Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Good afternoon, folks.
Speaker 1: Thanks, yes, thank you so much for coming out to
Speaker 1: the podcast. If you've listened to the last few episodes
Speaker 1: of The Happiness Lab, you know that I've been trying
Speaker 1: to get out of my tiny apartment podcast closet and
Speaker 1: into the real world so that I can meet listeners
Speaker 1: just like you. And to do that, I've been hosting
Speaker 1: a series of Happiness Lab live shows recorded in front
Speaker 1: of live audiences. Today's episode comes from the thirtieth anniversary
Speaker 1: Hot Dogs Festival in Toronto. At the event, I got
Speaker 1: to chat with someone you've met on the show before,
Speaker 1: best selling author and fellow podcaster Gretchen Ruby.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello. We're so happy to be here,
Speaker 3: of course no.
Speaker 1: Gretchen recently joined me on The Happiness Lab for a
Speaker 1: special double episode about her new book Life in Five Senses,
Speaker 1: How Exploring the Senses got Me out of my head
Speaker 1: and into the world. At the Hot Dogs event, Gretchen
Speaker 1: and I spoke more about how to awaken our senses
Speaker 1: and followed up on what we'd both learned since we
Speaker 1: last talked.
Speaker 4: It almost became unmanageable because I was like anything I
Speaker 4: was thinking of I would immediately start thinking of new
Speaker 4: things to try.
Speaker 1: You can hear our full and very fun conversation if
Speaker 1: you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber or by signing up at
Speaker 1: Pushkin dot fm forward slash joined Pushkin. But what you'll
Speaker 1: hear right now is what happened after Gretchen and I
Speaker 1: finished our initial chat. Because our event didn't end there.
Speaker 1: Gretchen and I both wanted to hear what fans just
Speaker 1: like you wanted to know about happiness and how we
Speaker 1: could better use our five senses to improve our well being.
Speaker 1: So we put out a call to the Hot Dogs
Speaker 1: audience for all their burning questions, and the folks in
Speaker 1: Toronto really stepped up. As you'll hear, it turned into
Speaker 1: one of the most engaging live Q and A sessions
Speaker 1: that I've had a chance to take part in in years.
Speaker 4: Well, and Laurie, I think the first I'm going to
Speaker 4: give you the first one ye yeah, okay? For someone
Speaker 4: going through a really tough time right now, who describes
Speaker 4: them in survival mode? What is the one thing or
Speaker 4: the first thing you would suggest they do to preserve
Speaker 4: well being?
Speaker 3: Good question?
Speaker 1: How many people not did you ask this question, but
Speaker 1: feel like that could have been their question the fee.
Speaker 1: You feel like you're in survival mode right now?
Speaker 2: Show U yeah. Clap, clap, clap, show hands. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it seems like about a quarter of the audience
Speaker 1: is clapping. And this gets to one of the strategies
Speaker 1: I would suggest, which is what the psychologist Kristen f
Speaker 1: calls kind of feeling your common humanity. Right, So there's
Speaker 1: a sort of strategy you can use for self compassion because, like,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us feel like we're struggling
Speaker 1: right now and we're in survival mode, and in some
Speaker 1: ways that's like normative.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The economy is falling apart, Like climate change is scary,
Speaker 1: political polarization is scary. We've just kind of maybe gotten
Speaker 1: out of a three year pandemic, but maybe not. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's really safe to be in this
Speaker 1: big on, you know, but like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that's making us feel uncertain and overwhelmed and scared
Speaker 1: and tired. And that's for folks who are just like
Speaker 1: at the regular baseline. If you in that climate go
Speaker 1: through something really tough, you're definitely going to feel like
Speaker 1: you're struggling and you're in survival mode. It's normative, And
Speaker 1: so that's kind of strategy number one is to remember
Speaker 1: you're not feeling you're not screwing up. That's what emotions
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be feeling right now. I think this
Speaker 1: is a problem is that sometimes and I worry sometimes
Speaker 1: that podcasts like ours contribute to this. Right, there's so
Speaker 1: much talk about happiness and positive emotions, and you can
Speaker 1: sometimes feel like you're if you're in survival mode, you're
Speaker 1: doing something wrong, right, But it's worth remembering that negative
Speaker 1: emotions are normative. We're supposed to feel frustrated and angry
Speaker 1: and scared and anxious at a lot of different times.
Speaker 1: And so first of all, don't beat yourself up. Your
Speaker 1: body and your mind is doing something that it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be doing, and it's doing something that a lot
Speaker 1: of us are going through right now. So that would
Speaker 1: be kind of strategy number one for common humanity. But
Speaker 1: then strategy number two would be like allowing yourself to
Speaker 1: experience those emotions, which is something that I think people
Speaker 1: tend not to like to do.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know I don't like to do it.
Speaker 1: Right. If I'm feeling those things, it's kind of like, uh,
Speaker 1: it both feels like something's wrong, but it also feels
Speaker 1: like something I should just like suppress and run away from.
Speaker 1: But practices where you find ways to allow those emotions.
Speaker 1: On the podcast, we shared one by the meditation teacher
Speaker 1: Tara Brock, which is this meditation practice called RAIN, which
Speaker 1: stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and nurture. Do you like
Speaker 1: recognize I'm feeling like I'm in survival mode right now,
Speaker 1: But then you sit and you say, okay, step number
Speaker 1: two Allow, I'm going to just allow that feeling and
Speaker 1: you investigate. You notice what is my body doing when
Speaker 1: I'm in survival mode? Like I am tense, my neck
Speaker 1: is tense, I'm you know, or maybe I like have
Speaker 1: all these cravings. I want to eat something, I want
Speaker 1: to check my email, whatever, notice and pay it to
Speaker 1: like five ten minutes, just sit and watch. And the
Speaker 1: sitting and watching works because sometimes when you actually pay
Speaker 1: attention to these negative emotions they can kind of subside
Speaker 1: a bit, but you don't end there. The last step
Speaker 1: of Tara Brack's meditation practice is this end nurture, where
Speaker 1: you kind of do something nice for yourself. What can
Speaker 1: you take off your Can you call a friend? Can
Speaker 1: you make a connection. Can you dive into your five senses?
Speaker 1: Maybe this is a time when you want to curate
Speaker 1: a particular sense that you really like a nice candle
Speaker 1: or something right. Practices like that research suggests can really
Speaker 1: reduce negative emotions and feels like palliated care workers and
Speaker 1: so on. So it's a powerful strategy. So those will
Speaker 1: be my two things. One is like, you are not alone.
Speaker 1: What you're experiencing is normal. Everyone goes through this. But
Speaker 1: then give yourself a strategy not to suppress and ignore
Speaker 1: that emotion, but to kind of hang out with it
Speaker 1: enough that you can get through it.
Speaker 4: Here's a funny one too for stress is to schedule
Speaker 4: time to worry, so that you put aside time and
Speaker 4: like maybe it's once a week you're gonna worry, or
Speaker 4: maybe it's every day you're gonna worry, but it's like,
Speaker 4: don't do it right before you go to sleep, And
Speaker 4: if you start to worry outside that time, it's like, well,
Speaker 4: don't worry about that right now, because you've got your
Speaker 4: time to worry. And what it does is it lets
Speaker 4: you be feel free during the time when you're not
Speaker 4: scheduled to worry, and then when you do, because it
Speaker 4: is useful. Like anxiety, worry, anger, frustration. These are all
Speaker 4: have positive roles to play. But it's like you're sitting
Speaker 4: down and you're like, now is the time when I worry,
Speaker 4: and like you can get out your pad of paper
Speaker 4: and make a list of things to do, or you
Speaker 4: can just you know, think it through. But I just
Speaker 4: think that's so funny that you just put it on
Speaker 4: your calendar, like a dentist appointment schedule.
Speaker 3: Time to worry.
Speaker 4: Okay, and this one is related, So I'm going to
Speaker 4: kick it off to you too. How do you overcome
Speaker 4: negative thoughts and patterns of overthinking?
Speaker 1: So rumination, Yeah, rumination one of the biggest things that
Speaker 1: I think comes up for my students in my class, right,
Speaker 1: you know, these negative thought patterns that you can kind
Speaker 1: of get into, and the overall hack there is to
Speaker 1: try to get out of these sort of self focused thoughts.
Speaker 2: A lot of our rumination is about me, me, me.
Speaker 1: It's really about oh my gosh, I'm struggling, I'm not
Speaker 1: doing enough, and really self critical.
Speaker 2: I screwed up, I screwed.
Speaker 1: Up, right, But it's also about you, And there's lots
Speaker 1: of evidence that if you can just perspective, take a
Speaker 1: little bit right, make it not about me, me me.
Speaker 1: But even like third person, like Laurie, you're going through
Speaker 1: a tough time, for example, that can actually take some
Speaker 1: of the pain of that overthinking away. It sounds really
Speaker 1: silly just changing the pronouns that you use to talk
Speaker 1: to yourself, but there's evidence that speaking in the first person,
Speaker 1: I'm messing up, I'm doing et cetera, versus like, hey, Laurie,
Speaker 1: you got a tough thing going on, right, third person,
Speaker 1: second person. If you think about it, when when you
Speaker 1: hear you refer to yourself and you hear your name,
Speaker 1: it's usually somebody else saying it, right, it's often a
Speaker 1: mentor or a friend, right, and your brain doesn't know
Speaker 1: the difference. Your brain is like, oh, a wise counsel
Speaker 1: is you know, someone who really cares about me is
Speaker 1: explaining to me what I should do. And it means
Speaker 1: when you use that third person to talk to somebody else.
Speaker 1: You know, if I was talking to my husband Mark
Speaker 1: and I said Mark blah blah blah, like I'm often
Speaker 1: in wise counsel mode, I'm often in the mode of comforting, right,
Speaker 1: And so just the act of switching your head.
Speaker 4: I think another way to say this is we're much
Speaker 4: better giving advice to other people than taking it ourselves.
Speaker 4: And so it's a way to fake yourself out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a way to fake yourself out so that
Speaker 1: you talk to yourself like a friend, which we don't
Speaker 1: normally do. And if you really want to up the ante,
Speaker 1: you can use the favorite strategy that I love from
Speaker 1: Ethan Cross, who's a professor who talks a lot about overthinking.
Speaker 1: If you want a great book on overthinking, check out
Speaker 1: his book Chatter. He often uses the sort of what
Speaker 1: would so and so do? It is a very famous
Speaker 1: study with kids where you asked kids, what would Batman do?
Speaker 1: You don't have to use Batman, you know, but you
Speaker 1: can use you know, what would Beyonce do?
Speaker 2: What would my mom do? What would you know?
Speaker 1: Like a why pick the wise person in your life
Speaker 1: and use that phrase and so getting out of the
Speaker 1: self self self by using your name in third person,
Speaker 1: or if that's not working, jump to a different very
Speaker 1: wise third person.
Speaker 2: Lots of evidence that that helps a lot.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 1: All right, So now I have one for you you
Speaker 1: it's actually.
Speaker 2: For both of us.
Speaker 1: But I'm ali like Wratch answer right, So you focused
Speaker 1: on the importance of human connection as a critical component
Speaker 1: of creating happiness, something that we've both talked a lot about,
Speaker 1: but this message wasn't highly discussed that much pre pandemic.
Speaker 1: So what do we think the impact of the US
Speaker 1: Surgeon General's recent social connection framework will be? Will inspire
Speaker 1: people to take this issue more seriously and so just
Speaker 1: bracketed for folks that don't know our surgeon general will
Speaker 1: be big murthy just issued this huge on his new
Speaker 1: priority right now, which is fighting loneliness and social disconnection.
Speaker 2: And he wants to.
Speaker 1: Do that both with sort of individual strategies and sort
Speaker 1: of changing public infrastructure to make people less lonely. It's
Speaker 1: kind of his big push, which is kind of cool,
Speaker 1: right that, Like on the yields of a pandemic, the
Speaker 1: push that the Surgeon General is going for is not,
Speaker 1: you know, fighting future disease and so on. He's really
Speaker 1: focused on loneliness, which is pretty cool. But Gretchen and
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you this question because I think
Speaker 1: when you heard it, you kind of disagreed with the
Speaker 1: premise a little bit.
Speaker 3: If I recall, Yeah, I think.
Speaker 4: People have been very focused on loneliness for a while. Like,
Speaker 4: I think it's wonderful that he's shining a spotlight on
Speaker 4: it in particular right now. But I do think it's
Speaker 4: something that, because it is so well established how important
Speaker 4: human connection is to us, that I think even pre
Speaker 4: pandemic people were very aware that we needed to think
Speaker 4: about people who were isolated, think about people who were
Speaker 4: drifting away, people who had no friends or few friends.
Speaker 4: The role of relationships to the work place, Like when
Speaker 4: they do studies of people at work who are happy,
Speaker 4: often those are people who people who say they have
Speaker 4: a friend at work, not just like an acquaintance, but
Speaker 4: a friend, like somebody that they could confide an important
Speaker 4: secret to, or that they feel like has their back,
Speaker 4: or like they're direct the person they directly report to.
Speaker 3: Does that person really care.
Speaker 4: About them and want to see them succeed in their
Speaker 4: own aims for themselves. So I think there was a
Speaker 4: lot of awareness, There was a lot of research, and
Speaker 4: I think there was a lot of popular awareness of it,
Speaker 4: But I think you almost can't focus on it too
Speaker 4: much because it is kind of the centerpiece for a
Speaker 4: happy life, and so anything that helps us either broaden
Speaker 4: our connections or deepen our connections or improve the quality
Speaker 4: of our connections is something that is going to be
Speaker 4: good for the individual and good good for society.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's worth saying good for the individual,
Speaker 1: both in terms of your mental health, but also in
Speaker 1: terms of your physical health.
Speaker 4: That is astonishing. The physical consequences of loneliness.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean two of my favorite stats, one that you
Speaker 1: might have heard on the podcast before is that saying
Speaker 1: that you're lonely is the equivalent health effect on your
Speaker 1: longevity of smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, And it has
Speaker 1: twice to three times the negative effect that saying your
Speaker 1: obese has. Right, So these are like truly public health
Speaker 1: issues that we're dealing with. I think on the podcast
Speaker 1: when I talked about it, I said it should if
Speaker 1: we loneliness should have one of those health warnings like
Speaker 1: on those like you know, pharmaceutical ads where it's like
Speaker 1: may cause like premature death and cancer and all these
Speaker 1: says like and like lack of sleep and so on.
Speaker 1: It's because really it's actually a health issue. So in
Speaker 1: some ways it makes sense that the Surgeon General's focused
Speaker 1: on it because loneliness might actually be killing more people than.
Speaker 4: We and I think the new workplace is something that
Speaker 4: we're only starting to grapple with now. How it's going
Speaker 4: to trickle down and affect people's relationship and I think
Speaker 4: for some people it's going to be very positive and
Speaker 4: that for some people it could be quite negative, and
Speaker 4: it could it could increase loneliness and isolation, and so again,
Speaker 4: I think it's something that we really need to think
Speaker 4: through and how as we confront new issues, how they're
Speaker 4: going to affect loneliness for better or for worse.
Speaker 2: And just a little advertisement.
Speaker 1: Our next season that we haven't announced yet is on
Speaker 1: what we're calling fighting under Sociality.
Speaker 2: Under Sociality is.
Speaker 3: Our install I cannot wait to listen our.
Speaker 1: Instinct that, you know, when we're having a tough day,
Speaker 1: we definitely don't want to hang out with a friend.
Speaker 1: We want to like go plopped out and look at
Speaker 1: a screen by ourselves. So how can we, you know,
Speaker 1: fight our urge to not be social when we most
Speaker 1: need to.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, I cannot wait to listen. That is
Speaker 4: that's well you heard it here first we got yeah, no,
Speaker 4: Well but so okay, okay, let's take a minute and
Speaker 4: talk about this though. This is something I want you
Speaker 4: to talk about in your podcast, because I think on
Speaker 4: the one hand, people know, yeah, I'm happier when I
Speaker 4: get out there A lot of times I don't want
Speaker 4: to go, but then when I show up, I'm glad
Speaker 4: that I went.
Speaker 3: Yes. But on the other hand, I think.
Speaker 4: Now more than ever, people are saying, hey, be kind
Speaker 4: to yourself, don't push yourself.
Speaker 3: If you need to take take it easy, take it easy.
Speaker 4: But sometimes that means that we're staying home in our
Speaker 4: sweats instead of like gearing up to go out, even
Speaker 4: though in the end probably the going out would make
Speaker 4: us happier. How do we know the difference between like
Speaker 4: healthy attention to our own you know, sense of energy,
Speaker 4: and when we need to push ourselves to engage with
Speaker 4: others because that is such a source of happiness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm so glad you asked this question because it's
Speaker 1: one of the episodes that I'm most excited about. In
Speaker 1: this Undersociality series, we interview this wonderful woman, Jessica Pan
Speaker 1: who's a self proclaimed introvert, and she has this lovely
Speaker 1: book called Sorry I'm Late. I didn't want to come.
Speaker 3: Colon I seen the T shirt.
Speaker 1: An introverts Guide to saying yes, and so Jessica's stories
Speaker 1: that she moved with she's American. She moved with her
Speaker 1: partner to the UK and realized she just didn't have friends,
Speaker 1: and she just was like, I have to go out
Speaker 1: and make friends.
Speaker 2: I'm an introvert, I.
Speaker 1: Hate social I hate being social, but like I need
Speaker 1: to do something. And so she in a very Gretchen
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, all or nothing way, it was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm going to go full extrovert. I'm going
Speaker 1: to like give speeches. She went to the Edinburgh Comedy
Speaker 1: Festival and did stand up. She just went like full
Speaker 1: extra I aim extrovert, and what she found was that
Speaker 1: as she did it more and more, it worked easier.
Speaker 1: Like she had very strong predictions that this was going
Speaker 1: to be terrible in all these forms, even like talking
Speaker 1: to a stranger or talking to someone at a networking event,
Speaker 1: and what she found was it was always better than
Speaker 1: she expected. And this is completely consistent with their research.
Speaker 1: Researchers like Nick Epley at the University of Chicago and
Speaker 1: others have found that we mispredict social connection.
Speaker 2: He's the one.
Speaker 1: If you remember the Happiness Lap episode that forced people
Speaker 1: to talk on trains. You know, You're taking your commuter
Speaker 1: train home and Nick comes up to you with a
Speaker 1: ten dollars Starbucks gift card and says, hey, do you want,
Speaker 1: you know, to be in the study. You get the
Speaker 1: gift card and you say yes, because ten dollars Starbucks
Speaker 1: gift cards are the engine of all of social science
Speaker 1: research where you get nothing done if it wasn't but
Speaker 1: you say yeah, and Nick says, hey, for the rest
Speaker 1: of the train ride, I want you to make a
Speaker 1: connection with someone, or for the rest of the train ride,
Speaker 1: I want you to enjoy your solitude. He has you
Speaker 1: predict you know, whether you're going to enjoy that. Everybody
Speaker 1: across the personality spectrum says the talking is going to
Speaker 1: be awkward and weird. Introverts say it's going to be
Speaker 1: extremely awkward and weird. I think the scale doesn't go
Speaker 1: low enough for what they want to rate it. But
Speaker 1: everyone gets a happiness benefit from it. And this was
Speaker 1: what Jessica saw time and time again, is that even
Speaker 1: these scary things that she thought were going to feel awful,
Speaker 1: when you really are connecting with another person, it feels
Speaker 1: better than you expect. And so her advice is to
Speaker 1: really notice that you have this misprediction, right, you might
Speaker 1: totally have had a tough day at work, and you
Speaker 1: might really have exactly the prediction you were saying Gretchen,
Speaker 1: which's like I just want self care, I need to
Speaker 1: know my energy levels, blah blah blah. But recognize that
Speaker 1: your own calibration of that is off, and if you
Speaker 1: could just push yourself like fifteen percent more, you might
Speaker 1: end up happier.
Speaker 4: He donic prediction, right, This is people are not We're
Speaker 4: not very good at predicting what's going to make us happier,
Speaker 4: which is too bad. Okay, So here is a question
Speaker 4: for you, Laurie. I've been listening to your podcast now
Speaker 4: for three years. I assume you have been teaching your
Speaker 4: course for at least that long. Have you noticed whether
Speaker 4: your student body has noticeably changed in terms of level
Speaker 4: of happiness. I realize the pandemic has impacted a lot
Speaker 4: of us mentally, and students in particular.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so the first time I taught my class
Speaker 1: was back in twenty eighteen, when it was probably a
Speaker 1: little prescient to be thinking about mental health and happiness.
Speaker 1: Because I think in the years that have transpired since then,
Speaker 1: it's been sort of a dumpster fire for happiness, right,
Speaker 1: and so the right comparison isn't like, you know, have
Speaker 1: things gotten better in the whole student population because of
Speaker 1: these kind of external factors. But one thing we have
Speaker 1: been looking at is whether or not the Corsera class
Speaker 1: online it's called Signs of well Being. We have a
Speaker 1: new one called Signs of well Being for Teens, so
Speaker 1: make sure you get your teenagers to take it. That's
Speaker 1: a spot where we've been able to carefully calibrate whether
Speaker 1: or not people are feeling happier from before to after.
Speaker 1: And in studies, in collaboration with another researcher, Bruce Hood
Speaker 1: who's at the University of Bristol, who's been doing it
Speaker 1: in his students, he's actually been able to look longitudinally
Speaker 1: at students who take a version of the happiness class
Speaker 1: that he teaches at Bristol. And what we're finding is
Speaker 1: that it kind of works. It at least works, you know,
Speaker 1: from before to after you either get a small but
Speaker 1: significant boost and happiness. Usually it's on like imagine like
Speaker 1: a ten point happiness survey usually go up about a
Speaker 1: point that's a small but significant and that those effects
Speaker 1: seem to last at least three to six months out,
Speaker 1: which is the longest we've kind of looked. It's really
Speaker 1: hard to do these longitudinal studies because like you got
Speaker 1: to track people over time. And so the answer seems
Speaker 1: to be if you teach people these things and you
Speaker 1: give them like homework and you kind of train them
Speaker 1: up to put it into practice, it can stick with
Speaker 1: them for how long.
Speaker 2: We don't know.
Speaker 1: As Gretchen said that you can change, but to have
Speaker 1: changes that stick is really tricky. So it does seem like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're getting these small but significant effects.
Speaker 2: We've got a head to a quick break.
Speaker 1: But worry not, because Gretchen and I will be answering
Speaker 1: even more audience questions when we return. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: will be right back. Welcome back to the special live
Speaker 1: Q and A that I hosted at the Hot Dogs
Speaker 1: Festival alongside podcaster and best selling author Gretchen Rubin. So far,
Speaker 1: the Toronto fans have probed us on how to feel
Speaker 1: happier when you're in survival mode and how to engage
Speaker 1: in happier social connection. But our curious audience wasn't done there.
Speaker 1: In fact, their next question went much bigger asking how
Speaker 1: the fight for our individual happiness can help heal our
Speaker 1: ailing world.
Speaker 4: How can happiness also be turned into creating a more equitable,
Speaker 4: socially just world when we are living in a time
Speaker 4: of great polarities, greed and lack of democracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so glad whoever asks us.
Speaker 1: So I don't know who you are, but thank you
Speaker 1: for whoever asked this question, because I think this comes up.
Speaker 1: This comes up a lot in my work and in
Speaker 1: Gretchen's work. Right, Like a lot of the strategies we're
Speaker 1: talking about are at.
Speaker 2: The individual level.
Speaker 1: Right, Individually, you can engage with your senses more individually,
Speaker 1: you can make a little bit more social connection and
Speaker 1: doing so, oh, you know, the data seemed to suggest
Speaker 1: can give you a small but significant boost and happiness.
Speaker 1: And I think folks really worry about that, right, Folks say, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's great for that one individual, but have you just
Speaker 1: made that person you know more pollyannish or those people
Speaker 1: you know happier and they're good with their lives. But
Speaker 1: that means they're not going to engage with all the
Speaker 1: problems of the world. Like in some ways is like
Speaker 1: reinforcing people's individual happiness sort of at odds with the
Speaker 1: structural changes I think we all know we need to
Speaker 1: make to make ourselves happier and a happier society. And
Speaker 1: this is a spot where researchers are starting to look
Speaker 1: in a little bit more detail, right, kind of asking
Speaker 1: that question, if you become happier yourself, does that mean
Speaker 1: you do less good stuff for other people in the
Speaker 1: world and so on? And the answer so far seems
Speaker 1: to be no, just the opposite, Like when you are
Speaker 1: feeling happier usually measured if you're in a more positive mood,
Speaker 1: you wind up doing more nice stuff for other people.
Speaker 1: There's this thing called the feel good do good effect,
Speaker 1: whereas like, if you're in a good mood, you kind
Speaker 1: of do nicer stuff for other people. But there's evidence
Speaker 1: from folks like Constantin kush Lef at Georgetown that this
Speaker 1: actually impacts the world too. So he looks at things
Speaker 1: like who's taking action towards climate change by like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't installing solar panels or going to a climate protest.
Speaker 1: Who's engaging in Black Lives Matter movement not just saying
Speaker 1: they're worried about social justice stuff, but actually doing things,
Speaker 1: And what you find is that the people who self
Speaker 1: report having the highest positive mood, right, and.
Speaker 2: We kind of get it right.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're feeling down in the dumps, if
Speaker 1: you're in that struggle mode, if you have no bandwidth yourself,
Speaker 1: you can't face on head on the problems of the world.
Speaker 1: And so that means that in some ways, my hope
Speaker 1: is that these individual solutions are at least kind of
Speaker 1: and can be used in conjunction with a lot of
Speaker 1: these structural changes, that it'll make it easier for people
Speaker 1: to engage in some of the stuff that we all
Speaker 1: need to engage with to fick the stuff that we
Speaker 1: know is wrong with the world. And I especially love
Speaker 1: that for my Yale students. You know, I look at
Speaker 1: the stats right now nationally for college students, where forty
Speaker 1: percent of college students report being too depressed to function
Speaker 1: most days, almost seventy percent say that they're overwhelmingly anxious,
Speaker 1: more than one in ten has seriously considered suicide in
Speaker 1: the last six months. And I look to this generation,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, you're the ones that have to fix all
Speaker 1: the stuff that my generation messed up, Like they're not
Speaker 1: going to be able to do that unless they have
Speaker 1: some way to kind of deal with a lot of
Speaker 1: that negative emotion, a lot of those mental health issues.
Speaker 1: And so I love this question because it shows we
Speaker 1: can create a more equitable, just society if we all start.
Speaker 2: Putting our own oxygen masks. Onto leave it.
Speaker 3: At that, ditto, that's enough.
Speaker 2: Okay, good, that's enough. Yeah, good?
Speaker 3: Living on, let me drop mic.
Speaker 1: How do we be real and honest with our emotions.
Speaker 1: Let's say we're grieving, We're truly sad from a major
Speaker 1: life event, yet be truly present in our lives and
Speaker 1: see the beauty. How can we actually do that, like
Speaker 1: experience happiness in the moment of these kind of times
Speaker 1: of grief.
Speaker 2: How can we be real with what we're going through?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: I think that again, I think that so many aims
Speaker 4: within happiness.
Speaker 3: There's a way to think about it through the five senses.
Speaker 4: And I think the five senses is a great might
Speaker 4: be a great solace here because even when let's say
Speaker 4: you're experiencing some kind of deep grief, of course you
Speaker 4: wouldn't wish that away.
Speaker 3: I mean negative.
Speaker 4: I think sometimes people think that a happy life is
Speaker 4: a life with no negative emotions, and that's not possible.
Speaker 3: And it wouldn't even be a good life. So you
Speaker 3: want to you don't want to deny.
Speaker 4: Your grief or or wave it aside, or or cover it,
Speaker 4: you know, pretend that it's not there. But I think
Speaker 4: that through the five senses it can give you solace
Speaker 4: and comfort. And you know, certainly one way many people
Speaker 4: experience this is through nature, because there is something so
Speaker 4: timeless and so impersonal about like the great patterns of
Speaker 4: nature and the and the great cycles of nature that
Speaker 4: a lot. You know, this is a classic thing that
Speaker 4: people will think about, is trying to put grief into
Speaker 4: the context.
Speaker 3: Of the natural world.
Speaker 4: And the more that you can see here, smell, tastes,
Speaker 4: touch it, really try to it can take you out
Speaker 4: of yourself. And I experienced this at the MET because
Speaker 4: I mean, when they talk about happiness, one thing that
Speaker 4: clearly makes people happier is sort of moments of transcendence
Speaker 4: and awe. And I really experienced that at the MET
Speaker 4: and a sense of timelessness because it put everything in
Speaker 4: such a sense of perspective, like we were going through
Speaker 4: the pandemic, but there was all this art from hundreds
Speaker 4: of years ago, thousands of years ago that was people
Speaker 4: dealing with the plague like this is not a new thing.
Speaker 4: I mean back to this idea of identifying with other
Speaker 4: people you know, and just to see this is all,
Speaker 4: this is just the deep patterns of time. And so
Speaker 4: I think through the five senses you can you can
Speaker 4: find that the transcendence and the awe that can help
Speaker 4: give you a respite from your own you know, the
Speaker 4: pain in your own life, not to deny it, but
Speaker 4: to get out of it.
Speaker 1: And I think another kind of way that you do
Speaker 1: that with the five senses is you kind of get tiny.
Speaker 1: I feel like I experienced this a lot in the pandemic,
Speaker 1: when everything else felt so overwhelming, it was like, ah,
Speaker 1: the taste of my morning coffee mug, it's warm, right.
Speaker 3: Or just the little pleasures, the little sensation.
Speaker 1: And those are even in the midst of the worst grief,
Speaker 1: those are always there if you can kind of train
Speaker 1: your intention to look.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like the feel of a hot shower or yeah,
Speaker 4: now absolutely.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's a good one.
Speaker 1: Because I don't actually know the answer to this question
Speaker 1: is for Gretchen, what are what's some of the most
Speaker 1: fascinating research that you looked at or you conducted that
Speaker 1: you weren't able to include in your book.
Speaker 3: Well, I tried ayahuasca. That was pretty weird.
Speaker 4: I thought, Okay, this is going to be like five
Speaker 4: cents of psychedelic experience. I almost thought like, oh, was
Speaker 4: this going to be cheating because you know, it's like,
Speaker 4: you know, artificially amplified. But and it was a whole
Speaker 4: thing which I wrote about and then but so what
Speaker 4: actually happened was so I'm a real morning person and
Speaker 4: this was all happening very very very late at night.
Speaker 4: The whole it was a whole journey, very late at night.
Speaker 4: So I took the ayahuasca, immediately, threw up three times,
Speaker 4: fell asleep, and woke up totally normal. So as like
Speaker 4: a five census experience. It was a complete bus So
Speaker 4: I wrote this whole thing in my from my like
Speaker 4: this happened, then that happened, and then this other thing happened,
Speaker 4: and my editor was like, but you know, in the end,
Speaker 4: really nothing did happen.
Speaker 3: Let's leave it out.
Speaker 4: And so it was a huge experience for me, and
Speaker 4: it was definitely a huge Uh if one of the
Speaker 4: things that makes us happier, it's realizing that we can
Speaker 4: put ourselves out of our comfort zone, and we could
Speaker 4: truly surprise ourselves and do something that we did not
Speaker 4: think that we could do. I definitely did do that.
Speaker 4: So it was a huge appinist booster in that respect.
Speaker 4: But from a five census perspective, nothing. Here's another piece
Speaker 4: of fascinating research that I just moved around. I kept
Speaker 4: trying to stick it into the book. This my agent
Speaker 4: calls this no note card left behind, which is when
Speaker 4: you just want to get every fact into a book.
Speaker 4: So we're our senses are more sensitive at the low
Speaker 4: level than at the high level. Like you're much better
Speaker 4: at judging the sweetness of crackers than the sweetness of
Speaker 4: cinnamon buns. And you're much better at gauging the weight
Speaker 4: of a mixing bowl than of a bowling ball.
Speaker 3: How does this fit in? No, it does not. I
Speaker 3: was fascinated by this. I don't know why. It's just interesting.
Speaker 4: It doesn't appear in the book because I just as
Speaker 4: much as I tried to jam it in there, I
Speaker 4: could not make it relevant.
Speaker 1: But it does suggest that your taste party more crackers,
Speaker 1: less cinnamon.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, And that's right.
Speaker 4: We tried apples, yeah, not chocolate, chocolate chip ice crept.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and your ayahuasca experience can.
Speaker 4: So I challenge you to consider placebo effect with the
Speaker 4: all the new research on psychedelics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and some of the.
Speaker 1: Negative effects too, because it turns out I didn't know
Speaker 1: this statistic, but even in these very controlled clinical settings,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of clinical folks who are using psychedelics
Speaker 1: now potentially as treatments. Between ten to twenty percent have
Speaker 1: a really awful trip and awful experience. Did you read
Speaker 1: an patch it's essay, Yeah, yeah, so it's like it's
Speaker 1: higher than people think. So anyway, we're winding down, and
Speaker 1: we both liked the following question as a final question,
Speaker 1: so I'll ask it to Gretchen first and then she
Speaker 1: can ask it to me.
Speaker 2: What do people get wrong about happiness?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: I think that one thing people get wrong about happiness
Speaker 4: is that they think that there's one right way, and
Speaker 4: they think there's one best way, and they think that
Speaker 4: research shows that this is the way that you should
Speaker 4: do it, and I'm right and you're wrong, or maybe
Speaker 4: you're right and I'm wrong. And what I find is
Speaker 4: that there is no one right way. It's only what
Speaker 4: works for the individual, and that each of us has
Speaker 4: to create our own happiness project for ourselves, taking into
Speaker 4: account our own nature, our own interests, our own values,
Speaker 4: our own idiosyncrasies, our own five senses, and that if
Speaker 4: somebody says to you things like, well, you know, if
Speaker 4: something's important to you, you should get up and do it
Speaker 4: first thing, before you start your day, because that's when
Speaker 4: you're going to be at your freshness. So if something's
Speaker 4: important to you, you should do it first thing. It's like, well,
Speaker 4: that's good advice if you're a morning person, but it's
Speaker 4: terrible advice if you're a night person, because your most
Speaker 4: creative and productive and energetic later in the day. Or
Speaker 4: maybe people will say, well, you know, if you want
Speaker 4: to concentrate, you really need to have silence once you
Speaker 4: don't have any business listening to music if you're trying
Speaker 4: to do high mental work, and it's like, well, that's
Speaker 4: just not true. Some people like silence. Some people like
Speaker 4: a busy hum like a coffee shop. Some people like
Speaker 4: music with words, some people like music without words. Some
Speaker 4: people like white noise, brown noise, pink noise, green noise.
Speaker 4: It all depends on what we're few. I did this
Speaker 4: with my daughters. I would say to them, if you're
Speaker 4: gonna work, you have to be at a desk. I
Speaker 4: would have a desk in the bathroom. I have to
Speaker 4: have a desk, and they didn't. They would sit on
Speaker 4: the floor, they'd sit on their bed. And then I
Speaker 4: realized a lot of people just don't use a desk.
Speaker 4: There is nothing magic about a desk.
Speaker 1: This is why it's fun to have Gretchen and I
Speaker 1: up here because I think in many we both study
Speaker 1: happiness and know the research and stuff. But in many respects,
Speaker 1: I think personally we have very different preferences. I need
Speaker 1: incredible noise.
Speaker 4: You do, absolutely can what kind of music, din anything.
Speaker 1: When I took my exams in college, which is in Boston,
Speaker 1: I actually went to the T station and sat against
Speaker 1: a dirty wall and just did my work there because
Speaker 1: I needed that much noise. Sometimes at Yale, when I
Speaker 1: had to write a very important grant, I would go
Speaker 1: to the Mohegan Sun casino and not.
Speaker 3: Gim oh my god.
Speaker 1: I would just sit in the loudness, like in the
Speaker 1: corner and with my laptop and write a grant. So like,
Speaker 1: the more I have to concentrate, the more crazy noise.
Speaker 1: I need no desk either, just sitting kind of curled
Speaker 1: up in a corner.
Speaker 4: But you can see how this becomes a problem, like
Speaker 4: with somebody in an office, because if I'm the boss
Speaker 4: and I'm like, a clutter does mean it's a cluttered mind.
Speaker 3: Everybody's got to have.
Speaker 4: A clean desk. And silence is how people concentrate. So
Speaker 4: let's bring the noise down. I mean, who's to say?
Speaker 4: And like, I could show you research showing sixty percent
Speaker 4: of people need silence, but it doesn't matter data point
Speaker 4: of one, most important data point, data point of you.
Speaker 3: And so I think that a.
Speaker 4: Lot of times people have this search for the best way,
Speaker 4: the right way, and I think sometimes they turn to
Speaker 4: science or they justify it with science, saying, well, this
Speaker 4: is what science shows. But in the end, it's like,
Speaker 4: but what's your experience, When have you succeeded in the past,
Speaker 4: what works for you, what appeals to you, what helps
Speaker 4: you do what you want to do, and what matters
Speaker 4: to you? Because people have such different things that matter
Speaker 4: to them. So I feel like the I feel like
Speaker 4: that's the part that people often overlook, is that we've
Speaker 4: all got to figure it out for ourselves.
Speaker 3: So how about you, what do you think people get
Speaker 3: wrong about happiness.
Speaker 1: So my answer winds up with the same I think
Speaker 1: like final answer, which is that we've kind of got
Speaker 1: to figure it out for ourselves, that doing our own
Speaker 1: experiment is important. But I think what people get wrong
Speaker 1: about happiness is so many things. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the thing we just have our minds lie to us, right,
Speaker 1: this is the whole premise of the happiness lab. And
Speaker 1: I think our minds lie to us about so much. Right,
Speaker 1: we just talked about social connection. Our minds think, oh,
Speaker 1: just plopping down and looking at the screen is going
Speaker 1: to feel great, when gutting out and talking to somebody
Speaker 1: would feel better. Like, that's just the tip of the misconception, Iceberg,
Speaker 1: there's a billion you know, changing my circumstances. If I
Speaker 1: want to be happier, I need a new job, I
Speaker 1: need to change these things, when in fact, subtle changes
Speaker 1: to our behavior and our mindset matter more. And so
Speaker 1: for me, this is the big one, right, It's that
Speaker 1: we're walking around with these brains that have all these
Speaker 1: misconceptions that are telling us motivating us, Hey, go out
Speaker 1: and do these things and you'll feel happier and buy
Speaker 1: and large. A lot of those intuitions are wrong, Like
Speaker 1: some of the inductionsis you get wrong because the science
Speaker 1: are these like kind of these platitudes and things, but
Speaker 1: some are just our own intuitions about this is going
Speaker 1: to feel good, and it just does it.
Speaker 3: I have a great example for you people.
Speaker 4: A lot of people say, I've trained myself to get
Speaker 4: by on five hours of sleep.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, but talk to my undergrads about that one.
Speaker 1: We're on average, on average, all those horrible mental health
Speaker 1: statistics I just mentioned to you about college students, I
Speaker 1: actually think we could solve most of them if students
Speaker 1: got more sleep and they weren't sleeping five hours.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true for adults too. Though it's true for
Speaker 2: adults too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, people say that they've trained themselves to get by
Speaker 4: on very little, on like four or five hours, and
Speaker 4: then research shows that people are actually very very significantly
Speaker 4: impacted and you don't adjust to it and you can't
Speaker 4: get by without it, and so your mind is saying, oh,
Speaker 4: everything's fine, all I need is my cup of coffee,
Speaker 4: but you really are off your game.
Speaker 3: And so that's a good example.
Speaker 1: So this is where I do think the science and
Speaker 1: some of these averages can help is that you sometimes
Speaker 1: hear like, oh, the science isn't talking to somebody on
Speaker 1: the streen feels good, or that five hours of sleep
Speaker 1: isn't good for anyone, right, And then it can cause
Speaker 1: you to just try and change your behavior a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, we mentioned Jessica Pan before, and you know,
Speaker 1: she just like tried to change your behavior a little bit,
Speaker 1: and what she discovered was really striking.
Speaker 2: And I think that's that's the big.
Speaker 1: Thing that I've learned most from the sort of enterprise
Speaker 1: of studying happiness is that even my intuitions are wrong
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, and recognizing that they're wrong,
Speaker 1: can you just tweak things a little bit and you
Speaker 1: can start to notice yourself do the experiment yourself to notice, actually,
Speaker 1: that didn't feel as bad as I thought. Or that's
Speaker 1: a great hack for when things are really tricky, right,
Speaker 1: and that can be really really powerful. Recognizing that your
Speaker 1: mind isn't telling you the right way to go can
Speaker 1: help you come up with more creative solutions about what
Speaker 1: might really be the right way to go well.
Speaker 4: And that's what we try to do with on the
Speaker 4: Happier podcast is like just suggest idea after idea after
Speaker 4: idea for people, because some stick and some don't, Some
Speaker 4: feel right and some don't aren't relevant, But it's like
Speaker 4: sometimes just having these concrete ideas and knowing that they've
Speaker 4: worked for somebody can help you get ideas for the
Speaker 4: kinds of things that you would try for yourself and
Speaker 4: that can make you happier.
Speaker 1: And so I hope you all are leaving with lots
Speaker 1: of ideas for things that you can do to promote
Speaker 1: your happiness, both with your five senses and beyond.
Speaker 2: Can we give it up for Gretchen Reuven war House.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will be on a brief summer break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be back in July with a whole new
Speaker 1: series on listener stories, sharing how they put the science
Speaker 1: of happiness into practice.
Speaker 2: I hope you'll be back to join us then,