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