September 13, 2019 • 38 mins
You can make yourself happier today. Your life circumstances and personality aren't nearly as important as you think in deciding how happy you can be. Dr Laurie Santos explains how understanding the latest science will point you in the right direction and make you more satisfied with your life. Are you ready to feel better?
For an even deeper dive into the research we talk about in the show visit happinesslab.fm
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, No, I'm not nervous. Okay, I'm nervous. My heart's
over here. One fateful day every spring, high school seniors
who've applied to Yale University are invited to log onto
a special website to find out if they made it in.
(00:36):
I'm doing it now. Okay, okay. Only about six percent
of applicants will get good news. But for that lucky few,
it's time to celebrate. Some students even post their reactions
(00:57):
on YouTube. It's kind of a thing. Oh my god,
my god. When students find out they've gotten too Yale,
that all their hard work has finally paid off and
their college dreams have come true, they are understandably, really really,
really excited. But one students start attending college, all that joy,
(01:27):
all that relief they felt at getting in, it fades
pretty quickly. I've seen this firsthand, both as a professor
of psychology at Yale and as head of one of
the residential colleges. In the last five years, rates of
college mental health problems have skyrocketed. Nationally. Over sixty percent
(01:47):
of college students report feeling overwhelmingly anxious in the past year,
and over fifty percent say they felt completely overwhelmed in
the past week. Rates of depression in twenty year olds
have doubled since two thousand and nine, which is crazy.
Our country now has more than twice the number of
young people in serious psychological distress than we did just
(02:08):
ten years ago, more than twice the number. I was
horrified when I first heard these statistics, and I really
wanted to do something to help. So I did a
little digging and looked it more and more of the research,
and I started to realize it's not just college students.
Many of us feel like happiness is increasingly out of reach,
(02:31):
like we're doing everything right, but something just hasn't clicked.
I know that feeling well because at the time I
was experiencing it myself. I mean I wasn't clinically depressed,
but I felt like something important was missing, like I
was doing something wrong, like I wasn't as happy as
I could be or should be. Oh Yale University professor
(02:55):
is teaching students around the world how science can help
them lead a happier life. So I decided to develop
a new class on the science of happiness, a class
I called Psychology and the Good Life Life lessons that
could help students and all of us be happier. The
course was my attempt to pull together everything I could
about the latest science of happiness and how to achieve it.
(03:17):
I packed it all together in one convenient set of lectures,
taught it to my Yale students, and even through it
online for free. Now our teachings are spreading well beyond campus.
More than one hundred and thirty eight thousand people around
the world have registered for the online version of the class.
But the class also taught me an important lesson. Happiness
is something that all of us can acquire, but we
(03:39):
need to go about it the right way. We need
to go after the right things. That's where the science
and this podcast can help. If you want to learn
what researchers are discovering about happiness and how these lessons
can make real improvements to your well being, then I
welcome you to join me doctor Laurie Santos for the
(03:59):
first episode of the Happiness Lab. It was a cold
Saturday night. I had just gone home after driving hundreds
of miles to record one of the interviews you'll hear
(04:19):
later the season. I was pretty exhausted and really really
psyched to be home. But when I unlocked my door,
I noticed a strange piece of mail at my feet,
an envelope addressed to me. The stamps and postmark were foreign,
but the letter inside was written in English. Dear Miss Santos,
my name is Clement and I live in France. In
(04:42):
the letter, Clement explained that he was feeling defeated by life.
He didn't have the career, relationship or family he'd yearned for.
He said he felt trapped in a tunnel of desperation,
a tunnel with no light and no end. Sadly, this
is not the first time I've received messages like this.
Since teaching my class online, I've gotten letters and emails
(05:04):
like this from people around the world, people who weren't
feeling all that happy and wanted to make a change.
Clement's letter was especially frank, though. He told me that
he'd pretty much decided that his life wasn't worth living,
and that he'd even tried to kill himself. It was
at this lowest of low points that he stumbled across
my class to tell you the truth. He wrote, I
(05:27):
was not convinced of the effectiveness of this course, and
I thought this was hippie Californian well being crap. I
get this sort of skepticism from lots of people, but
the things I'm going to talk about in this podcast
really aren't crap or a bunch of platitudes or a
load of hippie dip bbs. This podcast will share the
(05:48):
latest scientific findings, work that's been carried out by my
friends and colleagues at top universities around the world. And
what all this research shows is that happiness is possible
even for people like Clement, people who are in serious
psychological distress. The problem, as well here in this podcast
is that we go about achieving that happiness the wrong way,
(06:11):
waiting and hoping that our circumstances will change, that a
promotion or a romance will bring us lasting happiness. None
of that works, at least not in the way we think.
It's just a lie that our minds tell us. That's
what Clement was able to learn. Despite his initial skepticism.
Clement decided to complete my online course. He learned all
(06:33):
about the science of well being and how to put
it into practice. It has worked, Clement said at the
end of his letter. It has truly worked. People write
all the time about how my books have changed their
life I'm talking with Sony Lubermerski, a professor at UC Riverside.
(06:55):
She wrote two classic texts on the science of wellbeing,
The How of Happiness and the Myths of Happiness. Her
work has helped a lot of people, which means she
gets tons of letters like the what I got from Clement.
I mean, lots of people say that they want to
to kill themselves and they've been saved by using these strategies.
Some people say they got married or divorced because they
wrote its something I wrote and now they're happier. So
(07:18):
I don't know. It's just weird to feel like you
have an influence on people's lives and people you don't
know who are total strangers. But at bottom line is
that it's wonderful. We're going to talk a lot about
happiness in this podcast, so I thought I should start
by giving you a definition. Since Sonia is pretty much
the world expert on happiness, I thought you would be
(07:38):
a great person to help. Essentially, happiness has two components.
The first component has to do with the experience of
positive emotions. Right, so, happy people tend to experience more
frequent positive emotions tranquility, enthusiasm, joy, pride, affection, but that's
not enough. So a happy person also has a sense
that their life is good, that they're satisfied with the
(08:00):
way that they're progressing towards their life goals. So you
really kind of need both of these components to be happy,
and I like to think of them as being happy
in your life and being happy with your life. I
love this definition because it fits really well with how
we'll think about improving your happiness in the episodes to come.
What you can do to be happy in your life,
(08:20):
to feel better a lot of the time, and with
your life, how you can experience more meaning and more satisfaction.
I also wanted Sonya to walk us through an even
tougher problem, how can we actually measure our happiness levels.
Happiness is something that's subjective. I wish there was something
like a happiness thermometer, but there isn't because happiness is
something that only really the person inside knows, which means
(08:43):
that scientists like Sonja have had to come up with
creative ways to track people's well being. In the end,
they usually opt for a rather simple approach. The gold
standard for measuring happiness is to ask the person if
they're happy so we sarch A stend to rely on
self report, and we have measures where we ask people,
you know, how often do you experience various positive emotions
in your life? How satisfy you with your life? How
(09:05):
happy are you? I've used similar measures of well being
with my students. Here's a pretty straightforward one. I can
give it to you now. Taking all things together, how
happy would you say you are? From zero not at
all happy to ten completely happy? Are you a nine
out of ten or more like a six? Researchers have
checked the validity of these skills in lots and lots
(09:27):
of ways. It turns out that self report score you
just gave will correlate with all kinds of real world stuff.
It predicts detailed timetables of your hour by our emotional experience,
and what your family members would say if I asked
them how happy you were. Your score even correlates with
how often you smile in daily life. The upshot is
(09:49):
that these seemingly simple questions are much more rigorous than
a silly BuzzFeed quiz. They really are scientific instruments. Using
metrics like these, researchers have learned that our happiness levels
matter more than we think looks like happiness might not
just be sort of associated with things like more money
and better longer life, more creativity, better relationships, but it
(10:13):
looks like that happiness might actually cause some of those things.
We think that the good things in life, being rich,
feeling healthy, having lots of friends lead us to feel happier,
and they do to a certain extent. But it turns
out that the causal arrow goes in the other direction too.
Feeling happy leads to good life outcomes. Happy people are
(10:35):
more likely to get married. Happy people live longer, they're
more creative, they're more likely to be called back for
a job interview. Consider the case of money. We assume
that wealth brings happiness, but the science shows we might
have it backwards. One recent study tested whether a person's
happiness level as a teenager predicts how much money they'll
be making as an adult. The scientists tracks seventh graders
(10:58):
in the US for decades. Teens who report the highest
level of life satisfaction at age twelve wind up having
a salary that's ten percent above the average when they're
thirty years old, but seventh graders who report being really
unhappy have incomes that are thirty percent lower than the average.
Those teens are still affected by their sad moods more
(11:20):
than a decade later. But happiness early in life doesn't
just lead to more money later on. It also leads
to stronger relationships. One of my favorite studies is called
the Yearbook Study. Women who showed more genuine what are
called Dushan smiles and their yearbook photos when they're about
age twenty one were more likely to get married at
(11:41):
age twenty seven and had more fulfilling marriages at age
fifty two. So it's kind of amazing. If you're sort
of positive and happy when you're in college, you're more
likely to have a good marriage thirty years later. Those
aren't just isolated findings. The positive effects of happiness are everywhere.
People who report feeling lots of positive emotions are less
(12:02):
likely to show cold symptoms when they're exposed to a virus,
and one famous study of nuns found that twenty some
things who express the most happy feelings in their diaries
are four times as likely to live into their nineties
as those who didn't express as many positive feelings. I
believe that the research is pretty strong that happiness does matter.
All these results make me incredibly worried about the college
(12:25):
students I work with. They seem to be unhappy all
the time. They constantly make themselves miserable stressing about grades.
They become so anxious about their job prospects and future
salaries that they have panic attacks. All this stress over
their future lives is more than just unnecessary, The science
suggests it's deeply counterproductive. The research shows that if my
(12:47):
students were able to work on being happier, on feeling
better now, those job prospects and salary levels might fall
into place more naturally than they expect. So if we
really want our circumstances to improve, we may need to
start focusing on improving our well being rather than all
that other stuff, which raises a critical question, can we
(13:08):
actually we improve our happiness? The science suggests that there
is a genetic component to happiness, but we have to
sort of understand what that means. So identical twins are
much more alike in their happiness levels than our fraternal twins,
and that suggests that there is a genetic influence on happiness,
just like there's a gendic influence on weight or blood
pressure or whether you're going to develop depression or schizophrenia.
(13:30):
Just because something is heritable or has a genetic influence
doesn't mean that we can't change it. The way I
see it is that if someone has a disposition that
leads them to be on the more unhappy side, they
can become happier, but they have to work harder at it.
There's this myth out there that happiness is something either
you either have it or you don't, and I just
(13:51):
think that's wrong. And this suggests something really important, a
premise that forms the basis of this entire podcast. There
is no real biological barrier to being happier. We can change.
We can all feel more joy. The problem, though, as
well hear after the break, is how we go about
changing those happiness levels, Because even though the science shows
(14:13):
we can improve our well being, it doesn't work in
the way we often think. Winning the Nobel Prize doesn't
make you happier, Winning the lottery doesn't make you happier.
It's not the things we imagine. It's not the shiny
babbles that makes us happy. The Happiness Lab will be
right back, okay, sweet, So we're recording. So my name
(14:42):
is Bob Waldinger. I'm a professor of psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School. I met Bob at a workshop on the
state of well Being in America run by the Arthur
Blank Foundation. I nervously asked if I could grab a
few minutes with him in the gardens outside. I felt
like I was meeting a rock star. Not because Bob
has one of the top ten most watched TED talks
(15:04):
of all time, but because Bob is the director of
what is perhaps the coolest study of human happiness ever conducted.
I direct a study called the Harvard Study of Adult Development.
It is, we think, the longest study of adult life
that's ever been done. It's a study that began in
nineteen thirty eight, so eighty years ago. The project started
(15:27):
as an attempt to learn about all the possible factors
that lead to high well being later in life. The
researchers started by recruiting a group of subjects who enjoyed
every privilege imaginable, Harvard College sophomores from the classes of
nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty two. Their deans chose
them as among the best and the brightest young men
(15:50):
and thought they would be suitable subjects to study how
people develop as healthy young adults, but the researchers also
wanted to study not so healthy development. They recruited four
hundred and fifty six boys from the poorest naighborhoods in Boston,
and not just from the poorest neighborhoods, but from the
(16:13):
families that had the most trouble familiar mental illness and
domestic violence and lots of other social problems, and so
they wanted to follow these children to see what happened
to them. Overtime, two groups of subjects from very different
backgrounds who'd be followed in as much detail as was
(16:33):
humanly possible. The researchers collected health information from the participants doctors.
They surveyed the subjects every two years, asking them questions
about their lives and their happiness. In later years, they
added blood tests, chest X rays, echo cardiograms, and even
brain scans. The men were followed through their entire lives,
(16:55):
which means scientists can now explore how the men's physical
and mental health changed across different life stages. We can
see how subjects felt when they got married and had kids,
or got divorced or widowed, or had their first grandkids.
We can look at how well being evolved as participants
started new jobs, when they reached different career milestones, or
even when they retired. The study was also big enough
(17:17):
that it included some amazing individual subjects too. We're not
really supposed to know their identities, but one of the
studies participants served in a presidential cabinet, one was a
longtime editor of the Washington Post, and one became President
of the United States. Yep. John F. Kennedy was one
of the studies participants. The study has now even extended
(17:41):
beyond the original sample. Researchers have begun following the men's children,
which means the research will now be able to capture
multiple generations of both men and women. Bob was captivated
from the moment he heard about the study. As a
young med student. My predecessor, George Valiant, lectured to my
(18:02):
first year medical school class and he told us about
the study and it like, I'm basically a voyeur, like
hearing about people's lives and what they do. So when
George started talking about this, I just thought, oh my gosh,
this is the coolest thing ever. And then fast forward
about twenty years, doctor Valiant took me out to lunch
(18:25):
one day and said to me, how would you like
to inherit the study of adult development? And that's how
he started out. Bob has now served as the studies
director for more than fifteen years. He's watched the original
generation of subjects transition from their late adulthood into their
elderly years. Two hundred and sixty eight Harvard undergraduates started,
(18:47):
only about twelve are still living, and they are in
their mid to late nineties. Four hundred fifty six inner
city boys started, and about sixty of them are left,
and they are around the age of ninety. Hundreds upon
hundreds of data points a nearly complete picture of health
and well being across many different life paths, and so
(19:10):
you're probably wondering what did the study find. Some of
what the study has found is absolutely no surprise to anyone.
We know that smoking is bad for you, and it
turns out in our study it was really bad for you.
We know that alcoholism is terrible. It takes a toll
on your health, you die earlier. It takes a toll
(19:30):
on your marriage, on your job, on your relationships. Again,
no surprise. What was the big surprise. It's all the
things we think make us happy, but don't. Wealth does
not make people happy. Having your material needs matt does
make you happy once you get there. Making more money
doesn't make you appreciably happier. But that's not the only
(19:54):
misconception we have about what makes for a happier life.
The other thing is achieving more at work. There's a
reason why we have this cliche. Nobody on their deathbed
wishes they spent more time at the office. It's a
shake because it's true. Our men, as they were looking
back on their lives as they were at the end
(20:15):
of their lives, said that the things they were proudest
of were building a family, raising healthy children, having a
strong relationship with a partner, teaching their grandchildren to sail.
I mean, these were the things that they talked about.
They didn't talk about what they'd achieved at work or
how much money they'd made. Bob studies showed that the
(20:36):
keys to happiness don't involve what we often put time
into to become happier, financial achievements so we can buy
cool stuff or working harder to achieve more in our careers.
In fact, his results show that health and happiness often
comes from the things we sacrifice, while spending more hours
at work. The surprise was in our finding that one
(20:58):
of the strongest predictors of staying healthy and happy in
your life was having good relationships with other people. We
think of happiness, we often think of self care, but
Bob's study shows that focusing only on yourself and turning
too far inwards is a recipe not only for misery,
(21:19):
but for physical health problems as well. We didn't believe
it because initially we thought that there couldn't be this
strong of a connection between mind and body. How could
the quality of your relationships determine whether you got Type
two diabetes, or whether you got arthritis, or whether you
(21:41):
got coary artery disease. That seemed unfathomable. The big message
of Bob's study is that we consider many of the
things that actually matter for happiness to be well unfathomable,
or at least way lower on the priority list than
they really should be according to the science. And if
you'll listen to the rest of the episodes in this season,
(22:01):
you'll see the same pattern time and time again. Our
minds just suck at predicting the kinds of things that
will really make us happier, and that means we end
up putting a lot of time and effort into improving
our happiness using strategies that just aren't going to succeed.
I can't stress enough how amazing the Harvard study is.
It delved deeply into the lives of some of America's
(22:23):
most privileged and some of its most vulnerable, and pretty
much proved that the rich and powerful have no monopoly
on well being. That may go against your intuition, but
it's true. Though there is a caveat. When I ask
Sonia Lubramerski to weigh in on I would add that
everything that I say applies to let's say, the average
(22:43):
listener of this podcast. That's you know, people who are
already relatively comfortable. You know they're not in dire straits.
If your situation is very bad, if you live in poverty,
or if you're in an abusive relationship, or if you
live in a war zone and Yemen, then of course
changes your life. Circumstances are going to make a huge
difference to your happiness. If you're a circumstances are truly awful,
(23:06):
then fixing them really will improve your well being. But
I'm guessing your circumstances really aren't all that bad. You
average podcast listener probably aren't in the kinds of awful
situations Sonya is talking about, and that means that changing
your circumstances won't help in the way you think. Note
that this doesn't mean your circumstances are perfect. All of
(23:27):
us have situations we want to change, ones we think
will make us happier. I'm not happy now, but I'll
be happy when I moved to that city I've always
wanted to live in, or when I get married, or
when I have a baby, or when I get that
job I've always wanted, or when I get a raise.
The idea that happiness lies in money or sort of
changing your life in some way, doing something new in
(23:48):
your life, I mean, I think that is a very
strong idea again, kind of rooted in this this concept
that we always want change in progress, even if we
really know that it's a myth. Overcoming the strong but
mistaken idea is what this podcast is all about. But
the second step is harder. Happiness doesn't evolve changing everything
in your life around. That's the good news, But as
(24:09):
we'll explore after the break, there is some bad news too.
It's not easy. It takes work. It's kind of like
if you want to lose weight or would be healthier, right,
you need to change your diet or go to the gym,
and same thing with happiness. The happiness lab will be
right back. Right now, I'm out of breath because I'm
(24:36):
on my daily hike at a local state park. I
always love going on the hike. After the fact, it's
usually not what I'm thinking when my alarm goes off
every morning when I throw my sneakers on, my brain
tells me that I'd be happier staying in bed or
even sitting on the couch or watching the news. But
I know the science, and the science shows that I'll
be healthier, more fit, and probably even happier if I
(25:00):
get a bit of cardio and every morning. So I
try to get in a hike every day, or at
least as often as I can, even though my mind
often otherwise. The science of happiness works a lot like
the science of exercise. It's not enough to know what
you need to do. You've got to go and do it.
You need to put that science into practice, and you
(25:23):
need to practice it regularly. I generally say that I'm
about an eight on a ten point scale. I think
I'm pretty happy. Even a happiness expert like Sony Lubra
Murski knows firsthand that reaching an eight and staying there
takes conscious effort. I do have to work at it.
I mean, a classic example is sometimes I get together
(25:43):
with friends and it's so great, it's so much fun,
and we think, why don't we do this more often?
You know? But then it takes like months for us
to sort of get together again and to plan it.
And so even when we know what will make us
really happy, we still kind of don't do it as
often as we should. I have to kind of put
it in my to do list to make sure that
I create times that I spend with those people. So
(26:04):
it's a very deliberate act. It'd be so nice if
happiness came easily, like we hang out with a friend
once and we're happy for good. But that's just not
how human wellbeing works. Women's magazines will often call me
and they'll say, can you give me some five minute
happiness strategies? And I'm like, there are no five minute
happiness strategies. It's true with any kind of goal in life, right,
(26:26):
it's not going to happen in five minutes on Thursday, right,
It's going to be you know, maybe a lifelong effort
and so yeah. So like creating habits, I guess would
be one way to put it that it's important to
create habits that you maintain over the course of your life.
There's no quick fix for happiness, but science shows there
is a fix if you put in consistent time and
(26:46):
effort if you want to become happier. There now a
number of sort of strategies are different kind of daily
activities that people can engage in that they've been tested
in research. We just need to pick the strategy that
works for us. If you listen to the rest of
the episodes in this season, you'll learn a bunch about
these sorts of activities what my students and I call rewirements,
(27:07):
habits that science has shown really can change your well
being over time. The ones that I tend to focus
on and actually quite a bitter we start just focusing
on our gratitude and kindness or what's called pro social behavior.
Those are two activities or you can call them strategies
that have been shown to make people happier. But it's
not just gratitude and kindness. Science shows us lots of
(27:29):
really simple habits we can add to our lives to
feel better. We can take more time to connect with
the people we care about, or just chat with a
stranger we meet on our commute. We can try to
reduce the exhausting choices we make on a daily basis.
We can count our blessings. We can become more accepting
both of the bad emotions we feel and the obstacles
we face in life. We can stop focusing on the
(27:50):
end goal and think more about the journey. Now, if
you're like me when I first encountered these ideas, you
might have the same reaction that our friend Clement had
in his letter. You might think these strategies I just
mentioned sound like hippie dippy crap, because to be fair,
they do sound like hippie dippy crap. You gradudate seems
really hokey. You know, counting your blessings, Oh, I'm so
(28:11):
grateful for XYZ. The problem is, as hokey as these
strategies sound, they work. That's what the science shows it
used to be why I started out. You know, there
are all these selful books that are'm based on nothing
like they're just based on anecdotal evidence and people's opinions.
We can't just look at anecdotal evidence, right, You know,
your cousin told you that they tried it and it works.
(28:32):
And they're now tons and tons of experiments, randomized control
trials that are sort of trying to test whether you
can get people to kind of change their thinking or
change their behaviors in some smaller medium ways in daily
life that could impact happiness. The problem is most people
on the street don't know this stuff, and I wanted
to change that. I wanted people to hear what pure
(28:55):
reviewed scientific research shows about becoming happier. Starting with my
Yale students. All right, let's get started. In the spring
of twenty eighteen, I had a chance to see if
teaching my students about the science of happiness could lead
them to live happier life. Welcome everybody to Psychology and
the Good Life. I expected about thirty people to take
(29:16):
the class, but I wound up with a lot more
guinea pigs than I expect it. I'm a little bit
surprised to see as many of you are here as
our here, but that's made almost twelve hundred students enrolled
in the class nearly one out of every four students
at Yale. The class was so big we had to
teach it in the university concert hall. That tiny polite
ripple of applause you might get at the end of
(29:36):
a lecture, well it turned into this. It was an
amazing experience, but it was also a logistical nightmare. I
had to find twenty eight graduate students just to help
me grade the student exams, and we needed to book
thirteen different classrooms all over campus just to host a
(29:59):
simple midterm. I jogged over two miles just to get
to all the students before the exam ended. And that
was the commotion that came before all the us started.
Each night, students have happiness, homework, meditate for ten minutes,
sleep eight hours, do something kind, and write down five
things that you're grateful for. But don't think it's an
(30:21):
easy egg. By midterm, I had a major television news
crew filming each and every one of my lectures. It
was a lot of pressure, But I bet I know
what you're asking. Did it work? Did the students get happier? Well?
The answer is I don't know. At least I'm not
sure from a scientific perspective. Anecdotally, I have dozens of
(30:43):
emails from students telling me the class changed their lives.
But the honest truth is that I was completely blindsided
by the size of the class, which means I didn't
get the logistics in place to do the rigorous surveys
that would really nail my students progress down. In retrospect,
I can say that this oversight was really, really freaking dumb.
Life doesn't usually give second chances for a scientific opportunity
(31:05):
like this, but Yale decided there was a need for
this class to be shared even more broadly, so we
put it online completely for free. This time, we could
track people's progress a bit more rigorously, but the question
remained would it work. My manager said, hey, we have
this new course with Lori Santo. She's working on it.
It's going to be about wellness. What do you think
(31:25):
about working on it? And of course I felt like
I had no choice in the matter, but even if
I did, I willingly and gladly accepted. This is Belinda Platt,
my colleague at the Yale poor Vous Center for Teaching
and Learning. Belinda has been my partner for the past
two years as I've tried to figure out the best
way to teach people around the world about the science
of happiness. Belinda's amazing. Her hard work is a lot
(31:48):
of what's made the online class so successful, but neither
of us expected the response we got. I had no
idea how popular it would become at all, just because
none of the other courses that we've worked on made
such a splash. The enrollment is well above three hundred thousand,
which is super cool. Yeah, that's pretty crazy, but like
(32:09):
with my nerdy scientists had, I really want numbers. And
one of the craziest things about the course is actually
like the data that we're getting. When students enroll in
our online class, they take a standard well being survey.
The specific one we use is called Perma. It's a
twenty three question survey that measures people's overall happiness, their
mood levels, their sense of accomplishment, and even their sense
(32:31):
of meaning. Students are asked to take the Perma quiz
before they start the class, and at the end of
the course ten weeks later, excitingly, we just got our
first round of data in over a thousand subjects. We
finally have a scientific measure of whether learning about the
science of happiness can change people's well being? What did
we find? We just have the graphs here, the papers
(32:54):
moving around, and the data are amazing, frankly, so on
every different measure, from positivity to engagement to meaning to
just general happiness, people get better. The gains are really huge.
Like on a ten point scaleple are going up an
entire whole point in terms of how much meaning they
feel like they have in their life. But on the
happiness measure, people are starting it about you know, a
(33:17):
six point five on the happiness measure, which is you know, reasonable,
and then after the class people are saying, I'm about
a seven point nine, which is so cool. The awesome
thing about these data is it suggests people can change.
Like this is a ten week class and people are
bumping up a whole point on a happiness measure, which
is incredible. Yeah, but why is the course changing people's lives.
It's not just that people learn about the science of
(33:38):
well being. Like when we first started teaching the live
version of the class at Yale, the Yale students had
this hashtag hardest class at Yale, And that was not
because the class was hard, like in terms of degrading
but it was really hard in terms of actually doing
the practices, because like, it's one thing to know that
you're supposed to do this stuff, but it's another to
actually put it into practice. I think that's one of
the ironies. Well, what I want to know what you're
(33:59):
working on. Yeah, but Linda's question caused me to stammer
a bit. I've been so busy with this podcast. I've
been slipping in my own practices. Even that daily hike
had turned into a weekly hike or bi weekly. I mean,
this is the challenge, is the thing we talked about
in the course. I know all the stuff that I'm
supposed to do, but I'm definitely not the like poster
(34:20):
child for like putting into practice all the time, which
is embarrassing as the person who's teaching the course and
like now running this new podcast. That's right, that's the
dirty secret. Even yours truly has trouble sticking to these
new positive habits. Human nature and our lying minds makes
changing our behavior super super hard. That's also why Belinda
(34:40):
and I spend so much time chatting about all the
reviews from the class, to keep reminding ourselves that this
stuff works if you stick with it. I love the
ones where they're like, I didn't really believe this, but
then it totally worked. Those are the best. Don't you
have a favorite one that said, like I thought this
was like hippie dippy. Yeah, that's actually one from a
(35:02):
letter I got from a learner named Clement. I think
he said it was like hippie dippy crap. But you know, right, Clement.
It had been a few months since I'd received his letter,
and I put off contacting him because I know how
hard it's been for me to stick with these habits.
Given where Clement started off, I was worried he might
have fallen back into some negative stuff, But in the
(35:23):
end I decided to phone him up. Hello, Hello, is
this Clement? Hello Loie. The international connection was kind of crappy.
I had to shout a lot, how are you? Can
you hear me? I can hear you better? Yeah, I'm good,
very good, very good. But despite the connection, our chat
(35:45):
was fantastic. Clement had stuck to his new habits, mostly
because he got the important message of this episode, happiness
takes work, good never keep off. But you're calls really
helped me. Mercy, Mercy, we appreciate it. Thank you, talk
(36:06):
to you soon, Bye bye, bye bye. I spoke with
Clement for probably half an hour, and we covered a
lot of ground in our conversation. But the thing he
said that stayed with me the most was that he
knew being happy wasn't going to be easy. It was
going to take a lot of effort to maintain, but
he didn't plan to give up trying, and that, for me,
(36:27):
at least, was pretty inspirational. If you're now ready for
the specifics, if you want to learn more about what
those happy people really are doing to feel better, then
I hope you'll come along for a journey over this season.
In each of the episodes that follow, we'll take a
(36:48):
deep dive into a single mistake that our minds make
about how to really achieve happiness. We'll explore lots and
lots of simple habits you can begin now to improve
your well being. We'll get to nerd out together and
learn more about all the studies that show why these
habits work. Plus you'll meet lots of folks who put
these tips into practice, an Olympic medalist who didn't fall
(37:09):
prey to social comparison, an advertising exect who got healthier
by ditching the silly choices she makes every day, a
Grammy winning musician who's fighting to make our lives more
social again, a star golfer with the secret to avoiding
unwanted thoughts, and a Navy seal who realized that her
training and negative thinking might be more powerful off the battlefield.
(37:30):
Simply put, it's going to be awesome. So I hope
I'll see you back here for the second episode of
The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. If you
enjoyed the show, I'd be super grateful if you could
spread the word by leaving a rating and a review.
(37:50):
It really does help other listeners find us, and don't
forget to tell your friends. If you want to learn
more about the science you heard on the show, then
check out our website Happiness Lab dot fm. You can
also sign up for our newsletter to get exclusive content.
The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley.
The show was mixed and mastered by Evan Viola and
(38:11):
edited by Julia Barton, fact checking by Joseph Friedman, and
our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks
to Mia La Belle, Carly mcgliorre Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor,
Maya Kanig, and Jacob Weisberg. The Happiness Lab is brought
to you by Pushkin Industries and ME doctor Laurie Sanders
Pushkin, No, I'm not nervous. Okay, I'm nervous. My heart's
over here. One fateful day every spring, high school seniors
who've applied to Yale University are invited to log onto
a special website to find out if they made it in.
(00:36):
I'm doing it now. Okay, okay. Only about six percent
of applicants will get good news. But for that lucky few,
it's time to celebrate. Some students even post their reactions
(00:57):
on YouTube. It's kind of a thing. Oh my god,
my god. When students find out they've gotten too Yale,
that all their hard work has finally paid off and
their college dreams have come true, they are understandably, really really,
really excited. But one students start attending college, all that joy,
(01:27):
all that relief they felt at getting in, it fades
pretty quickly. I've seen this firsthand, both as a professor
of psychology at Yale and as head of one of
the residential colleges. In the last five years, rates of
college mental health problems have skyrocketed. Nationally. Over sixty percent
(01:47):
of college students report feeling overwhelmingly anxious in the past year,
and over fifty percent say they felt completely overwhelmed in
the past week. Rates of depression in twenty year olds
have doubled since two thousand and nine, which is crazy.
Our country now has more than twice the number of
young people in serious psychological distress than we did just
(02:08):
ten years ago, more than twice the number. I was
horrified when I first heard these statistics, and I really
wanted to do something to help. So I did a
little digging and looked it more and more of the research,
and I started to realize it's not just college students.
Many of us feel like happiness is increasingly out of reach,
(02:31):
like we're doing everything right, but something just hasn't clicked.
I know that feeling well because at the time I
was experiencing it myself. I mean I wasn't clinically depressed,
but I felt like something important was missing, like I
was doing something wrong, like I wasn't as happy as
I could be or should be. Oh Yale University professor
(02:55):
is teaching students around the world how science can help
them lead a happier life. So I decided to develop
a new class on the science of happiness, a class
I called Psychology and the Good Life Life lessons that
could help students and all of us be happier. The
course was my attempt to pull together everything I could
about the latest science of happiness and how to achieve it.
(03:17):
I packed it all together in one convenient set of lectures,
taught it to my Yale students, and even through it
online for free. Now our teachings are spreading well beyond campus.
More than one hundred and thirty eight thousand people around
the world have registered for the online version of the class.
But the class also taught me an important lesson. Happiness
is something that all of us can acquire, but we
(03:39):
need to go about it the right way. We need
to go after the right things. That's where the science
and this podcast can help. If you want to learn
what researchers are discovering about happiness and how these lessons
can make real improvements to your well being, then I
welcome you to join me doctor Laurie Santos for the
(03:59):
first episode of the Happiness Lab. It was a cold
Saturday night. I had just gone home after driving hundreds
of miles to record one of the interviews you'll hear
(04:19):
later the season. I was pretty exhausted and really really
psyched to be home. But when I unlocked my door,
I noticed a strange piece of mail at my feet,
an envelope addressed to me. The stamps and postmark were foreign,
but the letter inside was written in English. Dear Miss Santos,
my name is Clement and I live in France. In
(04:42):
the letter, Clement explained that he was feeling defeated by life.
He didn't have the career, relationship or family he'd yearned for.
He said he felt trapped in a tunnel of desperation,
a tunnel with no light and no end. Sadly, this
is not the first time I've received messages like this.
Since teaching my class online, I've gotten letters and emails
(05:04):
like this from people around the world, people who weren't
feeling all that happy and wanted to make a change.
Clement's letter was especially frank, though. He told me that
he'd pretty much decided that his life wasn't worth living,
and that he'd even tried to kill himself. It was
at this lowest of low points that he stumbled across
my class to tell you the truth. He wrote, I
(05:27):
was not convinced of the effectiveness of this course, and
I thought this was hippie Californian well being crap. I
get this sort of skepticism from lots of people, but
the things I'm going to talk about in this podcast
really aren't crap or a bunch of platitudes or a
load of hippie dip bbs. This podcast will share the
(05:48):
latest scientific findings, work that's been carried out by my
friends and colleagues at top universities around the world. And
what all this research shows is that happiness is possible
even for people like Clement, people who are in serious
psychological distress. The problem, as well here in this podcast
is that we go about achieving that happiness the wrong way,
(06:11):
waiting and hoping that our circumstances will change, that a
promotion or a romance will bring us lasting happiness. None
of that works, at least not in the way we think.
It's just a lie that our minds tell us. That's
what Clement was able to learn. Despite his initial skepticism.
Clement decided to complete my online course. He learned all
(06:33):
about the science of well being and how to put
it into practice. It has worked, Clement said at the
end of his letter. It has truly worked. People write
all the time about how my books have changed their
life I'm talking with Sony Lubermerski, a professor at UC Riverside.
(06:55):
She wrote two classic texts on the science of wellbeing,
The How of Happiness and the Myths of Happiness. Her
work has helped a lot of people, which means she
gets tons of letters like the what I got from Clement.
I mean, lots of people say that they want to
to kill themselves and they've been saved by using these strategies.
Some people say they got married or divorced because they
wrote its something I wrote and now they're happier. So
(07:18):
I don't know. It's just weird to feel like you
have an influence on people's lives and people you don't
know who are total strangers. But at bottom line is
that it's wonderful. We're going to talk a lot about
happiness in this podcast, so I thought I should start
by giving you a definition. Since Sonia is pretty much
the world expert on happiness, I thought you would be
(07:38):
a great person to help. Essentially, happiness has two components.
The first component has to do with the experience of
positive emotions. Right, so, happy people tend to experience more
frequent positive emotions tranquility, enthusiasm, joy, pride, affection, but that's
not enough. So a happy person also has a sense
that their life is good, that they're satisfied with the
(08:00):
way that they're progressing towards their life goals. So you
really kind of need both of these components to be happy,
and I like to think of them as being happy
in your life and being happy with your life. I
love this definition because it fits really well with how
we'll think about improving your happiness in the episodes to come.
What you can do to be happy in your life,
(08:20):
to feel better a lot of the time, and with
your life, how you can experience more meaning and more satisfaction.
I also wanted Sonya to walk us through an even
tougher problem, how can we actually measure our happiness levels.
Happiness is something that's subjective. I wish there was something
like a happiness thermometer, but there isn't because happiness is
something that only really the person inside knows, which means
(08:43):
that scientists like Sonja have had to come up with
creative ways to track people's well being. In the end,
they usually opt for a rather simple approach. The gold
standard for measuring happiness is to ask the person if
they're happy so we sarch A stend to rely on
self report, and we have measures where we ask people,
you know, how often do you experience various positive emotions
in your life? How satisfy you with your life? How
(09:05):
happy are you? I've used similar measures of well being
with my students. Here's a pretty straightforward one. I can
give it to you now. Taking all things together, how
happy would you say you are? From zero not at
all happy to ten completely happy? Are you a nine
out of ten or more like a six? Researchers have
checked the validity of these skills in lots and lots
(09:27):
of ways. It turns out that self report score you
just gave will correlate with all kinds of real world stuff.
It predicts detailed timetables of your hour by our emotional experience,
and what your family members would say if I asked
them how happy you were. Your score even correlates with
how often you smile in daily life. The upshot is
(09:49):
that these seemingly simple questions are much more rigorous than
a silly BuzzFeed quiz. They really are scientific instruments. Using
metrics like these, researchers have learned that our happiness levels
matter more than we think looks like happiness might not
just be sort of associated with things like more money
and better longer life, more creativity, better relationships, but it
(10:13):
looks like that happiness might actually cause some of those things.
We think that the good things in life, being rich,
feeling healthy, having lots of friends lead us to feel happier,
and they do to a certain extent. But it turns
out that the causal arrow goes in the other direction too.
Feeling happy leads to good life outcomes. Happy people are
(10:35):
more likely to get married. Happy people live longer, they're
more creative, they're more likely to be called back for
a job interview. Consider the case of money. We assume
that wealth brings happiness, but the science shows we might
have it backwards. One recent study tested whether a person's
happiness level as a teenager predicts how much money they'll
be making as an adult. The scientists tracks seventh graders
(10:58):
in the US for decades. Teens who report the highest
level of life satisfaction at age twelve wind up having
a salary that's ten percent above the average when they're
thirty years old, but seventh graders who report being really
unhappy have incomes that are thirty percent lower than the average.
Those teens are still affected by their sad moods more
(11:20):
than a decade later. But happiness early in life doesn't
just lead to more money later on. It also leads
to stronger relationships. One of my favorite studies is called
the Yearbook Study. Women who showed more genuine what are
called Dushan smiles and their yearbook photos when they're about
age twenty one were more likely to get married at
(11:41):
age twenty seven and had more fulfilling marriages at age
fifty two. So it's kind of amazing. If you're sort
of positive and happy when you're in college, you're more
likely to have a good marriage thirty years later. Those
aren't just isolated findings. The positive effects of happiness are everywhere.
People who report feeling lots of positive emotions are less
(12:02):
likely to show cold symptoms when they're exposed to a virus,
and one famous study of nuns found that twenty some
things who express the most happy feelings in their diaries
are four times as likely to live into their nineties
as those who didn't express as many positive feelings. I
believe that the research is pretty strong that happiness does matter.
All these results make me incredibly worried about the college
(12:25):
students I work with. They seem to be unhappy all
the time. They constantly make themselves miserable stressing about grades.
They become so anxious about their job prospects and future
salaries that they have panic attacks. All this stress over
their future lives is more than just unnecessary, The science
suggests it's deeply counterproductive. The research shows that if my
(12:47):
students were able to work on being happier, on feeling
better now, those job prospects and salary levels might fall
into place more naturally than they expect. So if we
really want our circumstances to improve, we may need to
start focusing on improving our well being rather than all
that other stuff, which raises a critical question, can we
(13:08):
actually we improve our happiness? The science suggests that there
is a genetic component to happiness, but we have to
sort of understand what that means. So identical twins are
much more alike in their happiness levels than our fraternal twins,
and that suggests that there is a genetic influence on happiness,
just like there's a gendic influence on weight or blood
pressure or whether you're going to develop depression or schizophrenia.
(13:30):
Just because something is heritable or has a genetic influence
doesn't mean that we can't change it. The way I
see it is that if someone has a disposition that
leads them to be on the more unhappy side, they
can become happier, but they have to work harder at it.
There's this myth out there that happiness is something either
you either have it or you don't, and I just
(13:51):
think that's wrong. And this suggests something really important, a
premise that forms the basis of this entire podcast. There
is no real biological barrier to being happier. We can change.
We can all feel more joy. The problem, though, as
well hear after the break, is how we go about
changing those happiness levels, Because even though the science shows
(14:13):
we can improve our well being, it doesn't work in
the way we often think. Winning the Nobel Prize doesn't
make you happier, Winning the lottery doesn't make you happier.
It's not the things we imagine. It's not the shiny
babbles that makes us happy. The Happiness Lab will be
right back, okay, sweet, So we're recording. So my name
(14:42):
is Bob Waldinger. I'm a professor of psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School. I met Bob at a workshop on the
state of well Being in America run by the Arthur
Blank Foundation. I nervously asked if I could grab a
few minutes with him in the gardens outside. I felt
like I was meeting a rock star. Not because Bob
has one of the top ten most watched TED talks
(15:04):
of all time, but because Bob is the director of
what is perhaps the coolest study of human happiness ever conducted.
I direct a study called the Harvard Study of Adult Development.
It is, we think, the longest study of adult life
that's ever been done. It's a study that began in
nineteen thirty eight, so eighty years ago. The project started
(15:27):
as an attempt to learn about all the possible factors
that lead to high well being later in life. The
researchers started by recruiting a group of subjects who enjoyed
every privilege imaginable, Harvard College sophomores from the classes of
nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty two. Their deans chose
them as among the best and the brightest young men
(15:50):
and thought they would be suitable subjects to study how
people develop as healthy young adults, but the researchers also
wanted to study not so healthy development. They recruited four
hundred and fifty six boys from the poorest naighborhoods in Boston,
and not just from the poorest neighborhoods, but from the
(16:13):
families that had the most trouble familiar mental illness and
domestic violence and lots of other social problems, and so
they wanted to follow these children to see what happened
to them. Overtime, two groups of subjects from very different
backgrounds who'd be followed in as much detail as was
(16:33):
humanly possible. The researchers collected health information from the participants doctors.
They surveyed the subjects every two years, asking them questions
about their lives and their happiness. In later years, they
added blood tests, chest X rays, echo cardiograms, and even
brain scans. The men were followed through their entire lives,
(16:55):
which means scientists can now explore how the men's physical
and mental health changed across different life stages. We can
see how subjects felt when they got married and had kids,
or got divorced or widowed, or had their first grandkids.
We can look at how well being evolved as participants
started new jobs, when they reached different career milestones, or
even when they retired. The study was also big enough
(17:17):
that it included some amazing individual subjects too. We're not
really supposed to know their identities, but one of the
studies participants served in a presidential cabinet, one was a
longtime editor of the Washington Post, and one became President
of the United States. Yep. John F. Kennedy was one
of the studies participants. The study has now even extended
(17:41):
beyond the original sample. Researchers have begun following the men's children,
which means the research will now be able to capture
multiple generations of both men and women. Bob was captivated
from the moment he heard about the study. As a
young med student. My predecessor, George Valiant, lectured to my
(18:02):
first year medical school class and he told us about
the study and it like, I'm basically a voyeur, like
hearing about people's lives and what they do. So when
George started talking about this, I just thought, oh my gosh,
this is the coolest thing ever. And then fast forward
about twenty years, doctor Valiant took me out to lunch
(18:25):
one day and said to me, how would you like
to inherit the study of adult development? And that's how
he started out. Bob has now served as the studies
director for more than fifteen years. He's watched the original
generation of subjects transition from their late adulthood into their
elderly years. Two hundred and sixty eight Harvard undergraduates started,
(18:47):
only about twelve are still living, and they are in
their mid to late nineties. Four hundred fifty six inner
city boys started, and about sixty of them are left,
and they are around the age of ninety. Hundreds upon
hundreds of data points a nearly complete picture of health
and well being across many different life paths, and so
(19:10):
you're probably wondering what did the study find. Some of
what the study has found is absolutely no surprise to anyone.
We know that smoking is bad for you, and it
turns out in our study it was really bad for you.
We know that alcoholism is terrible. It takes a toll
on your health, you die earlier. It takes a toll
(19:30):
on your marriage, on your job, on your relationships. Again,
no surprise. What was the big surprise. It's all the
things we think make us happy, but don't. Wealth does
not make people happy. Having your material needs matt does
make you happy once you get there. Making more money
doesn't make you appreciably happier. But that's not the only
(19:54):
misconception we have about what makes for a happier life.
The other thing is achieving more at work. There's a
reason why we have this cliche. Nobody on their deathbed
wishes they spent more time at the office. It's a
shake because it's true. Our men, as they were looking
back on their lives as they were at the end
(20:15):
of their lives, said that the things they were proudest
of were building a family, raising healthy children, having a
strong relationship with a partner, teaching their grandchildren to sail.
I mean, these were the things that they talked about.
They didn't talk about what they'd achieved at work or
how much money they'd made. Bob studies showed that the
(20:36):
keys to happiness don't involve what we often put time
into to become happier, financial achievements so we can buy
cool stuff or working harder to achieve more in our careers.
In fact, his results show that health and happiness often
comes from the things we sacrifice, while spending more hours
at work. The surprise was in our finding that one
(20:58):
of the strongest predictors of staying healthy and happy in
your life was having good relationships with other people. We
think of happiness, we often think of self care, but
Bob's study shows that focusing only on yourself and turning
too far inwards is a recipe not only for misery,
(21:19):
but for physical health problems as well. We didn't believe
it because initially we thought that there couldn't be this
strong of a connection between mind and body. How could
the quality of your relationships determine whether you got Type
two diabetes, or whether you got arthritis, or whether you
(21:41):
got coary artery disease. That seemed unfathomable. The big message
of Bob's study is that we consider many of the
things that actually matter for happiness to be well unfathomable,
or at least way lower on the priority list than
they really should be according to the science. And if
you'll listen to the rest of the episodes in this season,
(22:01):
you'll see the same pattern time and time again. Our
minds just suck at predicting the kinds of things that
will really make us happier, and that means we end
up putting a lot of time and effort into improving
our happiness using strategies that just aren't going to succeed.
I can't stress enough how amazing the Harvard study is.
It delved deeply into the lives of some of America's
(22:23):
most privileged and some of its most vulnerable, and pretty
much proved that the rich and powerful have no monopoly
on well being. That may go against your intuition, but
it's true. Though there is a caveat. When I ask
Sonia Lubramerski to weigh in on I would add that
everything that I say applies to let's say, the average
(22:43):
listener of this podcast. That's you know, people who are
already relatively comfortable. You know they're not in dire straits.
If your situation is very bad, if you live in poverty,
or if you're in an abusive relationship, or if you
live in a war zone and Yemen, then of course
changes your life. Circumstances are going to make a huge
difference to your happiness. If you're a circumstances are truly awful,
(23:06):
then fixing them really will improve your well being. But
I'm guessing your circumstances really aren't all that bad. You
average podcast listener probably aren't in the kinds of awful
situations Sonya is talking about, and that means that changing
your circumstances won't help in the way you think. Note
that this doesn't mean your circumstances are perfect. All of
(23:27):
us have situations we want to change, ones we think
will make us happier. I'm not happy now, but I'll
be happy when I moved to that city I've always
wanted to live in, or when I get married, or
when I have a baby, or when I get that
job I've always wanted, or when I get a raise.
The idea that happiness lies in money or sort of
changing your life in some way, doing something new in
(23:48):
your life, I mean, I think that is a very
strong idea again, kind of rooted in this this concept
that we always want change in progress, even if we
really know that it's a myth. Overcoming the strong but
mistaken idea is what this podcast is all about. But
the second step is harder. Happiness doesn't evolve changing everything
in your life around. That's the good news, But as
(24:09):
we'll explore after the break, there is some bad news too.
It's not easy. It takes work. It's kind of like
if you want to lose weight or would be healthier, right,
you need to change your diet or go to the gym,
and same thing with happiness. The happiness lab will be
right back. Right now, I'm out of breath because I'm
(24:36):
on my daily hike at a local state park. I
always love going on the hike. After the fact, it's
usually not what I'm thinking when my alarm goes off
every morning when I throw my sneakers on, my brain
tells me that I'd be happier staying in bed or
even sitting on the couch or watching the news. But
I know the science, and the science shows that I'll
be healthier, more fit, and probably even happier if I
(25:00):
get a bit of cardio and every morning. So I
try to get in a hike every day, or at
least as often as I can, even though my mind
often otherwise. The science of happiness works a lot like
the science of exercise. It's not enough to know what
you need to do. You've got to go and do it.
You need to put that science into practice, and you
(25:23):
need to practice it regularly. I generally say that I'm
about an eight on a ten point scale. I think
I'm pretty happy. Even a happiness expert like Sony Lubra
Murski knows firsthand that reaching an eight and staying there
takes conscious effort. I do have to work at it.
I mean, a classic example is sometimes I get together
(25:43):
with friends and it's so great, it's so much fun,
and we think, why don't we do this more often?
You know? But then it takes like months for us
to sort of get together again and to plan it.
And so even when we know what will make us
really happy, we still kind of don't do it as
often as we should. I have to kind of put
it in my to do list to make sure that
I create times that I spend with those people. So
(26:04):
it's a very deliberate act. It'd be so nice if
happiness came easily, like we hang out with a friend
once and we're happy for good. But that's just not
how human wellbeing works. Women's magazines will often call me
and they'll say, can you give me some five minute
happiness strategies? And I'm like, there are no five minute
happiness strategies. It's true with any kind of goal in life, right,
(26:26):
it's not going to happen in five minutes on Thursday, right,
It's going to be you know, maybe a lifelong effort
and so yeah. So like creating habits, I guess would
be one way to put it that it's important to
create habits that you maintain over the course of your life.
There's no quick fix for happiness, but science shows there
is a fix if you put in consistent time and
(26:46):
effort if you want to become happier. There now a
number of sort of strategies are different kind of daily
activities that people can engage in that they've been tested
in research. We just need to pick the strategy that
works for us. If you listen to the rest of
the episodes in this season, you'll learn a bunch about
these sorts of activities what my students and I call rewirements,
(27:07):
habits that science has shown really can change your well
being over time. The ones that I tend to focus
on and actually quite a bitter we start just focusing
on our gratitude and kindness or what's called pro social behavior.
Those are two activities or you can call them strategies
that have been shown to make people happier. But it's
not just gratitude and kindness. Science shows us lots of
(27:29):
really simple habits we can add to our lives to
feel better. We can take more time to connect with
the people we care about, or just chat with a
stranger we meet on our commute. We can try to
reduce the exhausting choices we make on a daily basis.
We can count our blessings. We can become more accepting
both of the bad emotions we feel and the obstacles
we face in life. We can stop focusing on the
(27:50):
end goal and think more about the journey. Now, if
you're like me when I first encountered these ideas, you
might have the same reaction that our friend Clement had
in his letter. You might think these strategies I just
mentioned sound like hippie dippy crap, because to be fair,
they do sound like hippie dippy crap. You gradudate seems
really hokey. You know, counting your blessings, Oh, I'm so
(28:11):
grateful for XYZ. The problem is, as hokey as these
strategies sound, they work. That's what the science shows it
used to be why I started out. You know, there
are all these selful books that are'm based on nothing
like they're just based on anecdotal evidence and people's opinions.
We can't just look at anecdotal evidence, right, You know,
your cousin told you that they tried it and it works.
(28:32):
And they're now tons and tons of experiments, randomized control
trials that are sort of trying to test whether you
can get people to kind of change their thinking or
change their behaviors in some smaller medium ways in daily
life that could impact happiness. The problem is most people
on the street don't know this stuff, and I wanted
to change that. I wanted people to hear what pure
(28:55):
reviewed scientific research shows about becoming happier. Starting with my
Yale students. All right, let's get started. In the spring
of twenty eighteen, I had a chance to see if
teaching my students about the science of happiness could lead
them to live happier life. Welcome everybody to Psychology and
the Good Life. I expected about thirty people to take
(29:16):
the class, but I wound up with a lot more
guinea pigs than I expect it. I'm a little bit
surprised to see as many of you are here as
our here, but that's made almost twelve hundred students enrolled
in the class nearly one out of every four students
at Yale. The class was so big we had to
teach it in the university concert hall. That tiny polite
ripple of applause you might get at the end of
(29:36):
a lecture, well it turned into this. It was an
amazing experience, but it was also a logistical nightmare. I
had to find twenty eight graduate students just to help
me grade the student exams, and we needed to book
thirteen different classrooms all over campus just to host a
(29:59):
simple midterm. I jogged over two miles just to get
to all the students before the exam ended. And that
was the commotion that came before all the us started.
Each night, students have happiness, homework, meditate for ten minutes,
sleep eight hours, do something kind, and write down five
things that you're grateful for. But don't think it's an
(30:21):
easy egg. By midterm, I had a major television news
crew filming each and every one of my lectures. It
was a lot of pressure, But I bet I know
what you're asking. Did it work? Did the students get happier? Well?
The answer is I don't know. At least I'm not
sure from a scientific perspective. Anecdotally, I have dozens of
(30:43):
emails from students telling me the class changed their lives.
But the honest truth is that I was completely blindsided
by the size of the class, which means I didn't
get the logistics in place to do the rigorous surveys
that would really nail my students progress down. In retrospect,
I can say that this oversight was really, really freaking dumb.
Life doesn't usually give second chances for a scientific opportunity
(31:05):
like this, but Yale decided there was a need for
this class to be shared even more broadly, so we
put it online completely for free. This time, we could
track people's progress a bit more rigorously, but the question
remained would it work. My manager said, hey, we have
this new course with Lori Santo. She's working on it.
It's going to be about wellness. What do you think
(31:25):
about working on it? And of course I felt like
I had no choice in the matter, but even if
I did, I willingly and gladly accepted. This is Belinda Platt,
my colleague at the Yale poor Vous Center for Teaching
and Learning. Belinda has been my partner for the past
two years as I've tried to figure out the best
way to teach people around the world about the science
of happiness. Belinda's amazing. Her hard work is a lot
(31:48):
of what's made the online class so successful, but neither
of us expected the response we got. I had no
idea how popular it would become at all, just because
none of the other courses that we've worked on made
such a splash. The enrollment is well above three hundred thousand,
which is super cool. Yeah, that's pretty crazy, but like
(32:09):
with my nerdy scientists had, I really want numbers. And
one of the craziest things about the course is actually
like the data that we're getting. When students enroll in
our online class, they take a standard well being survey.
The specific one we use is called Perma. It's a
twenty three question survey that measures people's overall happiness, their
mood levels, their sense of accomplishment, and even their sense
(32:31):
of meaning. Students are asked to take the Perma quiz
before they start the class, and at the end of
the course ten weeks later, excitingly, we just got our
first round of data in over a thousand subjects. We
finally have a scientific measure of whether learning about the
science of happiness can change people's well being? What did
we find? We just have the graphs here, the papers
(32:54):
moving around, and the data are amazing, frankly, so on
every different measure, from positivity to engagement to meaning to
just general happiness, people get better. The gains are really huge.
Like on a ten point scaleple are going up an
entire whole point in terms of how much meaning they
feel like they have in their life. But on the
happiness measure, people are starting it about you know, a
(33:17):
six point five on the happiness measure, which is you know, reasonable,
and then after the class people are saying, I'm about
a seven point nine, which is so cool. The awesome
thing about these data is it suggests people can change.
Like this is a ten week class and people are
bumping up a whole point on a happiness measure, which
is incredible. Yeah, but why is the course changing people's lives.
It's not just that people learn about the science of
(33:38):
well being. Like when we first started teaching the live
version of the class at Yale, the Yale students had
this hashtag hardest class at Yale, And that was not
because the class was hard, like in terms of degrading
but it was really hard in terms of actually doing
the practices, because like, it's one thing to know that
you're supposed to do this stuff, but it's another to
actually put it into practice. I think that's one of
the ironies. Well, what I want to know what you're
(33:59):
working on. Yeah, but Linda's question caused me to stammer
a bit. I've been so busy with this podcast. I've
been slipping in my own practices. Even that daily hike
had turned into a weekly hike or bi weekly. I mean,
this is the challenge, is the thing we talked about
in the course. I know all the stuff that I'm
supposed to do, but I'm definitely not the like poster
(34:20):
child for like putting into practice all the time, which
is embarrassing as the person who's teaching the course and
like now running this new podcast. That's right, that's the
dirty secret. Even yours truly has trouble sticking to these
new positive habits. Human nature and our lying minds makes
changing our behavior super super hard. That's also why Belinda
(34:40):
and I spend so much time chatting about all the
reviews from the class, to keep reminding ourselves that this
stuff works if you stick with it. I love the
ones where they're like, I didn't really believe this, but
then it totally worked. Those are the best. Don't you
have a favorite one that said, like I thought this
was like hippie dippy. Yeah, that's actually one from a
(35:02):
letter I got from a learner named Clement. I think
he said it was like hippie dippy crap. But you know, right, Clement.
It had been a few months since I'd received his letter,
and I put off contacting him because I know how
hard it's been for me to stick with these habits.
Given where Clement started off, I was worried he might
have fallen back into some negative stuff, But in the
(35:23):
end I decided to phone him up. Hello, Hello, is
this Clement? Hello Loie. The international connection was kind of crappy.
I had to shout a lot, how are you? Can
you hear me? I can hear you better? Yeah, I'm good,
very good, very good. But despite the connection, our chat
(35:45):
was fantastic. Clement had stuck to his new habits, mostly
because he got the important message of this episode, happiness
takes work, good never keep off. But you're calls really
helped me. Mercy, Mercy, we appreciate it. Thank you, talk
(36:06):
to you soon, Bye bye, bye bye. I spoke with
Clement for probably half an hour, and we covered a
lot of ground in our conversation. But the thing he
said that stayed with me the most was that he
knew being happy wasn't going to be easy. It was
going to take a lot of effort to maintain, but
he didn't plan to give up trying, and that, for me,
(36:27):
at least, was pretty inspirational. If you're now ready for
the specifics, if you want to learn more about what
those happy people really are doing to feel better, then
I hope you'll come along for a journey over this season.
In each of the episodes that follow, we'll take a
(36:48):
deep dive into a single mistake that our minds make
about how to really achieve happiness. We'll explore lots and
lots of simple habits you can begin now to improve
your well being. We'll get to nerd out together and
learn more about all the studies that show why these
habits work. Plus you'll meet lots of folks who put
these tips into practice, an Olympic medalist who didn't fall
(37:09):
prey to social comparison, an advertising exect who got healthier
by ditching the silly choices she makes every day, a
Grammy winning musician who's fighting to make our lives more
social again, a star golfer with the secret to avoiding
unwanted thoughts, and a Navy seal who realized that her
training and negative thinking might be more powerful off the battlefield.
(37:30):
Simply put, it's going to be awesome. So I hope
I'll see you back here for the second episode of
The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. If you
enjoyed the show, I'd be super grateful if you could
spread the word by leaving a rating and a review.
(37:50):
It really does help other listeners find us, and don't
forget to tell your friends. If you want to learn
more about the science you heard on the show, then
check out our website Happiness Lab dot fm. You can
also sign up for our newsletter to get exclusive content.
The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley.
The show was mixed and mastered by Evan Viola and
(38:11):
edited by Julia Barton, fact checking by Joseph Friedman, and
our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks
to Mia La Belle, Carly mcgliorre Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor,
Maya Kanig, and Jacob Weisberg. The Happiness Lab is brought
to you by Pushkin Industries and ME doctor Laurie Sanders
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com