Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, and if you're listening to this on March twentieth,
Speaker 1: Happy World Happiness Day. On the Happiness Lab, we suggest
Speaker 1: you do something to improve your well being every day
Speaker 1: of the year, but if the United Nations wants us
Speaker 1: all to make a special effort for twenty four hours
Speaker 1: in March, then we're on board with that too. The
Speaker 1: first International Day of Happiness was celebrated back in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: The goal was to raise awareness that our well being
Speaker 1: can be approved if only more governments enacted policies to
Speaker 1: help us all become a little happier. On each International
Speaker 1: Day of Happiness, the United Nations also issues the World
Speaker 1: Happiness Report, written by scientists and academics. This report examines
Speaker 1: different themes, showing what we're getting right when it comes
Speaker 1: to happiness and what we still need to work on.
Speaker 1: Past reports have looked at happiness and parenting, what living
Speaker 1: in cities does for our happiness, and more recently, the
Speaker 1: impact that COVID nineteen has had on our well being.
Speaker 1: Over the next few episodes of the Happiness Lab, we'll
Speaker 1: be talking to the experts behind this year's World Happiness Report.
Speaker 1: They're among the best and brightest in the field of
Speaker 1: happiness science. So these are going to be some fantastic episodes,
Speaker 1: But for the show today, we're doing something a little different.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is made by Pushkin Industries, and many
Speaker 1: of the network's other hosts have some pretty interesting takes
Speaker 1: on what can make us all happier, so I decided
Speaker 1: to talk to them about what they would have put
Speaker 1: in this year's World Happiness Report. A little later, you'll
Speaker 1: hear from revisionist Histories Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2: I'm perfectly happy to suffer, but I will not suffer
Speaker 2: for six hours.
Speaker 1: And from Tim Hartford from cautionary.
Speaker 3: Tales, the surgeon would leave the probe in, so to speak,
Speaker 3: without wiggling it around.
Speaker 1: But we'll kick it off with an old, old friend
Speaker 1: of mine.
Speaker 4: It's worth sharing with folks that I've actually known you
Speaker 4: since I was seventeen years old. I was a student
Speaker 4: of yours.
Speaker 1: I was full eight years now.
Speaker 4: Now it feels like it's been so how much longer?
Speaker 1: This is Maya Schunker. I taught her back when she
Speaker 1: was an undergraduate at Yale, and we kept in touch
Speaker 1: after she graduated and went to work at the White House,
Speaker 1: where she advised the Obama administration on how behavioral science
Speaker 1: can improve government policy. These days, Maya hosts The Pushkin Show,
Speaker 1: a slight Change of Plans, a podcast about who we
Speaker 1: become when we face big challenges and decisions. Given all that,
Speaker 1: she was perhaps the perfect person to ask my question,
Speaker 1: if you were writing a chapter of the World Happiness Report,
Speaker 1: what would it be about?
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, this one's really easy for me because I
Speaker 4: think there is one thing that erodes my happiness more
Speaker 4: than anything else, and it's what our psychologist's friend, Ethan
Speaker 4: Cross calls mental chatter.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so Ethan Cross, he's a professor at the
Speaker 1: University of Michigan and he's the author of this wonderful
Speaker 1: book Chatter. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 4: And it was really helpful for me when I learned
Speaker 4: about this concept because I was like, wow, Ethan, you've
Speaker 4: just captured what's been in my brain for decades. So, Laurie,
Speaker 4: can you tell us more about what mental chatter is
Speaker 4: and how does that relate to the inner dialogue that
Speaker 4: we have in our minds all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let me start with the inner dialogue, because
Speaker 1: in some ways it's a really cool thing that we
Speaker 1: do as humans. So inner dialogue, just as it sounds,
Speaker 1: is like the self talk that you have going on
Speaker 1: in your head, and it could be about all kinds
Speaker 1: of things. Right, Our inner dialogue is how we like
Speaker 1: make sense of the world and build our own inner narrative.
Speaker 1: Our inner dialogue is how we like plan for what
Speaker 1: we're going to do after this. You know, when I
Speaker 1: was waiting for you to hop on zoom, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: after this, I'm gonna make dinner. And what do I
Speaker 1: have in my fridge? And I oh, I have some
Speaker 1: black beans? Like all of that is inner dialogue, right,
Speaker 1: But chatter, as Ethan defines, it, is a little bit different.
Speaker 1: It's when our inner dialogue goes to the negative. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's that inner voice of worry where you're thinking
Speaker 1: about the future and feeling anxious about what's to come,
Speaker 1: or that inner voice of rumination where you're thinking about
Speaker 1: the past and beating yourself up for something that you
Speaker 1: did do or that you didn't do, or even just
Speaker 1: like our inner voice of self criticism where we just
Speaker 1: kind of talk crap about ourselves like all the time,
Speaker 1: no matter what's going on. And so while our inner
Speaker 1: dialogue itself can be really adaptive, mental chatter is not.
Speaker 1: It kind of feels like crap, And then there's lots
Speaker 1: of evidence that it affects our performance negatively too.
Speaker 4: I remember so when I had a conversation with Ethan
Speaker 4: on a slight change of plans, it was so helpful
Speaker 4: for me to even hear this distinction, the distinction between
Speaker 4: the inner voice and dialogue and mental chatter, because I
Speaker 4: think what happens is in the throes of chatter, you
Speaker 4: are so pissed off at your brain. You're like, can
Speaker 4: you please stop? You've been ruminating over this thing for
Speaker 4: you three hours. You're not making any progress at all,
Speaker 4: and you can really start to resent your brain and
Speaker 4: resent the fact that it even has this faculty. And
Speaker 4: so when Ethan and I did more of this gratitude
Speaker 4: moment together where we appreciated our inner voice and to
Speaker 4: exactly your point, focused on all the benefits that that
Speaker 4: voice affords us in any given day, that alone helped
Speaker 4: me have a different relationship with my mental chatter, because
Speaker 4: at the end of the I thought, well, I wouldn't
Speaker 4: want to do away with my inner voice altogether. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's actually miraculous that I can travel in time to
Speaker 4: the future or the past in general. I mean, I
Speaker 4: might not like it in this moment because I'm perseparating
Speaker 4: about something even happened two weeks ago that I can
Speaker 4: no longer change. But in general, it's such a cool
Speaker 4: feature of our cognition, of human cognition, that we have
Speaker 4: the ability to have these internal conversations with ourselves.
Speaker 1: And I think the beauty is that once you understand
Speaker 1: what chatter is, you can also find strategies for controlling
Speaker 1: it when it goes to the not so great side, right,
Speaker 1: And that's the lovely thing about Ethan's work, because he
Speaker 1: has all these different strategies that we can use to
Speaker 1: like not shut our chatter up, but to use self
Speaker 1: talk to be a little bit more productive and a
Speaker 1: little bit kinder to ourselves.
Speaker 4: So let's talk about some of those strategies for those
Speaker 4: who are in the horrible loop of mental rumination. I
Speaker 4: want to give folks hope and help them see that
Speaker 4: there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 1: Well, one of Ethan's best strategies that I love because
Speaker 1: it's like so super simple, and in fact, there's lots
Speaker 1: of evidence that when you use this strategy, it doesn't
Speaker 1: take any cognitive work. It happens super fast. And that
Speaker 1: strategy is what he calls distance self talk, which is
Speaker 1: just the simple act of using your name and talking
Speaker 1: to yourself in the third person. So normally, if I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about my own like mental chatter, I'll be using
Speaker 1: the first person. I'll be like, oh, why did I
Speaker 1: do that? I said that stupid thing, like I should
Speaker 1: have thought more. But it's I I me, me, me me, right,
Speaker 1: that's a first person perspective, and that's what we often
Speaker 1: use when we get like all worrying and ruminative, because
Speaker 1: it's all about us. But distance self talk lets you
Speaker 1: get a little bit of psychological distance because instead of
Speaker 1: talking like that, you say, you know, maybe you messed
Speaker 1: up a little bit, Laurie, like, maybe this is something
Speaker 1: that you need to think about in the future. Right,
Speaker 1: So I'm using the second person you, I'm using the
Speaker 1: third person, like my name. And that is really powerful
Speaker 1: because the only time in your life you ever hear
Speaker 1: the second person you or your name is when somebody
Speaker 1: else is talking to you. And so it's this little
Speaker 1: cool linguistic device that makes us feel like we're hearing
Speaker 1: from some wise mentor we're hearing from some other person,
Speaker 1: somebody who is distance from that loop of chatter that
Speaker 1: we have going on. And Ethan's found that this simple
Speaker 1: act of doing that you don't even have to instruct
Speaker 1: subjects to like talk differently to themselves. Just the act
Speaker 1: of switching the pronouns that you use in your brain
Speaker 1: winds up making you a little bit kinder to yourself.
Speaker 1: Has all these wonderful emotional consequences where you're a little
Speaker 1: bit anxious over time, and it just lets you kind
Speaker 1: of get out of that loop so that you can
Speaker 1: perform better. And what's cool is like it doesn't take
Speaker 1: any work. It's just a matter of changing the pronouns.
Speaker 1: It's not like developing some complicated like cognitive behavior therapy strategy.
Speaker 1: It's just like you switch the pronouns and immediately you
Speaker 1: get this interesting distance from your normal chatter.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I remember reading in Ethan's book that Malala did this.
Speaker 4: Of course, Malala the most sophisticated psychologist of all time
Speaker 4: despite never having studied it, because she's such a such
Speaker 4: a genius. I really love the fly on the wall
Speaker 4: perspective because when I think about how I counsel my
Speaker 4: friends or family members, there's a certain objectivity that I
Speaker 4: feel I have in that moment where I can see
Speaker 4: the situation from a distance. The kind of hormonal fog
Speaker 4: is removed, all of those heated emotions are removed from
Speaker 4: whatever advice I'm giving, And it feels so useful when
Speaker 4: you're diagnosing your own problems to have that objectivity right,
Speaker 4: to be able to look at it as more of
Speaker 4: an impartial observer the distance.
Speaker 1: Self talk is one way to do that, but even
Speaker 1: finds you can also do that like literally taking the
Speaker 1: perspective of a distanced observer. You know what would Beyonce do?
Speaker 1: Sort of strategy where you just say, you know, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I said that thing, like that's so terrible. Well,
Speaker 1: what would Beyonce do? Imagine not Beyonce? How would I
Speaker 1: react to having said that? Like, I wouldn't care. I'd
Speaker 1: be Beyonce right, Which sounds silly, but the evidence really
Speaker 1: shows that, like taking this third person perspective, like pretending
Speaker 1: that you're somebody else, and especially somebody else who has
Speaker 1: exactly the skills to deal with whatever situation you're facing,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, like you wind up performing much better,
Speaker 1: being less anxious, and you can just kind of shut
Speaker 1: up the chatter because you kind of take on this
Speaker 1: other perspective. My favorite part of it what would Beyonce do?
Speaker 1: Is it turns out Beyonce herself uses a strategy I
Speaker 1: guess whenever she's like feeling nervous before shows, she has
Speaker 1: this persona that she calls Sasha Fears where she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna harness Sasha Fierce, and then she pretends she's
Speaker 1: Sasha Fierce and she just like goes out there and
Speaker 1: you know, does her Beyonce thing. So what would Beyonce do?
Speaker 1: Beyonce would use this form of distant self talk where
Speaker 1: you pretend that you're somebody cooler and wiser.
Speaker 4: I mean to imagine someone cooler than Beyonce. But fine,
Speaker 4: I guess she needs a different reference point. I'm curious
Speaker 4: to know what you think the mechanism is at play.
Speaker 4: Do you think it's because we are better at giving
Speaker 4: other people advice than we are ourselves, or do you
Speaker 4: think it's that we're better at following other people's advice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my guess is that it's a combination of the two.
Speaker 1: Right when we start using second person pronouns like you know, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to do a little bit better. I know
Speaker 1: that you know this has been hard, but you da
Speaker 1: da da da, Like I think we we rarely do
Speaker 1: that in like a mean way, like you suck and
Speaker 1: you're terrible, right, Like, that's just kind of not what
Speaker 1: most of us normally do. So when we apply that
Speaker 1: pronoun you to ourselves, I think it naturally makes us
Speaker 1: a little bit nicer. So it means the advice we're
Speaker 1: giving ourselves feels nicer. But I think hearing that self
Speaker 1: talk involving you and third person like you, Laura, you know,
Speaker 1: here's what you can do, all of a sudden, it
Speaker 1: gets us out of that like mental chatter frame where
Speaker 1: we're just talking to ourself and it kind of feels
Speaker 1: like we're hearing advice from somebody else. I think we
Speaker 1: both give advice differently, but we're more like we resonate
Speaker 1: with that advice differently too, We kind of hear it
Speaker 1: in a different way, so it's like both parts wind
Speaker 1: up making us feel better and perform better.
Speaker 4: One of my favorite strategies that I use when I
Speaker 4: am in the throes of mental chatter is temporal distancing.
Speaker 4: Can you share a bit more about what that is?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So That is a strategy where you pretend that
Speaker 1: you yourself are in the future thinking about whatever ye
Speaker 1: it is that you're ruminating about right now. Then I'll think, Okay,
Speaker 1: how is ten years from now Lari going to think
Speaker 1: about that? And I'm like, oh, she's not going to
Speaker 1: care about that at all? Right, Like my emotions kind
Speaker 1: of go down because it doesn't feel like it's that
Speaker 1: scary anymore. But also, ten years from now, Luria is
Speaker 1: going to think about that incident in a totally different way.
Speaker 1: She's going to say, oh, I learned something from that.
Speaker 1: And so this is this strategy of temporal distancing. You
Speaker 1: think about yourself in the future, how they would think
Speaker 1: about that this incident, And usually when they think about it,
Speaker 1: they're in a different mode than you are. They're not
Speaker 1: like feeling all anxious and ruminative about something. They're thinking
Speaker 1: from the perspective of this wise future observer who wants
Speaker 1: to go through hard things, who wants to grow from them,
Speaker 1: who's thinking more in terms of what they're going to
Speaker 1: learn rather than how it feels right now.
Speaker 4: So there have been a few times where temporal distancing
Speaker 4: has failed for me, and those are in moments where
Speaker 4: I'm sitting there ruminating, and I imagine five years from now, Maya,
Speaker 4: ten years from now Maya, and I think to myself,
Speaker 4: I'm going to be worried about the same damn thing
Speaker 4: even then. So for those of you who are listening
Speaker 4: who feel like they're very neurotic in this way, you're
Speaker 4: not alone. I'm with you, and so I want to
Speaker 4: share what I do in those moments. So what I
Speaker 4: do is I think back to my past and I
Speaker 4: try to think about some topic that sees my brain
Speaker 4: that I was absolutely convinced was going to plague me forever,
Speaker 4: and then to look at my present self and to say, huh,
Speaker 4: you're not actually worried about that issue that you thought
Speaker 4: in college was the biggest ever. And so sometimes collecting
Speaker 4: personal evidence from your own life that you were just wrong,
Speaker 4: you misfecasted the impact that a particular topic was going
Speaker 4: to have on you, can give you the confidence that
Speaker 4: the current thing will actually resolve in your brain over
Speaker 4: the next five or ten years.
Speaker 1: I love that because I do sometimes with that kind
Speaker 1: of temporal distancing strategy, like I feel like sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: so caught up in the moment with my chatter that
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, yeah, ten years from now, Laura, she's
Speaker 1: going to be just as freaked out about this tiny thing.
Speaker 1: But then when you look back, you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I was wrong about those other ones, so
Speaker 1: maybe I'm wrong about this one too.
Speaker 4: So Laurie, what are other strategies that we can use
Speaker 4: to distance ourselves from that chatter?
Speaker 1: Well, other strategies come from somebody else we've had on
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab, Krista Naff, who really talks about how
Speaker 1: we need to shut up the critical side of our
Speaker 1: self talk voice. And this is something that I think
Speaker 1: I've seen in my students so much, right, Like, I
Speaker 1: think my students just are so hyper ambitious. They talk
Speaker 1: to themselves in like such harsh ways. And I think
Speaker 1: they do that not because they're massochists, because they think
Speaker 1: it works, right. They just have this assumption that this
Speaker 1: really critic voices what's going to kind of get me
Speaker 1: off my butt and I'll actually do stuff and get
Speaker 1: motivated to do, you know, and achieve whatever goals I
Speaker 1: had in the first place. But a lot of kristin
Speaker 1: Neff's evidence suggests that that's absolutely not true. Self critical
Speaker 1: voice winds up causing you to procrastinate and it feels
Speaker 1: really terrible and you just don't get done what you
Speaker 1: need to get done. And she's found that there's a
Speaker 1: powerful alternative to this, which she refers to as self compassion. Again,
Speaker 1: you're kind of marshaling the compassion that you'd give to
Speaker 1: somebody else for yourself. You kind of give yourself the
Speaker 1: same kindness that you would an outside observer, but just
Speaker 1: to kind of make it concrete. She talks about self
Speaker 1: compassion as having these three parts. The first part is
Speaker 1: kind of mindfulness. You need to recognize this sucks right now.
Speaker 1: I'm having hard time right now, I have failed and
Speaker 1: I feel ashamed. So you're mindful about your feelings, the situation,
Speaker 1: how bad it is. You're kind of like calling like
Speaker 1: the emotional spade a spade, like this sucks right now.
Speaker 1: The second part is what she calls calmon humanity, which
Speaker 1: I think is super powerful. It's basically saying it's normal.
Speaker 1: I'm human, I'm going to screw up, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go through shame, I'm going to feel luck sometimes like
Speaker 1: this is normative, right, It is common humanity to experience
Speaker 1: these emotions that I'm experiencing. And then the third step
Speaker 1: is the self kindness part, kind of using the same
Speaker 1: strategies we were just talking about with Ethan, where you
Speaker 1: talk to yourself ideally using the sort of second and
Speaker 1: third person and say, Lauri, what can you take off
Speaker 1: your plate? Lauri, how can you be kind to yourself
Speaker 1: right now? And she finds this self compassion is this
Speaker 1: like super powerful strategy where it can do things like
Speaker 1: not just improve your performance and make you feel better,
Speaker 1: but also like reduce trauma when individuals are in combat situations.
Speaker 1: It can increase the compassion that you give to your
Speaker 1: team members and your partner. Right, so do you engage
Speaker 1: in self compassion? It boosts your other people compassion too,
Speaker 1: And it just like has this enormous effect on people's
Speaker 1: performance where you find that people stop procrastinating, they stop
Speaker 1: being afraid of the kind of tasks that they have
Speaker 1: ahead of them, they can just kind of embrace them
Speaker 1: with excitement.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I had so many misconceptions about the self compassion
Speaker 4: literature until I dug.
Speaker 1: In totally because it has really crappy brandis right, It
Speaker 1: sounds like very woo like self compassion. It doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like human performance maximization, but that's like ultimately what it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the minute I learned wait, self compassion
Speaker 4: can actually improve performance, I mean, then it just becomes
Speaker 4: a no brainer. It no longer feels like this soft
Speaker 4: woo woo narrative instead one that feels very productive and
Speaker 4: functional and ends up making you feel better, which matters too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think one thing we get wrong when
Speaker 1: we hear self compassion, And this is definitely something I've
Speaker 1: seen when I teach the strategy to my students is
Speaker 1: that they hear it as self indulgence. They think, like,
Speaker 1: if you're being kind to yourself, you're going to like
Speaker 1: let yourself off the hook or kind of not call
Speaker 1: yourself out when you are acting problematically, like when things
Speaker 1: are kind of a real problem. And I think that's
Speaker 1: why this idea of talking to yourself like you would
Speaker 1: a friend is so powerful. Like Maya, you're my friend
Speaker 1: and former student. If you were doing something that was
Speaker 1: really terrible, I would give you a talking to, but
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do it in a mean way and say, ma,
Speaker 1: you suck whatever. I would say like, Maya, what is
Speaker 1: going on? Like I just want to know how I
Speaker 1: can help? What can I do right? And so in
Speaker 1: some ways, this self compassion isn't self indulgence, it's not
Speaker 1: kind of letting yourself off the hook. If anything, it's
Speaker 1: what Kristin f calls fierce, right, Like you are ready
Speaker 1: to dive in even for tough problems and not avoid
Speaker 1: them because you care about yourself that much. Right. That's
Speaker 1: this kind of analogy with a friend. If a good
Speaker 1: friend's going through something tough and they're not behaving in
Speaker 1: the right way, you're going to check in. But you're
Speaker 1: not going to check in in this kind of mean,
Speaker 1: drill sergeant way. You're going to check in with kindness
Speaker 1: and curiosity and like understanding, right, And that's just kind
Speaker 1: of what we need to apply to ourselves too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that drill sergeant approach can really backfire.
Speaker 1: I remember.
Speaker 4: One of the freshest insights that I learned from Kristin
Speaker 4: is that when you are crippled by shame, right, when
Speaker 4: you feel that the thing you did is not just bad,
Speaker 4: that you're bad, it actually closes you off to the
Speaker 4: idea of improvement because if you're bad, you're irredeemable. There's
Speaker 4: no chance at making progress or ameliorating the situation. So
Speaker 4: actually self compassion is the instrument by which we can
Speaker 4: unlock growth and do better. So it's the opposite of
Speaker 4: letting ourselves off the hooktually, the thing that allows our
Speaker 4: brains to be open minded enough to think that there
Speaker 4: is redemption or at least a path to progress.
Speaker 1: Exactly, Maya. I love that you've brought up like the
Speaker 1: self talk and how we can use it better. I
Speaker 1: wish that was a chapter in the World Happiness Report.
Speaker 1: I think it's super important. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me, Laurie.
Speaker 1: A little later we'll be talking to Malcolm Gladwell about
Speaker 1: the joy or lack of it, he gets from running.
Speaker 1: But next up, the economist and Pushkin podcaster Tim Harford
Speaker 1: discusses the famous happiness experiment that echoes in his own
Speaker 1: medical history.
Speaker 3: I have to have colorsco is quite often we don't
Speaker 3: want to go into too many details, but it's a
Speaker 3: whole journey.
Speaker 1: All that after a quick break. If you look back
Speaker 1: through previous World Happiness Reports, you'll see that a lot
Speaker 1: of effort has been put into investigating why some people
Speaker 1: are happier than others, and indeed why some nations seem
Speaker 1: happier than their neighbors, but even in our own individual lives,
Speaker 1: our happiness tends to ebb and flow. We can be
Speaker 1: happy one year and down the next. Over the course
Speaker 1: of just an hour, we can experience a whole gamut
Speaker 1: of emotions, both good and bad. But there's an interesting
Speaker 1: bit of happiness research that shows just how slippery our
Speaker 1: grip on happiness can be. And that's the topic that
Speaker 1: was picked up by our next guest on this special show.
Speaker 3: I am Tim Harft. I am a senior columnist at
Speaker 3: the Financial Times, and I'm the host of Cautionary Tales,
Speaker 3: which is a podcast all about the catastrophes of the
Speaker 3: past and how we can learn from them.
Speaker 1: Tim admits to being obsessed by the work of Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize warning psychologist Danny Kanneman, and especially the work that
Speaker 1: Danny did on how we can remember bad experiences fondly
Speaker 1: given the right circumstances. In a series of experiments, Danny
Speaker 1: found that we can go through some pretty harrowing experiences,
Speaker 1: but with a couple of tweaks about how that ordeal ends,
Speaker 1: we can look back on even terrible times in a
Speaker 1: much more positive way than we expect.
Speaker 3: He emphasizes the difference between remember happiness and experienced happiness,
Speaker 3: and you would think happiness is just happiness, right, But
Speaker 3: of course Danny Carman gets to be Danny Carman by
Speaker 3: drawing these fine distinctions that never occurred to the rest
Speaker 3: of us. So let me give you an example that
Speaker 3: he ran an experiment where they've got people to hold
Speaker 3: their hands in ice water for sixty seconds, and using
Speaker 3: a kind of computer mouse, they could register how much
Speaker 3: that was hurting holding your left hand in this cold water.
Speaker 3: They get a nice warm towel, bit of a break,
Speaker 3: and then they got them to put their other hand
Speaker 3: in the water, not for sixty seconds, but for ninety seconds.
Speaker 3: But for the last thirty seconds the water got slightly warmer,
Speaker 3: I mean not warm, but just a little bit less horrible,
Speaker 3: And then you got your warm towel. But then the
Speaker 3: people participating in this experiment were asked do you want
Speaker 3: to do their left handing again or do you want
Speaker 3: to do the right hand thing again? In other words,
Speaker 3: do you want sixty seconds of pain followed by nice
Speaker 3: warm towels or do you want sixty seconds of pain
Speaker 3: followed by thirty seconds of slightly less painful pain followed
Speaker 3: by nice, warm towels, and people wanted the longer experience.
Speaker 3: They wanted the longer, more uncomfortable experience because they didn't
Speaker 3: remember it as more uncomfortable. What they recalled was, oh, well,
Speaker 3: I put my hand in iced water and it was painful,
Speaker 3: or there was that other time I put my hand
Speaker 3: in iced water and it wasn't as bad. I didn't
Speaker 3: remember it as being as bad. And the reason they
Speaker 3: don't remember it as being as bad is because it
Speaker 3: didn't end as uncomfortably. So in this particular case, Karnaman
Speaker 3: was highlighting, there's a clear irrationality.
Speaker 1: Obviously, it's better to be less time and pain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, less time and pain, like as you're experiencing them,
Speaker 3: the only difference between the two experiences was one of
Speaker 3: them had thirty extra seconds of discomfort. But as you
Speaker 3: remembered them, they're very different. Okay, so what has that
Speaker 3: got to do with happiness? Well, it turns out that
Speaker 3: this distinction between what you're experiencing as you go through
Speaker 3: it and then how you remember it applies to all
Speaker 3: sorts of things in our lives. You might experience a
Speaker 3: happy relationship, but then it ends in a really messy way,
Speaker 3: and then suddenly the whole relationship is like, well that
Speaker 3: was a disaster. You might experience a pleasant vacation, but
Speaker 3: then you have all kinds of trouble getting home from
Speaker 3: the vacation, and then the whole vacation is spoiled. And
Speaker 3: so this distinction between the stories we tell ourselves about
Speaker 3: our lives, what we remember about our lives, and how
Speaker 3: we're actually experiencing our lives as we go along, it
Speaker 3: really matters. And I'm not sure I would say that
Speaker 3: one of these things is the truth, like the experience
Speaker 3: is the truth and the memory is false. I don't
Speaker 3: think it's that simple, But there's a distinction there that's
Speaker 3: worth exploring.
Speaker 1: Tim is, of course right. That distinction can have a
Speaker 1: huge impact on our lives. Twenty years ago, Danny Carneman
Speaker 1: conducted a study to see if the medical procedure used
Speaker 1: at the time to examine the human bowel for disease
Speaker 1: could be made less uncomfortable, at least in our memories.
Speaker 1: If it could, then fewer people might duck out of
Speaker 1: the exam because of the discomfort, and more lives would
Speaker 1: be saved. So, just like in the ice water experiment,
Speaker 1: Danny decided to extend the duration of a colonoscopy.
Speaker 3: At the end of the procedure that basically the surgeon
Speaker 3: would leave the probe in, so to speak, without wiggling
Speaker 3: it around. So it was kind of uncomfortable, but fine.
Speaker 3: People rated those colonoscopies as less unpleasant, even though minute
Speaker 3: by minute it was clearly worse than the shorter procedure.
Speaker 3: The joy is because of a family history, I have
Speaker 3: to have colonoscopies quite often. We don't want to go
Speaker 3: into too many details, but the whole thing lasts a
Speaker 3: couple of days, and it's a whole journey.
Speaker 1: I once presented the colonoscopy study to a group of
Speaker 1: medical doctors who chastised me afterwards because they noted that
Speaker 1: when Danny did that study and people were in serious
Speaker 1: rectal pain during the entire colonoscopy, and we could kind
Speaker 1: of vary how it ended. That that was before the
Speaker 1: beauty of anesthesia that we have today, And those doctors said,
Speaker 1: your colonoscopy won't be nearly as bad. You'll just kind
Speaker 1: of get knocked out, have no remembered happiness or experienced happiness,
Speaker 1: and then you get a nice little bottle of juice.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I mean as a connoisseur of of having
Speaker 3: cameras shoved whether the sun doesn't shine, Yeah, they're fine. Actually,
Speaker 3: don't avoid. Do not avoid your kernoroscopy people that it's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love the experience versus remembered happiness stuff. I
Speaker 1: mean for a couple of reasons. One is that I
Speaker 1: love that Danny's figured this out and we can now
Speaker 1: start better engineering enjoyably remembered experiences just by making them
Speaker 1: kind of end pretty well at the end, right, you know,
Speaker 1: if you've had a kind of crappy vacation, you know,
Speaker 1: and it hasn't gone so well at the end, you
Speaker 1: can just kind of stick in some pleasant thing and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden you can start feeling a
Speaker 1: little bit happier. Danny also gives a suggestion that, you know,
Speaker 1: if you've had this vacation that's gone really well, and
Speaker 1: say that the day that you're flying home, you know,
Speaker 1: everything falls apart and terrible things happen. He would say, well,
Speaker 1: then you need to kind of reframe the vacation. There
Speaker 1: was the vacation, you know, it ended on a high note,
Speaker 1: and then there was the kind of crappy travel day home,
Speaker 1: but I'm just going to kind of put that into
Speaker 1: a different mental slot, and now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you can remember your vacation pleasantly, even though it sort
Speaker 1: of ended on a not so good no. And so
Speaker 1: I love this strategy because by using what he calls
Speaker 1: this peak end effect, where you're sort of paying too
Speaker 1: much attention to the end of events, you can sort
Speaker 1: of remember that the end of events matter a lot,
Speaker 1: and you just need to make sure that things end well,
Speaker 1: and then you'll kind of be happier. It's also funny
Speaker 1: to me that I think there's so many natural events
Speaker 1: in our lives that end well and we remember them
Speaker 1: really fondly, like desserts and orgasms and all these things
Speaker 1: that seem to be particularly good at the end, and
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden, we remember these things as
Speaker 1: the best experience as ever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, although meals, if you go out for a meal,
Speaker 3: it doesn't then with dessert.
Speaker 1: Have to end with the bill, ends with the bill, Laurie, It.
Speaker 3: Ends with somebody asking you to pay money. But we
Speaker 3: still go out for dinner, and we don't feel that
Speaker 3: was a mistake. So I guess we successfully compartmentalize the
Speaker 3: bill as being something else. But maybe restaurants should experiment
Speaker 3: with getting people to pay up front. If you go
Speaker 3: to really fancy restaurant and it has a tasting menu,
Speaker 3: you can actually know what the whole thing is going
Speaker 3: to cost, and you could pay in advance. Love this,
Speaker 3: Maybe that would be in everybody's interest. You just remember
Speaker 3: the whole thing more fondly.
Speaker 1: I do think some American restaurants have tried to come
Speaker 1: over this. We have a few restaurants in my hometown
Speaker 1: in New Heaven that when they bring the bill, they'll
Speaker 1: bring you like a little candy or some Swedish fish
Speaker 1: or something. So it's kind of this little surprise moment
Speaker 1: at the ends. You're paying the bill, but then you
Speaker 1: get to have some tasty candy at the end, but
Speaker 1: the bill at the beginning will save them the candy cast.
Speaker 1: I love this idea.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, But this distinction between what we remember and what
Speaker 3: we experience, I think it broadens out beyond this narrow
Speaker 3: but important point of we're really influenced by how things end.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's important in itself, but if you think about,
Speaker 3: for example, the standard question that people are asked when
Speaker 3: they're asked to evaluate their happiness, which is like, how's
Speaker 3: it going. I mean, I realized there's a little bit
Speaker 3: more more formal than that, but I mean that's like
Speaker 3: so metrics.
Speaker 1: Folks that might say that is but no, but seriously,
Speaker 1: all things considered, you know, how happy were you this week? Right?
Speaker 1: That's a remembered judgment. Right. People don't have access to
Speaker 1: their experienced happiness during the week at every moment when
Speaker 1: you're asking them that question. All they have access to
Speaker 1: is that remembered version. And if the remembered version is biased,
Speaker 1: either because it pays too much attention to what just
Speaker 1: happened or how things ended or whatever, then we're just
Speaker 1: not going to get great happiness judgments.
Speaker 3: No, and you've phrased it, how do things go this week?
Speaker 3: Which is one question. But you could ask people how
Speaker 3: are things going in general? How satisfied are you with
Speaker 3: your life? Or you could ask people, tell me about yesterday,
Speaker 3: how are things yesterday? Or you can get them to
Speaker 3: focus in in more detail. Let's walk through what happened yesterday.
Speaker 3: Let's go through the breakfast, the morning commute, you had
Speaker 3: these meetings, you had lunch with a friend, all the
Speaker 3: different things you did. So these are quite distinct ways
Speaker 3: of thinking about measuring happiness. If we're asked, for example,
Speaker 3: to evaluate our lives and we were just about to
Speaker 3: get married or were recently married, you know, I'm getting
Speaker 3: married or I just got married, is that like a
Speaker 3: huge deal? But if instead it's like, well, my children
Speaker 3: are graduating, they're going to leave home, they're going off
Speaker 3: to college. Well that's what you think about. Well maybe
Speaker 3: you're ill and that's what you think about. But actually
Speaker 3: none of these things are in fact as all encompassing
Speaker 3: as they seem to be when you are directing your
Speaker 3: attention at them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean. The good news about these measures, though, is
Speaker 1: that one could ask the question like, what are we
Speaker 1: really trying to maximize? Right? You know, most of the
Speaker 1: stuff we talk about in the Happiness Lab is all
Speaker 1: about strategies that you can use to maximize your happiness.
Speaker 1: As the question is what are we trying to maximize?
Speaker 1: And I think to a certain extent, what we're trying
Speaker 1: to maximize is what people say in those remembered judgments. Right.
Speaker 1: For example, if I do some sort of intervention, right,
Speaker 1: like I get people to scribble in a gratitude journal,
Speaker 1: or I get people to engage with more social connection,
Speaker 1: and then later on I asked them, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: all things considered, how are you feeling with your life
Speaker 1: or how are you feeling yesterday? What was your positive
Speaker 1: emotion like yesterday? And people say like, oh, it was
Speaker 1: pretty good. Then my sense is that that social connection intervention,
Speaker 1: or that gratitude intervention, it did actually do some work.
Speaker 1: It might just not be doing all the work we
Speaker 1: assume it's doing because these judgments are a little bit biased.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't entirely disagree, but I would want to
Speaker 3: raise a question. So if Laurie, for example, you encouraged
Speaker 3: your listeners to maybe go out and have more diverse experiences,
Speaker 3: go and meet more people, go to more places, do
Speaker 3: more challenging things, take more short vacations rather than fewer
Speaker 3: long vacations. Because all of these things are going to
Speaker 3: lay down new memories, your life is going to seem
Speaker 3: richer and more satisfying. I mean, that's advice I would
Speaker 3: give myself, that's advice I would take from you for sure.
Speaker 3: And yet, and yet are you not actually minute to
Speaker 3: minute potentially subjecting yourself to a lot more stress, more congestion,
Speaker 3: more uncomfortable situations, more difficulty, more danger, and actually you're
Speaker 3: going through your life potentially having a worse experience moment
Speaker 3: to moment, and yet at the end of the year
Speaker 3: you look back at it and go, that was great.
Speaker 3: Whose side to Thomas Shelling? Economist Thomas Shelling would would
Speaker 3: talk about this sort of thing, and he would raise
Speaker 3: the question whose side should you be on in that
Speaker 3: argument with yourself? Who's right? And I don't think the
Speaker 3: answer is entirely obvious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think one strategy we can use to get
Speaker 1: better at it is to do a better job of
Speaker 1: recognizing what's happening in our moment to moment self. I
Speaker 1: think the problem with the moment to moment self is
Speaker 1: that we're not often doing that evaluation. We're not taking
Speaker 1: time to be mindful and to recognize what's going on.
Speaker 1: But I think these practices where people engage in a
Speaker 1: little bit more mindfulness, even when it is being mindful
Speaker 1: about kind of not so great situations, you can kind
Speaker 1: of notice what negative emotions you're experiencing. Those kind of
Speaker 1: strategies can help us pay a little bit more attention
Speaker 1: to the experience self in the moment, so you're kind
Speaker 1: of kind of meta aware as you're going through those
Speaker 1: kinds of events during your day, and I think that
Speaker 1: can help us come up with a little bit of
Speaker 1: a better judgment. Right, we can kind of do the
Speaker 1: work to realize like, yeah, you know, it was fun
Speaker 1: to think about going on that vacation. That was great
Speaker 1: in my remembered happiness, but actually I kind of hate
Speaker 1: the traffic. I kind of hate going through you know,
Speaker 1: the tea essay or whatever. That mindfulness can sort of
Speaker 1: help us pay attention, and I think it can also
Speaker 1: help us pay attention in the other direction too, Right,
Speaker 1: we can start noticing the little good things about our
Speaker 1: life that are going well, so that in times that
Speaker 1: are kind of sucky, we can go back to our
Speaker 1: experienced happiness and notice like, actually, it wasn't that bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was to a certain extent my experience
Speaker 1: during COVID, where you know, in large part I was
Speaker 1: just starting some of this happiness work. So I was
Speaker 1: doing all this work and in the moment to kind
Speaker 1: of be mindful of the taste of my coffee and
Speaker 1: be grateful for the small things. And I think my
Speaker 1: overall evaluation of how bad it was during COVID is
Speaker 1: a little bit less bad than it could have been
Speaker 1: in a remembered sense, because I was there noticing mindfully
Speaker 1: some of these little things in life that were good,
Speaker 1: that didn't go away even in the midst of that
Speaker 1: pandemic time.
Speaker 3: One thing I have been doing recently is I have
Speaker 3: been keeping what is sometimes called a good time journal.
Speaker 3: So at the end of each day, I think back
Speaker 3: on what I've been doing and how much fun it was.
Speaker 3: And one thing I really noticed was that intense physical exercise.
Speaker 3: So going to the gym or kickboxing classes, they were
Speaker 3: always great in hindsight, and I know they I mean
Speaker 3: they hurt, they properly hurt. At the time, you were
Speaker 3: so glad. When they're over three hours later, you're looking
Speaker 3: back and going that was the best part of the day.
Speaker 3: And I guess that that is part of the weirdness
Speaker 3: and the fun of Danny Carnerman's distinction that he's making.
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that, as you'd expect from
Speaker 1: a master podcaster. Tim's talk there exercise sets us up
Speaker 1: perfectly for the last part of this special show, which
Speaker 1: Keen amateur runner Malcolm Gladwell turns a familiar happiness maxim
Speaker 1: on its head, it's.
Speaker 2: The journey, not the destination. I just like, no, it's
Speaker 2: the destination. Otherwise, what's the point of the journey.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will be right back. Hey, Hey, how's
Speaker 1: it going.
Speaker 2: It's going well.
Speaker 1: If I'm asking my fellow Pushkin host to re imagine
Speaker 1: the World Happiness Report, there's no way I could leave
Speaker 1: out revisionist history. Is Malcolm Gladwell. I knew he was
Speaker 1: going to have something interesting and provocative to add.
Speaker 2: All right, we're ready, fire away, all right.
Speaker 1: The question I had for you, Malcolm, is if you
Speaker 1: were an author of the World Happiness Report, if you
Speaker 1: were doing your own chapter in this big report, what
Speaker 1: would you want to talk about?
Speaker 2: I would like to do my argument that the phrase
Speaker 2: it's the journey not the destination is backwards. Oh, there's
Speaker 2: the whole important class of happiness that's about the destination
Speaker 2: and not the journey. And there's a special kind of
Speaker 2: deep and enduring I think pleasure fulfillment, where it's just
Speaker 2: all it's all about where you end up, and that
Speaker 2: getting there is sometimes hard and unpleasant, and that that
Speaker 2: makes the ending even sweeter. I've always found something uniquely
Speaker 2: kind of troubling about that phrase, it's the journey, not
Speaker 2: the destination. I just like, no, it's like it's the destination. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: what's the point of the journey.
Speaker 1: Well, well, let's unpack that a little bit, because there
Speaker 1: are spots. There are spots where I agree with you,
Speaker 1: and there's spots where I think the science might differ
Speaker 1: a little.
Speaker 2: Like I think about this all time because I'm a runner.
Speaker 2: Every time, I've been running my entire life. So I've
Speaker 2: been running. I'm sixty, I've been running for essentially fifty years.
Speaker 2: Every time I go running, I have exactly the same
Speaker 2: psychological experience, which is I don't really want.
Speaker 1: To do it.
Speaker 2: I mean I make a place for it, and I
Speaker 2: kind of formally look forward to it. I packed my
Speaker 2: running clothes. I know when I'm going to go running,
Speaker 2: I drive to a running place or you know, I
Speaker 2: set it all up. But you know, if you told
Speaker 2: me I could go home and drink a beer, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a powerful temptation every time not to do it.
Speaker 2: And then when I'm running, it's not always pleasant. You
Speaker 2: know it's going to be. If you're doing a hard
Speaker 2: track workout, it's hard, it's daunting. I mean, you're pushing
Speaker 2: yourself and it's but then when you're finished, there is
Speaker 2: a kind of experience from having finished it that keeps
Speaker 2: me going back to it for fifty years. It's thirty
Speaker 2: two degrees out there today, I'm going to go running.
Speaker 2: I don't want to go running in thirty two degrees,
Speaker 2: but I will do it because there's a plasure.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: When I'm done and I'm back home and it's warm again,
Speaker 2: I'm really really happy that I did it right. But
Speaker 2: I wouldn't describe the actual experience. It's not masochism because
Speaker 2: while I'm running, I have in the back of my
Speaker 2: mind the memory of the feeling of having finished running,
Speaker 2: and that makes the effort worth it and in a
Speaker 2: certain way pleasurable in this sort of in this sort
Speaker 2: of different way, it's like you're testing yourself in this
Speaker 2: way that you you kind of appreciate. That's so that's
Speaker 2: the argument I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think it maps on to this
Speaker 1: distinction that I feel like it's mountaineering folks who started
Speaker 1: this distinction between type one and type two fun. So
Speaker 1: type one fun is really just the beer, just sitting
Speaker 1: home having the beer, you know, like you know, hot
Speaker 1: fudge Sunday's orgasms, Like just like the in the moment
Speaker 1: stuff is just good and deeply pleasurable, whereas type two
Speaker 1: fun is sort of the opposite. It's like, again, it's
Speaker 1: not fun in the moment. It's not fun when you're
Speaker 1: like putting your shoes on and that first blast of
Speaker 1: the thirty two degree weather when you're running. But the
Speaker 1: fact that there's a goal at the end that you're
Speaker 1: going to get to means the type two fun winds
Speaker 1: up being really interesting. And this is like just a
Speaker 1: distinction that like sports nuts and like people who write
Speaker 1: in mountaineering blogs make, But it's actually something that the
Speaker 1: economist George Lowenstein studied himself. He wrote this paper of
Speaker 1: like why climb a mountain? But the idea is like,
Speaker 1: why would you ever do something where it's like kind
Speaker 1: of again not masochism, maybe not miserable in the moment,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't have fun in the actual journey itself.
Speaker 1: It just has fun when you hit the end of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so he argues that this is like a deep
Speaker 1: feature of human pleasure seeking, is that we don't just
Speaker 1: seek pleasure kind of in the moment for the journey,
Speaker 1: like most of the good, meaningful pleasures we get involve
Speaker 1: some hard stuff. I mean, you're talking about running, but
Speaker 1: I know you're also a dad and raising a kid,
Speaker 1: and that's the kind of thing that in the moment,
Speaker 1: the pleasure is not great. But when you get to
Speaker 1: these achievement moments like graduates from kindergarten or do these
Speaker 1: fun things like those matter a lot more. And so
Speaker 1: Lowenstein's argument is that there's so much of human motivation
Speaker 1: is motivation not to do the thing kind of in
Speaker 1: the moment for the journey, but the motivation kind of
Speaker 1: comes from the very fact of there being an arrival
Speaker 1: at the end. I think the problem, though, is when
Speaker 1: everything's about the arrival at the end, and I think
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing I see maybe with
Speaker 1: my students right where they get mistaken about how much
Speaker 1: they're going to enjoy the arrival at the end of
Speaker 1: I don't know, getting into a super good college, or
Speaker 1: getting married, or there's all these big things in life
Speaker 1: that we put our happiness only at the arrival at
Speaker 1: the end, and sometimes that can set us up for
Speaker 1: like kind of mispredicting how good that's going to feel.
Speaker 1: When students get into college there's all these videos now
Speaker 1: of like the acceptance moment when students click on the
Speaker 1: link and they find out did I get into Yale
Speaker 1: or did I not get into Yale? And when they
Speaker 1: click on the link and they get in, they start
Speaker 1: screaming like yeah, that's great. But students will self report
Speaker 1: afterwards like five minutes later, well that was a letdown,
Speaker 1: Like there's just the next caret to go after in
Speaker 1: the next caret, And so I think the challenge is,
Speaker 1: like how do we balance both of those. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, we want to get the meaningful pursuit from
Speaker 1: the big arrival moments in life, but we don't want
Speaker 1: to like have those only be the things, or be
Speaker 1: picking things where their arrival isn't as good as we expected.
Speaker 1: We kind of mispredict how awesome it'll be in the end.
Speaker 2: I think part of the answer is, I'm thinking again
Speaker 2: of the running example. Part of the answer is in
Speaker 2: understanding that the kind of satisfaction that you get from
Speaker 2: the journey is not less, it's just different. So when
Speaker 2: I go for a long run, there's always a moment
Speaker 2: in a long run where like in the middle, where
Speaker 2: you're filled with this sense of awe about what human
Speaker 2: It's funny, in fifty years, I've always had this, always,
Speaker 2: this moment wherein I think, Holy mackerel, I can't believe people.
Speaker 2: It's never personal. It's all about the class of runners.
Speaker 2: I can't believe we're capable of doing this, Like, you know,
Speaker 2: you might be You're eight miles into a twelve mile run,
Speaker 2: so you've been out there for an hour, and you're like,
Speaker 2: is it really possible for someone to be a middle
Speaker 2: aged man to go out and run twelve miles and
Speaker 2: be fine about it? Like it just seems like it
Speaker 2: seems incredible to me, Like you're moving, You're not meandering,
Speaker 2: You're like moving on. You know. It's sort of a
Speaker 2: fairly decent clip. And that's like I was it always.
Speaker 2: It fills me this with the same kind of wonder
Speaker 2: that I get whenever I see anyone doing something thing
Speaker 2: that requires effort and talent and persistence. Right, it makes
Speaker 2: me feel better about human beings that we can we
Speaker 2: can sort of pull this off.
Speaker 1: I love that and it fits with I mean, there's
Speaker 1: this lovely work by Daker Keltner that looks at all
Speaker 1: these domains in which people experience awe and wonder, and
Speaker 1: I think we assume that that's going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: these moments in nature when you connect with the divine.
Speaker 1: And he finds that the most common moments of awe
Speaker 1: in people's everyday experience is when we experience awe for
Speaker 1: the awesomeness of human beings, like human's moral character or
Speaker 1: their individual performance and achievement. And so I love that
Speaker 1: you get that while you're running, but that's not I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not a runner, but I do, like, you know,
Speaker 1: these long, hardcore yoga routines, and that is not my
Speaker 1: experience in the moment of the top yoga routine. My
Speaker 1: experience is always like why am I doing this?
Speaker 2: Sucks?
Speaker 1: Like I need to figure out, like I need to
Speaker 1: find ways to get to these deep moments of awe during.
Speaker 2: Because you know the There's another way in which journeys
Speaker 2: differ from destinations, which is that the pleasure that comes
Speaker 2: from reaching the destination is I don't want to say fixed,
Speaker 2: it's one very specific, singular thing, whereas the satisfaction that
Speaker 2: comes from the journey, you're cycling through a series of responses,
Speaker 2: so it's thirty two degrees out or whatever. And grew
Speaker 2: up in Canada going and running. I've gone rung in
Speaker 2: minus twenty before there's that dread, Oh you know, shit,
Speaker 2: go ahead. Then there's like ten minutes and you're like
Speaker 2: it's not that bad. And then fifteen minutes in your
Speaker 2: relax and just sort of running easily and you're not
Speaker 2: tired yet. And then there's that all moment like I
Speaker 2: can't believe I'm doing this. It's kind of amazing, right,
Speaker 2: and then there's that kind of like it's almost over exhilaration.
Speaker 2: It's like the journey is six different emotional states. The
Speaker 2: destination is one, and it's just and I think whenever
Speaker 2: I try to get non runners to run, it's very
Speaker 2: difficult to explain them that they're fixated on the first state,
Speaker 2: which is, oh man, it's hard, I don't know about there,
Speaker 2: and they forget no, no, no, there's like there's there's five
Speaker 2: more after that. You just have to get to them.
Speaker 2: This is a big deal in Canada because of how
Speaker 2: much running you have to do in the cold, that
Speaker 2: you have to understand that cold only only is a
Speaker 2: problem for the first five minutes.
Speaker 1: And I think that's true for so many experiences that
Speaker 1: ultimately give us happiness right, Like I think, you know,
Speaker 1: on the show, we talk a lot about social connection,
Speaker 1: for example, like just talking to a stranger, which ultimately,
Speaker 1: once you're five minutes into it and it's feeling good,
Speaker 1: is awesome and you really enjoy it. But the friction
Speaker 1: at the start of it, that first question that kind
Speaker 1: of awkward or they're going to hate me. All those
Speaker 1: predictions are off. And so I think this is like
Speaker 1: maybe a deep truth of things that make us like happy,
Speaker 1: is that a lot of them start with some friction,
Speaker 1: and like the first the first step is sucky, and
Speaker 1: you have to overcome the sucky step to get to
Speaker 1: the good part. But a lot of times we like
Speaker 1: miss miss the sucky I mean, I think that that's
Speaker 1: a real problem with so many of our happiness pursuits,
Speaker 1: is that, like we have to overcome that moment of friction,
Speaker 1: but there's often an opportunity cost of the thing that
Speaker 1: has no friction, you know, for you with the run,
Speaker 1: it's like instead of getting out in the like thirty
Speaker 1: two degree day, sit home and have the beer. Right,
Speaker 1: the frictionless thing is always appealing, but to get to
Speaker 1: the thing that makes us truly kind of feel great,
Speaker 1: we have to kind of overcome those first steps of friction.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, various sports have different relationships to these questions
Speaker 2: that we're talking about, and one of the most extreme
Speaker 2: is cyclists. I used to listen a lot to still
Speaker 2: do to Lance Armstrong's podcast, which is actually really good.
Speaker 2: You know, there's always a moment where Lance has one
Speaker 2: of his fellow cyclists on and they just talk about
Speaker 2: start talking about suffering, and like you realize they don't
Speaker 2: mean suffering the way we mean suffering. I don't think
Speaker 2: there's anything that's as painful as the Twitter France. I
Speaker 2: don't I just nothing. Running a marathon for a world
Speaker 2: class athlete, it's like two hours and ten minutes and
Speaker 2: then you're done. The Twitter France guys are out there
Speaker 2: like all day for like weeks. It's insane. They're like
Speaker 2: risking their lives, They're losing twenty pounds, their butts, sore,
Speaker 2: their back. I mean, it's just like incredible, Like what
Speaker 2: they go through. The whole thing is just nuts. It's
Speaker 2: just nuts. I mean it does look to the rest
Speaker 2: of us like masochism, but their ability to kind of
Speaker 2: reinterpret masochism as something fulfilling and redeeming, and it's just
Speaker 2: it's just amazing to me. I remember once Lence was
Speaker 2: talking to some guy and they were talking about how
Speaker 2: they're trying to teach their kids to suffer in the
Speaker 2: way that they liked suffering, and how it was just impossible.
Speaker 2: Like it's not a generational thing. It's just that those
Speaker 2: cyclists are so singular in their ability to reinterpret pain.
Speaker 1: Well, you'll appreciate that. In fact, one of the most
Speaker 1: famous papers on what's known as rosy retrospection, which is
Speaker 1: this idea that you look back at an experience that
Speaker 1: was kind of sucking, you think that was awesome. I
Speaker 1: would totally do it again. It actually looked at competitive
Speaker 1: cyclists they oh really yeah, yeah, people's happiness at every
Speaker 1: at various moments along the trip. And you know, when
Speaker 1: you're going to the trip for cycling, you feel great,
Speaker 1: and then you're on the trip and every rating is low,
Speaker 1: and then you come back and it's and you say,
Speaker 1: what was your average rating on the trip, And that
Speaker 1: retrospective average rating on the trip is like many points
Speaker 1: higher than the actual average at any point on the trip,
Speaker 1: So you kind of think back positively. So maybe it's
Speaker 1: they didn't. They didn't look into the individual differences that cyclist,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to make a general point about
Speaker 1: human nature and rosy retrospect, and they weren't making at
Speaker 1: individual differences and cyclists in particular. But maybe they should have.
Speaker 1: Maybe cyclists especially I.
Speaker 2: Used to cycle a lot, and I just stopped. I
Speaker 2: can't reinterpret my suffering the way they do. Let's go
Speaker 2: do a century. You know, you ride by one hundred miles,
Speaker 2: so nuts. It's like, I'm perfectly happy to suffer, but
Speaker 2: I will not suffer for six hours.
Speaker 1: So how do you get how do you get through
Speaker 1: the initial friction on your runs? Right? What's the what's
Speaker 1: a tip that our listeners can use to kind of
Speaker 1: bust through that friction to get to the happier, longer,
Speaker 1: more meaningful journey.
Speaker 2: At the end starts low as the obvious one. In
Speaker 2: the beginning, you're trying to distract yourself and you're thinking
Speaker 2: about kinds of things. You will eventually as you get
Speaker 2: into it, be running associatively where you just be focused
Speaker 2: on yourself. And that's very kind of you know, as
Speaker 2: runners high whatever they want to call it, but I don't.
Speaker 2: I prefer it sounds to me, that makes it sound
Speaker 2: very extravagant. It's just a kind of point of equilibrium.
Speaker 2: You'll get there eventually. I think a lot of the
Speaker 2: problems that beginning runners have is it sounds very paradoxical,
Speaker 2: is their runs are too short. So go out for
Speaker 2: two miles. No, no, no, no, two miles. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: you're not transitioning to anything if all you're doing is
Speaker 2: running two miles, Like there is a kind of I've
Speaker 2: always thought many runers with me that there is a
Speaker 2: magic about going past an hour that once you get
Speaker 2: into hour two, really really lovely things happen. It could
Speaker 2: be forty five minutes, but it's certainly not fifteen minutes,
Speaker 2: like it's not happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is cool. You've got to get You have
Speaker 1: to give yourself the time, and then once you get
Speaker 1: into it, the flow start kicking in.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The same thing, by the way, with writing a book,
Speaker 2: any kind of long concentrated activity, is just you have
Speaker 2: to readjust your time horizons. You're not making sense of
Speaker 2: a draft in two days. You know, if you're disappointed
Speaker 2: after two days, it's because your time horizon was wrong.
Speaker 1: And this raises a question of like how we can
Speaker 1: get to better time horizons. But ironically, some of the
Speaker 1: research by Shichi Twang and Jennifer Aker at Stanford suggests
Speaker 1: that one way we can get to longer time horizons
Speaker 1: is to start thinking about the journey more. They have
Speaker 1: all this work on what they call journey mindset. For example,
Speaker 1: like I want to lose some weight, I want to
Speaker 1: know hit my goal weight. Like no, Actually, what you
Speaker 1: want to do is like be it your goal weight
Speaker 1: for a really long time. Or I want to like
Speaker 1: get this feeling of happiness that comes from like writing
Speaker 1: the book. I want to get through the book Like no,
Speaker 1: you want to experience the benefit of having written the
Speaker 1: book and be able to talk to, you know, the
Speaker 1: people who read it and experience those ideas later. Or
Speaker 1: for my college students, like I want to get my degree, No,
Speaker 1: you want to like get a degree so you can
Speaker 1: be a lifelong learner and get the skills you need
Speaker 1: to learn in the future. So they find that it's
Speaker 1: easier to sustain motivation, for example, for getting a college
Speaker 1: degree or writing for the book, if you think of
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that you're going to get out
Speaker 1: of it that's beyond the achievement, and so ironically you
Speaker 1: might have gotten back to the fact that the journey
Speaker 1: maybe is good.
Speaker 2: No, Remember I didn't say journy didn't matter. I was
Speaker 2: objecting to the phrase it's the journey, not the destination.
Speaker 1: The journey and the destination.
Speaker 2: It's the journey and the destination. Yes, I'll buy that.
Speaker 1: So Malcolm wants to see the destination given a bit
Speaker 1: more love in the World Happiness Report, while Tim Harford
Speaker 1: would like to add a chapter on our memories of happiness,
Speaker 1: and Maya Schunker thinks that tackling our disruptive inner monologues
Speaker 1: should be included. But we'll be back to examine what's
Speaker 1: in the Real World Happiness Report. We'll talk to its
Speaker 1: authors about what they think are the most pressing issues
Speaker 1: facing us in twenty twenty four. All that on the
Speaker 1: next episode of The Happiness Lab with Me Doctor Laurie
Speaker 1: Santo's