"Human Minds Are Stupid!" (with Rich Roll)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. While we're hard at work
prepping our next season on some of the must read
psychology books of twenty twenty five, I thought you might
appreciate hearing some of the fun conversations I get to
have with smart folks outside of this show, And one
of my recent favorites was the chat I had on

(00:36):
the Ritual podcast. Ritual is an incredibly cool guy. He's
gotten to chat with an amazing array of people on
his show, from doctors to scientists, to sports stars to explorers.
My conversation with Rich covered a lot of ground, and
get ready because this episode does last a couple hours,
and I don't think we left any happiness stone unturned.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
If you enjoy what you hear, you should check out
Rich's other interviews on the Rich Role podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
You can download it wherever you get your shows. We
as a species of all always been obsessed with happiness.
The culture apparatus that we surround ourselves with is telling
us all the wrong things to do right. Go for money,
go for status, Just buy something, change your circumstances. You'll
feel happier. And what we know is like those are wrong.
We go after those things at the expense of social

(01:23):
connection time for rest. We kind of forego those great
things in the service of stuff that's not going to
make us feel good. I think if these strategies is
almost like preventative mental health. So you can have your
little O Lacarte snacklist of different strategies you use to
feel happier, and if you can manage to turn them
into habits, to put them into effect, you'll wind up
reaping the benefits.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to the podcast, today's version of which
is focused entirely on happiness. My guest for this very
broad and somewhat elusive subject matter is doctor Lori Santos,
who is a professor of psychology and the head of
Silomon College at Yale University, where she teaches psychology and

(02:09):
the good Life. This is not new terrain for this show,
but I think this conversation goes to some pretty interesting,
new and important places when it comes to the many
ways in which we misunderstand happiness and why we so
often behave in ways at cross purposes. With getting it.
We discuss what gets in our way specifically, and of

(02:32):
course the many things that we can do actionable tools.
Laurie calls rewirables to engender more happiness in our lives
more often. You can read up on her online at
doctor Loriisantos dot com, where you will also find her
fabulous podcast, The Happiness Lab, as well as a variety

(02:52):
of courses, courses for kids, for parents, courses for everyone,
and there's even one for teachers interested in teaching happiness,
which is pretty cool. So with that, let's do the thing.
This is me and doctor Lori Santos. I want to

(03:12):
start with some real basic stuff. We can't talk about
happiness without having a working understanding of what it actually is.
So what is your thesis. I'm sure people ask you
all the time you teach happiness, so tell me what
it is.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, I use the very limited definition that lots of
psychologists use. This comes from Sonya Lubermerski and her colleagues, right.
The idea is you think about being happy in your
life and with your life, the sort of two parts
of happiness. So being happy in your life is the
fact that you experience lots of positive emotion or decent
ratio of positive emotions to negative emotions. You have contentment
and laughter and joy in these things, and you have

(03:49):
a nice ratio of those with the normal negative stuff,
you know, anger or sadness, anxiety, overwhelm whatever. The key
there is you're not getting fully rid of negative emotions,
but you want the ratio to be decent. That's kind
of being happy in your life. But being happy with
your life is the fact that you think your life
is going well. These are what's often called the kind
of affective and the cognitive parts of happiness. How your

(04:10):
life feels and how you think it's going. But how
you think your life is going is the answer to
the question, all things considered, how satisfied am I with
my life? Do I have purpose, to have a sense
of meaning? Does it feel like something to be here?
And the strategies that I talk about in my course
and on my podcast, really what they're trying to do
is boost both of those. You're kind of feeling good
in your life and you sort of think your life

(04:31):
is going well, then by and large I'd be saying
that you're happy.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
You know, I'm curious around how you got interested in
this field to begin with. Was there a catalyst or
what ignited your passion around this subject of happiness.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Yeah, well, I've been a nerdy psychologist basically forever, like
since I was a kid, I was interested in people
in psychology, but spent most of my career studying animals,
all kinds of different stuff. And then my interest in
happiness started when I took on this new role at Yale.
I became this thing called the head of college, which
is like strange el speak for a faculty member who
lives on campus with students. Like I moved into this

(05:07):
big mansion in the middle of this dorm and thought
I was going to be around lots of college students
like partying and having this amazing time, And really what
I just saw was the college student mental health crisis.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Right.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Most of my day was like students who were experiencing
acute anxiety, suicidality, panic attacks. And I was like, this
is like, not okay, how long ago that this was?
In twenty seventeen was when I first started up pre.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Pandemic, Like we're in a different world now.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
I think things have gotten worse, you know, But what
I was seeing on the ground was just shocking, And
it wasn't what I remember from college, and it wasn't
what you kind of hear in the media of a
bunch of snowflakes. These were students having like acute crises,
and so I got interested in the happiness work because
I was like, somebody needs to do something to help
these students. It started with me being again like a
nerdy professor, thinking I'll make a new class, right, I'll

(05:57):
develop a class where I teach students these strategies. And
I didn't realize how much that would go viral, not
just on campus, but lots of folks need these strategies.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
I remember it was national news. You were all over
the place, the most popular, over subscribed class at Yale.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
And I think you know, it was a couple thing.
One is like whenever Yale does anything, it makes the
New York Times and national news and stuff. But I
think it was striking for people to see that these students,
who are nineteen one of the best universities in the world,
the whole lives out of them, were suffering in the
way that they were suffering like not just at Yale,
but right now nationally, more than sixty percent of students

(06:32):
report being so anxious that they can't function most days.
More than forty percent say they're depressed. More than one
in ten is seriously considered suicide in the last few months,
and that was what I was kind of seeing. So
I think it was a striking story for people to see,
like wow, like young people are struggling way more than
we thought.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
And by being head of college and cohabitating with all
of them, you're the door that is, you know, getting
knocked on, right, So you're on the receiving end of
a lot of these stories and tales.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Of woll No I would. I spent numerous weekends visiting
students in psychiatric hospitals. I had lots of knocks on
the door late at night where I like wear my glasses,
like walked down stairs to see what's going on.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
But you don't understand.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Honestly, it was less the emergencies and more just the
like low grade, painful hustle in ways that just like
weren't making students happy. They kind of like deep anxiety
about the future, just like mortgaging the fun and the
sleep and the social connection they could have in college.
It just felt like a really unhealthy situation. And again,

(07:37):
it wasn't just Yale. The more I dug into I
was like, this is just college student lives generally.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
That was my question because it takes a lot to
get into Yale, So by the time they arrive there,
you know, they're well into their striver trajectory, right, Like
they've been grinding for a long time.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, and I think, you know, there's there's aspects of
being at Ivy League school that might be worse because
they're kind of been in that grinding mode for so long.
But I just think this is a generational thing, and
the data really bear it out. Right, You're starting to
see seeds of this stuff in high school, even in
middle school, with rates of depression anxiety skyrocketing. And I
just think we have so many people who are off track.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Prior to creating the course what we're you teaching, Like,
I take it that you weren't, like happiness wasn't an
area of expertise or specificity for you.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah. I was really interested in kind of how humans
got to be the weird species that we are, both
the strange smart things that humans do, but also the
strange dumb things that humans do. I know you and
I both are fans of Bob Sapolski at Stanford, this
primary researcher, and I'm a fan in part because I
was a primary researcher. I studied these groups, this group
of monkeys off the coast of Puerto Rico, and tried

(08:44):
to see how they made sense of the world.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
So now it's your gambit to like create this course
and you got to figure it out, right, So how
do you piece that together and start to make sense
of this very elusive topic.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, well, one of the things I did was, you know,
stand on the shoulder of giants. Right. There were lots
of other faculty who maybe hadn't seen the same crisis
in the same way I did, but were really interested
in the science of happiness and had pulled together classes.
Is you know, I get a lot of mileage because
I did this at Yale, but folks like tall Benee
Hair had offered a similar course at Harvard. There recourses
all around the country that we're looking at this, So

(09:17):
I kind of pulled different folks syllabus and kind of
looked at the stuff I liked. I think the unique
thing that I added in though, was that I was
also really worried about not just what we should do
to be happy, but how we put that stuff into practice,
because I know, you know from the show that like
there's all theyse strategies and tips we can do to
be more fit, to be healthier, to be happier, to
strive more, whatever it is. But you can know all

(09:39):
those things and not do any of that stuff. You
can know all that stuff and lay on the couch
every morning.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
There's a big gap between self awareness and action. Yes,
when it comes to this stuff. I take it from
me as somebody who sat across from many a happiness expert.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
It's like they walked out of the room and you're like, yeah, do.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
I actually then go do these things? This is a
lingering question.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah. The nerds and social science like to call this
bias the g I Joe fallacy. You're my age, so
you probably remember Gi Joe. The cartoon. Gi Joe to
end the cartoon with this public service announcement where g
I Joe would teach kids things like don't talk to
strangers or look both ways when you cross the street,
then quaint to problems of the eighties that you need
to teach kids about. But then at the end the

(10:21):
kid would say, thank you, Gi Joe. Now I know,
and Gi Jo would say, and knowing is half the battle.
Go Gi Joe. There's tons of things I know that
I don't put into effect, and that you won't put
into effect unless you have social support in the right
habits and like a real commitment to these things. And
so I think that's where my course is different. Everyone
talks about it being a course about happiness, but the
whole second half of the course is about Okay, now

(10:43):
you know this stuff, but how do you put it
into practice? How do you form the right habits?

Speaker 3 (10:47):
Right? The difference between knowing something and then acting on
it is just like you said, like what got you
interested in psychology? Like why do our brains lead us astray?
It's like we know better, and yet we do these
things and we get into these loops and these patterns
that we can't escape from. I mean that is central
to happiness, but central to all facets of like trying

(11:12):
to better ourselves.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, this was the thing that the folks who were
first interested in psychology, who weren't psychologists, right, the philosophers,
the ancients, all the folks who thought about the human condition.
This was the thing they were really worried about, right,
self regulation? How do you get folks to do what
they really want to do? Yeah, So this gap has
been following us around for a long time.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
Is there science on because there are people, Oh I
read that and now I'm doing it. You know, it's
not a leap, but for most people it is a leap. Like,
is there some understanding around what differentiates those two archetypes?
Like the person who can just kind of pivot right
into action.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
Honestly not great work. I mean there are people who
talk about it lot. I know Gretchen Rubin for example,
and others. Journalist, happiness expert, she talks about what she
calls the lightning phenomena, which is like a lot of
times behavior change is really hard. But then sometimes there's
just this moment where you see some statistic, or you
hear something bad, or you have a health diagnosed, and
you're like, boom.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
I'm changing my behavior and then like a lightning bolt,
everything has changed. Sadly, most behavioral change doesn't work that way.
And I think we as social scientists, we really haven't
figured out how to engineer the lightning bolt. If we did,
you know, podcasts like this might be well.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Pain is a pretty good reliable motivator. Yeah, if you're
in enough pain, maybe for a while, then you develop
you develop a capacity for willingness that you know you
can't conjure willingness.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, So how you get folks to be motivated? How
you turn something into a habit? I mean, honestly, the
best strategies we have now were the same ones that
folks like Aristotle back in the day came up with. Right,
you do it repeatedly, so you become a person who
does these kinds of things. You kind of fake it
till you make it. You get social support. Right, The
best strategies we have in social science for getting people

(12:57):
to do stuff are the ones that the philosophers thought
of thousands of years ago.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
Are there not different types of happiness? I mean there's
hedonic happiness, there's you tomonic happyesiness. Is hedonic happiness actually happiness?
Or is that something different?

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Like?

Speaker 3 (13:14):
How do you think about that?

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, there's so many different definitions of happiness. I try
to squish them into this definition that social scientists use
so often. The way I think about more hedonic happiness.
That's the kind of in your life happiness, Right, that's
like things are going well, I'm experiencing joy, I'm savoring stuff, right.
I think it's not the pure way that hedon has
thought about it, because if you just had like you know,
you know, deep pleasure, pleasure, pleasure all the time, it

(13:37):
would stop being good right.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
Now, Well, you wouldn't be happy in your life ultimately, correct, Yes,
so you need to with your life. I can't what
is the distinction?

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Well, I think you know, if I was just going
for pure hedonic pleasure, you know, like how fuch Sundays
and sex and you know, days on the beach or whatever,
and that was it, eventually I would get bored with that, right.
This is a phenomenon of getting used to stuff, what's
called hedonic adaptation. Even the best things in life over
and over stop being so good. So it wouldn't really
make me happy in my life, and it probably wouldn't

(14:05):
make me happy with my life. You know, you and I,
because we do what we do, tend to run in
these circles where we meet lots of rich folks, lots
of folks who have the privilege and the money to
have every heat on at pleasure. By and large, my
experience with those folks as they are not happy, like.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Well, this is the world capital of that, I mean,
we live, you know, this is Los Angeles, you know
plenty of those people cruising around here, so I'm very
familiar with that. But I think part of what leads
them to that place is a fundamental misunderstanding of happiness.

(14:41):
It goes back to the self awareness thing. Like we know,
and we've read in so many books and heard so
many people say that the things that drive happiness are
human connection and having a purpose and you know, having
some sense of meaning in how you show up in
your life, and you know, all these things that you
talk about that we're going to get to. And yet

(15:03):
we still delude ourselves into thinking that the happiness that
eludes us is just around the bank end of the promotion,
or the new car, or when you get the new house,
or just name whatever your poison is. And for some
reason we believe that we are the sole exception to
the rule. And no matter. It's like in AA they say,

(15:26):
the persistence of this delusion is astonishing, Like it doesn't.
It's like it's so resilient, this idea that the things
that we chase in modern society will purchase happiness for us,
even though time and time and time again they don't
and we don't learn our lesson. Yeah, like what is
going on with that.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Human minds are stupid, man, I mean, human minds are stupid.
My mind is stupid, right. I know all this research
rag and quote you the specific paper and the journal
that these findings are in. But for me, it's like,
you know, the cool new opportunity, maybe I'll make some money.
It's like ah, how sexy, or like, let me just
get some emails done rather than like chat with my
husband over dinner. Like, we just have these biases to

(16:07):
go after stuff that we I strongly believe, at least intuitively,
like our deep intuitions are that this will make us
feel good, this will make us happy, this will make
life better, and it just doesn't. The specific things that
we go after what a lot of folks call the
arrival fallacy. One of the big ones that we mess
up is if I could just get to this thing,
if I could just get to the promotion, just earn
a million dollars, just find the right partner. When I

(16:29):
arrive there, I'll be happy. But this is the arrival fallacies,
like the happily ever after fallacy, And that's one thing
we get wrong right, which is there's never a moment
where you're like okay, one and none, like I can
be happy now and just exist in happiness. My colleague
Dan Gilbert at Harvard is fond of saying that happily
ever after it only works if you have three more
minutes to live. It's just not how happiness works, but

(16:51):
we often think it is, and we often really think
that the stuff like money, fame, all these things, we
think that that's going to get us there, and we
go after those things at the expense of all the
stuff you just listed, social connection, time, for rest, hard
problems that give us meaning but that we might you know,
not get to in the end. Right, these are things
that are really ultimately going to make life worth living,

(17:11):
but we kind of forego those great things in the
service of stuff that's not going to make us feel good.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
I'm curious or I wonder whether what we think of
is happiness when we chase these things, is, in point
of fact, the alleviation of fear or doubt. Like it's
not that we're imagining some blissful, permanent state of well

(17:37):
being if we achieve these things or get to these
certain places, but that we won't have to worry about
stuff that we worry about now that we will eradicate
some level of uncertainty, and we no longer need to
be afraid, and we won't have to work as hard.
I bang on about this all the time, so I
apologize to the audience. But I had this psychiatrist Phil Stutz.

(18:00):
You know Phil Stuts is on the show. He's a
wonderful man, and he has this working idea, this working theory,
because he treats all these people in Hollywood who are
like rich and powerful and just you know, miserable, right,
And he said, this sort of shared strain between all
of these people is that they are in denial of
three fundamental truths of life, which are pain, uncertainty, and

(18:24):
the need for constant work. And in the context of happiness,
on some level, it seems resonant like we're chasing these
things because we don't like these ideas of pain, uncertainty
and having to continually work on things. And if we
just get to this place, then we can take a breath. Yeah,
And we associate that with happiness, and I guess there's

(18:45):
some veneer of happiness with that, but it's a little
bit of a different thing.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, And I think we're really bad at making effective
accurate predictions about like how much pain we're going to
have in different situations. Right, take money. I think this
is one that people get wrong all the time. Right,
just walk in when the power ball gets high and
people are like, oh my gosh, when I win this
eight hundred million dollars, everything's going to be great. And
I think if you duck to some one of the
hundred million dollars to be like, oh maah, no, you

(19:11):
got to worry about the taxes and everyone comes out
of it would work to get money from you. And
where are you going to park your yacht? It's a
huge pain in the butt to figure out where you're
going to put your yacht, et cetera, et cetera. It's
like when we simulate these positive futures, we just get
it wrong, right, We kind of miss out on the
stuff that's really going to matter. That's true for the
good things in life. Interestingly, it's also true for the
bad things in life. Right. One of the most famous

(19:33):
studies on this that folks did, like back, you know,
decades ago now, had people predict, you know, if you
if we were to walk out of the studio and
you and I both get hit by a car and
we were both paraplegic. How would that affect our lives?
We said, Oh my gosh, we would just be so unhappy.
Our lives would be ruined. But you look at people
who've actually gone through a terrible accident like that, who've
become paraplegic, and what you find is that within six

(19:55):
months their happiness levels are statistically indistinguishable from what they
were before, statistically indistinguishable from folks who you know, walked
out of the studio and didn't get hit. That's absolutely
not what we predict. But what happens, like, you know,
life goes on, there's still reruns on TV, and like
you chat with your friends and something funny happens on
the internet, and like that's what's changing your day to day.
But we absolutely don't think that a terrible thing could

(20:17):
happen to us and we'd be fine. So these are
our prediction problems. We simulate the wonderful thing, the awesome
thing that we're going for, we don't simulate all the
problems that go with it. And when we simulate the
terrible things, we don't simulate all the day to day
stuff that's going to affect our happiness. Much more than
we expect with this terrible thing happening. So we're just
we're just kind of bad forecasters, and that's a lot

(20:38):
of what we get wrong.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
One of your so called rewirables around this, which are
basically actionable tools, right, is very encounterintuitive. We're all taught
to like visualize success and you know, imagine what will
happen and you know, believe in yourself and all of that,
and your counsel is basically like visualize the opposite, like
imagine the obstacles like forget, which is a very process

(21:03):
versus destination mindset, and I think it's really cool. I'd
never heard anyone talk about this before, the idea that
what you should be visualizing are all the problems you're
going to face on the road to getting the thing.
And when you visualize on the destination, that's when you
succumb to the arrival fallacy, right, because when you get there,

(21:23):
it's like, all right, well, I already imagine this, and
maybe it's not as good as I imagined, or it
wears off very quickly.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yeah, there's also lots of evidence that when we imagine
these positive futures, like oh my gosh, you know, I'm gonna
run ultra marathon. Oh, it's gonna be so great and
be so cool. Everyone's going to think I'm great whatever.
The more you imagine the positive future, your imagination kind
of works like real brain cognition, like real brain thinking.
You get some of the reward from that. When I'm thinking,
oh my god, everyone will think I'm so cool, I
kind of get a little bit of everyone thinking I'm

(21:51):
cool already, and it actually makes people less likely to
take action towards those goals. This is the lovely work
of this woman, Gabrielle Ottingen, who's at NYU. She does
these studies where she has students positively fantasize about getting
good grades, and she finds that the ones who have
the most vivid fantasies are the ones that put the
least work into studying because kind of like that already.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
Has right, I've already had the experience.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
It's exceeding. Meanwhile, you're you're not putting the work into
things you really need your cognitive help with, which is like, Okay,
how I'm going to actually get to the library, or
how am I going to go to office hours, or
how I'm going to do the million things you need
to do to achieve that goal. And so when you
envision the obstacles, now, all of a sudden, you're putting
your cognitive brain power towards practicing and thinking through the

(22:32):
things that are really going to mess you up when
you try to go for that goal.

Speaker 3 (22:35):
But you do need some self belief that you could
achieve the goal, right, So you have to balance that
against on some level, you know there is value in
seeing yourself cross the finish line or getting the rapport
card or whatever to anchor you in the journey. Yeah,
it's more than you ruminate on it, right.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
It's so nuanced. In fact, this was the thing that
I just finished teaching my happiness class this semester. You're
talking to me. I submitted grades right before I flew
here to Las. I'm feeling really good. But the one
thing my students kind of thought about and complained the
most about was this because right now, in the popular culture,
this idea of positive diss is big.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
Right.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
My students love manifesting. They hear about it on TikTok
a lot, and so they're like, you're telling me manifesting's bad.
I thought, thinking about your positive future, thinking you were
the kind of person that could do this is great.
And the subtle distinction is you want to think that
you're the kind of person who can do it, but
you're not that person yet, Like you haven't done it
already yet. Right, So you want to be like, I'm
the kind of person who can put in the work

(23:32):
needed to become a good student. I'm the kind of
person who can put in the work needed to become
ultra marathon or get fit or whatever it is. Right,
you want to think you're the kind of person who
can do it, but you also want to know the
things that you actually have to do to do it,
Cause most big goals have some like work that you
need to put in, and when you get the reward
without the work, that's when you get into trouble.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yeah, So by focusing on the obstacles with some anchor
of self belief that you are going to be able
to solve the problems and like navigate through the mindfield
is very valuable. But it's distinct from maybe what some
people misunderstand it to be, which would be like an

(24:14):
attitude of dread around this or a victim and everything's terrible.
There's all these problems, it's going to take forever. I'm
never gonna make it, and why even try? Like those
are two different things.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, And the best thing in Gabrielle Outingen's work is
not just imagine the obstacles, but imagine the if then
plan you would take to get through the obstacles. I
talk about this on my podcast, the sort of idea
of kind of getting through the obstacles. And I interviewed
Michael Phelps, the swimmer's coach, because Michael Phelps, Yeah, great,
great guy and can talk so articularly about what Michael

(24:46):
was doing. And one of the things he did a
lot was he used a lot of visualization, right, visualize
the perfect swim. But Michael was so good at this
he got bored with it, and so he started visualizing
what would happen if terrible things went wrong. His goggles
came off, he slapped his foot against the thing, you know,
just stupid stuff went wrong, right, And what he did
in doing that was that he kind of just played
out the scenario, right. He said, like, oh, my goggles

(25:08):
fall off, then I know I can just count my
strokes and that'll be fine. Turns out this wound up
being incredibly helpful. I think it was the Beijing Olympics
when his goggles actually came off. He kind of had
practiced what to do, and therefore he was fine and
he ended up winning a gold even though you know,
the horrible event that he was saying, Wow, this would
be so terrible actually happened, And I think this is
what we want to do. You want to ask the question, Okay,

(25:29):
like I'm trying to study more. What's a horrible thing. Well,
there's a party this weekend. Well how would I navigate that? Well,
I'd you know, set time to go to the party,
and I'd set my alarm clocker really and get up right.
You know, I want to go running a little bit
more this weekend. I want to pick up my more
miles or whatever. Like, well, what should I do? Well,
I have to I might have to cancel this thing
and schedule a little bit more time. Oh it's going
to be raining. I got to get myself to the

(25:50):
gym because I want to do on the treadmill. But
you're just going through the scenarios and coming up with
a plan, so it's not this victim mindset and all like, oh,
it's just going to be so hard you're like, Oh,
there's an obstacle, but I can overcome the obstacle, and
I've already thought through how to do it. I've kind
of given myself some practice.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
The distinctive quality in that is resilience. Is it not
like the ability to adapt when things aren't going your
way without getting completely derailed by it. Right? So in
the athletic context, when you've visualized the perfect race and
something slightly is amiss or doesn't go as you imagined it,
you collapse and fall apart, versus being able to roll

(26:29):
with whatever life throws at you.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yeah. And it's also the practice that we can do
inside our heads. I mean, this isn't a wonderful feature
of the human mind, right is it? We can just
experience things happening to us in our head.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
I don't have to go through the morning where my
alarm clock goes off and I don't want to run,
because like, oh, I can practice that in my head
and I can walk through like, oh, here's what I
will do to do that better. There's just some amazing
cognitive science work on the power of mental practice. One
of my favorite studies that I tell my students about
nerdly is. I think this is the work by Carrie
Morwage at Boston University. He does this study where he

(27:02):
either has people imagine eating M and ms one by
one slowly or slowly put in quarters like into a
vending machine, over and over again, and then at the
end of imagining this, you just give people a big
bowl of eminem's. What do you find The people who
imagine eating the eminems, They're like, oh God, I don't
want any more m and ms. I'm going I don't
need it anymore. Whereas the people who imagine the quarters,

(27:23):
it's like, oh, eminems will have some right. When we
practice something in our heads, there's something in our brain
that's a little bit confused about whether that's happened already,
and we get to mental practice in the fitness domain
or in the health domain, or in the like happiness
strategy domain. What it means is when you practice it
in your head, you're building that abbot up even though
you haven't had to do that in real life yet.

(27:44):
And that can be great. That means your time, you know,
stuck in traffic on your commute to work, the rumination
that you have in bed and they oh am I
going to be able to get through this. You can
harness that for good. You can like practice the thing
that you're worried is going to be hard, and you'll
get the benefit of that practice, you know when you
wake up or in real life later on.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
That's the positive side of the coin, you know, if
you flip it over the other version, the negative version
of that is is the person who talks all the
time about the thing they're going to do and then
never ends up doing it because their brain has already
been satisfied by whatever it's seeking. Right, So what's going

(28:23):
on in the brain like dopaminergically or neurologically that like,
what is the signaling that's occurring?

Speaker 1 (28:31):
I think the key is like if you just sit
there with their reward and that's it, and you stop there, right,
you kind of oh, I would be so great if
I did this. I'd be so proud of myself. You know,
you kind of dust it off and you're done. That
means you get the reward without doing the practice, without
kind of getting the information when you start to simulate
and ask, okay, well what would I need to do
to do that? What are the obstacles that are going

(28:51):
to come up? Oh? I like to sleep in, or
it's going to be cold out or whatever. You know, strategy,
You need to think of whatever obstacle that's there. Now,
all of a sudden, your brain goes into planning mode
rather than just sitting with your rewarder is firing and
be like, oh my gosh, that'd be so awesome. Now
you're kicking into the planning parts of your brain, your
frontal lobes kick in. Is trying to think through different
scenarios and come up with these answers for you. And

(29:14):
that means you get the answer before you have to
be in the situation that's doing it. And so I
think you switched from just kind of like sitting there
and enjoying what you already accomplished, which you didn't accomplish
yet too, turning on those planning parts of your mind
and your brain that can actually help you get through
in a much more successful way. Later on, you're listening

(29:34):
to my conversation on the Rich Role podcast. We'll have
even more after the break.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
While we're on the topic of misconceptions around happiness. Another
one that occurs to me is the way in which
we're wired to believe that comfort and convenience and expediency
and all of these things luxury are essential in this

(30:07):
equation happiness when we know that actually it's discomfort and
getting out of your comfort zone and pushing yourself and
you know, getting up, you know, when you set the
alarm or whatever habit or practice it is that as
uncomfortable and as miserable as they feel when we're doing them,
leads to that resilience and ultimately a sense of greater

(30:29):
self esteem like these are like you know, seedlings that
blossom into a more lasting and low grade maybe, but
sense of well being. That has to be part of happiness, yes, yeah,
for sure.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
And I think we get it wrong in two ways.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
Right.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
One is we assume that, you know, if we get
to the comforts, that those comforts are going to last, right,
And what we forget is that we get used to
stuff that Again, the best thing in life could happen
to you, and it's awesome when it first happens, but
it gets boring over time. I think this is one
of the reasons that people with just enormous privilege, you know,
the rich folks that we're living around here, you know,
hanging out here in La with us, that they don't

(31:08):
kind of enjoy the great things that are happening to
them because they're used to it. You know, you fly
in first class the first time, you're like, oh my god,
I get a free drink. This seeds so nice.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Whatever.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
You fly in first class for the fifteenth time, the
fiftieth time, it's just how you fly. Right. The comforts
that we bring to ourselves stop being comforting the more
we have them over time. In contrast the hard work
we have to put in the little bit of struggle.
It does two things right. One is that we kind
of don't get hurt by it as much as we

(31:37):
think because we get used to that too. Right when
you're starting a new fitness program. My husband talks about this.
He was a college swimmer and he remembers, like, you know,
when the swimming season started and you do the first
workout and you're so tired, and you're like, I cannot
do this every day for the next semester. Then two
weeks into it, you're like, oh, yeah, let's just still
work out. Right. We forget that we're going to get
used to the hard stuff too, Right, So we start

(31:59):
off being really scared by the hard stuff. We start
off being really scared about getting out of our comfort zone.
But then once you jump into it, it's just like
it becomes easier over time. And so this idea we
get used to stuff, this kind of concept of hedonic adaptation,
We kind of adapt to stuff in the world. We
forget that it causes us not to get as much
happiness out of the comfort stuff because we're going to
get used to the good stuff. It'll stop being as

(32:20):
good over time, and the bad stuff won't be as
bad over time because we'll sort of get used to.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
It, right the non hedonic adaptation. Is there a term
for that?

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Well, it's like researchers call this kind of affective forecasting bias.
Is one of the things. We call it what's often
called the impact bias. That the impact of whatever it is,
both in terms of it's kind of magnitude of how
good or how bad something is, and also its duration.
It just doesn't impact us as much as we think.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
A tangent of this hedonic adaptation. I'm just imagining, like
the super wealthy guy driving around LA in the fancy car.
Is that person's attention or my attention? I'll speak for myself.
I'm you know, I'm not immune from this. Immediately goes
towards comparison, because there's always somebody who's more successful, more powerful,

(33:06):
more wealthy, better looking, fitter, you name it, right, Why
do our brains deal with hedonic adaptation by immediately going there?

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, well, this is just a like, really remarkably common
feature of our brain. Right, you and I are talking
in this studio. You get these great lights. There's a
podcast I'm so jealous of. But when we walk out
of this really bright space into the rest of the studio,
we'll be like, oh, man, I didn't even realize when
I was sitting talking and rich that it was really bright.
But when I walk out, everything will look kind of dark. Right.

(33:37):
Our brains are always processing things in this relative way.
I'm not processing how much objective light is here. I
just kind of get used to the amount of light here,
and then when I walk outside, now all of a sudden,
it's brighter, it's darker, or something like that. That's our
visual system getting used to stuff. But the fact that
we get used to stuff that we think in terms
of these relative things over time rather than like what
objectively is going on, that's just a general feature of

(34:00):
how our mind works for everything, So nobody thinks of
their salary as being objectively good or objectively bad. If
you think how your salary is going, you just think
I meet in terms of like, well, what is the
guy next to me in the office making or like.

Speaker 3 (34:14):
That comparison is very much a function of proximity.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
Oh yeah, and what's terrible about the comparison is that,
like it never goes in the good way.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
Right.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
There might be tons of people sitting next to you
that aren't making as much money, that aren't as hot
as you, they didn't have as good a vacation as you,
that doesn't have a nice a car view, and you
just like don't notice those people. This is what happens
in La, right. I mean even driving here and again
I fall prey to the stuff too, you know, driving here,
you know, I was like driving right next to this
like super souped up white Porsche, and I was like, oh,
that's such a cool white Porsche. Right, I'm noticing the

(34:42):
car that's crappier than my rental car, But I didn't
notice the hundreds, maybe thousands of other cars on the
streets of La that like just were unremarkable.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, it's good. It's it's fun and easy to you know,
poke at the billionaire who's all been out of shape
because there's another guy at the cocktail party that has
you know, a billion more than him, Like how could
you possibly you know, think that. But it's just an
extreme version of what we all do.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
And like the data this is like just they're so funny.
There's one really funny study. It was in Europe where
they do lotteries a little bit differently. So here, the
lottery in the US is like you go buy a
powerball ticket, if your number comes up, you win. The
way they do them in Europe is often they do
it's called a postcode lottery. So I'm in ZIP code
like zero six five one one, and they're going to

(35:28):
pull a lottery ticket that's just going to say my postcode,
and if I played, then in my postcode, my whole
postcode will win. If I didn't play, I don't get it.
What's the consequence of this type of lottery system. If
your postcode is called and you didn't play, you're going
to have a bunch of people around you who like
one something.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
Like they all want like the worst case scenario for.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
You it's great. It's great for the lottery because a
lot of people want to play the lottery and regret insurance. Right.
But one of these lotteries was a lottery that gave
people a new car, right, And so people in the postcode,
if they're a lottery number, cam up, they got a
new car. What they found is that sales of lottery
cars of the non winners went up when people won,
of course, because like you're like, yeah, I want to
be the only one in my time.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
You left out, You're going to get you know, booted
out of the tribe.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
And this is true, you know, in the context of
material goods. It's definitely true for my poor students, in
the context of grades. It's true in the context of looks,
and our brains are just bad at it. We're just
good at finding people who are better than us. And
sometimes that's us, right, I think in the context of fitness,
in the context of looks. Right, all of us are
getting older over time, like we're moving towards a reference

(36:33):
point that's going to make us feel crappy about ourselves
if not now, ten years, twenty years, right, And so yeah,
minds are built to not be objective They're built to
pay attention to stuff in this relative fashion, and they
seek out reference points that make us feel crappy. I
did this consulting with a basketball team where I was
talking about social comparison a professional basketball team, and that's

(36:55):
something that comes up all the time. You know, who's
doing better than you was making more money, and I
was asking, well, you know, who's the reference point for
you know, salary, And at the time it was like
Steph Carry. I was like, okay, Steph Carry, Like who's
the reference point for like three point shots? And like, oh,
Steph Cary. I was like, who's the reference for the
best height in the NBA? And they're like Taco fails,
Like wait, why is it not Steph Curry anymore? Steph
Curry was the reference point for everything else, but in

(37:15):
the one domain where you're like doing better than him,
now he's not the reference point anymore. And like, that's
just how our minds work. We just pick the one
thing that makes us feel crappy about ourselves.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
And yet when we see those individuals who somehow have
immunized themselves against this compulsion that's so human and stand
proudly as themselves without concern for whatever. Anybody thinks about
what they're doing, and they're not comparing themselves to anyone else,

(37:46):
and they're just doing their thing. These are happy people
and there's a magnetism to that. Like when you see
those people, it's inspirational. You're like, wow, like, how can
I be more like that? And then we go right
back to comparing ourselves, you know what I mean. I
was thinking about that yesterday. I had Bob roth On here,
who runs the David Lynch Foundation, and we were talking

(38:07):
about David Lynch. I'm obsessed with this guy and he's like, why, Like,
what is it about him? You know that captures you?
And I said that very thing. It's like he's so
thoroughly himself and that's very attractive quality.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah, And I think it's a really hard quality to
go after it because our minds are not Our minds
are really built to be paying attention to other individuals do.
And I think that was bad enough back in the
evolutionary day when we were part of bands of people
were you know, one hundred, two hundred strong.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
It's a threat, it's to your membership.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, but it's so much worse when that membership is
everybody on TikTok or everybody on Instagram. Right. I think
this is something that comes up a lot. I see
my college students talk about this where you know, when
I was in college, you could have these like dorky hobbies.
You could be like, you know, I don't know, like
solve Rubik's cubes really fast, or like be like in
a cool band, right, like you played bass really well. Now,

(38:59):
I feel like our poor college students can never feel
like they do anything really well because they immediately go
on the internet. However fast you solve the Rubik's cube,
there's somebody who's doing it blindfolded and much faster than you.

Speaker 3 (39:09):
And so maybe they're learning that lesson earlier.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
I don't think so, Okay, I think they're just much
more paralyzed by it.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah, but you can also, I mean, I know you
have a lot to say about the digital landscape, and
you know how social media is driving a lot of
the malevolence here. But there are millions of subcommunities now
for every you know, bizarre interest and that lonely kid
who is the only person he or she knows that's

(39:39):
into you know, name name, your weird hobby can go
on Reddit or one of these places and find like
minded individuals and have some sense of connection and community there.
Totally total black and white thing.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
No, And I think I think this is one of
the tricks with social media and really all of our technology.
Raise it has such good aspects when it comes through
our happiness. There's such real potential to use this in
positive ways, to increase social connection, to get her better
sense of purpose, you know, honestly, to see reference points
that should make you feel really good about yourself.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Right.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
But like, I'm just like the fact that you are
anyone listened to this right now is privilege.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
Right.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
You have a technology that you can use to access this,
you have hearing right it like it is working, right
you you know, probably eyes are working if you're watching
this on YouTube. Right. Those are incredible privileges that we
can look to other people to feel good about, to
remember like, oh, that wasn't a given in life. Right.
And so the point is that we can use technology
in all these positive ways when it comes to our happiness.
The problem is that we tend not to use it

(40:34):
in those positive ways. And I think sometimes the technologies
themselves are set up with algorithms that are set up
to kind of lead us towards the not so good
ways for technologies.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
You have a rewirable around this as well, though, Like
the idea to the solution to this comparison problem in
terms of actions that you can take is to use
this what do you call it, the bronze.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Yeah, the bronze medallists, Yeah, yeah, which the joke is
we always have this idea of look for the silver lining,
and the joke as you look for the bronze lining.
And this actually comes from a sports domain too. One
of the most famous studies of social comparison in the
field of psychology was a study of Olympic medalists looking
at the emotions they show on the stand. And what

(41:17):
you find is that gold medalists, you know, best best
in their sport, are showing like, really strong positive emotions.
But the silver medalists aren't just showing slightly less positive emotions.
They're showing incredibly negative emotions. Their facial expressions show things
like contempt, deep sadness, anger, and these kinds of things.
And that's because of social comparison, Right, you were so
close to being the best in the world and you're not,

(41:39):
and rather than feeling like you beat billions of people
in your sport, which you did. You find very sailing.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
You're haunted.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
You're haunted by one person, right, that's a silver medallist.
And the reason why it's the kind of bronze lining
that matters is that if you look at the bronze medalists,
you might think that they're even more contemptuous, more angry
than the silver medalists. But no, because the bronze medalist's
reference point isn't gold. They were multiple seconds or multiple
whatever it was in their sport. Away from that, their

(42:06):
assailient reference point is like if I was just like
a teeny tiny bit slower, I wouldn't be up here
at I've going home empty handed. And so it turns
out that the bronze medalist, in some cases and these studies,
are actually happier than the gold medalists, like they're showing
like incredible elation because they're like, oh my gosh. And
this is why like finding the bronze lining instead of
the silver lining, because I can for any trait you

(42:26):
care about, there are people who are doing a lot
worse than you, right, And if they're not doing a
lot worse than you, on that particular trait you're looking at.
Just broaden your horizon a little bit to be like, again,
if you're watching this or listening to this right now,
you have hearing in a way that not everybody on
the planet has. You're the privilege of owning this technology,
which not everybody has. You have your phone that didn't
break ten minutes ago, right, which it could have done. Right. Like,

(42:48):
when we kind of take a broader perspective, we can
use our social comparison to realize we're actually doing pretty good.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
How do you give more than lip service to that though,
because it's it's like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can hear,
I can see fine, Like I know what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
But so the butt, the butt, the butt. Yeah, Well,
like all things, you got to do this strategy. But
here's the strategy that I like. And it comes both
from what we were talking about before in terms of
using our imagination in positive ways, and it gets back
to the ancients. This is a technique that the ancient
Stoics talked about. They called it negative visualization. But here's
how it goes. When I leave the studio right now,

(43:23):
I'm going to get hit by a car. I'm going
to lose the use of my legs. My phone's going
to be dead, and I'm not going to be able
to find my next appointment because I don't have a
phone anymore. Something terrible is going to happen to my husband,
and I'm going to get a horrible phone call, like
I'm not going to win that. That's not going to happen.
That took me like what thirty seconds. Instantly, I'm much
more grateful for my phone, much more grateful for my legs.

(43:43):
I'm going to call my husband when I got out
of this and be like, I didn't guard something terrible
didn't happen to you, write honey, are you okay? That's
negative visualization. The stoics thought that you should start every
morning being like I was exiled. I will lose my health,
I will lose my house, I will lose my money.
And you take a deep breath and you say, hey,
that didn't happen. Now, all of a sudden, you're a
little bit more kind of grateful for those things. I

(44:03):
do this negative visualization exercise in my talks. Lately, I've
been doing a lot of work on parenting and talk
can do parents about happiness, and I say, do a
quick negative visualization. The last time you saw your kids,
that was the last time you're ever going to see them.
They're gone, never going to see them again. My guess
is the next time even people listening see their kids
or hug them, you're going to hug them a little bit.

(44:24):
Like that's the power of imagination. It doesn't take us
long to get to a reference point of we don't
have the good things that we have in our lives.
You just have to take a practice to do that,
to recognize that a little bit more.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
We all know people in our lives though that see
the world through a very negative lens, like nothing's ever
going to work out, Like I'm worthless. It's only a
matter of time before I get fired, and then I'm
going to be homeless, and like I'm going to be
starving on the street and I'm just going to die,
you know, like I know a lot of these people. Yeah,
So the key is that this sty to share it

(44:58):
isn't isn't quite like it's a different thing. But like, notice.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
You do this like all day into the evening, two
o'clock in the morning. They said, just do it really
quickly and realize you can.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
Show get for the normal person. But what is the
antidote for somebody who's really caught up in this looping
negative pattern of the mind that then translates into how
they show up in the world, and then they do
manifest negative outcomes in their life because they're walking through life,
you know, staring at their feet and expecting everything to

(45:30):
go terribly wrong and kind of on some level like
are co creating that real world experience.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Well, I think there's two strategies. One is a strategy
just to shift your attention to the positive stuff. And
this is what comes out of a gratitude practice. I
feel like this is kind of in the common ether
about people talking about the power of gratitude, right, just
taking a moment to notice the good stuff, even the
little good stuff. The reason this is powerful is that
it trains our attention to do the opposite of what
we naturally do. We're naturally built to have this like

(45:59):
negativity bias where we're noticing, well, my car's not good enough,
or that bad thing happened. There's so much traffic today,
the weather's so crummy in la today, which, by the way,
rather it is kind of growing.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
It's been terrible believe me, I'm all upset about it.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
They keep going, rather than like the temperature is actually
quite pleasant.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
It's not you know, like we've been rain and it's
beautiful and the hills are.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
Alive and exactly, yeah, no, it just so beautiful out.
But this is where our brain normally goes negativity bias,
Oh the weather's so crummy, rather than my god, we
need a rain. This is great. This is going to
protect LA from all the yucky stuff that happens here. Right,
And so this this is the practice of gratitude. Right.
You're training your attention, which normally just gloms on to
the bad stuff, to find the good things. Sometimes when

(46:41):
I talk to people, they find gratitude to be like hard,
or you really have to be grateful, or it feels cheesy.
Another practice I love, which comes from the novelist Rosque
who's this book called the Book of Delights. He says,
rather than going for things that you're grateful for, which
kind of feels like I falu in or hard, just
notice delights on the way here. I was at the

(47:02):
airport coming into Lax and there's just like one restroom
in the ladies room that was like this orchid there,
and I was like, who's the staff who put it
work in there? Just like the delight We're like driving here,
there was somebody like blasting like Cypress Hill out of
his car like in a lowrider and just like really
savoring and being into Cypress Hill. And I was like,
that's a little delight. LA is so cool? Right, I'm

(47:22):
not taking extra work to like find these things that
I'm so grateful for whatever. I'm just noticing, like the
world has these good, funny things that are amusing, that
are beautiful, that are nice, you just like train your
brain to find. With Rosque, in his book The Book
of Delights, he wrote an essay about one delight every day.
And what that did was it made him he had
to find a delight because he had to write the
essay about it, right. And so I find that writing

(47:44):
these things down or finding someone you can share delights with.
I have some friends that I like will just text
a delight too, you know, like my god, dude listening
to Cypress Hill and his lowrider delight. You know, like
what you're doing there is you're training your mind that
would normally be looking for all the lucky stuff to
find a few of the good things. That's how to
train your attention. But the thing you brought up, this
sort of ruminating, I think needs another strategy, which is,

(48:06):
like you need to find ways to harness more positive
self talk or at least nip the bad self talk
in the bud. And one of the great ways for
doing that, I know you had Ethan Cross on the
show recently, is a lot of the strategies he talks
about for distance self talk, like literally talk to yourself
in the second and third person and I'm like, oh
my god, this is so terrible. Me me, me, You

(48:26):
just say, Laurie, it's gonna be fine. You've gone through
stuff like this before. Like you just switch the pronouns
that you use to talk to yourself. And what that
does is it puts you in good friend mode, it
puts you in mentor mode, it puts you in problem
solving mode rather than ruminate all the time. That's a hack,
one of Ethan's hacks that I use all the time.
And it's like been a game changer for me, because

(48:46):
like you just automatically switch the narrative in your head
when you're getting real with yourself.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
Dude, it's not that.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
Bad come on and you can.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
It also allows you to be a bit of an
objective observer, like you're disidentifying with the problem, and you're
bifurcating your identity like, oh, there's me, and then there's
like that other voice that is saying all of these
things that now needs to sit in the backseat and
be quiet for a little while.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah, I mean it helps you realize your thoughts or
your thoughts, which is one of the biggest innovations the
human mind has come up with to realize that like, wait,
that's not the truth. That's just like the little dialogue
that's going on in my brain. I could put a
little stop gap there and it'll work better.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
Human beings are storytelling and story receiving animals, and as
you were sharing about the person who is in a
negative thought pattern loop, so much of that is anchored
in whatever story they're telling themselves about who they are,
what they're capable of, and probably a very age old

(49:50):
story that maybe they inherited or was impressed upon them,
but nonetheless become cemented in such a way that we
rarely question it. And for the person who's waking up
every day and saying it's going to go terrible and
this bad thing is going to happen. I believe we
have the power to sort of change that narrative. And

(50:11):
the practice that seems like it would be effective is
to kind of do an inventory at the end of
the day or in the morning and say, Okay, here's
what actually happened, and reaffirming where the bad thing didn't happen,
like and something could happen instead, and like you know,
kind of starting to attune your attention to all of

(50:32):
those things as a way of kind of creating a
new neural pathway. Does that make sense? Is there science
behind that or yeah?

Speaker 1 (50:39):
Totally. I think it's partly using that negative visualization like
it could have gone bad but it didn't kind of thing,
which is powerful. But it also fits with what a
lot of the science shows is the power of practices
like journaling, right, which often is the kind of thing
people do towards the end of the day. Right. Journaling
practices are really powerful because when we're writing down, we
kind of just assume that writing is supposed to like

(51:01):
have a narrative arc.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
Right.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
You kind of got this in like you know, a
middle school in high school, right, where it's like it's
going to start and it's going to have a conflict,
and then you kind of solve conflict. Right, It's very
hard in your journaling just to be like this sucks,
this is terrible, I'm terrible, I'm terrible. When you're writing,
you kind of brain just automatically goes into like, okay,
but how can I make sense of this? Right? We
go into sense making, we go into problem solving. It's

(51:23):
kind of similar to some of Ethan stuff when you
talk like you're a friend. If you take that other perspective,
you instantly go into coach mode or mentor mode. When
you're writing, you go into sense making mode, into storytelling mode.
And there's lots of evidence that expressive writing about whatever
the thing is that you're scared about or that you're
worried about, you wind up coming up with better problem
solving strategies. And some lovely work by Jamie Pennybaker who

(51:45):
looked at the power of expressive writing even in domains
where people went through terrible trauma. He did some famous
work looking at the narratives of Holocaust survivors and found
that the people that got content onto paper, that were
able to talk about their stories, whether in writing or
whether with the interviewer, like they wound up kind of
going into sense making, and it had not just a
huge effect on how they process that horrible trauma, but

(52:06):
also on their health later on, as individuals live longer,
they had less heart attacks and so on, because it's
like you're not like holding in the body all this stuff.
And so I think this practice of express if you
get kind of get stuck in this negative thought pattern
and nothing works, give yourself an hour to just like
get stuff on paper and don't try to have an agenda,
just kind of let it go down, and your brain

(52:27):
will go into the normal mode it goes into to
try to make sense of some stuff.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
I find that to be very effective in my life.
It's something I've been doing for a long time, and
I've learned that when I start to resist, like I've
done enough, like I need to stop, Like you need
to have a certain number of pages that you commit
to because something happens, you know.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Yeah, that's why I said, Yeah, Like then you're.

Speaker 3 (52:52):
Like suddenly you're writing all this crazy stuff that your
unconscious mind gets activated and things start to spill out,
and you know more will be revealed.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Yeah, and I think just remember that, you know, one
of the reasons that human mind is school is there's
so many different parts in prosses, right, we have so
many different kind of narrators coming online, and like there's
a narrator in there that wants to understand things and
wants to make sense of things. You just kind of
get to give them space to kind of come out.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
All those voices just wanted to be loved and heard.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
To help, you know, everybody. All the voices want us
to be happy.

Speaker 3 (53:27):
I think another way in which our intuition leads us
astray with this idea of happiness is is that it
is very much rooted in circumstance. So talk a little
bit about that.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Yeah, I think we assume, you know, if we were
putting together a big ingredient list of what we need
for happy life, we would assume, maybe, like you know,
some genetics, you want some like genes to be happier,
but you would also want to have great circumstances. You
wouldn't want a life with a lot of conflict, a
lot of kind of problems. You'd want life with perfect circumstances.
You get into the perfect college. If you're like you

(54:00):
know the students I work with, or you have lots
of money, or great things happen to you. Everything goes
your way, your flight never gets canceled, there's no traffic.
You just want the circumstance is to be perfect. But
it turns out that circumstances have much less of an
effect on our happiness than we think, for a couple reasons. Right. One,
when you have good circumstances over and over again, you
don't keep noticing that they're good. You just get used

(54:21):
to them. The other is, if you have bad circumstances, right,
you become paraplegic, you have a horrible accident, Quickly you
get used to that bad thing too, and it doesn't
continue to affect you as much as you think. And
so oftentimes we're much better off not trying to change
our circumstances, getting richer, changing where we live, you know,
but then changing our behaviors in our mindsets, because those
things are going to matter more, right, getting more social connection,

(54:43):
getting out and moving your body, stopping that negative self talk,
finding the delights, those kinds of things are just intervention wise,
going to have a much bigger impact on your happiness
than changing your circumstances. It's also the case that changing
your circumstances for a lot of circumstances is like hard, right,
like you could do it. It often takes it. You know,
you can earn more money, but that's like much more
of a pain than engaging in a journaling practice every night,

(55:07):
or like writing down a few delights every week.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
It is a difficult thing, though, because if you're somebody
who came up from very difficult circumstances, or your life
is one in which it's difficult just by dint of
you know, where you find yourself, it's hard to claw
out of that. It's like you don't want to be
dismissive of that. If somebody's like you know, who's unhappy,

(55:32):
but they're caught in something they care.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Right well, out of the circumstances I'm talking about are
not like you are in a refugee situation or you've
been putting an El Salvador in prison, although racketed. What
we know as people who are in those horrible situations
sometimes find a lot of purpose, a lot of social connection,
a lot of happiness. Right, But if those are the
circumstances that you're listening right now, and you're like, that's
the situation I'm in. That's not what I mean. What

(55:55):
I mean is for the person who has hood on
the table, who has a roof over their head, who's
not in a terrible war zone or terrible trauma. I'm
talking about the person who's like, Oh, if I could
only make ten thousand dollars more a year, I'd be
so much happier. I just need to move to a
better neighborhood, I need a better phone or car. Those
are the circumstantial changes I'm talking about. And the sad
thing is like changing those things are just not going

(56:16):
to impact your happiness in the way you think. This
is similar. We were you talking about money and happiness before,
and we say, like, oh, money doesn't buy happiness. That's
not entirely true. Money does buy happiness. If you don't
have any right, you can't put a move over your head,
you don't have food on the table. Yes, getting more
money will allow you the basic needs you need to
be a little bit happier. It's just that after a
certain point, once you get those basic needs, more money

(56:38):
doesn't impact your happiness.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
Like you think, what are the questions that you ask
the person who comes to you, Laurie and says, I've
done everything right. I checked all the boxes. You know,
I went to the schools. You know, I got the job,
I worked hard, I you know, got married, I had

(57:00):
the two kids, and you know, I've done everything and
I succeeded. Like, I kind of have it all, and
I'm not necessarily unhappy. But I can't say that I'm
happy either. I know that there is a greater happiness
available to me. I just don't know what to do
or how to get it.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Yeah, Well, first I would start by asking questions about
their behaviors. You have this perfect job and all this stuff.
What's your social connection?

Speaker 3 (57:28):
Maybe not perfect, but like good reasonable?

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Yeah, what's your social connection?

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Like?

Speaker 1 (57:32):
Right, are you putting time into the connections that matter?
Are you putting time into doing good in the world.
One of the things we know is that treating ourselves
just doesn't make us as happy as treating other people. Right,
I might ask about like simple physical habits. Are you
moving your body? Are you getting sleep? Or is all
that at the expense of doing this other stuff that
you talked about? And then I would ask about kind
of how you think about emotions? Right, are you trying

(57:54):
to get positive emotion? Right? Do you get positive motions?
We don't often think about a sense of wonderous, sense
of awe, humor, those kinds of things. And I might
even ask like, how are you engaging with your strength?
Like what are the things that you find purpose and
in value and are you doing that stuff? Right? Really
kind of ask in detail about people's thought patterns and
their behaviors, because often that's that's the trick, right, that's

(58:15):
what people aren't investing in. And I see this even
in a get into my Yale students, right, you have
every povilege. I think they fall a lot into the
category you're talking about, Like I got into the perfect school,
you know, young and healthy and all, my future is
so bright? Why am I so miserable? And it's often
because those are the same students who are mortgaging their
social connection, filled with thought patterns of just like such
anxiety about the future, not sleeping, right, you know, they're

(58:38):
kind of doing the stuff that we know kind of
will negatively affect your happiness in the service of trying
to go after this stuff that probably won't impact their
happiness as much as they think.

Speaker 3 (58:47):
Yeah, I think in addition to that, for those students
or the person who has climbed the mountain, there's a
sense of betrayal because they've played the game and followed
all the rules, and implicit in the game is this
idea that you know, happiness is.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
The reward, right when you arrive there, you'll be happily
of rafter you're supposed to.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
This is a fantastic lie that has, you know, persevered
within this narrative. And I wonder if it's more acute
in America because this notion of the American dream and
you know, kind of pull yourself up by your bootstraps
and you know, these stories back to stories. It's like,
this is the story of what it means to live

(59:33):
here and how to go from where you are to
where you want to be.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
Yeah, one of the stories I watch in my Yale
students is that there's this phenomena on the Internet called
admissions videos. So when students are about to find out
if they're going to do to college, you know, they've
got a camera and TikTok's watching, you know, and they hear,
and so in my class, I show students these admission videos.
When students find out they get into Yale, which is
like a big heradic click on this little website and

(59:57):
it plays as Yelle. Seems like it was bulldog Bulldog bow.
So as you got into Yale, students scream and they cry,
and their parents are in these videos screaming, crying, and
the students will watch these videos and have a moment
of madness because you're like, I remember that moment, and
that moment was a good moment, but like thirty seconds later,
I was like, nah, I just have to do the
same thing to like get into medical. Like never care.

(01:00:20):
It just moved right, and it's like you didn't even.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Pain, uncertainty and the need for constant work.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
Exactly exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
You're listening to me and Ritual on the Ritual podcast.
We'll have even more fun conversation after the break.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
So we're kind of dancing around the edges here. But
there are well identified, scientifically evidence backed pillars to happiness.
There is relationships like connection with other people, like how
social are you in your community? And the low hanging
fruit like sleep and nutrition and you know, physical exercise

(01:01:05):
and being in nature. These are relatively easy to identify
and also easy to fix. But there are other pillars
that are a little bit more elusive, like when you
talk about purpose and meaning, like these are kind of big,
scary words that I think are hard to get our

(01:01:26):
heads around, like what does that mean? Like if I
do I have purpose in my life? Is there meaning?
Is what I'm doing meaningful? Is it meaningful to me?
Is there some you know, greater animating force that's propelling
me forward that is of value? Like how to identify that?
And if it's missing, how do you fix it? Because

(01:01:47):
I think when you say to somebody like well you
just need more purpose or you need meaning, you know,
it's like what are you supposed to do with that?

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
You know? I think it's paralyzing and I think it
leads to people feeling guilty, if not ashamed.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
Totally totally. And I think two things there. One is
I think when we think about purpose, you know, in
our brains, I think we like the capital pee purpose
like it's so big. Some of the folks I've talked
about my podcast, I've talked about small P purpose like
you know, little lowercase P. And I think when you
think about it like that, you say, oh, it's like

(01:02:22):
the conversation I have with the brist at the coffee shop,
or it's that I help my nephew with his homework,
or it's that I really care about this hobby that
I engage and I find it fun. I like I
like moving up right, Like I get a sense of
purpose for like running marathons, whatever it is, right if
you're not thinking like you have to, like you know,
becomes deep jobs or solve cancer or whatever. Like when
you realize it's like, oh, that's the thing that just

(01:02:43):
kind of I feel better about myself when I'm doing
that thing. I feel more authentically myself when I'm doing that.
That's the kind of little pea purpose, And I think
you just want to build more of that in. I
also use a technique with my students that get them
to think about the kind of more in an abstract way,
what some of those things are. The little pea purpose
exercises trying to figure out what are you already doing
that does that. But a different exercise you can use

(01:03:05):
is to try to figure out what researchers call your
signature strength. Right. Researchers like Chris Peterson and Marty Segment
have done this work where they've kind of gone cross
culturally and tried to figure out, like what are the strengths,
what are the values that different people can have, like
the good traits that you can have in the world.
And they've come up with a list of twenty four
of these things they call character strengths. There are things
like bravery and love of learning, a zest for life,

(01:03:27):
curiosity right like helping people, social intelligence and stuff. And
what they find is that all of these are good,
Like all those things I just listed are great, but
some of them you resonate with more than others. And
you can actually go online if you google character strengths
as a website called the Values in Action Character Strengths
where you can take a psychometric quiz and look at this.

(01:03:49):
You can just look at the big list of these
I find. Just looking at them, you go through you like,
oh yeah, bravery is good, but oh humor that's me
or love of learning that's me or whatever it is.
Those was the idea would be or your signature strengths.
And what research by Segment and as colleagues has found
is that the more you use your signature strength and
your daily life, the happier you feel, the more you

(01:04:09):
have like, the more like you love whatever you're doing
in your workplace. For example, if you use your signature strengths,
you can turn whatever job you have into a calling.
And the reason I like the work on the signature
strengths is that some of that's been not in jobs
like our job. You know, we have this wonderful podcaster
job or professor where I could build in all these things. Right,
A lot of the most creative work on signature strengths

(01:04:29):
is done in domains where folks have jobs that are
like very constrained. This woman, Amy Rezinski Us at the
University of Pennsylvania, looks at strengths in hospital janitorial staff workers.
So these are people who are like, you know, washing
the linen for people who are sick, or you know,
mopping the floor is like you don't think they could
bring in like bravery or a curiosity or prudence or

(01:04:51):
whatever it is, right, But what she finds is that
between like a quarter to a third of janitorial staff
workers say they love their job. They're you know, they
have to work for you to earn an income, but
they would like they would do it even if they
hit the lottery because they love what they do. And
those are the ones who are naturally infusing their strengths
into their job. She tells them my podcast, she told
these lovely stories. She had a story of a janitorial

(01:05:13):
staff worker who worked in a chemotherapy ward. And so
if you're listening right now and you had kenotherapy or
know someone who does, you know people get sick, right.
So a bad thing about this treatment is people tend
to vomit. So a lot of this dude's job was
cleaning up vomit. But he said, that's not my job.
My job is, like my strengths are humor and social intelligence.
My job is to make that person laugh. The person's
having a crummy day, and I see it as my

(01:05:34):
duty to like make them laugh before I walk out
of there. And he had, I guess he had like
a standard joke where he said, like, oh, there's a
lot of vomits over time today, like keep it coming,
you know, the you know, stupid joke. But the person
would lie and he's like, that's that's my job, right.
She talked about another janitorial staff worker who worked in
a coma award. So this was a staff work who
couldn't it and interact with the patients because the patients

(01:05:55):
were all in a coma and unconscious, but every day
she would like walk around and move, move the artwork
in the room. Her strength was creativity, right, Like I
guess she thought like maybe the patients will notice or
wake up. Probably not medically accurate, but he gave her
some purpose going to work. These are the ways we
can infuse purpose into our work. And I love the
janitor work because again, not all of us have jobs

(01:06:17):
where we can, you know, switch things around and do
some intellectual switch, right, But like everybody has a job
where you can bring some of these things in a
little bit, right, And if you can't do it at work,
bring it in in your leisure and stuff. So if
you're not sure what those are, I think google character strengths,
just look at the big list, or take one of
these formal tests, or just kind of have a sense
of like, you know these when I feel most authentically myself,

(01:06:39):
what am I engaging in, and just try to do
more of that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42):
There's something wonderfully counterintuitive about that, though, because I would
have thought that that inventory would be an attempt to
identify the things that bring you joy or remembering when
the last time you know, you felt like really happy.
What were you doing to like set it in a
context of strengths as opposed to activities where you really

(01:07:06):
feel yourself. I mean you mentioned authenticity, so that's part
of this, But why isn't it my version of that? Yeah, Like,
why is it strengths versus like activities that make me
feel happy?

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
I think I think ultimately they're one and the same
for you. It's just that the ones that might work
most for you might not be the ones that work
for somebody else. Right, Like there's people that, like, you know,
their signature strength is humor.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
Right, I love working on my weaknesses. Yeah, your strength.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
Is that that that could.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
Be that could be something right who those people are.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
But there are strengths that are bravery, for example, which
I think depending on how you think of those weaknesses,
it could be part of that. There are strengths that
are self regulation, right that, like what I'm going to
do is really try hard to kind of regulate my
deepest emotions, strengths of things like prudence, right where it's
like I want to just very carefully work on these things. Right.
So the set of strengths when you look at the
big list is pretty broad and a lot of times

(01:08:00):
that the thing that feels most authentic to you. When
you look at the list, you'll be like, oh, that's
kind of on there for me. You have artists who
have strengths of things like appreciation of beauty or zest
for life. A lot of folks who have strengthen that
are related to social intelligence like kindness or forgiveness or
or social intelligence kind of empathy and understanding people. When
you look at the big list, usually folks have some

(01:08:21):
that fit with that. And often if you're using those things,
it can be can be powerful.

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
How do you parse the difference between purpose and meaning?
Is it that meaning? Is this emergent property of finding
some purpose, even if it's a small p purpose by
investing in your strengths.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
Yeah, these definitions always make it complicated.

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):
It becomes like a mind vendor. And just like I
think meaning all these words are like the same, but
they're not the same and are like does one come
from the other? Like you know, I still, after like
having a million conversations about this, I still don't. I'm
still not sure I really get it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
The way I think about it. And again, I think
we all we use many of these turns interchangeably, and
it gets so much more complicated when we look cross culturally.
There's a set of researchers at Harvard who are doing
a project or trying to catalog emotional words that exist
in one language or one culture, but that don't translate
to other languages and cultures. And it's a really fascinating

(01:09:20):
list to go through because me is a monolingual English
speaking American. Just see all these words of like wait,
I kind of know that emotion, but I never had
a word for it. One of my favorite ones maybe
might not translate as well in LA. It translates a
lot on the East Coast where I live in the Northeast,
is the feeling that you get on the first spring
day where you can say outside and have a beer
and like the outdoors. That emotion. I'm like, oh man,

(01:09:41):
I know that might have don't have a word for yah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:43):
I mean, listen, I'm from the East Coast. I lived
in Ithaca.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
Because are the point, you know, if you look in
Asian cultures, you have lots of different words that are
hard to translate for an American that mean different aspects
of contemplation or peacefulness or kind of attention to what's
going on in the world acceptance, right. So point is
it's hard cross culturally, it's hard even for these terms
that we all use in English together. I think of
meaning as that experience. I get a sense of me

(01:10:09):
from engaging in the purpose, which is kind of the
activity or the kind of thing you're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):
It matters less how you define those things than the
actions that you're taking. Like you're very action based, You're like,
here are these things that you should do. Get into
action journaling, identify your strengths, like all of these you know,
sort of snackable you know what do you call them again, rewirables? Right,
that are there to counter program all the intuitions and

(01:10:36):
instincts that lead us astray when we're on autopilot.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
And I think this is the thing I didn't say
that I would say to the person who's like, I
feel like I'm doing everything right or I feel like
I'm really struggling. I have this rumination. I think that
the thing that really gives me hope about all this
stuff is like there's like hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands,
of studies on these things, these little snackable activities or
mindset shifts. They all work. They all work in a

(01:10:59):
striking way.

Speaker 3 (01:11:00):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
They don't take your happiness from zero to one hundred,
but they give small, reliable, significant increases in your happiness.
I know you Dan Harris on the show recently, he
talks about ten percent happier, And that's a great name
for a podcast and a title for anything, because that's
kind of the range that you're going up and all
these little meaningful changes. I'm suggesting you get a little
social connection, You'll go from a seven on a ten

(01:11:22):
point happiness scale to eight. You know, you get to
get in some exercise in a half hour of cardio
every day, like, you'll move from a six to a seven. Right. Like,
that's about the magnitude of increase. But that increase is
available for all the different things we've talked about. Right,
So you can have your little a la carte snacklist
of different strategies you use to feel happier, and if
you can manage to turn them into habits, to put

(01:11:42):
them into effect, you'll wind up reaping the benefits.

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
Another important pillar here is contribution to others service, basically,
which as a twelve step person I know well and
had to learn the hard way that this is the
most reliable and truest antidote to self obsession. And I

(01:12:05):
think self obsession is sort of at the root of
a lot of unhappiness out there. We're just constantly thinking
about ourselves all day long, whether positively or negatively. And
if we can get out of that and invest ourselves
in somebody else, I mean, this is a big part
of the community piece too, like be with other people.

(01:12:26):
Like you know, you have to get out of your
own like narrative and immerse yourself in the world. But
when you invest yourself in somebody else's welfare, even in
the smallest way, it's incredible how that can shift your mood,
your energy, and your perspective.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
Yeah, and I think this is something that culture gets wrong.
We talked about culture getting manifesting wrong. I think that's
number one thing we get wrong on TikTok. But number
two things we get wrong about happiness on TikTok is this.
If you look anywhere on TikTok itself about self care,
treat yourself self self self Like you look at the
studies of happy people, and happy people are not focused
on themselves. Happy people are very other oriented. They're doing

(01:13:06):
nice stuff for other people, right, control for income, happier
people tend to donate more money to charity than not
so happy people. Right. It's just these like subtle correlations
between doing nice stuff for others and feeling better. But
then you have all these experiments where you kind of
force participants to do nice stuff for other people. One
of my favorites by Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues where
they walk up to folks on the street, hand them

(01:13:27):
twenty bucks and say, either, hey, spend this twenty bucks
to do something nice to treat yourself, right, or hey,
spend this twenty bucks to do something nice for somebody else.
You could donate it to a homeless shelter, you could
buy a friend, you know, something nice like that has
to go to someone else. When they call people at
the end of the day or even at the end
of the week, they find that people are happier when
they treated someone else rather than when they treated themselves.

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
Right. In giving that money to that other person, if
you qualify it, it then becomes a burden for them,
as opposed to an enriching experience where you felt like, oh,
I like, you know, I did something nice for somebody.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
Yeah, And this is a spot where even in my
own life, if I'm not careful with it, like there's
just like a terrible opportunity cost because like all the
money you spend on yourself to feel better, you know,
buying yourself a massage, or buying yourself that new gadget,
or buying your treating yourself to a nice class, well,
it's just the same money that you could have spent
on someone else. Often joke that every time my brain

(01:14:20):
is like I'm going to get a manicure, I'm going
to do something nice for myself, I'm like, wait, can
I give my sister in law manicure? Can I buy
that massage for like someone in my workplace? Like it
genuinely is one of these things that even violates my
intuition's even saying. And now I'm like, dude, I would
like the massage better than my sister in law or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
But you're cultivating abundance, an abundance content, right instead of lack,
Like you you have to hoard it because you're afraid
it'll run out or you'll run out.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
And the benefits is like when you do nice things
for other people, like what you get back in the
social connection is huge, right. My my producer and co
writer form my podcast, Ryan Dilley tells the story of
he was walking into a coffee shop and someone was
walking out with this cookie they were very excited about
and then dropped it like on the threshold of the
doors they were walking out. It seems sad, and he
ran into the coffee shop and brought this person a

(01:15:08):
cookie and like gave them the cookie and like prison
was really happy. And he's like, months later, I'm still
telling that story, Like I don't ever tell the story.
At the time I walked through the coffee shop, I
just got myself the cookie. Like now it's you know,
millions of people and your show or hearing it, right,
And so these moments of good deeds that we do
for others, they percolate. They percolate in our own memory,
they percolate in our social conversations. Even you know, just

(01:15:30):
hearing Brian's story, probably all your people have this little
boost and happiness that we get, and so we forget
that our actions and our things we do to feel
happy at the moment, some of them live on better
than others. And the things we do for other people
live on in special ways, is.

Speaker 3 (01:15:44):
There any science to establish. I want to call it
a placebo effect, but it's not quite that. What I'm
getting at is the intention behind it, Like does it
matter if you give of yourself from a place of
you know, open heartedness and generosity, or you're doing it

(01:16:07):
selfishly because Lrie Santo's I do this it makes me happy.
And I know just based on my anecdotal personal experience
that it actually doesn't matter, Like if I just even
if I don't want to do the thing, like I
know that it will make me happier, and so to
be selfless from a selfish perspective, Yeah, it still ends

(01:16:33):
up creating a shift.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
Yeah, and I think that's true for all the like
we get the benefit from the behavior in a lot
of the cases. I think that again, with all these things,
there's a little bit of nuance. Lara Actin has this
work that if you feel forced to do nice things
for others, like you don't have any choice, you don't
have any agency in it, that can be not good.
This is one of the reasons we see things like
caregiver burnout and so on, Like you have no choice,
you have to be doing these nice things. That's not great.

(01:16:58):
But if you come at it from like, all right,
I don't really cortting this page, I'll try it. It
kind of works. And that's like, that's true in all
these domains, you know, Like I respect so many people
that get the like the wonderful emotional hit that have
the like craving for working out.

Speaker 3 (01:17:13):
I never have that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
It's always this log for me. I hoped that doing
it more and more I'll get into it. Never is,
but every time I do it, when I'm done, I'm like, oh,
that was great. Why did I hate doing that? What's
my problem?

Speaker 3 (01:17:22):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:17:23):
Yeah, And I think the same thing can be true
for doing nice things for others. For me, it's also
true for like talking to people. I know that talking
to strangers from all my studies. Again, I can tell
you the journal article name right that it makes you happier.
But I'm just like, don't really feel like talking to people.
But then inevitably, when I do it, I'm like, Okay,
I should really do it. I wind up feeling better.

(01:17:44):
Even on the plane over here today, I was sitting
next to someone who kind of plopped down, and this
individual sort of disabled and like had a tough time
getting in and was sort of seemingly sort of frustrated,
and I had this moment of like, all I want
to do is look at my phone and check my email.
That's all my craving and motivation is telling me to do.
But I know, happiness wise, I should like try to
brighten this person's day. And so I did it, and

(01:18:06):
we had a little chat, and then I felt a
little bit brighter for ten minutes into the flight and
feel like I've made you his version of that flight
a little bit better than if I was just kind
of on my own.

Speaker 3 (01:18:17):
How does this break down between introverts and extroverts Because
that type of behavior comes a little bit more naturally
to the extroverted person, and so it would follow that
extroverts are happier because they're more social. They like to
be around a lot of people, and you know, it's
an easier lift for them to you know, kind of
engage with people out in the world, whereas an introvert

(01:18:38):
is like afraid of those situations or is avoiding those
and isolating. So is there science around that those two archetypes.

Speaker 1 (01:18:47):
Yeah? Yeah, Well, first is the is there a difference
in the happiness of introverts and extroverts, and the answer
seems to be yes or extroverts are happier, probably presumably
because they're socially connecting more often and more easily, but.

Speaker 3 (01:18:59):
They can be more self obsessed, though they might be
more self pubsessed.

Speaker 1 (01:19:02):
Yeah, there's a lot of nuance, as I said, for
a lot of these. But there's a different question, right,
which is if introverts engaged in more social connection, if
they kind of pushed against their natural tendency not to
do it but tried it out more, would they wind
up being happier. And this is something that's been studied
by lots of folks. My favorite experiments on this are
by Nick up Lee at the University of Chicago where

(01:19:24):
he does these studies where he forces people to talk
to strangers that situation I was in talking to the
person on the plane. He basically makes people do that
on commuter trains in Chicago. He says you'll get a
ten dollars Starbucks gift card if you spend the train
ride talking to someone, And everyone hates to do it,
but they do it because the promise of the ten
dollars Starbucks gift card and social.

Speaker 3 (01:19:42):
Science amazing and a gift card will do yes.

Speaker 1 (01:19:47):
But people predict that this is going to be terrible
talking to the stranger on the train, and introverts predict
that it's going to be like more. I think the
scale doesn't go low enough for them to say how
terrible it will be. But both introverts and extroverts get
a positive emotion boost from talking to the stranger, which
is not what people expect.

Speaker 3 (01:20:05):
Does the boost higher for the introvert because there's seems
to be more to be gained, like there's a bigger
gap there.

Speaker 1 (01:20:12):
So the test that they did is the difference between
your prediction and what the outcome was. They didn't compare
introverts and extroverts, but what you find is the prediction error,
right what you think is going to happen versus what
really happens. That difference is much bigger for the introverts,
but everybody overall gets a positive boost. This is the
thing I'll tell you because you're going to look at
the comment section of the show that we're going to

(01:20:33):
get the most hate mail about. Because when I did
a podcast about introverts try it out and get a
little bit more social we got tons and tons of
hate mail. I had this fantastic guest on, Jessica Pan
who wrote this book called Sorry Emilee, I didn't want
to come colon inn Introverts Guide to Extroverting, and she
was this like incredibly hardcore introvert, like would go to

(01:20:56):
parties and like, you know, have to go cry in
the bathroom because she hated being social so much and
read the work on extroverts being Happier and she's like,
I'm just going to try it for a year, and
she'd one of these experiments that journalists do, or they
do the thing they will make them ha for a
whole year and she did improv comedy, she went to
like networking events, she talked to people on the train,
and she worked with Nick Eppley about this and at

(01:21:18):
the end of the year she was like way happier.
And at the end of the year she found something interesting,
which is like it's hard at first because your prediction
is wrong, right, And if you think about that prediction
er I just talked about, you see where it gets hard.
You're an introvert. You're like, ah, I predict calling my
friend that's going to be yucky. You're talking to the
barriste at the coffee shop. Oh that's going to be yucky.
You never do it, you don't notice it feel good,

(01:21:40):
and you keep not doing it right. It's like when
we get in bad cycles of whatever, you know. I
see this sometimes in my own fitness journey, of like
I don't feel like exercise and I don't do it.
Then I forget, Oh my god, it feels amazing. Then
it's harder for me to do it next time because
I didn't do it before, and so on, and so
folks like Nick Eppley think that this is kind of
one of the things that happens to introverts is that
you predict it's going to be crappy. You behaving based

(01:22:02):
on your predictions. You don't engage in social connection, and
then it's harder next time, and it's harder and it's harder,
and so his advice would be baby steps. This is
not like going to a party or doing improv comedy
or like, you know, going out with three hundred of
your best friends. This is just like text a good
friend and say hey, can we connect for coffee, or like,
you know, the set of time to call like someone
you haven't talked to in a long time, it's not

(01:22:24):
doing that all the time. It's just getting a little
bit more of that in I didn't try to see,
try to notice.

Speaker 3 (01:22:29):
If it makes you feel better, Yeah, well, let me
try to inhabit the voice of Susan Kane right now
and speak, you know, speak to the introvert thing. I
think there is a distinction between the introvert who's just
predisposed to a little bit more solitude and quiet and
tends to thrive in those types of environments or is

(01:22:53):
more suited to smaller gatherings, let's say, than the introvert
who has this fear or this terror of these and
it has like this negative predictive, you know, kind of
brain around what happens when they're in those you know,
more crowded irons. And I think on top of that,
I would imagine that part of the pushback that you

(01:23:14):
know you get for this is that beneath it all,
there's this perspective that it's better to be an extrovert,
and that if you're an introvert, you should be more
extroverted or there's something wrong with you. And some people
are more wired to be many many people are more
wired to be more introverted than extroverted. I happen to

(01:23:35):
be one of them, and it's very comforting to hear
Susan talk about this and say, there's nothing wrong with
you, you know what I mean. And that's not to say
that what you're sharing is is incorrect either. It's that
you know, if you are isolating and cutting yourself off
from life because of this predisposition that you have, that
there is greater happiness that you can find if you

(01:23:57):
get out of your comfort zone and you know, put
yourself in those uncomfortable positions. It doesn't mean that you
have to become an extrovert or that there's an expectation
around that is that you think that's.

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):
Exactly That's exactly I think. And I talk about the
work in social connection, some people hear me saying like,
don't be an introvert. That's wrong. Everybody should be extrovert.
It's not true. I think there's a lot of happiness
boosts that comes from certain aspects of introversion, like contemplation
right time and a sense of kind of like being
with yourself, understanding your own intentions right. I think there's

(01:24:27):
forms of happiness that come from solitude that you can't
get from social connection. That said, what we know is
we're better or for worse. One of the ways that
we boost our mood and improve our overall happiness and
life satisfaction is to have rich connections with other people.
Not to go to the hugest party and like whatever,
but like make sure you're maintaining your social connection even

(01:24:49):
with weak ties like the brast at the coffee shop
or the stranger on the train. And what it means
is if you're an extra, if you're an introvert that's
not doing any of that, you're leaving opportunities for happiness
on the table. And I think one thing to remember
is there's so much of the advice about happiness that,
at least for some personality types or people with certain backgrounds,
feels like a little bit of a stress, you know,

(01:25:10):
Like I think sometimes like you know, some people might
listen to this podcast because like eating super healthy, like
eating plant based and getting away from processed foods, it
feels like a stretch for people given some backgrounds. Even
you know, if you're the kid who's picked on in
gym class, like the you know, moving your body every
day might feel like a little bit of a stretch.
I think social cognition is one that's just like that too, Right.
It's a little bit of a stretch for people, but
if you engage in it doesn't make sense mean it's

(01:25:31):
better or worse, But there's an opportunity for you on
the table that if you engage with that a little
bit more, you might wind up feeling.

Speaker 3 (01:25:37):
You don't have to break a rubber band, but you can,
you know, extend it a.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
Little bit exactly and take a moment to notice, because
I think one of the interesting things about so many
things in this happiness space is that our predictions are wrong. Right.
We predict this thing is not going to work, we
do it. Oh, actually I feel a little bit better.
We predict this thing, oh, definitely going to work, more money,
you know, status, whatever, I still get to go after

(01:26:01):
more of it, right. And so one of the reasons
I like being a nerdy scientist in this space is
I want people to test their predictions. Right, try it out.
It may be more for you, maybe it will, but
you can do your own experiments on yourself and see
what works.

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
And those experiments require a little bit of discomfort, yes, right,
I mean that's the piece, right, So it's that Susan
David thing like discomfort is the price of admission for
a meaningful life. Yes, so you have to be willing
to step outside yourself, even if just a little bit,
to reap the benefits of any of these things that

(01:26:34):
you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:26:35):
And this gets to something that we haven't really talked about, right,
which is negative emotions, right, senses of you know, this
kind of pushing yourself feeling uncomfortable. Right. I think that
not only is discomfort the price of a meaningful life,
but so are all negative emotions, right, Anxiety, stress, overwhelm, anger,
all these things are prices for a meaningful life, and

(01:26:58):
that means that we need to not run away from
negative emotions. I think sometimes people hear about my class
and assume it's this terrible Ivy League toxic positivity thing
where I'm teaching people to be in, you know, happy
emotion all the time, and I think it's not true
at all. I think what we want to do is
find ways to notice, except embrace, learn from our negative emotions,
but also find good ways to regulate them.

Speaker 3 (01:27:19):
Do you get criticism for the class, like, oh yeah,
is there skepticism that you're treating this subject matter in
kind of a reductive way, or what is the nature
of the I think critique.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
Yeah, part of the critique is these snowflakes that need
a class on happiness, right, And I think those are
people who just haven't, honestly, haven't seen the data of
just how bad this mental health crisis is. I think
there are also folks who think we're treating it from
a scientific perspective and therefore we're missing out on other
ways to kind of come to these truths, right, Which

(01:27:54):
is one of the reasons I always like to bring
in the wisdom of the ancients and philosophers often sometimes
even spiritual traditions, right, because I like to see the
science in part because often our intuitions are wrong, so
it helps me to see the data of like, oh,
actually talking to somebody does make you feel good. But
so many of the ancient traditions figured this stuff out
and had deep insights even in the absence of these
psychological and neural data on these questions.

Speaker 3 (01:28:17):
What is your most controversial or contrarian opinion about happiness?

Speaker 1 (01:28:24):
Honestly, introversion, Like introverts could actually get a little bit
more social connection, it won't be so bad that's when
I get attacked on. Manifesting doesn't work in the way
you think when I get attacked on money doesn't make
you happy. I always know what's contrary, and.

Speaker 3 (01:28:37):
You're like, yeah, you're just whatever is going against the
grain of TikTok trends.

Speaker 1 (01:28:41):
It might be. Honestly, it really is like if I
could tweak the algorithm, we'd all I'd get much less
hate mail. I mean, I think another big one really
is just this idea that being happy is ultimately good
if what you want to do is face challenges and
push yourself. A different attack I get is kind of
look at the world right now. It is falling apart,

(01:29:03):
you know, like from the economy to the climate to whatever.
Like it's just like a crappy place with many big
structural problems. Right You're going around telling everybody to like
be happy and accept the things in life and find
your purpose, right Like, people need to not be happy.
People need to be out there pissed off. You know,
if you're not angry, you're not paying attention kind of thing.
And this is a pushback I actually get from a

(01:29:24):
lot of my students. I think a lot of the
young people I work with are you're really inclined to
worry about the big problems and fix them, and think
that the way you face those big problems is not
to like be happy in the face of them, or
to kind of be happy in ways that like ignore
the structural problems. Right. I think sometimes people here, for example, like,
you know, more money doesn't make you happy, that what
I'm doing is like justifying like really terrible practices where

(01:29:47):
billionaires get richer. It's like naha. I think what we
need to remember is two things. One is that we
can have individual change and individual strategies for feeling happier
that work alongside the structural changes for making you happier. Right,
you can write in your gratitude journal and do it
expressive writing if you're in a terrible job situation while
working to change that terrible job situation, right, and those

(01:30:08):
things should go together, right, It's not like, well, just
expressive writing and then you can put up with these
terrible bad practices. But I think the other thing is
that researchers have gone out and asked the question, like,
what is this set of psychology and the set of
emotions that you need to be the kind of person
that's fighting these big structural problems. His work by Constantin
Kush left at Georgetown, and what he finds is that like,

(01:30:29):
it's actually the people who are experiencing the most positive
emotion who are the ones who are the bandwidth to
go out and fight this stuff. He looks at folks
who are interested in, for example, in things like climate
justice and asks like, who are the ones who aren't
just like anxious about climate change, but really you know,
putting on solar panels, going to a protest, donating money.
And he finds that it's the folks who experience the

(01:30:50):
most positive emotion who are taking the actions. It's kind
of like, you know, putting your own oxygen mask on first.
And so this is something that I really push is
that when people are like, well, if you're not angry,
you're not paying attention, It's like, yes, but a little
bit of self care to protect yourself, kind of protecting
your own bandwidth is going to make you the kind
of person who has there is alience to kind of

(01:31:10):
fight the big fights.

Speaker 3 (01:31:11):
And so whatever you're pursuing, whether it's some strain of
activism or you have an ambition, what I'm hearing is
that happiness on some level is actually strategic in achieving
those goals, because otherwise you're on an unsustainable fuel source

(01:31:31):
and you'll burn out. Right. So if you're fulfilled in
finding meaning and purpose and all of these aspects of
what it means to be happy in the pursuit of
these difficult things, then you're going to stay in the game. Yes, Otherwise,
like if you're just fueled by anger and outrage and
this has to change, you know, when you're young, it's

(01:31:51):
like you know, of course you think that you'll be
able to do that forever, right, but you're not going
to last, Like you're not going to be able to
stay in it for all four quarters of the game.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
Yeah. And I love your idea that it's fuel right,
because I think it really is, you know, And I
think this is a spot where we get the metaphor
is all wrong. Right. Another thing we hear on TikTok
all that time is like work life balance, right, which
I think at our brains we picture like a scale like, well,
when work is going up, when I'm performing really hard,
like you know, life is going down like they can't
kind of and I think a much more accurate way

(01:32:21):
of thinking about it, which we get from the science
is the sense of work life harmony, right, where if
you're prioritizing life, by which I mean kind of happiness
and mental health and so on, you're gonna work better,
You're gonna perform better, you're gonna have more bandwidth to
do the stuff you care about. And this is the
kind of thing we see and study after study you
give people, you know, a hard problem at work. One
of these was done with medical doctors where it's like

(01:32:42):
you have to kind of you get some tough problem
you have to figure out, like what's the diagnosis? Is
really tricky. You need true innovative out of the box thinking.
You put some set of doctors in a good mood. First,
they just watch silly cat videos on YouTube. Aut of time,
they're the ones that come up with the innovative solution.

Speaker 3 (01:32:57):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:32:57):
You have to go through something really uncomfortable at work,
whether that's you know, a terrible time like COVID or
just like pushing yourself on a hard workout. But you
go into that listening to happy, upbeat music versus like
you know, drought down or you or music, and like
you're going to push through better if you're just like
you know, and so it seems so simple. But I
think we get it wrong, right. We're like, well, you know,

(01:33:19):
I have this ambition that I really care about, and
I'm just going to make myself super miserable. I'm not
going to see my friends, I'm not going to sleep.
I'm going to just like you know. But then I'll
get to the success and I'll feel happy. And we
get it wrong in two ways. One that we've talked about,
like the success that arrival isn't going to make us
as happy as we think. The second, if what you
really want to do is perform, well you're not doing
that as well, if you're not taking care of yourself,

(01:33:40):
if you're not giving yourself as or happiness fuel that
we know performance like true exceptional optimal performance really requires.

Speaker 3 (01:33:48):
I think that's a really important point. I know what
it's like to be laser focused on something and you know,
lose myself in the pursuit of a name or a goal,
and there is something dopamine inducing about that. There's like
a euphoria of like I'm all in man and I
don't have time for anything else. That in it of

(01:34:08):
itself as a form of self obsession where you begin
to believe or I should say, I you know, I
have been lured into into places where I would think
is happiness like is it really all that important? Like
it feels like an indulgence and also something I can
live without because I have this purpose and it's fulfilling
and it's giving me meaning and it's driving me forward,

(01:34:30):
and I have this aim and I'm gonna I'm going
to get there. And so not only is or are
all of the things that you need to do to
engender happiness inconvenient, They just feel indulgent and like a distraction.
And that is part and parcel of like the Striver's dilemma.

(01:34:51):
We had this woman in here the other day, doctor
Judith Joseph, who talks about, you know, high functioning depression,
and I'm like reading this book and I'm like, oh
my god, Yeah, they changed like seeing god, you know. Anyway,
But I can also imagine the person who has a
very challenging life, like the single mom with two and
kids and has to take the bus to work and

(01:35:12):
life is just hard. And for that person, that person
as well, I would imagine, is in a position where
they could develop the perspective that like, this happiness thing
is an indulgence and I can't take my eyes off
the ball because people need me and I need to provide,
And so make the argument for the self care at

(01:35:34):
least at a base level to cultivate some degree of
happiness From that sustainability perspective.

Speaker 1 (01:35:41):
Yeah, like, you just can't sustain that for very long.
And again, we know this in other domains. I remember
one thing from you reading your book that I loved
in your story was, you know, even when you're training
to be as fast as possible, you didn't want to
run as fast as possible. You actually want to be it.
I don't know, I'm not.

Speaker 3 (01:35:59):
Comfort conservation and efficiency.

Speaker 1 (01:36:02):
And active rest, right, active rest, we understand that in
other high performance fields. We forget that when it comes
to just performing at our jobs in our life. And
I think of active rest as the kind of fuel
that we need to do it better. Right, that sometimes
what we need is a break. Times what we need
is like a moment to notice that stupid delight in
the world, to like, you know, have a gab fest

(01:36:22):
with our you know, good girlfriends, right, Like, we just
kind of need this time to boost our overall mood
and to kind of feel good in life and to
feel good with life. And ultimately, if we're doing that,
it just makes it easier to achieve the bigger aims
that we have for ourselves. I hope you've been enjoying
my appearance on the Ritual podcast. We'll have even more
fun after the break.

Speaker 3 (01:36:45):
You mentioned curiosity earlier. Clearly having a growth mindset, or
being interested in the world or wanting to learn things
and seeking out new experiences are crucial, you know, to
being a happy person. But at baseline, like foundational to
that is your relationship with your own curiosity. So talk

(01:37:08):
a little bit about that, Like, curiosity is something that is,
you know, part of being human but also lives on
a spectrum.

Speaker 1 (01:37:17):
Yeah, and I think there's so much we can do
with curiosity to to feel happier. Right. One is that
sometimes curiosity can be a little motivating force that gets
us to positive emotions we don't expect. One of the
positive emotions I think about a lot is the experience
of awe. Right, This like sense of wonder, the sense
of stuff is bigger than you. You know, we've talked
a lot about being self obsessed, but like when you

(01:37:39):
look at you know, the skyline here in the canyon,
or when you look at you know, something bigger than you,
or even just like people doing amazing moral good in
the world, like you're just like, wow, there's things that
are bigger than myself because it's just.

Speaker 3 (01:37:49):
So inconvenient though, well there's so much it is hard,
like a gratitude there.

Speaker 1 (01:37:56):
Go with delights, go with the light. I mean, sometimes
these words.

Speaker 3 (01:37:59):
Get why you consciously use the word delights?

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
I think so because sometimes it feels like, you know,
was I grateful that the guy was listening to like
Cypress Hill in the car and the Lowrider and not really?
But was that delightful that you know, talking about it now?
Does it make me smile a little? That? Yeah? It does, right?
And I think all like if if all feels too much,
like maybe go with like bad ass, Like when you
see something really like that was just bad ass, Like
that was badass sunset or like you know, the James

(01:38:24):
Wood space telescope. We just see all these worlds that
is badass, or like someone doing an amazing you know
thing in Fitless is like like you know, smpone Biles,
It's just like she was bad ass that badass allows
you to think of something that's bigger than yourself. It
allows you to see achievement like it just kind of
feels like a good positive emotion. And so I think
curiosity can often get us to things that are badass,

(01:38:46):
and that's helpful. But I think a bigger way that
curiosity is so important for our positive emotions is that
we can use curiosity to allow and deal with our
negative emotions. I think the kinds of you know, type
A folks that you talk to a lot on this
podcast and listen to this podcast are like perform perform
all the time, and that sense of overwhelm or that fear,
that anxiety or that yuck you feel like that that

(01:39:08):
is really so I'm just gonna sqush that down. But
in doing that, we lose the opportunity to learn from
our emotions, to learn from our discomfort, something that Susan
Kane talks about a lot. I think curiosity can be
away in especially if you're kind of uncomfortable with those
negative emotions and your move is like squish them away.
I don't feel that get curious, like, huh, I don't

(01:39:28):
want to do this workout today? What's going on, like Oh,
I'm feeling a little overwhelmed at work, or huh, I'm
feeling like a little bit pissed off, right, I'm like
extra pissed off in this traffic right now. Curiosity, what's
going on? Where is this coming from? Like, oh, I'm
actually feeling kind of lonely right, Often when we get
a little bit curious about our emotions, it's a way
to engage with them in a way that doesn't like
amplify them, but kind of has some common humanity, like

(01:39:50):
make sense, I'm feeling this, Let me try to understand it,
and then we can use emotions what they're for, what
they're really for evolutionarily, which is I think of them
as like our like internal signaling unit. Like I like
to see our negative emotions is like the dashboard on
your car. It's like tire light, engine light, you know
that comes on in your car. If it came on
in my rental car today, like it'd be really inconvenient,
like crap, I had to deal with this tire situation.

(01:40:13):
And I think our negative emotions are kind of like that.
It's like ding ding overwhelmed, like ding ding anxiety. It's
like this is stupid but if you don't deal with it,
you know you're going to break down on the highway.
And I think the same is true for negative emotions. Right,
we need to get curious, like, huh, I wonder what's
going Why is that sense of overwhelm? They're like, oh,
I'm too busy at work, or I need to take
a break, or often there's something in there that you

(01:40:34):
can change your mindset or change your behavior about to
fix it. But if you suppress it, you're just not
going to notice what that signal is telling you.

Speaker 3 (01:40:40):
Yeah, it's another way of disidentifying. Yeah, detaching yourself a little.

Speaker 1 (01:40:45):
Bit from indicator.

Speaker 3 (01:40:48):
Because negative emotions can be intoxicating, and when they flare up,
then there's a kind of instinct to indulge them, right,
and you're not even consciously thinking about it. It just
takes over. And then in the aftermath of that we
self flagellate like like I can't believe why did I
do that? And you feel guilty and Shane, you just
go down in the spiral.

Speaker 1 (01:41:06):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:41:07):
But to be able to look at it as if
you're watching it on television as opposed to something that's
happening to you is a really powerful technique, and using
curiosity as the way in is a really cool idea.
Some people are naturally very curious. Some people are extremely incurious.

(01:41:30):
You know. I'd asked this question to other other people
on the show, and everyone seems to agree that curiosity
is something that you can learn and get better at
and trained, but you have to be curious about your
own curiosity A loop there.

Speaker 1 (01:41:44):
Yeah, yeah, I think with all of these things, there
are going to be some of these sort of happiness hacks,
happiness strategies that come really easy, right. You know, you
might be listening to this year super ex or oh yeah,
social connection tick or oh yeah, like watching what I
eat or moving my body great, But then there's some
that like h this one, like curiosity is a little harder.
I actually think those are the domains where you're going
to have the most impact, right. You know, we mentioned

(01:42:06):
this idea of being ten percent happier. You're not going
to go from zero to one hundred. So it's helpful
to find the spots where you're as close to baseline,
as close to not doing it all as possible, because
if you intervene on that, even a little baby staff
will kind of give you a big boost. And so
if yours is curiosity, I think just use the opportunity
to kind of notice a little bit, right, Rather than
call it curiosity, just call it noticing. Just noticing what's

(01:42:28):
happening in my body. I'm noticing what's going on. Expressive
writing is a really great tool for this, in part
because when you go into sense making mode, you have
to ask questions, right, and so just by the act
of writing about whatever's going on, you can often go
into question asking mode, which is sort of one of
the fastest ways to get to curiosity.

Speaker 3 (01:42:47):
On the topic of noticing, isn't attention sort of the
whole ballgame here?

Speaker 1 (01:42:54):
Totally?

Speaker 3 (01:42:54):
Like it really is a function of the extent to
which you're mindful about where you're placing your attention. That's
like the whole thing. So, whether it's curiosity, or your
interactions with people out in the world, or your ability
to notice something that could give you that moment of delight,

(01:43:14):
it's all about being present with your own attention and
not allowing it to randomly go where you know it's
it's sort of impulse to go, but commandeering it in
a conscious way.

Speaker 1 (01:43:29):
Yeah, And that's hard, right, because we know that attention
is very is We know that attentions like basically built
to go where it's going to go. Right, if someone
screamed fire right now in the studio, no matter how
interesting a conversation we were having, it would steal our attention.
And that kind of mode of commandeering attention is the
thing we've built into all the devices that are around

(01:43:51):
us all the time. Like there's so much built out
there to steal our attention. Like it was already bad
just having a human brain that just kind of get
commandeered really easily, but now we have all these things
around us that are trying to commandeer our attention, often
for bad, right, because negativity is what makes algorithms lots
of money, and so lots of folks are on us
are trying to commander our attention towards the anti delights

(01:44:12):
or the anti grateful things. But yeah, if you can
develop the agency to harness your attention, and so much
so much work in the field psychoho, do you suggest
that you can do that just through training, right, just
through practice and trying to notice certain things more through
your intention for your attention, you can kind of gain
agency over that and feel a lot better.

Speaker 3 (01:44:32):
What do you make of the mainstreaming or the degree
of attention and interest there is now in the subject
of happiness, Like this is sort of unprecedented in the
history of humanity. And to me, it's sort of like
you can look at it through two different lenses. On
the one hand, you can say, well, this is just

(01:44:53):
a byproduct of our metastasizing self obsession, right, like, you know,
we're so caught up in our own selves and obsessed
with our own degree of happiness, and this in and
of itself is some form of disease, right, Or you
can look at it as a symptom of the real disease,
which is that we are suffering this, this epidemic of

(01:45:15):
unhappiness and loneliness and disconnection and the like, and this
is us raising our hand or you know, like asking
to be rescued.

Speaker 1 (01:45:24):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well I guess a couple of things there.
One is that I think we are obsessed with happiness now,
but we as a species have always been obsessed with happiness.
We've been obsessed with happiness since we were a species
that could think about happiness. I mean, look at the ancients.
That was all they talked about was trying to live
the good life, and you Diaminia, and how do we
get there and create the right habits. You'll look at
the founders of the country, which you know, even in

(01:45:46):
the Declaration of Independence could have written like, you know,
here's what we want, like life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness, right living like longevity fright in the document.
And there's actually a really interesting history if you look
at the original document. They went through different versions, is
like life liberty, and then they decided on happiness, which
is sort of interesting and it's all right, But the
point is that like what was it was?

Speaker 3 (01:46:07):
It was there something in how they yea, it was
like it's.

Speaker 1 (01:46:10):
Hard to know, but I think it was like do
we want that in there? It was an interesting debate
about putting that in there, so it was interesting. But
the point is, like even old school they were thinking
about this, So I think we've always cared about it. However,
I do think we're more off track than ever, right,
I mean, I think we have cultural patterns that are
actively leading us in the wrong way. You know, we
were joking about TikTok and being a little facetious, but

(01:46:33):
I think you know, we mean something like the culture
apparatus that we surround ourselves with that's easily stealing our attention,
is telling us all the wrong things to do right,
go for money, go for status, just buy something, change
your circumstances. You'll feel happier. And what we know is
like those are wrong. And so I think the interest
we have now is in part because we're kind of
raising our hands and saying help, we're doing it wrong.

(01:46:53):
But I think it's also because we how could we
not be doing it wrong when there's so many other
influences that are pushing us in the wrong direction.

Speaker 3 (01:47:01):
Our digital devices are proxies for social connection, and we
believe that it is making us closer to all these people,
and we're not really conscious of the extent to which
it's actually isolating us more and more and more. Like
it's very effective convincing us that we're in touch with

(01:47:24):
all these people and we know what they're doing, and
it feels like one big community, even if we're prone
to comparison, and you know, we're a victim of the
algorithm and the like short of turn your phone off,
do a digital detox, don't bring it in, like all
the sort of stuff we know, right, Like, what is
the council that you give to your students and talk

(01:47:46):
about more broadly with respect to how we navigate our
digital age in a healthier way.

Speaker 1 (01:47:52):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's worth noting that technology
is just a tool. Right. It's a tool that we
could use in positively, is right, which I think we
all saw during the pandemic, Right, I don't know about
you're like zoom Thanksgiving, like you know, pilates glasses with
friends of mine, right, Like, it's we can use this
to really get connection, especially when we're feeling isolated. You know,
communities that you know you're the one person who cares

(01:48:14):
about this thing, and now you can connect with others
who care about that same thing and have that sense
of little be purpose. I think there's lots of things
we can do positively with technology, but you're right, a
lot of things we actually do with technology is like
leading us astray. It's leading us away from social connection.
But we don't want to get rid of it, right,
because it does have these positives. And so the strategy
I suggest to my students is is this strategy of attending, noticing,

(01:48:37):
getting curious again. Right, what are the parts of this
that are feeling good and what are the parts of
this that are maybe leading me astray? And I like
like shortcuts to do this because it's hard to do
this in the abstract. And one of the ones I
share with my students comes from the journalist Catherine Price
was this lovely book called How to Break Up with
Your Phone, where she argues that you don't really need
to break up with your phone, but you need to
take it to like couples counseling you can develop like

(01:49:00):
maybe like a hell of relationship with it. And she
has this acronym she uses called www, which is funny
because you know world Wide Web, but in her case
WWW stands for what for? Why now? And what else?

Speaker 3 (01:49:12):
Jerke is it?

Speaker 1 (01:49:13):
Whenever you find yourself kind of engaging with technology, you
should ask this question, what for was I picking my
phone up for? Maybe I was checking my email, looking
at the weather. Maybe I don't even know what it like,
I'm just in some Reddit rabbit hole and I have
no idea how I got here.

Speaker 3 (01:49:25):
Or you're just standing in line at the grocery store
and you don't want to have to be alone with
your thoughts for an instant.

Speaker 1 (01:49:31):
Exactly, and Then that gets to the second question, why
now right? What was the trigger? I was feeling lonely,
I was feeling anxious, I was feeling socially avoidant right,
Like what was your being curious about? What was the trigger?
Often an emotional trigger or situational trigger that caused you
to get on it. And the final question, what else?
What else could you be doing right now? Maybe in
that grocery line you could talk to a friend in

(01:49:53):
the grocery line, or text someone and check in. Maybe
you could do just a couple of deep breaths right, like,
you know, there's notice the world around you, Notice that
guy who's you know, playing the cypress hill or whatever?
Like what's the opportunity cost of being on your phone
right now? And I like this WWW technique? What for?
Why now? What else? Because it doesn't say digital detalks,
get off your phone, like it just causes you to

(01:50:15):
notice your own patterns, like, oh, whenever I'm being socially
avoided at a party, I look at my phone, or
I go to this whenever I'm anxious or what else?
I haven't noticed that it's springtime out because I've just
been staring at my phone the whole time. Right. It's
it allows you to get curious about the things you're
using your phone for and when you're using it, and
what's the cost, and you can ask are those things

(01:50:36):
worth it for me?

Speaker 3 (01:50:36):
Right? It's a way of applying your curiosity. But you're
certainly not going to find moments of delight on wonder
if you're looking at your phone.

Speaker 1 (01:50:47):
Sometimes you do, I mean there's a lot of like, yeah,
I understand what you're saying. That, like the analogy I
like to use and a and it gets back to
the nutrition stuff is like I think oftentimes we get
the sort of nutrisity of social connection online right where
it's like feels like I connected because I scrolled through
my Instagram feed and saw everyone's doing. It's not really nutritious.

(01:51:08):
Schocial can so like it's kind of like drinking the
diet coke, like it satisfies the sugartoos, but like it
doesn't and it has these kind of downstream consequences because
it's not nutritious. I think the same thing is true
for our kind of social connection psychology. It overcomes a
little social friction, like we kind of get to it
easier than like maybe talking to a friend or texting someone.
But I think that ease uh is mistake. We kind

(01:51:31):
of mistake it for something that's going to feel really
good ultimately psychologically, and it sort of doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:51:37):
Happiness is a byproduct of welcoming into your life all
of these things that we've been talking about. It is
not the aim. It's not something you chase, right, It's
a consequence of doing all of these things. Where we
place our attention. What is our curiosity? Like, are we
going out of our way to be connected to the

(01:51:57):
people we care about? Are we meeting new people all
the like? But do you think that there are still
many many people out there who are pursuing happiness in
a wrong headed way such that this pursuit becomes a
barrier to happiness, Like because it is such a mainstream phenomenon,

(01:52:19):
and there's so many books and so many experts like yourself,
and we're talking about it, and you know, you're on
the Today Show and in our collective consciousness, like, happiness
is something we're thinking a lot about and we're trying
to get more of. But if we're chasing it, we're
getting in the way of it. Yeah, I guess is
what I'm getting at.

Speaker 1 (01:52:38):
Yeah, I think for whatever reason we engage with these habits,
many of them will work. You know, if I'm engaging
in social connection now because I really want to connect
with this person, because I'm like, I'll get my little
happiness boost, I might still get the happiness boost, right,
you know, the same doing nice things for others. You know,
I might do it because like, well Laurie says to
do it, and then you'll feel happier, but you still,
as you noticed yourself, you still get the benefit. I

(01:53:00):
think where we go wrong is that when we go
after pursuing happiness, we do it in a very perfectionist,
very self critical way. I almost happy right now, and I'm
gonna not do normal baby steps and you know, take
it a little, you know, day by day, I'm going
to do it all right now. And then we wind
up disappointing ourselves. We wind up feeling crappy about it.
It winds up becoming a chore, it's another thing on

(01:53:22):
the to do list. It makes us feel overwhelmed, right,
and I think that's not helping anyone, right. There are
a lot of good things that we could do for ourselves,
from you know, eating healthier, to fitness to whatever pursuit
you want to engage in, that like will feel good
if you do it in a self compassionate kind reasonable way,
and we'll feel really terrible if you do it in
a like a perfectionist, self critical has to be perfect

(01:53:44):
kind of way. And I think one of the problems
with pursuing happiness is people get into that mindset. I'll
often get the question hafter to talk is like, well,
you mentioned all these things, what's the thing I can
do right now to do it? Like, I just want
to do the one thing. It's like, okay, we're already
like a yeah, maybe we want to do.

Speaker 3 (01:54:00):
It's in the Declaration of Independence. Shit.

Speaker 1 (01:54:04):
But it's the how of the pursuit. You know. There's
things we can pursue for the journey of it, for
the growth of it, for noticing that stuff, and there's
things that we can pursue. Were like, if I don't
get this right by Thursday, I'm like a loser, and
we just get out of get out of the loser mindset, right.
We need to recognize that a way to motivate ourselves
for anything, whether it's pursuing happiness or any of your pursuits,

(01:54:25):
A healthier way to do that is through self compassion, right,
kind of noticing this is a challenge, This is tough,
recognizing your common humanity, I'm just human, and talking to
yourself in a kind way. Those are the paths to
achieving so much of the stuff we want to achieve.
I think where we get happiness wrong isn't that we're
going after it. I think again, it's just built in.
We're going to want to go out. We're going to
want to have a flourishing life, most of us. But

(01:54:47):
like if we go after that flourishing life in this
like way doesn't work.

Speaker 3 (01:54:51):
The person who's clutching onto it and he's like, tell
me the thing I need to have it now, it's
sort of like asking a fish, how's the water? Like,
that's the problem, that's sort of the barrier.

Speaker 1 (01:55:02):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:55:02):
You have to emerge out of that mindset and that
bubble and find a different way.

Speaker 1 (01:55:08):
Yeah, And I think you know, when you really tackle
the principles and understand the principles better, that comes a
little bit more naturally, right. You learn these strategies for
self talk that are a little bit healthier. You learn
to be more other oriented, rice you get out of
this individual pursuit, and you kind of develop these notions
of wanting to do nice things for others for the
sake of doing nice things for others. I think what's
interesting is if you start going after this stuff, you

(01:55:31):
find it rewarding and it gets easier to do it,
not in a like groupy half new way, but in
a kind of more measured, self compassionate way.

Speaker 3 (01:55:39):
Are you a happier person now than when you started
lecturing on this?

Speaker 1 (01:55:44):
Oh? For sure. I mean I'm a nerd. I take data,
you know, I do my little psychometric happiness tests all
the time.

Speaker 3 (01:55:50):
And it would be so tragic if you weren't.

Speaker 1 (01:55:52):
Yeah, well I'll see it.

Speaker 3 (01:55:53):
Or if you had to lie about it.

Speaker 1 (01:55:54):
Yeah, I'm so much happier. No, no, I I you know,
true to this idea of ten percent happier, I'm about
a point to a point and a half happier on
a standard happiness test than I was when I started this.
But I will say something interesting, which is, with the
interesting meaning and purpose and amazing privilege of being able
to do this, comes a lot more happiness challenges. Right.
If I'm not careful, I can have so many guest

(01:56:17):
appearances like this opportunities for travel, that will take away
my social connection, that'll take away my sleep, that'll take
me from my movement routine if I'm not careful, and
so I have to push against that. I get to
see a lot more unhappy people. That gives me some
challenges with negative emotions. Right when you know about this stuff,
you're put in situations where people need this stuff and
you really see the full gamut of human emotion, and

(01:56:39):
that can be really tough. And so I think, even
though I have these strategies I can use to feel better,
it's also brought with it, like many good things in life,
lots of challenges. And so it means that I have
to practice what I preach, maybe even more now than
I was before I was doing this work.

Speaker 3 (01:56:53):
Being really clear on your nose and your yes is yeah,
when to say yes and more importantly when to say no,
and how to have clear boundaries. What was like the
biggest epiphany or shift that you made as a result
of this experience in the research and everything that you've
learned that made the biggest difference in your life.

Speaker 1 (01:57:16):
Yeah, Well, a big one is maybe a happiness strategy
we haven't mentioned yet, which is this idea of time
affluence that one of the things we need to feel
happier is to be wealthy, not with money in our finances,
but to be wealthy in time.

Speaker 3 (01:57:28):
I have none of this, I know already as get it.

Speaker 1 (01:57:31):
Most of us self report being time famished, which is
like literally starving for time, and the physiology of this
when you look is very similar to being tied. You know,
it's inflammation, it's stressed, it's all this stuff. This is
worked by Ashley Willian's at Harvard Business School. If you
self report being time famished a lot, that's as bad
for your well being as if you self report being unemployed.
You probably would be sad if you lost your job tomorrow.

(01:57:53):
Your listeners would be sad if they lost their job.
Just not have any time? Is this bad? This work
was an epiphany for me, both because as a professor, podcaster,
as a human in the modern age, I'm busier than
I should be, but especially because this new found path
that I'm on have given me so many opportunity where
if I don't set really hard boundaries, ones that I
like hate, I'm never going to be able to have

(01:58:15):
any time affluence. So that does that come up?

Speaker 3 (01:58:19):
Because you have a history of being a people pleaser.

Speaker 1 (01:58:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, just confirming, yeah yeah. And I
think because you know, the hardest times to set time
affluence are like when there's really good opportunities, and I
think for a lot of the you know, interesting people
with interesting jobs, interesting opportunities that are listening to this,
you're gonna have to say no. Not just to the
stuff you don't want to do that feels like kind
of crappy, you're gonna have to say no to the

(01:58:43):
stuff you really do want to do to leave space
for the time to stuff that really matters.

Speaker 3 (01:58:47):
Which are kind of the fruits of your labor. Like
you work so hard and now you're in this position
where you get invited to do really cool stuff with
cool people, and after all of that work to get
to this place, you have to say no. Yeah, yeah,
crimeing a river. But you know, it is it is
like a it's it's it's tough to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:59:07):
I think it's tough, and it's tough to realize that
that open space, that open time is going to be
more valuable than whatever you could get out of these things.
I think for us being.

Speaker 3 (01:59:18):
Clear on those values and what's.

Speaker 1 (01:59:19):
Important exactly and not falling prey to all the biases
we just talked about, right, I think a big kind
of trade off that people have to make is time
and money. Right, I could spend a little bit more
time at work, maybe I don't take my vacation time,
and I get that promotion, or I get some overtime.
I get these things. And again, if you have enough
money to put roof over your head, if you like,
if you're in the sort of threshold where more money
is not going to make you happy, more time really

(01:59:41):
will make you happy. So Ashley Willans finds that one
thing you can do to improve your time affluence is
to spend any discretionary income you have on getting time back, right,
you know, get the chopped up vegetables, get the healthy takeout,
hire the neighbor's kid to mow the lawn. Whatever it
is to free up time that actually makes you happier
than spending your discretionary and come on stuff or even

(02:00:03):
in some cases experiences.

Speaker 3 (02:00:06):
There's a piece within this subject of time affluence that
has to do with deferred happiness. Like I don't have
a lot of time affluence right now, but it's because
I'm in this phase of life, and I need to
do these things, and I am going to defer my

(02:00:27):
happiness and all these things that I know because I,
you know, pay attention to Laurie and everything that she says,
and I get it and I agree. But it's just
going to sit over here for a while and I
will indulge it at the appropriate time, So you hold
it in abeyance versus like the time is now and
your life is happening now, and you know, I fall

(02:00:49):
into that. So how do you disabuse people of that mindset?

Speaker 1 (02:00:53):
Yeah? I think having the terms for some of these
things can be so helpful. I think often we worry
about what researchers call myopia, right, which is like, you know,
eat unhealthy now, you know, because like you'll start your
workout tomorrow kind of thing. We kind of are indulging
now because we're myopic or like not taking care of
our future self. That does happen, of course, But I
worry much more about the opposite, which is what folks

(02:01:15):
call hyperopia, which is like I'll have my rewards in
the future, I'll just work really hard right now, and
the like social connection, I'll do that later, or you know,
enjoying the thing that I really care about. I'll get
to that later, and you know the sad thing is
that later is not guaranteed. You know, so many of
us have had the experience of like this thing that
we were you know, waiting to do, like runs out.

(02:01:37):
You know. The cliche is like, you know, buy the
nice bottle of wine that you're saving for a good occasion,
and when the good occasion finally comes around, you open
it and it's like it's toasted, it's dead, or you
save your frequent flyer miles, or you know, for the
people like me, you like a chicky self care. You know,
you buy that one nice candle that you're going to use,
or like that one bath bomb that you're going to save,
and by the time you get to it's like all smelly,

(02:01:58):
and it's just you know, I think we're doing that
so much with the big opportunities in life, that we're
assuming that they're going to be available tomorrow and they
might not. I just did this episode with my colleague
DJ Dedonna, who's a sabbatical expert who talks about the
benefits of you know, taking extended time off now and
he finds it people like well, you know, I'll do
it someday. I'll do it when I retire. And you

(02:02:19):
shared the statistic that I think I'm going to get right,
which is that if you're in a couple, the possibility
that you both individuals and your couple, you and your
spouse will make it healthy to retirement age and like
be able to do stuff is actually only fifty percent
that both of you will make it and be healthy
enough to travel or do whatever you're fantasizing you.

Speaker 3 (02:02:36):
And retirement's not really a thing anymore.

Speaker 1 (02:02:39):
I know, yeah, this is you're lucky enough to take retirement.
But his point is like, don't be hyperopic, like see
if you can get that time affluence now. And so
I think I think we need to kind of think
too often we worry about my apia, right. I think
like capitalist culture gets us to do this of like
you know, put out, don't put off till tomorrow what
you can do today. But then we have doing everything today,
assuming there's going to be a healthy, happy tomorrow that

(02:03:00):
and that's given that that's not guaranteed. We can have
a healthy medium where we put in some fun times
from enjoyable stuff now. And I think our mystique and
assumption is like, well, I can't do that because I
won't be as I won't be as productive. But everything
you've just heard showed you that that's a misconception. You'll
actually be more productive if you have that break now,

(02:03:21):
if you engage in that social connection, if you engage
in rest active rest now, you'll be able to perform
better in the future. It's so much of this is
about short term versus long term. Also, what makes us
happy in the short term doesn't make us happy in
the long term. And these uncomfortable things that are important

(02:03:41):
for the long term feel like tremendous inconveniences they do,
and easy to dismiss, you know, because we can just
say I am going to do it like.

Speaker 3 (02:03:51):
It is important to me, just not right now.

Speaker 1 (02:03:54):
So of course there's a conflict between the short term
and the long term.

Speaker 2 (02:03:57):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:03:57):
This is again the thing the agent thinkers talked about.
But often more often than we think, the thing that's
good for us in the short term is also good
for us in the long term. We just are predicting wrong. Right.
Take exercise, like a good workout might seem inconvenient, but
you do it and you actually feel good, like you're
pretty soon into it, right, And that's good for the
short term and good for the long term social connection.

Speaker 3 (02:04:16):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:04:17):
That's the kind of thing that like my feeling like
it's going to take up time I should be checking
my email, but let me talk to this person on
the trade. It's actually going to feel good for you
and the experience. Like the research shows that, like you
won't actually get a ding in your productivity. If anything,
you'll be more productive later on, right. And so I
think there are cases where obviously there's this kind of
disconnect between our short term and long term happiness, but

(02:04:37):
a lot of the things that really work for happiness
do both. It's just our mistaken minds that think they're
going to be in conflict and practice they're not actually
as much in conflict as we think.

Speaker 3 (02:04:46):
Is there anything that you've changed your mind about because
of emerging science or some new idea that cropped up
that challenged your preconceived idea about happiness.

Speaker 1 (02:04:59):
Yeah, I mean I think I've changed my mind a
lot about that time stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:05:02):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:05:03):
You know, I would have you know, set no boundaries, people,
please put in every opportunity, push push, push, And I
think I've really seen the signs and be like, no, no,
that's not going to work. I need to build in rest,
I need to build in breaks, I need to build
in that stuff. I wouldn't have thought that before, and
it goes against all my intuitions, but I think that
it's been so essential for me.

Speaker 3 (02:05:22):
You mentioned Martin Seligman earlier, and Sonya Leabamirsky who's been
on the show. In the pantheon of people who study
and teach happiness, Arthur Brooks comes to mind. Where do
you and your colleagues divert? Like? Is there daylight in

(02:05:46):
your perspectives? Like I imagine you don't match up perfectly
with Sonya or Arthur. You have a different lens. So
where is that daylight? What are the kind of points
of departure and why?

Speaker 1 (02:05:59):
Yeah, And I think so many of us are sweded
by the data that to the extent that the data
all agree, I think we kind of mostly agree on
these things. I think if there's a spot where not
so much we disagree, but our emphasies are different. I
think my emphasis has really been on this idea that
our minds are biased, that our minds are lying to us.

(02:06:20):
And then unless we kind of like approach those things
as lies as misconceptions, we're kind of not going to
get it right. And so I think that's a difference
of focus that like, if you look at my course,
for example, I'm so focused on, like what are the
misconceptions because we have to understand what we're getting wrong
before we can figure out what we need to do better.

Speaker 3 (02:06:38):
I feel like Arthur puts a lot of emphasis on
faith cultivating a relationship with the divine, and I don't
know that you disagree with that, but it doesn't seem
to be as top of mind or as big as
a priority. I mean, Arthur very devout Catholic. How do
you think about that aspect of it?

Speaker 1 (02:06:59):
Well, I think you know, in terms of their research,
Arthur's right on this, right. I mean, many studies have
looked at what makes people happy, and a big predictor
is if you have participation in religious faith. What's interesting, though,
is if you kind of break down what does that mean, Like,
what are the components of being a person of faith
that allows you to feel happier, it seems like it's

(02:07:19):
actually not so much your beliefs as opposed to your
behaviors and what you do what do I mean by that.
Let's say you're, you know, I don't know, a devout
Catholic who really believes in God, like you know, you
kind of like kind of really buy into the whole worldview,
all the metaphysics you agree with, but you never get
to church, you don't have time to pray, You're very busy.

(02:07:40):
Versus you are someone who goes to church a lot,
You pray a lot, you do the pro social acts,
like you donate to the spaghetti suppers and so on,
but inside you kind of you're not there with some
of the metaphysics. You're like, is it really the body
of Christ? I don't know, I have some questions. Right,
it turns out that the person that will get the
most happiness benefits is the latter person, is the person
who doesn't necessarily believe in the faith stuff, but actually

(02:08:04):
engages in the behaviors. And if you look at the
behaviors that matter, it's all the stuff we've been talking about,
social connection and community. It's doing nice acts for others.
It's taking time for presence and contemplation. It's turning your
attention to the good things in life. Right, It's often
taking time for rest most active religions and faiths have
time for like a sabbath or like taking time off right.

(02:08:24):
It's doing a lot of the behaviors that you would
do that we've just talked about that matter for happiness,
but you're doing it in the context of a cultural
and a religious tradition that brings it all together for
you and in a community of people that are doing
it together, which is one of the biggest acts we
know matter for happiness. So I actually think that the
reason that faith, among many reasons of faith, is really
good for boosting happiness is that it like kind of

(02:08:47):
forces you to do a lot of the behaviors and
the mindset things that we know matter a lot.

Speaker 3 (02:08:51):
It drives you towards all of those behaviors as may
naturally as a result of the culture around it.

Speaker 1 (02:08:57):
Exactly to go to big Lebowski years from both the
Stanley Covacs, you know, it's like, yeah, no, I think.

Speaker 3 (02:09:05):
I think Arthur would say, and I would probably agree
with Arthur on this, that there is something distinct from
what you're talking about with respect to believing in and
appreciating that there is a power greater than yourself, and
that that power is ineffable, and as a result of that,

(02:09:26):
it doesn't have to take any dogmatic or you know,
particular strain of thought or faith. But that alone is
a way of disabusing yourself of your self obsession, and
it's ultimately humbling, and it also makes place for awe
and wonder and the mystery of it all that I

(02:09:49):
think is, you know, I think that is a big piece.

Speaker 1 (02:09:52):
Totally, and that's one of the other you know. I
think the behavior of finding more a on your life
is another thing that of course religion gives you real
large and I think this idea of having a sense
of purpose that comes from religion and being a person
of faith is really powerful and often it's in part
kind of something that's bigger than yourself. But it's also
most faiths are about not being about you, right, It's

(02:10:13):
about other people. It's about connecting. It's about doing good
things for others, and so I think having those in
like one packed up tradition that's culturally relevant that you're
doing with other folks is really important. It's not the
only way to do it right. There's work by folks
like Casper Turkyle, who studies ritual and cultures and these
kind of strange cultures that find you can actually get
a lot of it, not everything, for sure, but some

(02:10:35):
aspects of it from other kinds of cultural traditions. He
actually looks at people that are really into CrossFit, for example,
where he finds that people push themselves, they have a
ritual that they go to have a sense of community.
You know, if somebody gets sick, they all work together
to help that person. Right, They're all in this kind
of shared experience together. Not all the benefits, but you
get some of them. And so I think that faith

(02:10:56):
traditions are one way to get at it. But for
those folks who are atheist, agnostic, questioning, maybe just didn't
grow up in a faith tradition that was really obvious
to them, there might be other ways to get some
of those things too.

Speaker 3 (02:11:09):
Obviously, a big piece in the declining quotion of happiness,
at least in America has to do with the decline
of faith based institutions and community after school programs like
CrossFit is a great example. But you know, thirty forty
years ago, we would have been talking about, you know,

(02:11:29):
the after school programs or YMCA or you know, any
number of things that kids used to do or young
people used to do, and so many of those have
gone away, and people have to kind of find their
footing in all of these subcultures, which thank god they exist,
and I think they serve a really important function. But

(02:11:51):
the infrastructure upon which you know, we used to create
so much of that seems to be no longer.

Speaker 1 (02:11:57):
Yeah, and this is something that researchers have focused on
a lot, especially researchers who looked at, say, increases in
loneliness and declines and social connection across time. There's a
very famous sociologist, Robert Putnam, the political scientists, sociologists who
talked about what he called third places, so there's a
place that's not work or not home where you can
get together with other people. He had this very famous

(02:12:19):
book called Bowling Alone.

Speaker 3 (02:12:20):
Called Soho House.

Speaker 1 (02:12:21):
Yeah exactly, yeah, exactly right. But nob Robert talked about how,
you know, the nineteen fifties people joined bowling leagues, right
and have this league we talked about Piglebaskiva. You have
these leagues where you bowl with other people, you see
them every week. It would be cross sections of people
from different wealth categories, different political backgrounds and so on.
Nowadays you don't get bowling leagues. People are bowling alone.

(02:12:43):
Or maybe this was his book in the late nineties
or early two thousands. Nowadays, I think we have bowling on.
We are bowling on like yeah, on like PlayStation or something.

Speaker 3 (02:12:52):
And people don't even go to work anymore and everyone's
at on zoom. And that gets back to the digital
aspect of it.

Speaker 1 (02:12:58):
But having these places where you don't have to spend money,
where people know your name, where you have cross sections
of society, these things are going away. And he kind
of charts from the nineteen fifties today kind of changes
in this. When he wrote his book in the two thousands,
it was just the dawn of the internet, so he
kind of talked about how maybe television was causing this.
I think if you look at kind of the way
we engage with TV and all the media that you

(02:13:19):
and I create, the things that we get online now,
it's easier to stay home and entertain yourself than it
was back in the day. The reason I love roberts
work though, is that this could be just like a
really depressing conclusion about boweling alone, Like from the nineteen
fifties to today, everything's going to crap and social connections
going down and third places have gone away. But he
actually looked at the history before the nineteen fifties and

(02:13:41):
what you find is that from the beginning of the century,
from late eighteen hundreds to the nineteen fifties, people were
actually creating these institutions that we were really atomized society,
really individualist society, really polarized society, and a society a
really unequal wealth distribution where it was the robber barons
who controlled everything and so on, and people kind of

(02:14:02):
got together and created these local in real life, in
person communities and it really changed the structure of society
and probably change the structure of happiness. And so what
might seem like a depressing conclusion has a positive upswing
in fact, that's way. He is a new book called
The Upswing that he talks about this, which is like,
we were at a yucky place in terms of social
connection and community before and we fixed it, and with

(02:14:25):
the right structures, we could have the intent to rebuild
those kind of structures today too.

Speaker 3 (02:14:29):
Life finds a way and the pendulum has to swing back, yeah,
because we need it right And even if we're not
conscious of what we're lacking, we will intuitively start to
build those things because you know, deep down, we know
that this is important to living a meaningful life. Yeah,
I think that's true.

Speaker 1 (02:14:49):
If we can get over our misconceptions, I think we
can build structures for ourselves that make us a lot happier.
But I think we can also build a world filled
with structures that would make everyone happier too.

Speaker 3 (02:14:59):
I have this question, and I find myself reluctant to
even ask it because I'm not sure that there's even
an answer to it, and if there is, it's probably
a four hour podcast, you know, to answer it. But
I guess I'm curious, maybe just on a top level,
how you think about all of these tools and ways
to engender happiness in one's life for the person who

(02:15:24):
is suffering from maybe something a little bit less than
a mild mental health disorder. I mean, as a psychologist,
what do you say to the person who is who,
because of childhood trauma or because of a certain particular
type of upbringing when they were young, is caught in

(02:15:48):
a mindset pattern or a behavioral pattern that makes it
very difficult to see their lives clearly and make these
decisions effectively. That can change their behavior and in turn
their relationship with happiness.

Speaker 1 (02:16:04):
Yeah, I think this is I'm glad you asked this
because I think this is an important question. Because we
to talk about these kind of rewirables or rewirements, we
can assume that they're the whole answer. And I think
it depends on the degree of problem that we're experiencing.
Right again, sometimes I can use a physical analogy when
we're talking about mental health.

Speaker 3 (02:16:23):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:16:23):
So let's say I go into my doctor and I say, hey, doctor,
I'm experiencing a little bit of inflammation, some high blood pressure.
What should I do? The doctor will be like, well,
eat right, get on the treadmill, do this thing. If
I walk into my doctor and clutching my chest the
same I'm having a cute cardiac arrest right now, the
doctor will be like, well you right. You know, they
would like, you know, clear and do all the things right.
There would be an urgent medical intervention for an urgent situation.

(02:16:46):
I think the same is true for our mental health, right.
You know, if you're feeling you know, a little bit
of languishing, you know things are going right, but I'm
not as happy as I could be. All these rewirebles
are for you, right, They're the thing you can do
if you are acutely suicidal, if you're actively in the
middle of a panic attack. I'm not going to be
like we'll go out and find the delights in the world,
or like you need a more urgent and medical intervention

(02:17:07):
for that, right. But just like in the physical health case, right,
you know, hopefully my you walking into the doctor with
a cute cardiac wress, I get through it and I'm
on the other side. At that point, the doctor might say,
you know, now that you're in recovery, I think you
need to look at your eating patterns, you need to
get a little bit more exercise, and so on. I
think the same is true for our mental health. Right
once you're through an acute crisis, once you're working on

(02:17:29):
something that's maybe a long standing issue for what you
need professional help, or if you're an acute issue which
you need treatment for, like, once you're on the other
side of it, I think all these strategies then come
into play. I think if these strategies is almost like
preventative mental health, right, like almost like the project to
make sure you can kind of get back to equilibrium.
But they might not be the best immediate intervention if

(02:17:50):
what you need is urgent care or really serious kind
of mental health support.

Speaker 3 (02:17:54):
I guess I'm imagining a situation in which it's not
necessarily urgent, but there's an underlying wound, and that wound
is the reason you're behaving the way that you behave. Yeah,
and you can, you know, do all of the rewirements
and you know rewirables, and and you know, try to

(02:18:16):
improve your behaviors, and that may move you in a
forward direction. But ultimately, if you don't heal that underlying wound,
like you're still dealing with symptoms, I guess. And so
at some point you have to look inward and kind
of contend with that if you truly want to make
the magical leap to the happiness that eludes you.

Speaker 1 (02:18:37):
Yeah, and I think again the physical analogy there would be,
you know, maybe you have like a heart underlying heart
condition or some genetic thing that right, like, even if
you're doing.

Speaker 3 (02:18:45):
You have like you've got a calcium scan and the
score wasn't so good. You're not going to die of
a heart attack tomorrow, but there's a situation looming on
the horizon for you.

Speaker 1 (02:18:54):
I think sometimes when we talk about these strategies, we think, well,
that's the only thing LORI thinks you should do. I
think these things can work in conjunction with going to
therapeutic practice. Right. A lot of the strategies we're talking
about are basically CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, where you're changing
your thought patterns to change your behavior in your mindset.
And sometimes that's hard to do on your own, especially
if there's deep seated stuff Like there's a reason that

(02:19:15):
some of these therapeutic practices work. But ultimately what they
are is being curious, right, being curious with the help
of some supportive person who can maybe help you see
in if seeing it is hard. But then once you
get curious, you're going to have homework where you try
to change your thought patterns. You're going to change your
behaviors in the face of this. And so if you're
struggling to do it yourself, it might be that what
you need is some therapeutic help, in part because like

(02:19:38):
that can kind of get you closer to some of
the answers. It can maybe make it the curiosity part easier.
If what you have to be curious about is not
you know, some low grade thing, but some deep like
Sherlock Holmes's mystery of what's going on with your mental health?

Speaker 3 (02:19:50):
Yeah, yeah, this has been great. Thank you, thanks so
much for having me on the show. I'm not done
yet that I got one last one for you, Laurie.
We're going to get you to stand a barber there.
I think it would be great to just round this
out with one message about happiness or a concrete thought
or action that you would like everyone to hear.

Speaker 1 (02:20:13):
Yeah. I think when things are feeling the most unhappy,
the most frustrating, just remember that all the science shows
you have agency over it. There are concrete things you
can do to change your behavior and change your mindset
to regulate your negative emotions that you can learn the
skills to do. And so even when it feels bad,
remember there are strategies you can use to.

Speaker 3 (02:20:34):
Feel happier, beautiful. I love it. I'm happier now than
I was at the beginning of the podcast. I should
have given you a scale than too good. This was great.
It was a long time coming, like we said at
the outset, but I feel like we did the thing.

(02:20:57):
That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly
hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests,
including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit
the episode page at richroll dot com, where you can
find the entire podcast archive, my books, finding Ultra voicing
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(02:21:18):
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(02:21:38):
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(02:22:00):
Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The
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(02:22:22):
Trapper Piet and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support,
See you back here, sin Peace Flats Loved

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