Speaker 1: Are you feeling stressed about the holidays? The pressure to
Speaker 1: make everything perfect, the tricky family gatherings, trying to keep
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Speaker 1: So go to oneufeed dot net slash holiday and change
Speaker 1: the way you experience the holidays.
Speaker 2: There's stuff our societies have been saying, our cultures have
Speaker 2: been saying, our grandmothers have been saying for hundreds, if
Speaker 2: not thousands of years, but somehow in the modern world
Speaker 2: we've got away from actually practicing these things.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 3: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 3: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 3: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 3: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 3: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is doctor
Speaker 3: Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology and head of Silliman
Speaker 3: College at Yale University. She's also the host of the
Speaker 3: podcast The Happiness Lab. Doctor Santos is an expert on
Speaker 3: human cognition and the cognitive biases that impede better choices.
Speaker 3: Her course, Psychology and the Good Life teaches students what
Speaker 3: the science of psychology says about how to make wiser
Speaker 3: choices and live a life that's happier and more fulfilling.
Speaker 3: And that class is Yale's most popular course in over
Speaker 3: three hundred years. She's been featured in numerous news outlets
Speaker 3: including New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Today's Show,
Speaker 3: and many many more, and is also a winner of
Speaker 3: numerous awards for both science and teaching from institutions such
Speaker 3: as Yale and the American Psychological Association. Laurie has been
Speaker 3: featured as one of Popular Sciences Brilliant ten Young Minds,
Speaker 3: and was named Times Leading Campus Celebrity.
Speaker 1: Hi Laurie, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have you on. You are the
Speaker 1: creator of a really great podcast called The Happiness Lab,
Speaker 1: as well as work you do on happiness at Yale
Speaker 1: and all sorts of things. And we'll get into all
Speaker 1: that in a minute, but let's start like we always
Speaker 1: do with the Parable and the Parable. There's a grandparent
Speaker 1: who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins, and the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I've heard the parable before when you feed,
Speaker 2: You know, for me, it really shows that happiness and
Speaker 2: focusing on our mental health takes work, and it takes choices, right,
Speaker 2: And it reminds us not just that happiness takes work,
Speaker 2: but there's these interesting opportunity costs, right that if you're
Speaker 2: putting your time and your energy, especially your emotional energy
Speaker 2: into certain kinds of things, you could be doing that
Speaker 2: at an opportunity cost of the kinds of processes you
Speaker 2: want to win out right. And so the wolf metaphor
Speaker 2: has always been really powerful of me. It's not enough
Speaker 2: that you focus on the things that matter. You also
Speaker 2: have to make sure that you're not also focus on
Speaker 2: the things that don't matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's a lot in your work that I
Speaker 1: think we'll get to as we go through that really
Speaker 1: hits on that parable. So much of your work, I
Speaker 1: think orients around an idea of what we think will
Speaker 1: make us happy is actually not usually the things that
Speaker 1: will make us happy. If we think something is going
Speaker 1: to make us happy, that's where we're going to direct
Speaker 1: all our energy. And to your point, if all your
Speaker 1: energy is going there, you don't have enough left to
Speaker 1: put over on the things that do create happiness. If
Speaker 1: we had infinite energy, this wouldn't be a problem, right,
Speaker 1: but it is. And so yeah, that opportunity cost is
Speaker 1: really important. I want to start by going a slightly
Speaker 1: different direction because I did not know this about you
Speaker 1: until I started doing deeper research.
Speaker 3: But you are the.
Speaker 1: Director of the Yale's Canine Cognition Lab, which that is
Speaker 1: so cool. That is so cool. I'm a huge dog lover.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the work is relevant in a couple different ways
Speaker 2: of feeding wolves. Yeah, we haven't worked with wolves directly,
Speaker 2: but we have worked with Australian dingoes. This was my
Speaker 2: kind of, you know, day job before I got interested
Speaker 2: in the science of happiness. I was really interested in
Speaker 2: this question of what makes humans unique? What makes humans special?
Speaker 2: And studying canids is really an important way to answer
Speaker 2: that question, in part because dogs and domesticated dogs in particular,
Speaker 2: grew up alongside humans, right, you know, so this path
Speaker 2: from becoming a wolf to becoming a canid that could
Speaker 2: be around people is one that really shaped these animals
Speaker 2: to pay it to us in a particular way and
Speaker 2: maybe even shape their cognitive abilities. So canids are a
Speaker 2: really fantastic comparison point for all the cool and interesting
Speaker 2: things that humans do if you're interested in questions of uniqueness.
Speaker 2: But I sadly don't get to spend as much of
Speaker 2: my time doing the canine work these days.
Speaker 1: No, It's just as I was looking at some of
Speaker 1: your publications after, like the second one that had dogs
Speaker 1: or you know, canines in the title, I was like,
Speaker 1: there's something I'm not understanding about her work here, and
Speaker 1: so then as I dug a little deeper, I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: So to that end, you know, if we wanted to
Speaker 1: translate that work into the happiness work, is there anything
Speaker 1: about the work that you do, or about dog cognition
Speaker 1: or animal cognition that would point us in the direction
Speaker 1: of happiness or any lessons we can sort of even
Speaker 1: if we're sort of stretching the analogy a little bit,
Speaker 1: anything from there that you find interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think there you know a couple
Speaker 2: of things. One is, animals are incredibly good at prioritizing
Speaker 2: some of the stuff that makes them happy, right, I
Speaker 2: mean to take you know, for example, presence, right, you know, mindfulness,
Speaker 2: just being in the present moment, you know. I think
Speaker 2: dogs are a wonderful example of this. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think one of the benefits we get from hanging out
Speaker 2: with dogs, and in fact, there's scientific work to suggest this,
Speaker 2: is that you become more mindful when you're around your dog.
Speaker 2: You're taking your dog for a walk and he's you know,
Speaker 2: sniffing the ground and looking at the flowers and paying
Speaker 2: attention to the sounds. It sort of causes you to
Speaker 2: do the same thing. It gets you back into your
Speaker 2: normal sensory experience. And so I think animals can be
Speaker 2: a great guide for helping us do that. I also
Speaker 2: think that dogs are a really wonderful way to get
Speaker 2: social connection, especially if you're having a hard time getting
Speaker 2: some social connection with humans, you can form that meaningful
Speaker 2: bond with an animal in a way that gives us
Speaker 2: so many of the exact same psychological benefits. So the
Speaker 2: work I was doing with dogs wasn't necessarily on happiness,
Speaker 2: but they have definitely give me a glimmer into some
Speaker 2: strategies that work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, dogs are one of my great sources
Speaker 1: of happiness in life, for sure. It's funny anytime if
Speaker 1: you were to look at my camera role, or you
Speaker 1: were to look at my gratitude lists, they're always know
Speaker 1: they're near the very very top. All right, So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about an idea that you use
Speaker 1: a lot, which I think is really important, and we
Speaker 1: talk about it on this program. We talk about it
Speaker 1: in the Spiritual Habits program. You say, a good rule
Speaker 1: of thumb for all this stuff is little and often.
Speaker 2: And I think what I mean by that is, you know,
Speaker 2: we can really find ways to protect our mental health
Speaker 2: and boost our well being through the little things that
Speaker 2: we do if we kind of keep up the habit
Speaker 2: of doing them often, you know. So, I think when
Speaker 2: we think about the things that are really bringing us down,
Speaker 2: it's not usually the one off thing that we happen
Speaker 2: to do with our time. It's the things that we're
Speaker 2: doing persistently over and over again, that again can kind
Speaker 2: of create this opportunity cost on our happiness. But if
Speaker 2: you can put in positive habits, even if they're tiny,
Speaker 2: even if they're baby steps, and you can get yourself
Speaker 2: to do them more and more, those are the things
Speaker 2: that are really going to impact your well being, oftentimes
Speaker 2: more than you expect. You think, Oh, it's this little thing,
Speaker 2: you know, do a five minute meditation, you know, it's
Speaker 2: this tiny thing to like make sure you're texting the
Speaker 2: friend and checking in. You know, these things matter more
Speaker 2: than we think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a Tanzanian proverb that I use in the
Speaker 1: Spiritual Habits course, which is little by little, a little
Speaker 1: becomes a lot. And I just love that idea and
Speaker 1: I love how you just pointed to this works for
Speaker 1: both the good and the bad. Right. You know, if
Speaker 1: social media doesn't make you feel good, I'm not castigating
Speaker 1: it across the board. But if you're one of those
Speaker 1: people in which social media turns into a comparison exercise
Speaker 1: and leaves you feeling bad about yourself, you know, little
Speaker 1: by little that becomes a lot versus just like you're
Speaker 1: saying text to friends, little by little, you're nurturing and
Speaker 1: growing connection. And so I just think that's such an
Speaker 1: important idea, and we tend to discount it because we
Speaker 1: think we have to make really big changes. And sometimes
Speaker 1: a big change can be great and can be helpful
Speaker 1: and depending on what it is, but for most of us,
Speaker 1: it's the little changes. You know, how do we work
Speaker 1: a little more of this into our day?
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, focusing on the little can
Speaker 2: allow us to do something that also can improve our
Speaker 2: well being, right, which is to make sure we're harnessing
Speaker 2: self compassion.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes when we want to make this huge change,
Speaker 2: like yeah, I'm going to be perfectly happy and I'm
Speaker 2: never going to mess up again, we're often trying to
Speaker 2: make that big change with a certain sort of attitude,
Speaker 2: and it's an attitude of perfectionism, like if I screw up,
Speaker 2: you know the world is over. And so I think
Speaker 2: focusing on the little changes means you're giving yourself something
Speaker 2: you can bite off, something that's actually doable. You're not
Speaker 2: setting yourself up for a failure. You're kind of doing
Speaker 2: it in a compassionate way. And so I think that's
Speaker 2: another way that focusing on the little can help us.
Speaker 2: We're doing it with this mindset of compassion and doability,
Speaker 2: as opposed to I must be this perfect robot that
Speaker 2: gets everything right the first time.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I think there's so much to be said
Speaker 1: for positive momentum. Right, So when we start doing little
Speaker 1: things and we're successful, we feel better about ourselves, we
Speaker 1: feel more confident, we feel like we have more self
Speaker 1: efficacy versus when we try try and do big things
Speaker 1: and we fail. You know, you do that long enough
Speaker 1: that eats away at your sense of your ability to change.
Speaker 1: You know. I did a lot of behavior coaching for
Speaker 1: a while, and that was such a big thing with
Speaker 1: People would say I'm the kind of person who doesn't
Speaker 1: finish things, and I'd say, well, you haven't finished things
Speaker 1: in the past. But I don't know that that's a
Speaker 1: personality trait, right, But we've got to adjust the way
Speaker 1: we go after these things.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. And I think we forget that. The
Speaker 2: stories we tell ourselves matter a lot, right. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm a person who doesn't finish things. You know, that's
Speaker 2: a story that you can update, right, That's a story
Speaker 2: that has some content that may or may not be true,
Speaker 2: that you could challenge you know, riddled with these cognitive fallacies,
Speaker 2: and so I think focusing on the small can also
Speaker 2: help us make sure that those stories are accurate. Right.
Speaker 2: We're not trying to come up with a magnum opus
Speaker 2: story that's going to you know, make sense of everything
Speaker 2: we've done. We're just talking about you know, did I
Speaker 2: get up and like do my five minute gratitude meditation
Speaker 2: this morning? Right? You know, these tiny things allow us
Speaker 2: to achieve it, but they allow us to come up
Speaker 2: with better stories that we can tell ourselves that are
Speaker 2: stories that are positive, ones about growth and so on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, doctor Rick Hanson said something once. He said, our
Speaker 1: stories about ourselves are at least six months out of date.
Speaker 1: And I think actually that number is way underestimated. I
Speaker 1: think I think our stories about ourselves can be years
Speaker 1: out of date, you know. And so I like that
Speaker 1: idea of just adjusting a little bit. You mentioned gratitude there,
Speaker 1: and I thought maybe we could turn towards gratitude for
Speaker 1: a second, because it's one of the skills that you
Speaker 1: talk about in your happiness course as being a really
Speaker 1: helpful happiness tool. There's lots of studies about how good
Speaker 1: gratitude is for us in so many different ways. You know,
Speaker 1: it's pro social, it tends to make us often be
Speaker 1: able to regulate ourselves better, sometimes get more done. There's
Speaker 1: a ton of reasons why gratitude is so valuable. So
Speaker 1: my question to you would be two fold. The first
Speaker 1: would be what do you think are some of the
Speaker 1: most useful strategies for making gratitude part of our life?
Speaker 1: And then the second question is a little bit more complex,
Speaker 1: but you talk about hedonic adaptation, which is we get
Speaker 1: used to things, right, you know, I get a new car,
Speaker 1: and then I get used to having the car. It's
Speaker 1: no longer special anymore. Well, I'm curious whether we can
Speaker 1: have hedonic adaptation in our gratitude work because this is
Speaker 1: what I feel like happens to me, is I do it,
Speaker 1: and it's really valuable until I've done it for a
Speaker 1: while and now I'm back to the same sort of things,
Speaker 1: and now all of a sudden, it's kind of used
Speaker 1: to the gratitude work. So question one would be what
Speaker 1: are some practices you like? And then question two what
Speaker 1: would be some ways of keeping it fresh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, in terms of practices that I think work,
Speaker 2: I mean, part of it is, you know, you got
Speaker 2: to find what works for you. Right. There are practices
Speaker 2: that might be fantastic for me that you might find
Speaker 2: cheesy or you might find onerous. You know, as someone
Speaker 2: who's an expert on behavior change, as you know, the
Speaker 2: practice that's going to work is the one that we
Speaker 2: can get ourselves to do right, right right. Some that
Speaker 2: I really like are, you know, just the simple act
Speaker 2: of writing down a few things that you're grateful for.
Speaker 2: You know, I have a little app that I used
Speaker 2: to do this. I don't think you need an appic
Speaker 2: And if you're a pen and paper person, use pen
Speaker 2: and paper. But just commit to, you know, three to
Speaker 2: five things you're grateful for every day. And the key,
Speaker 2: which maybe is going to get to your hedonic adaptation
Speaker 2: question a little bit, is that ideally those should be different.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really work if every day you're like dog
Speaker 2: spouse coffee dog spouse coffee dogs bous kind like. You
Speaker 2: gotta first have to mix it up a bit, and
Speaker 2: you second have to make sure you're feeling it. It
Speaker 2: can't be wrote. I mean, the whole point of gratitude
Speaker 2: is that it's an emotion and you have to kind
Speaker 2: of turn it on. But another practice I really love,
Speaker 2: which for me felt a little bit easier because it
Speaker 2: meant I was noticing things I was grateful for throughout
Speaker 2: the day. Was a practice that I learned from the
Speaker 2: author Ross Gay, who has this book called the Book
Speaker 2: of Delights, and his practice is just he tries to
Speaker 2: notice things that he finds delightful out there in a world.
Speaker 2: So it's not like, you know, capital g gratitude of
Speaker 2: this blessing that came to your life. It's just like
Speaker 2: you notice fun things out there. Like you know, this morning,
Speaker 2: as I was walking to get caught, there was a
Speaker 2: guy who was like parking near me, and he was
Speaker 2: like blasting old school like Ozzy Osbourne out the window
Speaker 2: of his car, and he had this big dog that
Speaker 2: was hanging out. So I looked over and for a
Speaker 2: second I thought the dog was like jamming along to
Speaker 2: Ozzy Osbourne, right, And that was like delight. You know.
Speaker 2: Roz Gay was put his finger in there and just
Speaker 2: said that is a delight. Right. And the reason I
Speaker 2: like the delight practice is first, it's easier than gratitude, right,
Speaker 2: you don't have to kind of remember this list and
Speaker 2: write it down. But the second is that it's doing
Speaker 2: what you want to be doing. In the gratitude practice,
Speaker 2: which is sort of training your attention to the blessings,
Speaker 2: to the things that are good in life. You're fighting
Speaker 2: this bias that we know is one that is built in,
Speaker 2: which is a negativity bias. Our brains are set to
Speaker 2: notice the big tigers out there in the world, the
Speaker 2: anxiety provoking, scary, sad things. It takes some work to
Speaker 2: train our brains to shift focus and notice the delightful things.
Speaker 2: So if a gratitude practice seems onerous or like it's
Speaker 2: going to be to work, commit to noticing the delights.
Speaker 2: And I like finding a delight buddy where you can
Speaker 2: like text the buddy like saw hanging out carplaying Ozzy
Speaker 2: Osbourne delight. You know all caps is good. That's a
Speaker 2: great idea to get to your heatonic adaptation question. You know,
Speaker 2: I think this is a tough one because there are
Speaker 2: studies that suggest that we don't hedonically adapt to certain
Speaker 2: kinds of emotions as easily, and gratitude is one of
Speaker 2: these that if you're focused on the right stuff, you
Speaker 2: can continue that feeling long after you expect you don't
Speaker 2: see the same hedonic adaptation curve for gratitude, but you
Speaker 2: have to keep feeling it to get there. And I
Speaker 2: think the problem with a lot of gratitude practices is
Speaker 2: we turn them into something that we do wrote It's
Speaker 2: like brushing our teeth again, you know, it's like you know,
Speaker 2: spouse dog coffee like every single day, right, and you
Speaker 2: just stop feeling it. And so one way to do
Speaker 2: that is you, you know, make a rule with yourself
Speaker 2: that it has to be something new. You know, it
Speaker 2: can be my spouse's feet or his smile or you know,
Speaker 2: my dog's tail or, like my dog the way she
Speaker 2: drinks the water. You have to commit to finding something
Speaker 2: novel every single time. And that means you're still in
Speaker 2: the noticing, right, You're still like allowing the gratitude to
Speaker 2: do what it needs to do, which is like you
Speaker 2: gotta feel it. You gotta think like that is amazing
Speaker 2: that this universe, of all the people, this dog could be,
Speaker 2: with all the dogs I could have, have this dog.
Speaker 2: You have to take a moment to feel that. But
Speaker 2: if you get there, if you allow yourself to feel it,
Speaker 2: there is evidence suggesting that you won't adapt to it
Speaker 2: as much. It still kind of can have its effect.
Speaker 2: Maybe even more so than other emotions, which is one
Speaker 2: of the many, many cool things about gratitude. If you're
Speaker 2: doing it right, you don't hedonically adapt as much.
Speaker 1: You said a bunch of things there. I'd like to
Speaker 1: just kind of hit on real quick. I think first,
Speaker 1: is I love that idea of delight. The word I
Speaker 1: often use is appreciation, Like what do I appreciate today? Like,
Speaker 1: to your point, it's smaller than something I'm grateful for.
Speaker 1: It's just a little flash of a moment that there
Speaker 1: was something something that was there. And then the other
Speaker 1: question I have is about feeling it, because this is
Speaker 1: an interesting one, right, I've talked on this show a
Speaker 1: lot about my struggles with depression. Depression when it comes
Speaker 1: on me, what it is primarily is lack of feeling right.
Speaker 1: Something that you might normally feel just doesn't do it right.
Speaker 1: The song that normally is like I gotta love that
Speaker 1: song is just like, yeah, it's fine. And so if
Speaker 1: gratitude is something we need to feel, and yet feelings
Speaker 1: are difficult to come by, and yet we know that
Speaker 1: gratitude is something that may help with depression, any thoughts
Speaker 1: on working around that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think your experience is of course, really comment.
Speaker 2: I mean, one of the classic symptoms of depression is
Speaker 2: you know, an hedonio. It's literally like you're not having
Speaker 2: hedonic you know moments, these hedonic experiences, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I think one way to do that is
Speaker 2: again to take this idea of baby steps and a
Speaker 2: little self compassion. Right. You know, if you're going through
Speaker 2: a terrible episode, yeah, the song that moved you before
Speaker 2: isn't going to do so. In the same way, you know,
Speaker 2: the main thing on your gratitude list, you're not going
Speaker 2: to feel it. And you know that's a pain that sucks, right,
Speaker 2: but it's something that you need to accept is not
Speaker 2: going to last forever. Right. I think these sort of
Speaker 2: statements that you talk to yourself with can be really
Speaker 2: powerful in those moments. But that's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: that I think a practice of something like a delight
Speaker 2: practice can be so powerful, is that if you commit
Speaker 2: to the tiniest thing, like you can start noticing again
Speaker 2: and that can kind of break through. And I do
Speaker 2: think that these things sort of snowball. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is one of the things we know in depression, right,
Speaker 2: is that you know you're not getting as much of
Speaker 2: a hedonic burst every time you do something fun. So
Speaker 2: then you stop doing things that are fun, and now
Speaker 2: you really don't have any hedonic bursts, and then you're
Speaker 2: in you know, it's like, so if you can kind
Speaker 2: of get this snowballing to go very slowly in the
Speaker 2: other direction, it can be quite powerful. And in Rosque's book,
Speaker 2: you know, he talks about how this practice of delight
Speaker 2: has gotten him through, you know, some really tough times.
Speaker 2: You know, the book is really honest about issues of
Speaker 2: racial violence and things like that, and he says, even
Speaker 2: in the midst of the worst times, you can just
Speaker 2: notice that one cool thing, it can kind of give
Speaker 2: you a little, you know, a peak of hope that
Speaker 2: can help you in a really important way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there's a couple things you're pointing to there.
Speaker 1: One is specificity, Right, if I can be more specific
Speaker 1: in what I'm grateful for, you just named it, like
Speaker 1: the way my dog drinks water, my dog's tail, Right,
Speaker 1: it's the specificity. And then I think the second piece
Speaker 1: in what you're saying also is that I do think
Speaker 1: by looking for little moments of even if the word
Speaker 1: delight is too strong, little moments of something that's positive
Speaker 1: shows that even something that feels as all encompassing as
Speaker 1: depression has its moments in which it's waxing and waning.
Speaker 1: It is not this constant thing. It's not always there
Speaker 1: in the same level, with the same intensity. It seems
Speaker 1: like it. But these noticing of little delights, as you
Speaker 1: sort of said, sort of allows you to see through
Speaker 1: these little holes, you know, like oh, yeah, okay, there's
Speaker 1: something out there. It's not all clouds, it's not all gray.
Speaker 2: And I think another key is to give yourself permission
Speaker 2: that those things were supposed to have on our gratitude journal,
Speaker 2: like our spouse and our dog. But you know, if
Speaker 2: you can find the goofy things, It's one of the
Speaker 2: reasons I love Ross's book is you know in his
Speaker 2: big list is like the band El DeBarge, like purple things,
Speaker 2: like you know, the why is purple color? It's such
Speaker 2: a weird color. I think if you can allow yourself
Speaker 2: a little bit of the goofiness, that can kind of
Speaker 2: snap you out of it a little bit too. It
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be, you know, the most meaningful thing
Speaker 2: in your life. You could just be like, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: pretty good. It's a good thing. It's like slightly above
Speaker 2: baseline and just get your brain to notice that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Another person who does that well as a guy
Speaker 1: Neo pass Rica. It's called the Book of Awesome, and
Speaker 1: then he's got other books of Awesome, but it's basically
Speaker 1: that thing. He's been a guest a couple times and
Speaker 1: it's just fun. He approaches it in a fun, small way.
Speaker 1: But again, the thing that I notice about his stuff
Speaker 1: is it's so specific, and I think that's an important thing.
Speaker 1: Let's change directions because I have to ask you about
Speaker 1: episode of the Happiness Lab, which is your podcast, and
Speaker 1: it's about something you've worked on with Dallas Taylor to
Speaker 1: create the Handbook for Sonic Happy. Basically, the idea is
Speaker 1: sound has an enormous impact on happiness and well being.
Speaker 1: I am a extraordinarily sound sensitive person. So I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if you can give us a few tips from the
Speaker 1: Handbook for Sonic Happiness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny that you're such a sound sensitive person.
Speaker 2: I feel like in general that you know, might not
Speaker 2: be a good thing for a podcast, or that's a
Speaker 2: fantastic you know, like you can hear all the tiny
Speaker 2: thing you know. Yeah, I mean one of the great
Speaker 2: things about talking with Dallas was realizing that we're not
Speaker 2: often intervening on sound to promote our happiness and our
Speaker 2: mental health. What do I mean by that? You know,
Speaker 2: we're constantly intervening on our other senses to feel better.
Speaker 2: You know, if I'm having a bad day, I want
Speaker 2: to take a warm bubble bath or maybe put on
Speaker 2: a candle, like I want to watch something on TV.
Speaker 2: I want to buy flowers. Right, We're hacking vision and
Speaker 2: touch and like taste, right, you know, when I'm having
Speaker 2: a bad day, I want some ice cream.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We do that quite naturally, and many of us have
Speaker 2: like straightforward go tos of things in those domains that
Speaker 2: feel good. But we don't often do that as much
Speaker 2: with sound. Maybe a little bit with music, right, you know,
Speaker 2: if I'm having a sad day, maybe I want to
Speaker 2: enhance the sadness and listen to a sad song or
Speaker 2: listen to something peppy to get me out of it.
Speaker 2: But that's pretty limited in the scope of all the
Speaker 2: sounds we could be engaging with. You know, what Dallas
Speaker 2: really recommends is making sure that you're as much as
Speaker 2: you can limiting some of the bad sounds and kind
Speaker 2: of noticing them. You know. He talks about even ambient
Speaker 2: sounds in the room, like you know, the hum of
Speaker 2: a refrigerator that's really annoying, or you know, like just
Speaker 2: other sounds around you. Sometimes I notice this too, like
Speaker 2: I'm feeling just grated and the like what's going on.
Speaker 2: It's like, ah, there's some stupid hum like happening in
Speaker 2: the building next door that's like really bugging me, right,
Speaker 2: So kind of finding ways to limit the bad sounds,
Speaker 2: but really trying to find ways to mindfully notice some
Speaker 2: of the good sounds, you know, and trying to get
Speaker 2: beyond music for something that feels nice. You know, for me,
Speaker 2: it's often very natural sounds kind of sound amazing, right,
Speaker 2: Like take a little high or go somewhere natural, even
Speaker 2: if it's like a park in your neighborhood and just
Speaker 2: be quiet.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Notice, and you know, you and I are having this conversation.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm in New England when it's right around
Speaker 2: the beginning of autumn and the leaves are kind of
Speaker 2: rustling and sometimes you can hear the acorns fall and
Speaker 2: things like that. You know, those are true delights for me,
Speaker 2: you know, those are delights in the sound domain. But
Speaker 2: I'm often not giving myself permission to engage with them,
Speaker 2: and the same way I would totally give myself permission
Speaker 2: to engage with the taste of an ice cream cone,
Speaker 2: you know, or the warmth of a warm bath, right,
Speaker 2: give yourself permission to engage in positive sounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the benefit of being a sound sensitive
Speaker 1: person and a person focused on positivity to some degree
Speaker 1: is I've really learned to seek those out. I had
Speaker 1: been a on again, off again meditator for a long time,
Speaker 1: and then someone said something to me that I had
Speaker 1: never heard of before. I don't think it's uncommon now,
Speaker 1: but this is ten years ago. They said, go outside,
Speaker 1: sit outside, and just meditate on what you hear. Just
Speaker 1: fa what you're here, and when your mind it gets
Speaker 1: lost in thought, just ask again what can I hear?
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden I was like, this is
Speaker 1: what I have been trying to get for twenty years
Speaker 1: from meditation. You know. It just really worked. And then
Speaker 1: that actually allowed me to settle enough that the other
Speaker 1: types of meditation became a lot more profound for me.
Speaker 1: So it really unlocked something for me. So I love
Speaker 1: to go outside and listen to sounds but the downside
Speaker 1: of a sound sensitive person is sort of like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: if there's a rattle or a hum or, a something.
Speaker 1: I mean, I am so aware of it and what
Speaker 1: I don't know and I can't decide, and I'd be
Speaker 1: curious to see, you know, kind of what your thoughts
Speaker 1: are and from what you've learned about it is. I
Speaker 1: sometimes worry that I'm making myself more neurotic around it.
Speaker 1: Just it's a rattle. Let it go, Eric, But I
Speaker 1: don't very well you know. The other one is and
Speaker 1: I think there's an actual name for this, but I
Speaker 1: don't know what the name is. But it's where the
Speaker 1: sound of other people eating dry you nuts. And I
Speaker 1: don't know whether you guys discuss that part at all.
Speaker 2: A couple of things there. One is I think probably
Speaker 2: a lot of us are getting rattled by the rattle psychologically,
Speaker 2: but we're not mindful or aware enough to realize it.
Speaker 2: I know. I'm just like, I'm in a bad mood.
Speaker 2: I'm going to strike out again. I'm going to say
Speaker 2: something me to my husband. But I'm like, oh wait,
Speaker 2: it was the refrigerator hunt, Like it was like there's
Speaker 2: a causal arrow from this nasty sound, so part of
Speaker 2: being you know, sound sensitive. You might even say sound mindful, right,
Speaker 2: sound sensitive as you're really affected by it, but sound
Speaker 2: mindful as you're noticing which things are out there. It
Speaker 2: can just give you some awareness, right, you might be
Speaker 2: able to do something to shut the rattle off, and
Speaker 2: even if you can't, you now at least have some awareness. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is going on, right? Yeah, you know, I know
Speaker 2: you talk a lot on the show about addiction and
Speaker 2: things like that. You know, it's the same as craving, right,
Speaker 2: you know, being mindful of the craving and now it's there,
Speaker 2: it's really present. But now you're aware of it, you
Speaker 2: can choose to do what you want to do with it.
Speaker 2: Maybe you're going to allow it, maybe you're gonna non
Speaker 2: judgmentally really pay attention to it, you know. And this
Speaker 2: was one of the things you know that I've seen
Speaker 2: in sounds that are annoying, is sometimes if you can
Speaker 2: get to recognizing them just as sounds, you're just in
Speaker 2: the same way that you can recognize a craving. Is
Speaker 2: it's just a feeling, and get really curious about it,
Speaker 2: Like that rattle, you know, what's the frequency of the bump? Bump, bump.
Speaker 2: It makes my chest vibrate and things like that. Like
Speaker 2: now you're just digging into it and investigating it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in a way that kind of causes it to lose
Speaker 2: its power, right, Like you notice it's not just this
Speaker 2: valance that's like sucky negative stop stop stuff Like you
Speaker 2: can sort of see it for what it is, and
Speaker 2: that can disarm it sometimes too.
Speaker 1: I like that idea. Actually, I had not thought of
Speaker 1: investigating it more closely. If it's rhythmic, I can capture
Speaker 1: the rhythm of it, and then it sort of disappears.
Speaker 1: It's the intermittent ones. But to your point, I'd either
Speaker 1: try and tell myself don't be annoyed by it, or
Speaker 1: I make it go away. I do one of those two,
Speaker 1: But I have not that much. Now that you're saying
Speaker 1: it turned towards it in a curious way. Learn more
Speaker 1: about it. How often is it? What are its frequencies?
Speaker 1: What you know? I think that's helpful. All right, What
Speaker 1: about be driven crazy by the sound of other people eating?
Speaker 1: Can you fix this problem?
Speaker 2: I think you could. Yeah, maybe the same technique, like
Speaker 2: get out of the room you're eating. Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the same with all affective things, right.
Speaker 2: You know, if you can really investigate your own preferences,
Speaker 2: sometimes you start laughing at yourself, right, You're like, I'm
Speaker 2: really really annoyed by this guy chewing chips. You know,
Speaker 2: Like if you can kind of get to a meta
Speaker 2: awareness of what's really upsetting you, then again, through this
Speaker 2: process of kind of allowing it and investigating it, you
Speaker 2: can sometimes get some purchase on it to be like, wait,
Speaker 2: that doesn't make any sense. Again, it doesn't make it perfect,
Speaker 2: and it does take a lot of work, right, but
Speaker 2: you can kind of get to the other side on things.
Speaker 1: Another episode that you had recently, it was about, in essence,
Speaker 1: on one level, working too much or you know, how
Speaker 1: much is too much to work. But the insight that
Speaker 1: came out of it that I thought was really interesting
Speaker 1: was that we all want more time. We have this desire.
Speaker 1: I used to say, I want to be able to
Speaker 1: do whatever I want, whenever I want, right, which is
Speaker 1: in my case an unqualified disaster when that occurs. But
Speaker 1: the point of the episode is that there is a
Speaker 1: sweet spot for how much discretionary time is helpful, and
Speaker 1: that even moving small amounts of discretionary time can be
Speaker 1: very helpful back to this a little and often. So
Speaker 1: can you tell us a little bit more about that one?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, So this was work that was looking at
Speaker 2: how much discretionary time do we need? It was an
Speaker 2: episode with the psychologist Cassie Holmes, who's fantastic. She's got
Speaker 2: a great new book out on some of these topics.
Speaker 2: And I think we assume that like infinite time is good, right,
Speaker 2: like all the free time possible. But what she finds
Speaker 2: is that you definitely need some free time time that
Speaker 2: you would describe as free that's not scheduled, but it's
Speaker 2: really not infinite. It's actually just a couple hours a day,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe even the range of like two to
Speaker 2: three hours a day. And I think two things there.
Speaker 2: One is like, when you realize it doesn't have to
Speaker 2: be infinite, you're like, Okay, this seems much more doable, right,
Speaker 2: Like I think I can move things around to objectively
Speaker 2: get that much free time, or it's a little easier
Speaker 2: than if I was going for infinite free time, for example.
Speaker 2: But the other thing that she talks a lot about
Speaker 2: is that we really need to prioritize that free time, right.
Speaker 2: And I think, look, really carefully at what's digging into it.
Speaker 2: You know, sometimes what's digging into it is work and
Speaker 2: paying the bills, and you know, yeah, that's a thing.
Speaker 2: But sometimes what's digging into it is stuff that's just
Speaker 2: like failing our time that we don't need, you know,
Speaker 2: I know you love parables. On the show, you know,
Speaker 2: she talks about the perhaps apocryphal tale of some professor
Speaker 2: who was trying to teach his kids, you know, about
Speaker 2: the power of this and he says like, you know,
Speaker 2: if these ping pong balls, how many ping pong balls
Speaker 2: can I fit in this class? People say some number
Speaker 2: of pop balls and he puts them in and he's like,
Speaker 2: so is the glass full? And people are like yeah,
Speaker 2: you know. And then he brings out these little like
Speaker 2: marbles and he's like, well, you know, actually, can I
Speaker 2: put some marbles in? And they're like, oh, yeah, you can't.
Speaker 2: So he fits some marbles in. He says, well, now
Speaker 2: is the glass full? And people are like yeah. And
Speaker 2: then he pulls out the sand and he's like, uh huh,
Speaker 2: I put the sand in. The reason this is relevant
Speaker 2: is he says, you know, your time is this glass,
Speaker 2: and if you start filling it with the sand. First,
Speaker 2: you won't be able to fit the ping pong balls,
Speaker 2: which are the things you really want to be doing
Speaker 2: with your life, the things that really fulfill you and
Speaker 2: build you up. And so I think, you know, with
Speaker 2: that metaphor, I think we can ask the question like,
Speaker 2: what's the sand in our lives that fill things up?
Speaker 2: You know, and what's the ping pong walls? And sometimes
Speaker 2: when you do that analysis, you realize, you know, the
Speaker 2: sand was you know, every you know, free ten minutes
Speaker 2: I had. I was looking at something stupid on the internet,
Speaker 2: and the sand was ruminating over and over again when
Speaker 2: I could have like, you know, popped out and you know,
Speaker 2: done a quick workout or something like that. Right, It
Speaker 2: really allows us to analyze and be more intentional about
Speaker 2: how we're spending our time and recognize that it's a
Speaker 2: limited resource that we often don't think of as one
Speaker 2: perhaps our most important limited resource. You know, money, if
Speaker 2: you blow it, you might be able to get more
Speaker 2: money someday. But time, when you blow it has gone forever,
Speaker 2: you know, in your life, It's not coming back.
Speaker 1: When we're talking about discretionary time, are we talking about
Speaker 1: time that we get to choose what we want to
Speaker 1: do in and we may fill it up. Is it
Speaker 1: still discretionary time? For example, if I'm like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: I want to exercise for an hour and I want
Speaker 1: to meditate for twenty minutes and I'd like to do this,
Speaker 1: would we still consider that sort of discretionary time because
Speaker 1: I don't have to do those things, or would we
Speaker 1: still say even beyond that sort of thing, I need
Speaker 1: some amount of time that's just do whatever I feel like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, honestly, I think it kind of depends a little
Speaker 2: bit on how you frame it. You know, you use
Speaker 2: the example of like the time to exercise. There's different
Speaker 2: ways to frame that, right. You know, you could frame
Speaker 2: it like I'm done work and I get to do
Speaker 2: the things that are for me. What's the thing for me, Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm going to exercise, I'm going to have this amazing
Speaker 2: yoga session, right, Or you could frame that exercises like
Speaker 2: I have to do it. If I don't do my
Speaker 2: half hour exercise, I'm failing it my happiness mission. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna like die of a hard attack. Like there's a
Speaker 2: sort of half douness, a shouldness to certain kinds of
Speaker 2: things we do. And you know a lot of shouldness
Speaker 2: obviously comes from work and paying the bills and things,
Speaker 2: but sometimes we build up that shouldness in our brain
Speaker 2: for things that darn't a have to, right, that are
Speaker 2: supposed to be a want to but now have somehow
Speaker 2: turned into a weird should have to, you know. And
Speaker 2: the joke I use with my students is that you
Speaker 2: don't want to be shoulting all over yourself, you know,
Speaker 2: but I think we often should all over ourselves in
Speaker 2: ways that make even the most leisurely things, even the
Speaker 2: things we would normally be doing, you know, as a
Speaker 2: gift to do ourselves, is this thing we should savor,
Speaker 2: you know, this delicious ice cream cone of time that
Speaker 2: we've spent. And it just feels like crappy, like we're
Speaker 2: just trying to like push our thrills through it, you know.
Speaker 2: It feels like the most onerous work tasks. I think
Speaker 2: it's not exactly defined by a particular thing. It's often
Speaker 2: defined by our attitude towards that thing. And this is
Speaker 2: one of the time hacks, because I think can be
Speaker 2: quite powerful, right, is that you don't necessarily have to
Speaker 2: change how you're objectively spending your time to you know,
Speaker 2: in some ways subjectively think about your time use differently.
Speaker 2: If you can kind of change your attitude towards how
Speaker 2: you're spending your time, that might be enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that is such a powerful intervention, is to
Speaker 1: get to this, I'm choosing to do X.
Speaker 2: You know, even do get to you know, you get
Speaker 2: to do this. It's amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, even something like doing work as a parent can
Speaker 1: very much feel like I have to. You know, I
Speaker 1: had this realization. I've shared this on the show a
Speaker 1: number of times. When my son was I don't know
Speaker 1: how old he was, nine or whatever, and I was
Speaker 1: complaining about having to take him to soccer practice again,
Speaker 1: and I just went like, no, I don't, like, there's
Speaker 1: no law that says I have to take my son
Speaker 1: to soccer practice, Like I simply don't have to do that.
Speaker 1: Matter of fact, I could choose not to come home
Speaker 1: and his mother would have to take care of him. No,
Speaker 1: I'd have to pay child support, but I could make
Speaker 1: that choice. And just reframing it that way then caused
Speaker 1: me to go, Okay, so I am taking into soccer practice.
Speaker 1: Why am I doing it? And now I'm sort of
Speaker 1: linking this thing to something I value, you know, and
Speaker 1: the same thing as you're saying with exercise, like I
Speaker 1: can turn it into a have to do it, but
Speaker 1: I don't actually have to do it. I'm totally in
Speaker 1: charge of choosing. I'm choosing to do it. Why, Okay,
Speaker 1: because I know it makes me feel better. I know,
Speaker 1: you know, blah blah blah. So I think reframing things
Speaker 1: as choices in our lives a gets us out of
Speaker 1: that feeling of obligation or we have to that feeling.
Speaker 1: It's a trapped feeling for me, right, and then also
Speaker 1: does get me back in touch with my values what
Speaker 1: matters to me. Then I can make a choice. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe that doesn't matter to me that much. Why am
Speaker 1: I doing that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, I think that's really profound. Right in two ways.
Speaker 2: One is kind of, as you mentioned, getting back to
Speaker 2: your values. Right, So now you can appreciate this thing, right,
Speaker 2: you can have some gratitude for It's like allowing you
Speaker 2: to harness the things you care about.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it also gets you back to a sense
Speaker 2: of agency, which just cycle logically is powerful. We don't
Speaker 2: like to be forced, you know, and helpless in doing things.
Speaker 2: But I think that choice can remind you that, like
Speaker 2: it's a choice. And you know, to go back to
Speaker 2: the metaphor we mentioned, like you can ask yourself, is
Speaker 2: this the sand or is this the like you know,
Speaker 2: big ping pong balls? Right, you can really say you
Speaker 2: know and like really assess whether or not this is
Speaker 2: the kind of thing you want to be doing, because
Speaker 2: sometimes some of the things we think are have too
Speaker 2: is in life have moved away from our values. Right,
Speaker 2: they're not serving us in the way that they served
Speaker 2: us before.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: You mentioned our theories of ourselves are several years old.
Speaker 2: In some cases, I think our kind of meta theories
Speaker 2: of what our values are might be wrong. When we
Speaker 2: really introspect, you can be like, I don't have to
Speaker 2: do this, and in fact, I don't want to do this,
Speaker 2: even in terms of my value. So it can allow
Speaker 2: us to engage in behavior changes that really are going
Speaker 2: to serve us a little bit better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, a lot of the stuff in your
Speaker 1: Happiness course talks about, you know, there's some very basic
Speaker 1: things in there that I often am Like, I wish
Speaker 1: I had recommendations that were more interesting than exercise, good
Speaker 1: sleep and meditate, Like feels a little bit like eat
Speaker 1: your vegetables right.
Speaker 2: People pay you and they're like, wait, really, this is
Speaker 2: the rocket science of you know, happiness research right now. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, one thing I like to tell my students
Speaker 2: is like, yeah, totally common wisdom, but definitely not common practice.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons I think it's powerful to understand
Speaker 2: the scientific benefits of these things is I think it
Speaker 2: sometimes can help us pop over a little bit to
Speaker 2: behavior change, right when you really reflect on the actual
Speaker 2: benefits of something like getting a half hour of cardio
Speaker 2: in or the actual benefits of getting some sleep for
Speaker 2: your mental health. You know, you see, like in my case,
Speaker 2: my students like they see these graphs of like do
Speaker 2: you want to be here on your mental health or
Speaker 2: here you know this big graph, it's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: you know that can sometimes give you the motivation, that
Speaker 2: kind of kick in the pants to get back in
Speaker 2: gear with some of these things. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: there's stuff our societies have been saying, our cultures have
Speaker 2: been saying, our grandmothers have been saying, you know for hundreds,
Speaker 2: if not thousands of years. But somehow in the modern world,
Speaker 2: we've got away from actually practicing these things.
Speaker 1: Yep. So we're talking about this, don't should on yourself
Speaker 1: or reflecting on choice, right, which is very valuable, there
Speaker 1: are still going to be times, you know, with me,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, I know unequivocally the single best thing
Speaker 1: I can do for my mental health is exercise, Like
Speaker 1: it is the number one intervention for me. I know
Speaker 1: that I have internalized that, and yet there are days
Speaker 1: where I'm like, I just don't want to do this.
Speaker 1: So there's a certain amount of like, yes, I want
Speaker 1: to have agency and I don't want to do this,
Speaker 1: and there's a certain amount of time where there is
Speaker 1: a need to sort of push and say, Eric, this
Speaker 1: is good for you and do something that in the
Speaker 1: moment I may not be wanting to do. So how
Speaker 1: do you balance those two sort of you know, not
Speaker 1: getting locked into obligation, not making something that's good for
Speaker 1: us a chore, knowing that sometimes we have to just
Speaker 1: go through the motion.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you only have days when you experienced this,
Speaker 2: you're doing well because I have months things like I think,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the big insight I think that
Speaker 2: the research shows us is that a lot of this
Speaker 2: isn't what the actual activities themselves are, but it's how
Speaker 2: we talk to ourselves about them, right. So the shoulting
Speaker 2: brain is really this kind of drill sergeant kind of
Speaker 2: idea of motivation where you just think, if I just
Speaker 2: scream at myself and be rate myself for being such
Speaker 2: idiot that I won't want to go to the gym,
Speaker 2: then that'll motivate me to go to the gym, right,
Speaker 2: And that feels like it should It feels like, ah,
Speaker 2: it can turn the best thing that you love the
Speaker 2: most into this thing that feels like an external obligation.
Speaker 2: But then you also don't want to have the pendulum
Speaker 2: shift too far in the other direction where you go
Speaker 2: into like indulgent mode where you're like, oh, do whatever,
Speaker 2: just like be this crazy, heatedus and hurt yourself, right,
Speaker 2: because that can lead down a bad path too. And
Speaker 2: so what you're trying to do is to find a
Speaker 2: happy medium, always hard, of course, but one of the
Speaker 2: voices to channel I think that helps with that happy
Speaker 2: medium is a voice of self compassion. Self compassion in
Speaker 2: the way that researchers like Kristin knaff At ut Austin
Speaker 2: talk about it, where you're trying to talk to yourself
Speaker 2: as a close friend would talk to you, right. You know,
Speaker 2: so let's say, you know, you haven't been to the
Speaker 2: gym in a while, you're feeling like crap, your close
Speaker 2: friend shows up. What are they gonna say to you.
Speaker 2: They're not gonna be like, Eric, you need to get
Speaker 2: your act together and get to the gym. What a loser.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 2: They're not gonna scream at you. They're not gonna be like, no,
Speaker 2: you have tomorrow morning eight am. You gotta go to
Speaker 2: the gym, like I'm gonna beat you up or something. Right,
Speaker 2: But they're also not going to be like, nah, not
Speaker 2: a problem that you're never going to the gym, Like
Speaker 2: eat more ice cream, like say on your butt. Like
Speaker 2: they're gonna be like, Eric, what's going on? What's going on?
Speaker 2: Why aren't you going to the gym? Right, they might
Speaker 2: be curious. They're gonna be kind. They're gonna try to
Speaker 2: get to the bottom of it. They're not gonna let
Speaker 2: you indul just you know, self compassion is not self indulgence.
Speaker 2: But they're gonna, you know, try to figure out what's
Speaker 2: going on. And I think that's sort of the attitude
Speaker 2: we need to take to ourselves when we're feeling that resistance.
Speaker 2: One move is to actually get curious about the resistance
Speaker 2: and say, what's you know going on? And I've done this,
Speaker 2: I mean I definitely have had this specifically with exercise
Speaker 2: a lot. They said, it's not days for me, sometimes
Speaker 2: it's months. But I find that when I get curious
Speaker 2: about it, it can help, like what's happening? Why does
Speaker 2: this feel like an obligation? What have I done? And
Speaker 2: sometimes you analyze and you realize, like, you know, it's
Speaker 2: the particular thing I'm compelling myself to do. There are
Speaker 2: other things that feel like I should in my life,
Speaker 2: and if I can't harness that time that I was
Speaker 2: exercising for something else, like there's another thing that I'm
Speaker 2: missing that I want to get into. But all of
Speaker 2: that is, it's not necessarily which solution I come up with.
Speaker 2: It's just the fact that being curious about the resistance
Speaker 2: can allow you to stop butting heads against it, either
Speaker 2: kind of you know, plowing through it like a drill sergeant,
Speaker 2: which doesn't work, or ignoring it and letting it continue
Speaker 2: when the resistance is really not serving you. So again,
Speaker 2: it's this kind of how you talk to yourself, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and allowing yourself to kind of get curious and pay
Speaker 2: attention and investigate what's going on with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's really good. I think another phenomenon
Speaker 1: I've noticed in myself is particularly with exercise. It's like
Speaker 1: I look at exercise and I'm like, Okay, my plan
Speaker 1: is I'm going to do a sixty minute bike ride
Speaker 1: that day. I know how much energy a sixty minute
Speaker 1: bike ride takes. It takes ten units of energy, and
Speaker 1: I look inside and I'm like, I have got one.
Speaker 1: This is not going to happen, right, So you know,
Speaker 1: the other just sort of simple thing to do is
Speaker 1: to break it down and go like, okay, can I
Speaker 1: get on my bike shoes? That takes one unit of energy?
Speaker 1: I got one unit of energy. Good. I ease myself
Speaker 1: one step at a time into the thing. Can be
Speaker 1: another just sort of a simple hack, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better word, to kind of get over that hump.
Speaker 1: Because I don't know what it is about exercise. I've asked,
Speaker 1: maybe you have a theory on this. I've never gotten
Speaker 1: a good answer for it, or not a complete answer,
Speaker 1: which is I have exercise. Let's say I don't know.
Speaker 1: Five thousand times in my life I don't know what
Speaker 1: the number is, it's a big number now, right, I'm
Speaker 1: not a young man. Every single time I've done it,
Speaker 1: when I'm done, I'm like that, I'm so glad I
Speaker 1: did that.
Speaker 2: That was also a choice, going to do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Never once, not once have I been like, ah, man,
Speaker 1: I wish I didn't do that right. You would think
Speaker 1: that it would just be easy to do it right.
Speaker 1: It just seems like my brain would learn that's good,
Speaker 1: do it, and yet it's still sometimes a big effort.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it just comes down to conservation
Speaker 1: of energy as a species. I don't know you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts on that, because it's strange to me.
Speaker 2: You're good if it's just exercise for you. I mean
Speaker 2: for me, it's like sit down to journal, do your meditation,
Speaker 2: like call your mom, like there's so yeah, and so.
Speaker 2: One hint that we get from the neuroscience is that
Speaker 2: you'd like to think that, you know, the brain was
Speaker 2: organized in the following way. It was good at detecting
Speaker 2: what I really liked, you know, what drove pleasure. It
Speaker 2: would notice that really well, and then it would have
Speaker 2: mechanisms that motivate you that say, hey, whenever you feel
Speaker 2: that you know that little burst of pleasure. Do that
Speaker 2: more often. Turns out the brain doesn't have that many
Speaker 2: pleasure centers. They're like really tiny and hard to find.
Speaker 2: Even a neuroscience researchers. Early on we're looking for them
Speaker 2: like we don't have any pleasure centers, meaning we don't
Speaker 2: often notice what feels good, right, We notice things that
Speaker 2: really hack into those systems. So you know, drugs of addiction,
Speaker 2: like those hack into the system great. We notice that
Speaker 2: those feel good, and those are very hooked up to
Speaker 2: the motivation systems. You know, sweet things, right, you know
Speaker 2: these visceral states we get. But you know, the nice
Speaker 2: warm feeling I get from doing a nice gesture to somebody,
Speaker 2: you know, the warmth I get from social connection, the
Speaker 2: exercise endorfin, HI don't notice it as much. However, the
Speaker 2: brain has lots and lots of neural real estate devoted
Speaker 2: to what you might call wanting. So if the pleasure
Speaker 2: systems are like the liking, the brain has lots of
Speaker 2: wanting stuff, and so you get these systems that like
Speaker 2: give you lots of craving to do stuff that you
Speaker 2: know just happen to be a hack in this liking system. Again,
Speaker 2: whether it's drugs of addiction or things like social media
Speaker 2: or you know, all these like little dopamine hacks. Our
Speaker 2: brain is really ready to go after those, but it
Speaker 2: has no mechanism to learn about, you know, the big highs,
Speaker 2: the you know kind of like deeper pleasures in life,
Speaker 2: and that sucks. Is such a stupid way to organize
Speaker 2: the brain. May probably work for rats, great for them,
Speaker 2: but like not for us. You know. So, how do
Speaker 2: you kind of combine these systems for wanting and liking better?
Speaker 2: You know, all the forms of liking, get them to
Speaker 2: talk to your wanting better. Sadly, there's not an obvious way,
Speaker 2: but there are hints that one way you can do
Speaker 2: it is to kind of ramp up your intentional noticing
Speaker 2: of the rewards you get. So my colleague Eddy Kober,
Speaker 2: who's a neuroscientist at Yale, she's really interested in mindfulness
Speaker 2: approaches to addiction and things like that, you know, claims
Speaker 2: that you can use the same sort of approaches to
Speaker 2: notice the good things, just as you can with say
Speaker 2: a craving for a cigarette or something. Notice like, actually,
Speaker 2: what I'm craving is kind of gross, you know, like,
Speaker 2: really pay attention to how this makes you feel, which
Speaker 2: is like not that good. You can do the reverse
Speaker 2: for something like exercise, And so this is something she
Speaker 2: practices all the time. She's like the annoying friend that
Speaker 2: always wants to do like the hard yoga or the
Speaker 2: run or the like. You know, she never has the
Speaker 2: thing that we were just describing. But it's in part
Speaker 2: because she's forced herself at the end of it and
Speaker 2: that moment you talk about when you're like this feels
Speaker 2: great to sit there and meditate on it, like, oh,
Speaker 2: my chest feels lighter, I feel really good. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: she's kind of giving her brain some time to be like, wait,
Speaker 2: like the reward areas that are kind of slow, unless
Speaker 2: it's like a straight up dopamine hit, they can kind
Speaker 2: of notice this stuff. And you know, does that perfectly
Speaker 2: lock up your wanting in liking systems? No, but I
Speaker 2: think it can kind of help the sort of mindfulness
Speaker 2: practice of noticing their rewarding parts, just in the same
Speaker 2: way you might notice that the negative things that are
Speaker 2: not serving you. When you sort of notice those consequences
Speaker 2: and really attend to how they feel, they can kind
Speaker 2: of get into that circuit a bit more too.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting perspective the liking in one in systems,
Speaker 1: and that a lot of the things that these pleasures
Speaker 1: were describing that come from wholesome activity. They're a subtler thing,
Speaker 1: and so savoring them is really important. It's just so
Speaker 1: interesting having been somebody who had drugs of addiction right
Speaker 1: as a heroin addict. It amazes me looking back on
Speaker 1: the amount of pleasure I was getting at the end
Speaker 1: was so small compared to the price I was paying,
Speaker 1: you know. And I've heard people describe some theories of
Speaker 1: addiction people have is that there's learning disorder associated with it,
Speaker 1: in that your brain is just not updating its priors,
Speaker 1: so to speak. Right, it it just it's stuck on
Speaker 1: the heroin good signal, even though heroin is clearly not
Speaker 1: any longer good. My brain is like it doesn't get it,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I think that these things are
Speaker 1: really tricky, that liking and wanting. I think it's really
Speaker 1: interesting that the brain has a lot of real estate
Speaker 1: devoted to wanting.
Speaker 2: Mmmmmm yeah, and in that the wanting sticks really strongly
Speaker 2: to certain things, right. You know. Again, drugs of abuse
Speaker 2: a lot of times are hacking your dopamine system. Yeah,
Speaker 2: as does the intert and reward of your Instagram feed,
Speaker 2: you know, as does the like really central pleasures like
Speaker 2: sugar and you know, lounging around and things that that
Speaker 2: want unting system has nothing to stick on to for
Speaker 2: these bigger pleasures, and it doesn't update well, you know,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned. You know, I think one of the
Speaker 2: said things that you know, if you're really addicted to
Speaker 2: a particular drug, is that you're habituated to it. You're
Speaker 2: definitely not getting not only at the consequence is super high,
Speaker 2: but you're also probably not getting the same pleasure that
Speaker 2: you were getting in the beginning because your brain is
Speaker 2: kind of used to it. But yet still the wanting
Speaker 2: systems like one one one.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: If I could go back in evolutionary time and like
Speaker 2: tweak one thing about the rain, it would probably be
Speaker 2: to put more pleasure zones for the bigger, you know,
Speaker 2: more meaningful pleasures, and it would be to hook the
Speaker 2: wanting systems up a little bit better to those. But
Speaker 2: sadly I did not get consulted on how brands should
Speaker 2: be designed. So well, so.
Speaker 1: Do you think though that this is just pure conjecture
Speaker 1: that if we as a species managed to not exterminate ourselves.
Speaker 1: In the next several thousand years, that will change because
Speaker 1: to your point, for rats, it's a very simple system. Right,
Speaker 1: They don't have meaningful pleasures in the same way that
Speaker 1: we do. Right, do you think that we might evolve
Speaker 1: to be a little wiser about these things and to
Speaker 1: shake off some of this evolutionary baggage one being like that,
Speaker 1: maybe we would realize, like sugar and fat are not
Speaker 1: always good. Do you think that humans will evolve? And
Speaker 1: again this is just conjecture, but I'm curious what you think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, totally scientifically speaking, I think these selection
Speaker 2: pressures have to be pressured to change things around in
Speaker 2: the brain. You know, if sugar and fat were killing us,
Speaker 2: you know, then we might over time develop adaptations not
Speaker 2: to like it. And that's kind of true, but not
Speaker 2: so quickly, you know, in like real evolutionary time, like
Speaker 2: evolution always moves towards directions of adaptation, but sometimes is
Speaker 2: it really slowly, right, you know, so not in our
Speaker 2: lifetime and not in a long time for the human species.
Speaker 2: That said, I think, you know, this is where cognitive
Speaker 2: hacks can come in, right, you know, if we can
Speaker 2: get good at noticing mindfully paying attention to certain rewards.
Speaker 2: You know, that really seems to be a hack on
Speaker 2: this system. It takes a tremendous amount of work. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is like, you know, we're talking like Buddhist meditation
Speaker 2: levels of you know, commitment to this stuff. But there's
Speaker 2: a sense in which you're kind of hacking these things.
Speaker 2: And this is one of the things I love about,
Speaker 2: you know, recent neuroscience work that looks at people who
Speaker 2: engage in these ancient spiritual practices that they are literally
Speaker 2: hacking their brain. You know, if you look at a
Speaker 2: long term meditator, they just have less neural real estate
Speaker 2: devoted to mind wandering. You know, if you look at
Speaker 2: a monk who's done you know, many many hours of
Speaker 2: compassionate meditation, their brains just go more quickly to engaging
Speaker 2: with compassion to other people. If you look at drug
Speaker 2: addicts who've used mindfulness practices to overcome craving, when you
Speaker 2: look at you know, their brain when they're in a
Speaker 2: craving state, it looks different than you know, a recovering
Speaker 2: addict who might not have used these mindfulness practices. And
Speaker 2: so there are hints that we can start hacking these
Speaker 2: systems through work and so on. That's not as easy
Speaker 2: as like, you know, meteor hits, like only people with
Speaker 2: certain wanting, liking systems stick around you. Way easier, you know, though,
Speaker 2: maybe more tragic. But yeah, yeah, But the good news
Speaker 2: is that with effort and intention, there are some hacks
Speaker 2: that can help this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think we can change this wiring extensively, my
Speaker 1: own life just being a testament to that. I've shared
Speaker 1: this story several times recently on the show, So sorry
Speaker 1: listeners if it's getting boring, but I think it's an
Speaker 1: important one, which is, my mom broke her hip and
Speaker 1: I was picking up all her prescriptions. I was carrying
Speaker 1: oxy cotton back and forth from my mom's house. The
Speaker 1: amazing thing is, not only did I not want it,
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about it. It was a month
Speaker 1: or two into it that I was like, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: But I would have robbed somebody at gunpoint for that
Speaker 1: once upon a time, you know. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that just speaks to change is really possible if we
Speaker 1: just keep doing these things. Now, I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of years away from Heroin, so it doesn't happen overnight,
Speaker 1: but it is possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's important to remember. You know,
Speaker 2: it gets back to something we were talking about before,
Speaker 2: that little and often right, that often is the key
Speaker 2: I think in your case, right like, you have to
Speaker 2: fight that craving or allow it or investigate it a
Speaker 2: lot to get to the point that you're at, but
Speaker 2: it does get easier over time. YEA, for sure.
Speaker 1: We've been talking a fair amount about behavior change here,
Speaker 1: and there's lots of techniques and tools for behavior change,
Speaker 1: but one of them is that the support of other
Speaker 1: people or a term I've seen you use as cultural
Speaker 1: or religious structures. You talk about how it seems kind
Speaker 1: of very clear that like your CrossFit gym or your
Speaker 1: church or these things can help make behavior change occur,
Speaker 1: and you then go on to say, well, what's driving it?
Speaker 1: Is it the beliefs of the organization of the thing
Speaker 1: or is it simply the commitment to it? And I
Speaker 1: just would love to hear you kind of talk through
Speaker 1: that again because I think it's really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so you know this better than
Speaker 2: anyone in your listeners to your podcast, if they've been
Speaker 2: listening for well know this better than anyone. Behavior change
Speaker 2: is a hard hard, hard hard, Right. So any hacks
Speaker 2: that we can figure out to help us can be huge.
Speaker 2: And I think one of the hacks that we forget about.
Speaker 2: We love the sort of Protestant work ethic idea that
Speaker 2: like I'll just power through it, you know, me, me, me,
Speaker 2: this individual changing my behavior against the world. But one
Speaker 2: thing we find is that behavior change often seems a
Speaker 2: lot easier when you have environments and structures around you
Speaker 2: that are kind of consistent with that change. You know
Speaker 2: what do I mean? Like, if you want to exercise,
Speaker 2: that's much easier. If all your friends exercise, right Like,
Speaker 2: that's much easier. If you have like you know this
Speaker 2: like padded out home gym, that's amazing, right Like, that's
Speaker 2: much easier. If you just happen to live in a
Speaker 2: place where there you know, there's no cars, you got
Speaker 2: to walk all the time. You're just going to get
Speaker 2: that in more naturally. So the environments can really help us.
Speaker 2: And sometimes those environments are physical structures, you know, like
Speaker 2: lots of walking paths and you know, an elliptical machine
Speaker 2: in your apartment. But sometimes those structures are really like
Speaker 2: cognitive structures. They're belief systems, right, you know, they're about
Speaker 2: the people around me value this right, the people around
Speaker 2: me are committed to this, And I think both of
Speaker 2: those kinds of things can really work their magic. Those
Speaker 2: are both kinds of structures that seem to really help us.
Speaker 2: But it's often not the kind of beliefs and values
Speaker 2: we think, you know. So, one of the big findings
Speaker 2: I talk about in my class is that overall, religious
Speaker 2: individuals tend to be happier people who have a belief
Speaker 2: in afterlife, belief in God and so on. And so
Speaker 2: you could say, like, well, maybe it's their their personal beliefs, right,
Speaker 2: like they have this belief in afterlife that gives them
Speaker 2: meaning and so on. Turns out not so much. It
Speaker 2: turns out if you factor certain things out, a belief
Speaker 2: in a god or something like that doesn't actually matter.
Speaker 2: What seems to matter a lot more is the practices
Speaker 2: you engage in. Religious individuals go to services, so they
Speaker 2: engage in social connections. Religious individuals often are part of
Speaker 2: organizations that engage in charity, so they do nice things
Speaker 2: for each other. They pray, and so they get a
Speaker 2: chance to be mindful and take some time where they're present.
Speaker 2: They often engage in practices related to things like gratitude
Speaker 2: and other pro social emotions. You know, they're just like
Speaker 2: physically around other people all the time because they're engaging
Speaker 2: with these other folks. And so we think structures have
Speaker 2: to be about our o own personal beliefs and like
Speaker 2: what we believe and what we value, but sometimes the
Speaker 2: environments around us can be shaping our behavior in ways
Speaker 2: that are so much easier. In a recent episode of
Speaker 2: my podcast where I interview the inventor of these so
Speaker 2: called blue zones, Dan Butner. He's an author who studies
Speaker 2: places around the world that tend to have these positive practices,
Speaker 2: either for like physical health, like places that induce longevity
Speaker 2: where people live healthily for a really long time, or
Speaker 2: places that induce happiness. And he's fond of saying that
Speaker 2: like any attempt to individually change your behavior without your
Speaker 2: environment supporting you is doomed to failure. Like, you know,
Speaker 2: you could do all these different hacks and download apps
Speaker 2: and get coaches and whatever, but like if you just
Speaker 2: moved to a place that was happier or moved to
Speaker 2: a place where you exercise more, that would impact your
Speaker 2: behavior so much more. You know, he's being a little
Speaker 2: harsh We know that with work you can change your behavior,
Speaker 2: but it's definitely true that if you can find some
Speaker 2: environmental support that helps enormously.
Speaker 1: It makes such a huge difference. I mean, I got
Speaker 1: sober in twelve step comunities, and you know, I've had
Speaker 1: friends of mine who are former heroin adicts say it
Speaker 1: was harder to quit smoking then stop doing heroin. And
Speaker 1: there's a variety of reasons for that, but one of them,
Speaker 1: I think is simply when we went to get off heroin,
Speaker 1: we were embedded in a community that was focused on that.
Speaker 1: And when we stop smoking, primarily most people just simply
Speaker 1: go all right, I'm going to stop smoking, and they
Speaker 1: do it entirely on their own. You know, I think
Speaker 1: it makes such a difference. And I think this idea
Speaker 1: between beliefs and practices. I've often heard people describe Judaism
Speaker 1: as a religion that's less about belief and more about practices.
Speaker 1: You know, I often try and tweeze apart what in
Speaker 1: twelve step programs worked, What was it that was actually
Speaker 1: working there? And you know, it's interesting to think about,
Speaker 1: but I do think that the community aspect of it,
Speaker 1: that piece of it is really really important. In twelve
Speaker 1: step programs, I talk about unity, service, and recovery, and
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting. The unity are the people,
Speaker 1: the service is doing something that cares about other people.
Speaker 1: And then the recovery was some method of personal internal transformation.
Speaker 1: I think that can just be applied to us generally
Speaker 1: as humans. You know, those three things are really helpful
Speaker 1: orienting points totally.
Speaker 2: And I also think this idea of you know, giving
Speaker 2: up control you know, which, which can be complicated. I
Speaker 2: think it has certain religious overtones and so on, but
Speaker 2: you know, ultimately it's really accepting your common humanity, you know,
Speaker 2: which is something that people who do work on self
Speaker 2: compassion talk about. Right. It's like, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: be perfect. I'm just going to be human. I'm going
Speaker 2: to be tempted, right, you know, Like I have to
Speaker 2: kind of come to terms with the fact that I'm
Speaker 2: not the one, you know, who's in control all the time,
Speaker 2: and that humility can often ground us in a whole
Speaker 2: host of attitudes and ways of talking to ourselves that
Speaker 2: allow us to be a little bit more self compassionate. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not going to be perfect. Maybe let's
Speaker 2: not put myself in this situation, it's going to be
Speaker 2: really hard, Like I'm not Superman, right, Like I need
Speaker 2: to ask for help. Yeah, all of these are practices
Speaker 2: where you're kind of compassionately dealing with yourself, but those
Speaker 2: are practices that also make behavior change much easier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd like to turn now towards loneliness. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of it out there, and it's not such an
Speaker 1: easy thing to solve. I was talking with someone who
Speaker 1: is lonely about this, and this is a person who's
Speaker 1: had lots of loss in their life, so everything that
Speaker 1: they sort of relied on is just kind of gone,
Speaker 1: and they're sharing how you know, It's one thing when
Speaker 1: you've got a spouse to go out and find some
Speaker 1: additional community by joining a club, but that when you
Speaker 1: have none of those foundations, it's very very difficult. So
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what might you say to someone who's in
Speaker 1: that position, who's you know, really isolated and becoming un
Speaker 1: isolated feels like a tremendous amount of work and is
Speaker 1: very discouraged by it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think first I could recognize that you are
Speaker 2: not alone, like a lot of people relate right, Like,
Speaker 2: loneliness is skyrocketing even if you don't have people talking
Speaker 2: to you about it. I mean, you know, even the
Speaker 2: Surgeon General of the United States, Viviig Marthy, has been
Speaker 2: focusing on loneliness in part because he thinks is a
Speaker 2: public health crisis, a public health crisis because of how
Speaker 2: dangerous it is, but also a public health crisis because
Speaker 2: of how common it is. Right, And so I think
Speaker 2: that's step number one is like, you know, you're not
Speaker 2: a loser, there's not something wrong with you, Like this
Speaker 2: is something a lot of people are going through. But
Speaker 2: that also comes with, you know, something that's related, which
Speaker 2: is that if you reach out in a baby step way,
Speaker 2: you'll often be surprised about how many people will follow up.
Speaker 2: I think one of our fears of loneliness is, or
Speaker 2: one of our worries when we're feeling lonely about doing
Speaker 2: something about it, is we're kind of simulating how much
Speaker 2: work it's going to take and how much success we're
Speaker 2: going to get, right or something like, oh, it's going
Speaker 2: to be such a pain to like call somebody or
Speaker 2: go to this club or whatever, And we're simulating, you know,
Speaker 2: if I do reach out, people aren't going to like me, right,
Speaker 2: and scientists have looked at this, and there's evidence that
Speaker 2: both of those intuitions are wrong. Right. Our predictions about
Speaker 2: how much of a pain in the butt, how stressful,
Speaker 2: how you know, annoying, how maybe awkward it's going to
Speaker 2: be to reach out, they're all wrong. Like our brain
Speaker 2: is telling us, oh, don't do that, it's going to
Speaker 2: be a pain, not going to be as much of
Speaker 2: a pain as you think, right, And our brain is
Speaker 2: also telling us stuff about how successful it's going to be.
Speaker 2: And we there's so much evidence that we mispredict how
Speaker 2: many people are going to like us. We mispredict how
Speaker 2: much people will appreciate our attempt at reaching out, especially
Speaker 2: if we haven't reached out in a long time. And
Speaker 2: I think recognizing that those biases are biases, that our
Speaker 2: intuitions are wrong, can be really helpful when you're making
Speaker 2: the decision to try to overcome your loneliness because you're like,
Speaker 2: it feels like it's going to be a lot of work.
Speaker 2: You can be like, no, science says it's not. Let
Speaker 2: me just try it, right, Let me just try it
Speaker 2: and take a baby step towards it. And then often
Speaker 2: if you're paying attention, you'll get some positive reinforcement back, right,
Speaker 2: You think, oh, it's going to be so onerous to
Speaker 2: go to this club, especially if I don't have a
Speaker 2: spouse of you know, nobody to talk to. But then
Speaker 2: when you try it, it actually works. The key though,
Speaker 2: I think, you know, especially with the science, is that
Speaker 2: you kind of have to try it the right way,
Speaker 2: and the right way is really making sure that you're
Speaker 2: doing that first step to reach out, you know, including
Speaker 2: when you go to a place, you know, so you know,
Speaker 2: I've seen friends who say, you know, you know, lonely,
Speaker 2: like maybe I should I'll go to CrossFit, or you know,
Speaker 2: I'll go to a book club or I'll go to
Speaker 2: this thing. But then they get to the book club
Speaker 2: and they like, you know, are on their phone, checking
Speaker 2: their email, or they're like playing with the cat you
Speaker 2: know at the book club, right, like, they're not actually
Speaker 2: talking to people. Yeah, and what does that do? You know?
Speaker 2: It's reinforces a cycle where people think, well, you're not
Speaker 2: interested in them, so they're not going to try to
Speaker 2: talk to you. And so I think we need to
Speaker 2: recognize that it's not just putting ourselves in this situation,
Speaker 2: but it's having our own openness. Often solutions to loneliness
Speaker 2: involved not like someone reaching out to us, but us
Speaker 2: reaching out to other people, us trying to solve other
Speaker 2: people's loneliness, us feeling like, you know, we're the ones
Speaker 2: who're going to talk to somebody so they feel better.
Speaker 2: That's what kind of opens things up.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting perspective, and actually I think my
Speaker 1: own experience would bear that out in certain cases. One
Speaker 1: on one, I am pretty fine with people. Put me
Speaker 1: in a room full of people that I don't know,
Speaker 1: and I hate it. You know, if I could have
Speaker 1: three glasses of whiskey, I would like it a whole
Speaker 1: lot more. But I don't. And so what I've found though,
Speaker 1: in some of those situations is exactly what you just
Speaker 1: said is the strategy for me sometimes is look around
Speaker 1: and see who looks lonely and go approach that person
Speaker 1: as a starting point. It's funny when you said that, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, you go to the event and you're on
Speaker 1: your phone or you're playing with the other people's cat.
Speaker 1: You know, I am totally that way. Put me in
Speaker 1: a new social situation, and what I've learned about myself
Speaker 1: is I may not even be able that first couple
Speaker 1: times to overcome it, like it just may be too strong.
Speaker 1: But if I keep going, I can find something. And
Speaker 1: I've seen some research talking about you know, it takes
Speaker 1: a while to build a connection or a friendship. And
Speaker 1: the thing that I've done so many times in my
Speaker 1: life is show up someplace once and be like, now,
Speaker 1: not my people, because nothing happened right. And I just
Speaker 1: know for myself that the first time I show up,
Speaker 1: my defenses are just they're unconscious and they're high enough
Speaker 1: that I'm either going to think I don't like these
Speaker 1: people or they don't like me. One of those two
Speaker 1: things is going to be going on in my brain,
Speaker 1: and I just kind of have to ignore it and go, well,
Speaker 1: try again, you know, try a few times. If this
Speaker 1: seems like it's a place that might offer the kind
Speaker 1: of community I want, I may have to venture into
Speaker 1: the space multiple times, and then sooner or later I
Speaker 1: find like all of a sudden, my walls start dropping.
Speaker 1: And so that's a way of doing it, even if
Speaker 1: you can't quite overcome you know what you're saying, Like,
Speaker 1: the first time I'm there, all I can do is
Speaker 1: play with a cat because I feel so shy.
Speaker 2: I'd like you'res justin there. You can also look at
Speaker 2: it from the other people's perspective, right, like why didn't
Speaker 2: they connect with me? It might not be because you
Speaker 2: know you're a loser and unconnectable. It might be you
Speaker 2: were playing with that cat the whole, you know. So
Speaker 2: it's like, yes, think if you, if you, if you
Speaker 2: frame it more like I'm going to help the loneliest
Speaker 2: person at the party, that's super helpful. I mean, I've
Speaker 2: seen this on one on one. You know. If you know,
Speaker 2: if you're feeling anxious, socially anxious, and a party's not
Speaker 2: the right scene, fine look through your phone or your email. Listen, say,
Speaker 2: I'm going to you know, text your email the person
Speaker 2: in this list that I think might be the loneliness,
Speaker 2: and I'm just going to check in and you'd be
Speaker 2: surprised how much good work that does.
Speaker 1: This is my final question, to what extent does virtual connection?
Speaker 1: Can it be a replacement for in person connection? Is
Speaker 1: it fifty percent is good? Seventy five percent is good?
Speaker 1: I'm asking the wrong question.
Speaker 2: It's a good question, and the answer is sort of
Speaker 2: it depends on how you do it right. You know,
Speaker 2: you and I are talking virtually over our favorite podcast app,
Speaker 2: and it feels pretty good, like we're having this nice
Speaker 2: connection I see you. And that's in part because it's
Speaker 2: in real time. Right, we're talking using the same things
Speaker 2: as primemates that we were built a revolution to do. Right,
Speaker 2: we're talking in real time with one another. I think
Speaker 2: that virtual connection works less well if you're not doing
Speaker 2: it in real time, like you know, a text thread
Speaker 2: where you're texting a friend. It just kind of doesn't
Speaker 2: jive with the way our psychology is used to it.
Speaker 2: But the cool thing is we have lots of tools
Speaker 2: now that allow us to do that from like FaceTime
Speaker 2: and zoom where you can see each other or just
Speaker 2: like the old school phone. Right, we have these smartphones
Speaker 2: that are our cameras and our alarm clocks and all
Speaker 2: these things, and we forget like you could just use
Speaker 2: it as a phone. We know, the phone, you know,
Speaker 2: it's pretty good for social connection. It was like really
Speaker 2: all we had for a very long time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, And I think the thing that sometimes
Speaker 1: people will do, and I know I've been guilty of this,
Speaker 1: is like, well, in person connections, what's really important? So
Speaker 1: I won't do zoom right, thinking it's somehow inferior, but
Speaker 1: it's still way, way, way better than nothing.
Speaker 2: And I think this for me was, you know, a
Speaker 2: gift of the pandemic. You know, I could talk about
Speaker 2: silver linings and blessings and really awful situations. Was that,
Speaker 2: you know, I think it got a lot of us to,
Speaker 2: you know, do these zoom hangouts with the friends, or
Speaker 2: zoom movie or game nights and zoom yoga classes. I
Speaker 2: was doing zoom yoga with friends and it made me realize, like, wait,
Speaker 2: this is pretty good. You know, there are people that
Speaker 2: live far away that I won't see in person for
Speaker 2: a while, but connecting with them over zoom was great.
Speaker 2: And some of those you know, zoom things I was doing,
Speaker 2: I'm still doing with those friends. My college roommates are
Speaker 2: scattered all across the country and we still do these
Speaker 2: like once a month kind of you know, spaw night
Speaker 2: hangouts over zoom because we realize, like it's better to
Speaker 2: see them that way than not at all. So I think,
Speaker 2: you know, listen to those lessons. They can be powerful.
Speaker 1: Well, Laurie, thank you so much for coming on. It
Speaker 1: has been such an enjoyable conversation and I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: that you had time to join us today.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me on the show.
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