Speaker 1: Hello, it's or Hee. Before we get started, I wanted
Speaker 1: to tell you that my new book, Oliver's Great Big
Speaker 1: Universe Evolution Changes Everything, is coming out September sixteenth. It's
Speaker 1: a great read for smart kids and smart adults with
Speaker 1: lots of science, humor and heart. Check it out at
Speaker 1: Great Big Universe dot net. Thanks a lot. Hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to sign Stuff. Reproduction of iHeartRadio. I'm Poritchhim and Doday
Speaker 1: were answering the question does money make you happy? Now?
Speaker 1: This is the second part of a two part series
Speaker 1: on happiness, so be sure to listen to part one.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we're going to continue our conversation with
Speaker 1: a couple of experts about what science says are the
Speaker 1: factors that affect our happiness. We're going to talk about purpose,
Speaker 1: stoicism and money. Does money make you happy? Or is
Speaker 1: it the case as they say that more money means problems?
Speaker 1: The answer is coming up. Hey everyone, all right. In
Speaker 1: the last episode, we talked about some of the main
Speaker 1: factors that affect our happiness. Genetics is one of them,
Speaker 1: and in a study that tracked the happiness of hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of people, doctor Matt Killingsworth at the University
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania found three main factors that play a role
Speaker 1: in how happy we feel. One living in the moment,
Speaker 1: two having in person interactions with others, and three staying
Speaker 1: physically active. But these are not the only things that
Speaker 1: make us happy. Here's more of my conversation with doctor Killingsworth. Now,
Speaker 1: I wonder these three factors you mentioned. Are those the
Speaker 1: three main factors because they have the highest impact on
Speaker 1: our happiness? But do you mention these because these are
Speaker 1: three that we have some control over.
Speaker 2: It's some of both, but I think those are some
Speaker 2: of the biggest and most unified things I see, And
Speaker 2: there are things that we could conceivably control. But you know,
Speaker 2: there's other stuff that matters too.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're going to spend the rest of the episode
Speaker 1: talking about some of the other factors that affect our happiness,
Speaker 1: starting with having a purpose in life? Does that make
Speaker 1: you happy? Here's my friend and co author of the
Speaker 1: book Out of Your Mind, Professor Dwayne Godwin of Wake
Speaker 1: Forest University. Let's talk about purpose, this idea that finding
Speaker 1: purpose in your life will somehow lead to your happiness.
Speaker 1: What do we know from psychology about purpose?
Speaker 3: Well, purpose is important to a sense of well being.
Speaker 3: For the most part, our psychology is wired to seek purpose.
Speaker 3: There is a story about Victor Frankel, and Victor Frankel
Speaker 3: famously wrote A Man's Search for meeting. He was in
Speaker 3: a concentration camp during World War Two, you know, held
Speaker 3: captive by the Nazis, and while he was imprisoned there,
Speaker 3: he noticed that the people who survived often had some reason,
Speaker 3: some purpose in their life to live, whether it was
Speaker 3: taking care of a loved one, taking care of unfinished business,
Speaker 3: or you know, their spiritual beliefs. And he wrote that
Speaker 3: those who have a why to live can bear almost
Speaker 3: me How so, you know that idea of being able
Speaker 3: to find purpose even in the context of suffering is important.
Speaker 1: How would you define purpose as it'sychology.
Speaker 3: You know, helping others, you know, working on projects that
Speaker 3: I find personally very satisfying. From a neuroscience perspective, purpose
Speaker 3: activates again the brain's reward system. It does so more
Speaker 3: consistently than something like a fleeting pleasure. Purpose driven individuals
Speaker 3: tend to show higher activity in the prefrontal cortex because
Speaker 3: again that's the place where you're doing these sorts of
Speaker 3: assessments of positive emotional valance, and that's associated with things
Speaker 3: like long term planning, moral reasoning, and overall levels of satisfaction.
Speaker 1: In other words, the idea of purpose, when your actions
Speaker 1: align with a greater goal that you think has value,
Speaker 1: is one way to activate your brains reward center, because
Speaker 1: that's kind of how your brain is wired. This doctor
Speaker 1: Garmin speculates probably came from how our brains evolved. But
Speaker 1: I think what you're saying is that somehow our brain
Speaker 1: evolved to need purpose to be happy.
Speaker 3: Well, our brain found a way to be happy when
Speaker 3: we were being purposeful. You know, it could be that
Speaker 3: from an evolutionary perspective, that having purpose. If you think
Speaker 3: about now communities of early humans, Now that was a
Speaker 3: trait that was selected for because having a purpose and
Speaker 3: contributing to the community was obviously a great survival benefit
Speaker 3: for the collective. And you can imagine that the opposite
Speaker 3: of that, not having a purpose, would be somewhat counterproductive
Speaker 3: to the community.
Speaker 1: But I guess sometimes in our modern lives we can
Speaker 1: get kind of stuck because we don't have a purpose.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. I think that a real danger
Speaker 3: in our society when we have become so disconnected from
Speaker 3: one another. You're not going to, you know, be scrolling
Speaker 3: through Facebook and necessarily find your purpose.
Speaker 1: I asked doctor Killingsworth if purpose was something he's seen
Speaker 1: in the data from the thousands of people who sign
Speaker 1: up on Track Yourhappiness dot org. People mention things like
Speaker 1: purpose a lot. Does that volunteer your non objective category.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think to me, that's almost more
Speaker 2: like an outcome than a predictor. I think a lot
Speaker 2: of the things that bring us happiness, like living a
Speaker 2: purposeful life, for a meaningful life, for all kinds of
Speaker 2: other things to some degree or kind of satisfying fundamental
Speaker 2: human needs because we're a social species, and so you know,
Speaker 2: when you engage with other people, when you feel respected
Speaker 2: by them, when you have all of these other like
Speaker 2: social features, that would show up on all these other
Speaker 2: different forms of happiness outcomes as well.
Speaker 1: What doctor Killingsworth is saying is that a happy life,
Speaker 1: in a way will have its own purpose. Meaning you
Speaker 1: can think of having a purpose or aligning your actions
Speaker 1: to your values as making you happy, or you can
Speaker 1: think that finding things that make you happy aligns your
Speaker 1: actions with your values, giving you a purpose. It's all
Speaker 1: a feedback loop in your brain, so you can look
Speaker 1: at it both ways. And this brings up another factor
Speaker 1: that affects your happiness, which is how your brain reacts
Speaker 1: to events. Let's talk about stoicism. What is that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Stoicism is one of my favorite philosophical concepts. It
Speaker 3: was popularized by Marcus Aurelius, and for people who don't know,
Speaker 3: he was the emperor in Gladiator, So at the beginning
Speaker 3: of Gladiator he was the guy that was in charge
Speaker 3: of Rome. So he was a Roman emperor. Russian here,
Speaker 3: not Russell Crowe. They were buddies, you know, at least
Speaker 3: that's my memory of Gladiator. Marcus Aurelius was a Roman
Speaker 3: emperor and he was a Stoic philosopher, and he was
Speaker 3: very much into self regulation and how to regulate his
Speaker 3: own emotions and his responses to things, because he felt, hey,
Speaker 3: I have this important position. I need to be on
Speaker 3: top of my game. And so he wrote down a
Speaker 3: lot of reflections in the form of a journal. He
Speaker 3: to remind himself how to deal with the world, how
Speaker 3: to accept pain, how to accept change, and how to
Speaker 3: deal with things like loss. He lived during a time
Speaker 3: of plagues war, he lost several of his children that
Speaker 3: his writings are filled with reminders to welcome challenges and
Speaker 3: to focus on what is within one's own control.
Speaker 1: Okay, you might be wondering what does ay Roman philosopher
Speaker 1: have to do with science, and the answer is that
Speaker 1: Stoicism and Marcus Aurelis's writing have become the base is
Speaker 1: for something called cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Kinditive behavioral therapy is really one of the most popular,
Speaker 3: i would say, and most widely subscribed counseling therapies where
Speaker 3: you assess the world and what happens in the world
Speaker 3: somewhat dispassionately, and negative self talk is diminished in your perception.
Speaker 3: I think we an example. You know what happens if
Speaker 3: you lost one hundred dollars out, Well, if I lose
Speaker 3: this money, you know, there are two responses to it.
Speaker 3: One is, oh, I'm stupid. I shouldn't have lost that money.
Speaker 3: I really needed that money. I'm not going to be
Speaker 3: able to make my rent, or I'm not going to
Speaker 3: be able to buy those shoes that I really wanted.
Speaker 3: Those sorts of things, those sorts of negative self talk
Speaker 3: bits that can help to really drive our mood and
Speaker 3: our emotions to a negative place. But the other way
Speaker 3: to look at it is, hey, you know it is money.
Speaker 3: It's replaceable in the ground scheme of things. You will
Speaker 3: probably get that one hundred dollars back through some way
Speaker 3: or another. And yes, I lost one hundred dollars, but
Speaker 3: someone else, perhaps someone who really needed that money, will
Speaker 3: will find that money. Now, it doesn't really blunt the
Speaker 3: fact that you lost a hundred bucks. But what it
Speaker 3: does do is allows you the emotional space to process
Speaker 3: that and not allow it to drive your total emotional response.
Speaker 1: It's about taking a step back and that that gives
Speaker 1: you the power to kind of choose how you're going
Speaker 1: to interpret what happened.
Speaker 3: I think that's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1: If you've been to therapy, this idea of changing the
Speaker 1: way you look at things might be familiar to you.
Speaker 1: And this is important because you might remember from the
Speaker 1: Happiness Tracking project that mind wandering, especially mind wandering negative thoughts,
Speaker 1: is highly correlated with unhappiness. Well, according to doctor Godwin,
Speaker 1: the solution is not to stop having negative thoughts, but
Speaker 1: to train your brain to change how you view those thoughts.
Speaker 3: You know, if you talked about the neuroscience of cognitive
Speaker 3: behavioral therapy. I think that there are two elements to it.
Speaker 3: One is engaging these sort of logical based areas of
Speaker 3: the brain, areas like prefrontal cortext but it's also the
Speaker 3: process of slowing things down so that you have time
Speaker 3: to process. We know from the neuroscience literature that activity
Speaker 3: and patterns of activity actually are capable of rewiring the brain.
Speaker 3: So learning to take a step back and providing different
Speaker 3: thought patterns that can effectively change your response should the
Speaker 3: same set of circumstances arise in the future.
Speaker 1: In other words, you can train your brain to see
Speaker 1: things on the bright side, which the data shows will
Speaker 1: make you happier. All right, Now, we're going to get
Speaker 1: to the question of money. And here I'm going to
Speaker 1: guess you believe one of two things, One that money
Speaker 1: doesn't really make you happy, or two that money does
Speaker 1: make you happy, but only up to a certain point. Well,
Speaker 1: if you believe either of those things, I'm here to
Speaker 1: tell you that the size of happiness says you're wrong.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into that after the break, will
Speaker 1: be right back and we're back right. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the different factors that affect your happiness, and now we
Speaker 1: get to the topic of money. Does money make you happy? Well,
Speaker 1: According to doctor Killingsworth, for a long time, the conventional
Speaker 1: wisdom in scientific circles was that the answer was no.
Speaker 2: So if you go back to the state of the
Speaker 2: scientific literature, I think the kind of common narrative amongst
Speaker 2: happiness researchers is that money doesn't really matter very much
Speaker 2: for happiness, like especially given how much people seem to
Speaker 2: care about it. While there's something that's true about that
Speaker 2: that I'll mention in a minute, I think we actually
Speaker 2: got that kind of wrong. It turns out that people
Speaker 2: who make more money are pretty consistently happier. You know,
Speaker 2: on average, people who earn more tend to be happier.
Speaker 2: You could be rich and miserable, you could be poor
Speaker 2: and very happy, but on average, flipping the money switch
Speaker 2: up without making other things worse probably is going to
Speaker 2: nudge you in a positive rather than a negative direction. Least,
Speaker 2: that's kind of the shape of the correlation that I observe.
Speaker 1: Now I know what you're thinking at this point, which
Speaker 1: is yes or Hey, of course money helps make you happy.
Speaker 1: He need some money to survive, to have something to eat,
Speaker 1: and to have a roof over your head. But surely
Speaker 1: at some point money stops being useful, And that's what
Speaker 1: I thought too, So I asked doctor Killyesworth this question.
Speaker 1: Is there an amount after which money will not make
Speaker 1: you happier? Or is having more money always better?
Speaker 2: Well, that's a good question. You've hit on one of kind
Speaker 2: of the key topics here. Starting around twenty ten, there's
Speaker 2: this very famous paper by Dannykanneman and ingus student where
Speaker 2: they found that while cognitive aspects of well being seemed
Speaker 2: to keep rising with income, they argued that the emotional
Speaker 2: component of happiness rises up to around seventy five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars a year in income, and then it plateaus. And
Speaker 2: when I run into regular people, if they know like
Speaker 2: one thing about the signs of happiness or what is
Speaker 2: the data show, it's probably that finding. That's like the
Speaker 2: one thing that probably the most people know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might have heard about it in the news.
Speaker 1: The study from Dustin and ten supposedly found that making
Speaker 1: more money makes you happier, but only up to about
Speaker 1: making seventy five thousand dollars in income a year, and
Speaker 1: after that it doesn't make you any happier. And this
Speaker 1: finding was very popular, I think because it confirms what
Speaker 1: we all want to believe, which is that money isn't everything,
Speaker 1: that rich people are not necessarily happier than the rest
Speaker 1: of us. But actually, when doctor Killingsworth looked into it,
Speaker 1: this turned out to be not quite true.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I've been working on in
Speaker 2: the last few years is kind of unpacking this relationship.
Speaker 2: So I've now run this big set of using experience
Speaker 2: sampling a really really great way to measure how people
Speaker 2: are actually feeling. And it turns out in my big study,
Speaker 2: when I look at the relationship between how much money
Speaker 2: people earn and how happy they really feel in the
Speaker 2: moments of their lives, happiness in the moment just keeps
Speaker 2: going up. There wasn't an inflection point at seventy five
Speaker 2: thousand dollars or any other particular level of income. There
Speaker 2: didn't seem to be any threshold where that relationship change.
Speaker 2: It just sort of kept going modestly but steadily.
Speaker 1: Upward, meaning people with more money have fewer negative in
Speaker 1: the moment happiness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just kind of their average moment gets a little
Speaker 2: bit better and a little bit better the more money
Speaker 2: they tend to be earning. So people are more satisfied
Speaker 2: and more fulfilled and find life more meaningful on average
Speaker 2: to a modest degree. When they earn more money, I
Speaker 2: see and their day to day experiences seem to be
Speaker 2: better as well.
Speaker 1: So more money, not more problems, More money, fewer problem
Speaker 1: on average. What doctor Klein'sworth found was that an average,
Speaker 1: having more money always makes you happier. That's true if
Speaker 1: you're poor or if you're already rich. Getting more money
Speaker 1: in general will make you even happier. This doesn't just
Speaker 1: show up in doctor Kleinsworth data. There have been natural
Speaker 1: experiments that prove this.
Speaker 2: Money is hard to experiment with compared to lots of
Speaker 2: other things, but we have pretty good evidence that when
Speaker 2: people are like randomly assigned more money, they actually become
Speaker 2: substantially happier as well. There are some nice natural experiments,
Speaker 2: for example, called lotteries, So there are some great studies
Speaker 2: that have been done where they've looked at people who
Speaker 2: play the lottery a similar amount. But then some people
Speaker 2: win and some people don't. Uh, and when you follow
Speaker 2: those people up later, the people who want and got
Speaker 2: more money actually turn out to be happier and sometimes
Speaker 2: quite a bit and sometimes for quite a long time.
Speaker 2: There was a great study I think it was in
Speaker 2: Sweden where they looked at people ten years later after
Speaker 2: they won. It's a pretty decently sized effect.
Speaker 1: Now, to be fair, one thing that doctor Kellingsworth found
Speaker 1: that doesn't get better with more money is stress.
Speaker 2: However, when I look at like, what is like the
Speaker 2: emotional profile of people who are earning more money, they're
Speaker 2: not necessarily less stressed. That's kind of the one emotion
Speaker 2: that doesn't really get better when you earn more and
Speaker 2: more and more money. So if you think, hmm, it'll
Speaker 2: be great, you know, when my income is doubled, you
Speaker 2: might not be any less stressed. But pretty much every
Speaker 2: aspect of kind of your emotional life, at least my
Speaker 2: data would predict, are probably going to be better.
Speaker 1: In other words, if someone offers you money, you should
Speaker 1: take it. On average, having money will only increase your happiness,
Speaker 1: even if it doesn't make you less stressed. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: there are several caveats here. Number one, this relationship between
Speaker 1: money and happiness is on average, having more money doesn't
Speaker 1: guarantee you're going to be happier. And number two, money
Speaker 1: isn't everything. It's just one of the many things that
Speaker 1: contribute to your happiness.
Speaker 2: It's just one of the many leavers. So I think
Speaker 2: the part that's really true and importantly true is that
Speaker 2: tons of things matter for happiness, and money and income
Speaker 2: is just one of them. So if you sacrifice all
Speaker 2: kinds of other sources of happiness and make more money,
Speaker 2: you're probably going to be less happy, even if money
Speaker 2: is helpful.
Speaker 1: Now, one interesting fact about money and happiness is said
Speaker 1: having more money on average will make you happier, but
Speaker 1: having friends or neighbors that make more money than you
Speaker 1: will tend to make you unhappier. In one study, researchers
Speaker 1: from the London School of Economics look at data from
Speaker 1: a survey of Americans from nineteen seventy two to two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight that ask three questions, how happy are you?
Speaker 1: How much money do you make? Do you think you
Speaker 1: make more or less money than other Americans? The analysis
Speaker 1: found that people who tended to think they made less
Speaker 1: money than others also tended to be unhappier, no matter
Speaker 1: how much money they actually made. In general, making more
Speaker 1: money than your friends and neighbors will make you happier,
Speaker 1: and making less will make you unhappier. There is good news, though,
Speaker 1: which is what happens when you think about why money
Speaker 1: brings us happiness.
Speaker 2: When I look at why is there this positive relationship
Speaker 2: between money and happiness, and what I find is that
Speaker 2: about eighty percent of that relationship, even for that emotional component,
Speaker 2: can be explained by the fact that as people earn
Speaker 2: more money, they feel more in control of their lives.
Speaker 2: So if you have someone with a low income but
Speaker 2: feels very in control of their life, they psychologically look
Speaker 2: a lot like a very well off.
Speaker 1: Person Whoah, it comes down to control and not having
Speaker 1: to worry about the future.
Speaker 2: I haven't necessarily looked at it in terms of like
Speaker 2: the future in quotes, but yeah, the more money you have,
Speaker 2: the more you tend to feel in control of your life,
Speaker 2: and that seems to be uniquely able to explain this relationship.
Speaker 1: In other words, doctor Killingsworth also asks people, how in
Speaker 1: control of your life do you feel? And the people
Speaker 1: who said they felt more in control of their lives
Speaker 1: tended to be the people who had more money, and
Speaker 1: they also tended to be the people who were happier,
Speaker 1: which tells you that most of the value of having
Speaker 1: money is just having more control of your life.
Speaker 2: So I looked at lots of other factors as well,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of fueling in control of your life.
Speaker 2: That's the biggest one. Another one is the simply the
Speaker 2: more money you earn, the less likely you are to
Speaker 2: have trouble paying bills. So when I look at the
Speaker 2: lowest income people in my study, almost half of them say, yeah,
Speaker 2: I had trouble paying a bill in the last two weeks,
Speaker 2: Whereas if you go to the people with very high incomes,
Speaker 2: it's like seven percent of them. So you get a
Speaker 2: seven x difference in the likelihood that bills are a
Speaker 2: source of uncertainty and riskiness for you. So those two
Speaker 2: things together are at least within the set of things
Speaker 2: that I measured, those were kind of the biggest expl
Speaker 2: natory factors.
Speaker 1: Now, this is probably not surprising to you. If you
Speaker 1: have money, you don't have to worry as much about
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to you or how are you
Speaker 1: going to pay your bills. But the point doctor Killingesporre
Speaker 1: says is that once you know that's the real reason
Speaker 1: money affects your happiness, you can work around it.
Speaker 2: However, and I think this is part of what is
Speaker 2: a little bit empowering. While if you look at this
Speaker 2: relationship between money and happiness, about eighty percent of that
Speaker 2: can be explained by people who earn more money feel
Speaker 2: more in control of their lives, but the flip side
Speaker 2: of that is that only about twenty percent of how
Speaker 2: in control of you feel of your life is due
Speaker 2: to money.
Speaker 1: What what do you mean? What do you mean?
Speaker 2: What I think that points to is the fact that, well,
Speaker 2: what money brings us perhaps is control over our life.
Speaker 2: There are ways that we can get control over our
Speaker 2: life that have nothing to do with money. And so
Speaker 2: you could kind of have a workaround for money itself
Speaker 2: by finding ways to kind of take control of your life,
Speaker 2: like what kind of life do you want to live?
Speaker 2: And how could you reorient your life to live that life?
Speaker 2: And so the more you find the ways to do that,
Speaker 2: perhaps suggestively, speculatively, it might be possible that you could
Speaker 2: end up kind of getting the life of someone who's
Speaker 2: richer without necessarily having to earn more money.
Speaker 1: What doctor Killy Sporth is saying is that, yes, having
Speaker 1: more money will make you happier. That's mostly because it
Speaker 1: gives you the feeling of being in control of your life.
Speaker 1: So if you can figure out other ways to get
Speaker 1: that feeling, then maybe you don't need as much money.
Speaker 1: All Right, when we come back, we're going to tackle
Speaker 1: the last piece of the happiness puzzle, and then I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask each of our experts if they're happy.
Speaker 1: So stay with us, we'll be right back. Welcome back.
Speaker 3: One thing that we should talk about is depression. There
Speaker 3: are certainly a case of individuals with treatment resistant depression.
Speaker 3: And as much as we can affect the way our
Speaker 3: brains work by how we think, there are individuals who
Speaker 3: cannot do that or are their brains are not wired
Speaker 3: in such a way that will allow them to take
Speaker 3: these tools and do something with them. So that we
Speaker 3: have to really step back a little bit to say
Speaker 3: that disorders of brain circuits, like disruptions in how areas
Speaker 3: like the frontal lobes or the amygdala and the hippcamp
Speaker 3: is how they communicate. If those are disrupted, then it's
Speaker 3: really difficult for you to think your way out of
Speaker 3: that and to think yourself into a happy set of circumstances. Right,
Speaker 3: So there's a limit to which these things can be
Speaker 3: very helpful and effective. But I think if you have
Speaker 3: treatment resistant depression, then that's something that you have to
Speaker 3: go and get seen about by professional all.
Speaker 1: Right, the lassie slip puzzle we're going to tackle here
Speaker 1: is what does this all need? And to do that,
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the question of what
Speaker 1: happiness is and whether it's what we feel in the
Speaker 1: moment or what we feel when we take a step
Speaker 1: back to think about how our lives are going. Because
Speaker 1: as we learn, how you answer the question are you
Speaker 1: happy can be different depending on when you're asked that question,
Speaker 1: but according to our experts, that difference is not totally random.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I've seen to some degree
Speaker 2: is that I think happiness is simpler than we realize,
Speaker 2: and its causes are more complex than we realize.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: So you've hit on I think one of the key
Speaker 2: sort of features of all of this. There's one element
Speaker 2: of this that's really how good or bad our moments are,
Speaker 2: But then there are also these other more kind of
Speaker 2: slower moving elements, like is your life fulfilling and meaningful
Speaker 2: and satisfying? Overall? When I look across all the different
Speaker 2: things that matter, for happiness. It turns out pretty similar
Speaker 2: things matter for all the different flavors. You know, a
Speaker 2: fulfilling life overall is also tends to be produced by
Speaker 2: the kinds of things. Things that you know, drive good
Speaker 2: experiences in the moment, and I think the reality to
Speaker 2: some extent is that both of those things are going
Speaker 2: to come together. Those stable factors that we think of
Speaker 2: as affecting things like how satisfied you are, tend to
Speaker 2: affect your moment, and having good experiences in the moment
Speaker 2: that you have over and over again also produce kind
Speaker 2: of a good life in the overall sense.
Speaker 3: So when I told you that my cork is floating,
Speaker 3: that's the best analogy that I can come up with,
Speaker 3: because you can kind of imagine your emotional life as
Speaker 3: a quirk bobbing on the ocean, and every wave that
Speaker 3: lifts that cork, maybe it's a moment of joy or pleasure.
Speaker 3: It's like a little burst of dopamine, and then the
Speaker 3: troughs of disappointment or sadness could reflect some kind of
Speaker 3: dip in the brain's reward circuitry.
Speaker 1: Okay, what doctor Killing's Worth and doctor Gotwyn are saying
Speaker 1: is that there's a certain simplicity about the experience of happiness.
Speaker 1: If you're having a lot of good moments in your life,
Speaker 1: your brain is wired to recognize that and tell you, hey,
Speaker 1: things are going well, keep it up, and you feel happy.
Speaker 1: Or if you're having a lot of bad moments, your
Speaker 1: brain is wired to tell you, Hmmm, something's not right
Speaker 1: here and you feel unhappy. And I think this tells
Speaker 1: you two things about happiness. The first is that variations
Speaker 1: in how happy you feel are inevitable.
Speaker 2: So even people that are pretty happy will have some
Speaker 2: really miserable moments, and even people that are pretty unhappy,
Speaker 2: you'll have some really great moments, like how can someone
Speaker 2: who's so unfulfilled have such a happy moment? Or if
Speaker 2: I'm supposedly living such a great life, why am I
Speaker 2: having this moment where I feel so terrible? But I
Speaker 2: think that's just kind of a feature of being human,
Speaker 2: is that we have this dynamic element of happiness that
Speaker 2: really does change.
Speaker 1: Into the words nobody has a perfect life. We all
Speaker 1: have our ups and downs. And the second thing I
Speaker 1: think all of this tells is is that if there
Speaker 1: is something wanted to change about your life and your happiness,
Speaker 1: a good place to start is to pay attention to
Speaker 1: those day to day moments. Happier people do have ups
Speaker 1: and downs, but according to doctor Killingsworth's data, those ups
Speaker 1: and downs are better quality. So you can look at
Speaker 1: your own moments and see what's costing them and potentially
Speaker 1: change them, or if you can't change them, maybe you
Speaker 1: can work around them. Because as we've learned in these episodes,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things that affect your happiness,
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 2: Think that's emblematic of kind of a general tactic and
Speaker 2: strategy for thinking about happiness is if there's some part
Speaker 2: of it that you're kind of blocked on, Like I
Speaker 2: want to have the happiness that that thing would give me,
Speaker 2: but maybe that's a hard thing for me to change.
Speaker 2: I'm in a job that has some future, but for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, I can't really change that job. Or you know,
Speaker 2: I earn this amount of money and you know I'm
Speaker 2: a teacher. There's just no way I'm going to start
Speaker 2: earning six hundred thousand dollars a year. Or I have
Speaker 2: a challenging relationship with this family member. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to stop interacting with them. It's important enough for me
Speaker 2: to sustain that. Can we find workarounds for the things
Speaker 2: that we maybe can't change by understanding the kinds of
Speaker 2: happiness and the ways that they might bring us happiness
Speaker 2: if they were different. I see, you know, how can
Speaker 2: we be the river flowing around the rock?
Speaker 1: I see? I see sometimes in our lives we find
Speaker 1: that there's this lever that we just can't pull, and so,
Speaker 1: understanding more about the whole picture, let's just work around
Speaker 1: that by pulling other levers.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, when I was saying earlier that measuring happiness is
Speaker 2: simpler than we think, but the causes of happiness are
Speaker 2: more complicated than we realize. There's a downside to that,
Speaker 2: which is there's no one silverable to happiness. But the
Speaker 2: upside is it gives us a lot of options for
Speaker 2: how we pursue it. There are all of these different
Speaker 2: levers we can pull. So if for you one of
Speaker 2: those levers is really sticky you can't move it, that's okay,
Speaker 2: just find a different one.
Speaker 1: There. Are you happy now? I mean, are you happy?
Speaker 1: That we're coming to the end of the k So
Speaker 1: I thought i'd end things by asking our two experts
Speaker 1: if they're happy? All right, Matt, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Last question, are you happy.
Speaker 2: I am pretty happy.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Like I said, happiness is a wiggly line. So I
Speaker 2: have moments that are amazing and moments that are challenging,
Speaker 2: and lots of moments in the middle. But overall, I
Speaker 2: love my life. I love getting to work on this problem.
Speaker 2: I also get to take all the things that I
Speaker 2: learn and try to apply them myselves.
Speaker 1: And think your happiness changed before and after this project.
Speaker 2: Definitely, I mean, I've learned a lot from it. One
Speaker 2: of the biggest warnings for me was the very first
Speaker 2: one that I talked about and discovered, which was this
Speaker 2: relationship to mind wandering by nature. I think and spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time thinking and in my head, and honestly,
Speaker 2: wasn't until I both collected the data and looked at
Speaker 2: all of the results that I started to recognize when
Speaker 2: that was helpful and when that wasn't so helpful.
Speaker 1: All right, that was pretty good, Dwayne. Do you feel
Speaker 1: pretty happy about that conversation?
Speaker 3: I'm content with it.
Speaker 1: Well, well, don't get too excited there.
Speaker 3: Well that's my wife saying. You know, this is what
Speaker 3: I did. So I went to a restaurant my wife,
Speaker 3: and it was a new restaurant that we hadn't eaten
Speaker 3: at before, and at the end of it, it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, what did you think? And my standard response
Speaker 3: is I wasn't too bad. I have this sort of
Speaker 3: glitch where I can't like fully invest in it. And
Speaker 3: it was great. It was hash Browns and an omelet
Speaker 3: and it was wonderful. But my normal response is I
Speaker 3: wasn't bad. I'm sort of like a Larry David. I
Speaker 3: guess pretty pretty, pretty good.
Speaker 1: Well, I think we make a good team then, because
Speaker 1: my wife tells me I'm too positive all the time.
Speaker 3: Oh really, so you're you would say, wow, that was
Speaker 3: the best ever.
Speaker 1: I love everything. I love every mine of air I read.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a good way to be. That's true happiness
Speaker 3: if you can reach that state.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm also a cartoonist. I think that helps. All right.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. See you next time. And hey,
Speaker 1: if you want to join doctor Killingsworth's Study of Happiness,
Speaker 1: just go to track your Happiness dot org. And if
Speaker 1: you want to read the book Doctor Godwin and I Rode,
Speaker 1: just search for Out of your Mind The Biggest Mysteries
Speaker 1: of the Human Brain in your favorite bookstore. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us, See you next time. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: Science Stuff the production of iHeartRadio, written and produced by
Speaker 1: me or Ycham, edited by Rose Seguda, executive producer Jerry Rowland,
Speaker 1: and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Peckram. And you can
Speaker 1: follow me on social media. Just search for PhD Comics
Speaker 1: and the name of your favorite platform. Be sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe to Sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts, and please tell your
Speaker 1: friends We'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.