Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's Maya. Like many of us entering the new year,
Speaker 2: one of my goals is to be a happier, more
Speaker 2: peaceful person in twenty twenty six. That's why I recently
Speaker 2: revisited a conversation I had with my friend and former
Speaker 2: undergrad advisor, Laurie Santos. Lari is a psychology professor at
Speaker 2: Yale and a leading expert on happiness. She shares a
Speaker 2: bunch of science back strategies that we can implement right
Speaker 2: away to make us meaningfully happier in our everyday lives.
Speaker 2: Our conversation ranged from ideas like the arrival fallacy, the
Speaker 2: false sense that reaching one big milestone will finally be
Speaker 2: the thing that makes us happy, to whether thinking about
Speaker 2: our own happiness too much can actually backfire. I hope
Speaker 2: you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I
Speaker 2: enjoyed hosting it. All Right, without further ado, here's my
Speaker 2: conversation with Laurie. Hi, Laurie, Hello a, Maya. Thank you
Speaker 2: for joining me on a slight change of plans in
Speaker 2: honor of World Happiness Day.
Speaker 1: I love it. Thanks so much for having me on
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 2: So I alluded to this, but it's worth sharing with
Speaker 2: folks that I've actually known you since I was seventeen
Speaker 2: years old. I was a student of yours almost eight years. No, no,
Speaker 2: it feels like it's been so much longer. I was
Speaker 2: a freshman in your monkey lab class, and you ended
Speaker 2: up being my academic advisor for all four years. And
Speaker 2: at the time, your research lab was focused on cognition, right,
Speaker 2: differences between monkeys and humans, and I would never have
Speaker 2: known at the time that at some point you would
Speaker 2: pivot and start focusing on happiness research. So can you
Speaker 2: share what led to that show?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just as so much of a surprise
Speaker 1: for me too, interestingly, but yeah, no, So, I mean
Speaker 1: I was doing all this work on kind of comparative
Speaker 1: cognition and studying monkeys, you know, happily doing that work,
Speaker 1: and then I took on a new role at Yale,
Speaker 1: I becoming what's called the head of college. And so
Speaker 1: I know you know this, but for your listeners, Yale's
Speaker 1: one of these weird schools like Hogwarts and Harry Potter,
Speaker 1: where there's like colleges within a college. There's like Gryffindor
Speaker 1: and s Lytherin kind of thing. Yale has these two.
Speaker 1: I was head of what's called Silliman College, and that
Speaker 1: meant that I, as a faculty member, lived on campus
Speaker 1: with students. So I hung out with them in the
Speaker 1: dining hall and I just you know, saw them in
Speaker 1: the coffee shop. I was like really much closer to
Speaker 1: student life than I was even you know, running my
Speaker 1: lab where I got to know students really well, and honestly,
Speaker 1: I just didn't like what I was seeing. I was
Speaker 1: seeing the college student mental health crisis up close and personal,
Speaker 1: where just in my community we had so many students
Speaker 1: who were self reporting experiencing like extreme anxiety or suicidality
Speaker 1: or panic attacks. It was just like on the ground,
Speaker 1: just so sad and scary that these students' lives were
Speaker 1: just like riddled with these mental health issues. And this
Speaker 1: is not just what's going on at Yale or any
Speaker 1: other IVY League campus. This is what's happening nationally right now,
Speaker 1: where nationally over sixty five percent of college students report
Speaker 1: being more anxious and overwhelmingly anxious such that they can't
Speaker 1: get any work done. Like the stats are just like
Speaker 1: staggering when you look at them. And so that was
Speaker 1: when I made this pivot to studying happiness. I was like,
Speaker 1: I need to figure out ways that I can help
Speaker 1: my students, right, Like my job as a professor means
Speaker 1: I need to take care of the mental health of
Speaker 1: these students that are around me. And one way I
Speaker 1: can do that is to try to figure out, like,
Speaker 1: what are strategies that we know from science that students
Speaker 1: can use to feel happier. And so I made this
Speaker 1: whole new class, Psychology in the Good Life that I thought,
Speaker 1: would you know, be just like a normal class on
Speaker 1: Yale's campus, But in the end it kind of went
Speaker 1: a little bit viral. Over twelve hundred students showed up
Speaker 1: on the first day of class to be part of
Speaker 1: this new class that we were teaching, and I think
Speaker 1: it showed that, like young people today are voting with
Speaker 1: their feet, like they don't like this culture of feeling
Speaker 1: stressed out and anxious, and they really just wanted to
Speaker 1: learn how they could kind of protect their well being.
Speaker 1: And so from there I kind of retrained in this
Speaker 1: new domain of happiness studies and realized it was useful
Speaker 1: not just for Yale students, but useful for like, honestly everyone,
Speaker 1: because everybody's trying to be happy. Everyone's sort of feeling
Speaker 1: a little bit burned out these days and feeling a
Speaker 1: little stressed, and I think so many of us are
Speaker 1: looking for strategies from science about what we can do
Speaker 1: to feel better.
Speaker 2: So I want to establish the basics because there are
Speaker 2: so many definitions of happiness out there, and there's so
Speaker 2: many questions, philosophical questions about what happiness is. Is it satisfaction,
Speaker 2: is it joy? Is it fulfillment? Is it pleasure? And
Speaker 2: I really love how you and many other psychologists define
Speaker 2: and measure happiness because to me, it encompasses so many
Speaker 2: of these concepts. So do you mind sharing how you
Speaker 2: think of that happiness?
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this is a definition that I've taken from
Speaker 1: Sonya Lubermirski, who's a professor at UC Riverside, and she
Speaker 1: thinks about happiness as being defined as being happy in
Speaker 1: your life and being with your life. So let's kind
Speaker 1: of break this down. So, being happy in your life,
Speaker 1: this is the idea that you have a decent number
Speaker 1: of positive emotions, or at least a decent ratio of
Speaker 1: positive emotions to negative emotions. I think bracketed happiness is
Speaker 1: not about getting rid of all of your negative emotions.
Speaker 1: That's toxic positivity. That's not what happiness researchers mean, but
Speaker 1: it does mean like having a decent ratio of positive
Speaker 1: things like cheerfulness and joy and laughter to the not
Speaker 1: so good things like anger and sadness and so on.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of being happy in your life. But
Speaker 1: being happy with your life is a different construct. It's
Speaker 1: how you think your life is going. So it's your
Speaker 1: answer to the question, all things considered, how satisfied are
Speaker 1: you with your life? And so researchers have called these
Speaker 1: the affective and cognitive parts of subjective well being. So
Speaker 1: the affective like the more emotional parts of happiness, and
Speaker 1: the cognitive how you think your life is going parts
Speaker 1: of happiness. And I love this definition because it shows
Speaker 1: us a couple things. One is it shows us that
Speaker 1: these constructs can dissociate. And you probably know people for
Speaker 1: whom they've dissociated. I have a friend who has a
Speaker 1: newborn baby right now, and you know she is with
Speaker 1: her life quite happy, right you know, she's this new
Speaker 1: like meaningful, bulderful of joy who she loves and you know,
Speaker 1: can't wait to see his future and so on. But
Speaker 1: like in her life, maybe the emotions are not as good. Right,
Speaker 1: there's like, yeah, it's like it's a rough go and
Speaker 1: you like have a newborn baby. Right. And we probably
Speaker 1: also can come up with examples of the opposite. You know,
Speaker 1: somebody who might have in their life all these like
Speaker 1: hedonistic pleasures, you know, to think of some like super
Speaker 1: rich or super famous person, but with their life, maybe
Speaker 1: they feel a certain emptiness. Right. And So I love
Speaker 1: this definition because I think it captures so much of
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to help my students with and what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to help my listeners with with happiness. What
Speaker 1: I want them to have is a life that's filled
Speaker 1: with lots of positive emotion and a life that feels
Speaker 1: satisfying to live a life that they think is going well.
Speaker 1: And the great news is there's so many strategies that
Speaker 1: we can use to boost both of those constructs up.
Speaker 2: What is the time horizon for thinking about the like
Speaker 2: in your life versus the with your life? Because in
Speaker 2: any given day, I wonder, you know, can you have
Speaker 2: both that moment to moment understanding of your happiness and
Speaker 2: then also that reflective experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is a hard one and this
Speaker 1: is where we get to a sort of dirty secret
Speaker 1: of the entire happiness science work, which is that to
Speaker 1: measure people's happiness in their life and with their life,
Speaker 1: we have to ask them, Right, Like I wish we
Speaker 1: had a little thermometer that we could stick in someone's
Speaker 1: mouth that would say, well, in your life, you're you know,
Speaker 1: ninety nine point six happy, you know, out of one
Speaker 1: hundred or something, But we don't. We have to kind
Speaker 1: of ask people, and that brings up the problem that
Speaker 1: whenever we're asking people, we're getting people's like retrospective judgment
Speaker 1: about how things are going. If I were to ask you, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, how many positive emotions did you experience
Speaker 1: this week? You'd have to think back and make an
Speaker 1: evaluation of, well, how was that farmer's market or how
Speaker 1: was that you know, interesting coffee shop I went to. Right,
Speaker 1: you'd have to kind of make a remembered judgment about something.
Speaker 1: The same is true and even more true in the
Speaker 1: case of your happiness with your life. Right, you kind
Speaker 1: of have to do a sort of summing of, like, well,
Speaker 1: all things considered, how satisfied am I? You're kind of
Speaker 1: making this sort of very cognitive judgment and all of
Speaker 1: the judgments are a little bit retrospective, right, and it
Speaker 1: makes us worry that, like maybe the judgments go wrong,
Speaker 1: and maybe those judgments particularly go wrong if you ask
Speaker 1: people after a long time horizon. Many of these happiness
Speaker 1: studies try to do an analysis like in the particular day,
Speaker 1: so tag you right now, like how many positive emotions
Speaker 1: have you experienced this week? So hopefully you'll kind of
Speaker 1: remember accurately. But sometimes we're having people give these retrospections
Speaker 1: a while back, and we might be tapping into maybe
Speaker 1: a different form of happiness and people's remembered happiness than
Speaker 1: in their kind of happiness in the moment. This is
Speaker 1: something that researcher Danny Conneman calls this distinction between experienced
Speaker 1: happiness and remembered happiness, Like it's hard to know the
Speaker 1: experienced happiness because I have to like ask you immediately
Speaker 1: and make sure you're not kind of remembering to get
Speaker 1: it right. But you know, Danny has this interesting quip
Speaker 1: where he says, well, which of these happinesses are we
Speaker 1: trying to maximize our experience or our remembered happiness? And
Speaker 1: I feel like he kind that comes down on the
Speaker 1: side of the remembered happiness, you know, like the experience
Speaker 1: happiness that's gone. Like all you have access to is
Speaker 1: what you remember, and so maybe we might want to
Speaker 1: maximize that one instead.
Speaker 2: So a foundational message of your work is that we
Speaker 2: as humans mispredict what is going to make us happy.
Speaker 2: When it comes to happiness, we always have a well,
Speaker 2: as soon as X happens or as soon as Y happens,
Speaker 2: as soon as I get to Z, that's when I'll
Speaker 2: be happy. Right. We stall our happiness in present day
Speaker 2: with a hope that this future event will deliver all
Speaker 2: the goods. And it might be for someone a promotion
Speaker 2: they're waiting for, or having a family, or finally finding
Speaker 2: a partner to get married to. And we just put
Speaker 2: so much stock in that one event and then inevitably,
Speaker 2: at least the research shows it will disappoint us, right,
Speaker 2: that end destination.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is what researchers call the arrival fallacy, right,
Speaker 1: or I like to call it the happily ever after fallacy,
Speaker 1: Like this thing happens and I'll be happy ever after. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So for example, you know my like some high school
Speaker 1: student applies to Yale. They're really excited about it. They
Speaker 1: get in. They over predict that that event of getting
Speaker 1: into Yale will feel amazing, like super super amazing, and
Speaker 1: they predict that that feeling of happiness will last for
Speaker 1: a really long time. It turns out it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: as amazing as you think, and that amazing feeling doesn't
Speaker 1: last for as long as you think. And that's not
Speaker 1: just true of getting into Yell. It's true of any
Speaker 1: positive fact, whether that's like getting married or winning the lottery.
Speaker 1: You know, pick your favorite positive thing. It just like
Speaker 1: doesn't impact you for as much or as long as
Speaker 1: you think. But this has like good news attached to
Speaker 1: it as well, which is that the same is true
Speaker 1: for negative events, you know, So pick your terrible negative
Speaker 1: event right, Like you get divorced, you go bankrupt, like
Speaker 1: you lose the ability to use your leg, you become paraplegic.
Speaker 1: For example, all those things we predict would be really
Speaker 1: really really bad. It would very negatively affect our happiness,
Speaker 1: and we would feel pretty crappy about it for a
Speaker 1: long time. But it turns out that we even more
Speaker 1: strongly mispredict in the negative direction. So, you know, we mispredict,
Speaker 1: for example, that getting into yet will feel really good.
Speaker 1: We even more mispredict that having a car crash and
Speaker 1: becoming paraplegic would feel really bad, and we even more
Speaker 1: strongly mispredict how long these negative events are going to last.
Speaker 1: And so research by Harvard professor Dan Gilbert has found
Speaker 1: that our impact bias is worse in the negative direction
Speaker 1: than it is in the positive directions. We make even
Speaker 1: more mispredictions when we're dealing with bad events, which is
Speaker 1: kind of good news, right, because it means that all
Speaker 1: those things, all these things aren't really scared of, They're
Speaker 1: not going to be as bad as we think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And can you talk a bit about this concept
Speaker 2: of the happiness set point and how when you talk
Speaker 2: about this mixed prediction, what ends up happening is we
Speaker 2: often just return back to our baseline faster than we
Speaker 2: might have thought.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so this is a phenomenon the researchers often
Speaker 1: refer to as hedonic adaptation, where you just kind of
Speaker 1: you go back to wherever your set point was and
Speaker 1: happiness no matter what the good stuff and the bad
Speaker 1: stuff is. And again that can feel a little bit depressing, right.
Speaker 1: We want these new circumstances in our life life that
Speaker 1: are good to have this positive impact on our happiness
Speaker 1: for a while, but actually we kind of just mostly
Speaker 1: go back to baseline. But that means the same is
Speaker 1: true for all the crappy stuff in life. Some terrible
Speaker 1: thing happens, and it will, you know, hurt a little
Speaker 1: bit less than we think, maybe for a while, but
Speaker 1: not for as long as we think, and so we're
Speaker 1: much more stable in our set points for happiness than
Speaker 1: we expect.
Speaker 2: I still remember learning about this research for the first time,
Speaker 2: and I think this is the most powerful finding that
Speaker 2: I've come across in my entire time as a cognitive
Speaker 2: scientist when it came to impacting my personal life. And
Speaker 2: I think that's because my philosophy around life is to
Speaker 2: minimize suffering. I'm less concerned with maximizing the positive, and
Speaker 2: suffering is what scares the crap out of me, right,
Speaker 2: and so learning that I would be more resilient in
Speaker 2: the face of that suffering has been just I mean,
Speaker 2: it was a boon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, how often are we like really over analyzing
Speaker 1: some decision because we're trying to avoid some negative outcome
Speaker 1: when we can really say to ourselves, actually, if that
Speaker 1: worst case scenario happen, I'd actually be fine with it,
Speaker 1: or I'd be more fine than I think, and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't impact me for as long as I think. And
Speaker 1: so I think, Yeah, recognizing that your impact bias can
Speaker 1: kind of make you a little bit more resilient. It
Speaker 1: can make you a little bit more open to however
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: Is going to be like risk seeking, you know, just
Speaker 2: needing of closure. Yeah, and how robust are those findings
Speaker 2: because there are times where I feel like I'm exceptional
Speaker 2: in this way. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 2: average person will be really resilient, but I komm a
Speaker 2: maya won't be because I suck in a particular way.
Speaker 2: And so can people buy and large feel fairly good
Speaker 2: given their mental constitution that they will show these effects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know there is you know, well
Speaker 1: there's like this so called replication crisis in psychology, but like,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any replication crisis when it comes
Speaker 1: to effective forecasting or impact bias. This is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that everybody shows and people is shoe it
Speaker 1: both in these like natural field data, like of people
Speaker 1: who actually have wonderful and terrible things happen, like winning
Speaker 1: the LWE and so on, this is like one that
Speaker 1: seems to be a sure universal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, that's great. That's great because I can I've
Speaker 2: definitely felt that way, and I can imagine a lot
Speaker 2: of people listening thinking okay, yeah, sure on average, but
Speaker 2: you know me, not really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this is super important, right because a
Speaker 1: real problem with these like cognitive errors is that even
Speaker 1: when we learn how they work, they don't go away. Right,
Speaker 1: So I like literally have whole podcast episodes and whole
Speaker 1: lectures about hedonic adaptation, but when I'm making a prediction
Speaker 1: about something happening, I get just as freaked out about it.
Speaker 1: I get just as worried, Like I am just as
Speaker 1: bad at predicting as everybody else. But I can kind
Speaker 1: of remember the data and sort of course correct a
Speaker 1: little bit after the fact. And so I think that's important, right,
Speaker 1: Like knowing about these biases doesn't make them go away.
Speaker 1: It just makes you like have a little bit more awareness.
Speaker 1: You can kind of update a little bit after the fact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, as you know, I studied visual perception
Speaker 2: and undergrad and it was it was akin to you know,
Speaker 2: the visual illusions and illusion, but you can't unsee it
Speaker 2: exactly case of happiness, we can be a little bit
Speaker 2: more intentional, deliverate and change our mental frames. But yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: I think I'm sure this happens to a lot of
Speaker 2: people as soon. Given the field we're in, Oh, you
Speaker 2: must be so disciplined about eating and exercise and all
Speaker 2: these other things. And it's like, not really, we know
Speaker 2: the tactics, but implementing them is a different matter altogether.
Speaker 1: In fact, my next whole season of the podcast is
Speaker 1: going to be about happiness challenges that I face on
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab. So fun, Yeah, so fun, but also
Speaker 1: so personal and kind of so painful.
Speaker 2: How fixed is this? So if I'm someone listening to
Speaker 2: this podcast and I'm thinking, look, I'm committed to being happier,
Speaker 2: I really want to be happier. I'm going to work
Speaker 2: super super hard, Laurie, what do you have to tell
Speaker 2: me in terms of hope in this domain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's some bad news and good news, as
Speaker 1: there often is in science. So the bad news is
Speaker 1: that there is a heritable component to our overall subjective
Speaker 1: well being. Like if you grew up with parents who
Speaker 1: are really unhappy and you have the genes for unhappiness,
Speaker 1: it's going to be harder for you to be happy
Speaker 1: than it might be for somebody to whom happiness comes
Speaker 1: a little bit more naturally. So there is a sort
Speaker 1: of heritable component to happiness, but it's pretty tiny, right
Speaker 1: It's tinier than most of the other traits that we
Speaker 1: have out there, and that means there's lots of room
Speaker 1: for malleyability. And so the good news is that that
Speaker 1: range is really really flexible. It's much more flexible than
Speaker 1: we think. Like, even if you're a natural kind of
Speaker 1: set point right now might be feeling a little bit unhappy,
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily say that you're going to be stuck
Speaker 1: right there for your whole life. There's probably a range.
Speaker 1: You might not be like the happiest person on the planet,
Speaker 1: but you can engage with strategies to become much happier
Speaker 1: than you are right now. The problem is that we
Speaker 1: do that the wrong way. The problem is that we
Speaker 1: do that by like trying to change our circumstances. We
Speaker 1: try to go for the lotteries and the big college
Speaker 1: winds as we were just talking about. We try to
Speaker 1: engage in things that are just not going to feel
Speaker 1: as happy as we think. The key to really changing
Speaker 1: our happiness is that we need to realize the right
Speaker 1: ways to do it.
Speaker 2: One really powerful finding is that even small tweaks in
Speaker 2: the way we frame an experience can have a big
Speaker 2: impact on the way that we process it from a
Speaker 2: hedonic perspective. And so, can you talk about the role
Speaker 2: that expectations play in the way that we interpret in experience?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, expectations are huge. I mean, wasn't it Shakespeare?
Speaker 1: There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like how basically all of our
Speaker 1: psychology works. We just don't do it in objective terms.
Speaker 1: We think in terms of some reference point, and it's
Speaker 1: also often some reference point that makes us feel kind
Speaker 1: of crappy about whatever we've just gotten or achieved in
Speaker 1: our own life. My favorite example of this comes from
Speaker 1: the Olympics. So imagine that you're some amazing athlete, you're
Speaker 1: an Olympian, and you win a silver medal, right, like
Speaker 1: your second best in the entire world in some sport.
Speaker 1: You might think I would feel amazing, right, But it
Speaker 1: turns out that if you actually analyze how silver medalists
Speaker 1: experience receiving this sol metal, they're not feeling elated. They're
Speaker 1: actually feeling awful. If you analyze their like emotional expressions
Speaker 1: on the stand, like you see expressions of contempt discussed,
Speaker 1: like deep sadness right like, it looks like they've like
Speaker 1: you know, lost a loved one or something. It's that terrible,
Speaker 1: and you say, like, what is going on, Well, what's
Speaker 1: going on is that they're evaluating based on an expectation,
Speaker 1: a reference point. What's the obvious reference point? If you've
Speaker 1: won silver, it's a gold medal. You didn't get that,
Speaker 1: and you don't see that you've beat you know, millions
Speaker 1: and millions of people around the world. You just see
Speaker 1: I didn't do as good as I could have done.
Speaker 1: And what's super interesting is that if you analyze the
Speaker 1: emotional expressions of bronze medalists, you see just the opposite.
Speaker 1: They are elated, they are happy. Sometimes they're even happier
Speaker 1: than the person who won the gold medal. And the
Speaker 1: reason is that their reference point is totally different. What's
Speaker 1: the reference point that's salling it? If you just want
Speaker 1: a bronze medal, like you weren't going to get gold,
Speaker 1: you are like many seconds or you know, many moments away,
Speaker 1: right like many points away your reference point is like,
Speaker 1: if I'd just done a little bit worse, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be up here at all, Like I would no metal,
Speaker 1: no metal at all. Right, and so you are thrilled.
Speaker 1: You're like, by the skin of my teeth, I'm up here,
Speaker 1: and my parents are gonna be so proud. This is great, Right.
Speaker 1: That's a power of reference points. Like we're not thinking
Speaker 1: in terms of our objective performance. We're just thinking in
Speaker 1: terms of how we did relative to some expectation. And
Speaker 1: that's powerful because it means if we set the right expectations,
Speaker 1: we could probably feel a lot happier with however we
Speaker 1: did objectively.
Speaker 2: Still ahead, Laurie and I talk about science back strategies
Speaker 2: for making yourself happier. We'll be back in a moment
Speaker 2: with a slight change of plans. All right, So Lari,
Speaker 2: let's talk through what the research says about how we
Speaker 2: can become happier. Let's start with strong social relationships. This
Speaker 2: seems to be like the number one thing. It's very,
Speaker 2: very very hard to be happy if you lack this,
Speaker 2: So tell me more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people like Marty Seligman and Ed Diner are these
Speaker 1: super famous positive psychology researchers claim that social connection is
Speaker 1: a necessary condition for high happiness, right. You cannot be
Speaker 1: highly happy without it. And that's because, like we're in
Speaker 1: social primates, right, we really get lots of positive emotion
Speaker 1: out of being with other people. We feel like our
Speaker 1: life is more satisfying when we're close to others. And
Speaker 1: there's tons of evidence that just people who spend more
Speaker 1: time with the people they care about, and who just
Speaker 1: spend more time with people all together wind up feeling happier.
Speaker 1: And importantly, this is true whether you're an introvert or
Speaker 1: an extrovert. I sometimes hear from a lot of my
Speaker 1: listeners who are introverts who say things like, Okay, that
Speaker 1: social connection thing sounds great for some extrovert like you,
Speaker 1: but for an introvert like me, that sounds miserable. And really,
Speaker 1: what the data show are that if you're an introvert,
Speaker 1: you do need some alone time, but you still get
Speaker 1: the same kind of positive emotion boost from being around
Speaker 1: other people, especially when you interact with other people in
Speaker 1: like small settings, you know, calling a friend or hanging
Speaker 1: out with someone you're really close to, right, And so
Speaker 1: I think this is just a human universal that social
Speaker 1: connection winds up making us happier.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, are you even an extrovert? I feel like
Speaker 2: you're kind of in your line not.
Speaker 1: I get us of being an extra for all the
Speaker 1: time because I talk about social connection, but you know me,
Speaker 1: like I would look solo in my house all the time.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, just because you have a podcast doesn't make
Speaker 2: you an extrovert, right exactly. Yeah. And I think I
Speaker 2: definitely found a hit to my well being during COVID,
Speaker 2: where it wasn't possible anymore to engage in small talk
Speaker 2: with people that I would see to a coffee shop
Speaker 2: or just waving and smiling to people on the street.
Speaker 2: Those little moments were so precious, and I'd been taking
Speaker 2: them for granted because when I lost that ability, that
Speaker 2: that part of my social fabric, I really felt affected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think a lot of people were, not
Speaker 1: just during COVID, but you know, there's tons of evidence
Speaker 1: that these weak ties, these kind of quick conversations we
Speaker 1: have with the barista at a coffee shop were just
Speaker 1: like someone on the street, they wind up being really
Speaker 1: important for our positive mood. Researcher Nick Epley, who's a
Speaker 1: professor at the University of Chicago who studies this phenomenon
Speaker 1: he calls undersociality, where we like don't take into account
Speaker 1: our social connection as much as we should. He described
Speaker 1: happiness overall as a leaky tire. You know, you're kind
Speaker 1: of happy for a while, but your happiness tires leak
Speaker 1: in and you got to fill it up, and he
Speaker 1: says that these quick conversations with strangers are like one
Speaker 1: of the fastest ways to fill up your leaky tired.
Speaker 2: One thing I've tried to do recently to strengthen social
Speaker 2: connections is just call people on the phone. I've just
Speaker 2: started doing that, and I think it really just freaked
Speaker 2: people out in the beginning because they're like, whoa, do
Speaker 2: we have like a scheduled time?
Speaker 1: What happened right?
Speaker 2: It's like four fourteen. I don't think we had a
Speaker 2: call scheduled. This actually happened a couple weeks ago where
Speaker 2: Michael lewis a friend of both of ours and someone
Speaker 2: who also has a pushkin podcast. I was just thinking
Speaker 2: about him, so I gave him a phone call and
Speaker 2: he picked up and was like, did you just butt
Speaker 2: dial me? Maya like this has to be a butt
Speaker 2: dial and I was like no, I just wanted to
Speaker 2: say hello, and see how you were doing. Turned out
Speaker 2: he was battling the flu, he had been in bed
Speaker 2: for a few days, and he loved the company and
Speaker 2: we had a great chat and it boosted his mood,
Speaker 2: and it just built my confidence that those unexpected moments
Speaker 2: where you just call people and connect with them can
Speaker 2: be really powerful. But it takes a little bit of courage.
Speaker 1: It does take a little bit of courage. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the problem with social connection is that there's
Speaker 1: a little friction there, right, especially given the other things
Speaker 1: we have to do that aren't social connection, right, Like
Speaker 1: you're picking up the phone and dialing it and calling
Speaker 1: Mike Lewis, Like, there's a little awkwardness there. It's much
Speaker 1: easier to just like scroll on your Instagram or do
Speaker 1: something dumb that kind of has this feeling of social
Speaker 1: connection but isn't as social as we think. And so
Speaker 1: I think one of the tasks of engaging in more
Speaker 1: social connection is we have to overcome that like speed
Speaker 1: bump of friction, cost of like a little bit of vulnerability,
Speaker 1: a little bit of work to kind of make those connections.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, speaking of phones, let's talk about the role
Speaker 2: of technology and our phones and what impact they have
Speaker 2: on our on our social connections and then what we
Speaker 2: can do about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean phones are so ironic, right. They were
Speaker 1: literally built so that we could talk to other people,
Speaker 1: like that is what the purpose of a phone was.
Speaker 1: But now phones have become this tool that we can
Speaker 1: use to look at our email, or check what's going
Speaker 1: on in politics, or you know, look at a million
Speaker 1: other factoids in the world. What started as a tool
Speaker 1: just for connecting with other people has turned into, honestly,
Speaker 1: this terrible opportunity cost when it comes to connecting with
Speaker 1: other people. How often have you been out at dinner
Speaker 1: and looked over and seen some couple or they're like
Speaker 1: both just looking at their phones and they have this
Speaker 1: precious time to talk to one another in real life,
Speaker 1: but they're just like not actually speaking to one another.
Speaker 1: Or sadly at times that I've done that myself, where
Speaker 1: my husband saying something and I was like, oh uh,
Speaker 1: could you say that again? What I was looking at
Speaker 1: my email? Right? And this is terrible, right, It means
Speaker 1: that we might be missing out on something really important
Speaker 1: with the social connections we have in real life because
Speaker 1: we're like looking at some dumb stuff on the Internet,
Speaker 1: and so how can we deal with this opportunity cost
Speaker 1: in like a healthy way? And one of my favorite
Speaker 1: strategies comes from the journalist Catherine Price. She has this
Speaker 1: strategy that she calls WWW, which is an acronym that
Speaker 1: stands for what for, why now? And what else? And
Speaker 1: so her idea is that whenever you happen to notice
Speaker 1: that your phone in your hand, you ask those questions,
Speaker 1: what for? Was there some purpose that I was looking?
Speaker 1: You know, I was really looking at the weather? Or
Speaker 1: did it just like wind up there? Because like with
Speaker 1: no purpose in mind, I'm just like scrolling through whatever?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Why now? Right? This is the sort of emotional question,
Speaker 1: like what caused me to pick up my phone? Was
Speaker 1: it some functional reason? Or maybe it was boredom or
Speaker 1: maybe I was feeling awkward? What's the kind of queue
Speaker 1: that caused you to pick up your phone? And then,
Speaker 1: perhaps most important, what else? That's the opportunity cost question?
Speaker 1: What am I missing out on?
Speaker 2: That's the big one.
Speaker 1: That's a big one, right, is like am I just
Speaker 1: like not being present in the world, or am I
Speaker 1: ignoring my husband? Or am I avoiding something? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the what's the opportunity cost of being
Speaker 1: on your phone right now. And I love this acronym
Speaker 1: because it doesn't say like, get off your phone all
Speaker 1: the time, right, but it allows you to mindfully notice
Speaker 1: what's happening when you're on your devices, and how those
Speaker 1: devices are making you feel, and what you happen to
Speaker 1: be missing out on. It kind of brings to light
Speaker 1: the things that you might be missing by being on
Speaker 1: your phone.
Speaker 2: I love to also talk about another happiness tip that
Speaker 2: I know has a lot of personal resonance for you,
Speaker 2: because this is something you've really struggled with. Can you
Speaker 2: talk about time affluence?
Speaker 1: Ah? Yes, time affluence. This is the subjective sense that
Speaker 1: we have some free time, something that until recently was
Speaker 1: very foreign to me because I experienced the opposite, which
Speaker 1: is what researchers called time famine, where you're literally starving
Speaker 1: for time. And research shows that time famine feels a
Speaker 1: lot like hunger famine, like it works a lot like
Speaker 1: that in your body, where you're literally you're activating your
Speaker 1: fight or flight system and so on. And it turns
Speaker 1: out that time famine is really bad for your happiness.
Speaker 1: And so the answer is that we need to kind
Speaker 1: of free up more time. We need to prioritize our time,
Speaker 1: and one way to do that, researcher actually will In
Speaker 1: suggest is to like trade off more time for money.
Speaker 1: Often we can do these things with our money that
Speaker 1: give us back more time, but we don't usually frame
Speaker 1: it like that. So take going out to eat, head
Speaker 1: out to eat, you know, you and your husband Jimmy,
Speaker 1: head out to eat. That's like some food that you
Speaker 1: didn't have to cook yourself. Those are dishes you didn't
Speaker 1: have to prepare, you didn't need to look up the recipe.
Speaker 1: Going out to dinner with your husband might be a
Speaker 1: time savings of what like an hour and a half
Speaker 1: two hours. The question is like, what did you use
Speaker 1: that time for? Right, So this is a simple active
Speaker 1: reframing that we can use with something as silly as
Speaker 1: going out to dinner to realize like, hey, that was
Speaker 1: a spot where I spent some money to give myself
Speaker 1: back some time. And Willin's points out that, you know, look,
Speaker 1: this might sound privileged to some folks who have discretionary income,
Speaker 1: but when she finds us at every level, if you
Speaker 1: have any discretionary income whatsoever, the more you spend that
Speaker 1: discretionary income to get back time, the happier you are.
Speaker 1: So this isn't just for like rich people who get
Speaker 1: to go out to like, you know, like Michelin starred
Speaker 1: restaurants all the time. This is any of us. Can
Speaker 1: you know, pay the kid next door to like pick
Speaker 1: up the yard or clean up the snow or take
Speaker 1: out the trash. Right, These like simple ways of spending
Speaker 1: some money to get back time can be important, but
Speaker 1: I think a bigger strategy is to take time to
Speaker 1: remember that you should use the time you do have wisely.
Speaker 1: The journalist Bridget Shultz coined this term that I love
Speaker 1: called time confetti, which refers to these little pieces of
Speaker 1: time that are floating around. You know that five minutes
Speaker 1: your Zoom meeting ends early, or the ten minutes when
Speaker 1: your kid falls asleep quicker than expected. We never recognize
Speaker 1: that those are big chunks of time, so we just
Speaker 1: kind of blow that time confetti away. We just sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, check our email or scroll
Speaker 1: on Instagram scroll. If you add it up, it winds
Speaker 1: up being a lot of time. In fact, like researchers
Speaker 1: have found that we actually have more free time in
Speaker 1: our time confetti now than we did back in the day,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of broken up into these tiny chunks
Speaker 1: so we don't notice it. And So a strategy for
Speaker 1: improving your time affluence and your happiness is what can
Speaker 1: you do to make good use of that time confetti.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's when you call a friend you know who
Speaker 1: accused you of butt dialing him. Maybe that's the time
Speaker 1: when you like take time to do a quick deep breath.
Speaker 1: Maybe like that's the time when you engage in better
Speaker 1: self talk with yourself. We can use those time confetti
Speaker 1: moments to do any of these strategies that help us
Speaker 1: feel better and that can be really helpful for our happiness.
Speaker 2: I'd love to talk about my favorite happiness boosting strategy,
Speaker 2: which is being other oriented.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this is an important one, especially these days,
Speaker 1: because I think this is something that culture gets really wrong, right,
Speaker 1: Like I think these days, whenever we talk about happiness,
Speaker 1: we hear about things like self care or treat yourself.
Speaker 1: It's like self self self. We assume that happiness is
Speaker 1: just about investing in ourselves. But if you look at
Speaker 1: happy people, that's not what happy people are doing. Happy
Speaker 1: people tend to be much more other oriented. They're volunteering,
Speaker 1: for charities, they're spending time on the people they care about.
Speaker 1: They're doing nice things for others, whether that's with their
Speaker 1: money or with their time. They just tend to be
Speaker 1: a lot more focused on other people's happiness than their
Speaker 1: own happiness. And research shows that even if that's not
Speaker 1: your natural inclination, you can engage with that a little
Speaker 1: bit more. Researchers like Liz Done in her colleagues at
Speaker 1: the University of British Columbia do these studies where they
Speaker 1: hand subjects money on the street but kind of force
Speaker 1: them to spend that money in particular ways. You're either
Speaker 1: forced to spend that money on something self care ish,
Speaker 1: like you do something nice for yourself, or you're forced
Speaker 1: to spend that money on other people. And what she
Speaker 1: finds is, at the end of the day, those people
Speaker 1: who are forced to spend mone on others wind up
Speaker 1: feeling happier than those that were forced to spend the
Speaker 1: same amount of money on something that was more for themselves,
Speaker 1: that was more selfish. And so I love this study
Speaker 1: because it suggests that even if that's not your natural inclination,
Speaker 1: you can kind of add in more stuff where you're
Speaker 1: just like a little bit more focused on other people,
Speaker 1: and that the evidence suggests that will naturally make you
Speaker 1: feel happier.
Speaker 2: I feel like I've heard before that the happiest people
Speaker 2: are the people who don't spend a lot of time
Speaker 2: thinking about their own happiness. Is that true? Like, is
Speaker 2: that what research shows?
Speaker 1: I think yes and no, right, I think because of
Speaker 1: all these misconceptions, in some ways, we do have to
Speaker 1: focus on our happiness or we might be doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: Like I think, if we're pretending that these new circumstances
Speaker 1: will make us, you know, happy, and we have to
Speaker 1: have this specific achievement or this great outcome, like we're
Speaker 1: going to get that wrong. And so I do think
Speaker 1: that we want to be thinking about happiness, but we
Speaker 1: want to be thinking about it in the right way.
Speaker 1: What we assume people would do when I think about
Speaker 1: happiness is like me, me, me, you know, put in
Speaker 1: all these strategies. We don't think, Oh, they'll just take
Speaker 1: time to like be with other people, and they'll I'll
Speaker 1: stop trying to achieve as much because they'll recognize the
Speaker 1: importance of time affluence, and we'll take lots of time
Speaker 1: off and rest, you know, or they'll you know, volunteer
Speaker 1: for charity and do this nice stuff for others. That's
Speaker 1: not our stereotype of people narcissistically pursuing happiness, and so
Speaker 1: I think it's not the pursuit of happiness that's the problem.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that we generally tend to do it wrong,
Speaker 1: and if we start to do it right, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll feel happier and be better off because we were
Speaker 1: thinking about our happiness and trying to find good ways
Speaker 1: to pursue it.
Speaker 2: What advice do you have for people listening to this
Speaker 2: who don't feel licensed to be happy or feel guilty
Speaker 2: being happy because they take a look around them and
Speaker 2: they see so much suffering the world. It just it
Speaker 2: feels like it's almost too jarring to try and entertain
Speaker 2: happiness for themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I'll start with saying I get it,
Speaker 1: like I look around in the world and I'm a
Speaker 1: happiness expert, and I think exactly the same thing. But
Speaker 1: I think that idea comes from a certain assumption that
Speaker 1: we have about like positive emotions and happiness. I think
Speaker 1: we feel guilt feeling happy when the whole world is
Speaker 1: falling apart, in part because we think, well, if I'm happy,
Speaker 1: I'm probably not going to do anything about it, right,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to ignore the fact that the world
Speaker 1: is on fire, like if I feel good about it.
Speaker 2: Placency.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of like a like a Pollyanna hypothesis
Speaker 1: where I'll just be like, it's like the dog and
Speaker 1: that meme with the fire where he's sitting in the
Speaker 1: fire and he's like, this is fine. Like if we're happy,
Speaker 1: we're like, this is fine. I don't care if the
Speaker 1: world's on fire. But that's a hypothesis about how the
Speaker 1: human mind works. It's a hypothesis that when we're in
Speaker 1: a positive mood, we're more likely to ignore the bad
Speaker 1: stuff going on in the world, and we're more likely
Speaker 1: to kind of just engage in inaction rather than doing
Speaker 1: something good about it. And RESEARCHERR. Constantin kush Leaf at
Speaker 1: Georgetown has actually tested this. He's asked the question, Okay,
Speaker 1: who are the people who are out there doing the
Speaker 1: like really important social justice things in life? For example,
Speaker 1: who's going to a Black Lives Matter protest or who's
Speaker 1: taking climate action, like not just being anxious about the
Speaker 1: fact that the climate is changing. It's scary right now,
Speaker 1: but really doing stuff to like protect it. And what
Speaker 1: he finds is that people's positive mood winds up predicting
Speaker 1: the amount of social justice action that people take. In
Speaker 1: other words, like, the people who are in the best
Speaker 1: mood are the ones who are going to the protests,
Speaker 1: who are engaging in climate action and so on. And
Speaker 1: whenever I say that result, I'm always like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course that had to be the case, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're too depressed a function most days and you're
Speaker 1: feeling overwhelmingly anxious, you're not like getting out there to
Speaker 1: do stuff, like you're just like in bed, like not
Speaker 1: able to do anything. These data are great because I
Speaker 1: think they give me a license to say, oh, if
Speaker 1: I want to actually change the bad stuff in the world,
Speaker 1: I do need to focus on my mental health. I
Speaker 1: do need to focus on my positive mood. It matters.
Speaker 1: It is the path to having the bandwidth and the
Speaker 1: wherewithal to actually make the changes that we want to
Speaker 1: see in the world.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's the best answer I could have
Speaker 2: possibly imagined. I didn't know about that research. And you know, Laurie,
Speaker 2: I'm reflecting in this moment on my own life, and
Speaker 2: you're giving me so much food for thought, and I'm
Speaker 2: realizing that, Okay, that's the macro stuff where you're trying
Speaker 2: to fight these big social justice issues. When I do
Speaker 2: you get that the happiest periods of my life, I
Speaker 2: was a better friend, I was a better daughter, I
Speaker 2: was a better mentor, I was a better coworker. I
Speaker 2: was just better to everyone in my life during those periods.
Speaker 2: And so this is operating at a micro and at
Speaker 2: a macro level in terms of our positive impact on
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there was a really early paper by a
Speaker 1: Yale professor, Peter Salive, who I know you know well,
Speaker 1: on what he called the feel good do good effect,
Speaker 1: which is like, if you happen to put people in
Speaker 1: a positive mood, then they do these little tiny acts
Speaker 1: of kindness towards the people around them. These were like
Speaker 1: old studies where you'd have people hear some positive news
Speaker 1: on the radio and they'd be more likely to like
Speaker 1: help someone who drop their contact, you know, in the
Speaker 1: mall or something like that, or you kind of have
Speaker 1: people listen to happy music at the gym and they'll
Speaker 1: be more likely to help someone who needs some assistance
Speaker 1: with their study of handing out leaflets or something like
Speaker 1: that these the ideas that when we're feeling good, we
Speaker 1: end up doing good both for the people who are
Speaker 1: close to us in our lives and just like people generally.
Speaker 1: And again, I think we just have this like incorrect
Speaker 1: view that like if we're good, if we're feeling good, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll just ignore everybody else. We'll just kind of focus
Speaker 1: on our own good. But it's the opposite, you know.
Speaker 1: So many positive emotions are what's called pro social emotions,
Speaker 1: things like gratitude and so on, Like they make us
Speaker 1: want to do good for other people and so ergo,
Speaker 1: if we want good things to happen in the world,
Speaker 1: we might want to focus on people's mental health and
Speaker 1: give them more of those positive emotions.
Speaker 2: I love it all right, Thanks so much, Laurie. Happy World,
Speaker 2: Happiness Day, Happy.
Speaker 1: World, Happiness Day. A Mayah, thanks so much for having
Speaker 1: me on the show.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, thanks for coming, Hey, thanks so much for listening,
Speaker 2: and thank you also for your incredible support of my
Speaker 2: new book, The Other Side of Change. We shared a
Speaker 2: preview of the opening chapter last week in the slight
Speaker 2: Change feed, and I was so moved by your enthusiasm
Speaker 2: and how so many of you were desperate to finish
Speaker 2: Olivia's story. If you're interested in reading or listening to
Speaker 2: the other side of Change, we've included a link in
Speaker 2: our show notes, and you can also find it at
Speaker 2: Change withthmaya dot com slash book. We'll be back in
Speaker 2: a week with another episode of A Slight Change of Plans.
Speaker 2: I'll see you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written,
Speaker 2: and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change
Speaker 2: family includes our showrunner Alexandra Garritan, our lead producer Megan Luvin,
Speaker 2: our associate producer Sonya Gerwitt, and our sound engineer Erica Huang.
Speaker 2: Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith
Speaker 2: helped arrange the vocals. Special thanks to Daphne Chen for
Speaker 2: her editorial support of this episode. A Slight Change of
Speaker 2: Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks
Speaker 2: to everyone there, and of course, a very special thanks
Speaker 2: to Jimmy Lee.