July 21, 2025 • 46 mins
On this episode of Wide Open, Ashlyn Harris sits down with emotional expert, scientist, and Yale professor Dr. Laurie Santos to talk about that thing we’re all chasing: happiness. Why isn’t it as easy to be happy, to experience joy, as it should be? How do we recognize the moments we’re heading over the edge, and pull ourselves back? Newsflash: it’s not your fault. Tips, tricks, and digressions into sports metaphors abound.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
All right, hello and welcome to another episode of Wide
Open with Ashland Harris. Today, I am so excited to
be talking to Yale professor, scientist, podcaster and happiness expert
doctor Lori Santos. Doctor Santos, Welcome to the show. Thank
you so much for being here. What a important time
(00:32):
right now.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
It's so good to meet you, be here with you.
You are the guru everyone talks about you. Welcome to
the show.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, thank you so much for having me on. It's
an honor. You know.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Wide Open means a lot of things in life, whether
it's sport, whether it's your personal journey, whether you know,
it's just about being honest and vulnerable in a lot
of ways. And what a better conversation to really just
dive into who you are. I'm just curious to start
(01:05):
the show by saying, who are you? How do you
show up in the world outside of what you do,
because that's a big important factor of this show.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, yeah, well, I think you know one of you know,
one of the reasons I study happiness and study well
being is that, like I'm curious about it in my
own life, right, you know, like this is something that
you know, I occasionally struggle with a lot. You know,
I got really interested in the science of happiness in
part because I was seeing such mental health issues in
my college students, right, I mean right now. Nationally, more
(01:35):
than forty percent of college students report being too depressed
a function. Over sixty percent say that they're overwhelmingly anxious,
like our students are struggling. But the reason I really
got into this was that I was noticing some of
the same patterns in myself. You know, I wasn't experiencing
suicidality or like clinical depression, but I was just watching
like stress and overwhelm just take the joy out of
(01:56):
the stuff that I was experiencing in life. And I
just thought, you know, I need to teach my student
skills to deal with this stuff, but I also need
to learn these skills for myself. And so part of
my journey that like sounds scientific and sounds nerdy and
the guruy and whatever, is really a journey to kind
of help myself and try to learn from myself what
are the things that really matter in life.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
And it's such an important thing to talk about because
everyone just expects it. Everyone just expects us to be happy,
even though we live in.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
This really complex culture and.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
World where things are very different than they used to be.
And yeah, I'm curious though, what got you here? Before
we dive into the incredible work you do as a
scientist professor.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
What got you here?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
What was the driving factor to say, this is what
I want to do, This matters, and this will change
the landscape of how people are on the pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah, well, for me, it started you know my little
girl you know career path was like I think I
was always a psychologist at heart. I was always like
curious about people, especially curious about adults. I was like
the little kid that the parents would be like, get
out of here, go play with your friends, like, you know,
stop paying attention to us. So I think I was
sort of fascinated by human nature, like ever since I
was a little kid, And so you know that naturally
(03:20):
drew me. And it's like a nerdy academic to study psychology.
When I first started, I was really interested in this
question about what makes the human mind special? And why
are you and I here having a podcast where we
talk about going wide open and know other you know,
chimpanzee or amiba is doing the same thing, right, like,
why are we on the only species that gets to
do this fun stuff? And so I spent a lot
(03:41):
of my time studying animals trying to figure out what
makes humans unique. I work with this kind of strange
population of monkeys that lives on an island off the
coast of Puerto Rico, studying them and comparing them with humans.
I just spent a lot of time like studying these
very Ivory Tower questions, but it was really interacting with
my students where I started to realize how how many
young people are struggling that I thought, you know, my
(04:03):
field of psychology might have some answers for this stuff.
I started to realize that, like, you know, the skills
that people were studying in this field of positive psychology,
those are the kinds of things that like everybody should
learn about. And so I think my transition happened from
kind of being more of like an Ivory Tower professor
to thinking about, like, Okay, how can we translate these
skills into like easy ways that people can use this stuff.
(04:23):
How can we communicate this stuff outside the university so
that everybody who's struggling in this world, as you mentioned,
which especially in the modern day is so tough. How
can we give everybody these tools?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
And I love that.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
And you know what I love so much about who
you are and how you show up and how you've
dedicated your life to this work.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Is you make it really digestible.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
You make it easy to understand for everyday people wanting
the same thing, joy and happiness. And I'm curious with that.
Is there a difference between joy and happyiness?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think you know.
One of the things, one of the things we have
to start with when we develop this science of happiness
is like to get some definitions on the table. So
let's first like talk about how scientists define happiness, because
it tends to be a little bit different, I think,
than how lay people think about happiness. So scientists divine
happiness as this sense of being happy in your life
and being happy with your life. So let's break that down.
(05:24):
So being happy in your life is sort of the
extent to which you have lots of positive emotions and
have a decent ratio between your positive emotions and your
negative emotions. It doesn't mean happiness, doesn't mean having no
negative emotions. I think we'll talk about this the negative
emotions are normative. We don't want to get into toxic positivity,
like we want them to be there, but ideally you
balance them out with a set of good emotions. Right.
(05:47):
Being happy with your life is just your sense that
like things feel good, You're satisfied with your life, you
have a sense of meaning and purpose. You kind of
think your life is going well. So scientists call this
a kind of affective or emotional part of happiness, kind
of cognitive or sort of thinking part of happiness. Now
we get to joy, and how that's different. I would
say that joy is sort of an emotional state, kind
(06:08):
of that being happy in your life part that so
many of us need to experience. Right, So it's kind
of one component of being happy. But what scientists would
think about it differently. And so the goal of all
the work that I do is to figure out, Okay,
what are some tips of strategies behavior as mindsets that
we can engage in to make us a little bit
more happy in our lives and hopefully a little bit
more happy with our lives too.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
I love that, and you know I'm thinking in real
time and why this is this conversation is so valuable
for me personally as you know you might know, I
am a newly retired professional athlete.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
I was lucky enough to be asked to speak.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
At the Wellness Oasis with Deepak Chopra and Art Basle.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
And what my topic on stage was was about joy.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And happiness and in the landscape, the current landscape, you know,
how do we show up and choose joy and happiness?
And I got really candid and I got really open
because I think faking joy and happiness is really toxic.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
And I got.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Really vulnerable, and I like really got wide open in
front of a lot of people, and I said, happiness
is really difficult and joy is really difficult for me
personally as a professional athlete because of my job, because
of the expectation of my job.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I don't know what happiness is.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
I don't know what joy is because if I wasn't suffering,
I wasn't doing my job. And it really like gave
me whiplash in a lot of ways. And I left
that and I was like, Wow, what does happiness mean
to me? Did I even enjoy my career?
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
You know, I win a world championship. Great? Did that
check the box?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I don't even sit in it to enjoy it and
the journey, the hard work.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah. This this, this is a bias that psychologists called
the arrival fallacy, where you when we're kind of planning
for something, we kind of get in our head, you know,
I'm going to get that national championship and that'll be it.
I'll kind of leave like halfway ever after when I
arrive at that point, I'll be good. But then we
get there, and what the research shows is it's never
doesn't make us as happy as we think, and it
(08:40):
doesn't make us as happy for as long as we think,
And then I think we're kind of like it's that
whiplash you talked about about, Like now I'm blindside. What's
the next thing. Well, I guess I need to get
an international championship, or I need to win the next one,
or I need to like you know, be MVP or
whatever it is. We just like immediately jump on to
the next carot. And I think that, you know, like
for you, as professional athlete, those carrots were you know,
(09:02):
accolades in your sport. I think for other people it
can be money, it can be trying to find the
perfect relationship, you know, getting married, getting that next promotion
at work. I think so many of us fall prey
to this arrival fallacy where we're not enjoying the journey
at all. We just have this kind of you know,
this carrot in the future in our minds, and we
chase there. But even in the rare cases where we
(09:22):
get it, you know, when we achieve the excellence we wanted,
we're not satisfied with that. We just move on to
the next hurdle.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And I unfortunately think our culture now has really affected our.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Ability to be present.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
You know, you talk about social media, you talk about
you know, these kids at a very early age. Just
like you said, whether it's athletics or academic, these kids
are being professionalized at such a young age. Like when
I grew up playing, I played everything like I When
I think about my child childhood, I do think about happiness,
(10:02):
and I do think about joy because I didn't have
the expectation of being the greatest, you know, to win
these championships, to pave the way for these all these
young women looking up you know, to our team and
us as athletes and individuals like I just don't see
kids playing outside like I did as as a young child.
(10:25):
Has this really affected our children and how they see
themselves and how they view happiness.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Yeah, for sure. A former Stanford dean has christened this
term cages of enrichment. Right. The idea is like, you know,
you want to give your kid, you know, I don't know,
access to the best like soccer team, so they can
play and get good at it. But because all of
these kinds of things that we're doing to help kids
feel like there's kind of pre professional that they're kind
of very goal oriented, that you have to kind of
get to the point and be excellent all the time.
(10:54):
It's almost like a cage. Like, yeah, they're getting this
sort of enrichment, but they're sort of trapped in it, right,
And I think that you're exactly right that this kind
of thing is happening more and more and more from
athletics to you know, academics. I mean, I talk to
so many of my student athletes who will say things
like you, like you kind of think in this moment
of like sort of sharing a deep dark secret of
(11:14):
like I hate my sport. I hate it. I just
don't want to do it anymore. And it's so incredible
that these students who dedicated so much time to being
excellent this thing, you know, hate this thing that they've
become excellent at. And I just think that's just such
an indictment of our culture right now, and in some
ways an indictment of parenting. I think parents sometimes get
a lot wrapped up in this sort of carot chasing
(11:36):
and really want their kids to be excellent at whatever
they're doing. And so I think parents need to step
away and ask the question, Okay, do you really want
that excellence at the cost of your kid's mental health,
at the cost of their enjoyment, at the cost of
their kind of relishing the journey along the way?
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And I love that you bring that point up because
it is really important to me. And I get this
question a lot is these parents like bumba me and
is like, are like, what advice can you give my child?
Your child eight like, yes, exactly, My advice is to you.
My advice is exactly what you said. This is supposed
(12:14):
to be the best time of their life.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
And I'm like, just they should just be having fun.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Yeah, And what we know one of the things we
know about the power of fun, the power of playfulness, right,
which is often how it's defined right, which is that
you're doing something not for some extrinsic reward, like you're
trying to get a trophy, you're trying to you know,
get into a good college. You're just doing it for
the intrinsic internal enjoyment of things. Research shows that the
more we play, especially when you're young, the better we
develop stress coping strategies that just like doing things that
(12:43):
you enjoy can help you kind of gain resilience when
the tough stuff in life comes up, you know, not
to mention, it's also just like fun, so it makes
you feel good and gives you positive emotions. And I
think you're right. I think we really have moved away
from fun. And it kind of raises a question of, like,
you know, Okay, if you're kind of a person like
you who's been doing this for so long, how do
you step out of it? How do you get back
(13:03):
to what researchers call a journey mindset where you're kind
of not waiting for the arrival but sort of enjoying
the journey along the way. How do you fight back
against these cultural tendencies?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Oh, and I love that. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
We'll be right back after this, you know, as I
shared with you about a very humbling moment for me
now trying to understand my identity outside of sport. I
(13:41):
think that conversation of joy and happiness really split me
wide open. And I ask every person on this podcast
show that you know, what was the defining moment in
your life that really split you wide open, that really changed.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Everything for you, that made you sit.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Back and be like, oh, like this is going to
make or break me.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
What was that moment for you?
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah? Well, I think it came a little bit after
I sort of dove into this field of the science
of happiness. As I mentioned, I was working really closely
with these students. I was actually living with them on
campus in this role as a head of college on campus.
This is this kind of weird role at Yale where
you're like, as a faculty member, you live with students
and eat with them in the dining hall and kind
of you're just like in student life much more closely.
And that was where I started to see really this
(14:35):
college student mental health crisis up close and personal. Right.
So I developed this new class that idea. As I'm
teaching students all these great strategies, you know, my class
went a little bit viral because everybody pays attention to
what's happening at Yale, and I think there was this
question about, like, oh my gosh, these kids who are
nineteen and at Yale University, if they are all desperate
to take a class on happiness, like, you know, what
(14:55):
about the rest of us? You know, So there's news articles,
there's I started my podcast, which came soon after that,
and juggling being a professor, being ahead of college, being
a podcast host, being an expert and a speaker on happiness.
And that was when the pandemic hit, and you know,
there was a lot more you know, need for folks
who are interested in science. I want to talk, and honestly,
(15:16):
I just got really burned out, especially the part about
running this college on campus when we had kind of
unceremoniously kicked everyone out for COVID. It was just really hard,
and I just started to notice all the kind of
clinical signs of burnout, you know, the one we think about,
which is a sense of emotional exhaustion. But it's not
like the usual physical exhaustion. It's like even if you
(15:37):
take a break, you just kind of can't even you're
just emotionally not able to keep doing it. That's sort
of clinical sign number one. Clinical sign number two is
what folks call depersonalization, but it's really a sense of cynicism.
It's just like everybody is getting on your last nerve, right,
you just start of interpret everyone around you's intentions as bad.
(15:59):
And I knowed this in a kind of really embarrassing
moment that I've talked about before, but it still kind
of strikes me when I talk about it. As a
head of college, you often get, you know, emergency situations
from students who might need, you know, finances or need something.
And I got an email from a student that I
was really close with who desperately needed a root canal. Right,
his tooth was all messed up. He needed some money
for a root canal. And instead of what I hope
(16:21):
would be my usual reaction of just compassion, like oh,
this poor kid, he's in the middle of midterms and
he you know, so sucks, you know, my immediate reaction
was like, oh, I have to send another damn email.
And I was like WHOA, Like that is something's wrong there?
Like I ha, do you to kind of think about this,
you know? And so that was clinical sign number two.
Of my burnout and then clinical sign number three is
(16:42):
that you experience what what researchers call a sense of
personal ineffectiveness, which is this idea that like, even if
I was doing my job perfectly, even if I was
hitting every mark, every deadline, it still wouldn't matter. It
still would kind of feel meaningless. And that was really
happening during COVID, where I'm like, what are we even
you know, what are we even doing? Like running a
college where everyone's like on screens and zooms and there's
(17:04):
no athletics, right, there's no music, there's no anything happening
on campus, and so it was really it was really
that moment, you know, when I got that email and
had that reaction that I was like, I have to
make change, Like I am not living up to all
this stuff that I'm teaching other people, and so I
stepped away from my role as a head of college.
I took a like an unpaid year leave from Yale.
(17:27):
I really tried to get more in touch with kind
of what I was doing wrong in the spots where
I wasn't following my own advice. And that was really transformative, right,
I think I got back into social connection. I developed
some better self talk strategies to give myself, you know,
a little self compassion despite being a kind of perfectionist
in my own ways. I think it was really important.
(17:49):
It was an important realization and it's been a journey
since then for.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Me, and I'm sure it took a lot to get
to the place of understanding what burnout actually is and
having a enough like agency over your own mental health
and well being to say I need to put myself first,
which you know, a lot of people don't understand, you know,
(18:16):
they're themselves enough or don't have the ability to take
a step back to say, hmm, I'm I'm heading into
this place and I really need a reset. Y.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah. So I think another thing is that, you know,
we mentioned a little bit negative emotions before. I think,
you know, especially people kind of type A folks who
push themselves. I throw professional athletes into this category, right,
you know, with all you talked about suffering, it's kind
of like whenever you experience a negative emotion, it could
be like inconvenient, like, oh, that sense of overwhelm I'm
feeling right now, that sense of burnout. Don't have time
(18:51):
for that on this random Tuesday. I'm going to push
that away, right, And I think what I came to
realize is that, you know, our negative emotions are kind
of like the dash or light in our car. You know,
if your tire light goes on or your engine light
goes on, that's inconvenient. You might not be able to
pull over right at that second to deal with this.
But like, unless you deal with it soon and take
(19:11):
it seriously, you know your car is going to get
much more messed up. And I think our bodies and
our minds wind up getting much more messed up when
we're not listening to our negative emotions, because they're like
an alert signal. Right. If we're experiencing loneliness, that's telling
you something important about you need a little bit more
social connection. If you're experiencing a sense of overwhelm at
work or burnout, that's a really important signal that you've
(19:33):
got to take something off your plate. If you're experiencing
sometimes resistance, you know, this is the thing. I think
my students and my student athletes are feeling like I
hate my sport. I'm like that is an honest signal
that something about this relationship and this dynamic and your
values have to change, right, And so I think we
ignore those negative emotions at our peril, even if they're
ones that are really inconvenient. That suggests, you know, a big,
(19:55):
wide open change needs to come. We still need to
pay attention to those absolutely.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So what would you say is like the biggest misconception
about happiness.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Yeah, we talked about one of them, right, which is
this idea that happiness is really about no negative emotions. Right,
that's toxic positivity. That's just wrong. A rich, good life
is going to include negative emotions because they're your signal
for like, you know what you really need to kind
of experience more joy and be more satisfied with your life.
I think a different misconception is that happiness is all
(20:28):
about your circumstances, right, It's what you achieve in life.
It's your money, it's your accolades, it's you know, you
got that national championship. But those things just don't impact
our happiness for as long or for as much as
we even think. And so I think that's honestly, the
biggest misconception I see in my students is like I
have to change something in my life or get something
(20:49):
or earn something or win something to feel happy, and
study after study just shows that's not it.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
So if trust me, I live this, and I just like,
I love your work so much, and my brain right
now is just literally doing cartwheels or jumping jacks. I
really don't know which one, but something in between. What
are like the tangible things.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
That people can do.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
To get to a place of happiness, Like how when
you are doing your work and you're you know, you're
talking to people like me. I'll be very honest, I
feel more at home and suffering than I do in happiness.
Not looking for like a therapy session. But I think
a lot of people feel this because the journey to
(21:41):
happiness is like not as easy. Like people get so
comfortable and suffering and so comfortable and misery and so
at home in that space of being in the trenches.
I'm just curious of what are actionable steps that we
could be taking or checking ourselves or rewiring our self
(22:05):
talk and self worth to putting one step one foot
in front of the other and really like practicing the
art of happiness.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, well, a big step is changing your mindset, changing
yourself talk, as you mentioned, And I think there's a
couple of things we can start with. Right. One is
if you're kind of in the mindset of suffering and
that's what you gravitate towards, it'll take your mind a
little bit of training to notice some of the good
stuff in the world. So this has often been called
like a gratitude practice, where you try to notice the
(22:37):
things that you're grateful for. If that feels heavy, which
it does for some people, I like to suggest a
slightly different practice, which is to notice the delights in
the world. Gratitude can feel really heavy of like, oh
my gosh, I have so much privilege. It kind of
feels overwhelming. But delights are like, oh my gosh, you know,
my morning coffee cup. You know, when I was walking
over here to get set up for the podcast, there
(22:58):
was just like somebody driving by, like black some like
Motley Crue. And also that's like a little delight, you know,
it's a little yeah. And so it's like delights are
great because they're they're just tiny, you know, They're just
these moments where your heart's like, oh, you know, like warm,
happy feelings, right, And the act of noticing them is
it doesn't seem like it, but what you're really doing
is practicing over time, right, just like you do you know,
(23:20):
sprints or I don't know, like you know, kicking this.
I was never a soccer player, I mess up all
my soccer metaphors, right, But like, just like you do
that kind of practice and athletics, the act of noticing
delights makes it easier for your brain to notice them, right.
You're kind of retraining what your mind naturally pays attention to.
So if your brain is like on the lookout for
things that you're grateful for, things that are cool, things
(23:42):
that are delightful, you'll kind of train away what's often
called a negativity bias. Our mind's just evolutionarily naturally notice
the negative stuff, but you can kind of train that
away with a little bit of practice. And so that's
kind of finding delights, finding gratitude. I think that can
be a a big mindset shift for a lot of us.
Another one that I think sounds like, you know, perfectionists
(24:02):
or folks who are kind of their whole career and
how they approach things we're suffering. I think a big
mindset shift there that can really help is to develop
a little bit of self compassion, which sounds like wooy
and whatever, but really it's just the practice of talking
to yourself and giving yourself the benefit of the doubt,
just like you would with a good friend or someone
(24:23):
you really cared about. And so Kristinneff, who's a researcher
at UTI Austin, does a lot of great work on
self compassion, and she sort of defines it as having
these three steps. One is sort of mindfulness, like I'm
struggling right now, this sucks right now, I'm feeling really overwhelmed.
Right now, you sort of notice where you are and
what could be tough. You kind of mindfully notice that.
(24:44):
The second step is what she calls calmon humanity, which
is especially hard for the perfectionists, but you know, practice
you get good at it. Common humanity is just and
that makes sense that I'm overwhelmed and struggling because I'm
just human. I'm not like a superhuman robot. I'm not
like the perfect you that's never going to make a mistake.
I'm actually human, and it makes sense that I'm going
(25:04):
through this and it's a normative experience. I'm not alone,
right That's a common humanity step. And then the final
step is what she calls self kindness. This is kind
of treating yourself like you treat a friend. You say,
you know, what do I need right now? What can
I take off my plate? Right? And this idea of
treating yourself like you treat a friend, I think is
a helpful way to frame self compassion for perfectionists, because
(25:25):
I think sometimes perfectionists confuse self compassion with self indulgence.
They think that being nice to yourself is like just
letting yourself off the hook, just screwing up. But really,
what self compassion is, it's like being a really good coach,
like a really empathic coach. Like if you are actively
screwing up, your coach wouldn't be like, that's fine, I'll
just pretend it's okay, but they would be like, hey,
(25:46):
what is up? What is going on? Can we talk
about this and like figure it out? A good empathic
coach would go into like problem solving mode but not
accusing mode, right. And that's the sort of attitude you
bring to yourself. It's not like you're can of letting
yourself off the hook if you're really screwing up, but
you come in there with like a little bit of
compassion and problem solving rather than just like beating yourself
(26:08):
up all the time, and self compassion can be an
incredibly powerful mindset. Research shows that it allows you to
treat your future self better. Suit eat healthier, you exercise
more when you're a little bit more self compassionate. If
you have a big project, you're less likely to procrastinate
because you're not beating yourself up, So it makes it
easier to do hard things. And self compassion research shows
(26:28):
can actually help even in just really extreme situations of suffering,
like trauma. Kristin has done work with Afghan and Iraqi
veterans who've been in combat, and she founds that teaching
them these self compassion strategies mean they get lower rates
of PTSD post traumatic stress disorder even going through trauma.
So it's kind of like it's like a really good strategy,
(26:51):
but is one that can be really hard for perfectionists,
so it too kind of takes a little bit of
time and practice to get used to.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, and I think what it boils down to is
just giving yourself grace, which I'm learning in real time.
And I say this all the time. You know, there's
so many people that have opinions of me and my
performance always, you know, the days of making a mistake
and walking off the field and not thousands, if not
(27:20):
millions of people watching it and having an opinion on it.
It's been a weird process growing up in a space
of social media with people having opinions of you, and
then you internalize the way they see you. And it's
just this really wild spiral that I had to go
(27:44):
through as a as a performer, player, perfectionist, all these things.
And what I did know is no one was harder
on me than me, and I really had to learn grace.
I had to really humanize myself a lot, because I
am not a perfect person. I am not a perfect athlete,
(28:07):
and I am going to make mistakes all the time.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I really hold on to that grace part.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
I really hold on to understanding boundaries, which I'm learning
to set now, because for every five hundred beautiful, nice
comments that people think I'm so lovely and I'm doing
great work and they're so encouraging, the two, three, four,
five comments that absolutely destroy me I weirdly hold on
(28:35):
to completely.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
I mean, that is the negativity bias, right Like, your
brain can see hundreds and hundreds of nice things and
the one terrible thing. It's like, oh, let me lock
onto that. We do the same thing with comparison, right.
You know, you can be a better player than you are,
a better player than literally billions of other people on
the planet, but the one or two players that are
better than you, like that will stick in your mind,
(28:58):
and whatever your comparison is at the time, your brain
will lock onto the one that makes you feel worse
about yourself. I was doing I was doing some training
with professional basketball players and I was showing the power
like how bad our brains are at comparison. And I
was asking them like, you know, what, what's the comparison
point for like, you know, free throws? And I was like, oh,
(29:18):
that's Steph Curry, you know, because he's so good at it.
Like yeah, I was like, what's the comparison point for
you know, I don't know how much people are earning
at the time. Stuff was making a lot and they're like, oh, yeah,
Steph Curry again. And I was like, Okay, what's the
comparison point for height? And they're like, well, that's not
Steph Curry, you know, because he's kind of short. He's like,
that's like taco fail. He's like really tall. I'm like
Why did your brain let stuff off the hook for
that one? Why didn't it like allow you to feel
better because you're taller than him. It's like, that's just
(29:40):
not how brains work, you know. And so if it's
your performance at work, you know, you're gonna pick the
highest performer at work. If it's your look, she'll pick
someone off social media.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
It's like whatever you are feeling is relevant to your
identity at the time, you tend to pick comparison points
that make you look the worst possible, right, And because
you know, know, none of us are perfect, there's gonna
always be some dimension on which we're not, you know,
the best ever in the history of universe, and that's
just going to make us feel kind of crappy. There's
(30:10):
a very famous study on this, on this kind of
form of comparison that was done actually with athletes, So
it was with Olympic athletes on the metal stand, just
asking kind of who's happiest, and of course you predict,
like you know, when you win a gold medal, you're
going to be the most happy. It's the gold medalists
who are the most happy, and they are happy. But interestingly,
if you look at the silver medalists, they're not kind
of second happiest. They're actually showing emotions on the metal
(30:34):
stand that look like contempt, deep sadness, grief. Right, and
you're like, oh my gosh, you're second best in the world.
You're taking home a metal for your country. Why do
you feel so crappy? Well, they feel crappy in part
because of this comparison. There's a really salient thing they
didn't get, which is the gold medal. But what's interestingly
is if you look at if you look at bronze medalists,
you might predict that they'd be experiencing even more contempt
(30:56):
and grief than the silver medalists, but not so. There's
sailing comparison isn't gold. You know, they weren't gonna you know,
they're multiple points away or multiple seconds away or whatever,
and whatever sport they're in. Their sailing comparison is like,
oh my gosh, if I was just a little bit worse,
I wouldn't get any metal at all. And so it
turns out that if you look at on the stand,
the bronze medalists on average are like smiling, more like
(31:18):
feeling this relief. They're feeling ecstatic even though objectively they
actually did worse than silver medallists, they're feeling better. And
so my joke from you know, these studies with Olympic
athletes is instead of looking for the silver lining, we
all have to look for the bronze lining, right, We
need to look at the spot where you know it
might not be as good as we are, like find
(31:38):
comparisons that kind of make you feel a little bit
better about your own identity.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And that is so that is I love what you
said there, and it's so important. This is wide open
and I'm your host, Ashlyn Harris.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
You know, in the culture of sport is that, you know,
really contradicts what we were trying to talk.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
About what we're unlearning in a lot of ways, because
they teach you to suffer. They teach you.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
That that's how you become the best. And now that
I'm on the other side, I'm like, holy shit, I
have so much unlearning to do because of it and
because of how it now affects how I move in
the real world.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
How how does that.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Make you think based on all the studies you've done,
based on your life commitment in this you know, happiness
section of psychology. Like I just feel now that I
think back on my younger self, I'm like, oh my gosh,
no wonder.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
I can't sleep. I always think someone's working hard than me.
No wonder.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
I have this weird complex that nothing is ever enough,
that how I do anything is how I do everything,
and like, I run these things through my head because
I'm so branded to do so, and it really does
affect my overall well being and happiness and how I
show up for my friends, my work, my.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Family, my kids.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
And I'm curious what you think about this, because it
is a part of our culture as athletes to be
brainwashed to suffer because that's what makes us great.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah, well, I think this is I mean, that's a theory, right,
that what makes athletes great is that you have to
force them to suffer. And we have this kind of
theory in a lot of performance careers and domains.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
I did some work with retired Navy seals, you know,
and they have similar kinds of phrases eat the pain, right.
Oh yeah, things right. But it raises a question of like,
is that the best way to perform?
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Right?
Speaker 3 (33:56):
It turns out that if you look at performance data
you often find is that people's overall levels of mental
health correlate with their performance in all kinds of different domains,
including athletics. Right. I think we have this assumption that like,
you know, suffer suffer, suffer, no pain, no gain, push
through it is the right move. But it might be
that like recognizing your own boundaries, recognizing your limitations, you know,
(34:21):
that might actually make athletes who not only perform really well,
but might have longevity in the sport part because they
continue to enjoy it and they don't hate it. Right,
And I do think there are some athletes out here
there that, despite their excellence, have trained in ways that
are like less kind of you know, eat the pain
and more like self compassion. On my show, I talked
(34:43):
to the Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwan and was surprised that,
you know, even though she just like achieved such you know,
excellence at her sport, she kind of was able to
maintain a little bit of a journey mindset. Somehow she
kind of fought off all those arrival fallacy kinds of things,
and she had these lovely examples of it. You know.
She talked about when she would go to the Olympics.
Her favorite part was that she would get to skate
(35:06):
across the ice where they had the Olympic rings embedded in,
and she talked about like skating over those colors and
just trying to say, I'm just going to be present
with like, I don't care about what happens. I just
kind of want to be present with this, right. And
so I think somehow there are excellent athletes who've avoided
this suffering mindset. I think as a culture, we're not
good at that, and we push because we think that
that's the only way to become excellent. But I think
(35:28):
more and more as people see the research, they realize, actually,
you perform better like with self compassion. Actually you have
longer careers, right, longer more successful careers if you treat
yourself well. And so I hope is that my hope
is that a new generation of coaches who see these
real performance dat are going to say, hang on, maybe
we can achieve the same kind of performance in sport,
(35:50):
but do it with a little bit more compassion, like
a kind of smart way that kind of understands psychology better.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
And I love that, and I wish I knew more
while I was young because I do. I agree with you.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I think if I could have found more happiness and
joy through the journey, I think I would have been
a better teammate. I think I would have been a
better human. I think I would have been a better, like,
you know, person outside of sports too. I just I
felt that I carried that mindset in everything I did.
(36:30):
And you just brought up something that really.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Made me think.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
You said something about boundaries, and I don't think we've
really touched on that with the landscape of social media.
You know, let's pull away a little bit outside of sport.
The current landscape of our country, new presidency, things are
(36:56):
bonkers right now. It's really affecting everyone overall.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Well being, mental health. As a queer woman who has
adopted two black children, I'm terrified most days. I got
to be really honest. How do we start setting boundaries?
How do we.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Help protect ourselves in a landscape where you know, we're
always picking this damn thing up and checking what everyone
else is doing.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
The country's on fire.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Everything is just like whoa spiraling absolutely out of control.
And it does affect the way we move, It does
affect the way we show up, It does affect the
way we see ourselves. How do we set boundaries, like,
how do we really figure out a way to protect
our peace?
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah? Well, I think the first step gets back to
something we spoke a little bit about before, which is
like mindfully noticing these negative emotions. I think it helps
to kind of notice what you're feeling after you're on
your phone. Right, So, say you, you know, scroll through
Instagram or look at what the news is showing you,
and you know, at least I'm like you, like the
last New Week's wonder're having this conversation, it's been like
(38:10):
utter terror, utter frustration, that kind of sense of loneliness
and disconnection, just like yucky, yucky feelings. Right, But I
think there's a moment to take a breath and notice
those feelings, right like, because they're not you know, this
is what the administration is. This is kind of where
we find ourselves breath, notice and ask the question, Okay,
what do I need right now? How can I take
(38:31):
care of myself? Right? And often what you realize is
like it's not another half hour scrolling through the same
news feed, right, it's you know, to put the phone
away and go spend time with your kids, right it's
to put the phone away and just like take a
deep breath, maybe move your body around a little bit
so you can get some endorphins, right, Like, it's really
asking yourself what can I do to take care of myself?
(38:52):
And a very practical kind of set of strategies that
I often use that I teach my students is this
very specific meditation practice that was popularized by the meditation
teacher tar Brock. It goes by the acronym of rain
RAI in which stands for recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture.
And so you know, let's say you're scrolling through the
newsfeed and you see what's going on in the world
(39:13):
right now, and you just you know, that's when you say, okay,
do a quick rain, take a step away, recognize what
are the specific emotions I'm going through, and really try
to categorize them, Like this time, it's just like it's anxiety,
or it's anchor, or it's just overwhelmed, Like I just
feel like the problems of the world can't fit with
everything I have on my plate. Just kind of notice
(39:34):
and try to categorize what you're feeling. That's step one. Recognize.
Then you say the next one is a hard step.
You say, allow, just gonna allow those feelings to be
there just as they are. Right. I think this is
the spot where your training is as an athlete comes in. Right.
You're good at allowing pain or allowing things. You're gonna
allow these emotions and sit with them and look at them, right,
(39:54):
But you give your brain something to do while you're
doing that, And that's the eye step. Investigate. You say, Okay,
deep breath, when I'm feeling the sense of overwhelming anxiety,
where do I experience it in my body? You really
kind of get deep. Is it in my chest? Maybe
my brow is furrowed? Whatever. And the reason this step
works is, you know, there's so much work in clinical
psychology and clinical training that talks about how our emotions,
(40:15):
our cravings, they're sort of like a wave. Right when
we first start to pay attention to them, they'll kind
of go up, and they might feel more intense when
you're really looking at it. But if we give our
emotions time, they'll just sort of pass like a wave.
This is often a process that's called urge surfing, and
that investigates step. Let you do that because you're looking
directly at it. Like, oh, my chest, my body's fluttering,
(40:36):
my stomach feels gross. But you're like feeling that thing
head on, and inevitably in a couple minutes, usually like
three to five minutes. A lot of the science suggests
that will pass, but you don't stop there. There's one
last step of rain, and that's the end nurture. You say,
what can I take off my plate? What do I
need right now? Sometimes those answers will be inconvenient. Right,
(40:58):
It's like I got to ask somebody for help, right,
I need to, you know, cancel these meetings that feel important.
I need to really take a break. But kind of
give yourself that grace and kind of do that. I
think rain is a really nice way to notice the
bad things in the world, recognize and allow like we
might not be able to solve them, and that sucks.
(41:19):
But deep breath, let's feel that emotion and kind of
let it take its course.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
And that's important what you just said, because I do
find that the times I get the most overwhelmed are
when I can't control things.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
There's a lot of this world I can't control.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
So I think that's the spiral in me where I'm like,
oh my god, that's when I get uncomfortable. That's when
I start crawling out of my skin. That's when it's
like I can't directly impact this, but it's affecting me
so much.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
So I love that you suggest that.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
And I hope you know everyone watching and listening, you know,
can take something away here because there's no question why
your class is the most popular class and Yale, what
is it.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Three hundred years something?
Speaker 1 (42:12):
The work is so important and I want to first
and foremost say thank you for the way you serve
your community, your students, all of us. Like I love
your podcast, you know, the Happiness Lab. It's such an
important practice you've dedicated.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Your life to. And like, I want to end there
a little.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Bit and talk about that, because so much of what
you do is serving other people.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
So I'm going to, you know, remove that for a second.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Like the legacy you're leaving behind through your work is
so beautiful, it's so powerful, and I wonder if you
ever take a step back and realize the work you've
done to bless all of these people on this pursuit
and journey of happiness, Like.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Do you think about that? What is the legacy you
want to leave behind?
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Like, what what's next for you? You know, You've done so
much in this space, and I'm so grateful for your work,
and I needed to tell you that personally.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Thank you. It's great to hear, especially coming from you.
It's nice, yeah, fans of fans, but yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know. I think one one great thing about the
work that I've done, and I think you'll see this,
you know on your podcast Wide Open, is that this
act of helping other people, sharing good stories, helping your
viewers and your listeners and winds up helping you too, right.
(43:47):
It really gives you a sense of meaning and purpose.
It forces you when you're sharing these kinds of ideas
and strategies to make sure you're adopting them yourself. And so,
you know, I'm proud of the work I've done. I
feel incredible humbled that it's helped so many people. But
I'm also just like so happy that I get to
do it because I get something very selfishly out of it, too, right,
(44:08):
I get these strategies and get the great feeling and
meaning and purpose that comes from this work.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
I love it and I'm very grateful for you, and
I will continue following you. Please tell everyone the listeners
and everyone tuning in where they can.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Access your work.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Not all of us are lucky enough to go to Yale,
but the good thing is is everyone can access you
and your podcast and your work.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Please let everyone know where they can find you.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
Yeah, well, they can subscribe to the Happiness Lab, which
is my podcast wherever they get their podcasts. And if
you want to take a short version of the Yale
class that I teach, you can check it out on
Coursera dot org. It's called the Science of well Being
and it's really available to anyone who wants to take it.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Thank you for being wide Open, thank you for being vulnerable,
and thank you for showing up today. I think this
was a really great conversation and I think a lot
of people will learn something new and take something away.
So doctor Santos, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Thank you, thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
And I hope to see you down the line.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
I will definitely tell them all my athlete friends if
they haven't tuned into your work, they're missing out. So again,
thank you for being here this week, and we'll see
everyone next week. Wide Open with Ashland Harris is an
iHeart women's sports production.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
You can find us on the iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our
producers are Carmen Borca, Coreo, Emily Maronov, and Lucy Jones.
Production assistants from Malia Agudello. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz,
Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder. Our editors are Jenny Kaplan
(45:58):
and Emily Rudder and I'm Your Host Ashlyn Harris
All right, hello and welcome to another episode of Wide
Open with Ashland Harris. Today, I am so excited to
be talking to Yale professor, scientist, podcaster and happiness expert
doctor Lori Santos. Doctor Santos, Welcome to the show. Thank
you so much for being here. What a important time
(00:32):
right now.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
It's so good to meet you, be here with you.
You are the guru everyone talks about you. Welcome to
the show.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, thank you so much for having me on. It's
an honor. You know.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Wide Open means a lot of things in life, whether
it's sport, whether it's your personal journey, whether you know,
it's just about being honest and vulnerable in a lot
of ways. And what a better conversation to really just
dive into who you are. I'm just curious to start
(01:05):
the show by saying, who are you? How do you
show up in the world outside of what you do,
because that's a big important factor of this show.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, yeah, well, I think you know one of you know,
one of the reasons I study happiness and study well
being is that, like I'm curious about it in my
own life, right, you know, like this is something that
you know, I occasionally struggle with a lot. You know,
I got really interested in the science of happiness in
part because I was seeing such mental health issues in
my college students, right, I mean right now. Nationally, more
(01:35):
than forty percent of college students report being too depressed
a function. Over sixty percent say that they're overwhelmingly anxious,
like our students are struggling. But the reason I really
got into this was that I was noticing some of
the same patterns in myself. You know, I wasn't experiencing
suicidality or like clinical depression, but I was just watching
like stress and overwhelm just take the joy out of
(01:56):
the stuff that I was experiencing in life. And I
just thought, you know, I need to teach my student
skills to deal with this stuff, but I also need
to learn these skills for myself. And so part of
my journey that like sounds scientific and sounds nerdy and
the guruy and whatever, is really a journey to kind
of help myself and try to learn from myself what
are the things that really matter in life.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
And it's such an important thing to talk about because
everyone just expects it. Everyone just expects us to be happy,
even though we live in.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
This really complex culture and.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
World where things are very different than they used to be.
And yeah, I'm curious though, what got you here? Before
we dive into the incredible work you do as a
scientist professor.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
What got you here?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
What was the driving factor to say, this is what
I want to do, This matters, and this will change
the landscape of how people are on the pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah, well, for me, it started you know my little
girl you know career path was like I think I
was always a psychologist at heart. I was always like
curious about people, especially curious about adults. I was like
the little kid that the parents would be like, get
out of here, go play with your friends, like, you know,
stop paying attention to us. So I think I was
sort of fascinated by human nature, like ever since I
was a little kid, And so you know that naturally
(03:20):
drew me. And it's like a nerdy academic to study psychology.
When I first started, I was really interested in this
question about what makes the human mind special? And why
are you and I here having a podcast where we
talk about going wide open and know other you know,
chimpanzee or amiba is doing the same thing, right, like,
why are we on the only species that gets to
do this fun stuff? And so I spent a lot
(03:41):
of my time studying animals trying to figure out what
makes humans unique. I work with this kind of strange
population of monkeys that lives on an island off the
coast of Puerto Rico, studying them and comparing them with humans.
I just spent a lot of time like studying these
very Ivory Tower questions, but it was really interacting with
my students where I started to realize how how many
young people are struggling that I thought, you know, my
(04:03):
field of psychology might have some answers for this stuff.
I started to realize that, like, you know, the skills
that people were studying in this field of positive psychology,
those are the kinds of things that like everybody should
learn about. And so I think my transition happened from
kind of being more of like an Ivory Tower professor
to thinking about, like, Okay, how can we translate these
skills into like easy ways that people can use this stuff.
(04:23):
How can we communicate this stuff outside the university so
that everybody who's struggling in this world, as you mentioned,
which especially in the modern day is so tough. How
can we give everybody these tools?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
And I love that.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
And you know what I love so much about who
you are and how you show up and how you've
dedicated your life to this work.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Is you make it really digestible.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
You make it easy to understand for everyday people wanting
the same thing, joy and happiness. And I'm curious with that.
Is there a difference between joy and happyiness?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think you know.
One of the things, one of the things we have
to start with when we develop this science of happiness
is like to get some definitions on the table. So
let's first like talk about how scientists define happiness, because
it tends to be a little bit different, I think,
than how lay people think about happiness. So scientists divine
happiness as this sense of being happy in your life
and being happy with your life. So let's break that down.
(05:24):
So being happy in your life is sort of the
extent to which you have lots of positive emotions and
have a decent ratio between your positive emotions and your
negative emotions. It doesn't mean happiness, doesn't mean having no
negative emotions. I think we'll talk about this the negative
emotions are normative. We don't want to get into toxic positivity,
like we want them to be there, but ideally you
balance them out with a set of good emotions. Right.
(05:47):
Being happy with your life is just your sense that
like things feel good, You're satisfied with your life, you
have a sense of meaning and purpose. You kind of
think your life is going well. So scientists call this
a kind of affective or emotional part of happiness, kind
of cognitive or sort of thinking part of happiness. Now
we get to joy, and how that's different. I would
say that joy is sort of an emotional state, kind
(06:08):
of that being happy in your life part that so
many of us need to experience. Right, So it's kind
of one component of being happy. But what scientists would
think about it differently. And so the goal of all
the work that I do is to figure out, Okay,
what are some tips of strategies behavior as mindsets that
we can engage in to make us a little bit
more happy in our lives and hopefully a little bit
more happy with our lives too.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
I love that, and you know I'm thinking in real
time and why this is this conversation is so valuable
for me personally as you know you might know, I
am a newly retired professional athlete.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
I was lucky enough to be asked to speak.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
At the Wellness Oasis with Deepak Chopra and Art Basle.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
And what my topic on stage was was about joy.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And happiness and in the landscape, the current landscape, you know,
how do we show up and choose joy and happiness?
And I got really candid and I got really open
because I think faking joy and happiness is really toxic.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
And I got.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Really vulnerable, and I like really got wide open in
front of a lot of people, and I said, happiness
is really difficult and joy is really difficult for me
personally as a professional athlete because of my job, because
of the expectation of my job.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I don't know what happiness is.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
I don't know what joy is because if I wasn't suffering,
I wasn't doing my job. And it really like gave
me whiplash in a lot of ways. And I left
that and I was like, Wow, what does happiness mean
to me? Did I even enjoy my career?
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
You know, I win a world championship. Great? Did that
check the box?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I don't even sit in it to enjoy it and
the journey, the hard work.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah. This this, this is a bias that psychologists called
the arrival fallacy, where you when we're kind of planning
for something, we kind of get in our head, you know,
I'm going to get that national championship and that'll be it.
I'll kind of leave like halfway ever after when I
arrive at that point, I'll be good. But then we
get there, and what the research shows is it's never
doesn't make us as happy as we think, and it
(08:40):
doesn't make us as happy for as long as we think,
And then I think we're kind of like it's that
whiplash you talked about about, Like now I'm blindside. What's
the next thing. Well, I guess I need to get
an international championship, or I need to win the next one,
or I need to like you know, be MVP or
whatever it is. We just like immediately jump on to
the next carot. And I think that, you know, like
for you, as professional athlete, those carrots were you know,
(09:02):
accolades in your sport. I think for other people it
can be money, it can be trying to find the
perfect relationship, you know, getting married, getting that next promotion
at work. I think so many of us fall prey
to this arrival fallacy where we're not enjoying the journey
at all. We just have this kind of you know,
this carrot in the future in our minds, and we
chase there. But even in the rare cases where we
(09:22):
get it, you know, when we achieve the excellence we wanted,
we're not satisfied with that. We just move on to
the next hurdle.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And I unfortunately think our culture now has really affected our.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Ability to be present.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
You know, you talk about social media, you talk about
you know, these kids at a very early age. Just
like you said, whether it's athletics or academic, these kids
are being professionalized at such a young age. Like when
I grew up playing, I played everything like I When
I think about my child childhood, I do think about happiness,
(10:02):
and I do think about joy because I didn't have
the expectation of being the greatest, you know, to win
these championships, to pave the way for these all these
young women looking up you know, to our team and
us as athletes and individuals like I just don't see
kids playing outside like I did as as a young child.
(10:25):
Has this really affected our children and how they see
themselves and how they view happiness.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Yeah, for sure. A former Stanford dean has christened this
term cages of enrichment. Right. The idea is like, you know,
you want to give your kid, you know, I don't know,
access to the best like soccer team, so they can
play and get good at it. But because all of
these kinds of things that we're doing to help kids
feel like there's kind of pre professional that they're kind
of very goal oriented, that you have to kind of
get to the point and be excellent all the time.
(10:54):
It's almost like a cage. Like, yeah, they're getting this
sort of enrichment, but they're sort of trapped in it, right,
And I think that you're exactly right that this kind
of thing is happening more and more and more from
athletics to you know, academics. I mean, I talk to
so many of my student athletes who will say things
like you, like you kind of think in this moment
of like sort of sharing a deep dark secret of
(11:14):
like I hate my sport. I hate it. I just
don't want to do it anymore. And it's so incredible
that these students who dedicated so much time to being
excellent this thing, you know, hate this thing that they've
become excellent at. And I just think that's just such
an indictment of our culture right now, and in some
ways an indictment of parenting. I think parents sometimes get
a lot wrapped up in this sort of carot chasing
(11:36):
and really want their kids to be excellent at whatever
they're doing. And so I think parents need to step
away and ask the question, Okay, do you really want
that excellence at the cost of your kid's mental health,
at the cost of their enjoyment, at the cost of
their kind of relishing the journey along the way?
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And I love that you bring that point up because
it is really important to me. And I get this
question a lot is these parents like bumba me and
is like, are like, what advice can you give my child?
Your child eight like, yes, exactly, My advice is to you.
My advice is exactly what you said. This is supposed
(12:14):
to be the best time of their life.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
And I'm like, just they should just be having fun.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Yeah, And what we know one of the things we
know about the power of fun, the power of playfulness, right,
which is often how it's defined right, which is that
you're doing something not for some extrinsic reward, like you're
trying to get a trophy, you're trying to you know,
get into a good college. You're just doing it for
the intrinsic internal enjoyment of things. Research shows that the
more we play, especially when you're young, the better we
develop stress coping strategies that just like doing things that
(12:43):
you enjoy can help you kind of gain resilience when
the tough stuff in life comes up, you know, not
to mention, it's also just like fun, so it makes
you feel good and gives you positive emotions. And I
think you're right. I think we really have moved away
from fun. And it kind of raises a question of, like,
you know, Okay, if you're kind of a person like
you who's been doing this for so long, how do
you step out of it? How do you get back
(13:03):
to what researchers call a journey mindset where you're kind
of not waiting for the arrival but sort of enjoying
the journey along the way. How do you fight back
against these cultural tendencies?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Oh, and I love that. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
We'll be right back after this, you know, as I
shared with you about a very humbling moment for me
now trying to understand my identity outside of sport. I
(13:41):
think that conversation of joy and happiness really split me
wide open. And I ask every person on this podcast
show that you know, what was the defining moment in
your life that really split you wide open, that really changed.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Everything for you, that made you sit.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Back and be like, oh, like this is going to
make or break me.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
What was that moment for you?
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah? Well, I think it came a little bit after
I sort of dove into this field of the science
of happiness. As I mentioned, I was working really closely
with these students. I was actually living with them on
campus in this role as a head of college on campus.
This is this kind of weird role at Yale where
you're like, as a faculty member, you live with students
and eat with them in the dining hall and kind
of you're just like in student life much more closely.
And that was where I started to see really this
(14:35):
college student mental health crisis up close and personal. Right.
So I developed this new class that idea. As I'm
teaching students all these great strategies, you know, my class
went a little bit viral because everybody pays attention to
what's happening at Yale, and I think there was this
question about, like, oh my gosh, these kids who are
nineteen and at Yale University, if they are all desperate
to take a class on happiness, like, you know, what
(14:55):
about the rest of us? You know, So there's news articles,
there's I started my podcast, which came soon after that,
and juggling being a professor, being ahead of college, being
a podcast host, being an expert and a speaker on happiness.
And that was when the pandemic hit, and you know,
there was a lot more you know, need for folks
who are interested in science. I want to talk, and honestly,
(15:16):
I just got really burned out, especially the part about
running this college on campus when we had kind of
unceremoniously kicked everyone out for COVID. It was just really hard,
and I just started to notice all the kind of
clinical signs of burnout, you know, the one we think about,
which is a sense of emotional exhaustion. But it's not
like the usual physical exhaustion. It's like even if you
(15:37):
take a break, you just kind of can't even you're
just emotionally not able to keep doing it. That's sort
of clinical sign number one. Clinical sign number two is
what folks call depersonalization, but it's really a sense of cynicism.
It's just like everybody is getting on your last nerve, right,
you just start of interpret everyone around you's intentions as bad.
(15:59):
And I knowed this in a kind of really embarrassing
moment that I've talked about before, but it still kind
of strikes me when I talk about it. As a
head of college, you often get, you know, emergency situations
from students who might need, you know, finances or need something.
And I got an email from a student that I
was really close with who desperately needed a root canal. Right,
his tooth was all messed up. He needed some money
for a root canal. And instead of what I hope
(16:21):
would be my usual reaction of just compassion, like oh,
this poor kid, he's in the middle of midterms and
he you know, so sucks, you know, my immediate reaction
was like, oh, I have to send another damn email.
And I was like WHOA, Like that is something's wrong there?
Like I ha, do you to kind of think about this,
you know? And so that was clinical sign number two.
Of my burnout and then clinical sign number three is
(16:42):
that you experience what what researchers call a sense of
personal ineffectiveness, which is this idea that like, even if
I was doing my job perfectly, even if I was
hitting every mark, every deadline, it still wouldn't matter. It
still would kind of feel meaningless. And that was really
happening during COVID, where I'm like, what are we even
you know, what are we even doing? Like running a
college where everyone's like on screens and zooms and there's
(17:04):
no athletics, right, there's no music, there's no anything happening
on campus, and so it was really it was really
that moment, you know, when I got that email and
had that reaction that I was like, I have to
make change, Like I am not living up to all
this stuff that I'm teaching other people, and so I
stepped away from my role as a head of college.
I took a like an unpaid year leave from Yale.
(17:27):
I really tried to get more in touch with kind
of what I was doing wrong in the spots where
I wasn't following my own advice. And that was really transformative, right,
I think I got back into social connection. I developed
some better self talk strategies to give myself, you know,
a little self compassion despite being a kind of perfectionist
in my own ways. I think it was really important.
(17:49):
It was an important realization and it's been a journey
since then for.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Me, and I'm sure it took a lot to get
to the place of understanding what burnout actually is and
having a enough like agency over your own mental health
and well being to say I need to put myself first,
which you know, a lot of people don't understand, you know,
(18:16):
they're themselves enough or don't have the ability to take
a step back to say, hmm, I'm I'm heading into
this place and I really need a reset. Y.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah. So I think another thing is that, you know,
we mentioned a little bit negative emotions before. I think,
you know, especially people kind of type A folks who
push themselves. I throw professional athletes into this category, right,
you know, with all you talked about suffering, it's kind
of like whenever you experience a negative emotion, it could
be like inconvenient, like, oh, that sense of overwhelm I'm
feeling right now, that sense of burnout. Don't have time
(18:51):
for that on this random Tuesday. I'm going to push
that away, right, And I think what I came to
realize is that, you know, our negative emotions are kind
of like the dash or light in our car. You know,
if your tire light goes on or your engine light
goes on, that's inconvenient. You might not be able to
pull over right at that second to deal with this.
But like, unless you deal with it soon and take
(19:11):
it seriously, you know your car is going to get
much more messed up. And I think our bodies and
our minds wind up getting much more messed up when
we're not listening to our negative emotions, because they're like
an alert signal. Right. If we're experiencing loneliness, that's telling
you something important about you need a little bit more
social connection. If you're experiencing a sense of overwhelm at
work or burnout, that's a really important signal that you've
(19:33):
got to take something off your plate. If you're experiencing
sometimes resistance, you know, this is the thing. I think
my students and my student athletes are feeling like I
hate my sport. I'm like that is an honest signal
that something about this relationship and this dynamic and your
values have to change, right, And so I think we
ignore those negative emotions at our peril, even if they're
ones that are really inconvenient. That suggests, you know, a big,
(19:55):
wide open change needs to come. We still need to
pay attention to those absolutely.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So what would you say is like the biggest misconception
about happiness.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Yeah, we talked about one of them, right, which is
this idea that happiness is really about no negative emotions. Right,
that's toxic positivity. That's just wrong. A rich, good life
is going to include negative emotions because they're your signal
for like, you know what you really need to kind
of experience more joy and be more satisfied with your life.
I think a different misconception is that happiness is all
(20:28):
about your circumstances, right, It's what you achieve in life.
It's your money, it's your accolades, it's you know, you
got that national championship. But those things just don't impact
our happiness for as long or for as much as
we even think. And so I think that's honestly, the
biggest misconception I see in my students is like I
have to change something in my life or get something
(20:49):
or earn something or win something to feel happy, and
study after study just shows that's not it.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
So if trust me, I live this, and I just like,
I love your work so much, and my brain right
now is just literally doing cartwheels or jumping jacks. I
really don't know which one, but something in between. What
are like the tangible things.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
That people can do.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
To get to a place of happiness, Like how when
you are doing your work and you're you know, you're
talking to people like me. I'll be very honest, I
feel more at home and suffering than I do in happiness.
Not looking for like a therapy session. But I think
a lot of people feel this because the journey to
(21:41):
happiness is like not as easy. Like people get so
comfortable and suffering and so comfortable and misery and so
at home in that space of being in the trenches.
I'm just curious of what are actionable steps that we
could be taking or checking ourselves or rewiring our self
(22:05):
talk and self worth to putting one step one foot
in front of the other and really like practicing the
art of happiness.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, well, a big step is changing your mindset, changing
yourself talk, as you mentioned, And I think there's a
couple of things we can start with. Right. One is
if you're kind of in the mindset of suffering and
that's what you gravitate towards, it'll take your mind a
little bit of training to notice some of the good
stuff in the world. So this has often been called
like a gratitude practice, where you try to notice the
(22:37):
things that you're grateful for. If that feels heavy, which
it does for some people, I like to suggest a
slightly different practice, which is to notice the delights in
the world. Gratitude can feel really heavy of like, oh
my gosh, I have so much privilege. It kind of
feels overwhelming. But delights are like, oh my gosh, you know,
my morning coffee cup. You know, when I was walking
over here to get set up for the podcast, there
(22:58):
was just like somebody driving by, like black some like
Motley Crue. And also that's like a little delight, you know,
it's a little yeah. And so it's like delights are
great because they're they're just tiny, you know, They're just
these moments where your heart's like, oh, you know, like warm,
happy feelings, right, And the act of noticing them is
it doesn't seem like it, but what you're really doing
is practicing over time, right, just like you do you know,
(23:20):
sprints or I don't know, like you know, kicking this.
I was never a soccer player, I mess up all
my soccer metaphors, right, But like, just like you do
that kind of practice and athletics, the act of noticing
delights makes it easier for your brain to notice them, right.
You're kind of retraining what your mind naturally pays attention to.
So if your brain is like on the lookout for
things that you're grateful for, things that are cool, things
(23:42):
that are delightful, you'll kind of train away what's often
called a negativity bias. Our mind's just evolutionarily naturally notice
the negative stuff, but you can kind of train that
away with a little bit of practice. And so that's
kind of finding delights, finding gratitude. I think that can
be a a big mindset shift for a lot of us.
Another one that I think sounds like, you know, perfectionists
(24:02):
or folks who are kind of their whole career and
how they approach things we're suffering. I think a big
mindset shift there that can really help is to develop
a little bit of self compassion, which sounds like wooy
and whatever, but really it's just the practice of talking
to yourself and giving yourself the benefit of the doubt,
just like you would with a good friend or someone
(24:23):
you really cared about. And so Kristinneff, who's a researcher
at UTI Austin, does a lot of great work on
self compassion, and she sort of defines it as having
these three steps. One is sort of mindfulness, like I'm
struggling right now, this sucks right now, I'm feeling really overwhelmed.
Right now, you sort of notice where you are and
what could be tough. You kind of mindfully notice that.
(24:44):
The second step is what she calls calmon humanity, which
is especially hard for the perfectionists, but you know, practice
you get good at it. Common humanity is just and
that makes sense that I'm overwhelmed and struggling because I'm
just human. I'm not like a superhuman robot. I'm not
like the perfect you that's never going to make a mistake.
I'm actually human, and it makes sense that I'm going
(25:04):
through this and it's a normative experience. I'm not alone,
right That's a common humanity step. And then the final
step is what she calls self kindness. This is kind
of treating yourself like you treat a friend. You say,
you know, what do I need right now? What can
I take off my plate? Right? And this idea of
treating yourself like you treat a friend, I think is
a helpful way to frame self compassion for perfectionists, because
(25:25):
I think sometimes perfectionists confuse self compassion with self indulgence.
They think that being nice to yourself is like just
letting yourself off the hook, just screwing up. But really,
what self compassion is, it's like being a really good coach,
like a really empathic coach. Like if you are actively
screwing up, your coach wouldn't be like, that's fine, I'll
just pretend it's okay, but they would be like, hey,
(25:46):
what is up? What is going on? Can we talk
about this and like figure it out? A good empathic
coach would go into like problem solving mode but not
accusing mode, right. And that's the sort of attitude you
bring to yourself. It's not like you're can of letting
yourself off the hook if you're really screwing up, but
you come in there with like a little bit of
compassion and problem solving rather than just like beating yourself
(26:08):
up all the time, and self compassion can be an
incredibly powerful mindset. Research shows that it allows you to
treat your future self better. Suit eat healthier, you exercise
more when you're a little bit more self compassionate. If
you have a big project, you're less likely to procrastinate
because you're not beating yourself up, So it makes it
easier to do hard things. And self compassion research shows
(26:28):
can actually help even in just really extreme situations of suffering,
like trauma. Kristin has done work with Afghan and Iraqi
veterans who've been in combat, and she founds that teaching
them these self compassion strategies mean they get lower rates
of PTSD post traumatic stress disorder even going through trauma.
So it's kind of like it's like a really good strategy,
(26:51):
but is one that can be really hard for perfectionists,
so it too kind of takes a little bit of
time and practice to get used to.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, and I think what it boils down to is
just giving yourself grace, which I'm learning in real time.
And I say this all the time. You know, there's
so many people that have opinions of me and my
performance always, you know, the days of making a mistake
and walking off the field and not thousands, if not
(27:20):
millions of people watching it and having an opinion on it.
It's been a weird process growing up in a space
of social media with people having opinions of you, and
then you internalize the way they see you. And it's
just this really wild spiral that I had to go
(27:44):
through as a as a performer, player, perfectionist, all these things.
And what I did know is no one was harder
on me than me, and I really had to learn grace.
I had to really humanize myself a lot, because I
am not a perfect person. I am not a perfect athlete,
(28:07):
and I am going to make mistakes all the time.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I really hold on to that grace part.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
I really hold on to understanding boundaries, which I'm learning
to set now, because for every five hundred beautiful, nice
comments that people think I'm so lovely and I'm doing
great work and they're so encouraging, the two, three, four,
five comments that absolutely destroy me I weirdly hold on
(28:35):
to completely.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
I mean, that is the negativity bias, right Like, your
brain can see hundreds and hundreds of nice things and
the one terrible thing. It's like, oh, let me lock
onto that. We do the same thing with comparison, right.
You know, you can be a better player than you are,
a better player than literally billions of other people on
the planet, but the one or two players that are
better than you, like that will stick in your mind,
(28:58):
and whatever your comparison is at the time, your brain
will lock onto the one that makes you feel worse
about yourself. I was doing I was doing some training
with professional basketball players and I was showing the power
like how bad our brains are at comparison. And I
was asking them like, you know, what, what's the comparison
point for like, you know, free throws? And I was like, oh,
(29:18):
that's Steph Curry, you know, because he's so good at it.
Like yeah, I was like, what's the comparison point for
you know, I don't know how much people are earning
at the time. Stuff was making a lot and they're like, oh, yeah,
Steph Curry again. And I was like, Okay, what's the
comparison point for height? And they're like, well, that's not
Steph Curry, you know, because he's kind of short. He's like,
that's like taco fail. He's like really tall. I'm like
Why did your brain let stuff off the hook for
that one? Why didn't it like allow you to feel
better because you're taller than him. It's like, that's just
(29:40):
not how brains work, you know. And so if it's
your performance at work, you know, you're gonna pick the
highest performer at work. If it's your look, she'll pick
someone off social media.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
It's like whatever you are feeling is relevant to your
identity at the time, you tend to pick comparison points
that make you look the worst possible, right, And because
you know, know, none of us are perfect, there's gonna
always be some dimension on which we're not, you know,
the best ever in the history of universe, and that's
just going to make us feel kind of crappy. There's
(30:10):
a very famous study on this, on this kind of
form of comparison that was done actually with athletes, So
it was with Olympic athletes on the metal stand, just
asking kind of who's happiest, and of course you predict,
like you know, when you win a gold medal, you're
going to be the most happy. It's the gold medalists
who are the most happy, and they are happy. But interestingly,
if you look at the silver medalists, they're not kind
of second happiest. They're actually showing emotions on the metal
(30:34):
stand that look like contempt, deep sadness, grief. Right, and
you're like, oh my gosh, you're second best in the world.
You're taking home a metal for your country. Why do
you feel so crappy? Well, they feel crappy in part
because of this comparison. There's a really salient thing they
didn't get, which is the gold medal. But what's interestingly
is if you look at if you look at bronze medalists,
you might predict that they'd be experiencing even more contempt
(30:56):
and grief than the silver medalists, but not so. There's
sailing comparison isn't gold. You know, they weren't gonna you know,
they're multiple points away or multiple seconds away or whatever,
and whatever sport they're in. Their sailing comparison is like,
oh my gosh, if I was just a little bit worse,
I wouldn't get any metal at all. And so it
turns out that if you look at on the stand,
the bronze medalists on average are like smiling, more like
(31:18):
feeling this relief. They're feeling ecstatic even though objectively they
actually did worse than silver medallists, they're feeling better. And
so my joke from you know, these studies with Olympic
athletes is instead of looking for the silver lining, we
all have to look for the bronze lining, right, We
need to look at the spot where you know it
might not be as good as we are, like find
(31:38):
comparisons that kind of make you feel a little bit
better about your own identity.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And that is so that is I love what you
said there, and it's so important. This is wide open
and I'm your host, Ashlyn Harris.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
You know, in the culture of sport is that, you know,
really contradicts what we were trying to talk.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
About what we're unlearning in a lot of ways, because
they teach you to suffer. They teach you.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
That that's how you become the best. And now that
I'm on the other side, I'm like, holy shit, I
have so much unlearning to do because of it and
because of how it now affects how I move in
the real world.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
How how does that.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Make you think based on all the studies you've done,
based on your life commitment in this you know, happiness
section of psychology. Like I just feel now that I
think back on my younger self, I'm like, oh my gosh,
no wonder.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
I can't sleep. I always think someone's working hard than me.
No wonder.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
I have this weird complex that nothing is ever enough,
that how I do anything is how I do everything,
and like, I run these things through my head because
I'm so branded to do so, and it really does
affect my overall well being and happiness and how I
show up for my friends, my work, my.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Family, my kids.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
And I'm curious what you think about this, because it
is a part of our culture as athletes to be
brainwashed to suffer because that's what makes us great.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah, well, I think this is I mean, that's a theory, right,
that what makes athletes great is that you have to
force them to suffer. And we have this kind of
theory in a lot of performance careers and domains.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
I did some work with retired Navy seals, you know,
and they have similar kinds of phrases eat the pain, right.
Oh yeah, things right. But it raises a question of like,
is that the best way to perform?
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Right?
Speaker 3 (33:56):
It turns out that if you look at performance data
you often find is that people's overall levels of mental
health correlate with their performance in all kinds of different domains,
including athletics. Right. I think we have this assumption that like,
you know, suffer suffer, suffer, no pain, no gain, push
through it is the right move. But it might be
that like recognizing your own boundaries, recognizing your limitations, you know,
(34:21):
that might actually make athletes who not only perform really well,
but might have longevity in the sport part because they
continue to enjoy it and they don't hate it. Right,
And I do think there are some athletes out here
there that, despite their excellence, have trained in ways that
are like less kind of you know, eat the pain
and more like self compassion. On my show, I talked
(34:43):
to the Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwan and was surprised that,
you know, even though she just like achieved such you know,
excellence at her sport, she kind of was able to
maintain a little bit of a journey mindset. Somehow she
kind of fought off all those arrival fallacy kinds of things,
and she had these lovely examples of it. You know.
She talked about when she would go to the Olympics.
Her favorite part was that she would get to skate
(35:06):
across the ice where they had the Olympic rings embedded in,
and she talked about like skating over those colors and
just trying to say, I'm just going to be present
with like, I don't care about what happens. I just
kind of want to be present with this, right. And
so I think somehow there are excellent athletes who've avoided
this suffering mindset. I think as a culture, we're not
good at that, and we push because we think that
that's the only way to become excellent. But I think
(35:28):
more and more as people see the research, they realize, actually,
you perform better like with self compassion. Actually you have
longer careers, right, longer more successful careers if you treat
yourself well. And so I hope is that my hope
is that a new generation of coaches who see these
real performance dat are going to say, hang on, maybe
we can achieve the same kind of performance in sport,
(35:50):
but do it with a little bit more compassion, like
a kind of smart way that kind of understands psychology better.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
And I love that, and I wish I knew more
while I was young because I do. I agree with you.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I think if I could have found more happiness and
joy through the journey, I think I would have been
a better teammate. I think I would have been a
better human. I think I would have been a better, like,
you know, person outside of sports too. I just I
felt that I carried that mindset in everything I did.
(36:30):
And you just brought up something that really.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Made me think.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
You said something about boundaries, and I don't think we've
really touched on that with the landscape of social media.
You know, let's pull away a little bit outside of sport.
The current landscape of our country, new presidency, things are
(36:56):
bonkers right now. It's really affecting everyone overall.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Well being, mental health. As a queer woman who has
adopted two black children, I'm terrified most days. I got
to be really honest. How do we start setting boundaries?
How do we.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Help protect ourselves in a landscape where you know, we're
always picking this damn thing up and checking what everyone
else is doing.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
The country's on fire.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Everything is just like whoa spiraling absolutely out of control.
And it does affect the way we move, It does
affect the way we show up, It does affect the
way we see ourselves. How do we set boundaries, like,
how do we really figure out a way to protect
our peace?
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah? Well, I think the first step gets back to
something we spoke a little bit about before, which is
like mindfully noticing these negative emotions. I think it helps
to kind of notice what you're feeling after you're on
your phone. Right, So, say you, you know, scroll through
Instagram or look at what the news is showing you,
and you know, at least I'm like you, like the
last New Week's wonder're having this conversation, it's been like
(38:10):
utter terror, utter frustration, that kind of sense of loneliness
and disconnection, just like yucky, yucky feelings. Right, But I
think there's a moment to take a breath and notice
those feelings, right like, because they're not you know, this
is what the administration is. This is kind of where
we find ourselves breath, notice and ask the question, Okay,
what do I need right now? How can I take
(38:31):
care of myself? Right? And often what you realize is
like it's not another half hour scrolling through the same
news feed, right, it's you know, to put the phone
away and go spend time with your kids, right it's
to put the phone away and just like take a
deep breath, maybe move your body around a little bit
so you can get some endorphins, right, Like, it's really
asking yourself what can I do to take care of myself?
(38:52):
And a very practical kind of set of strategies that
I often use that I teach my students is this
very specific meditation practice that was popularized by the meditation
teacher tar Brock. It goes by the acronym of rain
RAI in which stands for recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture.
And so you know, let's say you're scrolling through the
newsfeed and you see what's going on in the world
(39:13):
right now, and you just you know, that's when you say, okay,
do a quick rain, take a step away, recognize what
are the specific emotions I'm going through, and really try
to categorize them, Like this time, it's just like it's anxiety,
or it's anchor, or it's just overwhelmed, Like I just
feel like the problems of the world can't fit with
everything I have on my plate. Just kind of notice
(39:34):
and try to categorize what you're feeling. That's step one. Recognize.
Then you say the next one is a hard step.
You say, allow, just gonna allow those feelings to be
there just as they are. Right. I think this is
the spot where your training is as an athlete comes in. Right.
You're good at allowing pain or allowing things. You're gonna
allow these emotions and sit with them and look at them, right,
(39:54):
But you give your brain something to do while you're
doing that, And that's the eye step. Investigate. You say, Okay,
deep breath, when I'm feeling the sense of overwhelming anxiety,
where do I experience it in my body? You really
kind of get deep. Is it in my chest? Maybe
my brow is furrowed? Whatever. And the reason this step
works is, you know, there's so much work in clinical
psychology and clinical training that talks about how our emotions,
(40:15):
our cravings, they're sort of like a wave. Right when
we first start to pay attention to them, they'll kind
of go up, and they might feel more intense when
you're really looking at it. But if we give our
emotions time, they'll just sort of pass like a wave.
This is often a process that's called urge surfing, and
that investigates step. Let you do that because you're looking
directly at it. Like, oh, my chest, my body's fluttering,
(40:36):
my stomach feels gross. But you're like feeling that thing
head on, and inevitably in a couple minutes, usually like
three to five minutes. A lot of the science suggests
that will pass, but you don't stop there. There's one
last step of rain, and that's the end nurture. You say,
what can I take off my plate? What do I
need right now? Sometimes those answers will be inconvenient. Right,
(40:58):
It's like I got to ask somebody for help, right,
I need to, you know, cancel these meetings that feel important.
I need to really take a break. But kind of
give yourself that grace and kind of do that. I
think rain is a really nice way to notice the
bad things in the world, recognize and allow like we
might not be able to solve them, and that sucks.
(41:19):
But deep breath, let's feel that emotion and kind of
let it take its course.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
And that's important what you just said, because I do
find that the times I get the most overwhelmed are
when I can't control things.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
There's a lot of this world I can't control.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
So I think that's the spiral in me where I'm like,
oh my god, that's when I get uncomfortable. That's when
I start crawling out of my skin. That's when it's
like I can't directly impact this, but it's affecting me
so much.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
So I love that you suggest that.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
And I hope you know everyone watching and listening, you know,
can take something away here because there's no question why
your class is the most popular class and Yale, what
is it.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Three hundred years something?
Speaker 1 (42:12):
The work is so important and I want to first
and foremost say thank you for the way you serve
your community, your students, all of us. Like I love
your podcast, you know, the Happiness Lab. It's such an
important practice you've dedicated.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Your life to. And like, I want to end there
a little.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Bit and talk about that, because so much of what
you do is serving other people.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
So I'm going to, you know, remove that for a second.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Like the legacy you're leaving behind through your work is
so beautiful, it's so powerful, and I wonder if you
ever take a step back and realize the work you've
done to bless all of these people on this pursuit
and journey of happiness, Like.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Do you think about that? What is the legacy you
want to leave behind?
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Like, what what's next for you? You know, You've done so
much in this space, and I'm so grateful for your work,
and I needed to tell you that personally.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Thank you. It's great to hear, especially coming from you.
It's nice, yeah, fans of fans, but yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know. I think one one great thing about the
work that I've done, and I think you'll see this,
you know on your podcast Wide Open, is that this
act of helping other people, sharing good stories, helping your
viewers and your listeners and winds up helping you too, right.
(43:47):
It really gives you a sense of meaning and purpose.
It forces you when you're sharing these kinds of ideas
and strategies to make sure you're adopting them yourself. And so,
you know, I'm proud of the work I've done. I
feel incredible humbled that it's helped so many people. But
I'm also just like so happy that I get to
do it because I get something very selfishly out of it, too, right,
(44:08):
I get these strategies and get the great feeling and
meaning and purpose that comes from this work.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
I love it and I'm very grateful for you, and
I will continue following you. Please tell everyone the listeners
and everyone tuning in where they can.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Access your work.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Not all of us are lucky enough to go to Yale,
but the good thing is is everyone can access you
and your podcast and your work.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Please let everyone know where they can find you.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
Yeah, well, they can subscribe to the Happiness Lab, which
is my podcast wherever they get their podcasts. And if
you want to take a short version of the Yale
class that I teach, you can check it out on
Coursera dot org. It's called the Science of well Being
and it's really available to anyone who wants to take it.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Thank you for being wide Open, thank you for being vulnerable,
and thank you for showing up today. I think this
was a really great conversation and I think a lot
of people will learn something new and take something away.
So doctor Santos, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Thank you, thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
And I hope to see you down the line.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
I will definitely tell them all my athlete friends if
they haven't tuned into your work, they're missing out. So again,
thank you for being here this week, and we'll see
everyone next week. Wide Open with Ashland Harris is an
iHeart women's sports production.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
You can find us on the iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our
producers are Carmen Borca, Coreo, Emily Maronov, and Lucy Jones.
Production assistants from Malia Agudello. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz,
Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder. Our editors are Jenny Kaplan
(45:58):
and Emily Rudder and I'm Your Host Ashlyn Harris
Host
Ashlyn Harris
Popular Podcasts
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.