Speaker 1: Pushkin, No, I'm not nervous. Okay, I'm nervous. My heart's
Speaker 1: over here. One fateful day every spring, high school seniors
Speaker 1: who've applied to Yale University are invited to log onto
Speaker 1: a special website to find out if they made it in.
Speaker 1: I'm doing it now. Okay, okay. Only about six percent
Speaker 1: of applicants will get good news. But for that lucky few,
Speaker 1: it's time to celebrate. Some students even post their reactions
Speaker 1: on YouTube. It's kind of a thing. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: my god. When students find out they've gotten too Yale,
Speaker 1: that all their hard work has finally paid off and
Speaker 1: their college dreams have come true, they are understandably, really really,
Speaker 1: really excited. But one students start attending college, all that joy,
Speaker 1: all that relief they felt at getting in, it fades
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. I've seen this firsthand, both as a professor
Speaker 1: of psychology at Yale and as head of one of
Speaker 1: the residential colleges. In the last five years, rates of
Speaker 1: college mental health problems have skyrocketed. Nationally. Over sixty percent
Speaker 1: of college students report feeling overwhelmingly anxious in the past year,
Speaker 1: and over fifty percent say they felt completely overwhelmed in
Speaker 1: the past week. Rates of depression in twenty year olds
Speaker 1: have doubled since two thousand and nine, which is crazy.
Speaker 1: Our country now has more than twice the number of
Speaker 1: young people in serious psychological distress than we did just
Speaker 1: ten years ago, more than twice the number. I was
Speaker 1: horrified when I first heard these statistics, and I really
Speaker 1: wanted to do something to help. So I did a
Speaker 1: little digging and looked it more and more of the research,
Speaker 1: and I started to realize it's not just college students.
Speaker 1: Many of us feel like happiness is increasingly out of reach,
Speaker 1: like we're doing everything right, but something just hasn't clicked.
Speaker 1: I know that feeling well because at the time I
Speaker 1: was experiencing it myself. I mean I wasn't clinically depressed,
Speaker 1: but I felt like something important was missing, like I
Speaker 1: was doing something wrong, like I wasn't as happy as
Speaker 1: I could be or should be. Oh Yale University professor
Speaker 1: is teaching students around the world how science can help
Speaker 1: them lead a happier life. So I decided to develop
Speaker 1: a new class on the science of happiness, a class
Speaker 1: I called Psychology and the Good Life Life lessons that
Speaker 1: could help students and all of us be happier. The
Speaker 1: course was my attempt to pull together everything I could
Speaker 1: about the latest science of happiness and how to achieve it.
Speaker 1: I packed it all together in one convenient set of lectures,
Speaker 1: taught it to my Yale students, and even through it
Speaker 1: online for free. Now our teachings are spreading well beyond campus.
Speaker 1: More than one hundred and thirty eight thousand people around
Speaker 1: the world have registered for the online version of the class.
Speaker 1: But the class also taught me an important lesson. Happiness
Speaker 1: is something that all of us can acquire, but we
Speaker 1: need to go about it the right way. We need
Speaker 1: to go after the right things. That's where the science
Speaker 1: and this podcast can help. If you want to learn
Speaker 1: what researchers are discovering about happiness and how these lessons
Speaker 1: can make real improvements to your well being, then I
Speaker 1: welcome you to join me doctor Laurie Santos for the
Speaker 1: first episode of the Happiness Lab. It was a cold
Speaker 1: Saturday night. I had just gone home after driving hundreds
Speaker 1: of miles to record one of the interviews you'll hear
Speaker 1: later the season. I was pretty exhausted and really really
Speaker 1: psyched to be home. But when I unlocked my door,
Speaker 1: I noticed a strange piece of mail at my feet,
Speaker 1: an envelope addressed to me. The stamps and postmark were foreign,
Speaker 1: but the letter inside was written in English. Dear Miss Santos,
Speaker 1: my name is Clement and I live in France. In
Speaker 1: the letter, Clement explained that he was feeling defeated by life.
Speaker 1: He didn't have the career, relationship or family he'd yearned for.
Speaker 1: He said he felt trapped in a tunnel of desperation,
Speaker 1: a tunnel with no light and no end. Sadly, this
Speaker 1: is not the first time I've received messages like this.
Speaker 1: Since teaching my class online, I've gotten letters and emails
Speaker 1: like this from people around the world, people who weren't
Speaker 1: feeling all that happy and wanted to make a change.
Speaker 1: Clement's letter was especially frank, though. He told me that
Speaker 1: he'd pretty much decided that his life wasn't worth living,
Speaker 1: and that he'd even tried to kill himself. It was
Speaker 1: at this lowest of low points that he stumbled across
Speaker 1: my class to tell you the truth. He wrote, I
Speaker 1: was not convinced of the effectiveness of this course, and
Speaker 1: I thought this was hippie Californian well being crap. I
Speaker 1: get this sort of skepticism from lots of people, but
Speaker 1: the things I'm going to talk about in this podcast
Speaker 1: really aren't crap or a bunch of platitudes or a
Speaker 1: load of hippie dip bbs. This podcast will share the
Speaker 1: latest scientific findings, work that's been carried out by my
Speaker 1: friends and colleagues at top universities around the world. And
Speaker 1: what all this research shows is that happiness is possible
Speaker 1: even for people like Clement, people who are in serious
Speaker 1: psychological distress. The problem, as well here in this podcast
Speaker 1: is that we go about achieving that happiness the wrong way,
Speaker 1: waiting and hoping that our circumstances will change, that a
Speaker 1: promotion or a romance will bring us lasting happiness. None
Speaker 1: of that works, at least not in the way we think.
Speaker 1: It's just a lie that our minds tell us. That's
Speaker 1: what Clement was able to learn. Despite his initial skepticism.
Speaker 1: Clement decided to complete my online course. He learned all
Speaker 1: about the science of well being and how to put
Speaker 1: it into practice. It has worked, Clement said at the
Speaker 1: end of his letter. It has truly worked. People write
Speaker 1: all the time about how my books have changed their
Speaker 1: life I'm talking with Sony Lubermerski, a professor at UC Riverside.
Speaker 1: She wrote two classic texts on the science of wellbeing,
Speaker 1: The How of Happiness and the Myths of Happiness. Her
Speaker 1: work has helped a lot of people, which means she
Speaker 1: gets tons of letters like the what I got from Clement.
Speaker 1: I mean, lots of people say that they want to
Speaker 1: to kill themselves and they've been saved by using these strategies.
Speaker 1: Some people say they got married or divorced because they
Speaker 1: wrote its something I wrote and now they're happier. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's just weird to feel like you
Speaker 1: have an influence on people's lives and people you don't
Speaker 1: know who are total strangers. But at bottom line is
Speaker 1: that it's wonderful. We're going to talk a lot about
Speaker 1: happiness in this podcast, so I thought I should start
Speaker 1: by giving you a definition. Since Sonia is pretty much
Speaker 1: the world expert on happiness, I thought you would be
Speaker 1: a great person to help. Essentially, happiness has two components.
Speaker 1: The first component has to do with the experience of
Speaker 1: positive emotions. Right, so, happy people tend to experience more
Speaker 1: frequent positive emotions tranquility, enthusiasm, joy, pride, affection, but that's
Speaker 1: not enough. So a happy person also has a sense
Speaker 1: that their life is good, that they're satisfied with the
Speaker 1: way that they're progressing towards their life goals. So you
Speaker 1: really kind of need both of these components to be happy,
Speaker 1: and I like to think of them as being happy
Speaker 1: in your life and being happy with your life. I
Speaker 1: love this definition because it fits really well with how
Speaker 1: we'll think about improving your happiness in the episodes to come.
Speaker 1: What you can do to be happy in your life,
Speaker 1: to feel better a lot of the time, and with
Speaker 1: your life, how you can experience more meaning and more satisfaction.
Speaker 1: I also wanted Sonya to walk us through an even
Speaker 1: tougher problem, how can we actually measure our happiness levels.
Speaker 1: Happiness is something that's subjective. I wish there was something
Speaker 1: like a happiness thermometer, but there isn't because happiness is
Speaker 1: something that only really the person inside knows, which means
Speaker 1: that scientists like Sonja have had to come up with
Speaker 1: creative ways to track people's well being. In the end,
Speaker 1: they usually opt for a rather simple approach. The gold
Speaker 1: standard for measuring happiness is to ask the person if
Speaker 1: they're happy so we sarch A stend to rely on
Speaker 1: self report, and we have measures where we ask people,
Speaker 1: you know, how often do you experience various positive emotions
Speaker 1: in your life? How satisfy you with your life? How
Speaker 1: happy are you? I've used similar measures of well being
Speaker 1: with my students. Here's a pretty straightforward one. I can
Speaker 1: give it to you now. Taking all things together, how
Speaker 1: happy would you say you are? From zero not at
Speaker 1: all happy to ten completely happy? Are you a nine
Speaker 1: out of ten or more like a six? Researchers have
Speaker 1: checked the validity of these skills in lots and lots
Speaker 1: of ways. It turns out that self report score you
Speaker 1: just gave will correlate with all kinds of real world stuff.
Speaker 1: It predicts detailed timetables of your hour by our emotional experience,
Speaker 1: and what your family members would say if I asked
Speaker 1: them how happy you were. Your score even correlates with
Speaker 1: how often you smile in daily life. The upshot is
Speaker 1: that these seemingly simple questions are much more rigorous than
Speaker 1: a silly BuzzFeed quiz. They really are scientific instruments. Using
Speaker 1: metrics like these, researchers have learned that our happiness levels
Speaker 1: matter more than we think looks like happiness might not
Speaker 1: just be sort of associated with things like more money
Speaker 1: and better longer life, more creativity, better relationships, but it
Speaker 1: looks like that happiness might actually cause some of those things.
Speaker 1: We think that the good things in life, being rich,
Speaker 1: feeling healthy, having lots of friends lead us to feel happier,
Speaker 1: and they do to a certain extent. But it turns
Speaker 1: out that the causal arrow goes in the other direction too.
Speaker 1: Feeling happy leads to good life outcomes. Happy people are
Speaker 1: more likely to get married. Happy people live longer, they're
Speaker 1: more creative, they're more likely to be called back for
Speaker 1: a job interview. Consider the case of money. We assume
Speaker 1: that wealth brings happiness, but the science shows we might
Speaker 1: have it backwards. One recent study tested whether a person's
Speaker 1: happiness level as a teenager predicts how much money they'll
Speaker 1: be making as an adult. The scientists tracks seventh graders
Speaker 1: in the US for decades. Teens who report the highest
Speaker 1: level of life satisfaction at age twelve wind up having
Speaker 1: a salary that's ten percent above the average when they're
Speaker 1: thirty years old, but seventh graders who report being really
Speaker 1: unhappy have incomes that are thirty percent lower than the average.
Speaker 1: Those teens are still affected by their sad moods more
Speaker 1: than a decade later. But happiness early in life doesn't
Speaker 1: just lead to more money later on. It also leads
Speaker 1: to stronger relationships. One of my favorite studies is called
Speaker 1: the Yearbook Study. Women who showed more genuine what are
Speaker 1: called Dushan smiles and their yearbook photos when they're about
Speaker 1: age twenty one were more likely to get married at
Speaker 1: age twenty seven and had more fulfilling marriages at age
Speaker 1: fifty two. So it's kind of amazing. If you're sort
Speaker 1: of positive and happy when you're in college, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to have a good marriage thirty years later. Those
Speaker 1: aren't just isolated findings. The positive effects of happiness are everywhere.
Speaker 1: People who report feeling lots of positive emotions are less
Speaker 1: likely to show cold symptoms when they're exposed to a virus,
Speaker 1: and one famous study of nuns found that twenty some
Speaker 1: things who express the most happy feelings in their diaries
Speaker 1: are four times as likely to live into their nineties
Speaker 1: as those who didn't express as many positive feelings. I
Speaker 1: believe that the research is pretty strong that happiness does matter.
Speaker 1: All these results make me incredibly worried about the college
Speaker 1: students I work with. They seem to be unhappy all
Speaker 1: the time. They constantly make themselves miserable stressing about grades.
Speaker 1: They become so anxious about their job prospects and future
Speaker 1: salaries that they have panic attacks. All this stress over
Speaker 1: their future lives is more than just unnecessary, The science
Speaker 1: suggests it's deeply counterproductive. The research shows that if my
Speaker 1: students were able to work on being happier, on feeling
Speaker 1: better now, those job prospects and salary levels might fall
Speaker 1: into place more naturally than they expect. So if we
Speaker 1: really want our circumstances to improve, we may need to
Speaker 1: start focusing on improving our well being rather than all
Speaker 1: that other stuff, which raises a critical question, can we
Speaker 1: actually we improve our happiness? The science suggests that there
Speaker 1: is a genetic component to happiness, but we have to
Speaker 1: sort of understand what that means. So identical twins are
Speaker 1: much more alike in their happiness levels than our fraternal twins,
Speaker 1: and that suggests that there is a genetic influence on happiness,
Speaker 1: just like there's a gendic influence on weight or blood
Speaker 1: pressure or whether you're going to develop depression or schizophrenia.
Speaker 1: Just because something is heritable or has a genetic influence
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that we can't change it. The way I
Speaker 1: see it is that if someone has a disposition that
Speaker 1: leads them to be on the more unhappy side, they
Speaker 1: can become happier, but they have to work harder at it.
Speaker 1: There's this myth out there that happiness is something either
Speaker 1: you either have it or you don't, and I just
Speaker 1: think that's wrong. And this suggests something really important, a
Speaker 1: premise that forms the basis of this entire podcast. There
Speaker 1: is no real biological barrier to being happier. We can change.
Speaker 1: We can all feel more joy. The problem, though, as
Speaker 1: well hear after the break, is how we go about
Speaker 1: changing those happiness levels, Because even though the science shows
Speaker 1: we can improve our well being, it doesn't work in
Speaker 1: the way we often think. Winning the Nobel Prize doesn't
Speaker 1: make you happier, Winning the lottery doesn't make you happier.
Speaker 1: It's not the things we imagine. It's not the shiny
Speaker 1: babbles that makes us happy. The Happiness Lab will be
Speaker 1: right back, okay, sweet, So we're recording. So my name
Speaker 1: is Bob Waldinger. I'm a professor of psychiatry at Harvard
Speaker 1: Medical School. I met Bob at a workshop on the
Speaker 1: state of well Being in America run by the Arthur
Speaker 1: Blank Foundation. I nervously asked if I could grab a
Speaker 1: few minutes with him in the gardens outside. I felt
Speaker 1: like I was meeting a rock star. Not because Bob
Speaker 1: has one of the top ten most watched TED talks
Speaker 1: of all time, but because Bob is the director of
Speaker 1: what is perhaps the coolest study of human happiness ever conducted.
Speaker 1: I direct a study called the Harvard Study of Adult Development.
Speaker 1: It is, we think, the longest study of adult life
Speaker 1: that's ever been done. It's a study that began in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, so eighty years ago. The project started
Speaker 1: as an attempt to learn about all the possible factors
Speaker 1: that lead to high well being later in life. The
Speaker 1: researchers started by recruiting a group of subjects who enjoyed
Speaker 1: every privilege imaginable, Harvard College sophomores from the classes of
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty two. Their deans chose
Speaker 1: them as among the best and the brightest young men
Speaker 1: and thought they would be suitable subjects to study how
Speaker 1: people develop as healthy young adults, but the researchers also
Speaker 1: wanted to study not so healthy development. They recruited four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty six boys from the poorest naighborhoods in Boston,
Speaker 1: and not just from the poorest neighborhoods, but from the
Speaker 1: families that had the most trouble familiar mental illness and
Speaker 1: domestic violence and lots of other social problems, and so
Speaker 1: they wanted to follow these children to see what happened
Speaker 1: to them. Overtime, two groups of subjects from very different
Speaker 1: backgrounds who'd be followed in as much detail as was
Speaker 1: humanly possible. The researchers collected health information from the participants doctors.
Speaker 1: They surveyed the subjects every two years, asking them questions
Speaker 1: about their lives and their happiness. In later years, they
Speaker 1: added blood tests, chest X rays, echo cardiograms, and even
Speaker 1: brain scans. The men were followed through their entire lives,
Speaker 1: which means scientists can now explore how the men's physical
Speaker 1: and mental health changed across different life stages. We can
Speaker 1: see how subjects felt when they got married and had kids,
Speaker 1: or got divorced or widowed, or had their first grandkids.
Speaker 1: We can look at how well being evolved as participants
Speaker 1: started new jobs, when they reached different career milestones, or
Speaker 1: even when they retired. The study was also big enough
Speaker 1: that it included some amazing individual subjects too. We're not
Speaker 1: really supposed to know their identities, but one of the
Speaker 1: studies participants served in a presidential cabinet, one was a
Speaker 1: longtime editor of the Washington Post, and one became President
Speaker 1: of the United States. Yep. John F. Kennedy was one
Speaker 1: of the studies participants. The study has now even extended
Speaker 1: beyond the original sample. Researchers have begun following the men's children,
Speaker 1: which means the research will now be able to capture
Speaker 1: multiple generations of both men and women. Bob was captivated
Speaker 1: from the moment he heard about the study. As a
Speaker 1: young med student. My predecessor, George Valiant, lectured to my
Speaker 1: first year medical school class and he told us about
Speaker 1: the study and it like, I'm basically a voyeur, like
Speaker 1: hearing about people's lives and what they do. So when
Speaker 1: George started talking about this, I just thought, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this is the coolest thing ever. And then fast forward
Speaker 1: about twenty years, doctor Valiant took me out to lunch
Speaker 1: one day and said to me, how would you like
Speaker 1: to inherit the study of adult development? And that's how
Speaker 1: he started out. Bob has now served as the studies
Speaker 1: director for more than fifteen years. He's watched the original
Speaker 1: generation of subjects transition from their late adulthood into their
Speaker 1: elderly years. Two hundred and sixty eight Harvard undergraduates started,
Speaker 1: only about twelve are still living, and they are in
Speaker 1: their mid to late nineties. Four hundred fifty six inner
Speaker 1: city boys started, and about sixty of them are left,
Speaker 1: and they are around the age of ninety. Hundreds upon
Speaker 1: hundreds of data points a nearly complete picture of health
Speaker 1: and well being across many different life paths, and so
Speaker 1: you're probably wondering what did the study find. Some of
Speaker 1: what the study has found is absolutely no surprise to anyone.
Speaker 1: We know that smoking is bad for you, and it
Speaker 1: turns out in our study it was really bad for you.
Speaker 1: We know that alcoholism is terrible. It takes a toll
Speaker 1: on your health, you die earlier. It takes a toll
Speaker 1: on your marriage, on your job, on your relationships. Again,
Speaker 1: no surprise. What was the big surprise. It's all the
Speaker 1: things we think make us happy, but don't. Wealth does
Speaker 1: not make people happy. Having your material needs matt does
Speaker 1: make you happy once you get there. Making more money
Speaker 1: doesn't make you appreciably happier. But that's not the only
Speaker 1: misconception we have about what makes for a happier life.
Speaker 1: The other thing is achieving more at work. There's a
Speaker 1: reason why we have this cliche. Nobody on their deathbed
Speaker 1: wishes they spent more time at the office. It's a
Speaker 1: shake because it's true. Our men, as they were looking
Speaker 1: back on their lives as they were at the end
Speaker 1: of their lives, said that the things they were proudest
Speaker 1: of were building a family, raising healthy children, having a
Speaker 1: strong relationship with a partner, teaching their grandchildren to sail.
Speaker 1: I mean, these were the things that they talked about.
Speaker 1: They didn't talk about what they'd achieved at work or
Speaker 1: how much money they'd made. Bob studies showed that the
Speaker 1: keys to happiness don't involve what we often put time
Speaker 1: into to become happier, financial achievements so we can buy
Speaker 1: cool stuff or working harder to achieve more in our careers.
Speaker 1: In fact, his results show that health and happiness often
Speaker 1: comes from the things we sacrifice, while spending more hours
Speaker 1: at work. The surprise was in our finding that one
Speaker 1: of the strongest predictors of staying healthy and happy in
Speaker 1: your life was having good relationships with other people. We
Speaker 1: think of happiness, we often think of self care, but
Speaker 1: Bob's study shows that focusing only on yourself and turning
Speaker 1: too far inwards is a recipe not only for misery,
Speaker 1: but for physical health problems as well. We didn't believe
Speaker 1: it because initially we thought that there couldn't be this
Speaker 1: strong of a connection between mind and body. How could
Speaker 1: the quality of your relationships determine whether you got Type
Speaker 1: two diabetes, or whether you got arthritis, or whether you
Speaker 1: got coary artery disease. That seemed unfathomable. The big message
Speaker 1: of Bob's study is that we consider many of the
Speaker 1: things that actually matter for happiness to be well unfathomable,
Speaker 1: or at least way lower on the priority list than
Speaker 1: they really should be according to the science. And if
Speaker 1: you'll listen to the rest of the episodes in this season,
Speaker 1: you'll see the same pattern time and time again. Our
Speaker 1: minds just suck at predicting the kinds of things that
Speaker 1: will really make us happier, and that means we end
Speaker 1: up putting a lot of time and effort into improving
Speaker 1: our happiness using strategies that just aren't going to succeed.
Speaker 1: I can't stress enough how amazing the Harvard study is.
Speaker 1: It delved deeply into the lives of some of America's
Speaker 1: most privileged and some of its most vulnerable, and pretty
Speaker 1: much proved that the rich and powerful have no monopoly
Speaker 1: on well being. That may go against your intuition, but
Speaker 1: it's true. Though there is a caveat. When I ask
Speaker 1: Sonia Lubramerski to weigh in on I would add that
Speaker 1: everything that I say applies to let's say, the average
Speaker 1: listener of this podcast. That's you know, people who are
Speaker 1: already relatively comfortable. You know they're not in dire straits.
Speaker 1: If your situation is very bad, if you live in poverty,
Speaker 1: or if you're in an abusive relationship, or if you
Speaker 1: live in a war zone and Yemen, then of course
Speaker 1: changes your life. Circumstances are going to make a huge
Speaker 1: difference to your happiness. If you're a circumstances are truly awful,
Speaker 1: then fixing them really will improve your well being. But
Speaker 1: I'm guessing your circumstances really aren't all that bad. You
Speaker 1: average podcast listener probably aren't in the kinds of awful
Speaker 1: situations Sonya is talking about, and that means that changing
Speaker 1: your circumstances won't help in the way you think. Note
Speaker 1: that this doesn't mean your circumstances are perfect. All of
Speaker 1: us have situations we want to change, ones we think
Speaker 1: will make us happier. I'm not happy now, but I'll
Speaker 1: be happy when I moved to that city I've always
Speaker 1: wanted to live in, or when I get married, or
Speaker 1: when I have a baby, or when I get that
Speaker 1: job I've always wanted, or when I get a raise.
Speaker 1: The idea that happiness lies in money or sort of
Speaker 1: changing your life in some way, doing something new in
Speaker 1: your life, I mean, I think that is a very
Speaker 1: strong idea again, kind of rooted in this this concept
Speaker 1: that we always want change in progress, even if we
Speaker 1: really know that it's a myth. Overcoming the strong but
Speaker 1: mistaken idea is what this podcast is all about. But
Speaker 1: the second step is harder. Happiness doesn't evolve changing everything
Speaker 1: in your life around. That's the good news, But as
Speaker 1: we'll explore after the break, there is some bad news too.
Speaker 1: It's not easy. It takes work. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: if you want to lose weight or would be healthier, right,
Speaker 1: you need to change your diet or go to the gym,
Speaker 1: and same thing with happiness. The happiness lab will be
Speaker 1: right back. Right now, I'm out of breath because I'm
Speaker 1: on my daily hike at a local state park. I
Speaker 1: always love going on the hike. After the fact, it's
Speaker 1: usually not what I'm thinking when my alarm goes off
Speaker 1: every morning when I throw my sneakers on, my brain
Speaker 1: tells me that I'd be happier staying in bed or
Speaker 1: even sitting on the couch or watching the news. But
Speaker 1: I know the science, and the science shows that I'll
Speaker 1: be healthier, more fit, and probably even happier if I
Speaker 1: get a bit of cardio and every morning. So I
Speaker 1: try to get in a hike every day, or at
Speaker 1: least as often as I can, even though my mind
Speaker 1: often otherwise. The science of happiness works a lot like
Speaker 1: the science of exercise. It's not enough to know what
Speaker 1: you need to do. You've got to go and do it.
Speaker 1: You need to put that science into practice, and you
Speaker 1: need to practice it regularly. I generally say that I'm
Speaker 1: about an eight on a ten point scale. I think
Speaker 1: I'm pretty happy. Even a happiness expert like Sony Lubra
Speaker 1: Murski knows firsthand that reaching an eight and staying there
Speaker 1: takes conscious effort. I do have to work at it.
Speaker 1: I mean, a classic example is sometimes I get together
Speaker 1: with friends and it's so great, it's so much fun,
Speaker 1: and we think, why don't we do this more often?
Speaker 1: You know? But then it takes like months for us
Speaker 1: to sort of get together again and to plan it.
Speaker 1: And so even when we know what will make us
Speaker 1: really happy, we still kind of don't do it as
Speaker 1: often as we should. I have to kind of put
Speaker 1: it in my to do list to make sure that
Speaker 1: I create times that I spend with those people. So
Speaker 1: it's a very deliberate act. It'd be so nice if
Speaker 1: happiness came easily, like we hang out with a friend
Speaker 1: once and we're happy for good. But that's just not
Speaker 1: how human wellbeing works. Women's magazines will often call me
Speaker 1: and they'll say, can you give me some five minute
Speaker 1: happiness strategies? And I'm like, there are no five minute
Speaker 1: happiness strategies. It's true with any kind of goal in life, right,
Speaker 1: it's not going to happen in five minutes on Thursday, right,
Speaker 1: It's going to be you know, maybe a lifelong effort
Speaker 1: and so yeah. So like creating habits, I guess would
Speaker 1: be one way to put it that it's important to
Speaker 1: create habits that you maintain over the course of your life.
Speaker 1: There's no quick fix for happiness, but science shows there
Speaker 1: is a fix if you put in consistent time and
Speaker 1: effort if you want to become happier. There now a
Speaker 1: number of sort of strategies are different kind of daily
Speaker 1: activities that people can engage in that they've been tested
Speaker 1: in research. We just need to pick the strategy that
Speaker 1: works for us. If you listen to the rest of
Speaker 1: the episodes in this season, you'll learn a bunch about
Speaker 1: these sorts of activities what my students and I call rewirements,
Speaker 1: habits that science has shown really can change your well
Speaker 1: being over time. The ones that I tend to focus
Speaker 1: on and actually quite a bitter we start just focusing
Speaker 1: on our gratitude and kindness or what's called pro social behavior.
Speaker 1: Those are two activities or you can call them strategies
Speaker 1: that have been shown to make people happier. But it's
Speaker 1: not just gratitude and kindness. Science shows us lots of
Speaker 1: really simple habits we can add to our lives to
Speaker 1: feel better. We can take more time to connect with
Speaker 1: the people we care about, or just chat with a
Speaker 1: stranger we meet on our commute. We can try to
Speaker 1: reduce the exhausting choices we make on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: We can count our blessings. We can become more accepting
Speaker 1: both of the bad emotions we feel and the obstacles
Speaker 1: we face in life. We can stop focusing on the
Speaker 1: end goal and think more about the journey. Now, if
Speaker 1: you're like me when I first encountered these ideas, you
Speaker 1: might have the same reaction that our friend Clement had
Speaker 1: in his letter. You might think these strategies I just
Speaker 1: mentioned sound like hippie dippy crap, because to be fair,
Speaker 1: they do sound like hippie dippy crap. You gradudate seems
Speaker 1: really hokey. You know, counting your blessings, Oh, I'm so
Speaker 1: grateful for XYZ. The problem is, as hokey as these
Speaker 1: strategies sound, they work. That's what the science shows it
Speaker 1: used to be why I started out. You know, there
Speaker 1: are all these selful books that are'm based on nothing
Speaker 1: like they're just based on anecdotal evidence and people's opinions.
Speaker 1: We can't just look at anecdotal evidence, right, You know,
Speaker 1: your cousin told you that they tried it and it works.
Speaker 1: And they're now tons and tons of experiments, randomized control
Speaker 1: trials that are sort of trying to test whether you
Speaker 1: can get people to kind of change their thinking or
Speaker 1: change their behaviors in some smaller medium ways in daily
Speaker 1: life that could impact happiness. The problem is most people
Speaker 1: on the street don't know this stuff, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to change that. I wanted people to hear what pure
Speaker 1: reviewed scientific research shows about becoming happier. Starting with my
Speaker 1: Yale students. All right, let's get started. In the spring
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen, I had a chance to see if
Speaker 1: teaching my students about the science of happiness could lead
Speaker 1: them to live happier life. Welcome everybody to Psychology and
Speaker 1: the Good Life. I expected about thirty people to take
Speaker 1: the class, but I wound up with a lot more
Speaker 1: guinea pigs than I expect it. I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: surprised to see as many of you are here as
Speaker 1: our here, but that's made almost twelve hundred students enrolled
Speaker 1: in the class nearly one out of every four students
Speaker 1: at Yale. The class was so big we had to
Speaker 1: teach it in the university concert hall. That tiny polite
Speaker 1: ripple of applause you might get at the end of
Speaker 1: a lecture, well it turned into this. It was an
Speaker 1: amazing experience, but it was also a logistical nightmare. I
Speaker 1: had to find twenty eight graduate students just to help
Speaker 1: me grade the student exams, and we needed to book
Speaker 1: thirteen different classrooms all over campus just to host a
Speaker 1: simple midterm. I jogged over two miles just to get
Speaker 1: to all the students before the exam ended. And that
Speaker 1: was the commotion that came before all the us started.
Speaker 1: Each night, students have happiness, homework, meditate for ten minutes,
Speaker 1: sleep eight hours, do something kind, and write down five
Speaker 1: things that you're grateful for. But don't think it's an
Speaker 1: easy egg. By midterm, I had a major television news
Speaker 1: crew filming each and every one of my lectures. It
Speaker 1: was a lot of pressure, But I bet I know
Speaker 1: what you're asking. Did it work? Did the students get happier? Well?
Speaker 1: The answer is I don't know. At least I'm not
Speaker 1: sure from a scientific perspective. Anecdotally, I have dozens of
Speaker 1: emails from students telling me the class changed their lives.
Speaker 1: But the honest truth is that I was completely blindsided
Speaker 1: by the size of the class, which means I didn't
Speaker 1: get the logistics in place to do the rigorous surveys
Speaker 1: that would really nail my students progress down. In retrospect,
Speaker 1: I can say that this oversight was really, really freaking dumb.
Speaker 1: Life doesn't usually give second chances for a scientific opportunity
Speaker 1: like this, but Yale decided there was a need for
Speaker 1: this class to be shared even more broadly, so we
Speaker 1: put it online completely for free. This time, we could
Speaker 1: track people's progress a bit more rigorously, but the question
Speaker 1: remained would it work. My manager said, hey, we have
Speaker 1: this new course with Lori Santo. She's working on it.
Speaker 1: It's going to be about wellness. What do you think
Speaker 1: about working on it? And of course I felt like
Speaker 1: I had no choice in the matter, but even if
Speaker 1: I did, I willingly and gladly accepted. This is Belinda Platt,
Speaker 1: my colleague at the Yale poor Vous Center for Teaching
Speaker 1: and Learning. Belinda has been my partner for the past
Speaker 1: two years as I've tried to figure out the best
Speaker 1: way to teach people around the world about the science
Speaker 1: of happiness. Belinda's amazing. Her hard work is a lot
Speaker 1: of what's made the online class so successful, but neither
Speaker 1: of us expected the response we got. I had no
Speaker 1: idea how popular it would become at all, just because
Speaker 1: none of the other courses that we've worked on made
Speaker 1: such a splash. The enrollment is well above three hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: which is super cool. Yeah, that's pretty crazy, but like
Speaker 1: with my nerdy scientists had, I really want numbers. And
Speaker 1: one of the craziest things about the course is actually
Speaker 1: like the data that we're getting. When students enroll in
Speaker 1: our online class, they take a standard well being survey.
Speaker 1: The specific one we use is called Perma. It's a
Speaker 1: twenty three question survey that measures people's overall happiness, their
Speaker 1: mood levels, their sense of accomplishment, and even their sense
Speaker 1: of meaning. Students are asked to take the Perma quiz
Speaker 1: before they start the class, and at the end of
Speaker 1: the course ten weeks later, excitingly, we just got our
Speaker 1: first round of data in over a thousand subjects. We
Speaker 1: finally have a scientific measure of whether learning about the
Speaker 1: science of happiness can change people's well being? What did
Speaker 1: we find? We just have the graphs here, the papers
Speaker 1: moving around, and the data are amazing, frankly, so on
Speaker 1: every different measure, from positivity to engagement to meaning to
Speaker 1: just general happiness, people get better. The gains are really huge.
Speaker 1: Like on a ten point scaleple are going up an
Speaker 1: entire whole point in terms of how much meaning they
Speaker 1: feel like they have in their life. But on the
Speaker 1: happiness measure, people are starting it about you know, a
Speaker 1: six point five on the happiness measure, which is you know, reasonable,
Speaker 1: and then after the class people are saying, I'm about
Speaker 1: a seven point nine, which is so cool. The awesome
Speaker 1: thing about these data is it suggests people can change.
Speaker 1: Like this is a ten week class and people are
Speaker 1: bumping up a whole point on a happiness measure, which
Speaker 1: is incredible. Yeah, but why is the course changing people's lives.
Speaker 1: It's not just that people learn about the science of
Speaker 1: well being. Like when we first started teaching the live
Speaker 1: version of the class at Yale, the Yale students had
Speaker 1: this hashtag hardest class at Yale, And that was not
Speaker 1: because the class was hard, like in terms of degrading
Speaker 1: but it was really hard in terms of actually doing
Speaker 1: the practices, because like, it's one thing to know that
Speaker 1: you're supposed to do this stuff, but it's another to
Speaker 1: actually put it into practice. I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the ironies. Well, what I want to know what you're
Speaker 1: working on. Yeah, but Linda's question caused me to stammer
Speaker 1: a bit. I've been so busy with this podcast. I've
Speaker 1: been slipping in my own practices. Even that daily hike
Speaker 1: had turned into a weekly hike or bi weekly. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the challenge, is the thing we talked about
Speaker 1: in the course. I know all the stuff that I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to do, but I'm definitely not the like poster
Speaker 1: child for like putting into practice all the time, which
Speaker 1: is embarrassing as the person who's teaching the course and
Speaker 1: like now running this new podcast. That's right, that's the
Speaker 1: dirty secret. Even yours truly has trouble sticking to these
Speaker 1: new positive habits. Human nature and our lying minds makes
Speaker 1: changing our behavior super super hard. That's also why Belinda
Speaker 1: and I spend so much time chatting about all the
Speaker 1: reviews from the class, to keep reminding ourselves that this
Speaker 1: stuff works if you stick with it. I love the
Speaker 1: ones where they're like, I didn't really believe this, but
Speaker 1: then it totally worked. Those are the best. Don't you
Speaker 1: have a favorite one that said, like I thought this
Speaker 1: was like hippie dippy. Yeah, that's actually one from a
Speaker 1: letter I got from a learner named Clement. I think
Speaker 1: he said it was like hippie dippy crap. But you know, right, Clement.
Speaker 1: It had been a few months since I'd received his letter,
Speaker 1: and I put off contacting him because I know how
Speaker 1: hard it's been for me to stick with these habits.
Speaker 1: Given where Clement started off, I was worried he might
Speaker 1: have fallen back into some negative stuff, But in the
Speaker 1: end I decided to phone him up. Hello, Hello, is
Speaker 1: this Clement? Hello Loie. The international connection was kind of crappy.
Speaker 1: I had to shout a lot, how are you? Can
Speaker 1: you hear me? I can hear you better? Yeah, I'm good,
Speaker 1: very good, very good. But despite the connection, our chat
Speaker 1: was fantastic. Clement had stuck to his new habits, mostly
Speaker 1: because he got the important message of this episode, happiness
Speaker 1: takes work, good never keep off. But you're calls really
Speaker 1: helped me. Mercy, Mercy, we appreciate it. Thank you, talk
Speaker 1: to you soon, Bye bye, bye bye. I spoke with
Speaker 1: Clement for probably half an hour, and we covered a
Speaker 1: lot of ground in our conversation. But the thing he
Speaker 1: said that stayed with me the most was that he
Speaker 1: knew being happy wasn't going to be easy. It was
Speaker 1: going to take a lot of effort to maintain, but
Speaker 1: he didn't plan to give up trying, and that, for me,
Speaker 1: at least, was pretty inspirational. If you're now ready for
Speaker 1: the specifics, if you want to learn more about what
Speaker 1: those happy people really are doing to feel better, then
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come along for a journey over this season.
Speaker 1: In each of the episodes that follow, we'll take a
Speaker 1: deep dive into a single mistake that our minds make
Speaker 1: about how to really achieve happiness. We'll explore lots and
Speaker 1: lots of simple habits you can begin now to improve
Speaker 1: your well being. We'll get to nerd out together and
Speaker 1: learn more about all the studies that show why these
Speaker 1: habits work. Plus you'll meet lots of folks who put
Speaker 1: these tips into practice, an Olympic medalist who didn't fall
Speaker 1: prey to social comparison, an advertising exect who got healthier
Speaker 1: by ditching the silly choices she makes every day, a
Speaker 1: Grammy winning musician who's fighting to make our lives more
Speaker 1: social again, a star golfer with the secret to avoiding
Speaker 1: unwanted thoughts, and a Navy seal who realized that her
Speaker 1: training and negative thinking might be more powerful off the battlefield.
Speaker 1: Simply put, it's going to be awesome. So I hope
Speaker 1: I'll see you back here for the second episode of
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed the show, I'd be super grateful if you could
Speaker 1: spread the word by leaving a rating and a review.
Speaker 1: It really does help other listeners find us, and don't
Speaker 1: forget to tell your friends. If you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about the science you heard on the show, then
Speaker 1: check out our website Happiness Lab dot fm. You can
Speaker 1: also sign up for our newsletter to get exclusive content.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley.
Speaker 1: The show was mixed and mastered by Evan Viola and
Speaker 1: edited by Julia Barton, fact checking by Joseph Friedman, and
Speaker 1: our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Mia La Belle, Carly mcgliorre Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Maya Kanig, and Jacob Weisberg. The Happiness Lab is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Pushkin Industries and ME doctor Laurie Sanders