With much of the global population living with anxiety, fear and loss due to the coronavirus pandemic, many are looking for answers on how to find some happiness during these difficult and uncertain times. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Science Director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, discusses what happiness really means and shares science-based practices for managing stress and anxiety.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hi. This is Milan Vervier and this is Kim Azarelli.
We are co authors of the book Fast Forward, How
Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose. And you're listening to
Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose, brought to you
by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio.
Welcome to this special edition. During these difficult times, we're
(00:38):
talking to experts who can help us gain perspective on
the impact of coronavirus, as well as share tips and
resources and so much needed inspiration. Today I'm joined by
Emiliana Simon Thomas. Miliana is the science director of the
Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.
She's the co instructor of the Science of Happiness course
(00:58):
and helps run its exp Ending Gratitude Project. Ameliana, thanks
so much for joining us. It's a pleasure. Thanks for
inviting me to be on your show. Your topic of
expertise is extremely important right now. Happiness. UM really going
through a very difficult period in our history. UM, so
very grateful for you joining the show. Ameliana. How do
(01:19):
you define happiness and does it differ from person to
person depending on I suppose their personality. Yeah, I'm so
glad you asked that question, because that's one of the
first mistakes that many people make when they think about happiness. UM.
I define happiness as an overarching characteristic of one's life,
and it is described as feeling good most of the time,
(01:44):
being able to handle life setbacks, and a graceful and
forward UM learning manner, and being well connected, feeling like
you trust other people. UM. The mistake that people make
is thinking that happiness means pleasure, or that happy its
means cheerfulness or enthusiasm or gratifying a desire, when in
(02:06):
fact those are positive emotional states. Positive emotional states matter,
but they don't equal happiness. And if we strive for
sea happiness by trying to string together a perpetual sequence
of positive emotions, we actually feel less happy. I'm so
glad you said that, because that is also what we
sort of believe, is that happiness is not the sort
(02:28):
of happy face emoji, but this sort of longer state
of UM well being. And so I think you're right.
I think everyone's chasing that happy face all the time,
and it's not a very realistic, uh pursuit and actually
leads on yeah yeah, and the quickly addressed the second
part of your question. Absolutely, happiness feels different. Individuals who
(02:49):
have a more shy or um nervous disposition or personality
might experience happiness in a way that feels really different
and been a very extroverted and in social social individual.
That doesn't mean that the benefits of being happy are
any different. It just means that the expression and the
(03:11):
behaviors and the particular activities that might be the best
fit for fostering happiness might differ between individuals. So I'm
going to ask the very obvious question, Um, how does
a person stay quote unquote happy during very challenging times?
What are you saying to people or what are you
hearing that is helping people get through this difficult moment? Yeah,
(03:34):
I mean, I think one of the most valuable things
in this in this particular time of the COVID nineteen pandemic,
is to first develop some skills of managing stress and anxiety.
Stress and anxiety are very, very natural and real, and
the reason is because this time is particularly uncertain. The
(03:54):
circumstances are ambiguous, We don't know the answers. Humans don't
like ambiguity. The human nervous system is designed to try
to find patterns and to predict what's coming and to
be good at it, and just having a situation whether
there is no possible answer that we can rely on,
is inherently stressful, and because of that, the first thing
(04:17):
we need to do is develop some skills for just
finding some ease and balanced day in and day out,
and for many that can come from practices that fall
into the category of mindfulness. This maybe just a deep
breath where you inhale deeply and exhale slowly, and put
your hand on your heart and try to not think
(04:39):
about the future or the past, or you're to do list,
or the harm that you know is happening in the world.
That instead just maybe the warm sun on your shoulders,
maybe the delicious beverage that you enjoyed with your breakfast,
just the things that bring you comfort and ease for
even a moment, it can really benefit that pervasive stress
(05:03):
and anxiety that we're handling or grappling with these days.
After you've gotten that under your belt, really prioritizing moments
of connection and connection where you feel like you're actually
a source of support is a valuable way to um
to manage time in a way that will be beneficial,
(05:25):
that will fuel your sense of meaning and purpose. I
think many of us are struggling, particularly those of us
who are not on the front line, who are not
considered essential, because we're not out there actually actively finding
the vaccine or treating people who are suffering UM. There's
a sense of guilt or shame around our inability to
(05:47):
be of service, and we need to recognize that we
are of service just by staying home. We are of
service by reaching out to others who are alone, who
are isolated. We are service by connecting with our friends
in the ways that we still can despite the expectations
for staying physically distant from one another. We are of
(06:10):
service by just being present and aware and caring and
caring about the issue and keeping ourselves praise of how
we can be helpful outside of just trying to fix
the problem or expecting ourselves to fix the problem. So
important what you're saying, I mean, how we can each
be of service and and it seems like in this
(06:30):
time of being at home with our loved ones, probably
being of service also means to really be thoughtful about
your relationships and and be kind to the people in
close proximity to you absolutely. I mean, if we have
issues that we've been able to kind of put under
the pillow because we are so busy in our regular
lives that are now becoming more evident to us as
(06:53):
we're spending time closer and longer with our families, it's
a perfect time to set aside UH and the opportunities
for real, heartfelt conversations and emotional sharing and spending time together.
I think for parents who are home with school aged children, UM,
this is a remarkable uh and yet strange opportunity to
(07:18):
get to know each other in a different way than
perhaps we were able to when our lives were busier
and involved more time doing separate things out of the house.
So relationship skills like expressing gratitude can be a really
neat way to strengthen our bonds and UH convey our
sense of commitment and interdependence with one another. Expressing gratitude
(07:43):
can seem really easy and sort of flippant, but research
shows that when we get good at it, and when
we're specific about it, it can be a really powerful
asset to our health and well being. And what I
mean by specific is instead of just saying hey, thanks,
thanks for in the dishes, or thanks for helping me
carry the groceries inside the house. Um, we say something like, um, hey,
(08:08):
thanks for doing the dishes. I mean, you could have
done a bunch of other things instead, you could have
watched TV or um taking a shower, but you helped me,
and you're doing that allowed me to do, um, what
I really wanted to do instead, which is have a
phone call with my mother who I hadn't been able
to talk to earlier today. So what I did was
(08:28):
express what the person did, acknowledge their effort, and explain
how it helped me. And it took us a few
seconds longer. But those aspects of gratitude are really important
to share, and when we share them, the gratitude has
a much greater impact on a sort of sense of
closeness and and shared bond. That's super powerful. Um, Like
(08:50):
you said, being specific, that's a really great piece of advice.
On the other side of the spectrum, where there are
a lot of people who are home alone, and you know,
dealing with socializolation is very difficult for a lot of people.
What's your advice for people who are dealing with loneliness
or even depression? Right now. Yeah, Loneliness and depression are
a huge problem in this pandemic time. I can only
(09:15):
encourage those of you who are by yourselves to use
the tools that are available to you through technology to
connect with people. UM. There are many many organizations who
are providing live events, or people all join a called
together on Zoom and talk about what is going on
(09:36):
in their lives, get to know each other. I've participated
in several of them, both as a expert perspective and
also just as a member of the community. UM. There
are lots of little ways to engage with people online
through games and having some levity during these difficult times
is of great value. Walking outside if you're able to,
(09:59):
if you got the right protective equipment and your a
location where that's acceptable, is a really powerful way to
Even if you have to see someone at this six
foot distance, it's still meaningful to see another human being
and make eye contact, not or smile. Those little signals
are really important. Having phone calls with people who you
(10:21):
know and care about who also care about you is
a really valuable way to remind yourself that you're still connected,
remind yourself that you're still a human, that belongs to
a particular community. These reminders are essential. Humans really suffer
when put in a position where they're deprived of social
(10:41):
contact and loneliness becomes the feeling we'll be back after
this break. So what's the difference between moment terry happiness
and this deep, lasting happiness that you're talking about, and
(11:03):
what is the key to that? Yeah, I mean a
momentary positive emotion, and I'm being really deliberate about using
that word because I think it's a mistake to call
that happiness. You might feel happy in a moment, and
that is fine, but it's not very specific. We're actually
equipped to experience this vast array of very particular emotions
(11:25):
that we've been into the category of happy, that that
feel good, and they can again be feeling of pride,
a feeling of inspiration, the feeling of elevation, the feeling
of amusement, a feeling of sheer pleasure, a feeling of anticipation,
uh so many, a feeling of closeness and affection. All
(11:47):
of these specific feelings are evolutions way of orienting us
towards opportunities, towards meaningful opportunities, and they galvanize us too
to furnish the response that makes that opportunity most available
and most accessible to us, And so that response is
(12:08):
pretty quick, like, oh, I have a an anticipatory sort
of enjoyment sensation because of the smell of chocolate chip
cookies baking. What that does is quickly make me want
to walk towards the direction where that fragrance gets stronger.
And then that's the end of that feeling. Right, that
feelings over it served its purpose. If I was like, Okay,
(12:31):
that feeling is so nice that I'm going to try
to keep feeling it all day long, I would actually
not be able to do that. Right. If I smell
chocolate chip cookie for seventy two hours, I would soon
not be able to smell it anymore, and or even
find it quite aversive, right as you might. You know,
think of people who work in occupations where they experience
(12:55):
something that might be pleasurable once in a while or
even regularly, but not all day long as sort of
ordinary and normal. Are nervous systems habituate and adapt to
stimulate that that are regular and readily available without any change.
So because of that, our punts of emotions aren't meant
(13:15):
to last and go on and be repeated over and
over all day. Instead, they're meant to occur in births
and to be dynamic and to come up and then recover,
as it's the case with our negative emotions, and our
negative emotions are as important as our positive emotions to
our survival and our overall happiness in life. Oftentimes, the
(13:40):
most meaningful experiences that we have involved negative emotions, those
moments in life where we are moved to change something
about who we are, or moved to take an action
that might be particularly challenging or difficult. Those emotions and
those actions are really important to our sense of meaning
in life, to our sense of purpose, and those are
(14:03):
both instrumental to what we're calling happiness, what I'd like
to refer to its happiness in life. We have to
be able to experience positive emotions. That we're the kind
of person who can never feel joy when good things
are happening, we're probably not going to end up in
the category of a person who has high happiness in life.
Same for someone who isn't able to recover from life
(14:24):
difficult moments, who isn't skilled in the domain of resilience,
they're also unlikely to fall into the category it's very
happy in life. So there are these elements, are these
components that really help us arrive at happiness. But it's
not exclusively or even predictably just trying to feel positive
(14:47):
emotions all the time. That actually doesn't work. In fact,
those researches shows that when people try that, when that's
their approach to striving for happiness, they're less happy. That
expectation is impossible to fulfill. Yeah, like curse of high
expectations is real. Um. Yeah, when we when we were
doing the research for our book, we did see and
(15:08):
and our experience is this that you know, having that
sort of larger purpose um, and trying to find purpose
across your life and and getting outside yourself kind of
creates that halo of happiness um, that feeling that you're
talking about, which unfortunately we're confusing with the word happiness.
So I I really appreciate everything that you've said. And
you actually now have a course um that helps people
(15:29):
think about how to practice happiness. Yeah. So actually since
two thousand and fourteen, we've been running a Science of
Happiness course. It's some d X platform e d x
dot org. You can just search for Science of Happiness.
It's modeled after an undergraduate introductory level course, so there's
eight modules of it. Each module has videos and readings
(15:50):
and what we call happiness practices, and these are exercises
that we've drawn from empirical studies that have shown that
they have impact on happy net and people try them,
and there's also exams and problem sets and the hope
is and actually our own internal data has shown that
when people complete the course, when people learn these ideas,
(16:14):
invest in the practices and try them and exercise them,
they actually grow. Their happiness goes up, their loneliness goes down,
their stress goes down, their sense of meaning in life
goes up, their sense of common humanity increases. This is
all learnable. It's just a matter of putting in the
time and and deciding that this is something that matters.
(16:35):
Can you give us one example? I know it's a
it's a whole course, but is there one example that
we can take away from this conversation. Yeah, so the
one that I shared earlier, the specific gratitude is a
great example. Another example which is always fun and interesting
to offer from from Berkeley being someone from Berkeley, California,
because it's a common bumper sticker. It's called random acts
(16:56):
of kindness. What random acts of kindness means is just
the fighting on a given day or maybe for a
sequence of three to five days, just perform three to
five kind acts for somebody else. It can be holding
the door open, It can be UM paying for their coffee.
(17:17):
It can be calling them out of the blue and
sharing UH an uplifting story, any number of things. Turns
out that when people engage in this practice random acts
of kindness and sort of shifts the tenor of your
orientation towards other people, we think and think about and
(17:37):
see other people in a more benevolent and friendly and
trusting light. And it reduces stress and um strengthens bonds
and increases our own happiness. So that's another example of
activity that could be particularly beneficial in these times when
we are grappling with the COVID nineteen pandemic. The more
(17:59):
we preserve our sense of care and concern towards others,
towards the world around us, and the more we act
on that sense of care and concern, the better off
we're going to be. What makes you optimistic or hopeful
in this moment? For me, this moment is unprecedented in
its in the degree of of global uh commonality that
(18:26):
we're all witnessing. We have more in common with people
around the world today than we've ever had in my
life course, at least, we're all experiencing this remarkable event
that will shift humanity in a way that that I
can't really predict. But I think what we've learned through
(18:49):
a hard lesson is that the less we cooperate, the
less we coordinate our effort, the less we share resources
and information, the more suffering and pain we are going
to have to endure. And so I am optimistic that
in the wake of this experience, our approach to many
(19:14):
many different endeavors, from political to science to education, will
be much more collective, will be able to understand and
prioritize a more common approach to managing the challenges that
we're facing, and maybe that will inspire to come together
(19:35):
around other huge challenges that are on the on the
road map for us, like climate change. I've douts what
brings me optimism? Well, I have to thank you so
much for this interview. I mean, you gave us such
great advice from from the random acts of kindness and
and sort of getting outside of yourself to create that
halo of happiness to actually learning about ourselves through these
(19:58):
difficult times. So we really appreciate your taking the time
to be on the show and we hope to have
you back. Thank you so much for including me, and
thank you for doing the show, and onward onwards. Thank you.
You're listening to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose
(20:19):
brought to you by the Seneca Women podcast Network and
I Heart Radio with support from founding partner p And
Listen to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose on
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get your podcasts, and please support this podcast by telling
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(20:41):
Seneca Women, follow us on social media, visit our website
Seneca Women dot com, and check out the Seneca Women
app free in the app Store. Have a great day
and
Hi. This is Milan Vervier and this is Kim Azarelli.
We are co authors of the book Fast Forward, How
Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose. And you're listening to
Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose, brought to you
by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio.
Welcome to this special edition. During these difficult times, we're
(00:38):
talking to experts who can help us gain perspective on
the impact of coronavirus, as well as share tips and
resources and so much needed inspiration. Today I'm joined by
Emiliana Simon Thomas. Miliana is the science director of the
Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.
She's the co instructor of the Science of Happiness course
(00:58):
and helps run its exp Ending Gratitude Project. Ameliana, thanks
so much for joining us. It's a pleasure. Thanks for
inviting me to be on your show. Your topic of
expertise is extremely important right now. Happiness. UM really going
through a very difficult period in our history. UM, so
very grateful for you joining the show. Ameliana. How do
(01:19):
you define happiness and does it differ from person to
person depending on I suppose their personality. Yeah, I'm so
glad you asked that question, because that's one of the
first mistakes that many people make when they think about happiness. UM.
I define happiness as an overarching characteristic of one's life,
and it is described as feeling good most of the time,
(01:44):
being able to handle life setbacks, and a graceful and
forward UM learning manner, and being well connected, feeling like
you trust other people. UM. The mistake that people make
is thinking that happiness means pleasure, or that happy its
means cheerfulness or enthusiasm or gratifying a desire, when in
(02:06):
fact those are positive emotional states. Positive emotional states matter,
but they don't equal happiness. And if we strive for
sea happiness by trying to string together a perpetual sequence
of positive emotions, we actually feel less happy. I'm so
glad you said that, because that is also what we
sort of believe, is that happiness is not the sort
(02:28):
of happy face emoji, but this sort of longer state
of UM well being. And so I think you're right.
I think everyone's chasing that happy face all the time,
and it's not a very realistic, uh pursuit and actually
leads on yeah yeah, and the quickly addressed the second
part of your question. Absolutely, happiness feels different. Individuals who
(02:49):
have a more shy or um nervous disposition or personality
might experience happiness in a way that feels really different
and been a very extroverted and in social social individual.
That doesn't mean that the benefits of being happy are
any different. It just means that the expression and the
(03:11):
behaviors and the particular activities that might be the best
fit for fostering happiness might differ between individuals. So I'm
going to ask the very obvious question, Um, how does
a person stay quote unquote happy during very challenging times?
What are you saying to people or what are you
hearing that is helping people get through this difficult moment? Yeah,
(03:34):
I mean, I think one of the most valuable things
in this in this particular time of the COVID nineteen pandemic,
is to first develop some skills of managing stress and anxiety.
Stress and anxiety are very, very natural and real, and
the reason is because this time is particularly uncertain. The
(03:54):
circumstances are ambiguous, We don't know the answers. Humans don't
like ambiguity. The human nervous system is designed to try
to find patterns and to predict what's coming and to
be good at it, and just having a situation whether
there is no possible answer that we can rely on,
is inherently stressful, and because of that, the first thing
(04:17):
we need to do is develop some skills for just
finding some ease and balanced day in and day out,
and for many that can come from practices that fall
into the category of mindfulness. This maybe just a deep
breath where you inhale deeply and exhale slowly, and put
your hand on your heart and try to not think
(04:39):
about the future or the past, or you're to do list,
or the harm that you know is happening in the world.
That instead just maybe the warm sun on your shoulders,
maybe the delicious beverage that you enjoyed with your breakfast,
just the things that bring you comfort and ease for
even a moment, it can really benefit that pervasive stress
(05:03):
and anxiety that we're handling or grappling with these days.
After you've gotten that under your belt, really prioritizing moments
of connection and connection where you feel like you're actually
a source of support is a valuable way to um
to manage time in a way that will be beneficial,
(05:25):
that will fuel your sense of meaning and purpose. I
think many of us are struggling, particularly those of us
who are not on the front line, who are not
considered essential, because we're not out there actually actively finding
the vaccine or treating people who are suffering UM. There's
a sense of guilt or shame around our inability to
(05:47):
be of service, and we need to recognize that we
are of service just by staying home. We are of
service by reaching out to others who are alone, who
are isolated. We are service by connecting with our friends
in the ways that we still can despite the expectations
for staying physically distant from one another. We are of
(06:10):
service by just being present and aware and caring and
caring about the issue and keeping ourselves praise of how
we can be helpful outside of just trying to fix
the problem or expecting ourselves to fix the problem. So
important what you're saying, I mean, how we can each
be of service and and it seems like in this
(06:30):
time of being at home with our loved ones, probably
being of service also means to really be thoughtful about
your relationships and and be kind to the people in
close proximity to you absolutely. I mean, if we have
issues that we've been able to kind of put under
the pillow because we are so busy in our regular
lives that are now becoming more evident to us as
(06:53):
we're spending time closer and longer with our families, it's
a perfect time to set aside UH and the opportunities
for real, heartfelt conversations and emotional sharing and spending time together.
I think for parents who are home with school aged children, UM,
this is a remarkable uh and yet strange opportunity to
(07:18):
get to know each other in a different way than
perhaps we were able to when our lives were busier
and involved more time doing separate things out of the house.
So relationship skills like expressing gratitude can be a really
neat way to strengthen our bonds and UH convey our
sense of commitment and interdependence with one another. Expressing gratitude
(07:43):
can seem really easy and sort of flippant, but research
shows that when we get good at it, and when
we're specific about it, it can be a really powerful
asset to our health and well being. And what I
mean by specific is instead of just saying hey, thanks,
thanks for in the dishes, or thanks for helping me
carry the groceries inside the house. Um, we say something like, um, hey,
(08:08):
thanks for doing the dishes. I mean, you could have
done a bunch of other things instead, you could have
watched TV or um taking a shower, but you helped me,
and you're doing that allowed me to do, um, what
I really wanted to do instead, which is have a
phone call with my mother who I hadn't been able
to talk to earlier today. So what I did was
(08:28):
express what the person did, acknowledge their effort, and explain
how it helped me. And it took us a few
seconds longer. But those aspects of gratitude are really important
to share, and when we share them, the gratitude has
a much greater impact on a sort of sense of
closeness and and shared bond. That's super powerful. Um, Like
(08:50):
you said, being specific, that's a really great piece of advice.
On the other side of the spectrum, where there are
a lot of people who are home alone, and you know,
dealing with socializolation is very difficult for a lot of people.
What's your advice for people who are dealing with loneliness
or even depression? Right now. Yeah, Loneliness and depression are
a huge problem in this pandemic time. I can only
(09:15):
encourage those of you who are by yourselves to use
the tools that are available to you through technology to
connect with people. UM. There are many many organizations who
are providing live events, or people all join a called
together on Zoom and talk about what is going on
(09:36):
in their lives, get to know each other. I've participated
in several of them, both as a expert perspective and
also just as a member of the community. UM. There
are lots of little ways to engage with people online
through games and having some levity during these difficult times
is of great value. Walking outside if you're able to,
(09:59):
if you got the right protective equipment and your a
location where that's acceptable, is a really powerful way to
Even if you have to see someone at this six
foot distance, it's still meaningful to see another human being
and make eye contact, not or smile. Those little signals
are really important. Having phone calls with people who you
(10:21):
know and care about who also care about you is
a really valuable way to remind yourself that you're still connected,
remind yourself that you're still a human, that belongs to
a particular community. These reminders are essential. Humans really suffer
when put in a position where they're deprived of social
(10:41):
contact and loneliness becomes the feeling we'll be back after
this break. So what's the difference between moment terry happiness
and this deep, lasting happiness that you're talking about, and
(11:03):
what is the key to that? Yeah, I mean a
momentary positive emotion, and I'm being really deliberate about using
that word because I think it's a mistake to call
that happiness. You might feel happy in a moment, and
that is fine, but it's not very specific. We're actually
equipped to experience this vast array of very particular emotions
(11:25):
that we've been into the category of happy, that that
feel good, and they can again be feeling of pride,
a feeling of inspiration, the feeling of elevation, the feeling
of amusement, a feeling of sheer pleasure, a feeling of anticipation,
uh so many, a feeling of closeness and affection. All
(11:47):
of these specific feelings are evolutions way of orienting us
towards opportunities, towards meaningful opportunities, and they galvanize us too
to furnish the response that makes that opportunity most available
and most accessible to us, And so that response is
(12:08):
pretty quick, like, oh, I have a an anticipatory sort
of enjoyment sensation because of the smell of chocolate chip
cookies baking. What that does is quickly make me want
to walk towards the direction where that fragrance gets stronger.
And then that's the end of that feeling. Right, that
feelings over it served its purpose. If I was like, Okay,
(12:31):
that feeling is so nice that I'm going to try
to keep feeling it all day long, I would actually
not be able to do that. Right. If I smell
chocolate chip cookie for seventy two hours, I would soon
not be able to smell it anymore, and or even
find it quite aversive, right as you might. You know,
think of people who work in occupations where they experience
(12:55):
something that might be pleasurable once in a while or
even regularly, but not all day long as sort of
ordinary and normal. Are nervous systems habituate and adapt to
stimulate that that are regular and readily available without any change.
So because of that, our punts of emotions aren't meant
(13:15):
to last and go on and be repeated over and
over all day. Instead, they're meant to occur in births
and to be dynamic and to come up and then recover,
as it's the case with our negative emotions, and our
negative emotions are as important as our positive emotions to
our survival and our overall happiness in life. Oftentimes, the
(13:40):
most meaningful experiences that we have involved negative emotions, those
moments in life where we are moved to change something
about who we are, or moved to take an action
that might be particularly challenging or difficult. Those emotions and
those actions are really important to our sense of meaning
in life, to our sense of purpose, and those are
(14:03):
both instrumental to what we're calling happiness, what I'd like
to refer to its happiness in life. We have to
be able to experience positive emotions. That we're the kind
of person who can never feel joy when good things
are happening, we're probably not going to end up in
the category of a person who has high happiness in life.
Same for someone who isn't able to recover from life
(14:24):
difficult moments, who isn't skilled in the domain of resilience,
they're also unlikely to fall into the category it's very
happy in life. So there are these elements, are these
components that really help us arrive at happiness. But it's
not exclusively or even predictably just trying to feel positive
(14:47):
emotions all the time. That actually doesn't work. In fact,
those researches shows that when people try that, when that's
their approach to striving for happiness, they're less happy. That
expectation is impossible to fulfill. Yeah, like curse of high
expectations is real. Um. Yeah, when we when we were
doing the research for our book, we did see and
(15:08):
and our experience is this that you know, having that
sort of larger purpose um, and trying to find purpose
across your life and and getting outside yourself kind of
creates that halo of happiness um, that feeling that you're
talking about, which unfortunately we're confusing with the word happiness.
So I I really appreciate everything that you've said. And
you actually now have a course um that helps people
(15:29):
think about how to practice happiness. Yeah. So actually since
two thousand and fourteen, we've been running a Science of
Happiness course. It's some d X platform e d x
dot org. You can just search for Science of Happiness.
It's modeled after an undergraduate introductory level course, so there's
eight modules of it. Each module has videos and readings
(15:50):
and what we call happiness practices, and these are exercises
that we've drawn from empirical studies that have shown that
they have impact on happy net and people try them,
and there's also exams and problem sets and the hope
is and actually our own internal data has shown that
when people complete the course, when people learn these ideas,
(16:14):
invest in the practices and try them and exercise them,
they actually grow. Their happiness goes up, their loneliness goes down,
their stress goes down, their sense of meaning in life
goes up, their sense of common humanity increases. This is
all learnable. It's just a matter of putting in the
time and and deciding that this is something that matters.
(16:35):
Can you give us one example? I know it's a
it's a whole course, but is there one example that
we can take away from this conversation. Yeah, so the
one that I shared earlier, the specific gratitude is a
great example. Another example which is always fun and interesting
to offer from from Berkeley being someone from Berkeley, California,
because it's a common bumper sticker. It's called random acts
(16:56):
of kindness. What random acts of kindness means is just
the fighting on a given day or maybe for a
sequence of three to five days, just perform three to
five kind acts for somebody else. It can be holding
the door open, It can be UM paying for their coffee.
(17:17):
It can be calling them out of the blue and
sharing UH an uplifting story, any number of things. Turns
out that when people engage in this practice random acts
of kindness and sort of shifts the tenor of your
orientation towards other people, we think and think about and
(17:37):
see other people in a more benevolent and friendly and
trusting light. And it reduces stress and um strengthens bonds
and increases our own happiness. So that's another example of
activity that could be particularly beneficial in these times when
we are grappling with the COVID nineteen pandemic. The more
(17:59):
we preserve our sense of care and concern towards others,
towards the world around us, and the more we act
on that sense of care and concern, the better off
we're going to be. What makes you optimistic or hopeful
in this moment? For me, this moment is unprecedented in
its in the degree of of global uh commonality that
(18:26):
we're all witnessing. We have more in common with people
around the world today than we've ever had in my
life course, at least, we're all experiencing this remarkable event
that will shift humanity in a way that that I
can't really predict. But I think what we've learned through
(18:49):
a hard lesson is that the less we cooperate, the
less we coordinate our effort, the less we share resources
and information, the more suffering and pain we are going
to have to endure. And so I am optimistic that
in the wake of this experience, our approach to many
(19:14):
many different endeavors, from political to science to education, will
be much more collective, will be able to understand and
prioritize a more common approach to managing the challenges that
we're facing, and maybe that will inspire to come together
(19:35):
around other huge challenges that are on the on the
road map for us, like climate change. I've douts what
brings me optimism? Well, I have to thank you so
much for this interview. I mean, you gave us such
great advice from from the random acts of kindness and
and sort of getting outside of yourself to create that
halo of happiness to actually learning about ourselves through these
(19:58):
difficult times. So we really appreciate your taking the time
to be on the show and we hope to have
you back. Thank you so much for including me, and
thank you for doing the show, and onward onwards. Thank you.
You're listening to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose
(20:19):
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(20:41):
Seneca Women, follow us on social media, visit our website
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