April 6, 2023 • 35 mins
Happiness is not a destination. According to Dr. Laurie Santos – host of The Happiness Lab podcast, and professor of a popular class on happiness at Yale University – happiness is a journey that comes with many roadblocks. Whether you call it flourishing, contentment, or just plain joy, the key to finding it involves rolling up your sleeves and getting to work. With rates of anxiety and depression skyrocketing among young people, Dr. Santos sheds much-needed light on ways that we can adjust our own expectations about happiness, and offer constructive support to the people who need it most. She also clarifies the unexpected role that resilience plays along the path: the stronger we become, the more we’re capable of post-traumatic growth.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
I'm Katie Kuric, and this is next question, you know,
having a podcast on happiness, teaching a whole classed Ivy
League students, generation after generation. Yeah, I mean, I think
that we get happiness wrong. Happiness, that feeling of joy
or contentment that we all seem to crave can also
seem totally unattainable in this day and age. In fact,
(00:27):
maybe we need to replace the word happiness altogether. True
flourishing is taking on challenges, embracing failure, you know, navigating
these negative emotions that might be normative. And so I think,
you know, it would be better to have a different word,
But in some ways we're stuck with happiness. Doctor Laurie
Santos is a cognitive scientist who's been studying happiness in
(00:48):
the lab as well as through the class she teaches
at Yale. But she's the first to admit even she
isn't happy all the time. Some of us are kind
of genetically lucky to have a little bit of a
predisposition and happiness. I'm probably the opposite. I think I
was born on a rainy like loudry mixed kind of day.
So what do we need to understand about happiness, Why
(01:11):
is it so difficult to come by? And why is
true happiness such freaking hard work. By the way, if
you want to get smarter every morning with a breakdown
of the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness
and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter, Wake
Up Call by going to Katiecurrek dot com. Are you
(01:34):
or a loved one battling cancer? I'm passionate about raising
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improving quality of life. You know, too often the length
(01:55):
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(02:17):
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So talk to your doctor. To find hospitals where Meridian
(02:37):
is available, visit viewray dot com. Laurie Santos, come on down.
I'm so excited to be talking to you. Ditto, Ditto.
Let's start with the basics. What exactly is happiness? We
do a very long time answering that, kat So. Social
(02:59):
scientists tend to think of happiness as being happy in
your life and being happy with your life. So being
happy in your life is like you've just got lots
of positive emotions. There's like joy and smiling and laughter
as opposed to kind of negative emotions like sadness, anger
and saying. It's not saying you have no negative emotions,
it's just that the ratio is pretty good. That's being
happy in your life. But being happy with your life
(03:20):
is how you think about your life. Is the answer
to your question, like all things considered, how satisfied are
you with your life? And if you say yes, then
that's pretty good. And I love this definition because you know,
we all know that there are times that those two
things dissociate, right that you know you're doing something that's
making you incredibly satisfied with your life. You know, maybe
you have a new baby or a new job, but
it's hard, you know, in your life there's a lot
(03:41):
of stress and things like that. And I think we've
all met people, you especially being you know, with the
rich and famous folks where no no in their life,
like you know, you're flying first class and great food,
but with your life there's a real sense of emptiness
and a lack of meaning. And so we have these
misconceptions when it comes to the things that make guess happy.
Are we using the wrong word? Should it be contentment?
(04:03):
Should it be fulfillment? I think the Greeks, you know,
and the ancients as usual, had it right. You know,
they talked about you diamondia flourishing, and that I think
would be a better word, because to have true flourishing,
it's not like you're happy all the time. Like true
flourishing isn't toxic positivity where you're like smiling like some
terrible yellow emojing where you're like, oh my gosh, I'm
happy all the time. And so what I try to
(04:23):
do is to explain to folks that true happiness allows
for the normal kinds of spots where you're not going
to feel great, like, that's typical, that's normal, that's what
you need for a good, ultimately happy life. But people
probably should think about the word flourishing or fulfillment, contentment.
It just seems much more stable. Happiness seems like at
(04:45):
the high end of the emotional scale, right, and that's
unattainable because nobody's happy all the time. Yeah. My colleague
Dan Gilbert, professor at Harvard, who comes a lot on
my podcast, Dan's vond of saying that you know, happily
ever after only exists if you have like three minutes
left to live, like, it's just not a destination. And
I think that's another thing we get wrong. We think
(05:06):
I'm going to do something and get there. You know,
I'll get married and I will be happy. Or I'll
get this new raise and I will be happy. Or
you know, my college students, I'll get into the perfect
medical school or get the perfect rates and I will
be happy. And that's just not how it works. My
late husband used to say that I was born on
a sunny day, which I thought was such a nice compliment,
and it made me wonder if some people are hardwired
(05:29):
for happiness. Is there a happiness set point that varies
from person to person, from biology to biology. Yeah, there's
some evidence that that might be at least partly the case.
And the evidence comes from these studies on what's called heritability. Right,
what is it called heritability? It's just not irritability irritability. Heritability,
(05:51):
which is this like big word of saying, you know,
how much of the variance that we see in the population.
You know, some people are happy, not so happy. How
much of that is do to your biology? How much
of that is due to kind of how you grow up? Right?
And the way we test heritability is to look at twins. Right,
Some twins are identical. That means they're genetically exactly the same,
the same way, raise the same way. Right. Some are fraternal,
(06:14):
which means they're genetically different, Like they're just as similar
as regular brothers and sisters. And so if happiness is
really built in, then identical twins should be much more
similar in their happiness level than regular brothers and sisters.
Tons of studies have looked at this, and what you
find is that's true, but a little bit. Heritability estimates
are at about thirty percent, and that's like, you know,
(06:35):
it's there, but scientifically speaking, it's kind of small. What
does that mean? It means there's something to be said for,
you know, being born on a sunny day. Some of
us are kind of genetically lucky to have a little
bit of a predisposition to happiness, but it's not as
much as we, I think assume. So it sounds like
nurture is more important than nature when it comes to happiness.
(06:55):
That's exactly right, and I think it's important not to
discount nature, right. There are some people who have a
harder than others because they've got to put more work in,
but everybody can put the right work in to change things. Well,
I wanted to ask you what sets you up for happiness?
I mean, is it a secure home, life, loving parents,
financial security, positive affirmation, success, and however you define it.
(07:21):
I feel like I'm really lucky, honestly, Laurie, in all
those categories. I think of people who have parents who
didn't give them unconditional love and how that really kind
of reverberates throughout their lives. Yeah, I mean, obviously those
things have an impact, right. You know, trauma, which is
(07:42):
the kind of thing you're talking about right where parents,
you know, your abusive parents or with whole scene or
exactly or you know, they could even be affluent, you know,
successful parents, just very distant or really harsh, right, I
mean we all kind of grow up with different levels
of that, and you can look at levels are pretty extreme,
and scientists do that, right. This is a lot of
the work on trauma and what's often called post traumatic
(08:05):
stress disorder. You many of us have heard about that, right,
And it comes from the fact that when you experience
trauma sometimes that can have a longstanding effect. But even
though you know post traumatic stress disorder PTSD gets a
lot of airtime, scientists have also looked at what you
might consider the opposite, which is called post traumatic growth. Right,
you go through an awful, terrible incident that you never
(08:26):
would have wished on yourself or anyone else, and some
good comes from that. You feel like you come out stronger,
you feel like you come out more resilient, you feel
like you come out more socially connected to the people
you really care about. And this is what's called post
traumatic growth. And I'm kind of curious. I mean, you know,
you and I are talking after you've been so helpfully
public about your breast cancer diagnosis. That could be a
(08:47):
trauma that leads to PTSD. You know, individuals who experience
cancer diagnosis and have to go through the process, you know,
terrible and awfully traumatic, but you kind of resonate with that,
this idea of the post traumatic growth a bit. I mean,
I think because I've had so much experience witnessing cancer
much more severely in both my late husband and my
(09:09):
sister who also passed away, and I became so knowledgeable
about cancer. I have a very really healthy and solid
understanding about my particular situation, and instead of being traumatized,
it actually increased my gratitude because I know, unlike them,
(09:30):
both my husband and sister were diagnosed with stage four cancer.
Mine was discovered early, when it's not only treatable but curable,
and so if anything, it wasn't traumatic. It was actually
weirdly life affirming. It was a death sentence for my
(09:52):
husband and my sister when they were diagnosed, and the
fact that it was twenty twenty two, the fact that
science has really progressed, I felt grateful. And so this
is what we hear a lot, both with kind of
diagnoses like yours, but even cases where individuals find out
they have a terminal situation or things that you couldn't
(10:13):
even imagine. You're There are accounts of parents who've lost
young children who obviously, you know, the most traumatic thing
any parent could imagine. You know, obviously they're not happy
about it, they wouldn't wish it again, but they'll say
on mass more good things came of it than I expected, right,
And that is a profound thing about human psychology and
human nature. The worst thing possible that we could ever
(10:34):
imagine happens, and we say there are parts of this
at least that I'm grateful for, or there's parts of
this that I wouldn't change. I've grown from this. This
is one of the biggest mistakes that we make about happiness.
We think it's only our circumstances. If things go well,
I'll be great, and God forbid things go badly. But
in practice, when these things actually happen to people were
much more resilient, and we often take much more meaning
(10:57):
and purpose from those events than we often expect. I
think my resilience you mentioned going public, just as I
try to spread awareness and educate people about calling cancer
prevention and encourage them to get colonoscopies, and got one
on television myself, I knew that by being a public
(11:18):
figure and talking about it, I have the potential to
actually save lives. And so for me translating it into
I don't mean to sound cheesy, but some form of service,
it actually is very grounding and satisfying and fulfilling for me.
And that's what I think. Sometimes we get wrong about happiness.
(11:42):
I think resilious it's finding strength with them. So sometimes
we are in a situation that we're unprepared for and
you find yourself digging deeper into something that you didn't
even know you possessed more after the break. I'm an
(12:05):
artist in New York City, so when I'm creating or discovering,
that's where I find my happiness usually most of the time.
So happiness, you can try and find it, you can
try to inspire it. I also think you got to
give energy to get energy, So do that you can
find a lot of happiness. We're back with Lorie Santos.
(12:27):
All this focus on quote unquote self care, which I
think to a certain extent, we need to focus and
take care of ourselves. And the oxygen mask and all
that jazz. On the other hand, it seems like we
have become so self focused that we're missing the point
about serving others, being kind to others. Those things are
(12:49):
proven to increase your happiness, right, Lorie. Yeah, I mean
one of the biggest cross cultural universals in happiness science
right now is that doing nice things for other people
makes you happier. If you look at people who are
controlled for the level of income they have, people who
donate more of their money to charity are happier. People
who just tend to just be more self focused are
(13:10):
less happy than the people who are out there doing
stuff for other people. And even if you force people
to do nice stuff for others, they wind up feeling happier.
And do you think this whole emphasis on self care
and wellness has had the adverse effect in some ways?
Have you looked at that? Yeah? Definitely. It's a relatively
new phenomenon, isn't it. I mean I feel like sort
(13:31):
of the self care wellness industry has really blossomed and
just the last five years. Yeah, I think it's problematic
in two ways. Again, One is this focus on the self, right,
you know, me, me me, when again, all the data
suggest that doing for others would be better. I think
another problem is it like reflects this notion that we
have that like our circumstances matter for happiness. Right, if
(13:52):
I could just like have it be you know, bubble
bats and rainbows and first class flights, then my life
would be great. And it's really missing out on the
things that can actually matter for our happiness. Were in
some ways even just a simple act of spending our money,
We're doing it wrong. Spending on things that we think
are going to make us feel good, I think aren't
going to bring us joy, and they might not bring
us the joy we think. We're in New York City,
(14:12):
the epicenter of type A strivers, right, and I think
if there's one thing that has hurt my happiness quotient,
if you will, is always striving, because once you get something,
it's like, Okay, what am I going to do next?
Where am I going to go? How am I going
(14:32):
to achieve something? More? Talk about how these type A
kind of super driven people, because I'm transitioning to you
your Yale class where you at them in droves, how
that impacts your happiness. I mean, it's sometimes funny to
people when they hear I teach this class unhappiness to
Yale students, because the lay person's assumption is like Yale
(14:56):
students haven't made they're nineteen, you know, many of them
are wealthy or at least well connect. Did yet you
know one fourth of them decided to take a class
on happiness. What year did you start teaching it? First?
In twenty eighteen, and it was It became the largest
class ever in Yale's history, and one quarter of the
students enrolled, right, And I ken that tells you that
these you know type A, you know, very driven Yale
(15:17):
students are voting with their feet. They've especially at Yale,
they've gotten everything they've wanted. You know, probably since these
kids were twelve years old, they dreamed of getting into
an Ivy League school, and now they're there and it's
still not doing what they expect, which only proves like
all these things that we talked about are not necessarily
the key. What's missing for them? Yeah, I mean it's
(15:38):
often the things that they are having an opportunity cost
on because they're so driven at their academics. It's simple
things like sleep and taking care of their physical health.
It's often social connection. Right. These are students who are
working on homework into the night. They're not getting the
same social connection that you expect, And honestly, it's just
having this kind of mistaken idea that more and more
and more is going to be good. Right. It's not
(16:00):
stopic to kind of you smell the roses and reflect
on the accomplishments you've gotten, because they're thinking about what
grades are going to make, and how are they going
to get into a good law school, and how are
they going to get that job at Goldman Sachs or
you know, all those things that I would imagine detract
from just being present and enjoying the moment exactly. There's
work on what's known as journey mindset, right, which is
(16:23):
this idea that you're not kind of going for the
next thing, you're not looking at what you're arriving towards.
The goal is not then it's not law school or
Goldman Sacks, we're even getting into Yale. It's kind of
what you're going to learn and get along the way.
It's really being present across that, and I think that
we've raised, honestly, not just my Yale students, but a
generation of young people that have dropped the journey mindset right.
They are careerists from as early as we can detect,
(16:44):
and that means that they're just going to jump to
the next accolade. How can we tamp down this tremendous
pressure that's really detracting from being a happy, whole person.
You imagine if Yale and Harvard and Stafford, all big
schools got together, like a nuclear d escalation, and we
all said, you know what, here the minimum standards you
(17:06):
need to be a good Yale student. Once you meet
this minimum standard, you go into a lottery and you'll
might get in or you might not. I think this
would be first of all, I think you'd be accurate,
But I think it would also allow students to see that, like,
you know, you don't have to keep hustling, and I
think the hustle starts earlier and earlier. I think you
know what you said is correct. I think parents really
have a role to kind of scale this back. And
(17:27):
I think you know, it can sometimes be really tough
for parents because they obviously want what's best for their kids.
You know, if there's a kind of accolade out there
that your child doesn't have, it so easy to kind
of want them to strive for it. I think working
with your kids to kind of back them up, talk
to them about what they're learning along the journey, make
it clear that you're going to love them no matter what,
and don't push them just because you want that Yale
(17:47):
sticker on the back of your car. You can buy
one even if your kid doesn't go to Yale. Dirty. So,
I'm curious what you heard from your students. You talked
to so many of these kids. I mean, you had
a whole case study every semester. What did they talk
about and why were they taking your class? There's lots
of evidence that this generation, and this is true at
(18:08):
Yell too, is just facing the biggest mental health crisis
that we've seen in the history of the human species. Like,
right now, there's race of depression nationally at colleges are
at levels like forty percent of students report being too
depressed to function most days. Over sixty percent say they're
overwhelmingly anxious. More than one in ten has seriously considered suicide.
So if you're looking at a group of ten college students,
one of them might be contemplating taking their own life, right, Like,
(18:30):
that's really how bad the mental health situation has gone
on campus. But that doesn't even tell you what you're
just seeing in the low grade kind of stress and
disappointment these students are facing. You know, I'll run into
a student in the courtyard and be like, hey, how's
it going, And they'd be like, oh, if I could
only get to mid terms or if I could only
fast forward to the summer to get out of this.
And I would have kind of two reactions to that
of like what college is so precious since so short,
(18:53):
Like how can you be fast forwarding this? But then
my other reactions like oh, yeah, we could only get
to mid terms, you know. So I was like realizing like, wow,
you know, these are misconceptions that I was having too.
You know, even though it was so acute in my
students that kind of overwhelm and stress they were facing,
I kind of saw it in myself too. You know.
I'm worried that we weren't being good mentors for them
to help them out of this. You know. I guess
(19:14):
maybe because I'm I'm a big fan of self flagellation,
but I do wonder if people of my generation parents
fucked up well it's hay, you know, yeah, yeah, blah blah,
And I wonder I wonder if my generation style of
(19:34):
parenting has contributed to this, because you know that everybody
gets a trophy. You have to fix things for your kids.
You can't have them suffer because it's too painful for you.
You can't have them be disappointed. And are the chickens
coming home to roost? I think so, although I think
(19:57):
there's also lots of evidence that, you know, society, a
lot of these structures changed, right. You know, the last
twenty years were also the time when the news was
talking a lot about stranger danger. You know, you wouldn't
be seen as a good parent unless you were trying
to protect your children. Again, I think institutions like mine,
you know, like focused on meritocracy in a way that's great.
You know, anyone can get into Yale now, anyone can
(20:18):
get into you. Oh why aren't you giving your child
the resources they need to do that? And I think
that that focus on higher education in these next steps
made it so that failure seemed scary. But I think
that that did mean that the kids today are growing
up with different kinds of norms when it comes to failures,
different kinds of norms when it comes to parental involvement.
Different kinds of norms when it comes to what they're
(20:39):
expected to know, just at different ages. We have college
students who have never used an alarm clock. Their parents
are their alarm clock. They call, you know, to make
sure their child gets up in the morning, you know,
at nineteen twenty one years old. Lily from New York.
I'm a teacher. I think the pandemic really affected kids negatively,
(21:01):
and they're having a really hard time figuring out how
to socialize in the way that we did when we
were kids, when life was quote unquote normal. So I
think the socializing, the lack of social skills is we're
finding kids like really inverting and struggling to reach out
to people. We'll be right back. There's things within your
(21:28):
control and there's things outside, and focus on those things
that are within your control and you'll do better and
we're back. You have just started an online course that's
free to teenagers. It's called the Science of Well Being.
What prompted you to do that, Laurie, Well, it had
done this class, you know, live on Yale's campus, and
(21:48):
we got tons and tons of press for it. But
a lot of the emails I was getting from parents
was saying, you know, could you make this available? Was
there any way I could see the syllabus. I want
my daughter who's in middle school, I want my son
who's any school to get this content. And it made
me realize that, you know, a lot of the skills
I was teaching Yale students. We want kids who are
younger than that to learn these things. So is it
(22:10):
different teaching teens than it is teaching college students. Yeah,
yes and no. Yes in the sense that you know,
teens face different kinds of contexts where these kinds of
principles and these misconceptions come up. Right, They're not worried
about salary and you know, getting married. They're worried about,
you know, getting good grades and thinking about colleges and
navigating how they're portrayed on social media rights. In some ways,
(22:32):
there are lots of similar stressors, but they kind of
play out in different ways. And so the new class
really uses the same kind of science concepts. Those things
are the same, but we're kind of talking about them
in a context that teens can really relate to them.
You know, So if we're talking about your circumstances don't matter.
We're not using examples of like getting promotions at work.
We're using examples of like, you know, the grade that
you got on your homework lass Thursday. We're sort of
(22:53):
talking about the kinds of things that are on teens minds.
Are there some basic skills that you're really trying to
give both the kids in college and also teenagers. One
of the great things that I've seen with the Yale
students in so far, with the teens who have taken
the classes, they want an evidence based approach. They don't
want to hear a bunch of platitudes about what they
should do. They like, what does the science say, because
(23:15):
that's great. But then we just walk through just really
simple behavior thought pattern changes that you can engage with
when a stressor comes up. You know, so if you're
feeling stressed, what are good behaviors? You know, maybe spending
more time on TikTok not as good the evidence suggests,
but if you can move your body a little bit more,
if you can contact a friend, if you take a sleep,
maybe take a walk, or even you know, think about
(23:35):
what you could do for someone else, you know, getting
back to this idea of being other oriented. These behaviors
that you could use in the moment to fix this.
We also spend a lot of time on changing your
thought patterns. I think we think we are our thoughts,
like you know, they just pop up and that's reality.
But there's so much evidence to say, no, that's just
the voice in our head, and there are simple techniques
we can use to change our thought patterns. You know.
(23:56):
A big one for teenagers is trying to sort of
shut off that self critic in your head. You know that, Yeah,
why started out for teenagers? I mean I do negative
self talk all the time, and some of my friends
here at Katie Kirk Media say, you know you are
what you say, and that actually is scientifically proven right totally.
I mean, there's so much evidence that what you're saying
(24:16):
to yourself is affecting how you perform. For example, if
you're really self critical, it's very easy to procrastinate because
you're screaming yourself. You can have set up this fear
in your own mind. There's also lots of evidence at
what you say it to yourself can affect your physiology.
The best advice is to talk to yourself like you
would a friend. If your best friend was really screwing up,
you wouldn't be like, oh, it's fine. You know, it's great,
(24:37):
You're wonderful, everybody loves you. You'd be like, you know,
we need to deal with this, like what's going on?
Like I love you and I really care about you.
And you wouldn't be like you suck, like why are
you wouldn't scream at your best friend and be great
him or her, but you would, you know, call a
spade a spade and say, hey, we got we gotta
deal with this. This isn't going well, And you would
be curious. You'd be like, what's going on? Like why
(24:57):
are you doing this? Like how can we fix this?
You'd be you'd be gentle, you'd be proactive, you'd be
problem solving oriented. But you wouldn't scream. You wouldn't be mean.
And that's the kind of voice we're trying to kind
of cultivate. But the evidence suggests that these practices really work.
So what can we do with social media? I means
the genie out of the bottle. How are you talking
(25:19):
to teens and to ladies like me about kind of
monitoring it and moderating it? Yeah, well, in some sense,
the genie is out of the bottle, right, We're not
ever going to go back to, you know, the way
we were, you know, when you and I were in college.
We're always going to have probably these devices in our
pockets that have the temptation of comparison, that have these
(25:41):
technologies available. I think what we can do, though, is
that we can be a little bit more mindful about
how these things are making us feel. And I think
that that's important, right, because we don't want to deny
the benefits of these things. One of the strategies I
teach my students comes from the journalist Catherine Price, who
is this lovely book called How to Break Up with
Your Phone, which she argues, you don't have to break
up your phone, but like couples, counseling probably required, you know,
(26:03):
for the relationship. And she has this acronym that she
uses called WWW to help you be more mindful. It
stands for what for, why now? And what else? And
so she argues, whenever you find your phone in your hand,
you should think, oh, www, like what for? Was was
there a purpose? Like I was checking my email or
I was going to text a friend? You know, maybe
it's just my addictive go to right? Why now? Right?
(26:24):
What was the trigger. You know, maybe again you had
something to do, but maybe it was I was feeling anxious,
or I was feeling bored, or you know, for my students,
often it's I was feeling a little bit scared about
engaging in real life social connection talking to someone in
the dining hall, so I just, you know, picked up
my phone. But the biggest one I think is what else, right?
What's the opportunity cost? What else could you be doing?
Could you be just like taking a deep breath, talking
(26:46):
to a friend, sleeping right? What are you not doing
because you're on your phone? And what are you missing?
You know? Sometimes if I land in a new city,
I am going to the hotel, and I realized I
didn't even look around at this new place and take
in being in a totally different environment because I've had
(27:07):
my face and my phone, and I think this is
so dumb. Why am I doing this? It is such
a default, though, Lorie, you know now, yeah, I think
it's a default. And often the thing we're missing is
other people. That's right, because it's distracting. It's very presence
is distracting. It also prevents you to engage in deep
thinking because it's interrupting you all the time, right, and
(27:30):
it makes sense, right because our brains aren't stupid, like
they know on the other end of this device, you know, imagine,
you know, we're having this lovely conversation here and it's
very fun. But imagine if to the conversation I brought
this big wheelbarrow, and in the wheelbarrow I had like
my photo album since like nineteen ninety two and print
outs of everything every politician or you know, Kardashian has said.
(27:50):
And the last week there was like cat video is imporn,
just like this huge pile of stuff in the wheelbar
and sort of food that you could learn to make. Like,
our brain isn't stupid. It knows that all that stuff
is right next to you. But it's having a huge
effect on our attention and our performance and our social connection.
Let's talk about global happiness because I mean, look what
(28:11):
you started, laurining. Now there then these worldwide surveys about happiness,
and what are we learning about those? I think so
many interesting things. I mean, first, I think we're learning
that just having a metric is powerful. Right. This is
the World Happiness survey that goes around globally and tries
to measure happiness using the sort of standard survey tools
(28:32):
that we have, and then they rank countries. What we've
learned from the metrics so far, though, is that there
are differences. There are countries that since this survey has
been out there have standardly been around the top, places
like Denmark, Norway, you know, these Scandinavian countries. And there
are otherwise very wealthy countries like the US that have
been surprisingly low on the list, like sixteenth. Yeah, not
(28:52):
at the bottom, but like not as high as we
would expect given that, you know, the pursuit of happiness
is like literally in our Declaration of Independence. And I
think that can be powerful because we can start to
ask questions about like, Okay, what are those nations that
are doing well doing well? And what are we missing
out on? And have you learned anything? I mean, is
it sort of quality of life? Is it providing you know,
(29:14):
parental leave and accessible childcare, things that reduce stressors for people?
It's all of those things. I mean, I think it's
it's actually having access to you know, those sorts of
things that we know mean for a good life. And
so I think what these countries do well is that
they build things into the structure of how they live
their lives that make it easier to get things like
(29:36):
social connection, presence, exercise, and so on, and what you
have is a lot more equality. Surprisingly, COVID did not
decrease the happiness metric in many of these countries, which
says a lot about our resilience. And in fact, I
think the pandemic in some ways was a reset for us.
(29:56):
I think so. I think there was a little bit
of this idea of post at at growth that we
talked about before right where you know. It caused us
to socially connect more. It caused us to recognize our
own resilience. It's sort of brought back our gratitude for
simple things. I think it also really taught us to
reevaluate what we were doing with our lives. I think
many people during the pandemic thought a little bit more
(30:17):
critically about the hustle culture that they might have been
engaged in, about what it was for. We saw that
there was a path when we could work at home
and spend more time with our families, and I think
that's what's leading to this so called great resignation, things
like quiet quitting. Right now, I think people are reevaluating
their relationship with work and are maybe considering some kind
of patterns that might be healthier. I think many people
(30:39):
are starting to realize that they're frantically climbing up this
ladder that they might not even want to be on
in the first place, and they're burning out before they
even graduate from college. And it's even affecting college professors
like you, because you took a sabbatical because you were
afraid you were going to totally burn yourself out. So
(31:00):
did taking a step back. I know you're still working,
but getting a change of scenery, etc. Didn't make you happier?
Oh definitely. I mean, and I'm a nerd, right, so
I take, you know, like literally data on this. I've
gone up about a point on a ten point happiness scale. Yeah,
I mean, I was really I really started to notice
in the midst of this pandemic all the classic signs
(31:21):
of early burnout. Right. I was emotionally exhausted, not just
physically exhausted. It was just like kind of tired, like
if one more email came like I was gonna, you know,
just lose it. It It was just like too much. I
was feeling really cynical, right, my fuse was really short
with the people around me, especially my students. That that
was the thing that affected me most. That's not normal
for me, and that was really big. But the biggest
(31:42):
thing I think I experienced during COVID on college campuses
was the third kind of symptom of burnout, which is
a sense of personal ineffectiveness, like even if you did
your job the best that you possibly could, it wouldn't
be good enough. And I was like, wait, you know,
I've read the papers. I know where this leads. I
need to make some changes. Good news is I think,
you know, for me, at least, the changes have been great.
(32:03):
Actually made the very difficult decision to step down as
a head of college on campus in part because I
was realizing that, you know, to do that job as
well as I wanted to, I just didn't have the
bandwidth anymore. Have you regained your happiness equilibrium as a
result of stepping back? And you know, will it change
when you re enter the Yale campus? Will it change me? Yeah?
(32:27):
I think I'll make, you know, some big changes. You know,
stepping down from this role has been a big one.
You know, I'm already sort of thinking about how I
can have a better balance with some of the stuff
I'm doing. There Again, you have to remember, happiness isn't
this destination. This is going to keep and taking a constant.
It's not a constant. Let's close this out with some
Laurie Santo's happiness tidbits. One is, as you mentioned, it
(32:49):
takes work. So what does that mean, Like if you
were saying, Katie, if you want to be happy and happier,
this is what you should do. What kind of work
do I have to do? I think the first piece
of work is just recognizing that your intuitions are off right,
that you just have these normal things that you think, Oh,
i've had a bad day, I'll you know, I'll get
a manicure. Oh you know, this is what I'll do,
or I'll keep pushing at work. You know, for X, Y,
(33:11):
and Z, we have these intuitions about the things that
we should be doing, that we're supposed to be doing.
I think you have to realize that those intuitions are wrong. Right,
you have to say the science says do something else
in really simple domains, right. You know, if you have
a long day at work, you might have the intuition
of like, oh, I just want to PLoP down and
just like glass of wine, which is a depressant, by
the way, exactly when you know so much. Science suggests
(33:33):
that if you instead called a friend, went for a walk,
you know, just try to engage in something that was
a little bit more challenging of a form of leisure
than plopping down to watch that. Take a pickle ball
lesson you know, just like on your phone, do a
lingo something right like that would be better. Text a
friend that you're a little bit worried about, right, Become
a little bit more other oriented. When we're in these
moments where we're feeling stressed, we're feeling overwhelmed, we're feeling
(33:56):
a little sad. They are just simple behaviors we can
engage in that are going to work better than what
our natural intuition is. Laurie Santos, this has been so fun.
Thank you for spending so much time with me. I
feel like I just went to therapist and I owe
you whatever a lot. Thank you, Laurie, Thanks so much.
(34:16):
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for
me or want to share your thoughts about how you
navigate this crazy world, reach out. You can leave a
short message at six o nine five one two five
five oh five, or you can send me a DM
on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next
Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kurik Media.
(34:39):
The executive producers are Met Katie Kurik and Courtney Litz.
Our supervising producer is Marcy Thompson. Our producers are Adriana
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who also composed our theme music. For more information about
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(35:02):
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(35:22):
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(35:46):
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I'm Katie Kuric, and this is next question, you know,
having a podcast on happiness, teaching a whole classed Ivy
League students, generation after generation. Yeah, I mean, I think
that we get happiness wrong. Happiness, that feeling of joy
or contentment that we all seem to crave can also
seem totally unattainable in this day and age. In fact,
(00:27):
maybe we need to replace the word happiness altogether. True
flourishing is taking on challenges, embracing failure, you know, navigating
these negative emotions that might be normative. And so I think,
you know, it would be better to have a different word,
But in some ways we're stuck with happiness. Doctor Laurie
Santos is a cognitive scientist who's been studying happiness in
(00:48):
the lab as well as through the class she teaches
at Yale. But she's the first to admit even she
isn't happy all the time. Some of us are kind
of genetically lucky to have a little bit of a
predisposition and happiness. I'm probably the opposite. I think I
was born on a rainy like loudry mixed kind of day.
So what do we need to understand about happiness, Why
(01:11):
is it so difficult to come by? And why is
true happiness such freaking hard work. By the way, if
you want to get smarter every morning with a breakdown
of the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness
and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter, Wake
Up Call by going to Katiecurrek dot com. Are you
(01:34):
or a loved one battling cancer? I'm passionate about raising
awareness about the importance of early detection and for patients
and their caregivers to fully understand all available treatment options,
especially those that have meaningful impact to extending survival and
improving quality of life. You know, too often the length
(01:55):
of treatment, recovery period, and debilitating side effects can be
difficult to cope with. Our partners at view Ray have
reinvented cancer treatment with Meridian MRI guided radiation therapy for
those who qualify. Around eighty percent of patients complete treatment
and as few as five sessions, often with little or
(02:17):
no side effects. Viewray is working to educate patients about
this life changing cancer treatment and where patients can find
a Meridian treatment center. Innovation like Meridian gives me hope
for the millions of people around the world currently battling cancer.
So talk to your doctor. To find hospitals where Meridian
(02:37):
is available, visit viewray dot com. Laurie Santos, come on down.
I'm so excited to be talking to you. Ditto, Ditto.
Let's start with the basics. What exactly is happiness? We
do a very long time answering that, kat So. Social
(02:59):
scientists tend to think of happiness as being happy in
your life and being happy with your life. So being
happy in your life is like you've just got lots
of positive emotions. There's like joy and smiling and laughter
as opposed to kind of negative emotions like sadness, anger
and saying. It's not saying you have no negative emotions,
it's just that the ratio is pretty good. That's being
happy in your life. But being happy with your life
(03:20):
is how you think about your life. Is the answer
to your question, like all things considered, how satisfied are
you with your life? And if you say yes, then
that's pretty good. And I love this definition because you know,
we all know that there are times that those two
things dissociate, right that you know you're doing something that's
making you incredibly satisfied with your life. You know, maybe
you have a new baby or a new job, but
it's hard, you know, in your life there's a lot
(03:41):
of stress and things like that. And I think we've
all met people, you especially being you know, with the
rich and famous folks where no no in their life,
like you know, you're flying first class and great food,
but with your life there's a real sense of emptiness
and a lack of meaning. And so we have these
misconceptions when it comes to the things that make guess happy.
Are we using the wrong word? Should it be contentment?
(04:03):
Should it be fulfillment? I think the Greeks, you know,
and the ancients as usual, had it right. You know,
they talked about you diamondia flourishing, and that I think
would be a better word, because to have true flourishing,
it's not like you're happy all the time. Like true
flourishing isn't toxic positivity where you're like smiling like some
terrible yellow emojing where you're like, oh my gosh, I'm
happy all the time. And so what I try to
(04:23):
do is to explain to folks that true happiness allows
for the normal kinds of spots where you're not going
to feel great, like, that's typical, that's normal, that's what
you need for a good, ultimately happy life. But people
probably should think about the word flourishing or fulfillment, contentment.
It just seems much more stable. Happiness seems like at
(04:45):
the high end of the emotional scale, right, and that's
unattainable because nobody's happy all the time. Yeah. My colleague
Dan Gilbert, professor at Harvard, who comes a lot on
my podcast, Dan's vond of saying that you know, happily
ever after only exists if you have like three minutes
left to live, like, it's just not a destination. And
I think that's another thing we get wrong. We think
(05:06):
I'm going to do something and get there. You know,
I'll get married and I will be happy. Or I'll
get this new raise and I will be happy. Or
you know, my college students, I'll get into the perfect
medical school or get the perfect rates and I will
be happy. And that's just not how it works. My
late husband used to say that I was born on
a sunny day, which I thought was such a nice compliment,
and it made me wonder if some people are hardwired
(05:29):
for happiness. Is there a happiness set point that varies
from person to person, from biology to biology. Yeah, there's
some evidence that that might be at least partly the case.
And the evidence comes from these studies on what's called heritability. Right,
what is it called heritability? It's just not irritability irritability. Heritability,
(05:51):
which is this like big word of saying, you know,
how much of the variance that we see in the population.
You know, some people are happy, not so happy. How
much of that is do to your biology? How much
of that is due to kind of how you grow up? Right?
And the way we test heritability is to look at twins. Right,
Some twins are identical. That means they're genetically exactly the same,
the same way, raise the same way. Right. Some are fraternal,
(06:14):
which means they're genetically different, Like they're just as similar
as regular brothers and sisters. And so if happiness is
really built in, then identical twins should be much more
similar in their happiness level than regular brothers and sisters.
Tons of studies have looked at this, and what you
find is that's true, but a little bit. Heritability estimates
are at about thirty percent, and that's like, you know,
(06:35):
it's there, but scientifically speaking, it's kind of small. What
does that mean? It means there's something to be said for,
you know, being born on a sunny day. Some of
us are kind of genetically lucky to have a little
bit of a predisposition to happiness, but it's not as
much as we, I think assume. So it sounds like
nurture is more important than nature when it comes to happiness.
(06:55):
That's exactly right, and I think it's important not to
discount nature, right. There are some people who have a
harder than others because they've got to put more work in,
but everybody can put the right work in to change things. Well,
I wanted to ask you what sets you up for happiness?
I mean, is it a secure home, life, loving parents,
financial security, positive affirmation, success, and however you define it.
(07:21):
I feel like I'm really lucky, honestly, Laurie, in all
those categories. I think of people who have parents who
didn't give them unconditional love and how that really kind
of reverberates throughout their lives. Yeah, I mean, obviously those
things have an impact, right. You know, trauma, which is
(07:42):
the kind of thing you're talking about right where parents,
you know, your abusive parents or with whole scene or
exactly or you know, they could even be affluent, you know,
successful parents, just very distant or really harsh, right, I
mean we all kind of grow up with different levels
of that, and you can look at levels are pretty extreme,
and scientists do that, right. This is a lot of
the work on trauma and what's often called post traumatic
(08:05):
stress disorder. You many of us have heard about that, right,
And it comes from the fact that when you experience
trauma sometimes that can have a longstanding effect. But even
though you know post traumatic stress disorder PTSD gets a
lot of airtime, scientists have also looked at what you
might consider the opposite, which is called post traumatic growth. Right,
you go through an awful, terrible incident that you never
(08:26):
would have wished on yourself or anyone else, and some
good comes from that. You feel like you come out stronger,
you feel like you come out more resilient, you feel
like you come out more socially connected to the people
you really care about. And this is what's called post
traumatic growth. And I'm kind of curious. I mean, you know,
you and I are talking after you've been so helpfully
public about your breast cancer diagnosis. That could be a
(08:47):
trauma that leads to PTSD. You know, individuals who experience
cancer diagnosis and have to go through the process, you know,
terrible and awfully traumatic, but you kind of resonate with that,
this idea of the post traumatic growth a bit. I mean,
I think because I've had so much experience witnessing cancer
much more severely in both my late husband and my
(09:09):
sister who also passed away, and I became so knowledgeable
about cancer. I have a very really healthy and solid
understanding about my particular situation, and instead of being traumatized,
it actually increased my gratitude because I know, unlike them,
(09:30):
both my husband and sister were diagnosed with stage four cancer.
Mine was discovered early, when it's not only treatable but curable,
and so if anything, it wasn't traumatic. It was actually
weirdly life affirming. It was a death sentence for my
(09:52):
husband and my sister when they were diagnosed, and the
fact that it was twenty twenty two, the fact that
science has really progressed, I felt grateful. And so this
is what we hear a lot, both with kind of
diagnoses like yours, but even cases where individuals find out
they have a terminal situation or things that you couldn't
(10:13):
even imagine. You're There are accounts of parents who've lost
young children who obviously, you know, the most traumatic thing
any parent could imagine. You know, obviously they're not happy
about it, they wouldn't wish it again, but they'll say
on mass more good things came of it than I expected, right,
And that is a profound thing about human psychology and
human nature. The worst thing possible that we could ever
(10:34):
imagine happens, and we say there are parts of this
at least that I'm grateful for, or there's parts of
this that I wouldn't change. I've grown from this. This
is one of the biggest mistakes that we make about happiness.
We think it's only our circumstances. If things go well,
I'll be great, and God forbid things go badly. But
in practice, when these things actually happen to people were
much more resilient, and we often take much more meaning
(10:57):
and purpose from those events than we often expect. I
think my resilience you mentioned going public, just as I
try to spread awareness and educate people about calling cancer
prevention and encourage them to get colonoscopies, and got one
on television myself, I knew that by being a public
(11:18):
figure and talking about it, I have the potential to
actually save lives. And so for me translating it into
I don't mean to sound cheesy, but some form of service,
it actually is very grounding and satisfying and fulfilling for me.
And that's what I think. Sometimes we get wrong about happiness.
(11:42):
I think resilious it's finding strength with them. So sometimes
we are in a situation that we're unprepared for and
you find yourself digging deeper into something that you didn't
even know you possessed more after the break. I'm an
(12:05):
artist in New York City, so when I'm creating or discovering,
that's where I find my happiness usually most of the time.
So happiness, you can try and find it, you can
try to inspire it. I also think you got to
give energy to get energy, So do that you can
find a lot of happiness. We're back with Lorie Santos.
(12:27):
All this focus on quote unquote self care, which I
think to a certain extent, we need to focus and
take care of ourselves. And the oxygen mask and all
that jazz. On the other hand, it seems like we
have become so self focused that we're missing the point
about serving others, being kind to others. Those things are
(12:49):
proven to increase your happiness, right, Lorie. Yeah, I mean
one of the biggest cross cultural universals in happiness science
right now is that doing nice things for other people
makes you happier. If you look at people who are
controlled for the level of income they have, people who
donate more of their money to charity are happier. People
who just tend to just be more self focused are
(13:10):
less happy than the people who are out there doing
stuff for other people. And even if you force people
to do nice stuff for others, they wind up feeling happier.
And do you think this whole emphasis on self care
and wellness has had the adverse effect in some ways?
Have you looked at that? Yeah? Definitely. It's a relatively
new phenomenon, isn't it. I mean I feel like sort
(13:31):
of the self care wellness industry has really blossomed and
just the last five years. Yeah, I think it's problematic
in two ways. Again, One is this focus on the self, right,
you know, me, me me, when again, all the data
suggest that doing for others would be better. I think
another problem is it like reflects this notion that we
have that like our circumstances matter for happiness. Right, if
(13:52):
I could just like have it be you know, bubble
bats and rainbows and first class flights, then my life
would be great. And it's really missing out on the
things that can actually matter for our happiness. Were in
some ways even just a simple act of spending our money,
We're doing it wrong. Spending on things that we think
are going to make us feel good, I think aren't
going to bring us joy, and they might not bring
us the joy we think. We're in New York City,
(14:12):
the epicenter of type A strivers, right, and I think
if there's one thing that has hurt my happiness quotient,
if you will, is always striving, because once you get something,
it's like, Okay, what am I going to do next?
Where am I going to go? How am I going
(14:32):
to achieve something? More? Talk about how these type A
kind of super driven people, because I'm transitioning to you
your Yale class where you at them in droves, how
that impacts your happiness. I mean, it's sometimes funny to
people when they hear I teach this class unhappiness to
Yale students, because the lay person's assumption is like Yale
(14:56):
students haven't made they're nineteen, you know, many of them
are wealthy or at least well connect. Did yet you
know one fourth of them decided to take a class
on happiness. What year did you start teaching it? First?
In twenty eighteen, and it was It became the largest
class ever in Yale's history, and one quarter of the
students enrolled, right, And I ken that tells you that
these you know type A, you know, very driven Yale
(15:17):
students are voting with their feet. They've especially at Yale,
they've gotten everything they've wanted. You know, probably since these
kids were twelve years old, they dreamed of getting into
an Ivy League school, and now they're there and it's
still not doing what they expect, which only proves like
all these things that we talked about are not necessarily
the key. What's missing for them? Yeah, I mean it's
(15:38):
often the things that they are having an opportunity cost
on because they're so driven at their academics. It's simple
things like sleep and taking care of their physical health.
It's often social connection. Right. These are students who are
working on homework into the night. They're not getting the
same social connection that you expect, And honestly, it's just
having this kind of mistaken idea that more and more
and more is going to be good. Right. It's not
(16:00):
stopic to kind of you smell the roses and reflect
on the accomplishments you've gotten, because they're thinking about what
grades are going to make, and how are they going
to get into a good law school, and how are
they going to get that job at Goldman Sachs or
you know, all those things that I would imagine detract
from just being present and enjoying the moment exactly. There's
work on what's known as journey mindset, right, which is
(16:23):
this idea that you're not kind of going for the
next thing, you're not looking at what you're arriving towards.
The goal is not then it's not law school or
Goldman Sacks, we're even getting into Yale. It's kind of
what you're going to learn and get along the way.
It's really being present across that, and I think that
we've raised, honestly, not just my Yale students, but a
generation of young people that have dropped the journey mindset right.
They are careerists from as early as we can detect,
(16:44):
and that means that they're just going to jump to
the next accolade. How can we tamp down this tremendous
pressure that's really detracting from being a happy, whole person.
You imagine if Yale and Harvard and Stafford, all big
schools got together, like a nuclear d escalation, and we
all said, you know what, here the minimum standards you
(17:06):
need to be a good Yale student. Once you meet
this minimum standard, you go into a lottery and you'll
might get in or you might not. I think this
would be first of all, I think you'd be accurate,
But I think it would also allow students to see that, like,
you know, you don't have to keep hustling, and I
think the hustle starts earlier and earlier. I think you
know what you said is correct. I think parents really
have a role to kind of scale this back. And
(17:27):
I think you know, it can sometimes be really tough
for parents because they obviously want what's best for their kids.
You know, if there's a kind of accolade out there
that your child doesn't have, it so easy to kind
of want them to strive for it. I think working
with your kids to kind of back them up, talk
to them about what they're learning along the journey, make
it clear that you're going to love them no matter what,
and don't push them just because you want that Yale
(17:47):
sticker on the back of your car. You can buy
one even if your kid doesn't go to Yale. Dirty. So,
I'm curious what you heard from your students. You talked
to so many of these kids. I mean, you had
a whole case study every semester. What did they talk
about and why were they taking your class? There's lots
of evidence that this generation, and this is true at
(18:08):
Yell too, is just facing the biggest mental health crisis
that we've seen in the history of the human species. Like,
right now, there's race of depression nationally at colleges are
at levels like forty percent of students report being too
depressed to function most days. Over sixty percent say they're
overwhelmingly anxious. More than one in ten has seriously considered suicide.
So if you're looking at a group of ten college students,
one of them might be contemplating taking their own life, right, Like,
(18:30):
that's really how bad the mental health situation has gone
on campus. But that doesn't even tell you what you're
just seeing in the low grade kind of stress and
disappointment these students are facing. You know, I'll run into
a student in the courtyard and be like, hey, how's
it going, And they'd be like, oh, if I could
only get to mid terms or if I could only
fast forward to the summer to get out of this.
And I would have kind of two reactions to that
of like what college is so precious since so short,
(18:53):
Like how can you be fast forwarding this? But then
my other reactions like oh, yeah, we could only get
to mid terms, you know. So I was like realizing like, wow,
you know, these are misconceptions that I was having too.
You know, even though it was so acute in my
students that kind of overwhelm and stress they were facing,
I kind of saw it in myself too. You know.
I'm worried that we weren't being good mentors for them
to help them out of this. You know. I guess
(19:14):
maybe because I'm I'm a big fan of self flagellation,
but I do wonder if people of my generation parents
fucked up well it's hay, you know, yeah, yeah, blah blah,
And I wonder I wonder if my generation style of
(19:34):
parenting has contributed to this, because you know that everybody
gets a trophy. You have to fix things for your kids.
You can't have them suffer because it's too painful for you.
You can't have them be disappointed. And are the chickens
coming home to roost? I think so, although I think
(19:57):
there's also lots of evidence that, you know, society, a
lot of these structures changed, right. You know, the last
twenty years were also the time when the news was
talking a lot about stranger danger. You know, you wouldn't
be seen as a good parent unless you were trying
to protect your children. Again, I think institutions like mine,
you know, like focused on meritocracy in a way that's great.
You know, anyone can get into Yale now, anyone can
(20:18):
get into you. Oh why aren't you giving your child
the resources they need to do that? And I think
that that focus on higher education in these next steps
made it so that failure seemed scary. But I think
that that did mean that the kids today are growing
up with different kinds of norms when it comes to failures,
different kinds of norms when it comes to parental involvement.
Different kinds of norms when it comes to what they're
(20:39):
expected to know, just at different ages. We have college
students who have never used an alarm clock. Their parents
are their alarm clock. They call, you know, to make
sure their child gets up in the morning, you know,
at nineteen twenty one years old. Lily from New York.
I'm a teacher. I think the pandemic really affected kids negatively,
(21:01):
and they're having a really hard time figuring out how
to socialize in the way that we did when we
were kids, when life was quote unquote normal. So I
think the socializing, the lack of social skills is we're
finding kids like really inverting and struggling to reach out
to people. We'll be right back. There's things within your
(21:28):
control and there's things outside, and focus on those things
that are within your control and you'll do better and
we're back. You have just started an online course that's
free to teenagers. It's called the Science of Well Being.
What prompted you to do that, Laurie, Well, it had
done this class, you know, live on Yale's campus, and
(21:48):
we got tons and tons of press for it. But
a lot of the emails I was getting from parents
was saying, you know, could you make this available? Was
there any way I could see the syllabus. I want
my daughter who's in middle school, I want my son
who's any school to get this content. And it made
me realize that, you know, a lot of the skills
I was teaching Yale students. We want kids who are
younger than that to learn these things. So is it
(22:10):
different teaching teens than it is teaching college students. Yeah,
yes and no. Yes in the sense that you know,
teens face different kinds of contexts where these kinds of
principles and these misconceptions come up. Right, They're not worried
about salary and you know, getting married. They're worried about,
you know, getting good grades and thinking about colleges and
navigating how they're portrayed on social media rights. In some ways,
(22:32):
there are lots of similar stressors, but they kind of
play out in different ways. And so the new class
really uses the same kind of science concepts. Those things
are the same, but we're kind of talking about them
in a context that teens can really relate to them.
You know, So if we're talking about your circumstances don't matter.
We're not using examples of like getting promotions at work.
We're using examples of like, you know, the grade that
you got on your homework lass Thursday. We're sort of
(22:53):
talking about the kinds of things that are on teens minds.
Are there some basic skills that you're really trying to
give both the kids in college and also teenagers. One
of the great things that I've seen with the Yale
students in so far, with the teens who have taken
the classes, they want an evidence based approach. They don't
want to hear a bunch of platitudes about what they
should do. They like, what does the science say, because
(23:15):
that's great. But then we just walk through just really
simple behavior thought pattern changes that you can engage with
when a stressor comes up. You know, so if you're
feeling stressed, what are good behaviors? You know, maybe spending
more time on TikTok not as good the evidence suggests,
but if you can move your body a little bit more,
if you can contact a friend, if you take a sleep,
maybe take a walk, or even you know, think about
(23:35):
what you could do for someone else, you know, getting
back to this idea of being other oriented. These behaviors
that you could use in the moment to fix this.
We also spend a lot of time on changing your
thought patterns. I think we think we are our thoughts,
like you know, they just pop up and that's reality.
But there's so much evidence to say, no, that's just
the voice in our head, and there are simple techniques
we can use to change our thought patterns. You know.
(23:56):
A big one for teenagers is trying to sort of
shut off that self critic in your head. You know that, Yeah,
why started out for teenagers? I mean I do negative
self talk all the time, and some of my friends
here at Katie Kirk Media say, you know you are
what you say, and that actually is scientifically proven right totally.
I mean, there's so much evidence that what you're saying
(24:16):
to yourself is affecting how you perform. For example, if
you're really self critical, it's very easy to procrastinate because
you're screaming yourself. You can have set up this fear
in your own mind. There's also lots of evidence at
what you say it to yourself can affect your physiology.
The best advice is to talk to yourself like you
would a friend. If your best friend was really screwing up,
you wouldn't be like, oh, it's fine. You know, it's great,
(24:37):
You're wonderful, everybody loves you. You'd be like, you know,
we need to deal with this, like what's going on?
Like I love you and I really care about you.
And you wouldn't be like you suck, like why are
you wouldn't scream at your best friend and be great
him or her, but you would, you know, call a
spade a spade and say, hey, we got we gotta
deal with this. This isn't going well, And you would
be curious. You'd be like, what's going on? Like why
(24:57):
are you doing this? Like how can we fix this?
You'd be you'd be gentle, you'd be proactive, you'd be
problem solving oriented. But you wouldn't scream. You wouldn't be mean.
And that's the kind of voice we're trying to kind
of cultivate. But the evidence suggests that these practices really work.
So what can we do with social media? I means
the genie out of the bottle. How are you talking
(25:19):
to teens and to ladies like me about kind of
monitoring it and moderating it? Yeah, well, in some sense,
the genie is out of the bottle, right, We're not
ever going to go back to, you know, the way
we were, you know, when you and I were in college.
We're always going to have probably these devices in our
pockets that have the temptation of comparison, that have these
(25:41):
technologies available. I think what we can do, though, is
that we can be a little bit more mindful about
how these things are making us feel. And I think
that that's important, right, because we don't want to deny
the benefits of these things. One of the strategies I
teach my students comes from the journalist Catherine Price, who
is this lovely book called How to Break Up with
Your Phone, which she argues, you don't have to break
up your phone, but like couples, counseling probably required, you know,
(26:03):
for the relationship. And she has this acronym that she
uses called WWW to help you be more mindful. It
stands for what for, why now? And what else? And
so she argues, whenever you find your phone in your hand,
you should think, oh, www, like what for? Was was
there a purpose? Like I was checking my email or
I was going to text a friend? You know, maybe
it's just my addictive go to right? Why now? Right?
(26:24):
What was the trigger. You know, maybe again you had
something to do, but maybe it was I was feeling anxious,
or I was feeling bored, or you know, for my students,
often it's I was feeling a little bit scared about
engaging in real life social connection talking to someone in
the dining hall, so I just, you know, picked up
my phone. But the biggest one I think is what else, right?
What's the opportunity cost? What else could you be doing?
Could you be just like taking a deep breath, talking
(26:46):
to a friend, sleeping right? What are you not doing
because you're on your phone? And what are you missing?
You know? Sometimes if I land in a new city,
I am going to the hotel, and I realized I
didn't even look around at this new place and take
in being in a totally different environment because I've had
(27:07):
my face and my phone, and I think this is
so dumb. Why am I doing this? It is such
a default, though, Lorie, you know now, yeah, I think
it's a default. And often the thing we're missing is
other people. That's right, because it's distracting. It's very presence
is distracting. It also prevents you to engage in deep
thinking because it's interrupting you all the time, right, and
(27:30):
it makes sense, right because our brains aren't stupid, like
they know on the other end of this device, you know, imagine,
you know, we're having this lovely conversation here and it's
very fun. But imagine if to the conversation I brought
this big wheelbarrow, and in the wheelbarrow I had like
my photo album since like nineteen ninety two and print
outs of everything every politician or you know, Kardashian has said.
(27:50):
And the last week there was like cat video is imporn,
just like this huge pile of stuff in the wheelbar
and sort of food that you could learn to make. Like,
our brain isn't stupid. It knows that all that stuff
is right next to you. But it's having a huge
effect on our attention and our performance and our social connection.
Let's talk about global happiness because I mean, look what
(28:11):
you started, laurining. Now there then these worldwide surveys about happiness,
and what are we learning about those? I think so
many interesting things. I mean, first, I think we're learning
that just having a metric is powerful. Right. This is
the World Happiness survey that goes around globally and tries
to measure happiness using the sort of standard survey tools
(28:32):
that we have, and then they rank countries. What we've
learned from the metrics so far, though, is that there
are differences. There are countries that since this survey has
been out there have standardly been around the top, places
like Denmark, Norway, you know, these Scandinavian countries. And there
are otherwise very wealthy countries like the US that have
been surprisingly low on the list, like sixteenth. Yeah, not
(28:52):
at the bottom, but like not as high as we
would expect given that, you know, the pursuit of happiness
is like literally in our Declaration of Independence. And I
think that can be powerful because we can start to
ask questions about like, Okay, what are those nations that
are doing well doing well? And what are we missing
out on? And have you learned anything? I mean, is
it sort of quality of life? Is it providing you know,
(29:14):
parental leave and accessible childcare, things that reduce stressors for people?
It's all of those things. I mean, I think it's
it's actually having access to you know, those sorts of
things that we know mean for a good life. And
so I think what these countries do well is that
they build things into the structure of how they live
their lives that make it easier to get things like
(29:36):
social connection, presence, exercise, and so on, and what you
have is a lot more equality. Surprisingly, COVID did not
decrease the happiness metric in many of these countries, which
says a lot about our resilience. And in fact, I
think the pandemic in some ways was a reset for us.
(29:56):
I think so. I think there was a little bit
of this idea of post at at growth that we
talked about before right where you know. It caused us
to socially connect more. It caused us to recognize our
own resilience. It's sort of brought back our gratitude for
simple things. I think it also really taught us to
reevaluate what we were doing with our lives. I think
many people during the pandemic thought a little bit more
(30:17):
critically about the hustle culture that they might have been
engaged in, about what it was for. We saw that
there was a path when we could work at home
and spend more time with our families, and I think
that's what's leading to this so called great resignation, things
like quiet quitting. Right now, I think people are reevaluating
their relationship with work and are maybe considering some kind
of patterns that might be healthier. I think many people
(30:39):
are starting to realize that they're frantically climbing up this
ladder that they might not even want to be on
in the first place, and they're burning out before they
even graduate from college. And it's even affecting college professors
like you, because you took a sabbatical because you were
afraid you were going to totally burn yourself out. So
(31:00):
did taking a step back. I know you're still working,
but getting a change of scenery, etc. Didn't make you happier?
Oh definitely. I mean, and I'm a nerd, right, so
I take, you know, like literally data on this. I've
gone up about a point on a ten point happiness scale. Yeah,
I mean, I was really I really started to notice
in the midst of this pandemic all the classic signs
(31:21):
of early burnout. Right. I was emotionally exhausted, not just
physically exhausted. It was just like kind of tired, like
if one more email came like I was gonna, you know,
just lose it. It It was just like too much. I
was feeling really cynical, right, my fuse was really short
with the people around me, especially my students. That that
was the thing that affected me most. That's not normal
for me, and that was really big. But the biggest
(31:42):
thing I think I experienced during COVID on college campuses
was the third kind of symptom of burnout, which is
a sense of personal ineffectiveness, like even if you did
your job the best that you possibly could, it wouldn't
be good enough. And I was like, wait, you know,
I've read the papers. I know where this leads. I
need to make some changes. Good news is I think,
you know, for me, at least, the changes have been great.
(32:03):
Actually made the very difficult decision to step down as
a head of college on campus in part because I
was realizing that, you know, to do that job as
well as I wanted to, I just didn't have the
bandwidth anymore. Have you regained your happiness equilibrium as a
result of stepping back? And you know, will it change
when you re enter the Yale campus? Will it change me? Yeah?
(32:27):
I think I'll make, you know, some big changes. You know,
stepping down from this role has been a big one.
You know, I'm already sort of thinking about how I
can have a better balance with some of the stuff
I'm doing. There Again, you have to remember, happiness isn't
this destination. This is going to keep and taking a constant.
It's not a constant. Let's close this out with some
Laurie Santo's happiness tidbits. One is, as you mentioned, it
(32:49):
takes work. So what does that mean, Like if you
were saying, Katie, if you want to be happy and happier,
this is what you should do. What kind of work
do I have to do? I think the first piece
of work is just recognizing that your intuitions are off right,
that you just have these normal things that you think, Oh,
i've had a bad day, I'll you know, I'll get
a manicure. Oh you know, this is what I'll do,
or I'll keep pushing at work. You know, for X, Y,
(33:11):
and Z, we have these intuitions about the things that
we should be doing, that we're supposed to be doing.
I think you have to realize that those intuitions are wrong. Right,
you have to say the science says do something else
in really simple domains, right. You know, if you have
a long day at work, you might have the intuition
of like, oh, I just want to PLoP down and
just like glass of wine, which is a depressant, by
the way, exactly when you know so much. Science suggests
(33:33):
that if you instead called a friend, went for a walk,
you know, just try to engage in something that was
a little bit more challenging of a form of leisure
than plopping down to watch that. Take a pickle ball
lesson you know, just like on your phone, do a
lingo something right like that would be better. Text a
friend that you're a little bit worried about, right, Become
a little bit more other oriented. When we're in these
moments where we're feeling stressed, we're feeling overwhelmed, we're feeling
(33:56):
a little sad. They are just simple behaviors we can
engage in that are going to work better than what
our natural intuition is. Laurie Santos, this has been so fun.
Thank you for spending so much time with me. I
feel like I just went to therapist and I owe
you whatever a lot. Thank you, Laurie, Thanks so much.
(34:16):
Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for
me or want to share your thoughts about how you
navigate this crazy world, reach out. You can leave a
short message at six o nine five one two five
five oh five, or you can send me a DM
on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next
Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kurik Media.
(34:39):
The executive producers are Met Katie Kurik and Courtney Litz.
Our supervising producer is Marcy Thompson. Our producers are Adriana
Fasio and Catherine Law. Our audio engineer is Matt Russell,
who also composed our theme music. For more information about
today's episode, or to sign up for my newsletter wake
Up Call, go to the description in the podcast app,
(35:02):
or visit us at katiecurreic dot com. You can also
find me on Instagram and all my social media channels.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Are you
(35:22):
Battling Cancer? I'm passionate about raising awareness about early detection,
and it's also critical to understand all treatment options, especially
their impact on survival and quality of life. View Ray
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