June 3, 2024 • 41 mins
We all want to be happier, but are probably sick of hearing about 'exercising more, eating better, sleeping 8 hours'. In today's episode we break down FIVE evidence based tips that are simple, accessible, actionable and inexpensive for becoming a happier person and the research that proves it:
- Focus on platonic love over romantic love
- Small acts of kindness + how we are spending our money wrong and why its making us less happy
- The importance of a project
- The healing power of nature + what bacteria and dirt have to do with it
- Let yourself wallow
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to this show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode of the show
as we, of course break down the Psychology of our twenties.
Before we get into it today, I want to let
you guys know that my latest line of notebooks, in
collaboration with the illustrator Rosy Pink, have launched and are
(00:51):
live now and ready for you guys to get your
hands on. A lot of love and care went into
designing and producing these beautiful companions to the podcast. If
you're somebody who likes journaling, who likes to take notes
while listening, who likes, I don't know, just a gratitude journal,
(01:11):
who likes to have a little planner, a little to
do list, whatever you need a notebook for, these ones
are adorable and definitely up there as being one of
my favorite things I've ever created. It's also an amazing
way to support the show and to support me as
a creator. So if you are even thinking about it,
(01:32):
thank you so much. And if you hit purchase, you
are my favorite person in the world. So, without further ado,
let's get into the show. Today, we are going to
be taking a look at one of our most primary
and significant emotions, and that is happiness. This huge concept,
if we can even call it that that sounds so
(01:54):
reductive to call a concept. It plays such an everyday,
valuable role in our life. And yet I realized that
I have never actually sat down and done an episode
on happiness. Even in two hundred episodes. It might come up,
but it has never had its time in the spotlight
all on its own. And today is that day when
(02:15):
we are going to give all of our attention and
focus to this primary, deep, important emotion. I think everybody
on this planet wants to be happier in some sense.
They want more contentment, they're striving for greater satisfaction in
some area of their life, more pleasant emotions, or they
(02:35):
are you know, they recognize that they are unhappy and
they're looking for some way out of their despair or
their emotional rut. And yet I don't think many of
us really know how to change that. We don't really
know what brings us joy or contentment. We kind of
spend a lot of our life at this baseline level,
(02:56):
this like fifty percent mark of not being onhappy but
not really excelling as a happy human. The other alternative
is that we spend a lot of time doing things
that we think will improve our life satisfaction, doing things
that we think bring temporary pleasure and temporary joy, but
which don't actually have that sustainable happiness factor behind them, right,
(03:20):
They don't actually improve our emotional state in the long term.
I'm thinking about things like retail therapy, that's the first
one that always comes to mind, but other concepts or
other behaviors like binge drinking, emotional eating. Yes, we feel
better in the moment. Often we use these things to
self soothe, but I think that if we see happiness
(03:41):
as a scale, a lot of those activities that we
pursue to improve happiness really don't have a lasting effect.
On top of that, I also think that in our
minds for a lot of us, happiness is like important, absolutely,
but it's also seen as rather uncomplicated and very much
out of our control. When life is good, we are happy.
(04:04):
When bad things happen, we are not, And so we
really do tend to project our happiness and see it
as the responsibility of our circumstances, the responsibility of what
is happening around us, that is what has the biggest impact.
But actually that is not necessarily the case. There is
(04:25):
this model called the happiness pie which says something completely
differently so behavior geneticist psychologists. They actually attribute about fifty
percent of our happiness to genetics. So every single one
of us is born with what we call happiness set point,
a baseline level of happiness. This kind of relates to
(04:47):
the individual differences between being a pessimist and being an optimist.
When we are born, we are just naturally hardwired to
see the world as perhaps realistic, but more so either
a brighter or darker place than it actually is. So
fifty percent genetics, and then ten percent of our happiness
comes down to our life circumstances, which is shocking because
(05:11):
I think so often we blame our context and external
events for our emotional state when actually it really can
only tip the scale, not throw it off completely. I think,
of course, during intense moments of loss or grief, that
ten percent is really going to dominate. But on the
(05:31):
average day, our happiness really comes down to our mindset
and our outlook and our habits. And so we finally
arrive at that final slice of the pie, the forty
percent that we can actually attribute to our personal choices.
Forty percent of our happiness is dictated by us. Science
(05:52):
would say that it is within our control. And that's
what we're going to focus on today, that part of
the equation, and five ways that we can, you know,
scientifically improve our level of happiness. And I really wanted
to talk about tips that were actionable, accessible, simple, but
also inexpensive. Right, I'm not going to recommend some like
(06:16):
fifty dollars workout class or supplement, because it's kind of
ridiculous to think that only wealthy people would have access
to joy and peace. But I'm also not going to
give you like the basic tips that we all know.
You know, I think we all understand that when you
exercise and move more, when you get eight hours of sleep,
when you eat better, you are going to be happier.
That is pretty basic knowledge. But I want to go
(06:39):
a little bit deeper today. I want to really look
at some of the academia and the research about what
can really impact our happiness on an everyday level. What
are some of the secret habits of really really joyful,
happy content people. One final caveat. I know I've been
rambling for a while. These are not tips that are
(07:01):
going to, of course, cure you of your mental health concerns,
of your mental health symptoms or conditions. They are more
so additions to our life. They are techniques that can
elevate the work that we're already doing in therapy with
the help of medications. I just want to say that
loud and clear, this is not a replacement. These are
(07:22):
just bonuses. So without further ado, let's get into our
five evidence based ways to actually truly be happier. Let
us jump straight into it with my first tip, invest
(07:42):
as much time in your platonic relationships as your romantic ones,
if not more. I think that it is important that
if we are focusing on happiness, we need to firstly
focus on our social connections, and that requires us to
spend at least I would say, thirty minutes every day
day doing something that meaningfully connects you with another person
(08:05):
and that keeps you in touch even as life gets busy.
Even as the older we get, you know, the more
focus we become on our partners, or our romantic lives
or our marriages. Keep those platonic connections alive with those
people from your past and new friends as well, even
when it feels hard, even when it feels tedious, and
(08:27):
dare I say, even when it does sometimes let's admit
it feel like a bit of a chore. I think
we all go through these like social ruts where we
want to isolate, where we do feel withdrawn or you know,
just simply lonely. And the best thing that you can
do for your happiness is to find some way, any
(08:48):
way of getting back in touch with others. That is
one of the core needs that we have as humans.
So let's talk about some of the research behind why
this is so crude, sure, and why it's often neglected.
So possibly one of the most brilliant and significant studies
of all time provides so much evidence for why this
(09:11):
is such an important step in our happiness. So back
in nineteen thirty eight, that is almost ninety years ago now,
this huge team at Harvard University, they decided that they
wanted to track two hundred and sixty eight current sophomores
at the time, and they didn't just want to track
them for the you know, for the year, for the term.
(09:32):
They wanted to track them for the rest of their lives,
regularly checking in with them, regularly seeing how they were going,
to determine what parts of their lives, what factors were
determining whether one person was healthy and one person wasn't,
What events and characteristics meant that these men succeeded or failed,
(09:53):
what caused their early deaths or their long lives, what
made their marriages flourish versus fail, And also what it
was about these people's lives tracking them from when they
were nineteen till ninety and even past that what made
these people happy versus miserable. So this is now known
(10:14):
as the Grant Study. It is actually the longest longitudinal
study of all time. When I'm recording this right now
in twenty twenty four, I think only about like eighteen
of the men are still alive. But the biggest finding
across all of those decades of observation and research was
that the one thing that determined happiness above all else
(10:38):
was positive social relationships, not money, not promotions or careers,
not material possessions, but friendship and love, and even deeper
than that, just genuine companionship and a warmth from relationships.
There is something really valuable in that that I think
we often forget. I think there is often this sense
(11:00):
of like friendships and you know, relationships are just there
to feel empty space, They are there to make me
feel less lonely. Always sometimes end up thinking that our
careers and material fulfillment is actually what determines our happiness.
And this is a bit of a wake up call
that no, if you are going to invest in anything
(11:21):
in your life, anything at all, that's going to ensure
that not only do you live longer, but you're happier.
It is those really meaningful, platonic friendships and relationships that
was like the pioneering study on this. There have of
course been so many follow up research projects that are
finding the exact same thing. Another example of this is
(11:44):
a more recent one and research has employed the use
of this app and it was called the Mappiness App,
and basically what they wanted to determine was when a
people happiest on an eleven point scale from no, oh
I'm not happy at all to I am extremely happy.
This app would send them little alerts to rank how
(12:06):
they were at that very point throughout their day, and
they had over three million submissions from nearly fifty thousand volunteers.
And what they found was that the point where people
are happiest is when they are with their friends. Amongst
everything else, that they were able to track when they
were with their partners, when they were with their parents,
(12:29):
when they were with their children, when they were at work,
when they were exercising, when they were with their friends
always came out on top. So applying this tip, here
are three things that we can do once a day,
find thirty minutes minimum to deepen your bond with someone. Literally,
it could be as easy as sending them tiktoks or
texting them, but if you really want to improve your chances,
(12:52):
here giving that long distance friend a call, or grabbing
lunch with a friend on your lunch break, going to
the gym together afterwards. You know, after work, those small
thirty minute like kind of points of contact are so
valuable in building up that relationship. Once a week you
need to be doing minimum at least a one to
(13:14):
two hour even longer, hopefully in depth catch up with
one of your friends where you actually have a deep,
meaningful conversation, You get vulnerable, you disclose, you laugh, and
more important, you make memories. And then it comes to
once a month. Once a month, become the host. Now,
(13:35):
if you have listened for a while, if you know
me in real life, you will know that. One of
my secrets too, I would say being an incredibly optimistic,
happy person and a present person as well is finding
ways to build community, not just for myself but also
for the people that I love. And I think hosting
events in your house, in your neighborhood small things is
(13:57):
an expression of that. When I stopped waiting for other
people to do or organize cool things and hopefully invite
me and just started being the person who literally just
did fun shit, my life got so much better. So
once a month, what I really would implore you to
do is to get together a big, random bunch of
(14:18):
people for like a friendship group pot luck, or a
movie night at somebody's house or you know, trivia brunch,
a run club. You be the organizer, you be the host,
You be the person around which community is built. I
think you know, reflecting on that, and why it makes
(14:40):
so much sense is that in this day and age,
we really lack some of the structures and activities that
used to bring us together. You know, in the past,
we used to have so many more places to operate
within a community, right We had community dances, we had
town squares, we had small village like place and spaces
(15:01):
where you were surrounded by people. A lot more people
went to church or were involved in religion. There was
a bigger focus on community essentially, and I think as
society has progressed and become more globalized but also a
lot more online, for example, we've lost a lot of
(15:22):
that and that disconnection really bleeds into other areas of
our lives. So deliberately making our way back to that,
making engagement a practice rather than something we passively fall into,
is so valuable. My second tip for today spend your
money better.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Now. This has nothing to do with budgeting or having
long term financial goals. It is actually about spending money
on others and on experiences. And trust me, I know
that in this kind of very materialistic society, this may
initially make you feel uncomfortable to hear me say that
the secret to happiness is to spend on other people
(16:06):
and not yourself. But there is a science here. If
you're aiming for happiness, if that is your goal, this
might just be the path to it. Money does make
us happier up to a point, though only up to
a point. So in a really famous study I think
we probably have all heard of it at some point,
(16:28):
and they actually revised it last year. Basically they wanted
to measure at what point does an extra dollar really
not do much for our happiness? At what point does
making more money not really move the need or when
it comes to how good we feel? And they recently
updated this for inflation and nowadays. What they say is
(16:49):
that once you're making around one hundred k a year
in US dollars, so do the conversion. If you live
outside of the US, more money doesn't really do much
to make you feel better, and it doesn't do much
to eliminate misery or sadness. Yes, you might be able to,
you know, buy objects and experiences that you value. You
(17:12):
definitely will have more freedom and independence and security, but
at that point there isn't much more that would provide
you with already that baseline, So if your happiness hasn't
already been influenced by that level of wealth, more money
isn't going to help you, but there's something else that will.
(17:33):
So a study by Harvard Business School and the University
of British Columbia, they found that once you've actually pulled
yourself out of poverty, so once you can actually afford
your basics, spending money on other people actually gives us
more joy than spending money on ourselves. So they found
(17:53):
that even a minimal amount can make a difference. It's
really interesting because I think that that power generosity has
been lost, but it is such ancient, ancient knowledge. I
think in almost every major religion, every major historical text,
you will find evidence that for a long time, when
(18:14):
you've known that doing good by other people makes us
feel better, I think it also has the effect of
turning the attention away from you and your problems for
a moment, and remembering what it is that you have
that others might not, that you could assist them by
giving to them. So use your money, devote some portion
(18:37):
of it to basically engaging in random acts of kindness.
Quite literally, I want you to budget it. In One
way that I do this is called good deed Sunday.
Every Sunday you practice essentially being generous you give back
in some way or another. It actually doesn't even need
(18:58):
to be that much. Could be that, you know, when
you go and do your weekly shop, you buy some
extra items for your local community pantry, or you ask
somebody doing it tough outside if you can buy them something,
If you can buy them a couple of items that
they really need, you could find a you know, random
GoFundMe and budget literally five ten fifteen dollars each week
(19:21):
to go towards this random act of giving back and kindness.
I know it feels kind of strange giving to others
for your own happiness rather than just because you feel
compelled to do so, but I actually think it's more
about adopting an attitude and a genuine lifestyle adversely, gratitude
(19:41):
for what you do have, and generosity by realizing that
there is so much that you could give to others
that you should essentially feel really privileged to already be
in possession of. And as I said, the studies repeatedly say,
you will feel better for it. You will feel so
much better giving that small portion of what you're making
(20:02):
to somebody else than using it to buy something that
you might not actually need. So a brief second layer
to this tip around spending your money better to promote
your happiness. If you're not spending that extra coinage on others,
if that's not really what you want to do with
your time and your money, that is okay. A study
by Cornell University found that you're actually better off purchasing
(20:24):
experiences than things because the joy and the satisfaction that
you get from an object is going to wane and
decline pretty quickly after purchasing. But the enjoyment of an experience,
it's like a nice wine. It gets better over time
as you age. Those memories do become more valuable, They
(20:48):
become an investment, they become an important asset. The other
thing that the researchers pointed out around this in this
study by Cornell was that your experiences are actually just
inherently less comparative. It's a lot harder to you know,
compare them to somebody else and feel like you're lacking
(21:08):
the same way that we can do with material objects.
And we also don't typically have buyers remorse when it
comes to memories. When it comes to experiences, because even
if they were terrible, they are still a story. So
if you want to spend your money better for your happiness,
give to others, and give to your memories rather than
(21:29):
to your kind of like material rather than to the
material side of things. So let's move on to our
third tip. Have one project, one thing that you are
actively trying to finish or accomplish or get better at.
I say this a lot on the podcast, so I'm
(21:50):
very sorry if I sound like a broken record at
this point, but I say it because it's important and
it's something that I believe in very deeply. Sometimes the
easiest thing to do isn't what's best for us. What's
best for us is the thing that requires a bit
more effort for a lot more gain. I think the
(22:10):
older we get, we do tend to become more passive
in our lives, especially during our free time, during our downtime,
because hours a long, life is exhausting, life is busy,
Everything just gets a bit harder. I think we have
all had that feeling at some point of just wanting
to take the path of least resistance through life, getting
(22:32):
home from work and just genuinely wanting to sit on
the couch and scroll. But when we were kids, when
we were teenagers, we often had the privilege of something
to work towards, something that actually gave us a sense
of drive and purpose. I think that we have lost
that a little bit now. And you know, everybody tries
(22:53):
to blame social media and technology. I'm going to actually
quickly jump on that bandwagon for a second. I think
with social media, if we're getting the same amount of
dopamine from saying other people do cool and rewarding stuff,
why would we need to do it ourselves? And the
reason why. The answer to that question is that we
(23:15):
need purpose. If we think about happiness as being made
up of four components, in my mind, they would be
joy and pleasure, connection, altruism and meaning doing something that
actually makes you feel like you are alive and contributing,
and just having a sense of purpose. So in twenty thirteen,
(23:38):
this group of researchers at UCLA they actually identified this
through some research they were doing on the two distinct
kinds of happiness. We have hedonic happiness and eudaemonic happiness.
Hopefully I'm pronounced that right. You demonic, Yeah, you demonic happiness.
There we go, correct me if I'm wrong. But hedonic
(24:02):
happiness comes from self gratification and pleasure seeking hedonic is
obviously relating to the idea of hedonism, prioritizing pleasure over
everything else. But you, demonic happiness comes from having a
deep sense of meaning and purpose in life, doing things
(24:22):
for others, but more so doing hard things that do
take time. Rather than getting all of your joy and
pleasure from instantly gratifying experiences, we tend to spend a
lot of time in hedonic happiness. We look to external
pleasures to make life enjoyable. Because you, demonic happiness is harder.
(24:48):
Simply put, it's just harder to obtain, but there are
so many benefits. So simply put, if you are in
a bit of an emotional rut right now, I think
creating meaning is an essential way to switch from adonic
happiness to eudonic happiness. Just have a little bit more
of that more sustainable form of joy in your life.
(25:10):
And we create that meaning by creating goals or things
that we can strive towards, because I think you know,
in that act of striving, we feel engaged and proactive, meaning,
we realize that we can do things to change our
lives and how we feel about it. Now, those goals
(25:32):
this big, very daunting idea of purpose. It doesn't have
to be as large or as scary as it sounds.
You just need to have something. And I prefer to
think about this as a project rather than thinking about
this huge mission that we all need to have. You
just need to have something. For some people. That is,
(25:53):
you know, running a marathon, perfect example, and also super timely,
because I think everybody I know right now seems to
be training for a marathon or some running event of
some sort. But you know, that's fabulous because you're working
towards something that is harder and bigger than yourself that
you actually can't achieve overnight. But I also have a
(26:15):
really good friend whose purposeful thing for the year is
hitting her fifty two book target on Goodreads. My dad,
for example, right now, is learning Japanese. You know that
is something that you progress towards. And for me, well,
it was finishing my book, but that has done so now.
It's kind of being consistent in the gym, right I
(26:36):
can't just like show up one day and you know,
hit all my prs and do everything perfectly. It is
once again the act of striving that is so so
meaningful in these situations. So just stop and pause with
me right now, and I want you to honestly ask yourself,
is there something in my life, anything that ischallenging me
(27:01):
or that I am working towards? Do I have a project?
Or when I finish work, when I finish uni, when
I say goodbye to all my friends? Is my only
function to scroll and consume? And is that really what
I was designed to do? Is that really how I
want to spend my life? Does it make me feel human?
(27:22):
Does it make you feel meaningful? You can still, of
course unwind in that way, but I just want to
encourage you to think about what else you are made
for and whether you actually would be happier if you
were putting time into something that you really had something
to show for it at the end of it all,
you really had something that you felt was important and
(27:44):
that you felt proud of. Alrighty, I have two more
tips for you, but firstly we are going to take
a small break and then we will be right back.
Welcome back. I have two final tips for you today,
and the first one takes place outdoors. If you want
(28:08):
to be happier, if that is what you are striving towards,
and I'm assuming that it is because you are listening
to this episode. You need to rewild yourself. You need
to quite literally touch some grass, get your feet stuck
in the dirt, you know, experience or as you look
at the stars, take a dive in the ocean. Pretty
(28:28):
much anything that gets you connected with nature, our literal
you know, natural habitat can boost serotonin beyond even some
of the strongest antidepressants. Now again, not a cure for
serious mental health concerns. I am never going to sit
here and say go off your medication and like get outdoors,
because I think that is ludicrous, that is ridiculous, that
(28:51):
is unethical to even suggest. But it is an important addition.
I think we are so detached from nature in today's world.
We are so like you, caught up in concrete and
indoor environments that we have lost touch with what makes
us wild and what makes us as a species, what
(29:13):
makes us connected to the world around us. And when
researchers have deliberately intervened and essentially forced people to go
outdoors as part of studies, the impact on their overall happiness,
on their udontic happiness, on their joy, on their genuine
joy and love for life, the results and the impact
of that is just honestly so impressive. So I have
(29:36):
three examples for you to take away with you today,
three examples of how we can really activate this part
of us that responds so well to nature. So in
twenty seventeen, there was a study on this and it
was run on a group of thirty eight Northern Californians,
so not a huge sample size, but just hear me out.
(29:56):
So these thirty eight Californians, sorry in Northern Californians, maybe
there is a distinction, I don't know. They were split
up into two groups. One group took a ninety minute
walk in nature every day and the other group did
that same walk in the city. At the end of
this study, have a guess who was having fewer negative thoughts.
(30:18):
Have a guess who had a better self esteem. Have
a guest who was reporting greater levels of happiness. It
was the people who were walking in the outdoors. The
urban walkers who were walking amongst the city did not
report the same significant amount of change when they kind
of controlled for the general serotonin in endorphin boost from exercise.
(30:42):
It was those who did it out in nature and
who were you know, actively rewilding themselves who really experienced
the most benefit. What's more, fMRI scans revealed less activity
in the brain region that plays a role in mood
disorders and negative thought patterns. These individuals had genuinely seen
(31:04):
their brains almost rewire to be more positive. So the
dirt example I gave before, you know it may have
sounded like a joke, me telling you to go out
and touch some dirt. You know, touch some dirt, and
they go willy nilly, you're happier, But there is actually
some evidence that the literal smell of mud of dirt
(31:24):
may lift your spirits. So what it comes down to
is actually this harmless bacteria that exists in the soil.
It's called Myobacterium vacate. So if you want to give that,
you know, fancy Latin name a quick google, what you're
going to find is that when you smell dirt, that
(31:46):
smell that you can remember right now, really picture it
smelling that like that fresh soil. What you're actually spelling
and is that specific bacteria. And when it enters your
olfactory center in your brain, it leases a whole wave
of euphoria and serotonin, so much so that in human
tests when cancer patients were administered this bacteria, They're moved,
(32:11):
despite their circumstances, despite this terrible, terrible disease, their outlook
greatly improved. It is like nature's antidepressant, this bacteria. It
is really you should google it. It has this strange impact
on our brain and how our neurons communicate. Even anecdotally,
(32:33):
I don't think I've ever met an unhappy person who
was gardening. I have never been miserable whilst repotting my plants,
or hiking, or taking my feet off and like squishing
them around in the mud. So one final study to
convince you of the healing power of the outdoors and
why if you are prioritizing happiness, you should be prioritizing
(32:57):
quite literally your outdoor time is this study that was
focused on what eating outdoors can do for our well being,
and it turns out that it can do quite a bit.
One thing that I hear a lot, and I think
it's super understandable, is that you know, I just don't
have time for that, And that is actually so reasonable.
If you are working from eight am to six pm
(33:19):
and it's the middle of winter and the sun is
you know, not even coming up until you're at work,
not even setting until you're home. How are you possibly
meant to, you know, go play in the dirt or
frolic in the ocean. How are you meant to do that?
I understand, you know, it's really difficult for me to
sit here and you know, give you this advice when
we are like, there's just practicalities that prevent me from
(33:40):
doing this. So the simple solution is spending your lunch
break that thirty minutes or our lunch break that we
all legally get, eating outside, or eating somewhere with windows
to at least see some kind of nature. Do not
sit at your desk and eat, please and thank you.
Do not sit in the middle of a crowded food
(34:04):
hall with no natural light and expect, you know, to
see a difference. So in twenty thirteen, another study for
you guys and full of them today. These scientists from
the University of Sussex. They measured the happiness of these
this group of employees who ate lunch in different locations.
So the results showed that workers they were actually happiest
(34:26):
when they ate their lunch on the beach. Of course
you're going to be happy doing that, but it's also
not reasonable that you can get from your offers to
the ocean so quickly, but even just getting outside in
the sun was a huge contributor to basically like staving
off misery. People who ate in parks, people who ate outdoors,
(34:46):
they had a more positive attitude about their jobs, about
their lives, about their connections than those who were eating
at a restaurant or sitting on their couch at home.
So if you want to be happy, even slightly, if
this is something you're consciously trying to do, prioritize your
(35:07):
outdoor time that one. You know, one change that you
can make is literally just sitting outside while you have
your lunch, something that you are already you know, it's
already factored in your day that you will have to
do this. I am going to finish up with my
most counterintuitive tip of this entire episode, one that you
(35:28):
will probably be surprised would show up in an episode
about happiness. Here it is you need to be sadder
more often. And let me explain why we often think
of happiness as the absence of sadness, but it's actually
a mastery of sadness. It is a recognition that shit
(35:51):
happens life sometimes hurts a lot, It is boring, It
can quite frankly be a little bit bland if we're
not searching for hedonistic pleasure at all times. But that
doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile. And it also doesn't
mean that we suppress those feelings and adopt the delusion
(36:13):
that everything is fine and hope that it will be.
We need to give ourselves permission to wallow. We need
to be tender, we need to feel, We need to
watch that sad movie. We need to let ourselves be
open about our emotions. There is a brilliant Vice article
about this back when Vice you know, it was actually good,
(36:35):
and it's called You'll be Happier if you let yourself
feel like crap, and I would really really recommend you
go and read it. We have such high standards when
it comes to our emotions like joy, like euphoria, like excitement,
like passion, like love. We of course want to feel
them all the time. That is so human to want
(36:56):
to feel amazing all the time, but it can create
a gap between expectation versus reality, and you know that
actually results in us sometimes feeling less happy overall because
we're disappointed that we can't feel happy all the time.
And I think, you know, we live in a time
(37:16):
when our culture is very obsessed with this idea of
constant happiness. And I know it is so ironic that
I am doing a whole episode devoted on this feeling
whilst I am saying that, But seriously, I do think
that maturing and developing and evolving is knowing that you
cannot be happy all the time. And this author to
Boor to Boor, that is their full name. She published
(37:40):
a study in twenty twenty three talking about how when
we as individuals rebrand sadness as valuable rather than as
something that we want to escape from. This transformation occurs
because the very expression of this emotion begins to normalize
it as part of our human can be, and instead
(38:01):
of only focusing on how it is maladaptive, how it
is unpleasant, how we want to avoid it, we think
about what it actually can give us. I think that
our ability to embrace our negative feelings provide so many benefits.
There have been so many papers on this, so much
evidence that people individuals like you and I, who accept
(38:24):
all of our emotions without judgment, we are less likely
to ruminate on you know, those hard times, we are
less likely to suppress mental experiences, you know, which typically
backfires to only amplify those experiences in the end. And
we are also less likely to experience meta emotional reactions,
(38:48):
which is feeling, you know, upset about being upset, feeling
even more unhappy about the fact that we are unhappy.
You know. There was this fabulous article. It's in the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the authors put
it this way, when we accept, versus judge, our mental experiences,
(39:08):
we let those experience you know, experiences run there natural
and also relatively short lived course, rather than focusing on
them and exacerbating them. So that's my final tip. Express
your sadness. Find ways to communicate it to your friends,
find a home for it, find an expression for it,
(39:30):
find a way to sit with it even when it's uncomfortable.
And the research tells us that counterintuitively, it actually makes
us happier in the long term. Here are some quick
final notes for me on this. You don't have to
do all of these things, you know, that's a lot
of work. Just choose one or two of these tips
and implement them slowly, implement them over time, and just
(39:54):
notice whether something changes. You know, I'm not going to
choose which one you should do first. I think that
all five are really important, but whichever one resonates with
you most, that is the one that you should choose.
And I also want to say one more time, don't
forget the other core components of your wellbeing. I know
I said I wouldn't talk about exercise or eating well
(40:16):
or going to therapy, but you know, those are our foundations.
You can't really accept your sadness or have a project
or think that going outdoors is going to do as
much as getting those basics down pat will do in
the first place. So really I'm rooting for you these.
You know, with small changes comes big, big impact and
(40:39):
big results. And I just want you to remember the
happiness pie. When life feels overwhelming, you get to control
forty percent of it. That is all up to you
and your perception. So I'm sending a lot of love
and strength. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free
to share it with somebody else might also benefit from it.
(41:02):
Who you think might get something from this, And if
you do feel cool to do so, please leave a
review five stars. Of course it would really make my day.
It helps the show grow. It helps this information get
to more people and it just makes me really happy.
Make sure you're following along as well, so you know
when new episodes are coming out. If you have feedback
(41:23):
an episode, suggestion, something to say, something to contribute, something
that you even disagree with, whatever it is, please feel
free to follow me and DM me at that Psychology
Podcast with all your questions, queries, concerns, inquiries, topic suggestions,
whatever it is. I would love to hear from you,
and as always, we will be back on Friday with
(41:45):
another episode
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to this show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode of the show
as we, of course break down the Psychology of our twenties.
Before we get into it today, I want to let
you guys know that my latest line of notebooks, in
collaboration with the illustrator Rosy Pink, have launched and are
(00:51):
live now and ready for you guys to get your
hands on. A lot of love and care went into
designing and producing these beautiful companions to the podcast. If
you're somebody who likes journaling, who likes to take notes
while listening, who likes, I don't know, just a gratitude journal,
(01:11):
who likes to have a little planner, a little to
do list, whatever you need a notebook for, these ones
are adorable and definitely up there as being one of
my favorite things I've ever created. It's also an amazing
way to support the show and to support me as
a creator. So if you are even thinking about it,
(01:32):
thank you so much. And if you hit purchase, you
are my favorite person in the world. So, without further ado,
let's get into the show. Today, we are going to
be taking a look at one of our most primary
and significant emotions, and that is happiness. This huge concept,
if we can even call it that that sounds so
(01:54):
reductive to call a concept. It plays such an everyday,
valuable role in our life. And yet I realized that
I have never actually sat down and done an episode
on happiness. Even in two hundred episodes. It might come up,
but it has never had its time in the spotlight
all on its own. And today is that day when
(02:15):
we are going to give all of our attention and
focus to this primary, deep, important emotion. I think everybody
on this planet wants to be happier in some sense.
They want more contentment, they're striving for greater satisfaction in
some area of their life, more pleasant emotions, or they
(02:35):
are you know, they recognize that they are unhappy and
they're looking for some way out of their despair or
their emotional rut. And yet I don't think many of
us really know how to change that. We don't really
know what brings us joy or contentment. We kind of
spend a lot of our life at this baseline level,
(02:56):
this like fifty percent mark of not being onhappy but
not really excelling as a happy human. The other alternative
is that we spend a lot of time doing things
that we think will improve our life satisfaction, doing things
that we think bring temporary pleasure and temporary joy, but
which don't actually have that sustainable happiness factor behind them, right,
(03:20):
They don't actually improve our emotional state in the long term.
I'm thinking about things like retail therapy, that's the first
one that always comes to mind, but other concepts or
other behaviors like binge drinking, emotional eating. Yes, we feel
better in the moment. Often we use these things to
self soothe, but I think that if we see happiness
(03:41):
as a scale, a lot of those activities that we
pursue to improve happiness really don't have a lasting effect.
On top of that, I also think that in our
minds for a lot of us, happiness is like important, absolutely,
but it's also seen as rather uncomplicated and very much
out of our control. When life is good, we are happy.
(04:04):
When bad things happen, we are not, And so we
really do tend to project our happiness and see it
as the responsibility of our circumstances, the responsibility of what
is happening around us, that is what has the biggest impact.
But actually that is not necessarily the case. There is
(04:25):
this model called the happiness pie which says something completely
differently so behavior geneticist psychologists. They actually attribute about fifty
percent of our happiness to genetics. So every single one
of us is born with what we call happiness set point,
a baseline level of happiness. This kind of relates to
(04:47):
the individual differences between being a pessimist and being an optimist.
When we are born, we are just naturally hardwired to
see the world as perhaps realistic, but more so either
a brighter or darker place than it actually is. So
fifty percent genetics, and then ten percent of our happiness
comes down to our life circumstances, which is shocking because
(05:11):
I think so often we blame our context and external
events for our emotional state when actually it really can
only tip the scale, not throw it off completely. I think,
of course, during intense moments of loss or grief, that
ten percent is really going to dominate. But on the
(05:31):
average day, our happiness really comes down to our mindset
and our outlook and our habits. And so we finally
arrive at that final slice of the pie, the forty
percent that we can actually attribute to our personal choices.
Forty percent of our happiness is dictated by us. Science
(05:52):
would say that it is within our control. And that's
what we're going to focus on today, that part of
the equation, and five ways that we can, you know,
scientifically improve our level of happiness. And I really wanted
to talk about tips that were actionable, accessible, simple, but
also inexpensive. Right, I'm not going to recommend some like
(06:16):
fifty dollars workout class or supplement, because it's kind of
ridiculous to think that only wealthy people would have access
to joy and peace. But I'm also not going to
give you like the basic tips that we all know.
You know, I think we all understand that when you
exercise and move more, when you get eight hours of sleep,
when you eat better, you are going to be happier.
That is pretty basic knowledge. But I want to go
(06:39):
a little bit deeper today. I want to really look
at some of the academia and the research about what
can really impact our happiness on an everyday level. What
are some of the secret habits of really really joyful,
happy content people. One final caveat. I know I've been
rambling for a while. These are not tips that are
(07:01):
going to, of course, cure you of your mental health concerns,
of your mental health symptoms or conditions. They are more
so additions to our life. They are techniques that can
elevate the work that we're already doing in therapy with
the help of medications. I just want to say that
loud and clear, this is not a replacement. These are
(07:22):
just bonuses. So without further ado, let's get into our
five evidence based ways to actually truly be happier. Let
us jump straight into it with my first tip, invest
(07:42):
as much time in your platonic relationships as your romantic ones,
if not more. I think that it is important that
if we are focusing on happiness, we need to firstly
focus on our social connections, and that requires us to
spend at least I would say, thirty minutes every day
day doing something that meaningfully connects you with another person
(08:05):
and that keeps you in touch even as life gets busy.
Even as the older we get, you know, the more
focus we become on our partners, or our romantic lives
or our marriages. Keep those platonic connections alive with those
people from your past and new friends as well, even
when it feels hard, even when it feels tedious, and
(08:27):
dare I say, even when it does sometimes let's admit
it feel like a bit of a chore. I think
we all go through these like social ruts where we
want to isolate, where we do feel withdrawn or you know,
just simply lonely. And the best thing that you can
do for your happiness is to find some way, any
(08:48):
way of getting back in touch with others. That is
one of the core needs that we have as humans.
So let's talk about some of the research behind why
this is so crude, sure, and why it's often neglected.
So possibly one of the most brilliant and significant studies
of all time provides so much evidence for why this
(09:11):
is such an important step in our happiness. So back
in nineteen thirty eight, that is almost ninety years ago now,
this huge team at Harvard University, they decided that they
wanted to track two hundred and sixty eight current sophomores
at the time, and they didn't just want to track
them for the you know, for the year, for the term.
(09:32):
They wanted to track them for the rest of their lives,
regularly checking in with them, regularly seeing how they were going,
to determine what parts of their lives, what factors were
determining whether one person was healthy and one person wasn't,
What events and characteristics meant that these men succeeded or failed,
(09:53):
what caused their early deaths or their long lives, what
made their marriages flourish versus fail, And also what it
was about these people's lives tracking them from when they
were nineteen till ninety and even past that what made
these people happy versus miserable. So this is now known
(10:14):
as the Grant Study. It is actually the longest longitudinal
study of all time. When I'm recording this right now
in twenty twenty four, I think only about like eighteen
of the men are still alive. But the biggest finding
across all of those decades of observation and research was
that the one thing that determined happiness above all else
(10:38):
was positive social relationships, not money, not promotions or careers,
not material possessions, but friendship and love, and even deeper
than that, just genuine companionship and a warmth from relationships.
There is something really valuable in that that I think
we often forget. I think there is often this sense
(11:00):
of like friendships and you know, relationships are just there
to feel empty space, They are there to make me
feel less lonely. Always sometimes end up thinking that our
careers and material fulfillment is actually what determines our happiness.
And this is a bit of a wake up call
that no, if you are going to invest in anything
(11:21):
in your life, anything at all, that's going to ensure
that not only do you live longer, but you're happier.
It is those really meaningful, platonic friendships and relationships that
was like the pioneering study on this. There have of
course been so many follow up research projects that are
finding the exact same thing. Another example of this is
(11:44):
a more recent one and research has employed the use
of this app and it was called the Mappiness App,
and basically what they wanted to determine was when a
people happiest on an eleven point scale from no, oh
I'm not happy at all to I am extremely happy.
This app would send them little alerts to rank how
(12:06):
they were at that very point throughout their day, and
they had over three million submissions from nearly fifty thousand volunteers.
And what they found was that the point where people
are happiest is when they are with their friends. Amongst
everything else, that they were able to track when they
were with their partners, when they were with their parents,
(12:29):
when they were with their children, when they were at work,
when they were exercising, when they were with their friends
always came out on top. So applying this tip, here
are three things that we can do once a day,
find thirty minutes minimum to deepen your bond with someone. Literally,
it could be as easy as sending them tiktoks or
texting them, but if you really want to improve your chances,
(12:52):
here giving that long distance friend a call, or grabbing
lunch with a friend on your lunch break, going to
the gym together afterwards. You know, after work, those small
thirty minute like kind of points of contact are so
valuable in building up that relationship. Once a week you
need to be doing minimum at least a one to
(13:14):
two hour even longer, hopefully in depth catch up with
one of your friends where you actually have a deep,
meaningful conversation, You get vulnerable, you disclose, you laugh, and
more important, you make memories. And then it comes to
once a month. Once a month, become the host. Now,
(13:35):
if you have listened for a while, if you know
me in real life, you will know that. One of
my secrets too, I would say being an incredibly optimistic,
happy person and a present person as well is finding
ways to build community, not just for myself but also
for the people that I love. And I think hosting
events in your house, in your neighborhood small things is
(13:57):
an expression of that. When I stopped waiting for other
people to do or organize cool things and hopefully invite
me and just started being the person who literally just
did fun shit, my life got so much better. So
once a month, what I really would implore you to
do is to get together a big, random bunch of
(14:18):
people for like a friendship group pot luck, or a
movie night at somebody's house or you know, trivia brunch,
a run club. You be the organizer, you be the host,
You be the person around which community is built. I
think you know, reflecting on that, and why it makes
(14:40):
so much sense is that in this day and age,
we really lack some of the structures and activities that
used to bring us together. You know, in the past,
we used to have so many more places to operate
within a community, right We had community dances, we had
town squares, we had small village like place and spaces
(15:01):
where you were surrounded by people. A lot more people
went to church or were involved in religion. There was
a bigger focus on community essentially, and I think as
society has progressed and become more globalized but also a
lot more online, for example, we've lost a lot of
(15:22):
that and that disconnection really bleeds into other areas of
our lives. So deliberately making our way back to that,
making engagement a practice rather than something we passively fall into,
is so valuable. My second tip for today spend your
money better.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Now. This has nothing to do with budgeting or having
long term financial goals. It is actually about spending money
on others and on experiences. And trust me, I know
that in this kind of very materialistic society, this may
initially make you feel uncomfortable to hear me say that
the secret to happiness is to spend on other people
(16:06):
and not yourself. But there is a science here. If
you're aiming for happiness, if that is your goal, this
might just be the path to it. Money does make
us happier up to a point, though only up to
a point. So in a really famous study I think
we probably have all heard of it at some point,
(16:28):
and they actually revised it last year. Basically they wanted
to measure at what point does an extra dollar really
not do much for our happiness? At what point does
making more money not really move the need or when
it comes to how good we feel? And they recently
updated this for inflation and nowadays. What they say is
(16:49):
that once you're making around one hundred k a year
in US dollars, so do the conversion. If you live
outside of the US, more money doesn't really do much
to make you feel better, and it doesn't do much
to eliminate misery or sadness. Yes, you might be able to,
you know, buy objects and experiences that you value. You
(17:12):
definitely will have more freedom and independence and security, but
at that point there isn't much more that would provide
you with already that baseline, So if your happiness hasn't
already been influenced by that level of wealth, more money
isn't going to help you, but there's something else that will.
(17:33):
So a study by Harvard Business School and the University
of British Columbia, they found that once you've actually pulled
yourself out of poverty, so once you can actually afford
your basics, spending money on other people actually gives us
more joy than spending money on ourselves. So they found
(17:53):
that even a minimal amount can make a difference. It's
really interesting because I think that that power generosity has
been lost, but it is such ancient, ancient knowledge. I
think in almost every major religion, every major historical text,
you will find evidence that for a long time, when
(18:14):
you've known that doing good by other people makes us
feel better, I think it also has the effect of
turning the attention away from you and your problems for
a moment, and remembering what it is that you have
that others might not, that you could assist them by
giving to them. So use your money, devote some portion
(18:37):
of it to basically engaging in random acts of kindness.
Quite literally, I want you to budget it. In One
way that I do this is called good deed Sunday.
Every Sunday you practice essentially being generous you give back
in some way or another. It actually doesn't even need
(18:58):
to be that much. Could be that, you know, when
you go and do your weekly shop, you buy some
extra items for your local community pantry, or you ask
somebody doing it tough outside if you can buy them something,
If you can buy them a couple of items that
they really need, you could find a you know, random
GoFundMe and budget literally five ten fifteen dollars each week
(19:21):
to go towards this random act of giving back and kindness.
I know it feels kind of strange giving to others
for your own happiness rather than just because you feel
compelled to do so, but I actually think it's more
about adopting an attitude and a genuine lifestyle adversely, gratitude
(19:41):
for what you do have, and generosity by realizing that
there is so much that you could give to others
that you should essentially feel really privileged to already be
in possession of. And as I said, the studies repeatedly say,
you will feel better for it. You will feel so
much better giving that small portion of what you're making
(20:02):
to somebody else than using it to buy something that
you might not actually need. So a brief second layer
to this tip around spending your money better to promote
your happiness. If you're not spending that extra coinage on others,
if that's not really what you want to do with
your time and your money, that is okay. A study
by Cornell University found that you're actually better off purchasing
(20:24):
experiences than things because the joy and the satisfaction that
you get from an object is going to wane and
decline pretty quickly after purchasing. But the enjoyment of an experience,
it's like a nice wine. It gets better over time
as you age. Those memories do become more valuable, They
(20:48):
become an investment, they become an important asset. The other
thing that the researchers pointed out around this in this
study by Cornell was that your experiences are actually just
inherently less comparative. It's a lot harder to you know,
compare them to somebody else and feel like you're lacking
(21:08):
the same way that we can do with material objects.
And we also don't typically have buyers remorse when it
comes to memories. When it comes to experiences, because even
if they were terrible, they are still a story. So
if you want to spend your money better for your happiness,
give to others, and give to your memories rather than
(21:29):
to your kind of like material rather than to the
material side of things. So let's move on to our
third tip. Have one project, one thing that you are
actively trying to finish or accomplish or get better at.
I say this a lot on the podcast, so I'm
(21:50):
very sorry if I sound like a broken record at
this point, but I say it because it's important and
it's something that I believe in very deeply. Sometimes the
easiest thing to do isn't what's best for us. What's
best for us is the thing that requires a bit
more effort for a lot more gain. I think the
(22:10):
older we get, we do tend to become more passive
in our lives, especially during our free time, during our downtime,
because hours a long, life is exhausting, life is busy,
Everything just gets a bit harder. I think we have
all had that feeling at some point of just wanting
to take the path of least resistance through life, getting
(22:32):
home from work and just genuinely wanting to sit on
the couch and scroll. But when we were kids, when
we were teenagers, we often had the privilege of something
to work towards, something that actually gave us a sense
of drive and purpose. I think that we have lost
that a little bit now. And you know, everybody tries
(22:53):
to blame social media and technology. I'm going to actually
quickly jump on that bandwagon for a second. I think
with social media, if we're getting the same amount of
dopamine from saying other people do cool and rewarding stuff,
why would we need to do it ourselves? And the
reason why. The answer to that question is that we
(23:15):
need purpose. If we think about happiness as being made
up of four components, in my mind, they would be
joy and pleasure, connection, altruism and meaning doing something that
actually makes you feel like you are alive and contributing,
and just having a sense of purpose. So in twenty thirteen,
(23:38):
this group of researchers at UCLA they actually identified this
through some research they were doing on the two distinct
kinds of happiness. We have hedonic happiness and eudaemonic happiness.
Hopefully I'm pronounced that right. You demonic, Yeah, you demonic happiness.
There we go, correct me if I'm wrong. But hedonic
(24:02):
happiness comes from self gratification and pleasure seeking hedonic is
obviously relating to the idea of hedonism, prioritizing pleasure over
everything else. But you, demonic happiness comes from having a
deep sense of meaning and purpose in life, doing things
(24:22):
for others, but more so doing hard things that do
take time. Rather than getting all of your joy and
pleasure from instantly gratifying experiences, we tend to spend a
lot of time in hedonic happiness. We look to external
pleasures to make life enjoyable. Because you, demonic happiness is harder.
(24:48):
Simply put, it's just harder to obtain, but there are
so many benefits. So simply put, if you are in
a bit of an emotional rut right now, I think
creating meaning is an essential way to switch from adonic
happiness to eudonic happiness. Just have a little bit more
of that more sustainable form of joy in your life.
(25:10):
And we create that meaning by creating goals or things
that we can strive towards, because I think you know,
in that act of striving, we feel engaged and proactive, meaning,
we realize that we can do things to change our
lives and how we feel about it. Now, those goals
(25:32):
this big, very daunting idea of purpose. It doesn't have
to be as large or as scary as it sounds.
You just need to have something. And I prefer to
think about this as a project rather than thinking about
this huge mission that we all need to have. You
just need to have something. For some people. That is,
(25:53):
you know, running a marathon, perfect example, and also super timely,
because I think everybody I know right now seems to
be training for a marathon or some running event of
some sort. But you know, that's fabulous because you're working
towards something that is harder and bigger than yourself that
you actually can't achieve overnight. But I also have a
(26:15):
really good friend whose purposeful thing for the year is
hitting her fifty two book target on Goodreads. My dad,
for example, right now, is learning Japanese. You know that
is something that you progress towards. And for me, well,
it was finishing my book, but that has done so now.
It's kind of being consistent in the gym, right I
(26:36):
can't just like show up one day and you know,
hit all my prs and do everything perfectly. It is
once again the act of striving that is so so
meaningful in these situations. So just stop and pause with
me right now, and I want you to honestly ask yourself,
is there something in my life, anything that ischallenging me
(27:01):
or that I am working towards? Do I have a project?
Or when I finish work, when I finish uni, when
I say goodbye to all my friends? Is my only
function to scroll and consume? And is that really what
I was designed to do? Is that really how I
want to spend my life? Does it make me feel human?
(27:22):
Does it make you feel meaningful? You can still, of
course unwind in that way, but I just want to
encourage you to think about what else you are made
for and whether you actually would be happier if you
were putting time into something that you really had something
to show for it at the end of it all,
you really had something that you felt was important and
(27:44):
that you felt proud of. Alrighty, I have two more
tips for you, but firstly we are going to take
a small break and then we will be right back.
Welcome back. I have two final tips for you today,
and the first one takes place outdoors. If you want
(28:08):
to be happier, if that is what you are striving towards,
and I'm assuming that it is because you are listening
to this episode. You need to rewild yourself. You need
to quite literally touch some grass, get your feet stuck
in the dirt, you know, experience or as you look
at the stars, take a dive in the ocean. Pretty
(28:28):
much anything that gets you connected with nature, our literal
you know, natural habitat can boost serotonin beyond even some
of the strongest antidepressants. Now again, not a cure for
serious mental health concerns. I am never going to sit
here and say go off your medication and like get outdoors,
because I think that is ludicrous, that is ridiculous, that
(28:51):
is unethical to even suggest. But it is an important addition.
I think we are so detached from nature in today's world.
We are so like you, caught up in concrete and
indoor environments that we have lost touch with what makes
us wild and what makes us as a species, what
(29:13):
makes us connected to the world around us. And when
researchers have deliberately intervened and essentially forced people to go
outdoors as part of studies, the impact on their overall happiness,
on their udontic happiness, on their joy, on their genuine
joy and love for life, the results and the impact
of that is just honestly so impressive. So I have
(29:36):
three examples for you to take away with you today,
three examples of how we can really activate this part
of us that responds so well to nature. So in
twenty seventeen, there was a study on this and it
was run on a group of thirty eight Northern Californians,
so not a huge sample size, but just hear me out.
(29:56):
So these thirty eight Californians, sorry in Northern Californians, maybe
there is a distinction, I don't know. They were split
up into two groups. One group took a ninety minute
walk in nature every day and the other group did
that same walk in the city. At the end of
this study, have a guess who was having fewer negative thoughts.
(30:18):
Have a guess who had a better self esteem. Have
a guest who was reporting greater levels of happiness. It
was the people who were walking in the outdoors. The
urban walkers who were walking amongst the city did not
report the same significant amount of change when they kind
of controlled for the general serotonin in endorphin boost from exercise.
(30:42):
It was those who did it out in nature and
who were you know, actively rewilding themselves who really experienced
the most benefit. What's more, fMRI scans revealed less activity
in the brain region that plays a role in mood
disorders and negative thought patterns. These individuals had genuinely seen
(31:04):
their brains almost rewire to be more positive. So the
dirt example I gave before, you know it may have
sounded like a joke, me telling you to go out
and touch some dirt. You know, touch some dirt, and
they go willy nilly, you're happier, But there is actually
some evidence that the literal smell of mud of dirt
(31:24):
may lift your spirits. So what it comes down to
is actually this harmless bacteria that exists in the soil.
It's called Myobacterium vacate. So if you want to give that,
you know, fancy Latin name a quick google, what you're
going to find is that when you smell dirt, that
(31:46):
smell that you can remember right now, really picture it
smelling that like that fresh soil. What you're actually spelling
and is that specific bacteria. And when it enters your
olfactory center in your brain, it leases a whole wave
of euphoria and serotonin, so much so that in human
tests when cancer patients were administered this bacteria, They're moved,
(32:11):
despite their circumstances, despite this terrible, terrible disease, their outlook
greatly improved. It is like nature's antidepressant, this bacteria. It
is really you should google it. It has this strange impact
on our brain and how our neurons communicate. Even anecdotally,
(32:33):
I don't think I've ever met an unhappy person who
was gardening. I have never been miserable whilst repotting my plants,
or hiking, or taking my feet off and like squishing
them around in the mud. So one final study to
convince you of the healing power of the outdoors and
why if you are prioritizing happiness, you should be prioritizing
(32:57):
quite literally your outdoor time is this study that was
focused on what eating outdoors can do for our well being,
and it turns out that it can do quite a bit.
One thing that I hear a lot, and I think
it's super understandable, is that you know, I just don't
have time for that, And that is actually so reasonable.
If you are working from eight am to six pm
(33:19):
and it's the middle of winter and the sun is
you know, not even coming up until you're at work,
not even setting until you're home. How are you possibly
meant to, you know, go play in the dirt or
frolic in the ocean. How are you meant to do that?
I understand, you know, it's really difficult for me to
sit here and you know, give you this advice when
we are like, there's just practicalities that prevent me from
(33:40):
doing this. So the simple solution is spending your lunch
break that thirty minutes or our lunch break that we
all legally get, eating outside, or eating somewhere with windows
to at least see some kind of nature. Do not
sit at your desk and eat, please and thank you.
Do not sit in the middle of a crowded food
(34:04):
hall with no natural light and expect, you know, to
see a difference. So in twenty thirteen, another study for
you guys and full of them today. These scientists from
the University of Sussex. They measured the happiness of these
this group of employees who ate lunch in different locations.
So the results showed that workers they were actually happiest
(34:26):
when they ate their lunch on the beach. Of course
you're going to be happy doing that, but it's also
not reasonable that you can get from your offers to
the ocean so quickly, but even just getting outside in
the sun was a huge contributor to basically like staving
off misery. People who ate in parks, people who ate outdoors,
(34:46):
they had a more positive attitude about their jobs, about
their lives, about their connections than those who were eating
at a restaurant or sitting on their couch at home.
So if you want to be happy, even slightly, if
this is something you're consciously trying to do, prioritize your
(35:07):
outdoor time that one. You know, one change that you
can make is literally just sitting outside while you have
your lunch, something that you are already you know, it's
already factored in your day that you will have to
do this. I am going to finish up with my
most counterintuitive tip of this entire episode, one that you
(35:28):
will probably be surprised would show up in an episode
about happiness. Here it is you need to be sadder
more often. And let me explain why we often think
of happiness as the absence of sadness, but it's actually
a mastery of sadness. It is a recognition that shit
(35:51):
happens life sometimes hurts a lot, It is boring, It
can quite frankly be a little bit bland if we're
not searching for hedonistic pleasure at all times. But that
doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile. And it also doesn't
mean that we suppress those feelings and adopt the delusion
(36:13):
that everything is fine and hope that it will be.
We need to give ourselves permission to wallow. We need
to be tender, we need to feel, We need to
watch that sad movie. We need to let ourselves be
open about our emotions. There is a brilliant Vice article
about this back when Vice you know, it was actually good,
(36:35):
and it's called You'll be Happier if you let yourself
feel like crap, and I would really really recommend you
go and read it. We have such high standards when
it comes to our emotions like joy, like euphoria, like excitement,
like passion, like love. We of course want to feel
them all the time. That is so human to want
(36:56):
to feel amazing all the time, but it can create
a gap between expectation versus reality, and you know that
actually results in us sometimes feeling less happy overall because
we're disappointed that we can't feel happy all the time.
And I think, you know, we live in a time
(37:16):
when our culture is very obsessed with this idea of
constant happiness. And I know it is so ironic that
I am doing a whole episode devoted on this feeling
whilst I am saying that, But seriously, I do think
that maturing and developing and evolving is knowing that you
cannot be happy all the time. And this author to
Boor to Boor, that is their full name. She published
(37:40):
a study in twenty twenty three talking about how when
we as individuals rebrand sadness as valuable rather than as
something that we want to escape from. This transformation occurs
because the very expression of this emotion begins to normalize
it as part of our human can be, and instead
(38:01):
of only focusing on how it is maladaptive, how it
is unpleasant, how we want to avoid it, we think
about what it actually can give us. I think that
our ability to embrace our negative feelings provide so many benefits.
There have been so many papers on this, so much
evidence that people individuals like you and I, who accept
(38:24):
all of our emotions without judgment, we are less likely
to ruminate on you know, those hard times, we are
less likely to suppress mental experiences, you know, which typically
backfires to only amplify those experiences in the end. And
we are also less likely to experience meta emotional reactions,
(38:48):
which is feeling, you know, upset about being upset, feeling
even more unhappy about the fact that we are unhappy.
You know. There was this fabulous article. It's in the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the authors put
it this way, when we accept, versus judge, our mental experiences,
(39:08):
we let those experience you know, experiences run there natural
and also relatively short lived course, rather than focusing on
them and exacerbating them. So that's my final tip. Express
your sadness. Find ways to communicate it to your friends,
find a home for it, find an expression for it,
(39:30):
find a way to sit with it even when it's uncomfortable.
And the research tells us that counterintuitively, it actually makes
us happier in the long term. Here are some quick
final notes for me on this. You don't have to
do all of these things, you know, that's a lot
of work. Just choose one or two of these tips
and implement them slowly, implement them over time, and just
(39:54):
notice whether something changes. You know, I'm not going to
choose which one you should do first. I think that
all five are really important, but whichever one resonates with
you most, that is the one that you should choose.
And I also want to say one more time, don't
forget the other core components of your wellbeing. I know
I said I wouldn't talk about exercise or eating well
(40:16):
or going to therapy, but you know, those are our foundations.
You can't really accept your sadness or have a project
or think that going outdoors is going to do as
much as getting those basics down pat will do in
the first place. So really I'm rooting for you these.
You know, with small changes comes big, big impact and
(40:39):
big results. And I just want you to remember the
happiness pie. When life feels overwhelming, you get to control
forty percent of it. That is all up to you
and your perception. So I'm sending a lot of love
and strength. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free
to share it with somebody else might also benefit from it.
(41:02):
Who you think might get something from this, And if
you do feel cool to do so, please leave a
review five stars. Of course it would really make my day.
It helps the show grow. It helps this information get
to more people and it just makes me really happy.
Make sure you're following along as well, so you know
when new episodes are coming out. If you have feedback
(41:23):
an episode, suggestion, something to say, something to contribute, something
that you even disagree with, whatever it is, please feel
free to follow me and DM me at that Psychology
Podcast with all your questions, queries, concerns, inquiries, topic suggestions,
whatever it is. I would love to hear from you,
and as always, we will be back on Friday with
(41:45):
another episode
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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