Speaker 1: Pushkin. Last time on the Happiness Lab, we brought you
Speaker 1: the story of listener Rebecca Kuduru. Rebecca was involved in
Speaker 1: an awful car accident while living in Uganda.
Speaker 2: As my husband tried to swer our car ended up
Speaker 2: rolling probably seven or eight times and landed in a tree.
Speaker 1: And when she came to a few hours later, her
Speaker 1: face was smashed beyond recognition.
Speaker 2: I had broken my nose, I had broken my jaw,
Speaker 2: and I had shattered both my eye socket, the external
Speaker 2: part and the internal part.
Speaker 1: Her recovery was difficult and painful, with lots of setbacks
Speaker 1: and disappointments.
Speaker 2: There was something very weird happening with my left eye
Speaker 2: where it really looked like it was kind of sunken.
Speaker 1: Back back in the US and in between reconstructive surgeries,
Speaker 1: Rebecca began listening to The Happiness Lab while taking her
Speaker 1: daily walk. One day, she heard our episode with an
Speaker 1: army veteran JR. Martinez, who was badly burned while serving
Speaker 1: in Iraq.
Speaker 3: I look at myself and I'm like, that's not cute
Speaker 3: what I see in the mirror. The old Jr.
Speaker 4: Had died.
Speaker 1: His words had an immediate impact.
Speaker 2: Tears just burst out of my eyes and I like
Speaker 2: collapsed onto my knees on the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: If you haven't yet listened to the episode telling Rebecca's
Speaker 1: story and bringing her together with JR.
Speaker 3: What's that Rebecca, I'm so excited to meet you.
Speaker 1: I'd urge you to go back and check it out
Speaker 1: what is up? But today I want to give you
Speaker 1: a chance to hear the episode that so touched Rebecca.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite of the many shows we've made.
Speaker 1: It's all about the psychological immune system, which gives humans
Speaker 1: the resilience to overcome adversity. Unfortunately, just as bad things
Speaker 1: don't hurt us as deeply or as permanently as we fear,
Speaker 1: the satisfaction we get from the good things also fades
Speaker 1: faster than we'd like. It's a key well being concept
Speaker 1: and it's all explained in this episode. So get ready,
Speaker 1: it's quite a ride. It was the worst thing that
Speaker 1: ever happened to me. These were the words uttered by
Speaker 1: Billy Bob Harrold Junior, a man whose life had been
Speaker 1: unremarkable before a fateful event that ruined everything. On June
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven. Before that worst thing ever
Speaker 1: event occurred, Billy Bob was a relatively happy, middle aged Texan.
Speaker 1: He was a religious family man who cared deeply about
Speaker 1: his parents, his wife, Barber Jane, and their three children.
Speaker 1: Billy Bob worked at the local home depot, stocking shelves
Speaker 1: with electrical equipment. It wasn't the most lucrative career, but
Speaker 1: Billy Bob and his wife found ways to make ends
Speaker 1: me His life, by all accounts, was relatively blessed, but
Speaker 1: one hot summer evening everything changed. Within months, his marriage
Speaker 1: had fallen apart. His beloved Barbergine filed for divorce. Billy
Speaker 1: Bob tried dating younger woman, but still felt terrible. He
Speaker 1: lost almost fifty pounds, making him look sickly and gaunt.
Speaker 1: His children would later say that his personality completely changed.
Speaker 1: He switched from the happy dad they knew into a moody, depressive.
Speaker 1: In May of nineteen ninety nine, less than two years
Speaker 1: after that incident which I've not yet named, Billy Bob
Speaker 1: couldn't take it anymore. He locked himself in his master
Speaker 1: bedroom and took his own life. So what was that
Speaker 1: worst thing ever occurrence? That awful event that destroyed Billy
Speaker 1: Bob's family and his entire life. It was this Billy
Speaker 1: Bob won the Lotto Texas Jackboon.
Speaker 4: Good evening and welcome to the official Lotto Texas draw.
Speaker 1: In a split second, he was thirty one million dollars richer.
Speaker 1: Now that probably wasn't the kind of worst ever event
Speaker 1: you are imagining. When we think of tragedies, we imagine
Speaker 1: the death of a family member, some disfiguring car crash,
Speaker 1: or total financial ruin. What Billy Bob experience is actually
Speaker 1: something many of us yearn for. He became a multi
Speaker 1: millionaire overnight. He was suddenly rich, beyond his wildest dreams,
Speaker 1: wealthy enough to quit his job and to buy whatever
Speaker 1: he and his family needed for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: But the wonderful fortune he literally prayed for this certainly
Speaker 1: didn't make him as happy as he expected. I bet
Speaker 1: you think that wouldn't be the case for you. Most
Speaker 1: of us are convinced that making tons of money would
Speaker 1: feel good, But as it turns out, we're probably wrong,
Speaker 1: and not just about money. Research shows that we suck
Speaker 1: at predicting what will make us happy, generally, both when
Speaker 1: we're imagining how we'll feel when we get what we want.
Speaker 1: The good stuff like hitting the jackpot, getting the perfect job,
Speaker 1: being accepted to our dream school, but also when we
Speaker 1: envisioned some of the worst events a person could possibly endure.
Speaker 1: Why are we so bad at making these predictions? What's
Speaker 1: going wrong? Our minds are constantly telling us what to
Speaker 1: do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong?
Speaker 1: What if our minds are lying to us, leading us
Speaker 1: away from what will really make us happy. The good
Speaker 1: news is that understanding the science of the mind can
Speaker 1: point us all back in the right direction. You're listening
Speaker 1: to the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 4: If you have an enemy, go buy them a lottery ticket,
Speaker 4: because on the off chance that they win, their life
Speaker 4: is going to be really messed up.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with Clay Cockrell. He knows that the misery
Speaker 1: Billy Bob experienced after winning the lottery wasn't a one off.
Speaker 1: Clay's a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. His business address
Speaker 1: is up near Columbus Circle in New York City, but
Speaker 1: more often than not he can be found in Central
Speaker 1: Park or on the banks of the Hudson River.
Speaker 4: I do something unusual in that I walk with my
Speaker 4: clients instead of meeting in an office, walk and talk.
Speaker 4: I think better on my feet.
Speaker 1: His methods as a psychotherapist or novel But Clay also
Speaker 1: works with a rather particular clientele.
Speaker 4: About ten years ago, I started working with the super wealthy,
Speaker 4: people in the one percent of the one percent. Somehow
Speaker 4: my name got passed around this very small world as
Speaker 4: someone who doesn't bring judgment. So if you're struggling with
Speaker 4: I can't find a place to park my yacht, I
Speaker 4: have no judgment about that. I'm going to help you.
Speaker 4: Your problem is as real as someone else's.
Speaker 1: Clay finds that providing counsel to the richest of the
Speaker 1: rich generates a certain amount of hostility from the other
Speaker 1: ninety nine point nine nine percent, who think the mega
Speaker 1: wealthy have it pretty good. Being anxious about yacht parking
Speaker 1: doesn't play well with well with most people.
Speaker 4: Honestly, the general public. When they find out what I do,
Speaker 4: they don't have a lot of empathy because they bought
Speaker 4: into this idea that they have a certain amount of
Speaker 4: problems that are related to money, and they have this
Speaker 4: belief that if I have money, my problems will go away.
Speaker 4: But when they find out that there's somebody out there
Speaker 4: that has a lot of money and they still have problems.
Speaker 4: It busts that fantasy. So this thing that they're working toward,
Speaker 4: I just need a little bit more money is going
Speaker 4: to solve my problems. It really challenges that belief system.
Speaker 1: Clay's right that most people believe they just need a
Speaker 1: little bit more income for their troubles to end. One
Speaker 1: study asks people, how much money would you really need
Speaker 1: to be happy? What's an income level that, if you
Speaker 1: got it, you wouldn't need any more. People who are
Speaker 1: currently earning thirty thousand dollars a year say they'd need
Speaker 1: fifty k to be happier, which makes sense, But duke
Speaker 1: folks who actually earn fifty K think that was all
Speaker 1: that's needed. Not really. People earning twice that much one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars said they need a salary of two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty k to truly be happy.
Speaker 4: This myth more money equals happiness. So I just got
Speaker 4: to get some more. I'll get there. I just got
Speaker 4: to get some more.
Speaker 1: We've all heard that money can't buy you happiness, but
Speaker 1: is that really true? Two Nobel Prize winning scientists Danny
Speaker 1: Konnoman and Angus Dean teamed up to find out. They
Speaker 1: tested how annual salary in the US today affects three
Speaker 1: different measures of well being. What did they find Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that income does affect well being for
Speaker 1: people at lower salary levels. If you are in ten
Speaker 1: or twenty thousand dollars, then earning more will make you
Speaker 1: feel less stressed and happier. But that effect of income
Speaker 1: on well being starts to level off, and it does
Speaker 1: so really quickly. Based on their.
Speaker 4: Estimate, it is much better to earn seventy thousand than
Speaker 4: forty thousand. Life is a lot different, but it's not
Speaker 4: a lot different from seventy thousand to one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty or two fifty.
Speaker 1: Connoment and Dean found that once you're earning an annual
Speaker 1: income of seventy five thousand dollars, getting more doesn't help.
Speaker 1: You don't get less stressed or happier. Your well being
Speaker 1: just flat lines, even if you double or even quadruple
Speaker 1: your salary. That's what the data suggests, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: not what most of us believe.
Speaker 4: When I first got out of grad school, I made
Speaker 4: fourteen thousand dollars a year, and I was Wow, this
Speaker 4: is amazing. So you begin to think, Okay, there's a
Speaker 4: correlation here. More money equals a better life, and that
Speaker 4: keeps working until you get to around seventy five eighty
Speaker 4: thousand dollars and your basic needs are met. But you've
Speaker 4: learned a lesson. More money incrementally is going to make
Speaker 4: you happier and your life easier. But you start getting
Speaker 4: more and more money and more and more money, and
Speaker 4: it's not working like it used to when I went
Speaker 4: from fourteen to thirty five. I just need to work
Speaker 4: a little harder and get up to two fifty.
Speaker 1: Our intuition that more money equals more happiness means we
Speaker 1: don't realize the host of problems that come with being
Speaker 1: incredibly rich. He has seen these problems firsthand in his
Speaker 1: many clients.
Speaker 4: They struggle, they're not sleeping at night, they don't have
Speaker 4: good relationships.
Speaker 1: One of the most common problems class is guilt. The
Speaker 1: wealthy also buy into the idea that money brings happiness.
Speaker 1: That cognitive dissonance of being so rich yet so sad
Speaker 1: can pitch them into emotional turmoil.
Speaker 4: My life isn't perfect, but it should be. I shouldn't complain.
Speaker 4: I shouldn't seek psychotherapy to help me deal with my
Speaker 4: problems because I really shouldn't have them.
Speaker 1: And like Billy Bob Harrell after hitting the jackpot, the
Speaker 1: rich often struggle in their close relations.
Speaker 4: It's hard to trust because they've been burned a lot,
Speaker 4: particularly in romantic relationships. And then you get into prenuptial
Speaker 4: agreements and are you only getting into this relationship because
Speaker 4: I'm going to buy you nice things?
Speaker 1: Even casual friendships can be hard to maintain.
Speaker 4: They call it the one percent for a reason. There's
Speaker 4: not a lot of people out there that have this
Speaker 4: kind of money, so a majority of the population and
Speaker 4: on a fundamental level, you're not going to be able
Speaker 4: to relate to. There's a lot of isolation. Are you
Speaker 4: being my friend because of my bank account? If we
Speaker 4: go out to lunch, am I just expected to pick
Speaker 4: up the tab? When you're talking about your weekend. I
Speaker 4: had this one client that got to be friends at
Speaker 4: the local gym. They were talking about their weekend that
Speaker 4: they went out with their wives, and that weekend he
Speaker 4: just happened to have taken his private jet to Paris
Speaker 4: to try out this new restaurant. So how do you
Speaker 4: talk about that without it feel like you're rubbing your
Speaker 4: wealth in someone's face.
Speaker 1: But the biggest problem class is that the rich feel trapped.
Speaker 1: For most problems we encounter in life, they are painful
Speaker 1: but culturally acceptable solutions. If you're in a bad relationship,
Speaker 1: you can pack your bags and leave. You hate your job,
Speaker 1: so quit, But if you're loaded and miserable about it, you're.
Speaker 4: Not going to give it away. You're too attached to it.
Speaker 4: It gives too much freedom, so you're trapped the golden handcuffs.
Speaker 4: So I have a lot of people who say I
Speaker 4: can't get rid of it because it's amazing, it's great,
Speaker 4: but God, there's so much unhappiness and isolation and guilt
Speaker 4: that comes along with having this.
Speaker 1: Ironically, the rich then fall prey to the same bias
Speaker 1: we do. Maybe the problem isn't the money. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: just that they need a little bit more.
Speaker 4: I've worked with people who've had fifty million dollars and
Speaker 4: they say, yeah, but I really I can't do everything
Speaker 4: that I want. There's this wonderful painting that would really
Speaker 4: eat into my savings. This one guy had five hundred
Speaker 4: million dollars but had a sense that once I hit
Speaker 4: that billion, that's when things really change and you think
Speaker 4: that's that's crazy. You have more money than you could
Speaker 4: possibly spend, but they're searching for happiness, and people don't
Speaker 4: believe me, and I understand it's hard. It was hard
Speaker 4: for me to think that, But after living in this world,
Speaker 4: working with these people, I understand money is not going
Speaker 4: to buy you happiness. So be careful what you wish for.
Speaker 1: Be careful what you wish for. That's a warning many
Speaker 1: of us have heard before, but it fits with a
Speaker 1: growing body of research showing that nearly every amazing thing
Speaker 1: in life, from tons of money to an amazing house
Speaker 1: to the perfect grades, those things simply won't make us
Speaker 1: as happy as we predict they will.
Speaker 5: Almost all of us believe that we would be happy
Speaker 5: if we could just get what we want, and the
Speaker 5: only impediment to our happiness is that we can't always
Speaker 5: get what we want.
Speaker 1: This is Dan Gilbert. He wrote one of my favorite
Speaker 1: books on human psychology. It's called Stumbling on Happiness.
Speaker 5: It turns out that when people get exactly what they want,
Speaker 5: they're not always happy. When they get the opposite of
Speaker 5: what they wanted, they often are. That's a little bit
Speaker 5: of a mystery it's kind of mystery that attracts psychologists.
Speaker 1: This puzzle, as Dan's research over the last two decades
Speaker 1: has shown, stems from one of our most exceptional cognitive facultyties,
Speaker 1: our unique ability to run mental simulations of the future.
Speaker 5: This is a brand new faculty that it's wired into
Speaker 5: the human brain. No other animal can do anything vaguely
Speaker 5: like it. No chimpanzee has ever thought about whether it's
Speaker 5: going to look good in a bathing suit when it retires.
Speaker 5: But these brand new abilities are still in beta testing.
Speaker 5: In a sense, we have an ability you might call
Speaker 5: prospection one point oh, and it's still being worked on,
Speaker 5: so it's got bugs.
Speaker 1: One of the bugs in prospection one point oh. That
Speaker 1: ability we have to plan for the future is that
Speaker 1: your brain can't simulate all the parts of a given event.
Speaker 5: When you're imagining things unfolding over time, you can't imagine
Speaker 5: them unfolding in real time?
Speaker 6: Can you.
Speaker 5: If you could, then somebody would say, imagine moving to Chicago,
Speaker 5: and you'd have to spend four months imagining moving to Chicago.
Speaker 5: That's how long it actually takes. So one of the
Speaker 5: wonderful things about simulation is that it gives you a
Speaker 5: quick sketch, and then it runs at at hyper speed.
Speaker 5: But that's also one of its flaws, because a quick
Speaker 5: sketch often lacks important detail, and when things run at
Speaker 5: hyper speed, they run right over the details that often matter.
Speaker 1: We miss the critical details of almost any good event
Speaker 1: we try to simulate. But let's look in more detail
Speaker 1: at the example we started with earlier, getting rich beyond
Speaker 1: our wildest dreams. What kinds of details do you say
Speaker 1: lottery players miss when they think about winning all that cash.
Speaker 5: You close your eyes and imagine winning the lottery. Most
Speaker 5: of us imagine ourselves in a bathtub full of money,
Speaker 5: or on a yacht, or quitting our job, buying a
Speaker 5: big house, all the things we can get with money.
Speaker 5: You're not thinking about all the things you're going to lose.
Speaker 5: It's very unlikely you're going to continue all the same
Speaker 5: social relationships you have with people who need money but
Speaker 5: don't have any. You're underestimating the number of people in
Speaker 5: relatives that will come out of the woodwork begging you
Speaker 5: to help them over and over. You'll fail to realize
Speaker 5: that the social groups to which you would low like
Speaker 5: to belong don't want to have anything to do with
Speaker 5: you because you got your money the wrong way, on
Speaker 5: and on and on. None of that is in our
Speaker 5: mental simulation of the fe.
Speaker 1: Dan has shown there's a nasty consequence to missing these
Speaker 1: important details. It means our emotional predictions of how these
Speaker 1: events will feel are way off track.
Speaker 5: Would you rather have a weekend in Paris or gum
Speaker 5: surgery is kind of a one item IQ test, and
Speaker 5: almost everybody gets that right. What they don't realize is
Speaker 5: that the weekend in Paris won't be as good as
Speaker 5: they think it will be, and the good feelings won't
Speaker 5: last as long as they expect. The same is true,
Speaker 5: thankfully for the gum surgery.
Speaker 1: These tumorous predictions. Being wrong about how intense an event
Speaker 1: will feel and how long will feel that way is
Speaker 1: what Dan has christened impact bias. In one famous study,
Speaker 1: he asked young professors at the University of Texas to
Speaker 1: forecast how they'd feel when they got tenure, that permanent
Speaker 1: position that all new faculty crave. Dan tested people's predictions
Speaker 1: using a seven point happiness scale. Most professors thought they'd
Speaker 1: be really happy if they got tenure, around a six
Speaker 1: out of seven on that scale, But how did professors
Speaker 1: actually feel when they heard good news, they reported only
Speaker 1: being a five out of seven. Dan also tested what
Speaker 1: happened to professors who got bad news, the ones who
Speaker 1: found out they didn't get tenure. They assumed they'd be
Speaker 1: a three point four out of seven on that happiness scale,
Speaker 1: but in reality, actual professors who got denied tenure were
Speaker 1: only a four point seven on average. They felt a
Speaker 1: whole point better than anyone expected. I see a similar
Speaker 1: misprediction all the time in my college students. At Yale.
Speaker 1: Students are convinced they'll be ecstatic if they get a
Speaker 1: good grade, and are sure they'll feel devastated if they
Speaker 1: do badly. Psychologists have now seen the same pattern in
Speaker 1: many walks of life. Lovers predict they'll take a long
Speaker 1: time to recover from a sad breakup, but bounce back
Speaker 1: far quicker. Student drivers believe they'll be devastated if they
Speaker 1: fail to get their license, but aren't as sad walking
Speaker 1: out of the DMV empty handed as they think. The
Speaker 1: same is true for job applicants who are passed over,
Speaker 1: and even patients guessing how they'll feel about a pause
Speaker 1: or negative HIV diagnosis quit simply.
Speaker 5: The good things won't be as good. The bad things
Speaker 5: won't be as bad as your mind leads you to believe.
Speaker 1: Dan has shown that this pattern stems from yet another
Speaker 1: way our minds lie to us. We don't notice that
Speaker 1: we have a tendency to get used to stuff. Even
Speaker 1: when something feels amazing at first, we can't enjoy it forever.
Speaker 1: This is a phenomenon the psychologists call hedonic adaptation.
Speaker 5: You can't be really, really happy endlessly all the time,
Speaker 5: or your emotional system isn't doing its job. It has
Speaker 5: to come back to baseline so it can once again
Speaker 5: guide you to the next good thing that you, as
Speaker 5: an organism ought to be doing.
Speaker 1: Hedonic adaptation means that after a while, we tend to
Speaker 1: go back to a baseline level of emotional satisfaction. My
Speaker 1: students are happy for a while after getting a perfect grade.
Speaker 1: For a couple of hours, they might be as seven
Speaker 1: out of nine, but after a day or so they
Speaker 1: just go back to their usual set point level of happiness.
Speaker 1: The good and bad events don't move us up or
Speaker 1: down for as long as we think.
Speaker 5: So it's just a hard and fast truth that you
Speaker 5: can't stay at ten forever and ever and ever. People
Speaker 5: mistakenly think they can. They think happiness is a place
Speaker 5: that if they could get to it, they could build
Speaker 5: a house and live there their entire lives. It's only
Speaker 5: a vacation destination. It's a place you can visit more
Speaker 5: and more often if you do the right things, and
Speaker 5: you can stay longer and longer, but you can't stay forever.
Speaker 5: This is an important thing to know because people often
Speaker 5: feel that if their happiness has come back to baseline
Speaker 5: after something wonderful has happened, something's wrong. Why didn't this marriage,
Speaker 5: this child, this promotion give me the eternal happiness I
Speaker 5: was seeking, Because there is no such thing as eternal happiness.
Speaker 1: So happily ever after is just not psychologically realizable.
Speaker 5: Happily ever after is only true if you have three
Speaker 5: minutes to live.
Speaker 1: But this process also has an important upside. We get
Speaker 1: used to all the bad stuff too, horrible breakup, the
Speaker 1: chronic illness, that worst job with the lower salary. As
Speaker 1: we hedonically adapt to these things, they gradually start to
Speaker 1: distress us less and less. The problem is we don't realize.
Speaker 6: It, despite the fact that two months prior, I was
Speaker 6: sitting in my bed crying my eyes out like wishing
Speaker 6: I would die. It just shows that like life goes on,
Speaker 6: it's not the end of the world.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment.
Speaker 6: Basically, I remember I was on Tender because all these
Speaker 6: great stories throned on Tender.
Speaker 1: Rafaela Guns is telling me how she met the man
Speaker 1: of her dreams.
Speaker 6: A super beautiful, beautiful guy, blue eyes, full lips.
Speaker 1: And how he changed her life forever.
Speaker 6: I really liked him, I was so in him.
Speaker 1: After chatting with him for a while on Tinder, rafael
Speaker 1: agreed to a first date, something really low key. The
Speaker 1: couple just walked around getting to know each other. They
Speaker 1: didn't even kiss, but things picked up after that.
Speaker 6: We were hanging out for hours and hours, and we
Speaker 6: decided to go back up to my neighborhood so we
Speaker 6: could sit by the river, by the Hudson River because
Speaker 6: it's like super pretty to just wash the sunset over there.
Speaker 6: And we ended up having sex. And I thought I
Speaker 6: did everything right, like I carried condoms around in my mind.
Speaker 6: I was doing everything right.
Speaker 1: But Rafaela was about to hear the sort of news
Speaker 1: that nobody wants to hear.
Speaker 6: The next day, he sort of came down with what
Speaker 6: he thought was like a cold or something. He had
Speaker 6: like a sore throat and he was feeling very fatigued.
Speaker 6: And then a couple days later, I started coming down
Speaker 6: the same thing.
Speaker 1: Her beautiful boy with the blue eyes was the first
Speaker 1: to seek medical advice. He sent a text.
Speaker 6: I went to the doctor and they think, all this
Speaker 6: might be a sign of her fees and so like
Speaker 6: that was a weird text message. So I go into
Speaker 6: urgent care crying and I'm like, I need a herpes death.
Speaker 1: Rafaela got her official diagnosis soon after.
Speaker 6: Those first few days. I remember I was just sitting
Speaker 6: in bed crying. You know what I like thought my
Speaker 6: life was, Oh I wanted to die. It was the
Speaker 6: worst thing in the world. Like, not only was I
Speaker 6: like physically uncomfortable, but how am I going to date someone?
Speaker 6: How's anyone going to love me?
Speaker 1: In addition to being in physical pain with red bumps
Speaker 1: on her genitals, she was also in emotional pain. Her
Speaker 1: dream guy dropped her in a flash.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was like, oh this changed my vibe on you.
Speaker 6: He was like very very distant. I thought like, okay,
Speaker 6: we both have this thing, like we can go through
Speaker 6: it together, and sort of like learn about it together
Speaker 6: and figure us out together. But he was very much
Speaker 6: sort of like in it for himself. I felt sort
Speaker 6: of I don't know if betrayed the white word, but
Speaker 6: that's the word that was coming to my mind.
Speaker 1: Rafaela didn't only feel betrayed by the man who gave
Speaker 1: her herpes and disappeared. Her diagnosis also freaked out the
Speaker 1: people closest to her.
Speaker 6: She was like one of my own as friends. But
Speaker 6: then when I confided in her, when I'm like sitting
Speaker 6: on my diack crying because I have all these itchy
Speaker 6: red bumps and you know, the guy is ignoring me.
Speaker 6: Now things changed, She's like, I just think, you know,
Speaker 6: it would be better for my own sanity if you
Speaker 6: use toilet seat covers when you were here, and you know,
Speaker 6: if you use hand sanitizer a lot, and this and that.
Speaker 6: So that was really hurtful.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was one of your oldest friends.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this was someone I've known since we were in Diverse.
Speaker 7: And she's not supporting you for one of them.
Speaker 1: It sounds like one of the.
Speaker 6: Most scary times in my life. Yeah, it just sounds awful.
Speaker 6: And so that was horrible.
Speaker 1: Let's take a second to predict how you would feel
Speaker 1: in Rafaella's situation. You contracted in incurable and highly stigmatized disease,
Speaker 1: your romantic partner has ditched you, and some of your
Speaker 1: oldest friends are shunning you because of what happened. Would
Speaker 1: you describe all of this overall as a good thing,
Speaker 1: as a positive change in your life, as a present
Speaker 1: from the universe, Because that's how Rafaella sees it. She
Speaker 1: even wrote an article for ravishly dot com which she
Speaker 1: titled getting herpes was a gift.
Speaker 6: Some people were like what the like, how is this
Speaker 6: a gift? Like almost angry and like calling me like delusion,
Speaker 6: all all these sorts of things like how would you
Speaker 6: possibly think that's a gift?
Speaker 1: So why is it a gift?
Speaker 6: It's a gift because I'm more knowledgeable. It's a gift
Speaker 6: because I've been able to write things like that article
Speaker 6: that helps people.
Speaker 1: Rafaella says, all the fallout from her diagnosis has given
Speaker 1: her insight into the people who really matter. It's a
Speaker 1: strong litmus test for those who are actually going to
Speaker 1: be there for her.
Speaker 6: If a friend can't accept all of you warts and
Speaker 6: all upun intended, they're not really your friend. They're fair
Speaker 6: weather friends, you know.
Speaker 1: But it also gave Rafaela a new filter for her
Speaker 1: dating life. It saved her time figuring out which guys
Speaker 1: were worth her time and which guys just didn't get it.
Speaker 6: He said some dumbest shit about, oh am, I gonna
Speaker 6: get it if I kiss you, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 6: it's on my vagina.
Speaker 7: Do you think you know?
Speaker 1: Would you change anything?
Speaker 6: Would you do it?
Speaker 7: I mean it sounds like you learn so much from this, Like.
Speaker 1: Would you keep it? Would would you do it over again?
Speaker 6: I'd keep it. First of all, as much of a
Speaker 6: dick as he was, he was really hot, really hot,
Speaker 6: and the sex was really good, so I don't regret that. Secondly,
Speaker 6: it it helped me in my dating life, I feel
Speaker 6: a few months after I was diagnosed, I met my
Speaker 6: current boyfriend, who've been together for like three years, and
Speaker 6: I told him right away and he was fine with it.
Speaker 6: So that was nice to know. That's like, especially when
Speaker 6: you're when you can track something like herpes, you tend
Speaker 6: to think like all, my life's over and no one's
Speaker 6: every gonna want to sleep with me again, no one's
Speaker 6: every gonna want to date me again. I'm never gonna
Speaker 6: get married, this and that, but it was fine, and
Speaker 6: like there are people that have much much worse problems
Speaker 6: than little red bumps.
Speaker 1: Getting herpes was much much better than Raphael and might
Speaker 1: have predicted. And that kind of adaptation to itsity is
Speaker 1: something Dan Gilbert has found over and over again.
Speaker 5: What we find consistently is that in the face of
Speaker 5: negative events, people don't feel as bad as they themselves
Speaker 5: expected to.
Speaker 1: Although we're pretty bad at predicting how we'll feel after
Speaker 1: a good event like winning the lottery, Dan has observed
Speaker 1: we're worse at predicting how we'll feel after a bad
Speaker 1: event losing a friend, failing to get a job, or
Speaker 1: even getting herpies. Our impact bias is even bigger when
Speaker 1: we make predictions about negative life circumstances, because we're prone
Speaker 1: to overcome bad events more quickly than we think.
Speaker 5: One of the things we fail to do when we
Speaker 5: mentally simulate is we fail to consider adaptation. We are
Speaker 5: remarkably adaptive animal. We have been born and bred to
Speaker 5: pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and soldier on. When
Speaker 5: the going gets tough, we get going.
Speaker 1: Dan calls this capacity to overcome adversity our psychological immune system.
Speaker 1: Just as our physical immune system kicks in when we
Speaker 1: get sick, our psychological immune system turns on when we're
Speaker 1: in mental distress. And our psychological immune system works really,
Speaker 1: really well. As soon as we start to feel bad,
Speaker 1: our mind deploys a whole host of mental defenses.
Speaker 5: If you've ever had a friend experience a breakup, you know,
Speaker 5: at first they're really unhappy, and then pretty quickly they
Speaker 5: get around to rationalizing, Ah, she was never really right
Speaker 5: for me. This is really a chance for me to
Speaker 5: start my life over. I don't think we had that
Speaker 5: much in common in the first place. She didn't like
Speaker 5: my mother. When you mentally simulate a breakup, you mentally
Speaker 5: simulate the anguish, but you never mentally simulate the rationalizations.
Speaker 1: What's amazing about all those rationalizations, though, is that the
Speaker 1: happiness we get from rationalizing a bad event is just
Speaker 1: as real as the happiness we get from something objectively good.
Speaker 5: Well, there's no doubt that when people rationalize, everybody around
Speaker 5: them feels that they found some sort of phony and
Speaker 5: substandard form of happiness. I don't believe that for a minute.
Speaker 5: You know, the happiness you get when the person you
Speaker 5: love says yes to the marriage proposal, isn't qualitatively different
Speaker 5: than the kind you produce for yourself when she says no.
Speaker 5: There's absolutely no data that I know of to suggest
Speaker 5: that it's an inferior form of happiness, and indeed, in
Speaker 5: some cases, it can be more long lasting.
Speaker 1: Raphael's misery about contracting herpes was very deep and very real,
Speaker 1: but her misery was also short lived.
Speaker 5: But what about.
Speaker 1: Situations that are so horrible there's no way a person
Speaker 1: can carry on normally. What about events so profound and
Speaker 1: so awful that they change our lives forever. After the break,
Speaker 1: we'll hear about the true power of our psychological immune system,
Speaker 1: how it can transform the most terrible incidents a human
Speaker 1: can endure into a form of joy we'd never expect.
Speaker 3: Nineteen years old, I'm in this humvey. I'm thinking I'm
Speaker 3: going to die. It felt good to just kind of
Speaker 3: just close my eyes and just kind of let it happen.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will return in a moment.
Speaker 3: I joined as an vitument because I wanted to. I
Speaker 3: wanted to be in the action.
Speaker 5: J R.
Speaker 1: Martinez had just finished high school in a small town
Speaker 1: in the South. The only son of a single mother
Speaker 1: from El Salvador. After graduation, he decided to enlist in
Speaker 1: the army. It was just after nine to eleven, and
Speaker 1: he had a few predictions about how things would go.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: My thought process was three years I would be in it.
Speaker 3: I would give back to this country. It would give
Speaker 3: me an opportunity to travel to get more disciplined, it
Speaker 3: would give me an opportunity to give money for college.
Speaker 3: And I remember one of my sergeants, you know, one day,
Speaker 3: sitting down and talking to me and telling me that
Speaker 3: I needed to be prepared because we were going to
Speaker 3: be deployed sometime soon. And my response to him was,
Speaker 3: I'm not going anywhere yet. I just got out of
Speaker 3: basic training. Very naive of me, and he was absolutely
Speaker 3: correct and right in the sense of where two months later,
Speaker 3: I was on a plane with the rest of the
Speaker 3: unit head over to the Beddleis go into war.
Speaker 1: Jr. Was part of the initial invasion of Iraq in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. It was already a tough transition
Speaker 1: for a nineteen year old, and within weeks tragedy struck.
Speaker 3: Here we were, you know, a few days shy of
Speaker 3: a month of being in Iraq and escort in the
Speaker 3: convoy through a city car Carbala when the front left
Speaker 3: tire of the humvey that I was driving ran over
Speaker 3: a roadside bomb.
Speaker 1: The blast ripped through the entire truck and everything it
Speaker 1: was carrying, The AMMO spearri of fuel and other explosives.
Speaker 1: It was a fireball.
Speaker 3: There was three other soldiers in the vehicle with me.
Speaker 3: They all got thrown out of the vehicle, but I
Speaker 3: was trapped inside and within a matter of seconds this
Speaker 3: hovey was engulfed in flames and I was completely conscious.
Speaker 5: Jr.
Speaker 1: Was pinned inside the burning truck for several minutes. He
Speaker 1: described screaming as he watched the skin on his hands melting.
Speaker 1: Eventually he was pulled from the vehicle, but the damage
Speaker 1: was done. In addition to broken ribs and a lacerated liver,
Speaker 1: he had third degree burns over his entire body, and
Speaker 1: he'd been gulping flames into his lungs through the whole ordeal.
Speaker 1: He was immediately metavaced, first to Europe and then to
Speaker 1: the US Army Burn Center in San Antoo, Texas.
Speaker 3: I remember coming out of my medical induced coma three
Speaker 3: weeks later and my doctor essentially just kind of laying out,
Speaker 3: you know, all the cards and saying, this is the circumstance.
Speaker 3: You can't feed yourself, you can't walk, you can't sit up,
Speaker 3: you can't go to the bathroom by yourself. They also
Speaker 3: told me that I would no longer be able to
Speaker 3: remain in the United States Army, which was incredibly difficult
Speaker 3: and challenging.
Speaker 7: When this happened, you were nineteen and you spent like
Speaker 7: the next three years.
Speaker 3: I turned twenty, twenty one, twenty two in the hospital.
Speaker 7: It's amazing, you can just to be clear, how much
Speaker 7: just to get.
Speaker 3: Thirty four percent of my body was burned, and majority
Speaker 3: of that was third degree, so it consisted of For
Speaker 3: the listeners that can't see me, it consisted of my head,
Speaker 3: my face, my arms, my hands, portion of my back,
Speaker 3: portion of my legs. There's no way to really fully
Speaker 3: describe the pain unless you've been through it. But what's
Speaker 3: incredible about being a burn survivor a burn patient at
Speaker 3: the time is that the part of your body that
Speaker 3: isn't burned still hurts. Because they usually use the areas
Speaker 3: of your body that are not scarred as skin to
Speaker 3: do skin grafts, and usually the donor site is more
Speaker 3: painful than the actual injury itself.
Speaker 1: But Jr's physical pain was nothing compared to his emotional anguish.
Speaker 1: When he enlisted, he'd been something of a local heart throb.
Speaker 3: You know. It's funny because growing up I always heard,
Speaker 3: you know, from like my mom's friends, you know, all
Speaker 3: these women, you know, would say, Oh my god, he's
Speaker 3: so cute, he's so this, he's so that, And so
Speaker 3: I grew up just thinking like, that's what I am.
Speaker 3: You know, no one ever said he has an amazing personality,
Speaker 3: he's funny, he's whatever, articulate and nothing. It was cute.
Speaker 3: And so suddenly I look at myself and I'm like,
Speaker 3: that's not cute. What I see in the mirror, that's
Speaker 3: not And that person that I see I do not recognize.
Speaker 3: I have no relationship with that individual. The old JR.
Speaker 4: Had died, and.
Speaker 3: As you can imagine, I fell into a deep, dark
Speaker 3: place of I was depressed. I was angry, I was resentful.
Speaker 3: I was a victim in every sense of the word.
Speaker 1: Deep burns and thick scars over his entire body, dozens
Speaker 1: of surgeries, and years of his young life wasted in
Speaker 1: the hospital, plus the permanent loss of his good looks
Speaker 1: and his military career. Those are some of the most
Speaker 1: profound and tragic events a person can endure. But how
Speaker 1: does JR. Think about all these awful events today?
Speaker 3: I can tell you right now that what happened to
Speaker 3: me is a blessing.
Speaker 1: That's right, as a blessing.
Speaker 3: Considering the fact that I was trapped inside of a
Speaker 3: burning truck for five minutes. I'm fortunate to only have
Speaker 3: what I have. I have a lot of friends, and
Speaker 3: I know a lot of people that unfortunately have missing limbs,
Speaker 3: are you know, have are more scarred, you know, or
Speaker 3: disfigured you know. So in that sense, I'm incredibly fortunate.
Speaker 7: It's so cool to hear you say that you're incredibly fortunate,
Speaker 7: because again, I think people who just heard the story,
Speaker 7: you know, guys, m VY explodes, he spends you know,
Speaker 7: the decent chunk of his twenties in the hospital having major,
Speaker 7: major surgeries, loves with scars for the rest of his life.
Speaker 7: And then you're saying I'm fortunately, Like on the last.
Speaker 3: Line, yeah, well I am, because you know, I think
Speaker 3: about how I'm blessed to have a second chance at life.
Speaker 3: I don't want to take this second chance for granted.
Speaker 1: And JR. Did take every opportunity that came his way.
Speaker 1: Being a badly injured vet open doors that JR. Never
Speaker 1: dreamed of. He became a mentor for other burn victims,
Speaker 1: which led to a few lucrative speaking gigs. Telling his
Speaker 1: stories so openly built up Jr's confidence, so much so
Speaker 1: that when a friend casually mentioned that Jr. Should try
Speaker 1: out for an acting job, he decided to go for it.
Speaker 3: I became an actor on a soap opera All my Children,
Speaker 3: and that led Dancing with the Stars to ask me
Speaker 3: to be on the show, and then I'd acted in
Speaker 3: some other shows. After that, I wrote a book about
Speaker 3: my life and my mother's life and my family's life,
Speaker 3: and it became a New York Times bestseller. I mean,
Speaker 3: People Magazine put me on a cover because of these scars.
Speaker 3: I have this incredible ability to get people's attention, the
Speaker 3: fifteen seconds of curiosity right like, who is that? What
Speaker 3: happened to him? Those fifteen seconds of curiosity that people have.
Speaker 3: It's my job mine to take that fifteen seconds and
Speaker 3: turn it into thirty seconds, into forty five, into sixty seconds,
Speaker 3: into five minutes. Ten minutes a lifetime of actual, educated dialogue.
Speaker 3: This is who I am. Everything I thought I wanted
Speaker 3: in life. You know, I wanted to be a pro
Speaker 3: professional football player and have fame and have all this
Speaker 3: money and be able to do all these things. Like
Speaker 3: if I would have accomplished those things, would I be
Speaker 3: as happy as I am? Now?
Speaker 7: Would you change anything? Would you do it over differently?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: I wouldn't change anything. I one percent mean that.
Speaker 7: But you wouldn't change like the explosion and the scars,
Speaker 7: the surgery, You'd keep all of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because the life I have, I mean, the
Speaker 3: beautiful wife and the beautiful daughter, and the beautiful life
Speaker 3: that I've created for myself. I mean, gosh, I mean
Speaker 3: I'm blessed.
Speaker 5: With bad events. We often don't realize that some good
Speaker 5: can come out of them.
Speaker 1: Dan Gilbert is unsurprised that people like JR. See more
Speaker 1: positive than negatives even in the worst of circumstances. He's
Speaker 1: seen it time and again in his work on hedonic adaptation.
Speaker 5: Startlingly, if you ask people who've lost a child, which
Speaker 5: is the single worst event that people can imagine experiencing,
Speaker 5: and indeed it is one of the worst events people
Speaker 5: can actually experience. If you ask people have lost a child,
Speaker 5: they never say, gee, I'm glad that happened. But if
Speaker 5: you ask them to name the good and the bad
Speaker 5: things that have come from it, they tend to name
Speaker 5: more good than bad things. That's a very stunning fact
Speaker 5: that we should just sit back and marvel at the
Speaker 5: possibility that the worst thing in the world could happen
Speaker 5: to us and probably more good than bad will come
Speaker 5: out of it.
Speaker 1: There are awful events that will cause you to feel
Speaker 1: pain and hurt and loss, but we're fighters. When push
Speaker 1: comes to shove, we are really resilient. The problem is
Speaker 1: we don't realize that.
Speaker 5: I think if you understand the power of the psychological
Speaker 5: immune system, our remarkable ability to rationalize in the face
Speaker 5: of adversity, it makes you braver. You realize that you
Speaker 5: will make mistakes and it will be okay. I think
Speaker 5: there's a lesson there for all of us.
Speaker 1: After making this episode, I've become even more convinced about
Speaker 1: that lesson. Heatonic adaptation means the lows of life aren't
Speaker 1: going to be as awful as you imagine, just as
Speaker 1: the highs will be more temporary than you hope. As
Speaker 1: a psychologist, I already knew that winning the lottery and
Speaker 1: other great circumstances don't bring lasting happiness, But honestly, I
Speaker 1: often forget about the flip side. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: make a conscious effort to be a bit braver, to
Speaker 1: stop worrying so much, to remember that I have a
Speaker 1: kind of emotional superpower, one that can get me through
Speaker 1: the worst of circumstances. And I hope you'll do the same,
Speaker 1: because even though your mind might tell you otherwise, joy
Speaker 1: doesn't come from everything in life working out perfectly. It
Speaker 1: comes from adopting better habits and better behaviors. All strategies
Speaker 1: will be discussing in coming episodes of The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: with me Doctor Laurie Santos. If you enjoyed the show,
Speaker 1: I'd be super grateful if you could spread the word
Speaker 1: by leaving a rating and a review. It really does
Speaker 1: help other listeners find us, and don't forget to tell
Speaker 1: your friends. If you want to learn more about the
Speaker 1: science you heard on the show, then check out our
Speaker 1: website Happiness Lab dot fm. You can also sign up
Speaker 1: for our newsletter to get exclusive content. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is co written and produced by Ryan Dilly. The show
Speaker 1: is mixed and mastered by Evan Viola and edited by
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, fact checking by Joseph Friedman, and our original
Speaker 1: music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Mio
Speaker 1: La Belle, Carl mcgliori, Heather Fain, Maggie Taylor, Maya Knigg,
Speaker 1: and Jacob Weisberg. The Happiness Lab is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries and me Doctor Laurie Santos. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that blast from the past. Next time on
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab, we'll share another story from our listeners.
Speaker 1: Thirteen women in a New England town inspired by this
Speaker 1: podcast have teamed up to bring more playfulness and joy
Speaker 1: into their lives by staging fun interventions or funterventions. I
Speaker 1: traveled to meet them and joined in the fun. Hannah Montana,
Speaker 1: oh uh Bileay syr So. I hope you'll come back
Speaker 1: to hear the next episode of The Happiness Lab with
Speaker 1: me Doctor Laurie Santos. Oh, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, wasn't
Speaker 1: he in the Magic Mind