we assume that the destination is going to be fantastic.
(04:23):
But what you find is that we are really bad
at forecasting the kinds of things that will make us
feel good. We predict this stuff is going to be amazing,
and we usually get the valance right. You know, if
I'm predicting go to Spain, that's going to be pretty good.
Root canal not so much, Like we get the direction right,
but but we don't get the intensity right. Like the
root canal probably won't be as bad as I'm worrying
(04:44):
about and the trip to Spain might not be as
good as I'm forecasting, or at least not as good
for as long as I'm forecasting. And so this is
an issue, right. It means the very predictions we're making
about the kinds of things we should be doing are
wrong not and whether or not they're going to be
good or bad, but we're getting them magnitude all messed up, right,
or we're putting all our eggs in that basket. It's
(05:04):
just put too much weight in that, and that could
only lead to disappointment, right exactly. Exactly. One of the
things I show my Yale students is these days college
students today, they're a little bit strange. They put everything
on the internet, and one of the things they put
on the internet is their acceptance videos. So they're about
to click on the link to find out did I
get into Yale or not? And they're videotaping themselves and
it's like, you know, live streaming to TikTok or something.
(05:26):
And so there are these moments when the students find out,
oh my gosh, you know, killing myself through middle school
in high school it worked right, and they scream and
they get excited. I mean, this is one of the
reasons these videos are funny or they have you know,
not so good you know, like a result or whatever.
But students will tell you that, like, yeah, I screamed
at that, but the nano a second after that video
and I like closed the browser. I had this feeling
(05:48):
of dread because it was like, oh my gosh, now
I'm just onto the next carrot. I don't have time
to enjoy. I didn't enjoy along the way, right, And
I think the message isn't to strive for that stuff
like these goals are you know, and they do bring
us some happiness, right. We get the valance right, but
we have the intensity wrong. The key is that if
all we're going is for the end result, we're just
gonna be onto one next caret and the next and
(06:10):
the next. We really just need to enjoy the ride.
So for my students, if you're studying to go to
medical school or something, but you're hating every moment, maybe
study something that's not making you hate every moment, right,
Or if you're just kind of fast forwarding your life,
can you find a way to ease off the academics
just a tad. So you can have some presents, you
can sleep, and you make these good social connections. Life
(06:31):
is happening on what's happening on the way right, It's
not the kind of end destination. I want to talk
to you about the definition of happiness, Like, how do
you measure happiness? Yeah, well, we use the definition that
a lot of social scientists use, which is kind of
the goal is to be happy both in your life
and with your life. So being happy in your life
is having lots of positive emotions or and it's not
(06:52):
having no negative emotions, because negative emotions are important signals
and they're useful for a complete and meaningful life. But
you want the ratio to be pretty good. You want
the joy, laughter, all that stuff to kind of balance
out the sadness, anger, and so on. So that's kind
of being happy in your life. But being happy with
your life is kind of how you think your life
is going. It's the answer to the question all things considers,
how satisfied are you with your life? And so the
(07:14):
idea is like, if you can tell me, like, well,
within my life, of all these positive emotions, you know,
I'm experiencing life in a positive way, and I think
my life is going pretty well, then we're more likely
to say you're happy. And it's worth noting that those dissociate, right,
my Dean and her wife, they just had a new baby,
and this is a time when it's like, you know,
with your life, oh my gosh, the sense of meaning
(07:35):
this is great, but in your life it's like dirty
diapers and no sleep. It's like, you know, the emotions
that are like maybe not as positive, right, but then
you I'm sure in the entertainment industries probably see a
lot of people who are the opposite, right, who have
every luxury in terms of in their life, right, but
with their life there's this like deep emptiness, right. And
so I do lots of talks for private wealth management
(07:57):
and all these people who are incredibly wealthy, and that's
the one question should I get. It's like, you know,
I can fly first class, I can buy the best wine,
but when I think of with my life, I feel
totally empty. M hm. And so what's your first piece
of advice to those people? Yeah? Well, I mean one
of them is that we need to remember the kinds
of things that are really going to make us happy
and what's not. And I think one of the misconceptions
(08:17):
is that our circumstances matter. You know, that we can
buy the right kind of wine, that we can switch
our job or marry the right person, and that will
lead to happiness. And if you're in a traumatic situation,
if your circumstances are truly awful, if you can't put
food on the table and so on, Yeah, changing your
circumstances will probably help. But for probably most of the
people listening to this podcast, changing your circumstances isn't going
(08:39):
to help the way you think. We need to kind
of intervene on other things. And evidence suggests that happy
people are disproportionately more social. They spend time with other people,
They prioritize time with their friends and family members. And
you know, if you know, a quick hack you can
do is just like start talking to a stranger, which
you predict might feel awkward, but in practice, the evidence
suggests it will really boost your mood. So that's kind
(09:01):
of thing number one, because just be a little more social.
Thing number two is to kind of not focus on
yourself as much. I think we If you read these
magazine articles about happiness, there's a lot of talk about
self care and treat yourself. But if you look at
what happy people are really doing, they're not doing that.
There are other oriented they're donating money to charity, they're
volunteering their time. They're focusing on other people's happiness, and ironically,
(09:24):
that is the path to our own happiness. There's a
really cute study by a researcher, Liz Done, who's at
the University of British Columbia, and she does this study
where she walks up to people on the street and
she hands them some money. So she's like, here's twenty bucks.
But the key is she tells people how to spend it.
She says, by the end of the day, you have
to spend this on yourself, or by the end of
the day, you have to spend this on somebody else.
What she finds is the people who spend the money
(09:45):
on others are actually happier, you know. And I think
we know sort of like doing nice things for others
is good, Like random acts of kindness will make me
feel good. But when push comes to shove and we're
having a bad day, that is not the instinct. I mean,
I teach this stuff and I'll say, like when I'm
having a crappy day. It's not like I'll gift my
coworker a manicure or how like, you know, send my
(10:05):
mom out to a nice dinner. It's like, no, I
want the manicure, like I want the nice dinner. And
the evidence suggests that that's just kind of doing it wrong. Yeah. Well,
I do a lot of charity work, and we built
this house for kids with different disabilities who need certain therapies.
And so there's a camp this week. My son is
going every day. My nephews are volunteering, and so we
(10:26):
went this morning, and I mean I could have stayed
there eight hours. I try to explain to people, it's
not it's not even fair how good charity feels to you.
And I feel like, should I be feeling this good
about this? I mean, this is why you're happy. If
I feel like you. You do all these things kind
of slightly naturally that all the evidence suggests, you know,
I mean drink a lot too, so that but as
(10:48):
long as you're present with the drinking, you know, enjoying
it saying no. I mean, seriously, I think one of
the things we do is we engaging these activities like
we think are gonna make us happy to eat something
delicious or have a nice glass of wine, but then
we're not present for it. You know, you're having your
lass of rose and you're checking your email on your phone.
But like we could just turn on this mindfulness, turn
on this presence, and yeah, that's one of the reasons
(11:10):
that our thought patterns matter a lot for happiness. Engaging
in gratitude right, I mean, which is hard right now,
Like it feels like the world is on fire in
so many ways, and it's really easy to focus on
all the bad stuff. But if you just shift your
attention a little bit towards the blessings in life, all
of a sudden, that attitude change can have a huge effect,
not just on your happiness, but it it can make
(11:30):
you a little bit nicer both to other people in
your future self you kind of feel like you've got
enough and you've got some to give away. And there's
evidence that people who are grateful are more likely to
eat more healthily, they're more likely to save for retirement.
So it's like this attitude change that affects not just
your well being but all these other things about how
you act in the world. It was talking to Jay
(12:00):
about spirituality, and he was saying, how how you speak
but mostly to yourself is very important. And I used
to go, I have to go to work today, I
have to work out, I have to get home to
bathe my son. I have to get home to read
him story and he goes. If you just change it too,
I get to I get to go to work today.
This is my dream. I get to go and do
(12:22):
what I've been working towards for the last twenty years.
I get to go work out today because I have
an hour. I get to bathe my son today because
I'm gonna get home early. And that has changed really
my day, which obviously changes your life. I mean, this
is so important. We can control our thoughts, like we
can control the voice that's inside our head. It takes work, right,
it takes attention and work, but we can do it.
(12:45):
And it's amazing when you start doing and you're you're
reframing the kinds of things that you talk to yourself
about to experience a little bit more gratitude, right to notice,
like you know, these things that I get to do,
they're not a given in life. They could go away.
But another thing we can change is how we talked
ourselves the way that we talk to ourselves, and I
think implicitly a lot of us, especially kind of people
who are very busy and very driven, they have this
(13:07):
kind of drill instructor model of the mind where it's like,
if I just scream it myself, if I just rate
myself for not getting to the gym on time or
not doing enough, like all of a sudden, I'll do better.
But of course, like that doesn't. Well, first all, it
doesn't feel nice, right, negatively impacts our happiness, but there's
also evidence that it doesn't positively impact our productivity. Right,
if you have someone screaming at you, it makes you
(13:29):
less likely to want to do what you're gonna do.
And so talking to yourself with a little bit more
self compassion, recognizing your common humanity. The irony is that
like that is a way to be more productive, but
it requires a shift in what's going on in your head,
how you're talking to yourself. What are your happiness strategies?
Is there like a list, Yeah, we we talked about something.
(13:49):
I mean, so you know, being a more social, engaging
in nice acts to others, changing your attitude, becoming more
present and grateful. But then there's just like really simple
acts that we often forget, things like exercise and sleep.
Sleep is another huge one. I actually think one of
the reasons my college students have so many mental health
issues is that they're simply not sleeping. I show one
(14:09):
study in class where these researchers forced people who came
in for the study to get only five hours of sleep,
and their mood levels tank. But basically by the end
of this week of five hours at night of sleep,
that these subjects look like they're clinically depressed. And my
students start laughing because they're like, that's a good night
for us, Like where that's like the max we're getting.
So I actually think we could solve a lot of
the mental health csis in our country if we just
(14:30):
got people to sleep more. I remember when when Trump
used to say, oh, I don't sleep, and like as
a pride thing, and you're like, yeah, it shows buddy, Yeah,
it's it's one of the fastest way to get to
like psychosis and some major mental health issues. So yeah,
not ideal, but I think so many of us we're
also not prioritizing right, Like how many times do we
(14:50):
you know, just as we're about to go to sleep,
pick up the phone and see that blue light and
all the anxiety provoking information and all this stuff you
have to do, and then you're up for the next hour. Right,
So a lot of us could invest a little bit
more in our sleep hygiene to feel happier. Yeah, exercise, sleep, nature, Yeah,
getting out in nature. You know, there's a lot of
work on kind of finding yourself these places that will
(15:13):
give you a sense of positive emotions. One of the
positive emotions we forget about is awe write this sense
that there's something bigger than yourself, and often we get
it from nature. We can get it from beautiful works
of art, beautiful works of literature, and so that's a
positive emotion a lot of us can invest in. And
often when we're out in nature, were like walking around
and moving our bodies. And when we say getting an exercise,
(15:34):
that doesn't mean running an ultramarathon or trying to get
a body that looks like some you know TikTok influencer.
It's really just like moving so your body feels good
and not like a gross amipa. So I think that's
important too. And with all of these things, I think
the last hack is like baby steps, right, you know
you just heard that list. You're like, all right, I'm
gonna go out and do a million nice things for
other people and increase my time and be more present.
(15:56):
But the practice is really about making small transformations that
don't require you to beat yourself up. Yeah. I think
it's the same thing with like world issues and people.
I'll never solve the environments, like, yeah, but you could
recycle your water bottle. It is. I think life is
about that baby steps everything exactly. And one thing with
(16:16):
that is that I think sometimes when we're thinking about
our happiness, especially for the kind of people that are
focused on these big world issues, it can sometimes feel guilty, right, like,
how dare I think about my happiness when there's a
war in Europe and people are starving in California is
on fire and things. But the evidence suggests that the
happier we are, the more likely we are to engage
with those issues. So happier individuals are more likely to
(16:37):
take climate action. They're less worried about climate than unhappy people,
and unhappy people are pretty anxious about the climate, but
they're not doing anything about it, right because they just
not have the bandwidth they're burnt out, they're overwhelmed. So
one of the things I tell my students is like, look,
if you care about these issues about climate, if you
care about social justice and things like that, you kind
of got to put your own oxygen mask on first,
(16:58):
and we forget that we have from to do that.
I heard that on Oprah one time when uh there
was a guy and a girl on and they were
having marriage problems and they went to a therapist and
they said, list your priorities, right, So the wife put
my kids, my husband, my job. She was on four
or five on the list, and he looked at his
(17:19):
less and he goes me, my wife, my kids, heat
complete opposite, right, Like she's like, what do you mean me, No,
it's the kids before me. And he's like, no, you
you And she's like, what do you mean you happened
you be the first one? And he said you gotta
put your own mask on before you can help others
on the plane. And so I was like, oh my god,
(17:40):
Like it was such a lightbulb moment for me to
hear that, because you go, yeah, if you pass out,
what good are you to anybody else? Exactly? And I
think we can honestly forget that. I mean, I think
we get the causal arrow of happiness backwards, right, we
think everything goes well in my life, and then you know,
I'll be happy. But but sometimes both a sing on
(18:00):
happiness can give you the bandwidth two do things more
productively at work, and give you the bandwidth to reach
out and do good things for your community or do
good things for the environment. So I think we need
to think about it backwards. I think if we focus
on our mental health in the right ways, right, not
with these kind of bad intuitions, but doing these strategies
that we really know will work, we'll feel better and
(18:21):
that will make us better people in the world too.
And have you noticed a change when a student enters
your class and then complete your class? Yeah? Well, as
a nerdy scientist, you know, I want to answer that
question with like real data, Like we take our survey
before and after, and we thought to do that, but
the class we were so blindsided with how popular the
class was, we kind of didn't get our act together
to do it. But we've now put a version of
(18:43):
the class online completely for free, so anyone in the
world can take it. It's called the Science of well
being on Corsera, and with a little bit more bandwidth,
we were able to kind of take real survey data
before and after. And what we're finding is that people
on average tend to go up about a point on
a ten point happiness skill, which is not like you're
going from zero to a thousand, right, like you're not
terribly clinically depressed, and all of a sudden, you know
(19:04):
the happiest person in the world. But there's small but
significant gains. I mean, the key is that you see
this consistency, and that's cool, right. I would rather be
a seven on a happiness scale than a six, and
I'm sure anybody who's four would rather be a five.
And these practices, when you really do them, they actually
seem to work, and so you hope and you think
(19:24):
that your students are carrying these tools with them, Yeah,
I mean anecdotally, they'll say just so many amazing stories
in the midst of a really stressful exam period. I
had a student who would scribble down in a gratitude
journal of like my grandma, Like she's still alive and
I could still call her today if I need to, So,
no matter what happens on these exams I don't care,
or students who you know, these I League students are
(19:46):
really tempted to go off into like investment banking and
all these things, and students who are like I really
started to realize that I'd actually love to live near
my family and I want to not make a decision
that's going to take me away from the people I
care about. So even though we didn't have the survey data,
I'm watching them real decisions in real time. But show like, oh,
they they soaked this up. They're using these strategies. Well,
(20:16):
do you think disproportionately wealthy people are unhappy and poor
people are happy? Is there a study on that. Yeah,
there's some data on that. There's some data lottery winners, right,
lottery winners, they're like miserable, No, totally, and they are
just unportionately. In fact, the suicide rate among lottery winners
(20:37):
is higher than in the average population, because again, they
get this thing that they've been dreaming about, and the
problems are still there. In fact, more problems are there. Um.
One of the problems for lottery winners is that it's
often harder to be social. That one thing that we
know is so important for happiness, you feel like people
are trying to take your money, or it's harder to
relate to the people you grew up with because now
you know you're a millionaire, and so they end up
(20:59):
feeling really low only, which is kind of interesting. But yeah,
there're so there. There are interesting data on the connection
between money and happiness, and and my read of the literatures,
you know, the people ask a question, does money buy happiness?
And the answer is, like it depends, like if you
can't put food on your table or a roof over
your head. Yeah, if you get some money, that's going
to buy some happiness because it's just buying you the
sort of stability for the basics in life. But if
(21:21):
you've got that, then usually more money isn't going to
make you happy. And one very famous study by these
two Nobel Prize winners back in two thousand nine found
that the threshold is around seventy five thousand U s. Dollars,
So this is two thousand nine dollars might be a
little different now, but the idea is once you get
seventy five dollars a year, doubling or quadrupling your salary
is not going to make a difference in your happiness.
(21:42):
It doesn't reduce your overall levels of stress, it doesn't
increase your positive emotion. It's just not doing what we
think and the ideas like that's at least in again
two thousand nine dollars about the amount that like, you
got the basics that you need and then once you
get that, getting more doesn't really increase your happiness. Again,
it's not what we put it. Like my Yale students
that this is the one thing they'll fight with me
(22:03):
the most about. You know, after class there's a big
line of students like but what if you spend it
different or like what if you have a bunch of
kids or you know, it's like, yes, there's nu wants
around this, but the overall message is like there's just
a threshold. Getting more isn't going to impact your happiness
the same way. So crazy. I was shooting the show
in Mexico, traveling through Mexico, but we went to Wahaka
(22:23):
and this tiny town where they make I mean, they
make mescal everywhere, but really Wahaka is a place and
not only that, this woman who is probably one of
the only women in Mescal and we interview her, We
see how she makes the mescal, and she says, well,
we make enough for our family and the community to
give away, and if there's any left over, we sell it.
(22:47):
And I go, well, that's a horrible business model, Like
are you ever going to grow your business? You could
sell more if you gave away less. And then as
she goes, why would I need more? And she was
so confused about my stupid capitalist mind question of like, yeah,
but you can make so much more money if you
did this, And she said, but I don't need more money.
(23:09):
She'd work more and make more money, and then she
couldn't do all the things that she got to enjoy,
which is like hanging out in the community and drinking
really delicious miss Golic. What else does she need? Right?
I think you know that it's not clear that, like
you know, we get a lot of culturally derived happiness
from kind of late stage capitalism, right, Like a lot
of the things that capitalism prioritizes, like keep going, you know, past,
(23:30):
pass whatever, invest in objects. Right. We we also know,
for example, that material possessions give us way less happiness
than experiences, and part because experiences are about the journey,
They're about being present. You don't just get used to
something and board of it. Over time, we're prioritizing work
rather than just free time. There's so much evidence that
happiness really depends on having what's called time affluence, which
(23:52):
is that you're wealthy in time. And this is one
of the reasons that I think wealthier individuals aren't as
happy as you expect, is that they're often surprisingly time poor.
Even though they could use their money to buy back
free time, they often don't do that. And so, yeah,
I think there's there's a lot of cultural messages we
get that are kind of leading us astray. You're taking
a year off right now, right, Yeah, So you know,
(24:14):
I was continue all my work as a residential college
head in the midst of COVID, and I gotta say,
like running a college you know, dorm in the midst
of COVID was not, like it was not on my
bingo guard. Definitely not the most fun thing. And so
I teach about burnout, right, and I was watching all
these signs creeping up where I was feeling just more
physically exhausted, right, you know, even after a great night
(24:35):
of sleep, I was just like kind of dead. Um.
I was watching myself get what's called depersonalized, which is
like your cynical, like some student asked me, like a
completely reasonable thing for a student to ask me, and
I'm like, what's their problem in my head? And I'm like, oh,
like this is not this is not good. And then
I also started to feel really ineffective in my work.
And this is a kind of third feature of burnout,
(24:55):
the sense of personal ineffectiveness, like even if my job
went well, it wouldn't matter anyway. When I'm doing isn't important.
And you know, I wasn't all the way there, but
I was noticing the seeds of this stuff, and that's
like you gotta pay attention. May We often want to
avoid negative emotions, things like feeling overwhelmed or burned out,
or or even like subtle things like feeling sad or
anxious or things like that. But negative emotions are a signal.
(25:18):
It's like putting your hand on a hot stove. Like
you put your hand on a hot stove and your
body is telling you get your hand off the hostive
there's a major bad thing going on. You need to
fix that. And negative emotions are the same way. So
when I was noticing these symptoms, of burnout. I was like,
wait a minute, this is a wake up call that
I could listen to and take a break, or I
could just ignore it and it's not going to get better.
And so yeah, I'm currently on a year off where
(25:38):
I'm taking a leave from Yell but focused a lot
on my podcast and other projects, and it's already felt
really nice. Yeah. Yeah, I noticed that too. When I'm directing.
The main thing about directing you get asked a million
questions per second, and I love it. I I'm like, yes,
cut two, I'm directing something. I don't want to be directing.
(25:59):
I want to be home with my baby. And somebody's like,
you know, even what do you want? I don't know,
Like and I was like, whoa, Yeah, it's noticing your
own emotions, right, It's like, okay, you know, like a student,
I remember there was a case where a student, you know,
the low income student, had some dental trouble. You know,
I needed to fill out some paperwork so we could
kind of get the student reinburst, and I was feeling
like frustrated, what is his problem? And I was like,
(26:22):
you know, you notice, you're like I'm not that person,
Like what happened, Like, why am I experiencing frustration and
anger and negative emotion at this request? That's completely reasonable,
and that's that's burnout, that's creeping in and so yeah,
so when you're like, you know, it's like I need
a break. I need a break. So it's a balancing
act because you've got to recognize your negative emotions, but
(26:45):
you can't let them drive you either. Yeah, this is
why the mindset of mindfulness can be really important. You
pay attention, but you do so in a really particular
way with a particular attitude, which is the attitude of
non judgment. So when I have that moment with the
student where I was feeling really frustrated, one's instinct is
to be like, oh my god, I'm a horrible person.
(27:06):
What is my problem? Your drill sargeanting in your head?
Don't feel that way. It's not right, shut it off.
It feels gross. But mindfulness is like, uh, that was
more frustration than I thought I would experience. It's not
attacking myself. It's like becoming curious about it, like what's
going on? What's happening there? And I think that's using
your emotion as a signal. You're just this kind of
scientist who's like, like, anger, interesting, what's going on? Sadness
(27:29):
and grief about this? That's interesting, what's going on? So
you're not running away from them, but you're also not
amplifying them. And we can amplify emotions in two ways.
One is the way you might expect, where you really
sink into it and you kind of you're just soaking
it up and you milk it for all it's worth
kind of thing. But there's the second way we can
amplify emotions is just by trying to pretend they're not there.
We like shove them away. And my favorite analogy for
(27:51):
emotions is they're kind of like a like a beach
ball you're trying to like shove underwater. You can kind
of hold it there and rotate around for a while,
but eventually that beach ball is going to come out,
and when it does, it's gonna like smack someone in
a face. But we do that with our emotions all
the time. We try to squash down feeling sad or
feeling frustrated and and that doesn't work, but kind of
looking at it like holding it up and be like, huh,
(28:11):
I guess I'm feeling that way. Why could I be
feeling that way? What could I do differently? That's kind
of the right way to deal with these emotions. What's
the opposite of happiness? Is that sadness? It's an interesting question.
I mean, I think the opposite of happiness, if you
take the definition of being happy in your life and
with your life, it's it's kind of like meaninglessness. So
it's really not feeling happy with your life. But then
(28:34):
in terms of positive emotion, is it's not necessarily even
having lots of negative emotion. I think it's the absence
of positive emotion. It's kind of like anhedonia, right where
this is this kind of technical term for you're just
like not really experiencing a lot of positive emotion at all,
Like it doesn't doesn't feel like anything to be you.
And so, yeah, I think what we're striving for is
like above baseline, you know, we want some positive emotions
(28:55):
and we really want to feel like we're doing something
important with our life to feel like we think our
life is going well. And to get there, it's pretty
simple to do. You just have to engage in the
right strategies. Yeah, do you think it's important for us
to be connected in our life. Yeah, I mean, I
think to be socially connected is super important. I mean,
I love what I've heard about your podcast and heard
(29:16):
the name of like yep tick, like you know, that's
why she's right, Like you know, it's such a basic thing.
But I think it's also important to be connected with
what's going on. I think asking yourself this question of
how I'm feeling right now is important. Again, not judgmentally
we're going to beat yourself up for the answer, but
kind of noticing where you are is important for figuring
out where you want to go. And all the evidence
(29:37):
suggests that we can change around how we're feeling. We
just need to put in the right effort. One last
question I ask all my guess is just a book
they recommend for everyone. I am a nerdy academic, so
it's like an impossible question for me. But I'll recommend
one of my favorite recent books, which is by the
journalists Catherine Price, and it's called The Power of Fun,
How you can Engage with Fun in your life, because
I think this is another spot that we mess up,
(29:58):
especially as adults. We you have goals, and we have productivity,
and we have relaxation, but we don't have fun like
the answer to the question when was the was the
last time you would describe as so fun? We don't
often get those, and so the book is all about
ways to find more of a fantastic book, The Power
of Fun. Wow, that's amazing. That's a really good title
(30:19):
to the Power of Fun. Well, thank you so much,
Dr Santos. I'm so happy to happy to have met you. No,
thanks so much, happy me on the show. I feel
HAPPI or already. Thank you so much for listening. I'm
happy to be connected with you. Connections with Eva Lagoria
(30:40):
is a production of Unbelievable entertainment in partnership with I
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An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.