Pushkin. Hey, Slight Changers, it's Maya. I've got a special episode for you. In honor of World Happiness Day. I chat with doctor Laurie Santos, host of another Pushkin podcast, the Happiness Lab. She's also a friend and mentor of mine. This conversation is a kind of greatest Hits mixtape of the best tips and strategies for leading a happier life. And now that's what I call happiness Volume one situation. Sorry, I just really love nineties callbacks. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and I would love to hear from you about the things you try out. Hi, Laurie, Hello A Maya. Thank you for joining me on a slight change of plans in honor of World Happiness Day.

Pushkin. Hey, Slight Changers, it's Maya. I've got a special episode for you. In honor of World Happiness Day. I chat with doctor Laurie Santos, host of another Pushkin podcast, the Happiness Lab. She's also a friend and mentor of mine. This conversation is a kind of greatest Hits mixtape of the best tips and strategies for leading a happier life. And now that's what I call happiness Volume one situation. Sorry, I just really love nineties callbacks. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and I would love to hear from you about the things you try out. Hi, Laurie, Hello A Maya. Thank you for joining me on a slight change of plans in honor of World Happiness Day.

I love it. Thanks so much for having me on the show.

I love it. Thanks so much for having me on the show.

So I alluded to this, but it's worth sharing with folks that I've actually known you since I was seventeen years old. I was a student of.

So I alluded to this, but it's worth sharing with folks that I've actually known you since I was seventeen years old. I was a student of.

Yours alost eight years.

Yours alost eight years.

No, I know, it feels like it's been so much longer. I was a freshman in your monkey Lab class and you ended up being my academic advisor for all four years, and at the time your research lab was focused on cognition, right, differences between monkeys and humans, And I would never have known at the time that at some point you would pivot and start focusing on happiness research. So can you share what led to that shift?

No, I know, it feels like it's been so much longer. I was a freshman in your monkey Lab class and you ended up being my academic advisor for all four years, and at the time your research lab was focused on cognition, right, differences between monkeys and humans, And I would never have known at the time that at some point you would pivot and start focusing on happiness research. So can you share what led to that shift?

Yeah, I was just so so much of a surprise for me too, interestingly, but yeah, no, So, I mean I was doing all this work on kind of comparative cognition and studying monkeys, you know, happily doing that work, and then I took on a new role at Yale, I becoming what's called the head of college. And so I know you know this, but for your listeners, Yell's one of these weird schools like Hogwarts and Harry Potter, where there's like colleges within a college. There's like Gryffindor and Slytherin kind of thing. Yale has these too. I was head of what's called Silliman College, and that meant that I, as a faculty member, lived on campus with students. So I hang out with them in the dining hall and I just you know, saw them in the coffee shop. I was like really much closer to student life than I was, even you know, running my lab where I got to know students really well, and honestly, I just didn't like what I was seeing. I was seeing the college student mental health crisis up close and personnel, where just in my community we had so many students who were self reporting experiencing like extreme anxiety or suicidality or panic attacks. It was just like on the ground, just so sad and scary that these students' lives were just like riddled with these mental health issues. And this is not just what's going on at Yale or any other IVY League campus. This is what's happening nationally right now, where nationally over sixty five percent of college students report being more anxious and overwhelmingly anxious, such that they can't get any work done. Like the stats are just like staggering when you look at them. That was when I made this pivot to studying happiness. I was like, I need to figure out ways that I can help my students, right Like my job as a professor means I need to take care of the mental health of these students that are around me. And one way I can do that is to try to figure out, like what are strategies that we know from science that students can use to feel happier. And so I made this whole new class, Psychology and the Good Life that I thought, would you know, be just like a normal class on Yelle's campus. But in the end it kind of went a little bit viral. Over twelve hundred students showed up on the first day of class to be part of this new class that we were teaching, and I think it showed that, like young people today are voting with their feet, like they don't like this culture of feeling stressed out and anxious, and they really just wanted to learn how they could kind of protect their well being. And so from there I kind of retrained in this new domain of happiness studies and realized it was useful not just for Yale students, but useful for like, honestly everyone, because everybody's trying to be happy. Everyone's sort of feeling a little bit burned out these days and feeling a little stressed, and I think so many of us are looking for strategies from science about what we can do to feel better.

Yeah, I was just so so much of a surprise for me too, interestingly, but yeah, no, So, I mean I was doing all this work on kind of comparative cognition and studying monkeys, you know, happily doing that work, and then I took on a new role at Yale, I becoming what's called the head of college. And so I know you know this, but for your listeners, Yell's one of these weird schools like Hogwarts and Harry Potter, where there's like colleges within a college. There's like Gryffindor and Slytherin kind of thing. Yale has these too. I was head of what's called Silliman College, and that meant that I, as a faculty member, lived on campus with students. So I hang out with them in the dining hall and I just you know, saw them in the coffee shop. I was like really much closer to student life than I was, even you know, running my lab where I got to know students really well, and honestly, I just didn't like what I was seeing. I was seeing the college student mental health crisis up close and personnel, where just in my community we had so many students who were self reporting experiencing like extreme anxiety or suicidality or panic attacks. It was just like on the ground, just so sad and scary that these students' lives were just like riddled with these mental health issues. And this is not just what's going on at Yale or any other IVY League campus. This is what's happening nationally right now, where nationally over sixty five percent of college students report being more anxious and overwhelmingly anxious, such that they can't get any work done. Like the stats are just like staggering when you look at them. That was when I made this pivot to studying happiness. I was like, I need to figure out ways that I can help my students, right Like my job as a professor means I need to take care of the mental health of these students that are around me. And one way I can do that is to try to figure out, like what are strategies that we know from science that students can use to feel happier. And so I made this whole new class, Psychology and the Good Life that I thought, would you know, be just like a normal class on Yelle's campus. But in the end it kind of went a little bit viral. Over twelve hundred students showed up on the first day of class to be part of this new class that we were teaching, and I think it showed that, like young people today are voting with their feet, like they don't like this culture of feeling stressed out and anxious, and they really just wanted to learn how they could kind of protect their well being. And so from there I kind of retrained in this new domain of happiness studies and realized it was useful not just for Yale students, but useful for like, honestly everyone, because everybody's trying to be happy. Everyone's sort of feeling a little bit burned out these days and feeling a little stressed, and I think so many of us are looking for strategies from science about what we can do to feel better.

So I want to establish the basics because there are so many definitions of happiness out there, and there's so many questions philosophical questions about what happiness is. Is it satisfaction? Is it joy? Is it fulfillment? Is it pleasure? And I really love how you and many other psychologists define and measure happiness because to me, it encompasses so many of these concepts. So do you mind sharing how you think of that happiness?

So I want to establish the basics because there are so many definitions of happiness out there, and there's so many questions philosophical questions about what happiness is. Is it satisfaction? Is it joy? Is it fulfillment? Is it pleasure? And I really love how you and many other psychologists define and measure happiness because to me, it encompasses so many of these concepts. So do you mind sharing how you think of that happiness?

Yeah? So this is a definition that I've taken from Sonya Lubermirski, who's a professor at UC Riverside, and she thinks about happiness as being defined as being happy in your life and being happy with your life. So let's kind of break this down. So, being happy in your life this is the idea that you have a decent number of positive emotions, or at least a decent ratio of positive emotions to negative emotions. I think bracketed happiness is not about getting rid of all of your negative emotions. That's toxic positivity. That's not what happiness researchers mean, but it does mean and like having a decent ratio of positive things like cheerfulness and joy and laughter to the not so good things like anger and sadness and so on. So that's kind of being happy in your life, but being happy with your life is a different construct. It's how you think your life is going. So it's your answer to the question, all things considered, how satisfied are you with your life? And so researchers have called these the affective and cognitive parts of subjective well being. So the affective like the more emotional parts of happiness, and the cognitive how you think your life is going parts of happiness. And I love this definition because it shows us a couple of things. One is, it shows us that these constructs can dissociate. And you probably know people for whom they've dissociated. I have a friend who has a newborn baby right now, and you know she is with her life quite happy, right, you know, she's this new like meaningful, bunderful love of joy who she loves and you know, can't wait to see his future and so on. But like in her life, maybe the emotions are not as good, right, there's like, yeah, it's like it's a rough go and you like have a newborn baby, right. And we probably also can come up with examples of the opposite. You know, somebody who might have in their life all these like hedonistic pleasures. You know, think of some like super rich or super famous person, but with their life, maybe they feel a certain emptiness. Right. And So I love this definition because I think it captures so much of what I'm trying to help my students with and what I'm trying to help my listeners with with happiness. What I want them to have is a life that's filled with lots of positive emotion and a life that feels satisfying to live a life that they think is going well. And the great news is there's so many strategies that we can use to boost both of those constructs up.

Yeah? So this is a definition that I've taken from Sonya Lubermirski, who's a professor at UC Riverside, and she thinks about happiness as being defined as being happy in your life and being happy with your life. So let's kind of break this down. So, being happy in your life this is the idea that you have a decent number of positive emotions, or at least a decent ratio of positive emotions to negative emotions. I think bracketed happiness is not about getting rid of all of your negative emotions. That's toxic positivity. That's not what happiness researchers mean, but it does mean and like having a decent ratio of positive things like cheerfulness and joy and laughter to the not so good things like anger and sadness and so on. So that's kind of being happy in your life, but being happy with your life is a different construct. It's how you think your life is going. So it's your answer to the question, all things considered, how satisfied are you with your life? And so researchers have called these the affective and cognitive parts of subjective well being. So the affective like the more emotional parts of happiness, and the cognitive how you think your life is going parts of happiness. And I love this definition because it shows us a couple of things. One is, it shows us that these constructs can dissociate. And you probably know people for whom they've dissociated. I have a friend who has a newborn baby right now, and you know she is with her life quite happy, right, you know, she's this new like meaningful, bunderful love of joy who she loves and you know, can't wait to see his future and so on. But like in her life, maybe the emotions are not as good, right, there's like, yeah, it's like it's a rough go and you like have a newborn baby, right. And we probably also can come up with examples of the opposite. You know, somebody who might have in their life all these like hedonistic pleasures. You know, think of some like super rich or super famous person, but with their life, maybe they feel a certain emptiness. Right. And So I love this definition because I think it captures so much of what I'm trying to help my students with and what I'm trying to help my listeners with with happiness. What I want them to have is a life that's filled with lots of positive emotion and a life that feels satisfying to live a life that they think is going well. And the great news is there's so many strategies that we can use to boost both of those constructs up.

What is the time horizon for thinking about the like in your life versus the with your life? Because in any given day, I wonder, you know, can you have both that moment to moment understanding of your happiness and then also that reflective experience.

What is the time horizon for thinking about the like in your life versus the with your life? Because in any given day, I wonder, you know, can you have both that moment to moment understanding of your happiness and then also that reflective experience.

Yeah, I mean this is a hard one. And this is where we get to a sort of dirty secret of the entire happiness science work, which is that to measure people happiness in their life and with their life, we have to ask them, right, Like I wish we had a little thermometer that we could stick in someone's mouth that would say, well, in your life, you're you know ninety nine point six happy, you know, out of one hundred or something, But we don't. We have to kind of ask people, and that brings up the problem that whenever we're asking people, we're getting people's like retrospective judgment about how things are going. If I were to ask you, hey, you know what, how many positive emotions did you experience this week? You'd have to think back and make an evaluation of, well, how was that farmer's market, how was that you know, interesting coffee shop I went to? Right, you'd have to kind of make a remembered judgment about something. The same is true and even more true in the case of your happiness with your life. Right, you kind of have to do a sort of summing of, like, well, all things considered, how satisfied am I? You're kind of making this sort of very cognitive judgment, and all of the judgments are a little bit retrospective, right, And it makes us worry that, like, maybe the judgments go wrong, and maybe those judgments particularly go wrong if you ask people after a long time horizon. You know, many of these happiness studies try to to do an analysis like in the particular day, so tag you right now, like how many positive emotions have you experienced this week? So hopefully you'll kind of remember accurately. But sometimes we're having people give these retrospections a while back, and we might be tapping into maybe a different form of happiness and people's remembered happiness than in their kind of happiness in the moment. This is something that researcher Danny Conneman calls this distinction between experienced happiness and remembered happiness, Like it's hard to know the experienced happiness because I have to like ask you immediately and make sure you're not kind of remembering to get it right. But you know, Danny has this interesting quip where he says, well, which of these happinesses are we trying to maximize our experience or our remembered happiness? And I feel like he kind of comes down on the side of the remembered happiness, you know, like the experienced happiness that's gone, Like all you have access to is what you remember, and so maybe we might want to maximize that one instead.

Yeah, I mean this is a hard one. And this is where we get to a sort of dirty secret of the entire happiness science work, which is that to measure people happiness in their life and with their life, we have to ask them, right, Like I wish we had a little thermometer that we could stick in someone's mouth that would say, well, in your life, you're you know ninety nine point six happy, you know, out of one hundred or something, But we don't. We have to kind of ask people, and that brings up the problem that whenever we're asking people, we're getting people's like retrospective judgment about how things are going. If I were to ask you, hey, you know what, how many positive emotions did you experience this week? You'd have to think back and make an evaluation of, well, how was that farmer's market, how was that you know, interesting coffee shop I went to? Right, you'd have to kind of make a remembered judgment about something. The same is true and even more true in the case of your happiness with your life. Right, you kind of have to do a sort of summing of, like, well, all things considered, how satisfied am I? You're kind of making this sort of very cognitive judgment, and all of the judgments are a little bit retrospective, right, And it makes us worry that, like, maybe the judgments go wrong, and maybe those judgments particularly go wrong if you ask people after a long time horizon. You know, many of these happiness studies try to to do an analysis like in the particular day, so tag you right now, like how many positive emotions have you experienced this week? So hopefully you'll kind of remember accurately. But sometimes we're having people give these retrospections a while back, and we might be tapping into maybe a different form of happiness and people's remembered happiness than in their kind of happiness in the moment. This is something that researcher Danny Conneman calls this distinction between experienced happiness and remembered happiness, Like it's hard to know the experienced happiness because I have to like ask you immediately and make sure you're not kind of remembering to get it right. But you know, Danny has this interesting quip where he says, well, which of these happinesses are we trying to maximize our experience or our remembered happiness? And I feel like he kind of comes down on the side of the remembered happiness, you know, like the experienced happiness that's gone, Like all you have access to is what you remember, and so maybe we might want to maximize that one instead.

So a foundational message of your work is that we as humans mispredict what is going to make us happy. When it comes to happiness, we always have a well, as soon as X happens, or as soon as Y happens, as soon as I get to Z, that's when I'll be happy. Right. We stall our happiness in present day with the hope that this future event will deliver all the goods. And it might be for someone a promotion they're waiting for, or having a family, or finally finding a partner to get married to. And we just put so much stock in that one event and then inevitably, at least the research shows it will disappoint us, right that end destination.

So a foundational message of your work is that we as humans mispredict what is going to make us happy. When it comes to happiness, we always have a well, as soon as X happens, or as soon as Y happens, as soon as I get to Z, that's when I'll be happy. Right. We stall our happiness in present day with the hope that this future event will deliver all the goods. And it might be for someone a promotion they're waiting for, or having a family, or finally finding a partner to get married to. And we just put so much stock in that one event and then inevitably, at least the research shows it will disappoint us, right that end destination.

Yeah, this is what researchers call the arrival fallacy, right, or I like to call it the happily ever after fallacy, Like this thing happens and I'll be happy ever after, right.

Yeah, this is what researchers call the arrival fallacy, right, or I like to call it the happily ever after fallacy, Like this thing happens and I'll be happy ever after, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So for example, you know my, like, some high school student applies to Yale. They're really excited about it. They get in. They over predict that that event of getting into Yale will feel amazing, like super super amazing, and they predict that that feeling of happiness will last for a really long time. It turns out it doesn't feel as amazing as you think, and that amazing feeling doesn't last for as long as you think, And that's not just true of getting into YEA, it's true of any positive fact, whether that's like getting married or winning the lottery. You know, pick your favorite positive thing. It just like doesn't impact you for as much or as long as you think. But this has like good news attached to it as well, which is that the same is true for negative events, you know, So pick your terrible negative event right, Like you get divorced, you go bankrupt, like you lose the ability to use your leg, you become paraplegic. For example, all those things we predict would be really really really bad. It would very negatively affect our happiness, and we would feel pretty crappy about it for a long time. But it turns out that we even more strongly mispredict in the negative direction. So, you know, we mispredict, for example, that getting into yel will feel really good. We even more mispredict that having a car crash and becoming paraplegic would feel really bad, And we even more strongly mispredict how long these negative events are going to last. And so research by Harvard professor Dan Gilbert has found that our impact bias is worse in the negative direction than it is in the positive directions. We make even more mispredictions when we're dealing with bad events, which is kind of good news, right, because it means that all those things, all these things aren't really scared of, they're not going to be as bad as we think.

So for example, you know my, like, some high school student applies to Yale. They're really excited about it. They get in. They over predict that that event of getting into Yale will feel amazing, like super super amazing, and they predict that that feeling of happiness will last for a really long time. It turns out it doesn't feel as amazing as you think, and that amazing feeling doesn't last for as long as you think, And that's not just true of getting into YEA, it's true of any positive fact, whether that's like getting married or winning the lottery. You know, pick your favorite positive thing. It just like doesn't impact you for as much or as long as you think. But this has like good news attached to it as well, which is that the same is true for negative events, you know, So pick your terrible negative event right, Like you get divorced, you go bankrupt, like you lose the ability to use your leg, you become paraplegic. For example, all those things we predict would be really really really bad. It would very negatively affect our happiness, and we would feel pretty crappy about it for a long time. But it turns out that we even more strongly mispredict in the negative direction. So, you know, we mispredict, for example, that getting into yel will feel really good. We even more mispredict that having a car crash and becoming paraplegic would feel really bad, And we even more strongly mispredict how long these negative events are going to last. And so research by Harvard professor Dan Gilbert has found that our impact bias is worse in the negative direction than it is in the positive directions. We make even more mispredictions when we're dealing with bad events, which is kind of good news, right, because it means that all those things, all these things aren't really scared of, they're not going to be as bad as we think.

Yeah, And can you talk a bit about this concept of the happiness set point and how when you talk about this mixed prediction, what ends up happening is we often just return back to our baseline faster than we might have thought.

Yeah, And can you talk a bit about this concept of the happiness set point and how when you talk about this mixed prediction, what ends up happening is we often just return back to our baseline faster than we might have thought.

Yeah, And so this is a phenomenon the researchers often refer to as hedonic adaptation, where you just kind of you go back to wherever your set point was and happiness no matter what the good stuff and the bad stuff is. And again that can feel a little bit depressing, right. We want these new circumstances in our life that are good to have this positive impact on our happiness for a while, but actually we kind of just mostly go back to baseline. But that means the same is true for all the crappy stuff in life, Like some terrible thing happens, and it will, you know, hurt a little bit less than we think, maybe for a while, but not for as long as we think, and so we're much more stable in our set points for happy than we expect.

Yeah, And so this is a phenomenon the researchers often refer to as hedonic adaptation, where you just kind of you go back to wherever your set point was and happiness no matter what the good stuff and the bad stuff is. And again that can feel a little bit depressing, right. We want these new circumstances in our life that are good to have this positive impact on our happiness for a while, but actually we kind of just mostly go back to baseline. But that means the same is true for all the crappy stuff in life, Like some terrible thing happens, and it will, you know, hurt a little bit less than we think, maybe for a while, but not for as long as we think, and so we're much more stable in our set points for happy than we expect.

I still remember learning about this research for the first time, and I think this is the most powerful finding that I've come across in my entire time as a cognitive scientist when it came to impacting my personal life. And I think that's because my philosophy around life is to minimize suffering. I'm less concerned with maximizing the positive, and suffering is what scares the crap out of me, right, and so learning that I would be more resilient in the face of that suffering has been just I mean, it was a boon. Yeah.

I still remember learning about this research for the first time, and I think this is the most powerful finding that I've come across in my entire time as a cognitive scientist when it came to impacting my personal life. And I think that's because my philosophy around life is to minimize suffering. I'm less concerned with maximizing the positive, and suffering is what scares the crap out of me, right, and so learning that I would be more resilient in the face of that suffering has been just I mean, it was a boon. Yeah.

I mean, how often are we like, really over analyzing some decision because we're trying to avoid some negative outcome when we could really say to ourselves, actually, if that worst case scenario happened, I'd actually be fine with it, or I'd be more fine than I think, and it wouldn't impact me for as long as I think. And so I think, Yeah, recognizing that your impact bias can kind of make you a little bit more resilient. It can make you a little bit more open to however the world is going to be like.

I mean, how often are we like, really over analyzing some decision because we're trying to avoid some negative outcome when we could really say to ourselves, actually, if that worst case scenario happened, I'd actually be fine with it, or I'd be more fine than I think, and it wouldn't impact me for as long as I think. And so I think, Yeah, recognizing that your impact bias can kind of make you a little bit more resilient. It can make you a little bit more open to however the world is going to be like.

Risk seeking, you knowing of closure. Yeah, and how robust are those findings Because there are times where I feel like I'm exceptional in this way. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, the average person will be really resilient, but I kmm a, maaya won't be because I suck in a particular way. And so can people buy and large feel fairly good given their mental constitution that they will show these effects.

Risk seeking, you knowing of closure. Yeah, and how robust are those findings Because there are times where I feel like I'm exceptional in this way. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, the average person will be really resilient, but I kmm a, maaya won't be because I suck in a particular way. And so can people buy and large feel fairly good given their mental constitution that they will show these effects.

Yeah, I mean, you know, there is you know, well, there's like this so called replication crisis in psychology, but like, I don't think there's any replication crisis when it comes to effective forecasting or impact bias. This is the kind of thing that everybody shows and people is shoe it both in these like natural field data, like of people who actually have wonderful and terrible things happen, like winning the lottery and so on. This is like one that seems to be a universal.

Yeah, I mean, you know, there is you know, well, there's like this so called replication crisis in psychology, but like, I don't think there's any replication crisis when it comes to effective forecasting or impact bias. This is the kind of thing that everybody shows and people is shoe it both in these like natural field data, like of people who actually have wonderful and terrible things happen, like winning the lottery and so on. This is like one that seems to be a universal.

Yeah, okay, that's great. That's great because I can I've definitely felt that way, and I can imagine a lot of people listening thinking okay, yeah, sure on average, but you know me not really.

Yeah, okay, that's great. That's great because I can I've definitely felt that way, and I can imagine a lot of people listening thinking okay, yeah, sure on average, but you know me not really.

Yeah, I think this is super important, right, because a real problem with these like cognitive errors is that even when we learn how they work, they don't go away. Right, So I like literally have whole podcast episodes and whole lectures about hedonic adaptation. But when I'm making a prediction about something happening, I get just as freaked out about it. I get just as worried, Like I am just as bad at predicting as everybody else. But I can kind of remember the data and sort of course correct a little bit after the fact. And so I think that's important, right, Like, knowing about these biases doesn't make them go away, It just makes you, like have a little bit more awareness. You can kind of update a little bit after the fact.

Yeah, I think this is super important, right, because a real problem with these like cognitive errors is that even when we learn how they work, they don't go away. Right, So I like literally have whole podcast episodes and whole lectures about hedonic adaptation. But when I'm making a prediction about something happening, I get just as freaked out about it. I get just as worried, Like I am just as bad at predicting as everybody else. But I can kind of remember the data and sort of course correct a little bit after the fact. And so I think that's important, right, Like, knowing about these biases doesn't make them go away, It just makes you, like have a little bit more awareness. You can kind of update a little bit after the fact.

Yeah, I mean, as you know, I studied visual perception and undergrad and it was it was akin to you know, the visual illusions and illusion. But you can't unsee it exactly. At least in the case of happiness. We can be a little bit more intentional, deliverate and change our mental frames. But yeah, absolutely, I think I'm sure this happens to a lot of people. Assume given the field we're in, Oh, you must be so disciplined about eating and exercise and all these other things, and it's like not really. We know the tactics, but implement them is a different matter altogether.

Yeah, I mean, as you know, I studied visual perception and undergrad and it was it was akin to you know, the visual illusions and illusion. But you can't unsee it exactly. At least in the case of happiness. We can be a little bit more intentional, deliverate and change our mental frames. But yeah, absolutely, I think I'm sure this happens to a lot of people. Assume given the field we're in, Oh, you must be so disciplined about eating and exercise and all these other things, and it's like not really. We know the tactics, but implement them is a different matter altogether.

In fact, my next whole season of the podcast is going to be about happiness challenges that I face on the Happiness Lab. So fun, yeah, so fun, but also so personal and kind of so painful.

In fact, my next whole season of the podcast is going to be about happiness challenges that I face on the Happiness Lab. So fun, yeah, so fun, but also so personal and kind of so painful.

How fixed is this? So if I'm someone listening to this podcast and I'm thinking, look, I'm committed to being happier, I really want to be happier. I'm going to work super super hard, Laurie, what do you have to tell me in terms of hope in this domain.

How fixed is this? So if I'm someone listening to this podcast and I'm thinking, look, I'm committed to being happier, I really want to be happier. I'm going to work super super hard, Laurie, what do you have to tell me in terms of hope in this domain.

Yeah, So there's some bad news and good news, as there often is in science. So the bad news is that there is a heritable component to our overall subjective well being. Like, if you grew up with parents who are really unhappy and you have the genes for unhappiness, it's going to be harder for you to be happy than it might be for somebody to whom happiness comes a little bit more naturally. So there is a sort of heritable component to happiness, but it's pretty tiny, right, It's tinier than most of the other traits that we have out there, And that means there's lots of room for malleyability. So the good news is that that range is really really flexible. It's much more flexible than we think. Like, even if you're a natural kind of set point right now might be feeling a little bit unhappy, that doesn't necessarily say that you're going to be stuck right there for your whole life. There's probably a rain you might not be like the happiest person on the planet, but you can engage with strategies to become much happier than you are right now. The problem is that we do that the wrong way. The problem is that we do that by like trying to change our circumstances. We try to go for the lotteries and the big college wins, as we were just talking about. We try to engage in things that are just not going to feel as happy as we think. The key to really changing our happiness is that we need to realize the right ways to do it.

Yeah, So there's some bad news and good news, as there often is in science. So the bad news is that there is a heritable component to our overall subjective well being. Like, if you grew up with parents who are really unhappy and you have the genes for unhappiness, it's going to be harder for you to be happy than it might be for somebody to whom happiness comes a little bit more naturally. So there is a sort of heritable component to happiness, but it's pretty tiny, right, It's tinier than most of the other traits that we have out there, And that means there's lots of room for malleyability. So the good news is that that range is really really flexible. It's much more flexible than we think. Like, even if you're a natural kind of set point right now might be feeling a little bit unhappy, that doesn't necessarily say that you're going to be stuck right there for your whole life. There's probably a rain you might not be like the happiest person on the planet, but you can engage with strategies to become much happier than you are right now. The problem is that we do that the wrong way. The problem is that we do that by like trying to change our circumstances. We try to go for the lotteries and the big college wins, as we were just talking about. We try to engage in things that are just not going to feel as happy as we think. The key to really changing our happiness is that we need to realize the right ways to do it.

One really powerful finding is that even small tweaks in the way we frame an experience can have a big impact on the way that we process it from a hedonic perspective, And so can you talk about the role that expectations play in the way that we interpret in experience.

One really powerful finding is that even small tweaks in the way we frame an experience can have a big impact on the way that we process it from a hedonic perspective, And so can you talk about the role that expectations play in the way that we interpret in experience.

Yeah, yeah, expectations are huge. I mean, wasn't it Shakespeare? There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. I mean, this is like how basically all of our psychology works. We just don't do it in objective terms. We think in terms of some reference point, and it's also often some reference point that makes us feel kind of crappy about whatever we've just gotten or achieved in our own life. My favorite example of this comes from the Olympics. So imagine that you're some amazing athlete, you're an Olympian, and you win a silver medal, right like your second best in the entire world in some sport. You might think I would feel amazing, right, But it turns out that if you actually analyze how silver medalists experience receiving the silver medal, they're not feeling elated. They're actually feeling awful. If you analyze their like emotional expressions on the stand, like you see expressions of contempt discussed, like deep sadness, right like, it looks like they've like you know, lost a loved one or something. It's that terrible, and you say, like, what is going on, Well, what's going on is that they're evaluating based on an expectation, a reference point. What's the obvious reference point? If you've won silver, it's a gold medal. You didn't get that, and you don't see that you've beat you know, millions and millions of people around the world. You just see, I didn't do as good as I could have done. And what's super interesting is that if you analyze the emotional expressions of bronze medalists, you see just the opposite. They are elated, they are happy. Sometimes they're even happier than the person who won the gold medal. And the reason is that their reference point is totally different. What's the reference point that's staling it? If you just want a bronze medal, like you weren't going to get gold, you are like many seconds or you know, many moments away, right, like many points away. Your reference point is like, if i'd just done a little bit worse, I wouldn't be up here at all, Like I would no metal, no metal at all. Right, And so you are thrilled, You're like, by the skin of my teeth, I'm up here, and my parents are gonna be so proud. This is great, right, that's the power of reference points. Like we're not thinking in terms of our objective performance. We're just thinking in terms of how we did relative to some expectation. And that's powerful because it means if we set the right expectations, we could probably feel a lot happier with however we did objectively.

Yeah, yeah, expectations are huge. I mean, wasn't it Shakespeare? There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. I mean, this is like how basically all of our psychology works. We just don't do it in objective terms. We think in terms of some reference point, and it's also often some reference point that makes us feel kind of crappy about whatever we've just gotten or achieved in our own life. My favorite example of this comes from the Olympics. So imagine that you're some amazing athlete, you're an Olympian, and you win a silver medal, right like your second best in the entire world in some sport. You might think I would feel amazing, right, But it turns out that if you actually analyze how silver medalists experience receiving the silver medal, they're not feeling elated. They're actually feeling awful. If you analyze their like emotional expressions on the stand, like you see expressions of contempt discussed, like deep sadness, right like, it looks like they've like you know, lost a loved one or something. It's that terrible, and you say, like, what is going on, Well, what's going on is that they're evaluating based on an expectation, a reference point. What's the obvious reference point? If you've won silver, it's a gold medal. You didn't get that, and you don't see that you've beat you know, millions and millions of people around the world. You just see, I didn't do as good as I could have done. And what's super interesting is that if you analyze the emotional expressions of bronze medalists, you see just the opposite. They are elated, they are happy. Sometimes they're even happier than the person who won the gold medal. And the reason is that their reference point is totally different. What's the reference point that's staling it? If you just want a bronze medal, like you weren't going to get gold, you are like many seconds or you know, many moments away, right, like many points away. Your reference point is like, if i'd just done a little bit worse, I wouldn't be up here at all, Like I would no metal, no metal at all. Right, And so you are thrilled, You're like, by the skin of my teeth, I'm up here, and my parents are gonna be so proud. This is great, right, that's the power of reference points. Like we're not thinking in terms of our objective performance. We're just thinking in terms of how we did relative to some expectation. And that's powerful because it means if we set the right expectations, we could probably feel a lot happier with however we did objectively.

Still ahead, Laurie and I talk about science back strategies for making yourself happier. We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans. All right, so, Lari, let's talk through what the research says about how we can become happier. Let's start with strong social relationships. This seems to be like the number one thing.

Still ahead, Laurie and I talk about science back strategies for making yourself happier. We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans. All right, so, Lari, let's talk through what the research says about how we can become happier. Let's start with strong social relationships. This seems to be like the number one thing.

It's very, very.

It's very, very.

Very hard to be happy if you lack this, So tell me more.

Very hard to be happy if you lack this, So tell me more.

Yeah, people like Marty Seligman and Ed Diner are these super famous positive psychology researchers claim that social connection is a necessary condition for high happiness. Right. You cannot be highly happy without it. And that's because, like we're social primates, right, we really get lots of positive emotion out of being with other people. We feel like our life is more satisfying when we're close to others, and there's tons of evidence that just people who spend more time with the people they care about, and who just spend more time with people all together wind up feeling happier. And importantly, this is true whether you're an introvert or an extrovert. I sometimes hear from a lot of my listeners who are introverts who say things like, Okay, that social connection thing sounds great for some extrovert like you, but for an introvert like me, that sounds miserable. And really, what the data show are that if you're an introvert, you do need some alone time, but you still get the same kind of positive emotion boost from being around other people, especially when you interact with other people in like small settings, you know, calling a friend or hanging out with someone you're really close to. Right, And so I think this is just a human universal that social connection winds up making us happier.

Yeah, people like Marty Seligman and Ed Diner are these super famous positive psychology researchers claim that social connection is a necessary condition for high happiness. Right. You cannot be highly happy without it. And that's because, like we're social primates, right, we really get lots of positive emotion out of being with other people. We feel like our life is more satisfying when we're close to others, and there's tons of evidence that just people who spend more time with the people they care about, and who just spend more time with people all together wind up feeling happier. And importantly, this is true whether you're an introvert or an extrovert. I sometimes hear from a lot of my listeners who are introverts who say things like, Okay, that social connection thing sounds great for some extrovert like you, but for an introvert like me, that sounds miserable. And really, what the data show are that if you're an introvert, you do need some alone time, but you still get the same kind of positive emotion boost from being around other people, especially when you interact with other people in like small settings, you know, calling a friend or hanging out with someone you're really close to. Right, And so I think this is just a human universal that social connection winds up making us happier.

Yeah, Also, are you even an extrovert? I feel like you're kind of in you Why not?

Yeah, Also, are you even an extrovert? I feel like you're kind of in you Why not?

I get us of being an extrovert all the time because I talk about social connection, But you know me, like I would look solo in my house all the time.

I get us of being an extrovert all the time because I talk about social connection, But you know me, like I would look solo in my house all the time.

Right, Yeah, just because you have a podcast doesn't make you an extrovert, right exactly. Yeah, And I think I definitely found a hit to my well being during COVID, where it wasn't possible anymore to engage in small talk with people that I would see to coffee shop or just waving and smiling to people on the street. Those little moments were so precious, and I'd been taking them for granted, because when I lost that ability that part of my social fabric, I really felt affected.

Right, Yeah, just because you have a podcast doesn't make you an extrovert, right exactly. Yeah, And I think I definitely found a hit to my well being during COVID, where it wasn't possible anymore to engage in small talk with people that I would see to coffee shop or just waving and smiling to people on the street. Those little moments were so precious, and I'd been taking them for granted, because when I lost that ability that part of my social fabric, I really felt affected.

Yeah, and I think a lot of people were, not just during COVID, but you know, there's tons of evidence that these weak ties, these kind of quick conversations we have with the brista at a coffee shop or just like someone on the street, they wind up being really important for our positive mood. Researcher Nick Epley, who's a professor at the University of Chicago who studies this phenomenon he calls undersociality, where we like don't take into account our social connection as much as we should. He describes happiness overall as a leaky tire. You know, you're kind of happy for a while, but your happiness tires leak in and you got to fill it up. And he says that These quick conversations with strangers are like one of the fastest ways to fill up your leaky tire.

Yeah, and I think a lot of people were, not just during COVID, but you know, there's tons of evidence that these weak ties, these kind of quick conversations we have with the brista at a coffee shop or just like someone on the street, they wind up being really important for our positive mood. Researcher Nick Epley, who's a professor at the University of Chicago who studies this phenomenon he calls undersociality, where we like don't take into account our social connection as much as we should. He describes happiness overall as a leaky tire. You know, you're kind of happy for a while, but your happiness tires leak in and you got to fill it up. And he says that These quick conversations with strangers are like one of the fastest ways to fill up your leaky tire.

One thing I've tried to do recently to strengthen social connections is just call people on the phone. I've just started doing that, and I think it really just freaked people out in the beginning, because they're like, whoa, do we have like a scheduled time?

One thing I've tried to do recently to strengthen social connections is just call people on the phone. I've just started doing that, and I think it really just freaked people out in the beginning, because they're like, whoa, do we have like a scheduled time?

What happened right?

What happened right?

It's like four fourteen. I don't think we had a call scheduled. This actually happened a couple of weeks ago where Michael lewis a friend of both of ours and someone who also has a pushkin podcast. I was just thinking about him, so I gave him a phone call and he picked up and was like, did you just butt dial me? Maya like this has to be a butt dial and I was like, no, I just wanted to say hello and see how you were doing. Turned out he was battling the flu, he had been in bed for a few days, and he loved the company, and we had a great chat and it boosted his mood. And it just built my confidence that those unexpected moments where you just call people and connect with them can be really powerful, but it takes a little bit of courage.

It's like four fourteen. I don't think we had a call scheduled. This actually happened a couple of weeks ago where Michael lewis a friend of both of ours and someone who also has a pushkin podcast. I was just thinking about him, so I gave him a phone call and he picked up and was like, did you just butt dial me? Maya like this has to be a butt dial and I was like, no, I just wanted to say hello and see how you were doing. Turned out he was battling the flu, he had been in bed for a few days, and he loved the company, and we had a great chat and it boosted his mood. And it just built my confidence that those unexpected moments where you just call people and connect with them can be really powerful, but it takes a little bit of courage.

It does take a little bit of courage. I mean, I think the problem with social connection is that there's a little friction there, right, especially given the other things we have to do that aren't social connection, right, Like you're picking up the phone and dialing it and calling michae Lewis, Like, there's a little awkwardness there. It's much easier to just like scroll on your Instagram or do something dumb that kind of has this feeling of social connection but isn't as social as we think. And so I think one of the tasks of engaging in more social connection is we have to overcome that like speed, bump of friction, cost of like a little bit of vulnerability, a little bit of work to kind of make those connections.

It does take a little bit of courage. I mean, I think the problem with social connection is that there's a little friction there, right, especially given the other things we have to do that aren't social connection, right, Like you're picking up the phone and dialing it and calling michae Lewis, Like, there's a little awkwardness there. It's much easier to just like scroll on your Instagram or do something dumb that kind of has this feeling of social connection but isn't as social as we think. And so I think one of the tasks of engaging in more social connection is we have to overcome that like speed, bump of friction, cost of like a little bit of vulnerability, a little bit of work to kind of make those connections.

Yeah, So, speaking of phones, let's talk about the role of technology and our phones and what impact they have on our on our social connections, and then what we can do about that. Yeah.

Yeah, So, speaking of phones, let's talk about the role of technology and our phones and what impact they have on our on our social connections, and then what we can do about that. Yeah.

I mean phones are so ironic, right. They were literally built so that we could talk to other people, like that is what the purpose of a phone was. But now phones have become this tool that we can use to look at our email or check what's going on in politics, or you know, look at a million other factoids in the world. What started as a tool just for connecting with other people has turned into, honestly, this terrible opportunity costs when it comes to connecting with other people. How often have you, you know, been out at dinner and looked over and seen some couple or they're like both just looking at their phone and they have this precious time to talk to one another in real life, but they're just like not actually speaking to one another. Or sadly at times that I've done that myself where my husband saying something and I was like, oh uh, could you say that again? What? I was looking at my email? Right? And this is terrible, right. It means that we might be missing out on something really important with the social connections we have in real life because we're like looking at some dumb stuff on the internet. And so, how can we deal with this opportunity cost in like a healthy way? And one of my favorite strategies comes from the journalist Catherine Price. She has this strategy that she calls WWW, which is an acronym that stands for what for, why now and what else? And so Her idea is that whenever you happen to notice that your phone in your hand, you ask those questions. First off, what for? Was there some purpose that I was looking? You know, I was really looking at the weather? Or did it just like wind up there? Because like with no purpose in mind, I'm just like scrolling through whatever? Right? Why? Now? Right? This is the sort of emotional question, like what caused me to pick up my phone? Was it some functional reason? Or maybe it was boredom, or maybe I was feeling awkward? What's the kind of queue that caused you to pick up your phone? And then, perhaps most important, what else? That's the opportunity cost question? What am I missing out on?

I mean phones are so ironic, right. They were literally built so that we could talk to other people, like that is what the purpose of a phone was. But now phones have become this tool that we can use to look at our email or check what's going on in politics, or you know, look at a million other factoids in the world. What started as a tool just for connecting with other people has turned into, honestly, this terrible opportunity costs when it comes to connecting with other people. How often have you, you know, been out at dinner and looked over and seen some couple or they're like both just looking at their phone and they have this precious time to talk to one another in real life, but they're just like not actually speaking to one another. Or sadly at times that I've done that myself where my husband saying something and I was like, oh uh, could you say that again? What? I was looking at my email? Right? And this is terrible, right. It means that we might be missing out on something really important with the social connections we have in real life because we're like looking at some dumb stuff on the internet. And so, how can we deal with this opportunity cost in like a healthy way? And one of my favorite strategies comes from the journalist Catherine Price. She has this strategy that she calls WWW, which is an acronym that stands for what for, why now and what else? And so Her idea is that whenever you happen to notice that your phone in your hand, you ask those questions. First off, what for? Was there some purpose that I was looking? You know, I was really looking at the weather? Or did it just like wind up there? Because like with no purpose in mind, I'm just like scrolling through whatever? Right? Why? Now? Right? This is the sort of emotional question, like what caused me to pick up my phone? Was it some functional reason? Or maybe it was boredom, or maybe I was feeling awkward? What's the kind of queue that caused you to pick up your phone? And then, perhaps most important, what else? That's the opportunity cost question? What am I missing out on?

That's the big one.

That's the big one.

That's a big one, right, is like am I just like not being present in the world, or am I ignoring my husband? Or am I avoiding something? Right? Like? What's the opportunity cost of being on your phone?

That's a big one, right, is like am I just like not being present in the world, or am I ignoring my husband? Or am I avoiding something? Right? Like? What's the opportunity cost of being on your phone?

Right now?

Right now?

And I love this acronym because it doesn't say like get off your phone all the time, right, but it allows you to mindfully notice what's happening when you're on your devices and how those devices are making you feel, and what you happen to be missing out on it kind of brings to light the things that you might be missing by being on your phone.

And I love this acronym because it doesn't say like get off your phone all the time, right, but it allows you to mindfully notice what's happening when you're on your devices and how those devices are making you feel, and what you happen to be missing out on it kind of brings to light the things that you might be missing by being on your phone.

I love to also talk about another happiness tip that I know has a lot of personal resonance for you, because this is something you've really struggled with. Can you talk about time affluence? Ah?

I love to also talk about another happiness tip that I know has a lot of personal resonance for you, because this is something you've really struggled with. Can you talk about time affluence? Ah?

Yes, time affluence. This is the subjective sense that we have some free time, something that until recently was very foreign to me because I experienced the opposite, which is what researchers call time famine, where you're literally starving for time. And research shows it time famine feels a lot like hunger famine, like it works a lot like that in your body, where you're literally you're activating your fight or flight system and so on. And it turns out that time famine is really bad for your happiness. And so the answer is that we need to kind of free up more time. We need to prioritize our time. And one way to do that, researcher actually will In suggests, is to like trade off more time for money. Often we can do these things with our money that give us back more time, but we don't usually frame it like that. So take going out to eat, head out, to eat. You know, you and your husband Jimmy head out to eat. That's like some food that you didn't have to cook yourself. Those are dishes you didn't have to prepare, you didn't need to look up the recipe. Going out to dinner with your husband might be a time savings of what like an hour and a half two hours. The question is like, what did you use that time for? Right, So this is a simple active reframing that we can use with something as silly as going out to dinner to realize like, hey, that was a spot where I spent some money to give myself back some time. And Willin's points out that you know, look, this might sound privileged to some foak who have discretionary income, but when she finds us at every level, if you have any discretionary income whatsoever, the more you spend that discretionary income to get back time, the happier you are. So this isn't just for like rich people who get to go out to like you know, like Michelin starred restaurants all the time. This is any of us. Can you know, pay the kid next door to like pick up the yard or clean up the snow, or take out the trash. Right, These like simple ways of spending some money to get back time can be important, but I think a bigger strategies to take time to remember that you should use the time you do have wisely. The journalist Bridget Shult coined this term that I love called time confetti, which refers to these little pieces of time that are floating around. You know that five minutes when your Zoom meeting ends early, or the ten minutes when your kid falls asleep quicker than expected. We never recognize that those are big chunks of time, so we just kind of blow that time confetti away. We just sort of, you know, I don't know, check our email, or scroll on Instagram, or scroll scroll scroll. If you add it up, it winds up being a lot of time. In fact, like researchers have found that we actually have more free time in our time confetti now than we did back in the day. It's just kind of broken up into these tiny chunks so we don't notice it. And so a strategy for improving your time affluence and your happiness is what can you do to make good use of that time confetti. Maybe that's when you call a friend you know who accused you of butt dialing him. Maybe that's the time when you like take time to do a quick deep breath. Maybe like that's the time when you engage in better self talk with yourself. We can use those time confetti moments to do any of these strategies that help us feel better and that can be really helpful for our happiness.

Yes, time affluence. This is the subjective sense that we have some free time, something that until recently was very foreign to me because I experienced the opposite, which is what researchers call time famine, where you're literally starving for time. And research shows it time famine feels a lot like hunger famine, like it works a lot like that in your body, where you're literally you're activating your fight or flight system and so on. And it turns out that time famine is really bad for your happiness. And so the answer is that we need to kind of free up more time. We need to prioritize our time. And one way to do that, researcher actually will In suggests, is to like trade off more time for money. Often we can do these things with our money that give us back more time, but we don't usually frame it like that. So take going out to eat, head out, to eat. You know, you and your husband Jimmy head out to eat. That's like some food that you didn't have to cook yourself. Those are dishes you didn't have to prepare, you didn't need to look up the recipe. Going out to dinner with your husband might be a time savings of what like an hour and a half two hours. The question is like, what did you use that time for? Right, So this is a simple active reframing that we can use with something as silly as going out to dinner to realize like, hey, that was a spot where I spent some money to give myself back some time. And Willin's points out that you know, look, this might sound privileged to some foak who have discretionary income, but when she finds us at every level, if you have any discretionary income whatsoever, the more you spend that discretionary income to get back time, the happier you are. So this isn't just for like rich people who get to go out to like you know, like Michelin starred restaurants all the time. This is any of us. Can you know, pay the kid next door to like pick up the yard or clean up the snow, or take out the trash. Right, These like simple ways of spending some money to get back time can be important, but I think a bigger strategies to take time to remember that you should use the time you do have wisely. The journalist Bridget Shult coined this term that I love called time confetti, which refers to these little pieces of time that are floating around. You know that five minutes when your Zoom meeting ends early, or the ten minutes when your kid falls asleep quicker than expected. We never recognize that those are big chunks of time, so we just kind of blow that time confetti away. We just sort of, you know, I don't know, check our email, or scroll on Instagram, or scroll scroll scroll. If you add it up, it winds up being a lot of time. In fact, like researchers have found that we actually have more free time in our time confetti now than we did back in the day. It's just kind of broken up into these tiny chunks so we don't notice it. And so a strategy for improving your time affluence and your happiness is what can you do to make good use of that time confetti. Maybe that's when you call a friend you know who accused you of butt dialing him. Maybe that's the time when you like take time to do a quick deep breath. Maybe like that's the time when you engage in better self talk with yourself. We can use those time confetti moments to do any of these strategies that help us feel better and that can be really helpful for our happiness.

I'd love to talk about my favorite happiness boosting strategy, which is being other oriented generally.

I'd love to talk about my favorite happiness boosting strategy, which is being other oriented generally.

Yeah, I think this is an important one, especially these days, because I think this is something that culture gets really wrong, right, Like I think these days, whenever we talk about happiness, we hear about things like self care or treat yourself. It's like self self self. We assume that happiness is just about investing in ourselves. But if you look at happy people, that's not what happy people are doing. Happy people tend to be much more other oriented. They're volunteering for charities, They're spending time on the people they care about. They're doing nice things for others, whether that's with their money or with their time. They just tend to be a lot more focused on other people's happiness than their own happiness. And research shows that even if that's not your natural inclination, you can engage with that a little bit more. Researchers like Liz Done in her colleagues at the University of British Columbia do these studies where they hand subjects money on the street but kind of force them to spend that money in particular ways. You're either forced to spend that money on something self careish, like you do something nice for yourself, or you're forced to spend that money on other people. And what she finds is, at the end of the day, those people who are forced to spend money on others wind up feeling happier than those that were forced to spend the same amount of money on something that was more for themselves, that was more selfish. And so I love this study because it suggests that even if that's not your natural inclination, you can kind of add in more stuff where you're just like a little bit more focused on other people, and that the evidence suggests that will naturally make you feel how.

Yeah, I think this is an important one, especially these days, because I think this is something that culture gets really wrong, right, Like I think these days, whenever we talk about happiness, we hear about things like self care or treat yourself. It's like self self self. We assume that happiness is just about investing in ourselves. But if you look at happy people, that's not what happy people are doing. Happy people tend to be much more other oriented. They're volunteering for charities, They're spending time on the people they care about. They're doing nice things for others, whether that's with their money or with their time. They just tend to be a lot more focused on other people's happiness than their own happiness. And research shows that even if that's not your natural inclination, you can engage with that a little bit more. Researchers like Liz Done in her colleagues at the University of British Columbia do these studies where they hand subjects money on the street but kind of force them to spend that money in particular ways. You're either forced to spend that money on something self careish, like you do something nice for yourself, or you're forced to spend that money on other people. And what she finds is, at the end of the day, those people who are forced to spend money on others wind up feeling happier than those that were forced to spend the same amount of money on something that was more for themselves, that was more selfish. And so I love this study because it suggests that even if that's not your natural inclination, you can kind of add in more stuff where you're just like a little bit more focused on other people, and that the evidence suggests that will naturally make you feel how.

Beer I feel. Like I've heard before that the happiest people are the people who don't spend a lot of time thinking about their own happiness. Is that true? Like, is that what research shows.

Beer I feel. Like I've heard before that the happiest people are the people who don't spend a lot of time thinking about their own happiness. Is that true? Like, is that what research shows.

I think yes and no. Right, I think because of all these misconceptions, in some ways, we do have to focus on our happiness or we might be doing it wrong. Like I think, if we're pretending that these new circumstances will make us, you know, happy, and we have to have this specific achievement or this great outcome, like we're going to get that wrong. And so I do think that we want to be thinking about happiness, but we want to be thinking about it in the right way. What we assume people would do when I think about happiness is like me, me, me, you know, put in all these strategies. We don't think, Oh, they'll just take time to like be with other people, and they'll stop trying to achieve as much because they'll recognize the importance of time affluence, and we'll take lots of time off and rest, you know, or they'll you know, volunteer for charity and do this nice stuff for others. That's not our stereotype of people narcissistically pursuing happiness, And so I think it's not the pursuit of happiness that's the problem. It's the fact that we generally tend to do it wrong, start to do it right. You know, we'll feel happier and be better off because we were thinking about our happiness and trying to find good ways to pursue it.

I think yes and no. Right, I think because of all these misconceptions, in some ways, we do have to focus on our happiness or we might be doing it wrong. Like I think, if we're pretending that these new circumstances will make us, you know, happy, and we have to have this specific achievement or this great outcome, like we're going to get that wrong. And so I do think that we want to be thinking about happiness, but we want to be thinking about it in the right way. What we assume people would do when I think about happiness is like me, me, me, you know, put in all these strategies. We don't think, Oh, they'll just take time to like be with other people, and they'll stop trying to achieve as much because they'll recognize the importance of time affluence, and we'll take lots of time off and rest, you know, or they'll you know, volunteer for charity and do this nice stuff for others. That's not our stereotype of people narcissistically pursuing happiness, And so I think it's not the pursuit of happiness that's the problem. It's the fact that we generally tend to do it wrong, start to do it right. You know, we'll feel happier and be better off because we were thinking about our happiness and trying to find good ways to pursue it.

What advice do you have for people listening to this who don't feel licensed to be happy or feel guilty being happy because they take a look around them and they see so much suffering the world. It just it feels like it's almost too jarring to try and entertain happiness for themselves.

What advice do you have for people listening to this who don't feel licensed to be happy or feel guilty being happy because they take a look around them and they see so much suffering the world. It just it feels like it's almost too jarring to try and entertain happiness for themselves.

Yeah. I mean, I'll start with saying I get it, like I look around in the world, and I'm a happiness expert, and I think exactly the same thing. But I think that idea comes from a certain assumption that we have about like positive emotions and happiness. I think we feel guilty feeling happy when the whole world is falling apart in part because we think, well, if I'm happy, I'm probably not going to do anything about it, right, I'm just going to like ignore the fact that the world is on fire, like if I feel good about it.

Yeah. I mean, I'll start with saying I get it, like I look around in the world, and I'm a happiness expert, and I think exactly the same thing. But I think that idea comes from a certain assumption that we have about like positive emotions and happiness. I think we feel guilty feeling happy when the whole world is falling apart in part because we think, well, if I'm happy, I'm probably not going to do anything about it, right, I'm just going to like ignore the fact that the world is on fire, like if I feel good about it.

Placency.

Placency.

Yeah, it's kind of like a like a Pollyanna hypothesis where I'll just be like, it's like the dog and that meme with the fire where he's sitting in the fire and he's like, this is fine. Like if we're happy, we're like, this is fine. I don't care if the world's on fire. But that's a hypothesis about how the human mind works. It's a hypothesis that when we're in a positive mood, we're more likely to ignore the bad stuff going on in the world, and we're more likely to kind of just engage in inaction rather than doing something good about it. And RESEARCHERR. Constantin Kushlev at Georgetown has actually tested this. He's asked the question, Okay, who are the people who are out there doing the like really important social justice things in life, For example, who's going to a Black Lives Matter protest or who's taking climate action, like not just being anxious about the fact that the climate is changing its scary right now, but really doing stuff to protect it. And what he finds is that people's positive mood winds up predicting the amount of social justice action that people take. In other words, like the people who are in the best mood are the ones who are going to the protests, who are engaging in climate action and so on. And whenever I say that result, I'm always like, oh, yeah, of course that had to be the case, right, Like, if you're too depressed a function most and you're feeling overwhelmingly anxious, you're not like getting out there to do stuff, like you're just like in bed, like not able to do anything. These data are great because I think they give me a license to say, Oh, if I want to actually change the bad stuff in the world, I do need to focus on my mental health. I do need to focus on my positive mood. It matters. It is the path to having the bandwidth and the wherewithal to actually make the changes that we want to see in the world.

Yeah, it's kind of like a like a Pollyanna hypothesis where I'll just be like, it's like the dog and that meme with the fire where he's sitting in the fire and he's like, this is fine. Like if we're happy, we're like, this is fine. I don't care if the world's on fire. But that's a hypothesis about how the human mind works. It's a hypothesis that when we're in a positive mood, we're more likely to ignore the bad stuff going on in the world, and we're more likely to kind of just engage in inaction rather than doing something good about it. And RESEARCHERR. Constantin Kushlev at Georgetown has actually tested this. He's asked the question, Okay, who are the people who are out there doing the like really important social justice things in life, For example, who's going to a Black Lives Matter protest or who's taking climate action, like not just being anxious about the fact that the climate is changing its scary right now, but really doing stuff to protect it. And what he finds is that people's positive mood winds up predicting the amount of social justice action that people take. In other words, like the people who are in the best mood are the ones who are going to the protests, who are engaging in climate action and so on. And whenever I say that result, I'm always like, oh, yeah, of course that had to be the case, right, Like, if you're too depressed a function most and you're feeling overwhelmingly anxious, you're not like getting out there to do stuff, like you're just like in bed, like not able to do anything. These data are great because I think they give me a license to say, Oh, if I want to actually change the bad stuff in the world, I do need to focus on my mental health. I do need to focus on my positive mood. It matters. It is the path to having the bandwidth and the wherewithal to actually make the changes that we want to see in the world.

Oh my god, that's the best answer I could have possibly imagined. I didn't know about that research. And you know, Laurie, I'm reflecting in this moment on my own life, and you're giving me so much food for thought, and I'm realizing that, Okay, that's the macro stuff where you're trying to fight these big social justice issues. When I think about the happiest periods of my life, I was a better friend, I was a better daughter, I was a better mentor, I was a better coworker, I was just better to everyone in my life during those periods. And so this is operating at a micro and at a macro level in terms of our positive impact on the world.

Oh my god, that's the best answer I could have possibly imagined. I didn't know about that research. And you know, Laurie, I'm reflecting in this moment on my own life, and you're giving me so much food for thought, and I'm realizing that, Okay, that's the macro stuff where you're trying to fight these big social justice issues. When I think about the happiest periods of my life, I was a better friend, I was a better daughter, I was a better mentor, I was a better coworker, I was just better to everyone in my life during those periods. And so this is operating at a micro and at a macro level in terms of our positive impact on the world.

Yeah, and there was a really early paper by a Yale professor Peter Salive, who I know you know well, on what he called the feel good do good effect, which is like, if you happen to put people in a positive mood, then they do these little tiny acts of kindness towards the people around them. These were like old studies where you'd have people hear some positive news on the radio and they'd be more likely to like help someone who drop their contact, you know, in the mall or something like that. Or you kind of have people listen to happy music at the gym and they'll be more likely to help someone who needs some assistance with their study of handing out leaflets or something like that. These the ideas that when we're feeling good, we end up doing good both for the people who are close to us in our lives and just like people generally. And again, I think we just have this like incorrect view that like if we're good, if we're feeling good, yeah, we'll just ignore everybody else. We'll just kind of focus on our own good. But it's the opposite. You know. So many positive emotions are what's called pro social emotions, things like gratitude and so on, Like they make us want to do good for other people, and so Eric go, if we want good things to happen in the world, we might want to focus on people's mental health and give them more of those positive emotions.