Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm about to watch a VHS tape that I
Speaker 1: haven't seen for more than thirty five years. It's the
Speaker 1: dress rehearsal of a play I took part in when
Speaker 1: I was ten years old, the nineteen eighty five New
Speaker 1: Bedford High School Drama Club's performance of Peter Pan the Musical.
Speaker 1: My mom somehow finagled away for me to audition, even
Speaker 1: though I was only in fourth grade and I didn't
Speaker 1: really know how to act or sing or dance. But
Speaker 1: I got to star as the rabbit. If you've seen
Speaker 1: the play and don't remember a rabbit being involved, that
Speaker 1: is because as far as I can tell, the rabbit
Speaker 1: is not an actual role in Peter Pan the Musical.
Speaker 1: I think the directors just made it up. My entire
Speaker 1: part involved hanging out on the back of the stage silently,
Speaker 1: pretty much blending into the Neverland background. Why would any
Speaker 1: self respecting high school drama teacher go to all that
Speaker 1: trouble for a talentless ten year old kid. I think
Speaker 1: it's because after meeting me, they couldn't really say no.
Speaker 1: You see, back then, I was obsessed with Peter Pan.
Speaker 1: My family had the album, which I had worn out
Speaker 1: by listening to it over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Our home movies are filled with me forcing my older
Speaker 1: cousins to take part in impromptu performances, always with me
Speaker 1: playing Peter Pan never. When I was four, my mom
Speaker 1: left my newborn brother at home in Massachusetts to take
Speaker 1: me to Broadway to see the play. My mom says
Speaker 1: that when I got back to the hotel, I spent
Speaker 1: the entire night jumping between the rooms two beds, claiming
Speaker 1: that I was flying to Neverland so that I could
Speaker 1: have fun and stay a kid forever, just like Peter Pan.
Speaker 1: I distinctly remember my mom's reaction that night, as I
Speaker 1: was jumping from mattress to mattress. She couldn't hold back tears.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I never really understood why,
Speaker 1: But rewatching the musical as an adult, I finally got
Speaker 1: what made my mom sob If you haven't seen the musical,
Speaker 1: the plot involves Peter Pan taking Wendy to Neverland to
Speaker 1: have a bunch of adventures think pirates, lost boys, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. But eventually Wendy wants to go back to
Speaker 1: her normal life, so Peter takes her back to London
Speaker 1: and promises he'll come get her for more adventures soon,
Speaker 1: but when Peter finally returns at the end of the play,
Speaker 1: he's devastated. Even though Wendy promised she'd never get older,
Speaker 1: she accidentally grew up, and Peter can't believe it. He
Speaker 1: tells middle aged Wendy that she's not allowed to go
Speaker 1: back to Neverland and have fun ever again, because she's
Speaker 1: too grown up. Watching the play in my forties wasn't
Speaker 1: as fun as doing so as a kid. In a
Speaker 1: turn of events that would surely be mind blowing to
Speaker 1: my ten year old self, I have gotten old, like
Speaker 1: middle aged Wendy. I now have a job and a
Speaker 1: mortgage and responsibilities to worry about. Even though I clearly
Speaker 1: planned to prioritize having fun forever, that didn't really happen.
Speaker 1: These days, I don't have time to jump around on
Speaker 1: mattresses or lead fake musical singlongs with my cousins. Most
Speaker 1: of my days are so busy it doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: I have time for any fun at all, And that
Speaker 1: realization is pretty depressing and kind of ironic, because I
Speaker 1: used to pride myself on being fun. My grad school
Speaker 1: roommates and I through goofy theme parties several times a year.
Speaker 1: My husband and I won our engagement ring playing ski
Speaker 1: ball and a cheesy beach arcade that was literally called
Speaker 1: the fun Orama. I used to have a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: but lately not so much. I haven't thrown a ridiculous
Speaker 1: party in some time, and I haven't been back to
Speaker 1: that beach arcade in years. In fact, full disclosure, the
Speaker 1: last time my husband and I did visit, I secretly
Speaker 1: hit outside while he was wrapped up in some pinball
Speaker 1: game and answered my work emails. So what happened? Am
Speaker 1: I as doomed as middle aged Wendy was in that musical?
Speaker 1: Are we all destined to miss out on fun as
Speaker 1: an inevitable part of getting older? Or are there ways
Speaker 1: to prioritize a childlike sense of goofiness and adventure well
Speaker 1: into our later years. In this first ever double episode
Speaker 1: of the Happiness Lab, we'll learn that it is possible
Speaker 1: to rediscover how to have fun, and our evidence will
Speaker 1: come not just from the scientific literature, but from a
Speaker 1: much more personal experiment, because over the next two shows,
Speaker 1: I will become the subject of a fun intervention or
Speaker 1: funtervention for short, and my unorthodox attempt at finding more fun,
Speaker 1: which spoiler is going to involve inflatable microphones, cats on leashes,
Speaker 1: tomatoes on planes, and in New England surfing safari will
Speaker 1: wind up having a much bigger effect on my and
Speaker 1: other people's happiness than I ever ever expected. Our minds
Speaker 1: are constantly telling us what to you to be happy.
Speaker 1: But what if our minds are wrong? What if our
Speaker 1: minds are lying to us, leading us away from what
Speaker 1: will really make us happy. The good news is that
Speaker 1: understanding the science of the mind can point us all
Speaker 1: back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab for doctor Laurie Sanders. The idea for my funtervention
Speaker 1: came one summer morning when I was engaged in a
Speaker 1: not very fun one might even say soul sucking activity.
Speaker 1: I was checking and then immediately re checking my email.
Speaker 1: Refreshing your inbox when you know there's probably nothing new
Speaker 1: is kind of like when you look in the fridge
Speaker 1: over and over, pathetically hoping there'll be something else to eat. Embarrassingly,
Speaker 1: I often find myself doing this whenever I'm bored or
Speaker 1: avoiding some writing project that feels hard. And that's when
Speaker 1: it happened. A new email did appear one with an
Speaker 1: innocuous subject line, will you help me with my next book?
Speaker 1: I promise it will be fun. It was a newsletter
Speaker 1: from one of my favorite past podcast guests, the journalist
Speaker 1: Katherine Price. Catherine's the author of How to Break Up
Speaker 1: with Your Phone. In the book, she argues that will
Speaker 1: only find true happiness if we put some work into
Speaker 1: developing a better screen life balance. Catherine would definitely not
Speaker 1: be a fan of the fact that I was sitting
Speaker 1: there refreshing my inbox, so I was already feeling a
Speaker 1: little called out when I received her message, but as
Speaker 1: I read on, that feeling got even worse. Dear friends,
Speaker 1: I'm at work on a new book, and I'm writing
Speaker 1: to ask for your help. The book is about fun.
Speaker 1: More specifically, I'm writing about how, far from being frivolous,
Speaker 1: having fun is absolutely essential to a joyful and meaningful life.
Speaker 1: The book Catherine was working on seemed to be tapping
Speaker 1: into the very thing that I and so many other
Speaker 1: people were missing out on in adult life. I'm hoping
Speaker 1: you can help me out. I'm recruiting a global group
Speaker 1: of people that I'm calling the Fun Squad. My hope
Speaker 1: is that, in addition to helping me with the book.
Speaker 1: You'll also get to experience some of the benefits of
Speaker 1: fun for yourselves. I knew I needed it, so sheepishly
Speaker 1: I signed up which hot tip you can too by
Speaker 1: visiting how to Have Fun dot com. It did feel
Speaker 1: a little pathetic to reveal that I, a supposed happiness expert,
Speaker 1: was struggling to have fun, but I figured it was
Speaker 1: just some anonymous form. It wasn't like Catherine herself was
Speaker 1: going to be looking at which people signed up. Oh no, Hi, Laurie.
Speaker 1: First of all, I am so psyched to see that
Speaker 1: you signed up for the Fun Squad. It's been such
Speaker 1: a pleasure to follow your work and get to be
Speaker 1: a guest in the podcast. I love your tone and approach,
Speaker 1: and I feel like we're very kindred spirits, which is
Speaker 1: part of the reason I'm so especially excited to have
Speaker 1: you as part of the Fun Squad. Crap, Well, the
Speaker 1: first step is admitting you have a problem, I guess,
Speaker 1: so I wrote back and tried to be honest. Hey, Catherine,
Speaker 1: your Fun Squad is coming at a time in which
Speaker 1: I'm personally taking a hard look at what leisure looks
Speaker 1: like in my life. I'm embarrassed at how little time
Speaker 1: I spend taking part in fun, so it's something I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about a lot. I hit send and then worried
Speaker 1: that Catherine would immediately revoke my fun Squad privileges. But
Speaker 1: when we chatted over Zoom soon after that, I was
Speaker 1: shocked at how well she understood the difficulty I was having.
Speaker 1: Turns out that Catherine had gone through the same sort
Speaker 1: of existential crisis that I was experiencing when I was
Speaker 1: writing How To Break Up With Your Phone. I was
Speaker 1: doing this practice where my husband and I were taking
Speaker 1: these twenty four hour breaks from our screens, and there
Speaker 1: was this one day where I was totally alone in
Speaker 1: the house and I had this hour in front of
Speaker 1: me to do whatever I wanted to, but without my
Speaker 1: phone or any screen to spend time on. I realized
Speaker 1: I actually could not think of a single thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. And I freaked out because in my head,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, oh wow, I'm just sitting here
Speaker 1: waiting for dinner, which really means I'm just waiting to die.
Speaker 1: The realization that she didn't have anything she wanted to
Speaker 1: do shook Catherine to the core. She realized that she
Speaker 1: was going through what author Victor Frankel referred to as
Speaker 1: the Sunday neurosis. It's something like when the internal void
Speaker 1: within us becomes manifest And I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it was Saturday, but yes, that's what happened. But Catherine
Speaker 1: decided to do something about the existential void she was feeling.
Speaker 1: She asked herself, what's one thing you say you want
Speaker 1: to do but you supposedly don't have time for. Her
Speaker 1: answer was that she always wanted to learn how to
Speaker 1: play guitar. She remembered seeing a flyer in her neighborhood
Speaker 1: for a music school with adult classes, and immediately signed up.
Speaker 1: That decision would change her life. It magical, and I
Speaker 1: was having this kind of euphoria and this sense of
Speaker 1: freedom and this sense of joy. And part of it
Speaker 1: was that I was learning a new skill, like that
Speaker 1: was great. But I started to realize that that was
Speaker 1: not all that was happening. There was something much bigger happening.
Speaker 1: I was having fun with these people, and that really
Speaker 1: got me started on this investigation into what is fun?
Speaker 1: What is this feeling? And then most importantly, how can
Speaker 1: I have more of it? Because I wanted more of
Speaker 1: that feeling. Four years later, Catherine is now an expert
Speaker 1: on the science of fun. She's just written a new
Speaker 1: book called The Power of Fun, How to Feel Alive Again.
Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how much joy I have found
Speaker 1: through this pursuit of fun. Realizing the value of fun
Speaker 1: and defining it more concretely for myself has completely changed
Speaker 1: the way I think about how I spend my time.
Speaker 1: I don't think I had any idea how many benefits
Speaker 1: there would be to pursuing fun. I just thought it
Speaker 1: would be fun, you know. And so I've been shocked,
Speaker 1: pleasantly shocked to recognize the changes it's made in these
Speaker 1: other areas of my life. One of those areas, ironically enough,
Speaker 1: involved improving her productivity at work. I started to realize
Speaker 1: that my brain could only think and produce creative thoughts
Speaker 1: for a certain number of hours a day, which what
Speaker 1: I was doing with the other time was churning and
Speaker 1: I was answering my email. I was just doing stuff
Speaker 1: to make myself feel busy. What I found is that
Speaker 1: if I take a break, if I deliberately take breaks
Speaker 1: to do one of these other activities that fall much
Speaker 1: more into this fun category for me, I returned to
Speaker 1: whatever my task had been much more refreshed, with more
Speaker 1: ideas and without this sense of burnout. So what I found,
Speaker 1: counterintuitively is actually carving out space for this supposedly frivolous
Speaker 1: pursuit of fun actually ended up not just making me happier,
Speaker 1: but made me more productive. Research shows that fun also
Speaker 1: has physical health benefits. For example, it can lower cortisol,
Speaker 1: a bodily stress hormone. Again, we just think it's frivolous.
Speaker 1: So if I said to you, like fun my lower
Speaker 1: risk of a heart attack, you'd look at me like
Speaker 1: I was crazy. But if you think about what physiological
Speaker 1: state we're in when we were having fun, it is
Speaker 1: a low stressed state. We are not stressed out, and
Speaker 1: we are fully present, and there is plenty of research
Speaker 1: showing that that is very good for our health. So
Speaker 1: I personally think it's fascinating to consider that the pursuit
Speaker 1: of fun over the long run may actually be affecting
Speaker 1: the hormonal balance in our bodies in a way that
Speaker 1: is enormously beneficial for our long term physical health. In
Speaker 1: addition to making us feel really good when we do it.
Speaker 1: Committing to pursuing more fun has also given Catherine a
Speaker 1: sense of meaning. I don't want to end up at
Speaker 1: my deathbed feeling like I never lived. And I think
Speaker 1: that and I know that for me, fun is the
Speaker 1: path that is making me feel that, although death is inevitable,
Speaker 1: at least I am living. Hearing Catherine talk about the
Speaker 1: vast benefits of fun was making me feel really jealous.
Speaker 1: I wanted to feel alive again too. It felt like
Speaker 1: a rock bottom moment. I was in total fun cris this,
Speaker 1: so I asked Katherine if she'd helped me out. Luckily,
Speaker 1: she was up for the challenge. So I'm not a
Speaker 1: lost cause. You are not a lost cause. I would
Speaker 1: dare say, I'm e'en having fun right now, already writing
Speaker 1: it right, get yourself a gold star already. My Funtervention
Speaker 1: will shift into high gear when the Happiness Lab returns
Speaker 1: in a moment. I absolutely love swing dancing. I've always
Speaker 1: loved swingings and I think it is so fun. And
Speaker 1: if you watch people swing dancing like that's fun. Author
Speaker 1: and fun expert Katherine Price began My Funtervention with some
Speaker 1: tips about what not to do, recalling one of her
Speaker 1: more unfortunate swing dance partners. This poor guy was so stiff,
Speaker 1: and I just heard him talking to himself and he
Speaker 1: was just going, I'm having fun because this is fun,
Speaker 1: because this is fun, because we're having fun, over and
Speaker 1: over again to himself. And needless to say, I don't
Speaker 1: think he was having fun. You don't want that. That's
Speaker 1: not our goal here. The good news is that Catherine's
Speaker 1: fun intervention would not involve me gritting my teeth and
Speaker 1: strong arming my brain into trying to enjoy something I
Speaker 1: totally hated. But there was also bad news. Finding more
Speaker 1: fun in my life was going to take some time, effort,
Speaker 1: and soul searching. Are there things that you should do
Speaker 1: and try if you want to reorient towards fun. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're going to have to put some effort into this,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't have to be effort that feels unfun.
Speaker 1: If it starts to feel like work at any time,
Speaker 1: then you're on the wrong path. Like you don't want
Speaker 1: this to feel like work, but you do want it
Speaker 1: to feel like, Oh, this is interesting. I'm curious about this.
Speaker 1: I'm enjoying this process. That's what our goal is. Part
Speaker 1: of that curiosity involves overcoming the misconceptions that so many
Speaker 1: of us have about what actually feels fun. As we chatted,
Speaker 1: I realized I often use the term fun when I
Speaker 1: don't really mean, like, what a fun dinner party, when
Speaker 1: in reality I couldn't wait to get home. I've even
Speaker 1: wielded the words that was so fun to describe and
Speaker 1: at best meth zoom meeting. We use fun very casually
Speaker 1: and sloppily, and that leaves us vulnerable to being manipulated
Speaker 1: by anyone who tells us their product or service is fun.
Speaker 1: We will say, oh, yeah, I'll do that because it's
Speaker 1: for fun. Because we just think anything we don't do
Speaker 1: for work or leisure time it must be fun. But
Speaker 1: if you actually think about the things that you're doing
Speaker 1: for fun and then investigate how it's making you feel
Speaker 1: emotionally and physically, you may realize that it's not actually
Speaker 1: making you feel it that good. When Catherine began the
Speaker 1: research for her Power of Fun book, her first task
Speaker 1: was to define this elusive concept. We don't have a
Speaker 1: good working definition of what fun is, and as a result,
Speaker 1: we don't take it seriously. There are is very little
Speaker 1: scholarly work that's been done or academic worker scientific research
Speaker 1: into fun. Because I mean, it makes sense. How are
Speaker 1: you going to study something if you don't have a
Speaker 1: definition for it. I did my own literature search, and
Speaker 1: Catherine's right. There's lots of scientific work on happiness, but
Speaker 1: there are surprisingly few papers on fun. If you do
Speaker 1: the Standards Scientific Database search for the word fun, one
Speaker 1: of the top hits is a paper entitled putting the
Speaker 1: Fun in Fun. Guy tonail on co mycosis not fun,
Speaker 1: not fun at all. And so to develop her own
Speaker 1: definition of fun, Catherine called upon her Fun Squad, that
Speaker 1: group of a thousand or so people like me who'd
Speaker 1: signed up to help out with her new book. Catherine
Speaker 1: asked the Fun Squad to describe their own experiences with fun.
Speaker 1: I think I had a very technical way of phrasing
Speaker 1: the question, which is basically like, tell me about three
Speaker 1: times that you would describe as so fun. She got
Speaker 1: back hundreds of examples. People talked about memories of squishing
Speaker 1: mud through their toes, or playing drums with their grandkids,
Speaker 1: or church dances, or playing fetch with a particularly cute dog,
Speaker 1: or summer days on the lake laughing with ends. Catherine
Speaker 1: was surprised by how vary the experiences were, but also
Speaker 1: that these very different examples seem to touch on the
Speaker 1: same three themes over and over again. What I call
Speaker 1: true fun is the confluence of playfulness, connection and flow, playfulness,
Speaker 1: connection and flow. Let's look first at playfulness, which Catherine
Speaker 1: describes as a feeling of being out of the normal
Speaker 1: responsibilities of life. You don't have to actually be playing
Speaker 1: in the way of like playing a board game or
Speaker 1: playing with a child, but a playful spirit. You don't
Speaker 1: care too much about the outcome. You're care free. You're
Speaker 1: doing it just for the sake of doing it, and
Speaker 1: it's very intrinsically motivating. But you can bring a playful
Speaker 1: spirit to things that you wouldn't think or play. You
Speaker 1: can have a playful spirit and a engage in play
Speaker 1: at work, for example. So we shouldn't be so strict
Speaker 1: about what we consider potentially playful. We should, however, be
Speaker 1: strict about making sure we find ways to get more
Speaker 1: playfulness in our lives, especially if we care about our
Speaker 1: mental and physical help, because science shows that play not
Speaker 1: only feels nice, it's also good for our bodies and
Speaker 1: our brains. Studies find that people who play more often
Speaker 1: are less susceptible to chronic conditions like dementia and heart disease.
Speaker 1: There's also evidence that playfulness is linked with increases in
Speaker 1: what's known as brain derived neurotrophic factor, a protein that's
Speaker 1: linked to nerve growth. This connection between play and brain
Speaker 1: development is one of the reasons that many animals seem
Speaker 1: to play so much in childhood, the very time in
Speaker 1: which we grow the most new neural tissue. The second
Speaker 1: component of fun is something we talk about a lot
Speaker 1: on the Happiness Lab connection, that feeling of social togetherness
Speaker 1: and a sense that we're sharing experiences with those around us.
Speaker 1: When Catherine surveyed her fun squad, she found that nearly
Speaker 1: all of their examples of true fun involved activities done
Speaker 1: with other people, and that was true even for introverts.
Speaker 1: A number of people actually said they were surprised because
Speaker 1: they were a self described introvert, and yet the experiences
Speaker 1: they described to me all head other people. Connection is
Speaker 1: one of the big reasons that fun feels so good.
Speaker 1: Study after study shows that being around other people increases
Speaker 1: our positive mood and improves our mental health. One famous
Speaker 1: well being study even concluded that spending time with others
Speaker 1: was a necessary condition for high happiness. Definitely helps us
Speaker 1: tap into our shared humanity, which is something we do
Speaker 1: not prioritize, but which is enormously important. And I think
Speaker 1: we all know that intuitively, even if we haven't thought
Speaker 1: about it, because that's the drive that causes us to
Speaker 1: do things like spend a lot of time in social media.
Speaker 1: And that gets us to the third component of true
Speaker 1: fun flow. Psychologist me High cheek set Me High, the
Speaker 1: guy who first studied flow, defined it is that state
Speaker 1: of true immersion that comes when we engage in a
Speaker 1: challenging activity. Flow is the feeling you get when you're
Speaker 1: so present and passionately involved in something that time just
Speaker 1: starts flying by, but not all time flying by is
Speaker 1: a good thing. Catherine argues that it's important to distinguish
Speaker 1: between true, honest to goodness flow and what Cheeks set
Speaker 1: Me High called junk flow. The easiest way to think
Speaker 1: about it is the difference between being engaged and being hypnotized.
Speaker 1: So anytime you find your eyes glazing over and forty
Speaker 1: five minutes passing and you haven't taken a deep breath,
Speaker 1: that you haven't moved, and you're just staring at a screen,
Speaker 1: the chances are you're in a junk flow. And it's
Speaker 1: very easy to get sucked into that and think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at Instagram or I'm looking at social media
Speaker 1: for fun, and oh I'm in a flow state. But
Speaker 1: then you don't really feel very good. That's not what
Speaker 1: true fun is about at all, because true fund, by definition,
Speaker 1: is an active state. It's not about zoning out. If
Speaker 1: you're zoned out and you're not fully present, you're not
Speaker 1: having true fund. That requirement of presence is another reason
Speaker 1: true fund feels so good. The presence we get from
Speaker 1: fun pursuits also protects us from the urge to spend
Speaker 1: time on devices that tend to steal our attention and
Speaker 1: drain our happiness. If you're having fun, you're not going
Speaker 1: to want to be on your phone, like it's just
Speaker 1: not appealing. You don't have to use willpower, you just
Speaker 1: don't want to do it because it's less fun than
Speaker 1: whatever else you're doing. So playfulness, connection, and flow, those
Speaker 1: are the three ingredients of fun that I'll be shooting for.
Speaker 1: If you can have a life that has more playfulness
Speaker 1: or connection or flow, you're probably going to be on
Speaker 1: the right track and in a better place than you
Speaker 1: are now. If you have two of those states at once,
Speaker 1: even better. And if you have all three of them
Speaker 1: at once, I think of it as really being like
Speaker 1: hitting the bulls eye, and you will have a moment
Speaker 1: that I would consider to be true fun. The first
Speaker 1: step of my fun devention would require figuring out all
Speaker 1: the factors that we're preventing me from finding that bulls
Speaker 1: eye combination of playfulness, connection, and flow. Ah. Yes, my
Speaker 1: phone distraction is like kryptonite to fun. And I can
Speaker 1: assure you that you are certainly not the only person
Speaker 1: for whom distraction is probably the biggest fun killer in
Speaker 1: your life. Because we all have smartphones, and they all
Speaker 1: have notifications that go off all the time, and we've
Speaker 1: been conditioned to want to check them all the time,
Speaker 1: even if they're not notifying us, And anytime you do that,
Speaker 1: you're pulling yourself out of your present experience and mentally
Speaker 1: checking out for a second. Catherine noted that distraction was
Speaker 1: probably also contributing to another problem I've discussed before on
Speaker 1: this podcast that I often feel too time famished to
Speaker 1: do stuff I really enjoy. It's all tied together because
Speaker 1: the distraction that we're all encountering all the time is
Speaker 1: making us feel like we don't have much time, which
Speaker 1: is making us stressed out, which is making us more distractable,
Speaker 1: which is making us feel like we have no time.
Speaker 1: Catherine decided that addressing this would be Funtervention action item
Speaker 1: number one. I had to find ways to train my
Speaker 1: brain to be a little less distracted. But since this
Speaker 1: is a funtervention, Catherine thought I should limit my distractions
Speaker 1: in a way that boosted my playfulness and connection. So,
Speaker 1: rather than focus on avoiding the stuff I shouldn't be
Speaker 1: paying attention to my email and notifications and so on,
Speaker 1: Catherine decided that I should try to focus on more
Speaker 1: attractive stuff, things that naturally make me feel good. She
Speaker 1: suggested trying out to practice that she does with a
Speaker 1: few of her friends, looking for what she calls delight.
Speaker 1: I asked her what she meant by a delight. Delight
Speaker 1: is something that makes you feel delighted. Laurie. Her version
Speaker 1: of the practice started when a friend recommended a book
Speaker 1: by the poet Ross Gay entitled The Book of Delights,
Speaker 1: and he wrote an essay every day for a year
Speaker 1: about something that delighted him. Catherine copied the idea and
Speaker 1: found it to be well delightful, savoring like good things
Speaker 1: in the same way that we ruminate about bad things,
Speaker 1: and I find it's a great way to attract more
Speaker 1: fun into your life. It did sound like fun to
Speaker 1: wish a bunch of delightful things around in my brain
Speaker 1: all day, But I also worried that Catherine didn't fully
Speaker 1: realize the level of mind distraction her pupil was dealing with.
Speaker 1: I realized I might need some remedial help before jumping
Speaker 1: into the delight deep end. So I decided to talk
Speaker 1: to the poet who inspired Katherine, the guy who literally
Speaker 1: wrote the book on delights. When we get back from
Speaker 1: the break, we'll hear all the amazing lessons he shared.
Speaker 1: We'll see how fun it can be to start noticing
Speaker 1: all the great stuff world spring flowers, smiling faces on
Speaker 1: public transport, the eighties, band El DeBarge, and even tomato plants.
Speaker 1: Where's my tomato? How's my tomato? Either lose my tomato?
Speaker 1: Did you? The Happiness Lab will be right back. I
Speaker 1: knew finding more delights was going to be tough for
Speaker 1: someone who's as distracted and overworked as I am, so
Speaker 1: I decided to talk to the man who invented the practice,
Speaker 1: the poet Ross Gay. Well, you don't know until you
Speaker 1: carry a tomato seed lean through the airport and onto
Speaker 1: a plane. Is that carrying a tomato seed lean through
Speaker 1: the airport and onto a plane will make people smile
Speaker 1: at you, almost like you're carrying a baby. Ross is
Speaker 1: reading from his essay entitled Tomato Onboard. I did not
Speaker 1: know this until today. Carrying my little tomato about three
Speaker 1: or four inches high in its four inch plastic starter pot,
Speaker 1: which my friend Michael gave to me, smirking about how
Speaker 1: I was going to get it home, Ross decided to
Speaker 1: stick the plant in his open carry on bag and
Speaker 1: send it through the TSA machine. When the security guy
Speaker 1: saw it was a tomato, he smiled and said, I
Speaker 1: don't know how to check that. Have a good day.
Speaker 1: But as Ross tried to stick the tomato plant back
Speaker 1: into his bag, he realized that one of its stems
Speaker 1: had broken. So I decided I'd better just carried it
Speaker 1: out in the open, and the shower of love began.
Speaker 1: Before boarding the final leg of my flight, one of
Speaker 1: the workers said, nice tomato, which I don't think was
Speaker 1: a come on, and the flight attendant asked about the
Speaker 1: tomato at least five times, not an exaggeration every time,
Speaker 1: calling it my tomato, where's my tomato? How's my tomato?
Speaker 1: You did lose my tomato, did you? She even directed
Speaker 1: me to an open seat in the eggit row. Why
Speaker 1: don't you guys go sit there and stretch out. When
Speaker 1: I got my water, I poured some into the low
Speaker 1: guy's soil. When we got bumpy, I put my hand
Speaker 1: on the low guy's container, careful not to snap another
Speaker 1: arm off. And when we landed and the pilot put
Speaker 1: the brakes on hard, my arm reflects simply went across
Speaker 1: the seat, holding the low Gai in place, the way
Speaker 1: my dad's arm would when he had to break hard
Speaker 1: in that car without seat belts to speak of. In
Speaker 1: one of my very favorite gestures in the Encyclopedia of
Speaker 1: Human Gestures. Tomato on board is just one of the
Speaker 1: many joy inducing essays in Ross's Book of Delights, an
Speaker 1: entire book filled with his personal stories of feeling delighted.
Speaker 1: The idea for the book came when Ross was in Italy,
Speaker 1: walking on a lovely path and noticing all the wildflowers.
Speaker 1: He recognized how present he felt when experiencing delight, that
Speaker 1: feeling of deep pleasure we get when we notice something
Speaker 1: beautiful or funny or just well delightful. Ross wanted to
Speaker 1: experience that feeling more often and to document it. The
Speaker 1: thought was, no, you should write an essay every day
Speaker 1: for a year about something that delights you and see
Speaker 1: what you learn. He gave himself three rules for his
Speaker 1: new delight project, and they were to do it every day,
Speaker 1: to write by hand, and to write them quickly, so
Speaker 1: I draft of them all in thirty minutes. Ross began
Speaker 1: noticing new delights all the time, and every time he
Speaker 1: saw one, he'd stick his finger in the air and
Speaker 1: announce delight. The practice immediately connected him to a lot
Speaker 1: more joy than he was expecting, which was evident in
Speaker 1: the sheer number of times Ross laughed out loud as
Speaker 1: he fidgeted through our interview. But the practice also connected
Speaker 1: Ross to a host of wonderful, often very specific things
Speaker 1: that he normally wouldn't have time to notice because of
Speaker 1: the usual life distractions. Wonderful things like praying mantises and fireflies,
Speaker 1: and the first lilacs of the year, which Ross eloquently
Speaker 1: refers to as the purple cornets of spring, and the
Speaker 1: fact that spring not only has lots of lovely flowers
Speaker 1: like lilacs, but oddly lots of lovely purple flowers, hyacinths, bellflowers, irises,
Speaker 1: those circular puff things I don't really know the name of.
Speaker 1: It is indeed kind of delightful that they are all purple.
Speaker 1: The abundance of the purple things, like what miracle is that?
Speaker 1: You know? Ross also found delight in the dumb things
Speaker 1: our bodies do, like the laughing snort that sound we
Speaker 1: make when we go fall so hard that we wind
Speaker 1: up sounding like a pig, which is really beautiful experience
Speaker 1: of like, oh, my body did something I didn't mean
Speaker 1: it to do, but it didn't out of a kind
Speaker 1: of you know, a delight, Ross also started to take
Speaker 1: delight and the weird things humans do all the time,
Speaker 1: like giving a high five to a total stranger, and
Speaker 1: the do over when we make a mistake and quickly
Speaker 1: yell out do over and just somehow get to pretend
Speaker 1: that whatever we just did didn't happen. Ross also finds
Speaker 1: a lot of delight in music. One essay called Love
Speaker 1: Me in a Special Way chronicles his appreciation for one
Speaker 1: of my favorite eighties bands, El DeBarge Think to the
Speaker 1: beat of the rhythm of the night. The essay ends
Speaker 1: with him hearing El DeBarge playing in the security line
Speaker 1: at the Philadelphia Airport, and then noticing an older man
Speaker 1: working there scream out to no one in particular, Hey,
Speaker 1: is that El DeBarge? That that record was made and
Speaker 1: I could listen to its astonishing as I shared my
Speaker 1: own delight in listening to El DeBarge with Ross, He
Speaker 1: explained that conversations like ours soon became one of the
Speaker 1: best parts of his project. Like the fact that you
Speaker 1: just shared that with me, It just makes my eyes
Speaker 1: bigger for that, and it makes my heart bigger too.
Speaker 1: Ross's eyes are still constantly focused on the wonders of
Speaker 1: the world. He even shared a delight that he'd heard
Speaker 1: that very morning. I never noticed it before, But the
Speaker 1: way that sometimes we will make a sound to another person.
Speaker 1: Maybe you grow blueberries, I might make a sound to
Speaker 1: indicate their delicious and like, good job. By training himself
Speaker 1: to notice delights, Ross has made his days more playful,
Speaker 1: that first marker of true fun. But he's also embraced
Speaker 1: that sense of connection that comes from sharing your own
Speaker 1: delight with others. Oh this delights you, This delights me.
Speaker 1: Oh we're kindred in this way. Probably among other ways,
Speaker 1: a year of focusing on delightful things also made Ross
Speaker 1: more present. Seeking out delights gives him flow. I found
Speaker 1: that as I was practicing this, my eyes were on
Speaker 1: for delight. That's it. My eyes were on for delight.
Speaker 1: But noticing delights has had other benefits for Ross beyond
Speaker 1: just being fun. It's given Ross an unexpected dose of resilience.
Speaker 1: Even though his book is ostensibly about delights, his essays
Speaker 1: also tackle issues like structural racism and grief following the
Speaker 1: death of a loved one, and many of the parts
Speaker 1: of life that are downright ugly. But training his brain
Speaker 1: to notice positive things has allowed him to keep noticing
Speaker 1: blessings even in the worst of times. In the midst
Speaker 1: of profound sorrow. There's like eight purple things that bloom
Speaker 1: in May. It's ridiculous. As I chatted with Ross, I
Speaker 1: was struck by how much happiness he exuded. He's one
Speaker 1: of the most joyful people I've spoken with in a
Speaker 1: really long time. Ross explained that he constantly feels an
Speaker 1: emotion that scientifically known to boost well being, a deep
Speaker 1: sense of gratitude. Ross claims that his gratitude for the
Speaker 1: universe often feels so profound these days that it sometimes
Speaker 1: moves him to tears. No, it is, it's like yeah,
Speaker 1: as thank you, you know. Like that. Seeing the joy
Speaker 1: that Ross experienced got me really excited to do my
Speaker 1: fun intervention delight homework. So I bought a crappy notebook
Speaker 1: and got ready to catalog. Like Ross, I worried that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be able to come up with something truly
Speaker 1: delightful every single day. I also feared that I'd constantly
Speaker 1: feel like I didn't have time to be focused on
Speaker 1: sleuthing out all these good things, especially on busier days.
Speaker 1: But I adapted the rules Ross used to make things easier.
Speaker 1: I just had to find one delight a day, and
Speaker 1: I promised myself that I'd take no more than a
Speaker 1: few seconds to scribble something about that delight down on paper.
Speaker 1: And if I was feeling really overwhelmed on a particular day,
Speaker 1: I didn't even have to write anything, just notice finger
Speaker 1: in the air. Delight. So what happened, Well, I quickly
Speaker 1: realized how easily delights start finding you when you just
Speaker 1: take time to notice. Instead of walking around town with
Speaker 1: my phone out to check my email, I spent my
Speaker 1: days feeling kind of curious looking around, trying to find
Speaker 1: that hidden delight for the day. And when you train
Speaker 1: your attention to look for good stuff, it works often
Speaker 1: pretty fast. In fact, locating all those hidden delights took
Speaker 1: way less time than I thought. It quickly felt like
Speaker 1: they were finding me rather than me finding them. I
Speaker 1: was very excited to report back about all my successes
Speaker 1: to my fun intervention instructor. So I was at this
Speaker 1: beach house. There's this beautiful beach house looking out at
Speaker 1: the ocean, and this mocking bird like flew and came
Speaker 1: onto the fence right near there, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I mocking bird. And then he just took a dump
Speaker 1: and flew away, and that was like delight A figure
Speaker 1: in the air. The same beach, I went for a
Speaker 1: walk on the beach and there was this woman, you know,
Speaker 1: who was on a beach blanket, just hang out on
Speaker 1: the beach. And I noticed that she had a leash,
Speaker 1: but on the leash wasn't a dog, it was a cat.
Speaker 1: Like she brought her cat to the beach and the
Speaker 1: cat was just like sitting there chilling on the beach.
Speaker 1: That's delightful. It was wonderful. There so good. As Catherine
Speaker 1: and I connected and playfully laughed at the delights I'd
Speaker 1: been present enough to start noticing, I realized I was
Speaker 1: on the path to feeling less distracted and actually experiencing
Speaker 1: this thing called fun. But there was still more Funtervention
Speaker 1: to be done. I was getting better at paying attention,
Speaker 1: but I still needed to discover what really felt fun,
Speaker 1: and to do that, I needed to find ways to
Speaker 1: experience a bit more self compassion when trying new things.
Speaker 1: And so, unfortunately I need to leave you with a
Speaker 1: bit of a cliffhanger this week, but I promise that
Speaker 1: Part two of My Funtervention will be even more. That
Speaker 1: was super fun. I was really scared with those superbuds.
Speaker 1: It was. It was awesome fun. So if you want
Speaker 1: to hear about the final steps in my Funtervention, then
Speaker 1: don't miss the next sure to be fun episode of
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Delley. Our
Speaker 1: original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring,
Speaker 1: mixing and mastering by Evan Viola. Joseph Fridman checked our facts.
Speaker 1: Sophie Crane mckibbon edited our scripts. Emily Anne Vaughan offered
Speaker 1: additional production support. Special thanks to Miela Belle, Carlie mcgliori,
Speaker 1: Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor, Daniella lucarn Maya Kanig, Nicole Morano,
Speaker 1: Eric Xandler, Royston Bazzer, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent Ben Davis.
Speaker 1: That Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: An doctor Laurie Santos