May 4, 2020 • 29 mins
Reply All hosts PJ and Alex love to trade gripes. Their complaints about the minor annoyances of modern life make for great audio, but are the podcasters making a classic mistake?
We all like to complain - thinking that venting does us good - but Dr Laurie Santos explains to PJ and Alex that they should gripe less if they want to be happier, and sets them a task to say something nice.
For an even deeper dive into the research we talk about in the show visit happinesslab.fm
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. So did he tell you what we're doing today? No,
I did tell you more than I usually do. You
told me a bit. You didn't tell me much. Grapes.
Something about grapes, Yeah, something, that's what I remember, something
about grapes. I'm chatting with PJ Vote and Alex Goldman,
the co host of the podcast reply All. It's really
(00:36):
hard to describe. We do all sorts of crazy stories
about things that's out true but our true, and it's
a wonderful podcast. Pj's right, you should listen to reply All.
It's about the Internet, modern life, and how to survive it. Plus,
PG and Alex are a great pair. They're clever, funny,
and not above using the occasional curse word, as you'll
probably hear in the next half hour. But a real
(00:56):
highlight of reply All for me is when Alex gets
going on his favorite topic, graping. There's like this pink
mystery scuff on our floor and I'm like, what is that?
Why can't I get it off? It's making me so
mad and like, no sane person should care about it.
I'm glad I'm work married to you in that life,
married to you. I feel like we wouldn't live together
a while. Alex is particularly into griping. It's a way
(01:19):
that he likes to bond with his listeners because, if
we're being honest, griping feels kind of fun. I mean,
I like to gripe, My best friends like to gripe,
My family likes to gripe. It's funny, and griping lets
us connect with the people around us. I one day
some we were the first thing. We were like. We
hate all the same things, and most of the time,
venting our frustration seems to make us feel better. Or
(01:41):
does it is griping really all it's cracked up to be?
Or is this yet another spot? Or our mind is
leading us astray. Our minds are constantly telling us what
to do to be happy. But what if our minds
are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us,
leading us away from what will really make us happy.
The good news is that understanding the science of the
(02:02):
mind can point us all back in the right direction.
You're listening to the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.
Gripes became a regular part of Reply All by Necessity.
One of the show's early sponsors was a website hosting
company and PG and Alex had to deal with a
(02:22):
problem that many podcasters face, how to make an ad
for a company like that that sounds fun to listen
to and not super cheesy. And then at some point
we realized Alex is a habitual griper, and I think
I was saying that you should have a website where
it's just you're complaining. Then it went from just Alex's
gripes to taking like listener gripes, and the listener grapes
are great because they're almost like a picture of what
(02:44):
the world is like in a given moment. Like there's
like a real feeling to like summer gripes, and like
when world events are really anxiety producing, everyone seems to
be like griping in the same direction. The way the
website works is people just submit grapes and they end
up on a spreadsheet that I can go through whenever
I choose. As it happens, Alex has his laptop open
in his studio. The spreadsheet is huge. I certainly didn't
(03:05):
expect it to become what it is because we do
one of the ads every three to four months, but
I would say probably twenty to twenty five people leave
grapes on there a day. Really, maybe more. I didn't
realize there's that much. There are over thirty thousand grapes
on my spreadsheet. I didn't know. I like to check
the reply all recently submitted grapes because they're pretty funny.
(03:26):
And one recent complaint really spoke to me. Stickers on fruit. Oh,
because a grape isn't just a complaint, like a grape
is a specific kind of complaint, and some complaints don't
make good grapes like that, Like a grape has certain qualities.
Talk to me, Alex, how would you how would you
put it? I would describe it as something that is
annoying enough to complain about, but mostly not annoying enough
(03:50):
to do something about. Yes, yeah, yeah, and it's nice.
If they're like sort of good fiction, they should be
highly specific and also universal at the same time, Like
sticker on fruit is really good. Here's a grape we
got today at eleven fifty eight am. This is like
a perfect example of one washing my hands after cracking
eggs and then having hands are two wet to pinch
and sprinkle salt on your eggs. That's a good gripe.
(04:12):
It's really good. Yeah, PJ, you said that Alex isn't
a griping like, so why do you like the gripe
being so much? I think that probably the strength I
have is that I don't hold anything in. I'm just
like a constant pressure release valve. It's just like a
way to get it out of my head and so
that the you know, ahead of steam doesn't build up
(04:33):
and I don't become like miserable. It's interesting that you
say that, because I think sometimes that's how it works.
Other times, as a long time Alex could an observer
an expert. Sometimes I feel like there's a type of
complaining you'll do where it gets howt your system is gone.
There's a type of complaining you do where it's actually
just like a chorus to a song where every time
you sing it, you sing it like slightly louder. But
(04:54):
it's not like PJ only has to hear Alex's louder gripes.
There's also the Internet, which PJ describes as a complain
box for things that don't have complain boxes. We complain
on Twitter, we complain on Reddit, we complain on WhatsApp.
Any site or service that allows to post a comment
seems to attract gripes like moths to a flame, But
that raises a question. Why do we choose to share
(05:16):
our gripes or willingly read the gripes of total strangers.
I think one thing, it's just like you don't feel
alone in the world. You're like everyone's encountering this. Like
I have this theory that when you love somebody, you're like, oh,
they're so nice, they're so great. And people describe the
people they love very vaguely, and when you dislike somebody,
you're like, he's got this weird little walk, like he
(05:36):
thinks he's the Prince of Tennessee, and like blah blah
blah blah. And like what I like about graping complains
it is like you are noticing the world, you know
what I mean. Griping makes you present. It makes you
very very present, And like I can deal with anybody
complaining as long as they're funny about it. And it's
like you're taking the shit of the world and turning
it at least into like an observable moment or something.
(05:57):
Gripes are a guilty pleasure. They're like sugary candy. We
know we shouldn't really indulge too much, but we just
can't resist, And just like eating too much candy, it's
pretty clear griping too much has a downside. Well, everyone
thinks I'm a cranky asshole. Yeah, I don't think everyone
thinks you're a cranky asshole. Sarah has several friends who
just call me grumps, so oh okay, yeah everybody thinks
(06:20):
a cranky asshole. Yeah, I think you can make you
unpleasant company. In the last season of The Happiness Lab,
we talked about the need to curate our emotional lives
to make sure we're controlling those feelings that we're exposed to.
Flirting with gripes can demonstrate how witty and cool we are,
but recreational complaining can sometimes turn into a habit, which
means we're constantly surrounded by negative feelings. We used to
(06:43):
work with somebody who was like a high level constant graper,
and it wasn't like stickers on fruit. It was like
everything sucks. And I remember reaching a point where it's
like I can't talk to this person anymore because either
I have to argue with them all the time or
I have to see things the way they see them.
And if I see things the way they see them,
I won't like my life anymore. I'm dying to know
who you're talking about. Oh okay, yeah, but literally it
(07:08):
was like, I can't talk to you anymore. Like I can't,
I don't even want to make small talk, which I've
never that's the associopath thing to do. I've never done
that before. And it was a small office. Yeah, it
was a thing where you'd be like, hey, it's a
beautiful day out and then they'd be like, yeah, well
the sun was burning the back of my neck. I
was like, yeah, man, even relative to me, this is wild.
That was another level. We all have relationships that center
(07:28):
around swapping gripes and grievances. I mean, there are definitely
certain people in my life who I know I'll covetch
with as soon as I see them. And if I'm
being honest about how I end up feeling during and
after those gripe sessions, it's usually not great. It often
ups my stress levels. But the biggest downside to all
this cavetching, at least according to science, is one of
(07:49):
our minds can't see it. Turns out there is an
opportunity cost to griping, there's something else we could be
doing instead that allows for better social bonding and a
lot more happiness. The Happiness Lab will be back in
a moment. Certainly, there's that social commiseration component to it, right,
(08:24):
There's a bonding that goes on when we share complaints.
I'm talking with doctor Robert Emmons, a professor of psychology
at UC Davis. We're chatting about the upsides of griping.
There's some social benefits. Certainly, it can help connect us
together kind of a shared collective grievance, and that can
feel good. There's also the you know, the physiology. I
think it feels good to express the emotional least temporarily,
but in the long run it actually doesn't service very well.
(08:47):
Robert worries that the benefits of griping depends a lot
on the kind of cavetching we're engaging in. Some are
more detrimental to well being than others, and some are
perhaps a little bit more facilitative or actually can be
adaptive if it results in problem solving or insight. It
turns out that griping for the sake of griping doesn't
make us feel good, but when we express our frustrations
(09:08):
in order to process us a bad situation, to make
sense of it and find a solution that can have
a more positive effect. When people write about a negative
event that happened to them and they express their emotions
about it, that's not as beneficial as getting some insight
for why the event happened in the first place, or
now what a person can do about it. So you
could say that starts with a complaint, certainly noticing what's
(09:30):
going wrong, but the goal is always to move beyond that.
The problem is we don't always take our griping to
that next level. In fact, if you're a call that
was pretty much how PJ and Alex defined gripes earlier.
Something that is annoying enough to complain about, but mostly
not annoying enough to do something about. But not doing
(09:50):
anything about our gripes isn't even the worst part of
our urge to complain. The biggest issue is that we
get the benefits of griping all wrong. Our minds lie
to us about how good it will make us feel. Said,
it's if shown complaining or listening to people complain has
an effect both on the listener as well as the complainer.
It's another case where we do things which are bad
(10:11):
for us, but we don't realize that. Robert examined this
in a classic study back in two thousand and three.
He had college students fill out a weekly survey for
a couple months. He asked a bunch of questions about
the subjects, while being their overall mood, how grateful they
were feeling, and even whether they engaged in healthy habits
like exercise. Some students were then asked to list five
(10:32):
mundane events that had happened during the week, but other
students were asked to complain not about the big things
in life, mind you, just the small stuff, the stickers
on fruit level problems. They had the typical every day
guarden variety types of hassles related to roommates and finances
and parking problems and professors. Not me, of course, but
some of the other ones, of course, Robert. But did
(10:54):
giving students the chance to complain about these little annoyances
improve their mood over the ten weeks? The answer was striking.
Griping didn't help at all. If anything, people who talked
about their hassles had a worse time. For example, the
griping group wound up exercising almost forty five minutes less
than those in the control group. But Robert included one
additional group of participants in this study. Subjects in this
(11:17):
third condition showed improved well being relative to the Hassle's
condition and even higher levels of gratitude, more frequent exercise,
and fewer physical symptoms like headaches and stomach problems. What
were the people in this well being supercharged group asked
to do? They were told to think back over the
past week and write down up to five things that
they were thankful for. They were asked to do the
(11:40):
opposite of griping, focus on things you're grateful for. Robert
called this the blessings condition. In this and lots of
other studies, Robert has found that counting your blessings leads
to a host of positive outcomes. I used to be
able to keep track of all the findings, but now
it seems like almost every day and in every way,
we're learning more and more ways in which gratitude works
that it drives good outcomes in people's lives. So, whether
(12:03):
you're talking about emotional health, relational satisfaction, physical well being,
you see that gratitude matters The stats that Robert cites
in his book, The Little Book of Gratitude are pretty incredible.
People who count their blessings show twenty three percent lower
levels of stress hormones like cortisol. They reduce their dietary
(12:24):
fat intake by as much as twenty five percent. People
suffering from chronic pain show a ten percent improvement in
sleep quality and depression levels that are nineteen percent lower.
Science shows that gratitude also increases our resilience. In contrast
to griping, focusing on the good things in life seems
to be a strategy that allows you to take action
(12:46):
in order to fix the bad things. We know from
the studies that that gratitude helps us recover from loss
and trauma. It helps us to deal with the slow
drip of every day's stress, as well as the massive
personal upheavals and the face of suffering and pain and
loss and trials and tribulations. Gratitude is absolutely sensual. It's
part of our psychological immune system. But the biggest benefit
(13:08):
of counting your blessings, according to Robert, is that it
connects us with other people. Yes, that one good thing
that griping gives us, we can get that kind of
relationship boost from gratitude too, right, absolutely, I mean one
of the benefits of gratitude is that it connects us
so deeply with other people. And a colleague of mind
social psychologist at a Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Sarah Algo,
(13:30):
talks about gratitude as basically the interpersonal emotion. It is
the find, remind, and bind emotion. Sarah and her colleagues
have found that practicing gratitude can completely shift people's mindset
about a personal relationship. Taking time to think gratefully about
a friend or partner makes you spontaneously notice more positive
qualities about that person. It makes it easier to remember
(13:53):
happier memories with that person, and drives us to spend
more time with them. And all of these little mindset
shifts wind up making us feel more connected. Sarah calls
gratitude a booster shot for our relationships. The positive evidence
for focusing on the good things in life are pretty clear,
but it's still not something that comes naturally to many
(14:13):
of us. If you're going to express sentiment online, being
like I hate a nice sandwich, I'm really grateful to
be alive today is like it comes across I think
as well dopey. I think I think the problem with
niceness and goodness and happiness as express online is like
it can feel you feel like you're bragging. It can
feel like you can feel insincere. Enguelan since here, yeah, yeah,
(14:33):
PG and Alex kind of nailed it here. Gratitude does
feel a little dopey. Robert knows that if he's going
to get us all signed up to that blessing's condition,
he's going to have to change that attitude. I like
to say that gratitude really is an old fashioned idea,
but the science makes it brand new. In fact, we
know now from the science that gratitude actually does deliver
(14:54):
on its promise and on its potential. To paraphrase Robert,
gratitude seems dopey, but it works. Getting past the cheese
takes effort, but it's definitely effort worth doing. Part of
why I do this, you know, part of why I
study gratitude and try to con people that gratitude is
the best approach to life is just to convince myself,
is to remind myself that every day I need to
(15:15):
practice gratitude. Even though Robert's an expert on this. It
didn't always come easy. I was always you know, planning ahead.
I was always you know, the person who said, Okay,
well I'll be happy when such and such happens, when
I you know, get into college, when I get into
graduate school, and when I get tenued, when I get
I was always delaying or putting off happiness. And I
(15:36):
think it was because I wasn't grateful enough for my
current situation. That I had everything I needed perfectly to
be happy and to be grateful, to be content in
the moment, but I was always looking for something bigger
and better and brighter, you know, down the road. Doing
these sorts of you know, interviews, writing the books, doing
the research, giving the talks is just really almost like
(15:57):
a personal journey for me to become more grateful. So
for people who are kind of in the in the
complaining camp or like, you know, think that that's that's
focusing on the hassles is where it is any last
advice for them to get on the gratitude bandwagon. So
I think a really good thing to do is just
take one daily hassle, some area that you struggle with,
(16:17):
and try to view that through a lens of gratitude.
Take the bad thing that you are most likely by
default to complain about, and see if you can extract
at least one benefit from that bad thing. That's something
that anyone can do, whether or not we complain by
nature or by practice. I think you know, once we
start doing that, we can see that can shift us
(16:38):
that the house. We're not going to go away. We're
always going to have those, but at least we'll have
a backdrop by which we can view those with some
degree of hope and trust in the future and positivity
after the break. We're going to take Robert's advice to
the next level because science shows that there's one way
to experience gratitude that doesn't just boost your well being
in the moment, It can make you happier for a long,
(16:58):
long time, like for over a month. I wanted to
try out these bold scientific claims directly, and I knew
just the subjects. You guys don't mind being guinea pigs,
nor the Happiness lab will be right back. This exercise, allegedly,
(17:21):
according to science, can boost your mood not just for
the rest of the day, but for over a whole month. Really. Yeah.
In two thousand and five, psychologist Marty Seligman and his
colleagues recruited over five hundred people to try a bunch
of different happiness interventions. Simple behavior is designed to quickly
boost well being, but Seligman also wanted to test whether
(17:41):
these interventions caused sustained improvements and happiness and mood like
ones that lasted for weeks and weeks. One of these
interventions was called a gratitude visit. Here's how it works.
You think of someone you care about a lot, someone
you're really grateful for, but also someone you've never really thanked.
Then you sit down and write that person a genuine,
(18:02):
heartfelt letter. You explain why that person has had such
a meaningful impact on your life. And when you're done,
rather than mailing the letter or sending a quick email,
you ask to meet them in person. And so when
I went to interview PG and Alex, I just happened
to bring along some happiness lab notepaper. We have a
little project for you all. Are we doing gratitude journalism?
(18:25):
Oh my god, here's your prompt. I want you to
each write a quick letter of thanks to each other.
You want to express your thanks in a way of
something you've not expressed to each other, and so you're
just going to scribble some stuff down, Okay. Well, PG
and Alex are working on their letters. I wanted to
dig a bit more into the science of how this
intervention works and why, like PG and Alex, many of
(18:46):
us seem to dread openly expressing gratitude. I'm Nicholas Eppily.
You can call me Nick. I'm a professor of behavioral
science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.
I study mind reading for a living. I study how
people think about each other's thought and some beliefs and attitudes,
and mostly how people screw that up and misunderstand each
other a lot. Nick does lots of experiments in which
he forces people to do stuff they think is going
(19:06):
to feel really awkward, but winds up making and feel
happier than they expect. If you listen to Season one,
you might remember the guy who forced people to talk
to strangers on a train. That was Nick. You give
somebody else a compliment on a given day, you could
sit down and write a gratitude letter to somebody else.
And so what's of interest for me is a psychologist,
is why aren't we doing those things? Writing gratitude letters
(19:29):
we know makes people feel happier. Most people are listening
to your podcast today didn't do that today. Question is
why not? Why didn't you do that if that makes
you feel good? The answer is that we just get
the consequences of expressing gratitude all wrong. When participants here
they need to sincerely convey their thanks to someone's face,
(19:50):
they usually have a pretty strong reaction. They're thinking, oh
my god, this is going to feel cheesy. One of
the things that we find here, like we do in
so many other contexts, is that people just underestimate the
positive impact that their social engagement will have on other people,
and therefore it makes them reluctant to do it, which
causes them to miss out on opportunities that would make
(20:10):
them feel good too. Nick didn't experiment asking subjects to
do a gratitude letter, but before they started, he asked
them to make some predictions. How happy will the recipient
be about getting the letter, how surprised will they be,
and how awkward will they feel? I husked PG and
Alex the same thing. Actually talk through what it's feeling
like if you're trying to write it stressful and I
(20:31):
can hear Alex writing so more stressful. I just wrote
so far, Oh guy, dear Alex M. How are you feeling,
Alex weird? Because I feel like I'm gonna have to
read it. I wish I right about that there's some possibility. Yeah,
people say nice things to me like actually shuts my
(20:52):
brain down, like I can't respond, like I don't know
how to respond, just like public expressions of gratitude and kindness,
they just make me feel nervous, like they make me
feel vulnerable. How do you think PJS going to react
to the letter? PG is going to do a thing,
(21:12):
this thing that he always does, which is his eyes
will get wide and he's like, oh, that's really nice,
thank you. That's fucked up. I got you pegged son
on a scale of one not really that impressed to
ten he's really touched. Where is he going to be?
Probably an eight PG at a scale of one to ten.
How do you think Alex is gonna feel after this?
(21:33):
I think also probably around an eight right, probably higher? No,
probably about Yeah. I can't newly wait to game him
as well as he canna do meet Like, I don't
know what is Maybe I'll say thanks Bud. I wouldn't
say bud. You say bit a lot times when you're touched.
So those are PG and Alex's predictions, but Nick's experimental
data suggests they'll both be wrong. We found that the
(21:56):
letter writers consistently underestimate how positive the recipients are going
to feel. That the letter writers underestimate how surprised the
recipient will be about the content, underestimate how happy the
recipient will feel. They predict recipients will be happy recipients
are even happier than that. They're basically at the ceiling
of our measure, And they overestimate how awkward the recipient
(22:17):
is going to feel. When we think about sincerely expressing
thanks to someone, we assume it's going to feel weird
for everyone involved, But that's totally wrong. People love hearing
our gratitude. And just put yourself in the shoes of
a recipient for a minute. You've got somebody who has
valued something that you did for years and hasn't told
(22:38):
you about this, And you know, the more it matters
to them, the more depth they go into, how does
it feel to receive something like that? Really really really good? Right?
And every professor I know somewhere in their office has
a collection of gratitude letters that they've received from students. Everybody.
(23:01):
Mine is right next to my office. Choeah, Mine's in
my bedroom drawer. Actually there you go. Yeah, everybody keeps those,
I promise you. So why are we so bad at this?
Like even I, as a psychologist, just don't get the
intuition when I think about it, that it's going to
be as meaningful. I think it's going to be awkward. Like,
where does this misconception come from? It's crazy, It's not crazy,
(23:22):
it's psychology. It's perspective. So that's the big problem here.
So in all of these social interactions, you've got two
minds going on. You've got the mind of the agent,
the mind of the actor, the person who's starting the interaction,
person who's writing the letter or whatever it is. And
then you've got the mind of the person receiving the act.
And if we know anything in psychology, it's that bridging
(23:43):
those two minds is super hard. There's a gap there,
and the gap is between me writing it and you
reading it. Now, what's my perspective when I'm writing it?
So I'm having to come up with all the words,
and I'm revealing all this personal stuff, and I'm having
to get the words just right, and I'm you know,
I'm worried. Am I saying this sentence? Am I really
expressing what I feel? Am I articulating it just right?
(24:07):
Does that sound weird? I'm focused on all the words
that I'm saying, right, I'm focused on my competence. How
good of a letter writer? Am I? The sort of
competence focus is definitely what was playing out with the
reply all guys with a dash of mild competitiveness thrown
into the mix writing a fucking novel over there? Come on? Man, Wow,
(24:29):
it does kind of feel like a competition of who's
writing the most right now? And I will lie, yeah,
it feels awful done. Being them first doesn't mean you
did better. I know you're like the Q like finishes
the test right away and like walks out cartway ling
and then gets a d I'm saying such a nice shit.
(24:51):
Mat All you need is like two sentences. According to Nick,
Pugie and Alex need to relax. Their letters aren't going
to be graded like some AP English exam actors. Attend
to the words they're saying, to their competence and so
they're worried about it being awkward and weird and all
of that stuff. The recipients couldn't care us about that,
or don't care very much about that. They care about
(25:12):
the meaning of what you're saying, the warmth that you're conveying,
that you're reaching out to them and expressing gratitude, and
that is just super powerful. Oh my god, it's time
so the guys exchange their letters. Can you even read
my handwriting? Yeah, I'm sure I can. It's pretty bad.
Mine's pretty bad. Okay, PJ. Thank you for fielding all
(25:39):
the annoying HR stuff lately and for being sensitive to
my mental health struggles. I love working with you, even
though I even though you vaped too much, even though
I vaped too much. And it looks like it's signed
by Baba. It says Alex, I was supposed to be
a heart. Oh that's really nice. Fuck Ah. That's the
(26:05):
way that we deal with each other's coming us by'm
laughing at and mocking it. Fee it is christ all right,
here we go. Dear Alex, thank you for being a
friend and collaborator and weirdo partner in crime for the
past decade. You make me laugh more than anybody. And
I can't imagine going through the ups and downs of
this decade without you as my partner. Love you, buddy,
Thanks Bud. All right, quick skill One's ten. How are
(26:31):
you feeling like eight? Or nine? Yeah? More like nine? Yeah.
PG and Alex performed exactly like Nick's subjects. They knew
the letters were going to feel good, but they underestimated
just how good. And I thought they definitely seemed happier
after the activity. Yeah, it's nice. Now, in theory, if
(26:51):
I came back like a month later, you'd still be
like slightly more above baseline than you were. That's what
the data suggests. Really, yeah, which is crazy. That's crazy.
How much of a boost When Marty Seligman made his
test subjects read their gratitude letters, they showed a significant
bump in well being. They gained about five points on
a hundred point happiness survey known as the Steen Happiness Index.
(27:13):
But what's most impressive is that participants stayed boosted by
at least a few points on that test for an
entire month, which is kind of crazy. A whole month
just by reading a short little letter. Yeah, it's like
you just gave your antidepression medication like performance enhancing drug
for the podcast it. I'm not sure if these letters
are going to have a huge bump in their reply
(27:33):
all mood for weeks to come, but they definitely made
PJ and Alex a little happier during that interview, and
despite all their initial predictions, PJ and Alex ended up
leaving the experiment feeling more positive. We're good. That was awesome,
you guys. Our mind tells us that openly celebrating our
blessings or sincerely expressing our thanks to people will feel
(27:55):
awkward and weird. We think it'd be better to bond
with the people we care about in other ways, like
having a constant gripefest. But that intuition is wrong even
for expert level gripers, the ones like Alex, who can
make us really laugh when complain I had the DVD
from for like four months for like a year. Yeah,
that's a grape right there. The songs shows that the
(28:16):
cost are our constant gripe bing is bigger than we think.
We're getting ourselves and others all worked up without really
addressing the problems we face, but we're also missing out
on better ways to bond with the people around us
because we don't realize how good expressing our thanks will
make us feel. And so I, for one, I'm going
to try to take this evidence to heart. The next
(28:38):
time I'm at dinner with a friend. I'm going to
resist the urge to talk only about the annoying stuff
in life, and I'm going to scale back some of
my online gripe posting too. Instead, I'm going to take
a bit more time to focus on the blessings, starting
with the fact that you listen to my podcast. So
thanks podcast listener. I'm really proud that you're here, and
I hope that you'll join me for the next episode
(28:59):
of The Happiness Lab by Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness
Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley with
the help of Pete Naton. Our original music was composed
(29:20):
by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering by
Evan Viola. The show was edited by Sophie mckibbon and
fact checked by Joseph Fridman. Special thanks to mil Lavelle,
Carlie mcgliorre Heather Fame, Julia Barton, Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanag
Jacob Weisberg and my agent Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab
is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and by me,
(29:42):
doctor Laurie Santos,
Pushkin. So did he tell you what we're doing today? No,
I did tell you more than I usually do. You
told me a bit. You didn't tell me much. Grapes.
Something about grapes, Yeah, something, that's what I remember, something
about grapes. I'm chatting with PJ Vote and Alex Goldman,
the co host of the podcast reply All. It's really
(00:36):
hard to describe. We do all sorts of crazy stories
about things that's out true but our true, and it's
a wonderful podcast. Pj's right, you should listen to reply All.
It's about the Internet, modern life, and how to survive it. Plus,
PG and Alex are a great pair. They're clever, funny,
and not above using the occasional curse word, as you'll
probably hear in the next half hour. But a real
(00:56):
highlight of reply All for me is when Alex gets
going on his favorite topic, graping. There's like this pink
mystery scuff on our floor and I'm like, what is that?
Why can't I get it off? It's making me so
mad and like, no sane person should care about it.
I'm glad I'm work married to you in that life,
married to you. I feel like we wouldn't live together
a while. Alex is particularly into griping. It's a way
(01:19):
that he likes to bond with his listeners because, if
we're being honest, griping feels kind of fun. I mean,
I like to gripe, My best friends like to gripe,
My family likes to gripe. It's funny, and griping lets
us connect with the people around us. I one day
some we were the first thing. We were like. We
hate all the same things, and most of the time,
venting our frustration seems to make us feel better. Or
(01:41):
does it is griping really all it's cracked up to be?
Or is this yet another spot? Or our mind is
leading us astray. Our minds are constantly telling us what
to do to be happy. But what if our minds
are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us,
leading us away from what will really make us happy.
The good news is that understanding the science of the
(02:02):
mind can point us all back in the right direction.
You're listening to the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.
Gripes became a regular part of Reply All by Necessity.
One of the show's early sponsors was a website hosting
company and PG and Alex had to deal with a
(02:22):
problem that many podcasters face, how to make an ad
for a company like that that sounds fun to listen
to and not super cheesy. And then at some point
we realized Alex is a habitual griper, and I think
I was saying that you should have a website where
it's just you're complaining. Then it went from just Alex's
gripes to taking like listener gripes, and the listener grapes
are great because they're almost like a picture of what
(02:44):
the world is like in a given moment. Like there's
like a real feeling to like summer gripes, and like
when world events are really anxiety producing, everyone seems to
be like griping in the same direction. The way the
website works is people just submit grapes and they end
up on a spreadsheet that I can go through whenever
I choose. As it happens, Alex has his laptop open
in his studio. The spreadsheet is huge. I certainly didn't
(03:05):
expect it to become what it is because we do
one of the ads every three to four months, but
I would say probably twenty to twenty five people leave
grapes on there a day. Really, maybe more. I didn't
realize there's that much. There are over thirty thousand grapes
on my spreadsheet. I didn't know. I like to check
the reply all recently submitted grapes because they're pretty funny.
(03:26):
And one recent complaint really spoke to me. Stickers on fruit. Oh,
because a grape isn't just a complaint, like a grape
is a specific kind of complaint, and some complaints don't
make good grapes like that, Like a grape has certain qualities.
Talk to me, Alex, how would you how would you
put it? I would describe it as something that is
annoying enough to complain about, but mostly not annoying enough
(03:50):
to do something about. Yes, yeah, yeah, and it's nice.
If they're like sort of good fiction, they should be
highly specific and also universal at the same time, Like
sticker on fruit is really good. Here's a grape we
got today at eleven fifty eight am. This is like
a perfect example of one washing my hands after cracking
eggs and then having hands are two wet to pinch
and sprinkle salt on your eggs. That's a good gripe.
(04:12):
It's really good. Yeah, PJ, you said that Alex isn't
a griping like, so why do you like the gripe
being so much? I think that probably the strength I
have is that I don't hold anything in. I'm just
like a constant pressure release valve. It's just like a
way to get it out of my head and so
that the you know, ahead of steam doesn't build up
(04:33):
and I don't become like miserable. It's interesting that you
say that, because I think sometimes that's how it works.
Other times, as a long time Alex could an observer
an expert. Sometimes I feel like there's a type of
complaining you'll do where it gets howt your system is gone.
There's a type of complaining you do where it's actually
just like a chorus to a song where every time
you sing it, you sing it like slightly louder. But
(04:54):
it's not like PJ only has to hear Alex's louder gripes.
There's also the Internet, which PJ describes as a complain
box for things that don't have complain boxes. We complain
on Twitter, we complain on Reddit, we complain on WhatsApp.
Any site or service that allows to post a comment
seems to attract gripes like moths to a flame, But
that raises a question. Why do we choose to share
(05:16):
our gripes or willingly read the gripes of total strangers.
I think one thing, it's just like you don't feel
alone in the world. You're like everyone's encountering this. Like
I have this theory that when you love somebody, you're like, oh,
they're so nice, they're so great. And people describe the
people they love very vaguely, and when you dislike somebody,
you're like, he's got this weird little walk, like he
(05:36):
thinks he's the Prince of Tennessee, and like blah blah
blah blah. And like what I like about graping complains
it is like you are noticing the world, you know
what I mean. Griping makes you present. It makes you
very very present, And like I can deal with anybody
complaining as long as they're funny about it. And it's
like you're taking the shit of the world and turning
it at least into like an observable moment or something.
(05:57):
Gripes are a guilty pleasure. They're like sugary candy. We
know we shouldn't really indulge too much, but we just
can't resist, And just like eating too much candy, it's
pretty clear griping too much has a downside. Well, everyone
thinks I'm a cranky asshole. Yeah, I don't think everyone
thinks you're a cranky asshole. Sarah has several friends who
just call me grumps, so oh okay, yeah everybody thinks
(06:20):
a cranky asshole. Yeah, I think you can make you
unpleasant company. In the last season of The Happiness Lab,
we talked about the need to curate our emotional lives
to make sure we're controlling those feelings that we're exposed to.
Flirting with gripes can demonstrate how witty and cool we are,
but recreational complaining can sometimes turn into a habit, which
means we're constantly surrounded by negative feelings. We used to
(06:43):
work with somebody who was like a high level constant graper,
and it wasn't like stickers on fruit. It was like
everything sucks. And I remember reaching a point where it's
like I can't talk to this person anymore because either
I have to argue with them all the time or
I have to see things the way they see them.
And if I see things the way they see them,
I won't like my life anymore. I'm dying to know
who you're talking about. Oh okay, yeah, but literally it
(07:08):
was like, I can't talk to you anymore. Like I can't,
I don't even want to make small talk, which I've
never that's the associopath thing to do. I've never done
that before. And it was a small office. Yeah, it
was a thing where you'd be like, hey, it's a
beautiful day out and then they'd be like, yeah, well
the sun was burning the back of my neck. I
was like, yeah, man, even relative to me, this is wild.
That was another level. We all have relationships that center
(07:28):
around swapping gripes and grievances. I mean, there are definitely
certain people in my life who I know I'll covetch
with as soon as I see them. And if I'm
being honest about how I end up feeling during and
after those gripe sessions, it's usually not great. It often
ups my stress levels. But the biggest downside to all
this cavetching, at least according to science, is one of
(07:49):
our minds can't see it. Turns out there is an
opportunity cost to griping, there's something else we could be
doing instead that allows for better social bonding and a
lot more happiness. The Happiness Lab will be back in
a moment. Certainly, there's that social commiseration component to it, right,
(08:24):
There's a bonding that goes on when we share complaints.
I'm talking with doctor Robert Emmons, a professor of psychology
at UC Davis. We're chatting about the upsides of griping.
There's some social benefits. Certainly, it can help connect us
together kind of a shared collective grievance, and that can
feel good. There's also the you know, the physiology. I
think it feels good to express the emotional least temporarily,
but in the long run it actually doesn't service very well.
(08:47):
Robert worries that the benefits of griping depends a lot
on the kind of cavetching we're engaging in. Some are
more detrimental to well being than others, and some are
perhaps a little bit more facilitative or actually can be
adaptive if it results in problem solving or insight. It
turns out that griping for the sake of griping doesn't
make us feel good, but when we express our frustrations
(09:08):
in order to process us a bad situation, to make
sense of it and find a solution that can have
a more positive effect. When people write about a negative
event that happened to them and they express their emotions
about it, that's not as beneficial as getting some insight
for why the event happened in the first place, or
now what a person can do about it. So you
could say that starts with a complaint, certainly noticing what's
(09:30):
going wrong, but the goal is always to move beyond that.
The problem is we don't always take our griping to
that next level. In fact, if you're a call that
was pretty much how PJ and Alex defined gripes earlier.
Something that is annoying enough to complain about, but mostly
not annoying enough to do something about. But not doing
(09:50):
anything about our gripes isn't even the worst part of
our urge to complain. The biggest issue is that we
get the benefits of griping all wrong. Our minds lie
to us about how good it will make us feel. Said,
it's if shown complaining or listening to people complain has
an effect both on the listener as well as the complainer.
It's another case where we do things which are bad
(10:11):
for us, but we don't realize that. Robert examined this
in a classic study back in two thousand and three.
He had college students fill out a weekly survey for
a couple months. He asked a bunch of questions about
the subjects, while being their overall mood, how grateful they
were feeling, and even whether they engaged in healthy habits
like exercise. Some students were then asked to list five
(10:32):
mundane events that had happened during the week, but other
students were asked to complain not about the big things
in life, mind you, just the small stuff, the stickers
on fruit level problems. They had the typical every day
guarden variety types of hassles related to roommates and finances
and parking problems and professors. Not me, of course, but
some of the other ones, of course, Robert. But did
(10:54):
giving students the chance to complain about these little annoyances
improve their mood over the ten weeks? The answer was striking.
Griping didn't help at all. If anything, people who talked
about their hassles had a worse time. For example, the
griping group wound up exercising almost forty five minutes less
than those in the control group. But Robert included one
additional group of participants in this study. Subjects in this
(11:17):
third condition showed improved well being relative to the Hassle's
condition and even higher levels of gratitude, more frequent exercise,
and fewer physical symptoms like headaches and stomach problems. What
were the people in this well being supercharged group asked
to do? They were told to think back over the
past week and write down up to five things that
they were thankful for. They were asked to do the
(11:40):
opposite of griping, focus on things you're grateful for. Robert
called this the blessings condition. In this and lots of
other studies, Robert has found that counting your blessings leads
to a host of positive outcomes. I used to be
able to keep track of all the findings, but now
it seems like almost every day and in every way,
we're learning more and more ways in which gratitude works
that it drives good outcomes in people's lives. So, whether
(12:03):
you're talking about emotional health, relational satisfaction, physical well being,
you see that gratitude matters The stats that Robert cites
in his book, The Little Book of Gratitude are pretty incredible.
People who count their blessings show twenty three percent lower
levels of stress hormones like cortisol. They reduce their dietary
(12:24):
fat intake by as much as twenty five percent. People
suffering from chronic pain show a ten percent improvement in
sleep quality and depression levels that are nineteen percent lower.
Science shows that gratitude also increases our resilience. In contrast
to griping, focusing on the good things in life seems
to be a strategy that allows you to take action
(12:46):
in order to fix the bad things. We know from
the studies that that gratitude helps us recover from loss
and trauma. It helps us to deal with the slow
drip of every day's stress, as well as the massive
personal upheavals and the face of suffering and pain and
loss and trials and tribulations. Gratitude is absolutely sensual. It's
part of our psychological immune system. But the biggest benefit
(13:08):
of counting your blessings, according to Robert, is that it
connects us with other people. Yes, that one good thing
that griping gives us, we can get that kind of
relationship boost from gratitude too, right, absolutely, I mean one
of the benefits of gratitude is that it connects us
so deeply with other people. And a colleague of mind
social psychologist at a Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Sarah Algo,
(13:30):
talks about gratitude as basically the interpersonal emotion. It is
the find, remind, and bind emotion. Sarah and her colleagues
have found that practicing gratitude can completely shift people's mindset
about a personal relationship. Taking time to think gratefully about
a friend or partner makes you spontaneously notice more positive
qualities about that person. It makes it easier to remember
(13:53):
happier memories with that person, and drives us to spend
more time with them. And all of these little mindset
shifts wind up making us feel more connected. Sarah calls
gratitude a booster shot for our relationships. The positive evidence
for focusing on the good things in life are pretty clear,
but it's still not something that comes naturally to many
(14:13):
of us. If you're going to express sentiment online, being
like I hate a nice sandwich, I'm really grateful to
be alive today is like it comes across I think
as well dopey. I think I think the problem with
niceness and goodness and happiness as express online is like
it can feel you feel like you're bragging. It can
feel like you can feel insincere. Enguelan since here, yeah, yeah,
(14:33):
PG and Alex kind of nailed it here. Gratitude does
feel a little dopey. Robert knows that if he's going
to get us all signed up to that blessing's condition,
he's going to have to change that attitude. I like
to say that gratitude really is an old fashioned idea,
but the science makes it brand new. In fact, we
know now from the science that gratitude actually does deliver
(14:54):
on its promise and on its potential. To paraphrase Robert,
gratitude seems dopey, but it works. Getting past the cheese
takes effort, but it's definitely effort worth doing. Part of
why I do this, you know, part of why I
study gratitude and try to con people that gratitude is
the best approach to life is just to convince myself,
is to remind myself that every day I need to
(15:15):
practice gratitude. Even though Robert's an expert on this. It
didn't always come easy. I was always you know, planning ahead.
I was always you know, the person who said, Okay,
well I'll be happy when such and such happens, when
I you know, get into college, when I get into
graduate school, and when I get tenued, when I get
I was always delaying or putting off happiness. And I
(15:36):
think it was because I wasn't grateful enough for my
current situation. That I had everything I needed perfectly to
be happy and to be grateful, to be content in
the moment, but I was always looking for something bigger
and better and brighter, you know, down the road. Doing
these sorts of you know, interviews, writing the books, doing
the research, giving the talks is just really almost like
(15:57):
a personal journey for me to become more grateful. So
for people who are kind of in the in the
complaining camp or like, you know, think that that's that's
focusing on the hassles is where it is any last
advice for them to get on the gratitude bandwagon. So
I think a really good thing to do is just
take one daily hassle, some area that you struggle with,
(16:17):
and try to view that through a lens of gratitude.
Take the bad thing that you are most likely by
default to complain about, and see if you can extract
at least one benefit from that bad thing. That's something
that anyone can do, whether or not we complain by
nature or by practice. I think you know, once we
start doing that, we can see that can shift us
(16:38):
that the house. We're not going to go away. We're
always going to have those, but at least we'll have
a backdrop by which we can view those with some
degree of hope and trust in the future and positivity
after the break. We're going to take Robert's advice to
the next level because science shows that there's one way
to experience gratitude that doesn't just boost your well being
in the moment, It can make you happier for a long,
(16:58):
long time, like for over a month. I wanted to
try out these bold scientific claims directly, and I knew
just the subjects. You guys don't mind being guinea pigs,
nor the Happiness lab will be right back. This exercise, allegedly,
(17:21):
according to science, can boost your mood not just for
the rest of the day, but for over a whole month. Really. Yeah.
In two thousand and five, psychologist Marty Seligman and his
colleagues recruited over five hundred people to try a bunch
of different happiness interventions. Simple behavior is designed to quickly
boost well being, but Seligman also wanted to test whether
(17:41):
these interventions caused sustained improvements and happiness and mood like
ones that lasted for weeks and weeks. One of these
interventions was called a gratitude visit. Here's how it works.
You think of someone you care about a lot, someone
you're really grateful for, but also someone you've never really thanked.
Then you sit down and write that person a genuine,
(18:02):
heartfelt letter. You explain why that person has had such
a meaningful impact on your life. And when you're done,
rather than mailing the letter or sending a quick email,
you ask to meet them in person. And so when
I went to interview PG and Alex, I just happened
to bring along some happiness lab notepaper. We have a
little project for you all. Are we doing gratitude journalism?
(18:25):
Oh my god, here's your prompt. I want you to
each write a quick letter of thanks to each other.
You want to express your thanks in a way of
something you've not expressed to each other, and so you're
just going to scribble some stuff down, Okay. Well, PG
and Alex are working on their letters. I wanted to
dig a bit more into the science of how this
intervention works and why, like PG and Alex, many of
(18:46):
us seem to dread openly expressing gratitude. I'm Nicholas Eppily.
You can call me Nick. I'm a professor of behavioral
science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.
I study mind reading for a living. I study how
people think about each other's thought and some beliefs and attitudes,
and mostly how people screw that up and misunderstand each
other a lot. Nick does lots of experiments in which
he forces people to do stuff they think is going
(19:06):
to feel really awkward, but winds up making and feel
happier than they expect. If you listen to Season one,
you might remember the guy who forced people to talk
to strangers on a train. That was Nick. You give
somebody else a compliment on a given day, you could
sit down and write a gratitude letter to somebody else.
And so what's of interest for me is a psychologist,
is why aren't we doing those things? Writing gratitude letters
(19:29):
we know makes people feel happier. Most people are listening
to your podcast today didn't do that today. Question is
why not? Why didn't you do that if that makes
you feel good? The answer is that we just get
the consequences of expressing gratitude all wrong. When participants here
they need to sincerely convey their thanks to someone's face,
(19:50):
they usually have a pretty strong reaction. They're thinking, oh
my god, this is going to feel cheesy. One of
the things that we find here, like we do in
so many other contexts, is that people just underestimate the
positive impact that their social engagement will have on other people,
and therefore it makes them reluctant to do it, which
causes them to miss out on opportunities that would make
(20:10):
them feel good too. Nick didn't experiment asking subjects to
do a gratitude letter, but before they started, he asked
them to make some predictions. How happy will the recipient
be about getting the letter, how surprised will they be,
and how awkward will they feel? I husked PG and
Alex the same thing. Actually talk through what it's feeling
like if you're trying to write it stressful and I
(20:31):
can hear Alex writing so more stressful. I just wrote
so far, Oh guy, dear Alex M. How are you feeling,
Alex weird? Because I feel like I'm gonna have to
read it. I wish I right about that there's some possibility. Yeah,
people say nice things to me like actually shuts my
(20:52):
brain down, like I can't respond, like I don't know
how to respond, just like public expressions of gratitude and kindness,
they just make me feel nervous, like they make me
feel vulnerable. How do you think PJS going to react
to the letter? PG is going to do a thing,
(21:12):
this thing that he always does, which is his eyes
will get wide and he's like, oh, that's really nice,
thank you. That's fucked up. I got you pegged son
on a scale of one not really that impressed to
ten he's really touched. Where is he going to be?
Probably an eight PG at a scale of one to ten.
How do you think Alex is gonna feel after this?
(21:33):
I think also probably around an eight right, probably higher? No,
probably about Yeah. I can't newly wait to game him
as well as he canna do meet Like, I don't
know what is Maybe I'll say thanks Bud. I wouldn't
say bud. You say bit a lot times when you're touched.
So those are PG and Alex's predictions, but Nick's experimental
data suggests they'll both be wrong. We found that the
(21:56):
letter writers consistently underestimate how positive the recipients are going
to feel. That the letter writers underestimate how surprised the
recipient will be about the content, underestimate how happy the
recipient will feel. They predict recipients will be happy recipients
are even happier than that. They're basically at the ceiling
of our measure, And they overestimate how awkward the recipient
(22:17):
is going to feel. When we think about sincerely expressing
thanks to someone, we assume it's going to feel weird
for everyone involved, But that's totally wrong. People love hearing
our gratitude. And just put yourself in the shoes of
a recipient for a minute. You've got somebody who has
valued something that you did for years and hasn't told
(22:38):
you about this, And you know, the more it matters
to them, the more depth they go into, how does
it feel to receive something like that? Really really really good? Right?
And every professor I know somewhere in their office has
a collection of gratitude letters that they've received from students. Everybody.
(23:01):
Mine is right next to my office. Choeah, Mine's in
my bedroom drawer. Actually there you go. Yeah, everybody keeps those,
I promise you. So why are we so bad at this?
Like even I, as a psychologist, just don't get the
intuition when I think about it, that it's going to
be as meaningful. I think it's going to be awkward. Like,
where does this misconception come from? It's crazy, It's not crazy,
(23:22):
it's psychology. It's perspective. So that's the big problem here.
So in all of these social interactions, you've got two
minds going on. You've got the mind of the agent,
the mind of the actor, the person who's starting the interaction,
person who's writing the letter or whatever it is. And
then you've got the mind of the person receiving the act.
And if we know anything in psychology, it's that bridging
(23:43):
those two minds is super hard. There's a gap there,
and the gap is between me writing it and you
reading it. Now, what's my perspective when I'm writing it?
So I'm having to come up with all the words,
and I'm revealing all this personal stuff, and I'm having
to get the words just right, and I'm you know,
I'm worried. Am I saying this sentence? Am I really
expressing what I feel? Am I articulating it just right?
(24:07):
Does that sound weird? I'm focused on all the words
that I'm saying, right, I'm focused on my competence. How
good of a letter writer? Am I? The sort of
competence focus is definitely what was playing out with the
reply all guys with a dash of mild competitiveness thrown
into the mix writing a fucking novel over there? Come on? Man, Wow,
(24:29):
it does kind of feel like a competition of who's
writing the most right now? And I will lie, yeah,
it feels awful done. Being them first doesn't mean you
did better. I know you're like the Q like finishes
the test right away and like walks out cartway ling
and then gets a d I'm saying such a nice shit.
(24:51):
Mat All you need is like two sentences. According to Nick,
Pugie and Alex need to relax. Their letters aren't going
to be graded like some AP English exam actors. Attend
to the words they're saying, to their competence and so
they're worried about it being awkward and weird and all
of that stuff. The recipients couldn't care us about that,
or don't care very much about that. They care about
(25:12):
the meaning of what you're saying, the warmth that you're conveying,
that you're reaching out to them and expressing gratitude, and
that is just super powerful. Oh my god, it's time
so the guys exchange their letters. Can you even read
my handwriting? Yeah, I'm sure I can. It's pretty bad.
Mine's pretty bad. Okay, PJ. Thank you for fielding all
(25:39):
the annoying HR stuff lately and for being sensitive to
my mental health struggles. I love working with you, even
though I even though you vaped too much, even though
I vaped too much. And it looks like it's signed
by Baba. It says Alex, I was supposed to be
a heart. Oh that's really nice. Fuck Ah. That's the
(26:05):
way that we deal with each other's coming us by'm
laughing at and mocking it. Fee it is christ all right,
here we go. Dear Alex, thank you for being a
friend and collaborator and weirdo partner in crime for the
past decade. You make me laugh more than anybody. And
I can't imagine going through the ups and downs of
this decade without you as my partner. Love you, buddy,
Thanks Bud. All right, quick skill One's ten. How are
(26:31):
you feeling like eight? Or nine? Yeah? More like nine? Yeah.
PG and Alex performed exactly like Nick's subjects. They knew
the letters were going to feel good, but they underestimated
just how good. And I thought they definitely seemed happier
after the activity. Yeah, it's nice. Now, in theory, if
(26:51):
I came back like a month later, you'd still be
like slightly more above baseline than you were. That's what
the data suggests. Really, yeah, which is crazy. That's crazy.
How much of a boost When Marty Seligman made his
test subjects read their gratitude letters, they showed a significant
bump in well being. They gained about five points on
a hundred point happiness survey known as the Steen Happiness Index.
(27:13):
But what's most impressive is that participants stayed boosted by
at least a few points on that test for an
entire month, which is kind of crazy. A whole month
just by reading a short little letter. Yeah, it's like
you just gave your antidepression medication like performance enhancing drug
for the podcast it. I'm not sure if these letters
are going to have a huge bump in their reply
(27:33):
all mood for weeks to come, but they definitely made
PJ and Alex a little happier during that interview, and
despite all their initial predictions, PJ and Alex ended up
leaving the experiment feeling more positive. We're good. That was awesome,
you guys. Our mind tells us that openly celebrating our
blessings or sincerely expressing our thanks to people will feel
(27:55):
awkward and weird. We think it'd be better to bond
with the people we care about in other ways, like
having a constant gripefest. But that intuition is wrong even
for expert level gripers, the ones like Alex, who can
make us really laugh when complain I had the DVD
from for like four months for like a year. Yeah,
that's a grape right there. The songs shows that the
(28:16):
cost are our constant gripe bing is bigger than we think.
We're getting ourselves and others all worked up without really
addressing the problems we face, but we're also missing out
on better ways to bond with the people around us
because we don't realize how good expressing our thanks will
make us feel. And so I, for one, I'm going
to try to take this evidence to heart. The next
(28:38):
time I'm at dinner with a friend. I'm going to
resist the urge to talk only about the annoying stuff
in life, and I'm going to scale back some of
my online gripe posting too. Instead, I'm going to take
a bit more time to focus on the blessings, starting
with the fact that you listen to my podcast. So
thanks podcast listener. I'm really proud that you're here, and
I hope that you'll join me for the next episode
(28:59):
of The Happiness Lab by Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness
Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley with
the help of Pete Naton. Our original music was composed
(29:20):
by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering by
Evan Viola. The show was edited by Sophie mckibbon and
fact checked by Joseph Fridman. Special thanks to mil Lavelle,
Carlie mcgliorre Heather Fame, Julia Barton, Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanag
Jacob Weisberg and my agent Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab
is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and by me,
(29:42):
doctor Laurie Santos,
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