“Can You Train Your Mind to Be Happier?” (with Dr Tal Ben-Shahar)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin Hey Happiness Lab listeners. Over the summer, we've been
sharing episodes from other shows or instead of being the host,
I'm the one getting interviewed. So far, you've heard me
on The Daily Stoic and The Ritual podcast, but this

(00:38):
time I'll be tackling the subject of whether you can
train your brain to be happier. The conversation you're about
to hear is from a live webinar that I did
with the happiness expert, doctor tal Benjahar, founder of the
Happiness Studies Academy. The Happiness Studies Academy is an online
school that teaches the fundamentals of positive psychology. Tall is
a leading figure in the field, so it was super

(00:59):
fun to get a chance to talk to him.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
If you enjoy the.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Conversation, you should check out Happiness Studies Dot academy. But
for now, enjoy my webinar can you train your Brain
to be Happier?

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Hello everyone, and welcome. It's great to be here. My
name is tal Ben Shahar. I'm the co founder of
the Happiness Studies Academy, where we focus on helping people
become happier as well as spread happiness to sides of
the same coin. Today we have a very very special

(01:36):
guest whom I've known since my days in a graduate school.
So I was studying organizational behavior. Lori Santos was studying
cognitive psychology. We're both on the PhD track, and here

(01:57):
we are today. We're going to talk about happiness and
I'm going to ask Laurie how why she got into
studying this wonderful feel But before I call on Laurie,
just a very brief introduction, and again, person who needs
no introduction. So, doctor Laurie Santos is the Chandrika and

(02:20):
Runjon Tendon Professor of Psychology at Yale University and host
of the Happiness Lab podcast. She has won numerous awards
both for her scientific work and for her teaching, and
was recently voted as one of Popular Science Magazine's Brilliant
ten Young Minds, and was also named in Time magazine

(02:43):
as a leading campus Celebrity. So, Laurie, welcome, So great
to see you here.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
So, Lauri, we've known each other for a year or two,
we won't say how long, and here we are today,
So you know I've shared with our community why I'm here.
I'd love to hear what brought you to the world
of happiness.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, well, Tall, you made the transition a lot earlier
than I did. I think you were on top of it,
like a way before I was. My transition happened pretty
late into my career. I became a professor. I was
teaching about cognition, and specifically about comparative cognition, sort of
studying how animals make sense of the world. And the
pivot to happiness happened when I took on a new
role at Yale. I became what's called the head of college,

(03:35):
which is one of these faculty members who lives with
students on campus, right And it was in that role
that I really get to see student life up close
and personal, and I honestly was pretty saddened and shocked
by what I was seeing. I was seeing the college
student mental health crisis up close and personal. Where you know,
if you don't know the stats right now, Nationally, more
than forty percent of college students report being too depressed

(03:56):
to function most days. More than sixty percent say that
they feel hopeless and anxious. More than one in ten
has seriously considered taking their own life in the last
six months. Like, this is not just Yelo statistics, this
is what was happening nationally. And so I wound up
getting into the Happiness studies in part because I wanted
to do something to help students.

Speaker 4 (04:14):
Right.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
I had the sense that our has lots of answers
about questions about the things you can do to live
a happier life, to live a life that's filled with
more positive emotions, to live a life where you feel
like you're flourishing more. And I kind of wanted to
get that content out to my students. So I did
a kind of little mini retraining and Happiness Studies and
to develop this new course, Psychology and the Good Life,

(04:35):
And it was It was such a journey because I
didn't expect the course to go as viral as it did.
I know you you historically had taught the original huge
Ivy League Big Happiness class at Harvard ten years before
I started my class. Even knowing the success of your class,
I didn't really expect mine to kind of go so big.
We had a quarter of the entire Yale student body

(04:55):
taking the class the first time I taught it. But yeah,
that was my kind of that was my entry in right.
It was really thinking, realizing just how many people need
this stuff, especially how many people at the college level
need this stuff, and just the fact that you know,
our field has lots of answer and you know, we
do to do a better job of translating those answers
into things that people understand so they could put that
stuff into practice.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah wow, So you know you mentioned these numbers, you know,
forty percent depression, sixty percent hopeless, one intent considering taking
their own lives. Now. Granted, I know today we're measuring
a lot more and probably better than we did, you know,
when we were in college or or you know, one
hundred years ago. But still the numbers are astounding and

(05:41):
they're shocking. Why do you think they are where they are?
I mean, is there a reason reasons why we see
those numbers on college campuses and beyond.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
I mean, I think, honestly, it would be so much
easier if there was one reason, because then we could
fix that and then we'd, you know, a whole society
that was flourishing and happy, happy. I think it's been
lots of things. I mean, I think we have, especially
the college level, there's just a lot more ambition and
pushing a lot more sets of goals that may or
may not be contributing to happiness in the way we think.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Right.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
I watched my students get so stressed out about grades
and what their summer internship is going to be and
the career they're going to have after, you know, graduation,
and they're often worrying about that stuff at the expense
of the things that matter in the moment, right their sleep,
their level of social connection, their level of presence.

Speaker 4 (06:29):
Right.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
So, I think I think the kind of cultural norms
about the things you need to do to quote unquote succeed,
I think we're kind of off there, and especially off
when we're kind of talking about elite students in colleges today.
I think we also have had tremendous changes to technology
that are affecting us in lots of ways that I
think we're only beginning to understand. One of the things
that was really shocking for me, you know, going back

(06:51):
to college as a you know, forty somethingter professor, was
realizing just how little social connections students got on college campuses.
One of the surprises I experienced was going back into
the college dining hall, which I remember, as you probably do,
tall like it's just like the loudest place on campus.
You know, it's still pretty loud, but you get a
lot of students who are wearing, you know, super big headphones,

(07:13):
sitting looking at a screen and typing, not talking to
one another. Right, even though college is a place where
lots of people are around other people, I think students
are lonelier than ever. And I think our technology has
a lot to do with that, and so so I
think there's a lot, there's lots of different factors going on.
It'd be so much easier if there is one smoking
gun and we could you know, blot it and get

(07:33):
the smoke away and fix everything. But I think that
it just shows how important it is to be studying
happiness scientifically and trying to figure out, Okay, what are
the things that really do matter for a flourishing life,
and how can we put more things, more of those
things into effect in our own lives. But also kind
of think about our schools and get more of that
stuff in schools, think about what we value in terms
of society, and get more of that into the kind

(07:55):
of culture that we're building around one another.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
Right, And when you were talking about schools, yeah, of course,
college campus is, but we need to start a lot earlier. Definitely,
no high school, even kindergarten. I think there is a
lot that can be that can do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
One of our most recent projects was to do a
version of the class that I teach for Yale students
for middle schoolers and teenagers. Right again, I think we
don't even have to stop there, right, So many of
the practices that I know you talk about at the
academy and that I talk about my podcast are really
the kinds of things that you should be doing, you know,
as young as pausible.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yeah. Yeah, So let's go back to our topic today,
which is can you train your mind to be happier? Now,
I'm sure that people attending this, you know, this conversation
are assuming that it is what does the science actually

(08:51):
say about whether happiness train or something that we're born with?

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Well, I think the science, you know it is like,
is kind of careful about this, right, because I think
what we often want to ask a question like that
isn't either or answered like yes it can train or
it's fixed. And I think the science tells us that
it's a little bit of both, right. The question of
whether or not some of our happiness seems to be
built in, relegated to our genes, the kinds of things

(09:19):
we should be paying attention to. There's lots of studies,
as you well know, trying to look at this by
studying different twins, right, to try to look at whether
or not you can look to genetically similar individuals might
have different environments and ask, okay, what's playing the bigger role?
Is it our genes or is it our environments? These
are studies what's often called heritability, right, what's the percentage

(09:39):
of the variance in the population we can explain by
looking to someone's genes. And whenever you do those studies,
you ask the question, are identical twins who share one
hundred percent of their DNA more similar in their happiness
than say, fraternal twins who only share fifty percent of
their DNA. You often get the answer, yeah, there seems
to be more similarity and the identical twins and the
fraternal twins. There is a component of things like happiness,

(10:01):
our life satisfaction, our positive emotion that seems to be heritable.
But like most psychological traits, it's not a high heritability, right.
It's not that you know if you happen to be
born to your very happy parents, that you yourself are
going to be very happy. The heritability estimate is kind
of small. It's around thirty percent. What does that mean?
Means around thirty percent of the variation we see in

(10:22):
the population. You know, whether somebody's happy or not so happy,
it can be due to someone's genes, And that's pretty small.
So on the one hand, we get the answer of like, yeah,
some of your happiness might be built in, Right, the
variance that we see in people's happiness across society might
be due to some genes versus other genes. But that
also means there's a big window that we can change things, right.

(10:43):
I think the other misconception we often have about whether
we can train happiness is that we have this mistake
and assumption that our happiness is based only on our circumstances. Right,
you know, you're born in a wonderful country, and you're
incredibly rich, and you like, you know, you get into
the perfect Ivy League institution that you want to get into,
et cetera, et cetera, then you'll be happy. Yeah, So
often we tend to think that our circumstances matter a

(11:06):
ton for happiness, and they do matter some right. You know,
if you're living below the poverty line, getting more money
you might increase your level of happiness, your level of flourishing.
Or if you're living in really dire circumstances, it is
true that changing some things around might help. But for
most of the people on the call, most of the
people listening right now, changing your circumstances is not going
to matter as much as you think for kind of

(11:26):
moving your happiness. And so what we often think is that,
like you know, our circumstances matter a ton, they don't
matter as much as we think. It really is about
changing our behaviors and our mindsets for kind of improving
our happiness over time.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Right, Okay, so what are some of the practices that
we can do to change specifically our mindset?

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (11:48):
And what are some of the practices that you teach
in class and what are some of the things that
do you do?

Speaker 5 (11:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Well, I try to do all the things that I
teach in class because I find that if you're not
practicing what you preach, like, well, first of all, my
students will totally call me out on it. They'll be like, well,
you're not you know, engaging in gratitude or you're not
getting your social connections. So it's really great to have
a thousand, you know, undergraduate students around you holding you accountable,
holding the accountable exactly. But yeah, in terms of some
of the mindset changes I recommend, you know, a big

(12:15):
one is sort of engaging in a little bit more gratitude.

Speaker 5 (12:18):
Right.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
This one's really just a matter of trying to figure
out what your mind is attuned to and trying to
get it to a tune a little bit better to
the positive stuff out there, noticing the blessings rather than
the hassles. You know, there's lovely work from so new
Lupermurski and Robert Emmons and others just showing the power
of you know, simply writing down a few things that
you're grateful for every day, just noticing some noticing some

(12:40):
of the blessings, and studies suggest you can improve your
life satisfaction, you can improve your positive mood and so on,
and so that that, I think is like such an
easy one, right, It's just a matter of training your
brain to notice and scribble down a few things. Some
of my students find that gratitude practice a little tricky
and I think they especially find it tricky sometimes in
the world we live in right now, right where we

(13:00):
can look out and be like, oh, there's so many
terrible things happening, like, it can feel a little disingenuous
to focus on what you're grateful for. So I often
suggest maybe an even lighter version of the practice, where
you look out and try to find some delights out there,
you know, like the warmth of my morning coffee cup,
or you know, like like a child's laughter or a
really funny YouTube clip. Right, it's just like a delight.

(13:21):
It's just like a nice thing out there. And even
just the act of noticing those, I think can can
wind up training your brain away from the thing that
our brain tends to pay attention to, which is all
the negative stuff. Right. We have this terrible negativity bias
where our brains lock on to all the terrible things
out there. But if you can just kind of with
a little intention, shift your focus to the positive stuff,

(13:42):
you'll wind up feeling a lot better. So that's a
big that's a big mindset. One other big ones we
talk a lot about in class our behavioral changes. Right,
just stuff you can do, like like physically to achieve
more happiness, and honestly, the biggest one really is engaging
in more social connection, right, just like as you know,
tall like pretty much every available study of happy people

(14:02):
suggests that happy people tend to be more social, right,
whether that's more social, spending time with their friends and
family members, more social, talking to the brista at the
coffee shop, and making a little weak connection right, other
people are really a critical key to our happiness. And
so just finding time to get that social connection in,
even scheduling it if you really need to get it

(14:23):
in your calendar, winds up being really critical and really important.
I think also asking yourself the question of, like, in
some ways, what are the things that are interrupting your
social connection?

Speaker 4 (14:32):
Right?

Speaker 1 (14:33):
You know, if you're on your phone at dinner and
not talking to your spouse, that's a big opportunity cost
of some social connection you could be getting. You know,
if you're standing in line, you know, at the checkout
at the grocery store and like, you know, staring at
a screen rather than talking to the person around you
just connecting and sharing a smile, that too, is a
big opportunity cost on a kind of happiness boost you
could be getting And so I find that the committing

(14:55):
to the behavior of building in a little bit more
social connection can be really critical when it comes to
becoming happier.

Speaker 6 (15:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
And I think what's also important to think about when
we build those social connections is that micro interactions or
micro moment can make a very big difference. I mean,
you mentioned standing in line for you know, in the
grocery store. You know, it doesn't have to be and
I'm spending you know, three hours a day with my
BFFs and and I have, you know, in three days

(15:23):
every week fully with my with my family. Yeah. Nice, nice,
but not essential if you also have these micro moments.
And these micro moments are accessible available to us literally,
you know, every almost at every moment in the day.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah. And it's shocking how easily we give those up, right,
And I think this is a big hit that we
get from our technology. One of my favorite little factoids
that came out, you know, all these changes that happen
after the iPhone and smartphones were introduced, but one of
the biggest ones that I found so striking was that
the sales of chewing gum plummeted. And you're like, why

(16:03):
does the sale of chewing gums matter. You know, think
back to that moment at the grocery store, when do
you tend to see the chewing gum while you're in
line and you're kind of looking around like, oh, chewing
actually gets a chewing gum my mouth, you know, your
mental ye or whatever. But that moment of you not
noticing the chewing gum in the checkout line is the
same moment that you're not noticing, you know, the smile
and the kid in the line behind you, or you

(16:24):
know the fact that you know someone asks like, you know,
how's your day today or something. Right, our technologies are
stealing these tiny moments of attention that before technology we
were often devoting to the people around us, and we
sort of stopped. Liz Dunn, who is another who's a
professor now at the University of British Columbia, another one
of our colleagues in graduate school back in the day.

(16:44):
She did this lovely study where she'd just try to
look at how much less you smile when you have
your phone around you than not. So she brings participants
into the lab, sits them in a big waiting room
and either has them with their phones or not and
she finds just you know, naturally in the waiting room,
you see thirty percent less smiling between the people that
are seeing.

Speaker 7 (17:04):
Right.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
I often think about that in my residential college with
all my students, right of just like how much less
smiling in the courtyard and in the dining hall there is,
just because we're all walking around looking at these screens
all the time, you know. And what's the cumulative emotional
effect of all that stuff?

Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah? And I think the key point here is the
cumulative emotional effect because we know, you know, the what
a smile again, micro event, what a smile can do
a to us because when we smile, and you know
this from cognitive psychology, it has an effect on our
inner world as well, not to mention the mirror neurons
that when we smile, others are more likely to smile

(17:40):
as well. So the the loss given given that is significant.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Yeah, you talk.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
You know, we talked about these you know, standing in
line or the smiles, these small events. And yet you know,
many people ask, and I often ask about the difference
between feeling happy in the moment. So when I exchange
smiles for example, versus or in addition to developing a
long lasting sense of happiness, so more of a you know,

(18:11):
trade versus state question.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
Mm hmm, well, I think these things kind of work
as feedback loops, right, Like take the smiling example, right,
you know, if I have a little micro moment of
smiling at the barista at the coffee shop, you know,
that just gives me a sense that the world is
a friendlier place. I'm more socially connected, I like my
community more. That's a kind of in the moment feeling,

(18:35):
but it winds up building up to I think a
much broader kind of state attribution, right that I'm just
feeling more connected over time. And my sense is that
a lot of the micro moments wind up becoming bigger moments,
those small moments that you take, you know, to notice
something that's delightful to you or something that's a blessing
in your life, that can like pump up to become

(18:55):
more of a state like situation, in part because you're
doing it over and over and over again. So these
things become habits that you put into effect. So the
more you do the little things over time, the more
that becomes your life. Is what Aristotle, you know, Missy said, right,
it's our habits that kind of become what our life is.
But also I think it can kind of contribute to
a sense that your life is flourishing. Often these kind

(19:17):
of state moments, or sort of long term happiness assessments
are really an assessment of how is our life going right?
How satisfied am I with my life? But I think
that that satisfaction can often come from the cumulation of
a lot of these micro moments. So the micro moments
kind of wind up infecting these long term state moments,
part because they become habits over time, but in part
because I think they do change our overall interpretation of

(19:39):
how things are going. So those tight those investments that
feel really tiny can wind up being kind of long
term happiness investments too.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
And of course the key here is to do them,
to engaging them repeatedly. Correct So it's it's not just that,
you know, I'll do my gratitude exercise today and I'll
smile at the grocery store tomorrow and then I'll live happy.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, you know, push your hands together like one and done.

Speaker 8 (20:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
I mean, I think we understand these more in the
physical domain, you know, I mean, I would love it
if I met up with my trainer for one hard workout.
You know, my calves were sore and stuff, and then
I was good, good for a lifetime. We'd get Okay,
that's that's not going to work, right. I think in
the happiness space, we sometimes forget this right that we
can train ourselves to be happier. But it takes work,

(20:25):
you know, it takes constant work, And I think that's
kind of the bummer about happiness. But like it would
be nice if it was a one and done kind
of situation. But the good news is that when you
continue to put that work in, it works. You get
you wind up feeling better, feeling more satisfied with your life,
and it becomes easier as you do this stuff more
and more often. I think it's really fair to say that,

(20:45):
you know, before I get interested in this stuff, there
were lots of these practices that I just did not
put into effect in my own life. I tended not
to be a very grateful person. I was really much
more focused on the hassles and the bad stuff. I was,
you know, well socially connected with friends, but I definitely
wasn't the kind of person who would strike up a
conversation with a stranger. You know, I'd have my face
buried in my phone quite quickly. And as I've taught

(21:08):
more and more of this work, I've started engaging these
practices myself more and more, and it does become easier
over time. It just becomes the kind of thing that
you go to and that just makes it much easier.

Speaker 3 (21:20):
Yeah, and again I think that the sports analogy that
you gave is spot on. It's like, you know, if
I just pick up tennis and I learned how to
hit a forehand. Initially, it's awkward and I don't do
it well, but then after a while, you know, with
a coach, I get better and better. It becomes more comfortable,
more quite literally second nature because the brain with the

(21:42):
neural pathways are created and it becomes a habit.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yeah, and so I think find putting in the effort
now you can recognize that even if it feels awkward
at first, you're paving a path to make it easier
for yourself, right.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah, paving a path, creating a neural pathway. I've heard
you talk about the annoying features of the mind that
getting the way of happiness. What are you know some
of these annoying features that you refer to.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, they're just like features of our mind that you
know in theory are probably helpful something, but when it
comes to our happiness are kind of sucky. You know.
One of the worst ones when it comes to our
happiness is the simple fact that we get used to stuff.
It doesn't sound that bad, right, you know, you get
used to things over time. But the problem is that
we get used to the good stuff over time.

Speaker 8 (22:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
You know, you get a raise, right, you have this
new salary that you can use to buy all this stuff.
You know, maybe go out to eat and so on.
It's great at first, but over time you kind of
get used to it. You know, my Ivy League students, right,
who work so hard to get into college, they found
out they get into their dream school. First time you
announce to your parents your grandparents that you get into
your dream school, it feels great.

Speaker 8 (22:59):
You know.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
Time number three hundred where someone says, hey, where do
you go to college is just not as exciting anymore. This,
I think is one of the worst features of the
mind when it comes to happiness. We the best, the best,
best moment in life that, if it's repeated over time,
becomes just kind of boring. The example I always like
to give is, you know, if you're partnered up the
first time your partner said I love you, that felt great,

(23:21):
But you know this morning, you know, Monday morning, when
they said it, like, no, nobody cares. Right, This is
what as you know it tall A psychologists referred to
as hedonic adaptation. We just adapt to the good hedonic
stuff in life and we stop noticing it. And that
means the best circumstances can stop having a really good
impact over time, and so to truly feel the effect

(23:41):
of the good stuff around us, we need to do
stuff to fight hedonic adaptation. And one of the best ways,
honestly is gratitude, right, taking time to remember and notice like, hey,
hang on, like there's you know, I'm this couple of
coffee tastes great, Like this is wonderful. There's delights in
the world.

Speaker 7 (23:56):
Right.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
We kind of have to forcibly train our attention to
notice stuff so that we don't kind of fully adapt
to them over time. Another great way to fight hedonic
adaptation comes I know that how a studies academy focuses
a lot on history and philosophers. This is one that
comes from the stoics and one that the psychologists haven't
focused on too much. But it's the practice of negative visualization, right,

(24:20):
Imagine what life would be like without this thing, Not
in a terribly ruminative way that all the terrible things
are going to happen, but just you know, some wonderful
thing that's happening in your life. Just what would it
be like if that wasn't there anymore? The example I
often give in my podcast and when I'm giving toxes.
You know, if you're a parent, imagine that the last
time you saw your kid whenever that was, that was

(24:40):
the last time, never going to see them again. And like,
if you're a parent, my guess is you just said,
like your breath just caught in your throat. And my
guess is the next time you see your kid, just
with that short two second example, you'll hug them a
little bit more closely, right, Like, that's the power if
we if we just take a moment to realize what
it would feel like if we lost something, we can
start to appreciate the stuff we have. But all of

(25:02):
those are very intentional practices, right, Like all these habits
we've been talking about, you have to do that to
overcome hedonic adaptation doesn't happen naturally.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
Yeah, you know. Irvin Jaalam, who's professor was professor at
Stanford psychiatrist in one of his studies, talks about how
when he interacted with terminally ill patience, they just heard
that they're about to die, say the following. They say,
for the first time in my life in a very

(25:35):
long time, I truly feel that I'm alive, or I
truly appreciate, you know, my loved ones, or this meal
or the miracle that's all around me. And the question
I mean that begs is do we need to wait?
Do we need to wait? Or something tragic terrible to happen?

(25:57):
And I think what the Stoics did is they simulated
it with that question. You know, just imagine again you
don't need to take it, you know, make it so radical.
But even if something that you enjoy, you know, I
had an amazing smoothie this morning. You know, by the way,
Laurel'll tell you this in full confidence. My next career,
I'm going to have a smoothie stall to me just

(26:18):
to be very good at that.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
I feel like to be very fruity, very exactly, so you.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
Know, I had my smoothie this morning. And now if
I imagine what if I couldn't have a smoothie anymore,
What a difference that would make in mind? Again, something small,
seemingly trivial, but it can help us be more grateful
for those seemingly trivial important things.

Speaker 5 (26:39):
You know.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
One of the quotes that I love, which is attributed
I don't think he actually said it, but it's attributed
to Einstein, is there are only two ways in which
you can live your life. One way to live your
life is as if nothing is a miracle. The other
is as if everything is a miracle. And that's about,
you know, savoring, not taking for granted.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
And I think we all have experiences. You know, hopefully
most of the people listening right now aren't experiencing, you know,
a terminal cancer diagnosis. I think we've all had experiences
where good things have gone away and we kind of
recognize this, right, you know, Like you thought you lost
your phone, You're like, oh my gosh, my phone, and
then you find it, You're like, ah, I appreciate your
phone more. Or you know, take a situation we all

(27:22):
went through not that long ago, right, COVID Right, I
remember in the depths of like Spring of twenty twenty
that I was like, oh my gosh, if I could
just go to the movies again, I will love being
get them. If I could just go to a restaurant again,
I will love being a restaurant so much. You know,
Sadly it doesn't stick around, right, But so even just
remembering that, you know, if I go to a restaurant
later tonight, I'll think, oh my gosh, this this isn't guaranteed.

(27:44):
None of this stuff is guaranteed. In some ways, it
is a miracle that we get to enjoy all these
kind of cool things. So yeah, getting back in the
attitude of noticing that and savoring it can be so powerful.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
Yeah, you know, as you were talking, I'm thinking about
one of the main ideas that we talk about in
the Happiness Studies Academy, whether it's in our short programs
in our MA pro gram is around the three hours
of change, and the three hours of change are the
first r is reminders. So we need to remind ourselves

(28:20):
to express gratitude, We need to remind ourselves to you know,
go out and you know and meet someone. And these
reminders can come in the form of you know, our
phone reminding us. It can be a picture on the wall,
it can be a bracelet that that we wear and
reminds us of something like being mindful or present or kind.
But we need those reminders. Second after reminders, we need

(28:42):
repetition because, as you know you pointed out, not enough
to you know, one and done. We need to do
it again and again. And then if we do the
first two, then we get to the you know, the
sort of the promised land of change, which is rituals,
the third hour, or a habit. And you know, I
love the quote by John Dryden, a British philosopher poets,

(29:07):
who said, we first make our habits, and then our
habits make us and that's when it becomes second nature.
And again second nature, you know, whether it's to brushing
your teeth or saying hello and smiling to a person
you see on the street, these are all habits we
can cultivate and form.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, and I think you know what it's really worth
remembering how important it is to kind of create those
habits over time. I mean, the data just really show
that by engaging in these kind of practices more and
more often, you really can change your overall happiness.

Speaker 5 (29:40):
Right.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
You know, so many of those statistics we talked about
when we started, like, we don't that doesn't need to
be that way, right. There are things that we can
do as individuals and rituals we can set up as
societies to try to fix that. Yeah, you're listening to
my conversation with doctor tal Ben Shahar of the Happiness
Studies Academy. We'll be back after the break.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
Okay, final question and then we'll open it up. I
see there are many hands up. So in if in
any way at all has your work in cognitive psychology
informed your current work.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Yeah, so kind of psychology broadly, I think has really
helped me understand so many of the different studies in
happiness science. Right, in a very particular way, which is
that I think cognitively speaking, we get happiness wrong.

Speaker 5 (30:30):
Right.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
The way we think about what it means to be
happy isn't really the way happiness works, right.

Speaker 5 (30:36):
You know.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
We assume we need to change our circumstances to be happier. No,
not so much like we just really need to change
our behaviors in our mindsets.

Speaker 5 (30:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
We assume that what we need to do is to
get more and more money, but in practice, like we
don't actually need that stuff. I think, you know, one
path to happiness is really to overcome a lot of
the misconceptions we have about how happiness works. You know,
I often tell my students that our minds lie to us,
and then we have to kind of fight those lies
to do a little bit better. And you know, a

(31:06):
lot of those lies are the beliefs we have about happiness,
how we think about happiness, and so on. So, yeah,
I think cognition matters a lot for happiness. I'm curious
how you've applied your organizational behavior training to studies of happiness.

Speaker 6 (31:18):
What have you learned?

Speaker 1 (31:18):
If I get to ask the question.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
Yeah, of course. So you know, on my wall as
reminders of you know, the important things and the values
in my people I care about and who care about me.
And one of those pictures is Richard Hackman, whom you remember.
So he was on the fifteenth floor. He was, you know,
my mentor and supervisor. And Richard Hackman, who was an

(31:46):
organizational behaviorist, said to us the following He said, if
you really want to understand the phenomenon and want to
be able to change that phenomenon, you have to understand
it at multiple levels. So even though he was an
organizational behaviorist, he said, look at the neurons, look at
the individual, look at the interaction, the interpersonal, look at

(32:10):
the group, and look at the organization. So in order
to understand any phenomenon, and again happiness being no exception,
you need to look at all those levels. As a
result of his teachings, I created the Happiness Studies Academy
around the interdisciplinary approach. So yes, our students learn cognitive,

(32:35):
psichology and neuroscience, and they learn about organizations as well
as nations. So one of the first classes is about
systems thinking. And systems thinking is that about understanding the minute,
the micro details and the large the macro information.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
That's so important because I think, I think this is
another spot where we can get happiness wrong. I sometimes
get critiques from students about, you know, the fact that
we often talk about, well, here's the behaviors in the
mindsets that you can change as an individual, right, And
I think that that can mistakenly get folks to think
that that's the only path to happiness.

Speaker 9 (33:14):
Right.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
You know, if you're in a dead end, a job
that's not paying you a lot, of money. If you're
in an awful situation, if you're in a system that's
really not allowing you to flourish very well, it's like, well,
just write in your gratitude journal and it'll be okay.
I think we forget that we should be intervening on
multiple levels of analysis. Definitely the structural levels too, because
of course when you're interviewe on a whole organization, it
makes it easier for all the individuals in the organization

(33:36):
to flourish better too.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah. Yeah, there's a wonderful book that I know, Malcolm
Gladwell swears by, which is called The Person in the
Situation that talks about how again you have to look
to understand something, you have to look at the different levels,
the environment and the individual. All right, I have to
curb my enthusiasm here and call on our wonderful community.

(34:04):
So Sandy, please everyone, if you can make your your
questions sing short so that we can get through as
many as possible.

Speaker 6 (34:14):
This is this is a question for both of you,
tell and and Lourie. You know, you were talking about systems,
and you were talking about the environment and the conditions
around the subjects that all be obviously influence in happiness,
and you were also talking about the importance of connection

(34:35):
and micro moments smiles, knowlogy.

Speaker 10 (34:40):
Kind of blocking this. So my question is around that,
what do you think, both of.

Speaker 6 (34:46):
You about what we need to do talking about systems,
you know, social systems two to improve and to prevent
what we already see going on, you know, since twenty
ten and the social media and the screens that is

(35:08):
setting our brains for unhappiness.

Speaker 10 (35:11):
It's it's creating habits that we know will make us unhappy.
And I think that is a teamwork.

Speaker 6 (35:21):
As you say, it's not only it doesn't have to
do only with individual discipline, but because it is so
ingrained and even more with AI, it's going to become
even more ingrained and have the fantasy of connecting or
having someone that cares about us with you know, the
AI things.

Speaker 10 (35:43):
What can we do that I think it's urgent.

Speaker 6 (35:46):
What would you think we could do as a society,
as a team to prevent these from going even worse?

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, well, I mean I'm interested to hear tas the answer,
but I'll mention kind of two things. I mean, there's
many more that we could talk about.

Speaker 8 (36:00):
Right.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
One is I think we need to find ways to
perhaps regulate and curb the spaces where we're using our technologies,
while at the same time I'm building spaces where it's
much easier to interact socially. So I think structurally, on
the second point, we need more spaces. The political scientist
Robert Putnam another person that ton I probably interacted with

(36:22):
back when we were in school. Back in the day
as grad students, talked about this idea of third spaces.
These are places that are not home and not work,
where you can get together and interact with people from
all different walks of life. Ideally, you don't even have
to buy something there, right. Putnam talked about how third
spaces really flourished in the US back in the nineteen fifties,

(36:43):
where there were rotary clubs and churches and sports leagues
and bowling alleys where everyone could get together and kind
of hang out with one another. Not so much anymore.
I really think we need to think and kind of
energize our approach to building those kinds of spaces to
make it easier to interact in real life. At the
same time, I think we need to figure out ways
to get of avoid the temptation of interacting on our phones.

(37:06):
And I think this is something I think about a
lot in the school setting right where we know, of course,
like having your phone out is probably impacting say my
college students or even younger students' ability to learn, but
I worry more about it it's impact on their ability
to be social in the dining hall, hanging out with others,
you know, in the school yard and so on. And
so I think that we really need to take seriously

(37:29):
the idea of kind of getting phones out of schools
right or even having time limits on phones at schools,
And I think this is the spot we're doing it,
like system wide can be really helpful. It's so hard
as a parent of a teenager to be like, you know,
for your flourishing, I'm going to limit your phone use
when all their friends have access to phones. But if
a whole school says, hey, no phones until fifteen, or

(37:50):
no phones until sixteen, it just makes it easier because
there's not the fear of missing out that you have
is the one individual trying to do this. And so
I think as we think about kind of adjusting our
spaces so that our temptation to use our screens and
our technology is not as high, just going to make
it easier to engage in more social connection in real life.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
It's all curious with Yeah, thank you, Laurie. So I'll
second and third everything that that you said. I had
a bit of a how moment around this uh a
couple of years ago. And I know many in now
community know Udi, who's member of the HSA community. And

(38:33):
I told him about all the limitations that I was
putting on, you know, screen time. And I said, it's challenging,
but you know it's it's a it's a fight worth,
it's a battle worth, you know, fighting and and and
after a few minutes after I told him about all
the restrictions and limitations, he said, you know, you've you're
a positive psychologist, but until now you just talked about

(38:55):
all the no's, you know, what they don't do. How
about some yess in other words, finding positive alternatives too?
To the phone and you and you talked about, you know,
Putnam talked about those spaces that are pleasant, that are enjoyed,
that people want to go to. And I think one
of the most important yes is today, especially for well

(39:19):
for all of us, but certainly for kids. It's the
it's sports athletics, because you know, when they're playing basketball
with one another, they're not on the phone, nor are
they complaining that they're not on the phone in something
which is helping. Not you mentioned all the other benefits associated.

Speaker 5 (39:39):
You know.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
So it's the social, it's the physical, it's it's resilience
that they cultivate through through sports. So I would put
a lot more emphasis on sports in schools, in homes.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
I love that, all right, thank you, Sandy, Christina.

Speaker 7 (40:01):
Good morning, jo Or Santos, and Hi everybody. I just
came back from we passional retreat where we stayed in
silence completely ten hours meditation and so you can imagine

(40:21):
it was not so easy, and we completely we were
really strangers. We didn't know each other, but we spent
time close to each other. And at the end we
had this wonderful teacher, Carlos Sophiale is very good, quite
famous in Europe, and at the end we made a

(40:44):
heart meditation in which we just looked at each other
straight in the eyes with the hand on our art
and it was one of the most incredible experiences.

Speaker 5 (41:01):
Wow.

Speaker 8 (41:03):
So I just like to ask you in your experience
during these years. How much important do you put on
cultivating this kind of.

Speaker 7 (41:19):
Practices meditations, yoga, how important are they?

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, I mean, I think those kinds of practices, from
meditation to yoga, do a bunch of things that are
very relevant for cultivating a mindset that's relevant to happiness. Right,
most of those practices engage in some form of mindfulness, right,
being present in the present moment, hopefully in a way
that's kind of non judgmental. So you're not in the

(41:47):
present moment I hate this, I hate this, You're kind
of non judgmentally accepting the present moment. And there's tons
of studies showing the importance of that, not just for
kind of experiencing more positive emotions, feelings of contentment, and
so on, but also for things like decreasing craving over time.
One of the most interesting kind of remedies for substance

(42:07):
use disorders is through these practices of radical acceptance of
craving and so on. So I think these practices of
mindfulness can be incredibly powerful. But a second thing that
the particular form of mindfulness that you describe, the sort
of heart meditation can do is to allow us to
experience another mindset that we know is really important for happiness,
which is the mindset of compassion, right, kind of having

(42:29):
these positive feelings for other people, wishing them well and
so on. And there's studies from Tanya Singer's lab and
others showing that practices like loving kindness, meditation, really wishing
to others, may you be happy, may you be safe,
and so on, are incredible ways to feel good ourselves.
And this comes from work that I know everyone in
Happiness Studies Academy talks about a lot, which is doing

(42:51):
nice things for other people, having positive wishes towards the
nice things for other people. Those are the kinds of
things that wind up making us happier. And so yeah,
I think that these practices of meditation and mindfulness can
be incredibly powerful, not even just in one way, but
because they allow us to cultivate these mindsets that tap
into so many different tinier practices that can be good
for our flour.

Speaker 8 (43:13):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
Yeah, thank thank you, Laurie. And you know, I think
about this the you know, the heartfelt experience a lot.
I think For me, I've been doing the gratitude exercise
since the nineteenth of September nineteen ninety nine.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
My track record is not nearly as good.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
Yeah, well, but I did it, you know, as you recall,
you know, Emmons and mccuff did their research in two
thousand and three. But I learned about the Gratitude Journal
from Oprah. Of course, you know, we talked about it then,
and I was thinking, and I was watching one of
our shows, and I was thinking, well, what a nice idea.
And I tried it, and of course, you know, having
looked back and that it really upgraded my experience of

(44:00):
the very simple gratitude exercise is Barbara Fredericson's work on
heartfelt positivity. So it's not just going through the motion
and writing what I'm grateful for. It's yes, it's writing
and then maybe closing my eyes and think, okay, so
what does my daughter mean to me? Or you know,
what does the smile that I receive today mean to me?

(44:22):
So really experiencing those things that I write down in
the heart and that can make all the difference, because
in many ways that is also an antidote to hedonic adaptation.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
You're really savoring it, you're experiencing it. And I think
this is so critical. I see this in my students, right,
we assign them these practices of engaging in gratitude journaling
and so on, and like so many things in their lives,
I feel like they're kind of dial like it. And
it's like you know, my parents, my grades, you know,
food and water, whatever, you know, health, you know, just
like you can kind of do your gratitude journal like that,
or you could do it in a way where you

(44:56):
ask yourself, you know, how does it truly make me
feel the love I feel for my parents? Like what
would it feel like to not have them?

Speaker 5 (45:01):
And so on?

Speaker 1 (45:02):
That moment of savoring, that moment of noticing can be
so powerful. All in one other practice that I think
we should all squeeze into our gratitude practices to kind of,
you know, like supersize them in terms of their impact.
And that's to express gratitude to other people. Again to all,
I don't know your gratitude journals been going on for
a long time. I don't know what's in it. But
for me, a lot of times what's in it is

(45:23):
other people. Right that I'm grateful for things, you know,
smell my morning coffee and so on, but I'm really
grateful for, you know, the people who work on my
podcast team, my students like my husband right, and I
might even take time to kind of notice, oh, my gosh,
I love my husband so much, you know, I'm so
grateful for him. But rarely do I stop at the
end of that moment and walk over at him and
be like, you know, honey, I'm so grateful for you.

(45:43):
Thank you so much that you emptied the dishwasher, help
me with this problem or whatever. We tend not to
express gratitude to other people, and there's work by Nick
Kepley at the University of Chicago showing that one of
the reasons we don't do that is we just assume.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
They know, right.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
We assume they know they mean a lot to us
and they're thankful for us, and that kind of, you know,
cognitive distortion, assuming that they know when they don't actually know.
This sort of failure of perspective taking means we leave
a moment on the table to do something nice to
somebody else. When I express my husband, oh, I'm so
grateful for you, that feels good to him. It kind
of boots up my gratitude because it's hard to be

(46:16):
saying that and not feeling it, and it's usually a
moment of social connection, sometimes with people who haven't talked
to in.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
A while, you know.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
I know sometimes moments in my gratitude journal, I'm just
like thinking about an old friend or something that somebody
did for me weeks ago, maybe even sometimes years ago,
you know, reach out to that person and actually express
gratitude to them.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
You know.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
The studies really show that they don't know that you
appreciate them that much, and it can have a huge
impact on their well being and yours too.

Speaker 3 (46:42):
Yeah. Yeah, that's such an important, powerful amplifier of the
of the gratitude exercise, and then you have the cognitive
and the behavioral working in tandem. Yeah it Tai.

Speaker 4 (46:57):
Thank you so much. So I'm going to make a
quick question, especially as a college professor. We all know
the political climate in colleges has been spoke about everything
very charged, especially in the past twenty months. I wonder
what are your thoughts on the positive implications and the
negative implications it has on students welfare and happiness. On

(47:21):
one hand, there are social connections that are being made
students become politically involved. When I was a student in
a year's college twenty years ago, there was nothing like that.
On the other hand, obviously there are many people who
are very stressed and anxious about it. And I'm especially
curious to know because all the reports show that the wellbeing,

(47:44):
the mental wellbeing of students, especially in the US, is declining.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Yeah, yeah, this is a great question. I think is
what I think about a lot, especially on the US
college campus. I think part of the problem starts with
the loneliness crisis that we're seeing, and in some ways
the crisis of these third spaces. One of Robert Putnam's
original insights when you first started writing about third space
was that there are often spots where we can meet

(48:12):
someone who thinks differently across the political divide. He talked
to about growing up in a small town in Ohio
where during his at his bowling league, there were people
from many different races, many different political parties, many different
wealth levels.

Speaker 8 (48:27):
Right.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
I think more and more in modern times, especially in
the US, you just don't interact with someone that's a
Republican if you're a Democrat, Right, you just don't interact
with people who have a vastly different wealth level than you. Right,
especially on like even putting and even terms where you
can have fun conversations about something else. And so one
of Robert Putnam's points is that if we really want

(48:48):
to fix this problem of the political divide generally, but
also the kind of fraught nature of having tough political conversations,
like it would be great to build spaces where we
were talking like across the aisle generally, and then that
would make it easier to have these conversations later. And
so I actually see a lot of these problems as
ones of social connection, like we're just not interacting with

(49:10):
people who you know, share views that are different, that
have views that are different than ours, and so on.
I also think that in general, when I watch my
college students, it's not so much even that they're having
a tough time with these hard political conversations. They're having
a tough time with conversations generally. Right they have to
call someone to you know, update something on their financial
aid or something. It's like call someone I'm you know,

(49:32):
fraught with social anxiety to be able to do that.
One of the funny you know, as a head of college,
you often have these funny moments where you realize how
different life is for gen Z and Gen Alpha than
it is for you and One of the ones that
I remember so well during my head of college days
happened when one of my students was like, hox Santo's
that's my title head of college. Hoxanto's, hox Santo's there's

(49:52):
this weird number on the wall in my room, Like
what's this number? And I was like what she talking about?
So I go in a room and I'm like, oh,
that's that's a phone jack. That number used to be
a phone because you used to have a landline that
people could call you in your room. And she was like, oh,
that's so great, and she said, well, did each of
my roommates have one? Like is there one that would
have been mine? And like four other ones for my roommates?
And I was like, no, like back in the day,

(50:13):
there's just one number. And she she literally asked, She's like, well,
what would happen? You know if I was roommates with
Tall and someone called for Tall and Tall wasn't there.
But I answered the phone like what would happen? And
I said, well, you you would say, you know, Tall's
not here. Can I take a message? And I realized, like, wait,
many college students, many eighteen year olds today, have never
had that experience. You know, they don't have landlines in

(50:34):
their own home. They never you know, many college students
have never had the experience of having to go to
somebody's house, knock on the door, you know, say hey,
where's Tall? Can you come out to play and talk
with a parent? Like these tiny social interactions that you know,
if you're of a certain age like me and Tall,
maybe you remember as being ubiquitous in society just aren't
the things that kids today grow up with. And so like,
if they can't do that, you know, if they can't

(50:56):
be like, hey, Tall's not here, can I take a message?
You know, how are they going to talk about, you know,
like the bills that are coming out in the United
States and fraught political politics and what's going on in
the Middle East. Like that's way harder than the simple thing.
And so I actually think if we could find ways
to build in spaces where those simple conversations become easier
and more practices to get kids to kind of engage

(51:18):
in the habit of doing social connection generally, then we'll
actually solve a lot of the tougher political conversation issues
that our young people are facing today.

Speaker 3 (51:27):
You know, Laurie I'm thinking as you were talking about
one of the practices that we have at the Happiness
Studies academies. We have retreats. And the reason we have
those retreats is so that we can have, you know,
face to face, in person interactions rather than just being online.
And our last retreat was in Finland and we had

(51:49):
one of the professors from a Finnish university talk about
why is Finland, you know, time and time again, the
happiest country in the world. And he said one of
the reasons is the sauna and we were all acting
the sauna and he said, yes, Finns are obsessed with saunas.
And he said, if you think about it, what it does.

(52:12):
And he didn't use that language, but now I'm you know,
using Urine and Putnam's language. It's a third space, he says.
We get in there and it doesn't matter if you're
a you know, a CEO of a large company or
you know, a bus driver, you know, a street sweeper
or a stay at home parent or whatever. You're there together.
He added, often naked. So yeah, intimate, very intimate, and

(52:36):
you know, you talk about life and that's it. That's
a that's a third space. So maybe you know one
of our recommendations should be more son as a cross men. Yeah,
across the.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Country, yells campus. I think problems perhaps, but what will
work through it?

Speaker 3 (52:51):
I know, I know. Yeah, we'll think about that one. Yeah,
So creating more of those again, they don't need to
be major. Even micro interactions can make can make all
the difference on campuses and and the workplace and beyond.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
Thank you you're listening to me speaking with doctor Tall
Benjahar of the Happiness Studies Academy. We'll be back after
the shortbreak.

Speaker 11 (53:20):
Shari, Hello, So I have a question doctor Santos about
this is kind of following the same lines about students.
So I have a college aged student and he is
completely mortified when I speak to anyone in public. If
I pass someone on the sidewalk and say hello, if
I talk to someone in line at the grocery store,
He's like, why are you always talking to people? And

(53:42):
then we had a conversation recently about this gen Z stare.
I don't know if you're familiar with this, but this
idea that when you ask a gen Z person a
question and they just stare back at you with no response.
And so we were having along back and forth about this,
and I was trying to express to him the importance

(54:02):
or the value and just communicating with other people, recognizing
someone else as having these small conversations little chichette, and
He's like, if I'm working at a food counter and
they get their food, I'm doing my job.

Speaker 3 (54:15):
Why does it have to be all this extra?

Speaker 11 (54:17):
So my question is, when you have students who have
come to your class, I would imagine for a reason
they're choosing to take this class, and then you offer
them these things that they can do, do you find
that they struggle to recognize the value in doing those things?

Speaker 1 (54:34):
And then what do you do with that?

Speaker 4 (54:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (54:37):
No, it's a great question, and I resonate. Believe me,
I get a lot of the gen z stare in
my life much, professor, Right. I mean, I think one
of the strategies I've had for convincing people that this
stuff is important is really showing people the data, right,
I mean, in my course, you literally get to see
the graph of what happens if you engage in the

(54:58):
conversation with the breeze at the coffee shop versus if
you don't, And then you see that graph and you're like, well,
I actually want more of life satisfaction. I want more
of positive emotion. Maybe I should try it out. And
I think this is critical. You know, I mentioned before
this idea that our minds lie to us about the
kinds of things that make us happy, and I think
our minds lie to us about so much of what
the benefits of social connection could be. This is definitely

(55:19):
true for gen Z, but I think it's true for
adults too. Some of the original studies on the benefits
of these really micro interactions happened not with individuals for
a gen Z, but kind of like, you know, middle
aged adults in the workforce. Nick Epley did this study
where he had people on a commute to works. He's
again like, kind of middle aged people hopping on the
L train to go to work, because he did this
study in Chicago in the US, and he either told people, hey,

(55:43):
for the entire train ride, I want you to enjoy
your solitude, be by yourself, or hey, for the entire
train ride, I want you to talk to someone.

Speaker 8 (55:50):
Right.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
He does the study and finds it when you talk
to someone, you wind up feeling happier, enjoying more positive mood,
and so on. But the other thing he does is
to have subjects predict, hey, if you were in one
of these two conditions that enjoy your solitude condition versus
the talk to someone condition, which would make you feel better,
and that was, like, you know, one of the most
strikingffects and positive psychology. People think that talking to the
stranger on the train is going to be awkward, crummy,

(56:14):
anxiety provoking, etc.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
Etc.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
Our predictions are wrong. And one of the things Nick
argues is that our predictions are wrong because we don't
often engage in these activities. In fact, he finds, for example,
the introverts really strongly predict that this is going to
be terrible, but the benefits that they accrue are the
same as those that extrovert might accrue. Kind of surprisingly,
this is a finding, I guess some pushback on so
I like often like to cite it like no, no, no,

(56:38):
here's a graph, you could look at it yourself. But
his argument is that introverts tend to engage in these
little micro interactions less, so they don't notice the benefits,
and their misconception about what it's going to feel like
gets bigger and bigger, right, because you never get the
data to show you, oh, that's not as bad as
I thought. I think that's actually what's going on with
gen Z a lot of the time, right, is that
they don't engage in these interactions. As we mentioned, they

(56:59):
don't have this moment to like, you know, quickly answer
the phone and talk to somebody or talk to folks
on the street. They just have no practice, and so
when they simulate what this is going to feel like,
it feels really it feels like it has a lot
of friction, it feels like it's going to be really hard,
And they never engage in these practices to get the
data to say not only it wasn't that bad, but
like it actually kind of made me feel good. It
made me feel a little bit more connected. It made

(57:20):
me feel a little bit happier than I would have
felt on that train ride. So so I like showing
the data and and kind of convincing folks, hey, just experiment,
just try it once, notice and see what it feels like.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
Yeah, thank you, that's great advice, you know, Laurie, the
idea of just experiment, see what happens. You know, the
worst that would happen. Okay, you're a little bit embarrassed,
so what And then also to recognize that for many
of these interventions there is a startup cost. Yes, it's
easier to sit by yourself and you know, be you know,
inside your you know, your screen. It's a little bit

(57:56):
more challenging to you know, smile at someone and strike
up a conversation. But once we do that, once you
know the first step, it becomes an upward spiral.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
I think it's so important to recognize that, like our
intuitions about how bad it's going to be, our wrong,
you know, and if and they're wrong for so many
things in the domain of social connection, right, we assume
that other people don't want to talk to us. This
is another finding from some of Nick Epley's work, right,
that the person you're talking to is hating it the
whole time and being like, who's this weirdo who's talking
to me on the train? No, it turns out that

(58:26):
the people who you're talk who are talked to, actually
enjoy it as well. We worry that it would be
tough to ask someone for help, to show that we're vulnerable,
but social psychologists have long documented this so called beautiful
mess effect, where if you seem like you're a little
needy like and that you seem like you're a little vulnerable.
That actually enhances your likability to other folks. And so

(58:46):
I actually think, I honestly tell one of my roles
is to tell college students about all these kinds of
biases that like, you think social connection is going to
be bad, You think you're going to be bad at it,
You think other people aren't going to like it, But
not only is it going to be neutral, it's going
to be good for your happiness, for your likability, for
all these other things. Sometimes you need to overcome all
these misconceptions.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
Yeah, love it. Wonderful, Valentina, Thank you, Taal.

Speaker 12 (59:14):
I'm gonna make it a quick question, but I think
it has a lot of deep meaning behind.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
In Spanish we can.

Speaker 12 (59:22):
Relate to ideas to happiness estara falis which is joy
or emotional state, and c falis which is fulfillment the
whole person, wellbeing, et cetera. So I started a project
four years ago that promotes happiness as whole person well

(59:42):
being as a personal responsibility. So I just want to
listen to your insight.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
On that, Lari.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
Yeah, I mean I think this is a couple of
threads on that one is that I love that you're
bringing up the way different languages refer to happiness, because
I think this is one of the problems we face
right is that we have really limited tools to talk
about incredibly complicated states, whether those are states of emotion,
states of short term happiness, state happiness, and so on.

(01:00:09):
My favorite projects coming out of the work of Tyler
Vanderveil's lab at Harvard these Days is a whole repository
of words for happiness and words for emotions from around
the world. And what you find is English, the language
I speak from a terrible monolingual American. It's just like
so impoverished when it comes to other countries. And just like,

(01:00:30):
you know a concept that many folks know, even if
they don't know German. You know this word schadenfreude, right,
It's like it's an American. I don't know German, but
I'm like I hear that word. I'm like, oh, I
get shoden freuda, that kind of good feeling you get
when something bad happens to somebody else, know what it means.
So many of the words in this kind of big
corpus that they're putting together are concepts that you like.
When you hear it, you're like, oh my gosh, I
totally kind of have that concept, even though I don't

(01:00:52):
have a word for it. One of my favorite ones,
I'm going to forget the word which is even more embarrassing,
but it's a word in Norwegian that means on the
first hot day of the year, the cold beverage that
you have outside. And as someone who lives in the
northeast of the United States, I get I'm like, oh
my gosh, there's that day and you have the beard.
Oh so good. Right, But the point is that we

(01:01:12):
have impoverished words when it comes to all these concepts,
and so I think making distinctions, for example, between well,
what I mean by happiness when I mean the joy
the short term stuff, and what I mean by happiness
when I mean long term stuff. Right, those distinctions, you know,
are really critical, and in terms of like which one
we should be prioritize, I think the science or shows
us something interesting, right, which is like prioritizing both is

(01:01:34):
pretty good, right, as you kind of have more joy
in your life, more of these short term moments of
feeling good that can contribute to a life where you
feel like you're overall flourishing, you're could of all overall
promoting your happiness. And finally, I love this idea that
you talked about it as a personal responsibility, right. I
think sometimes we can kind of pooh pooh happiness because

(01:01:57):
we assume it's selfish.

Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
It's just like me, like, oh, you know, poor me,
I'm not as happy as I could be, Like you know, me, me, me,
I want to feel better. But I think more and
more data are coming out showing just how powerful people's
mood can be for the kinds of ways that they
interact in the world, and in particular the good things
they do in the world. Konstant Tin Kushlev, who's a
professor at Georgetown, has been doing these studies asking the

(01:02:20):
question like who's out there, like fighting the good fight
for the big problems, right, Like who's out there trying
to deal with the climate crisis that we're facing in
the US When we face social justice problems, you know,
who's going to, for example, a Black Lives Matter protest?
Like who's like really trying to put in the work
to fix the problems that you perceive us facing. And
what he finds is that a lot of it is

(01:02:41):
predicted by your positive mood. You know, if you ask
who are the people that are really worried about the
climate crisis, it tends to be people who are a
little high anxiety, a little high depression. But if you
ask the question who's getting solar panels, who's going to
a protest, who's calling you know, their congressman or a
politician to try to help and fix things, it tends
to be the people who are feeling happier. And his

(01:03:02):
hypothesis is that, like, actually, if we want to fix
the structural problems out there, we kind of need to
put our own oxygen mask on first, because that's how
we're going to help others, and that's how we're going
to help the world. And so so I love this
notion that, like, you should see your own life satisfaction,
you should see your own kind of flourishing. As a
personal responsibility, I actually think based on Kushluff's work, it

(01:03:24):
becomes kind of a moral responsibility to take care of yourself.
That might be one of the best ways to make
sure we have the bandwidth to be helping others and
help and helping the world too.

Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
That's great and Laurie, I just want to connect that,
you know, the two strands of your of your response.
You know, you talk about how language is important, and
you know, we talk about how words create worlds and
how concepts conceive and one of the words that we
use is rather than think about the pursuit of happiness

(01:03:59):
as being selfish or selfless, we talk about it being
self full. And within the idea of selffulness, that's when
you take care of yourself and you take care of others.
More than that, it's through taking care of yourself that
you take care of others, and by taking care of others,
you're also taking care of yourself, so you're potentially creating

(01:04:20):
an upward spiral of goodness and happiness.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
I love this. I love this concept of selfful It's
a good it's a good word.

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):
Thank you, Vallet Gutdie.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
Thank you first of all, thank you both for everything
that you do to help other people. You're both my hero,
So thank you very much. I am very much on board.
That has also known me for many years. I'm very
much on board with doing things proactively to become happier.

(01:04:57):
I have two teenage daughters who are seventeen years old
who will not listen to any of this and would
love any advice that you have for how we can
get these messages.

Speaker 3 (01:05:12):
Through to them.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
Well, I will say one of the things you can
do sounds like something you're already doing, Gotti, which is
that we know our behaviors are contagious. Right if you're
at the dinner table talking not about the terrible things
that happened at work, but your delights, that's the kind
of thing that's going to make other people tend to
do that too, and especially your kids. While it doesn't
often feel like it, you know, there's lots of evidence

(01:05:36):
from Cya, Barsaid and others that are the contagion that
we experience, both in our behaviors and our emotions happen
for happen through the people who are in charge to
the people who are a little bit less in charge.
And even though it doesn't feel that way, especially with
the seventeen year olds, you as a parent, are actually
in charge. But what that means is that you actually
have some agency over the emotions in your family and

(01:05:58):
in some ways the behaviors in your family. You just
kind of have to practice yourself. And I love this
piece of advice because it gives parents, and even if
you're not a parent, a leader at work and so on,
a manager, permission to take care of yourself and to
make sure you are doing the kinds of things that
you need to do to promote your well being, because
those kinds of behaviors and the emotions that emerge from

(01:06:18):
those behaviors will transmit. The other thing I'll suggest, though,
is that you know, if what what I find works
so much with our young people today in terms of
getting this message out, is really just sharing the data.
One of the insights I had from you know, the
fact that my happiness class went viral, and I think
the fact that Tall's happiness class went viral and so on,

(01:06:39):
is that I think our young people aren't looking for
platitudes about the kinds of things they're supposed to do,
right like, I think they get a lot of that.
I think they're really much more evidence based than previous generations.
I think they're like, show me the data, and then
I'll do what I need to do. And I think that,
you know, in the case of happiness studies, we just
have tons of data on the simple kinds of behavior
and mindset changes you can make to feel happier. And

(01:07:00):
so I think, rather than tell them what to do,
show them what they can do. Like, you know, hey,
did you know there's a study that you just talk
to somebody, you know, in the grocery store, you'll wind
up feeling happier.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
Huh.

Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
It's kind of like pointing them to the water, but
not trying to force them to drink. Give them a
sense of the kinds of things they can do, and
I find that that can be much more powerful than
you expect.

Speaker 8 (01:07:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
You know, my wife just recently shared a study with
our kids that's part of the Harvard study that doing
house chores contributes to self esteem, well being in success,
and I actually think it helped.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
Another general thing I talk a lot about on the
podcast is that sometimes when we want people to do
something are easy, the easiest way we think we can
get them to do it is to tell them to
do that, right, But if we reflect on how we
get motivated to do things, we instantly realize what a
bad strategy that is. Right, like the way to get
the dishwasher never to get empty. It just from my

(01:07:59):
husband to like nag me about it, right, I could
have been immediately about to go to the dishwasher, but
he's like, are you gonna empty the dishwasher? I'm like, no,
I'm not, I'm going. You know, Like, those are the
kinds of dynamics that we have as we often forget
that with our kids. We're often in the mode of
telling rather than showing, right, and I think if we
can get back to the mode of showing, either through
our own behavior or just like you know, revealing the

(01:08:20):
consequences of different forms of action, you know, kind of
like you were saying tall, like, hey, did you know
that doing chores like actually increases self esteem? Like these
folks are like smart agentave individuals, even if they're a
little younger than us, and they're going to hear kind
of what they should do and be more likely to
engage in it when they kind of figure it out
on their own and make a decision themselves that hey,
this might be a good thing to engage with rather

(01:08:42):
than you just sort of telling them or try or
or trying to force them or give them rewards for
it or so on. Find letting them find their own
intrinsic motivation is a really powerful strategy.

Speaker 3 (01:08:53):
Love that show, thank you, thank you very much. Thank you,
Gady Denny, thank you that.

Speaker 13 (01:09:02):
So good to see you again. I am wondering how
I have a six year old who is here, and
sometimes I wonder what can I do for him to
remain happier I feel happy for the rest of his
life because sometimes although he's a lot of life and everything,
at some points I see that he becomes in this

(01:09:22):
stage of adaptation, and so I wonder how can I
explain him without that to continue his happiness?

Speaker 6 (01:09:33):
So thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
Yeah, well, I think I think that's a spot when
you're dealing with younger kids where your actions matter a lot, right,
watching your behavior matters a lot. I think I think
we kind of implicitly know this a little bit with
the not so good behaviors.

Speaker 14 (01:09:50):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
You know, what's one way to get kids really addicted
to screens is if they see you on your screen
all the time, right, they're gonna cut they is you know.
You know another thing in my house is when you
hear your parents wear and the kid instantly picks up
on the bad word that they're not supposed to say. Right,
you know, they're they're soaking that stuff up, but they're
also soaking the good stuff up, Right. So I think
that the more you can engage in these practices, the

(01:10:12):
more they're kind of learning the right kinds of things
to do. One I think matters a lot for parents
is really talking through the emotions you're going through, especially
if they're bad emotions.

Speaker 6 (01:10:22):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
I think one of the things that we can do
mindset shift, we can engage in to feel a lot better,
is to give ourself some self compassion when we're not
having a good time.

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
I think this is a talk through you that really
helps with kids.

Speaker 5 (01:10:36):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
You know, mommy's feeling really frustrated today and she's having
a bad day. I'm actually feeling really frustrated and maybe
a little lonely. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna call,
you know, call my sister tonight, because that's what I
need to do. But like, it's okay, everybody goes through
bad emotions. Like that kind of stream of consciousness set
out loud teaches kids' words for emotions so they know
it's not just a yucky feeling. You can be feeling

(01:10:56):
frustrated or lonely or sad or angry or whatever, and
it kind of lets you articulate what you're going to
do that. It's okay that you're going through it. Everybody
goes through it, but here's what I'm going to do
to fix it. Those are powerful practices for little kids
to hear. When we finished our projects of sharing some
of these happiness strategies with teenagers, we also did a

(01:11:20):
project with Sesame Workshop, which is the group in the
US that build Sesame Street, to try to think about, like, well,
what are ways we can fill this into little kids.
And one of the most powerful ways we figured out
is like, well, parents can articulate some of these things too, right,
Parents behavior matters. This is like a lot of the
direct transmission we have, and so finding ways to just
articulate what you're going through let them hear it. They'll

(01:11:42):
pick up on it, not immediately, not perfectly, not one
hundred percent of the time, but you're getting that information
in there in a way that you'll be surprised, will
stick when you least expect it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:52):
Yeah, And it's that. And just to add to that stories,
whether it's stories of you know Mom, or stories off
you know Grandpa, or story of you know of Helen,
and stories that the children that that that have a

(01:12:15):
value base that communicate any important and this is.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):
One of the things I think you all do so well.
And the Happiness Studies Academy, right, is that not only
are you're not just focused on psychology, but you're also
focused on the system and focused on neuroscience. You're also
focused on the ways that we often share a narrative
about our values.

Speaker 5 (01:12:31):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
You know, I love that there's novels and movies that
you are all studying as part of the academy because
these can be fantastic ways to learn about our emotions,
to learn what we value, to learn what are the
kinds of paths to a flourishing life. So yeah, that
earlier we can get those good stories into our kids,
the better.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
Yeah, thank you so much.

Speaker 13 (01:12:49):
It's a pleasure to see you both here together.

Speaker 4 (01:12:51):
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:12:55):
Sandy.

Speaker 15 (01:12:58):
Yes, hello, I wanted to circle back on the social
connection piece and really really unpack it at the micro level.
I know Sandy had that excellent question at the macro
level and we've been sprinkling it throughout, but kind of
the dynamic between still feeling loneliness but not necessarily being alone. Right,

(01:13:19):
So you're in a crowd or you're with people, you're
talking to people, and yet you still come away from
the situation feeling lonely. I heard a podcast about this peripherally,
about you know, small talk versus deeply connecting around things
that bring you meaning, but things that light you up.
But I'm interested in how it plays out in like

(01:13:40):
different human ecosystems, Like are there studies around gender norms
or even cultural norms about what gets talked about and
how does that facilitate building the connection, or even like
in microcosms of small communities that everyone knows each other
and so there's you know, worry around gossip. I saw

(01:14:02):
this on the small college campus I worked at, and
so people have struggle with being vulnerable because they're worried
about gotha. And also is the relationship transactional on nature
or does it focus on connection first? So if you
can unpack any of that, that would be great.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's a great question, and
I think it's worth thinking about how loneliness can emerge
due to our kind of fears about being vulnerable in
these populations, whether it's you know, gossip on a college campus,
you know, connecting with folks at work, right, you know,
this is something I think about a lot that you know,
work is not a third space. It's like, you know,
home works like the second space, but it's a spot
where we spend a lot of time with other people,

(01:14:41):
you know, where we really could be boosting our social
connection and our vulnerability if we wanted to write. And
so my read of the data is that pretty much
what it says is that the path to feeling connected
and feeling less lonely is in some ways like as
about as universal as they come, right, which is that
you need to share and get vulnerable with other people,
and often a way to do that is through a

(01:15:03):
little bit deeper conversation. Right. This is again some work
by Nick Eppie and his colleagues where he points out
that we're often having shallow conversation. We're talking about the weather,
you know, what sports game we're gonna but we're not
talking about the things that reveal our values, right, We're
not talking about the things that really matter. And I
think that's the kind of conversation we need to get to,
right where we're really kind of sharing the kinds of

(01:15:26):
things that matter. And you know, there's some nuance there,
of course, but that kind of strategy can work often
in lots of different situations, right, you know, take again
the kind of idea of friendship at work. I think
this is when we're like, well, we definitely don't want
to overshare at work, and there's things that you know,
there are different boundary conditions and so on, but all
of us can share a little bit about what's going on,

(01:15:46):
and all of us can ask questions. Often the path
to reducing our loneliness isn't about getting other people to
know us, but it's about asking questions that allow us
to get to know other people, which is sort of
always on the table.

Speaker 5 (01:15:58):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
So if a friend, you know, hey, what are you know?
You're at work? Oh, like what are you doing this weekend?
Like oh, you know, I'm like, you know, I don't
go on to Rhode Island for the weekend, or something like, oh,
what's in Rhode Island? How did you connect with that?
You a family there?

Speaker 4 (01:16:09):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
Like that that's not a kind of overshere that's going
to get you into hr trouble. It's just trying to understand, Oh,
you're going fishing, Like how did you decide to go fishing?
Like when did you start doing that? As a kid, right, like,
what's your favorite part about fishing?

Speaker 8 (01:16:21):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:16:22):
Like those questions where you can kind of get to
know people like one more step deep, more and more deeply,
and that can resonate a lot with kind of feeling
more connected because the next thing is they're going to
ask you the same thing and you'll feel a little
bit better. And so I think the instinct in whatever
situation we're in is actually to go like half a
step deeper than we would normally go in that situation,

(01:16:43):
and when in doubt, ask other people questions, right like,
really try to follow up and get curious with them,
because that's really a quick path to getting to know
someone else, and it might even be a quick path
to kind of overcoming some of the political divides we
were talking about before. One of my favorite strategies for
having tough conversations and even seeing eye to eye across

(01:17:07):
political lit differences is this lovely work on deep canvassing.
This is a work of Josh Kalla. He's a colleague
of mine at Yale, where he asked the question, like,
you know, what are what are the ways that we
might be able to see eye to eye on these
tough issues, and he says, well, rather than kind of
perspective giving of like, hey, here's you know what I
think about the issue I care about, do some perspective
getting So, for example, he does a study on individuals

(01:17:30):
who are kind of you know, anti LGBDQ issues, right,
maybe anti trans rites and so on. And what he'll
do is go up to folks during a canvassing situation
and rather than say, hey, let me tell you about
an experience you know, I had as a queer person
that was really tough, he'll say, hey, person i'm talking
to what was a situation where you felt like you
didn't really belong or you felt really marginalized, or you

(01:17:51):
felt somebody didn't get you. And he does this work,
you know, in situations where there are a lot of
individuals who are you know, not as familiar with queer individuals. Right,
So they'll say, you know, well, one time I was
in the military and I had PTSD and no one
really understood it and stuff. The individual who's canvassing will
sit and listen to that for a while, right, and
you say, huh, you know that situation which you felt

(01:18:11):
like you didn't belong, Like that's the kind of thing
A lot of queer people go through in their situations right,
and like they're making a connection, right. But the key
to canvassing is you're asking the question first, you're listening.
And Colla's work suggests that it doesn't necessarily, you know,
completely change people's political opinions, but it gets everybody to
listen to the lived experience of other folks, and it

(01:18:34):
gets people to kind of, you know, not necessarily see
to I to I, and maybe not change the situations,
but to hear them and often to realize that there's
more in common than you actually think. One are the
examples that comes not from Josh's work, but this is
from the work of Jamal Zaki, who is also doing
this lovely work on having these tough political conversations where
you ask questions, is you often have these situations where

(01:18:55):
people actually see eye to eye more than you realize.
Jamil did ones on gun violence, right, should we be
able to own guns?

Speaker 5 (01:19:02):
And so on?

Speaker 1 (01:19:02):
And he had someone who was going to staunchly anti
gun talk to someone who is pro gun, and the
pro gun person said, you know, so I live in
the South, I'm actually queer, and I'm afraid all the time,
and so owning a gun makes me feel a little
bit safer, right, And that might not be the you know,
the stereotype you have about the person who's going to be,
you know, super pro gun. And it wasn't like the

(01:19:23):
anti gun person was like, oh, we should all have gun,
but it was like, oh, I see eye to eye
a little bit more. I get your lived experience. I
don't feel as alienated from you. I feel like we
can actually have the conversation and start that. But the
point is that all starts from listening. It starts with
getting curious and asking questions, which I think is the
key to you know, maybe seeing a little bit better
across political divides. But it's also the key to reducing

(01:19:45):
our loneliness.

Speaker 3 (01:19:48):
Yeah. I like that a lot, Laurie. You know, so
on the one hand, you want to share and be vulnerable,
and on the other hand you want to ask questions
and listen. So both input and outputs, and that's how
you create. So share and vulnerability and ask questions and listen.
It's great. So I think we have time for one more.

(01:20:09):
I'm going to take two more. The first one, Christiana
a little toll, Thank you.

Speaker 6 (01:20:16):
Hello, Laurie.

Speaker 5 (01:20:17):
I met you in Lago di Coomoa. Remember I said
a lot of sentence. You said, because the only one
who can pronounce my last name correctly. Rate seeing you
here with all and having this inspiring conversation. I just
graduated from the master in the Science of happiness. We thought,

(01:20:40):
oh yes, very happy, and I had two pneumatic leaderships
here inspire me. Today I'm gonna have an important lecture
at a place near my parents' house in San Paulo.
And I always get excited because intensity can be my

(01:21:01):
strange and also my weakness to take everything that we
know from the signs of happiness and how can help people.

Speaker 3 (01:21:09):
And one thing that always says is you teach.

Speaker 5 (01:21:12):
You trying to connect with that. But I would like
to love to listen from both of you, very experienced teachers.
All this path have created, both in Hervard and in Yale,
a problem that became the most popular ones.

Speaker 8 (01:21:28):
If you need to take something.

Speaker 14 (01:21:30):
Out there to talk about happiness, what would be We're
not two key messages that you really think that help
people that they need right at this moment.

Speaker 1 (01:21:44):
MM well, I think that the way you know, the
way to do the talks best is to use as
many stories as possible. I mean, I think what Chyle's
talking about is you teach you is like, find something
that resonates with you, a story and narrative you can share,
and that's going to be powerful. But on the one
topic that I think I wish everyone knew about happiness,
you know, it might be the theme of this overall webinar, right,

(01:22:05):
which is that you can change, you can train your happiness.
You know, if you're not feeling good right now, there
are behaviors who can engage in mindset shifts you can
engage in to just feel better, and I think that
can be so empowering for people.

Speaker 3 (01:22:19):
Thank you, Lever So, yeah, thank you for this, Laura.
And I'm gonna quote someone whom you've heard me quote
Christiana many times before, Carl Rogers, who wrote that what
is most personal is most general. So I remember the
Dali Lama once said, I'm all for cross cultural research,

(01:22:44):
which is very important and we need to do more
of it. What we mustn't lose sight of is the
fact that we're also, at the same time very similar,
that there is a universal nature. So when you go
deep into your own mind, soul, spirit, call it whatever

(01:23:04):
you want, you're also going into the universal spirit, soul
and mind, and so you know, look inside again, be
prepared to be vulnerable and share, look outside, ask questions
and listen. Thank you are both such an inspiration. Thank you,

(01:23:26):
thank you, Thank you so Alyssa. Can you make this
very short? I can go.

Speaker 9 (01:23:31):
I can thank you very much for both doing this
for free. Doctor Lourie. I picked your class five years
and five years ago and it was fantastic. Thank you.
Here's my question. Yeah, I remember, I have the notes
in front of me. I have two quick things to say,
and they'll be brief. One was when we had this class,
you talked about random acts of kindness like you mentioned

(01:23:52):
to the barrista. And the second thing that I don't
think was discussed but thought you could consider doing the
two of you, is about try new fun things to
add your happiness factor. You mentioned this city your prior.
I'm take a knitting, take up crocheting, try a new sport,
take classes. And so I'm a current seventy year old
California resident taking classes through Long Beach State, highly influenced

(01:24:14):
by you. I'm in five classes and at my age,
I've actually formed.

Speaker 1 (01:24:18):
A small group. We're a band and we perform in
cut of California.

Speaker 9 (01:24:21):
So that's thanks to you. So if you would mind
addressing the random acts of kindness thought and the doing
new things to help you become a happier person.

Speaker 1 (01:24:30):
Thanks love. I mean this is this is like, you
know why it's so tragic to you know, only have
such a short time to talk about this when you
need a whole academy, But you guess so much data
showing the power of random acts of kindness, you know,
I think Tall talked about this idea of self full right,
they do not selfless or it's you know, kind of selfish.
That doing for others, right, kind of being self less

(01:24:52):
is selfish in the fact that it winds up making
you feel better. And there's just so much evidence suggesting
that doing for others, thinking about others, reaching out to others,
it winds up making us even happier than we think.
Bias I think everyone should know about is this phenomena
of under sociality that we don't predict to the positive
effects of sociality nearly as much as they are there. Right,

(01:25:13):
we assume like it'll feel okay to do something nice
for someone else, but it feels much better for us
than we expect than others. So yes, random acts of kindness.
Glad we got that in there. But fun is something
we haven't talked about, and I think something that the
research really shows can be really important.

Speaker 5 (01:25:27):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
I think of fun as having these three components. It's
a moment where you tend to be really social, right,
which we've talked about a lot. It's a moment where
you tend to be a little bit present, you know,
which you talked about a little bit, these moments of mindfulness.
But it's also a moment in which you're often engaged
in play, right, just something for the intrinsic joy of
doing it. And there's less and less of that stuff

(01:25:49):
out there these days, especially among my college students, where
they're always doing something to like boost their resume, or
it's a side hustle or something, right, but the act
of just doing stuff for fun, these socially connected moments
of presence and play, you know, studies really show that
they can make you feel better. One of my favorite
studies show that play is one of the easiest ways
to reduce stress. That college students who tend to say

(01:26:10):
I play a lot actually report less stressed and seem
to use play as a coping strategy. So get that
play in there, you know, join a join, try out
a new hobby, join a singing group, or join a
band as you've done, and don't worry about being a
beginner because, as we've talked about, your habits will allow
you to get better at it over time.

Speaker 9 (01:26:30):
Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank.

Speaker 5 (01:26:33):
You, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:26:33):
Listen, what a lovely way to end on on fun
because you know, while happiness is not the same as fun,
funny is an important element of happiness. This has been
a lot of fun. Laurie, be meaningful and I can
thank you enough for all that you're doing and for

(01:26:55):
taking time to spend with us today.

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
Well, gratitude right back at you. I feel like I'm
just like you know, continuing the fine legacy of big
ivy leg classes that you begin yourself. So thanks so
much for all the work that you do and thanks
for having me on today.

Speaker 3 (01:27:09):
Great, Thank you, Laurien, thank you all for being here,
and again, take good care of yourselves and of others.

Speaker 1 (01:27:16):
Bye bye bye, thank you, I thanks, thanks,

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Host

Dr. Laurie Santos

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