Speaker 1: Pushkin. I've always been kinda into musicians. I obsessively read
Speaker 1: the memoirs of rock gods, and I love hearing about
Speaker 1: the lives of different artists. It's in part because I
Speaker 1: really envy musical talent, but it's also because I sort
Speaker 1: of dig the rocker attitude. Their vibe is so untethered,
Speaker 1: so spontaneous. There seems to be a word for this
Speaker 1: attitude of reckless, abandoned yolo. You only live once. It's
Speaker 1: a phrase that urges you to jump from passion to passion,
Speaker 1: from opportunity to opportunity, so that you can make the
Speaker 1: most of the present moment, no matter what. Future be damned.
Speaker 1: If you're like me, you may have first heard the
Speaker 1: phrase yolo back in twenty eleven. That's the year the
Speaker 1: acronym went viral when Drake used the phrase in the
Speaker 1: chorus of his rap anthem, the motto Yoo yolo, and
Speaker 1: so we used to tant that it turned into a song.
Speaker 1: That's not the rap anthem I was talking about, and
Speaker 1: that's not Drake, but it is a famous musician. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that I was the first one to coin
Speaker 1: yolo as you only live once until I read it somewhere,
Speaker 1: or someone told me that they read it in some
Speaker 1: encyclopedia or something. Whatever they go. Really, this is Mickey Hart,
Speaker 1: drummer for the legendary band The Grateful Dead. And yes,
Speaker 1: Mickey's right here. He was the one who coined the acronym.
Speaker 1: So what's the real origin story of yolo? Well, back
Speaker 1: in the early nineties, Mickey was rethinking his housing situation.
Speaker 1: My music is very loud, and I didn't want to
Speaker 1: disturb anybody, and it didn't want them to disturb me,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want the Deadheads to find me. Mickey
Speaker 1: realized he needed a different kind of property, something with
Speaker 1: plenty of space and lots of privacy. So when Micky's
Speaker 1: wife happened upon the listing for an old ranch house
Speaker 1: on fifty years of land in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: he knew it was perfect. Mickey immediately called the number
Speaker 1: on the listing brochure, but when he reached the agent,
Speaker 1: he got some bad news. The owners were asking such
Speaker 1: an astronomically high price for the property that the ranch
Speaker 1: had been taken off the market. It was more money
Speaker 1: than we were going to spend. We thought we couldn't
Speaker 1: afford it. At the time, So Mickey's dreamhouse wasn't even
Speaker 1: for sale anymore. End of story, right, not for a
Speaker 1: badass rocker like Mickey. So you know, I just looked
Speaker 1: at her and they said, we only live once, and
Speaker 1: this is our place. This is yolo. The couple hopped
Speaker 1: in their car and drive out to the property unannounced.
Speaker 1: In the end, they convinced the owner to sell them
Speaker 1: the ranch, but still paid more money than they could afford.
Speaker 1: But you know, yolo. Mickey thought the term fits so
Speaker 1: well that he christened his new home Yolo Ranch, and
Speaker 1: thus the new acronym was born. These days, the term
Speaker 1: yolo is invoked whenever we want to do something impulsive,
Speaker 1: care free, and reckless. Should I spend half my rent
Speaker 1: check on this one pair of shoes yolo? Should I
Speaker 1: quit my job on a whim Yolo? For some people,
Speaker 1: yolo has become a guiding principle, one that prioritizes the
Speaker 1: ability to be spontaneous and act in the present moment,
Speaker 1: no matter the consequences. You only live once, so don't
Speaker 1: settle for what's in front of you when something else
Speaker 1: amazing might be out there somewhere. But as the yolo
Speaker 1: impulse to live untethered and uncommitted the right way to
Speaker 1: maximize our presence and our happiness. Or have we all
Speaker 1: misunderstood what yolo should really stand for. Our minds are
Speaker 1: constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But
Speaker 1: what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds
Speaker 1: are lying to us, leading us away from what will
Speaker 1: really make us happy. The good news is that understanding
Speaker 1: the science of the mind can point us all back
Speaker 1: in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: with me, Doctor Laurie Santos. I was young in the
Speaker 1: age when like Yolo pop music was really big. This
Speaker 1: is Pete Davis. It was Miley Cyrus or like cash
Speaker 1: Us singing like let's live tonight, like We're going to
Speaker 1: die young or something. Pete's part of a generation that
Speaker 1: grew up on the idea of yolo, of living for
Speaker 1: the moment in a culture that prioritizes fleeting experiences over
Speaker 1: long term investments. Pete came of age when you could
Speaker 1: just swipe right on Tinder whenever you felt lonely, or
Speaker 1: scroll right on Netflix whenever you felt bored, jumping from
Speaker 1: job to job and from place to place. It was
Speaker 1: admired for the degree of URIs doctor Pete Davis. And
Speaker 1: so when Pete addressed his graduating class at Harvard, it
Speaker 1: may not surprise you to hear that he started his
Speaker 1: speech with a nod to the Yolo ethos and the
Speaker 1: value his generation gets from experiencing all the possibilities the
Speaker 1: modern world has to offer. I've seen all the good
Speaker 1: that can come from having so many new options. I've
Speaker 1: seen big decisions become less painful because you can always quit,
Speaker 1: you can always move. And mostly I've seen all the
Speaker 1: fun folks have had, experiencing more novelty than any generation
Speaker 1: in history ever experienced. But Pete's speech wasn't about the
Speaker 1: benefits of keeping all these doors of opportunity open in
Speaker 1: the hallway of life. It was about the drawbacks. We
Speaker 1: may have come here to help keep our options open,
Speaker 1: but I leave believing that the most radical act we
Speaker 1: can take is to make a commitment to a particular thing,
Speaker 1: to a place, to a profession, to a person, and
Speaker 1: to close doors and forego options. Pete was calling on
Speaker 1: his classmates to reject that version of the Yolo ethos.
Speaker 1: He wanted his peers to embrace the seemingly much stodgier
Speaker 1: option of tying yourself down and investing in just one
Speaker 1: thing for the long haul. We should rebel and join
Speaker 1: up with a counterculture of commitment. Let's get to work.
Speaker 1: Pete's commencement speech received millions of views on Facebook. The
Speaker 1: argument eventually turned into a book dedicated the case for
Speaker 1: commitment in an age of infinite browsing. So what does
Speaker 1: Pete mean by infinite browsing? You know, it's late at
Speaker 1: night and you start browsing Netflix looking for something to watch,
Speaker 1: and you can't pick anything. So you scroll through different
Speaker 1: titles and you read a few reviews, and you just
Speaker 1: can't commit to watching any given movie. And you wake
Speaker 1: up from your haze thirty minutes later and you found
Speaker 1: out I didn't pick anything. I've been on the menu
Speaker 1: screen this whole time, and now you're too tired to
Speaker 1: watch anything now, so you turn off the TV and
Speaker 1: go to sleep. Failing to commit to a show on
Speaker 1: Netflix may seem trivial, but Pete argues that modern life
Speaker 1: is full of many more important cases of infinite browsing mode.
Speaker 1: It's the idea of jumping from vocation of vocation. It's
Speaker 1: swiping through endless dating profiles, and even when you're on
Speaker 1: your first dates thinking the whole time, well is this
Speaker 1: person better than all the people I could swipe through?
Speaker 1: Or moving to a new place and saying, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't need to get rooted here because
Speaker 1: I can always leave and there's always a better thing
Speaker 1: out there. And I particularly focus on calling it infinite browsing,
Speaker 1: because browsing is sometimes good in your life. The problem
Speaker 1: I'm fighting is not taking some time in your life
Speaker 1: to brows it's never clicking out of the menu screen.
Speaker 1: Pete argues that the culture he grew up in prioritized
Speaker 1: staying on the menu screen of life as long as possible.
Speaker 1: The message is keep your options open. You know, as
Speaker 1: long as you're maximizing options for your future self, you'll
Speaker 1: be fine. Keep doing that. Pete worries that this is
Speaker 1: ultimately bad for society. He's instead taken with examples of
Speaker 1: people he refers to as long haul heroes, men and
Speaker 1: women throughout history who put in the sustained effort to
Speaker 1: fight long term for what they believe. In the fact
Speaker 1: that your town has that wonderful community center or farmers
Speaker 1: market or park that's preserved. Look into the history, you'll
Speaker 1: find a long haul hero behind it. But Pete fears
Speaker 1: that are keep your options open. Mentality isn't just limiting
Speaker 1: the number of long haul heroes in ways that will
Speaker 1: make society less happy. It's also negatively affecting our individual
Speaker 1: happiness as well. And the science backs pet up here.
Speaker 1: There's lots of evidence that not committing ultimately poses a
Speaker 1: huge opportunity cost for your happiness. Consider, for example, the
Speaker 1: happiness boost we get from experiencing a sense of belonging.
Speaker 1: Study after study shows that feeling connected to a group
Speaker 1: of friends, or a neighborhood or a workplace improves our
Speaker 1: overall well being. But building up that sense of authentic
Speaker 1: community requires time and investment. Pete fears that if we
Speaker 1: scream yolo and jump into something new every time the
Speaker 1: urge presents itself, we may never invest the time needed
Speaker 1: to feel connected to a job or a partner, or
Speaker 1: a place or a friend group. But the second reason
Speaker 1: infinite browsing impedes our happiness is that, ironically enough, it
Speaker 1: often makes us feel pretty bored. All the fun of
Speaker 1: novelty that comes from browsing, all the hot new thing
Speaker 1: that you jump from thing to thing and are excited
Speaker 1: about eventually gets haunted by the pain of the boredom
Speaker 1: of shallowness. Pete uses the example of that feeling you
Speaker 1: get when you realize you've just watched what feels like
Speaker 1: a hundred short Internet videos in a row. The algorithm
Speaker 1: of TikTok will present you in the world that day,
Speaker 1: probably the hundredth most interesting video created by humanity, and
Speaker 1: yet you're just completely bored and fried out by the
Speaker 1: hundred one, because jumping from hot new thing to hot
Speaker 1: new thing eventually becomes boring. But there's a third reason
Speaker 1: why staying in an infinite browsing mode reduces our happiness.
Speaker 1: When we fail to make a long term decision about
Speaker 1: a job, or a partner or a community, we reap
Speaker 1: the stress that comes from still needing to make that
Speaker 1: choice down the line. So browsing is good because it
Speaker 1: gives you flexibility, lets you kind of jump from thing
Speaker 1: to thing, but that flexibility is eventually haunted by choice paralysis.
Speaker 1: If you're a regular Happiness Lab listener, you may have
Speaker 1: heard the term choice paralysis before Choosing is exhausting, even
Speaker 1: when it's about trivial stuff, and even when it's hypothetical,
Speaker 1: it just wears you out. This is very Schortz, a
Speaker 1: professor at the Hoss Business School at UC Berkeley, who
Speaker 1: talked about the un happiness unmade choices cause way back
Speaker 1: in our first season. Barry's the author of a book
Speaker 1: called The Paradox of Choice, which argues that our obsession
Speaker 1: with the attachment free lifestyle comes from a fundamental misunderstanding
Speaker 1: of what makes us happy. There's a set of beliefs
Speaker 1: that are so deeply embedded in us that I don't
Speaker 1: even think we realize we hold them. And that is,
Speaker 1: if you want to enhance people's well being, you enhance
Speaker 1: their freedom. If you enhance people's choice, you will enhance
Speaker 1: their well being. And that seems so obviously true that
Speaker 1: it didn't occur to anyone to investigate it. But it
Speaker 1: did occur to Barry. He and his colleagues investigated the
Speaker 1: claim that keeping our options open makes us feel better,
Speaker 1: and they found that the exact opposite was true. Too
Speaker 1: many choices can cause us to panic and shut down.
Speaker 1: We experience choice paralysis, even though we predict that we'll
Speaker 1: enjoy what seems like endless possibilities. Having an abundance of
Speaker 1: options usually leaves us depleted and disappointed. Well people have
Speaker 1: come to realize is that there's no doubt that choice
Speaker 1: is good. But you can reach a point where what's
Speaker 1: bad about it starts to outweigh what's good about it,
Speaker 1: and you leave people in pretty bad shape. But Barry
Speaker 1: says there's a further reason that keeping options open hurts
Speaker 1: people's happiness, even after they've finally sucked it up and
Speaker 1: made a choice. It's so easy to imagine that one
Speaker 1: of the options they rejected would have been better than
Speaker 1: the one they chose. When you face too many possibilities
Speaker 1: before a decision, you wind up being haunted by decision ghosts,
Speaker 1: the ghosts of all the choices you didn't make. And
Speaker 1: so you give people lots of options. You raise their
Speaker 1: expectations about how good the thing they choose will be.
Speaker 1: You invite them to make comparison to all of the
Speaker 1: options that they've rejected and everything. The more you compare,
Speaker 1: the more the thing you've chosen suffers. So you end
Speaker 1: up making a good decision and feeling bad about it.
Speaker 1: Pete thinks decision ghosts can be even scarier for his generation,
Speaker 1: people so accustomed to never ending choice that they can
Speaker 1: feel bad about options they haven't even seen but it
Speaker 1: might not even exist, or future tender swipes and Netflix
Speaker 1: movie options that haven't even crossed our feeds, And even
Speaker 1: when we're dealing with actual rejected choices, our brains have
Speaker 1: a way of confabulating imaginary options and ways that make
Speaker 1: us feel bad. Like let's say you're a recent graduate
Speaker 1: trying to decide which city to move to after college,
Speaker 1: and you're like, should I live in Chicago, Miami, DC,
Speaker 1: or Austin. Chicago, Miami, DC or Austin. Maybe I'll go
Speaker 1: take a trip to Miami and see if I like it,
Speaker 1: then DC, and then maybe I'll ask my friends what
Speaker 1: about Chicago, And then you choose Chicago. It's not just
Speaker 1: that you're like haunted by a Miami in DC in Austin.
Speaker 1: You're haunted by a fictional city in your head that
Speaker 1: has Miami's beaches and DC's museums and Austin's food, and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, gosh, I wish I lived in that city,
Speaker 1: you know, Miami, DC, Austin. Choosing to be spontaneous and
Speaker 1: keeping our options open means we fail to get the
Speaker 1: benefit of authentic connection. We get super bored, and we
Speaker 1: suffer from the pain of choice paralysis, and the alternative
Speaker 1: possibilities we fantasize about can continue haunting us long after
Speaker 1: we finally do make a choice. So what's the alternative here?
Speaker 1: Once you commit, suddenly your paralysis is broken through by
Speaker 1: being on fire with purpose. Your identity gets rewired, Your
Speaker 1: whole sense of meaning becomes connected to your commitment. Your
Speaker 1: sense of spiritual isolation gets replaced by a community of
Speaker 1: friends and colleagues and comrades, And your sense of boredom
Speaker 1: and shallowness gets replaced by this magic of the whole
Speaker 1: world coming alive to you because you know all the
Speaker 1: details of some corner of the world. But if rejecting
Speaker 1: the yolo, untethered life is so beneficial for our well being,
Speaker 1: why don't we do it more often? If the benefits
Speaker 1: of commitment are so obvious, why do so many of
Speaker 1: us get stuck in infinite browsing mode. We'll learn the
Speaker 1: reasons why when the Happiness Lab returns from the rink.
Speaker 1: I'd say at the beginning of the book, and I
Speaker 1: really believe this, Like this is not one of those
Speaker 1: self help books that's like I lost fifty pounds and
Speaker 1: you can too, or something, or I turned my life around.
Speaker 1: It really comes for me being a super fan of
Speaker 1: longhole heroes, not from me being one myself. Even though
Speaker 1: author Pete Davis is evangelical about the counterculture of commitment,
Speaker 1: he does occasionally succumb to temptation. I'm watching movies at
Speaker 1: night with my wife and we literally can't choose since
Speaker 1: she just starts laughing to herself, like You're the biggest
Speaker 1: diffrecrit in the world, and it isn't just the trivial stuff.
Speaker 1: Pete sometimes wonders if he should devote himself to a
Speaker 1: cause other than promoting the joys of dedication. You know,
Speaker 1: I sometimes read the news and I hear about the
Speaker 1: latest important cause somewhere else. Pete preaches mindfulness during these moments.
Speaker 1: He argues that the urge to drop everything in switch
Speaker 1: Tracks usually comes down to one particular emotion, a feeling
Speaker 1: that often leads us to act irrationally. Fear. We have
Speaker 1: a fear that we're gonna wake up twenty years from
Speaker 1: now and wish we had committed to something else. But
Speaker 1: we don't just experience fear about the thing we picked.
Speaker 1: We're often even more scared about the things we don't pick.
Speaker 1: The word decide uses the same Latin root as homicide,
Speaker 1: namely to kill. When we make choices, we're terrified that
Speaker 1: we might be killing off an alternative life path full
Speaker 1: of different branches. You only live once, so you better
Speaker 1: not head down the wrong path. It's a terror that's
Speaker 1: so common it's also become a modern acronym, one that's
Speaker 1: almost as well known as yolo. It's fomo, the fear
Speaker 1: of missing out. Fomo keeps us worried that whatever great
Speaker 1: option we do pick will cause us to miss out
Speaker 1: on future opportunities for other great opportunities. This option comes
Speaker 1: with a lot of responsibilities that are going to bind
Speaker 1: my future self and prevent them from being everywhere with
Speaker 1: everyone doing everything. Pete thinks we should fight these fears,
Speaker 1: but he can also relate to the worry we experience
Speaker 1: when we make a big decision. It comes from this
Speaker 1: good place, which is that we want to treat our
Speaker 1: future selves well. And I think are just misguided about
Speaker 1: what treating your future self well should look like. As
Speaker 1: we say on the Happiness lab our, minds lie to
Speaker 1: us when it comes to what will make us happy.
Speaker 1: We assume that treating our future selves well means leaving
Speaker 1: lots of options open. We assume that the foma we
Speaker 1: experience when making a decision is an accurate psychological warning,
Speaker 1: but the science shows that we're wrong on both counts.
Speaker 1: As soon as you commit to something, two wonderful things happen.
Speaker 1: The first wonderful thing, according to Pee, is that commitments
Speaker 1: tend to take on their own momentum, so externally, the
Speaker 1: thing that you're committed to opens itself up to you more.
Speaker 1: Let's take Pete's earlier example deciding which city to live in.
Speaker 1: Let's say you finally make the choice to move to Chicago.
Speaker 1: Once you actually go to the Windy City, you'll start
Speaker 1: visiting new shops and restaurants. You'll try the famous pizza.
Speaker 1: You'll meet locals who will inevitably make you appreciate the
Speaker 1: new home you've chosen, even if you were a bit
Speaker 1: on the fence about your Chicago decision before the act
Speaker 1: of committing means you wind up learning fantastic new things
Speaker 1: about the option you picked, stuff you couldn't have known
Speaker 1: until you actually move there. And these new things will
Speaker 1: inevitably make you happier and more excited about your decision.
Speaker 1: But it's not just that the external thing that you're
Speaker 1: committed to opens itself up to you. You change on
Speaker 1: the inside as well. We often assume that our preferences
Speaker 1: are stable, that what we like and don't like doesn't
Speaker 1: change over time, But the science shows that we're prone
Speaker 1: to rationalization. We unconsciously switch up even our most basic
Speaker 1: preferences to fit the situations we find ourselves in, so
Speaker 1: that we end up feeling good about however things wound up.
Speaker 1: Rationalization is a remarkable skill. It gets a very bad name.
Speaker 1: This is Dan Gilbert, Harvard University psychologist, an author of
Speaker 1: Stumbling on Happiness. Dan's an expert on the mental gymnastics
Speaker 1: our brains go through to feel better after we've made
Speaker 1: a decision. It's really the mind doing what it ought
Speaker 1: to do and what it does best, finding alternative ways
Speaker 1: to see reality that are just as reasonable, but that
Speaker 1: help us cope and help us deal with it. We
Speaker 1: kind of smirk when we talk about rationalization. I wish
Speaker 1: there were a different word for it. Dan did, in fact,
Speaker 1: come up with a few new words to rebrand our
Speaker 1: rationalization processes. He christened them our psychological immune system. Dan's
Speaker 1: work has observed countless examples in which our psychological immune
Speaker 1: system seamlessly allows us to feel good even after we've
Speaker 1: made a crappy decision or experienced disappointing outcomes. High school
Speaker 1: students who get rejected from a college they chose immediately
Speaker 1: begin thinking about that college's weaknesses. Voters who chose a
Speaker 1: losing candidate quickly start noticing that the candidate who got
Speaker 1: elected has some strengths they may not have seen before.
Speaker 1: And participants who chose to tell a lie quickly start
Speaker 1: to believe that the act of telling white lies is
Speaker 1: totally forgivable. Dan's research shows that even when we make
Speaker 1: a bad decision, it's unlikely our minds will realize that
Speaker 1: we made a bad decision, because our psychological immune systems
Speaker 1: will be there in the background, unconsciously cushioning the blow.
Speaker 1: I think if you understand the power of the psychological
Speaker 1: immune system are remarkable ability to rationalize in the face
Speaker 1: of adversity, it makes you braver. I think there's a
Speaker 1: lesson there for all of us. That lesson is that
Speaker 1: we should probably just suck it up and commit to
Speaker 1: the person, place where career we're considering, because even if
Speaker 1: it sucks more than we expected, we won't notice the
Speaker 1: suckiness as much as our lying minds think. But Dan
Speaker 1: argues that the existence of a psychological immune system should
Speaker 1: also make us keen to make commitments generally, and that's
Speaker 1: because the act of making a decision is what turns
Speaker 1: on our psychological immune systems in the first place. It's
Speaker 1: much easier to rationalize things you're stuck with than things
Speaker 1: you can change. That's just a hard and fast rule.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever rationalizes why their rental car is the best
Speaker 1: car in the world. They just take it back. But
Speaker 1: when you buy one, you've got to convince yourself you
Speaker 1: did the right thing. Dan designed an elegant study to
Speaker 1: test the role that commitments play and turning on the
Speaker 1: psychological immune system. He gave a group of students cameras
Speaker 1: and ask them to take a bunch of meaningful photos
Speaker 1: around campus. Participants were then allowed to print out their
Speaker 1: two favorite shots, but after the photos were printed, students
Speaker 1: were told that they'd only get to keep one of
Speaker 1: the two prints. They had to make a tough decision.
Speaker 1: Half of the photographers were told that this tough decision
Speaker 1: would be permanent. The British instructor running the class would
Speaker 1: be taking whichever print they didn't choose back to his
Speaker 1: office in London, never to be seen again. But the
Speaker 1: other half of students were told that their choice was reversible.
Speaker 1: The unchosen print would remain close by on campus so
Speaker 1: they could easily change their mind. Dan was interested in
Speaker 1: which group of students wound up happiest with their decision
Speaker 1: in the end, the students who were trapped in their
Speaker 1: first choice or the ones who got to change their minds.
Speaker 1: The results were pretty striking. Students who were stuck in
Speaker 1: their decision like the photo they chose significantly more than
Speaker 1: the ones who could switch. Most of us work hard
Speaker 1: to have our options open, but this little bit of
Speaker 1: wisdom suggests that were better rationalizers when our options are closed.
Speaker 1: But who among us says I want to go shop
Speaker 1: at places that won't allow me to return the items,
Speaker 1: I want to sign up for magazine subscriptions I can't
Speaker 1: ever cancel. None of us. So we make a mistake
Speaker 1: when we design our lives with maximal freedom, because that
Speaker 1: freedom is also the freedom to keep wondering if we
Speaker 1: did the right thing. We are really good at adapting
Speaker 1: to things, but it only happens if we commit to something.
Speaker 1: Author Pete Davis says the lesson we should take from
Speaker 1: Dan Gilbert's research is that instead of feeling fomo, we
Speaker 1: should fear not committing, we should fear not dedicating ourselves
Speaker 1: long haul to specific people, places, and crafts. What you
Speaker 1: miss out on by closing those one hundred doors and
Speaker 1: settling into a room is nothing compared to what you're
Speaker 1: going to missus out on if you never settle into
Speaker 1: a room, becoming an elder in a community, becoming a
Speaker 1: master of a craft, celebrating your tenth anniversary, seeing a
Speaker 1: project to get off the ground. And that's why Pete's
Speaker 1: becomes so obsessed with his long haul heroes. As we chatted,
Speaker 1: he brought up even more examples of change makers who
Speaker 1: picked a lane and stuck to it, watching this documentary
Speaker 1: biography of Nader in the seventies fighting for these consumer protections,
Speaker 1: or hearing about Jane Adams starting the settlement house movement.
Speaker 1: But there was one name I didn't expect to hear
Speaker 1: in Pete's list of long haul heroes. It's the grateful
Speaker 1: dead drummer Mickey Hart started a Yolo ranch. Wait Mickey
Speaker 1: Hart grateful dead drummer literal inventor of the acronym yolo.
Speaker 1: I thought he was kind of the antithesis of a
Speaker 1: long hauler. If you're a drummer, you should always know
Speaker 1: where the exit is. That's well, I say, you know,
Speaker 1: things can go wrong and you got to get out
Speaker 1: of here quick. But Pete had a very different interpretation
Speaker 1: of why Mickey used that now famous acronym. When he
Speaker 1: and his wife made that decision to buy their ranch.
Speaker 1: You know, they looked at each other and it was like,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna do it, we better make this commitment work.
Speaker 1: And they've now had it for decades and it has
Speaker 1: become their dream. So have we got yolo all wrong?
Speaker 1: Has Mickey figured out a philosophy of you only live
Speaker 1: once that really does promote happiness? The kids today they
Speaker 1: really think of yolo as you know, don't commit, leave
Speaker 1: all the doors open, never walk through any of them.
Speaker 1: And it's just not I think it's not what you meant.
Speaker 1: It's not what the no no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: not at all. I can't believe that it's not obvious
Speaker 1: the happiness lab will be right back. I did write
Speaker 1: a song called Happiness is drumming, and it turned into
Speaker 1: one of the big Grateful Dead songs called Fireing on
Speaker 1: the Mountain. As I chatted with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart,
Speaker 1: I was humbled to realize that he'd been carefully thinking
Speaker 1: about the path to happiness long before many happiness experts
Speaker 1: like me were even born. Life is short, and to
Speaker 1: find happiness you have to be in the now, in
Speaker 1: the moment that is happiness, which then you're living. You're
Speaker 1: not living in the past, you're not living in the future.
Speaker 1: You're living here now, and being in the moment will
Speaker 1: eventually lead to something marvelous, magnificent. So that's how I
Speaker 1: see yolo. Before talking to Mickey, I'd assumed his brand
Speaker 1: of yolo would be lived fast and party like a
Speaker 1: rock star. But apparently I and others have gotten Mickey's
Speaker 1: original notion of yolo very very wrong. I never used
Speaker 1: yolo when I was partying at all. I'd never even
Speaker 1: thought of it, you know, like, Okay, let's have a
Speaker 1: Yolo night for Mickey. The mantra that you only live
Speaker 1: once isn't about partying. It's about making sure that you're
Speaker 1: using the precious life you have wisely and that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean switching tracks whenever the urch strikes. To Mickey, yolo
Speaker 1: means dedicating yourself to the things you love for the
Speaker 1: long haul. Go at it with everything you have. I mean,
Speaker 1: once you find it, there's no rest. It's not a
Speaker 1: frivolous thing. It's a sohole thing. You know, when there's
Speaker 1: a Yolo moment, you really know it, you don't want
Speaker 1: to throw it away frivolously. It's more of a spiritual experience.
Speaker 1: Mickey had exactly that kind of spiritual experience when he
Speaker 1: and his wife first laid eyes on the property that
Speaker 1: would later become Yolo Ranch. I know that we had
Speaker 1: the chills when we came up the driveway and looked around.
Speaker 1: It just had that big good feeling, like whoa gosh.
Speaker 1: Once you feel it, you have to commit to it.
Speaker 1: Mickey's version of yolo is the opposite of recklessness. He
Speaker 1: thinks you should yell the acronym whenever you recognize that
Speaker 1: you're ready to pick the person or career or home
Speaker 1: that you're going to stick with for the long haul,
Speaker 1: just as he did with his beloved Ranch. It was
Speaker 1: a commitment that we knew was the right thing, and
Speaker 1: Mickey did indeed fully dedicate himself to that new investment
Speaker 1: more than three decades after he saw that real estate listing.
Speaker 1: Yolo Ranch is still Mickey's home, as well as his
Speaker 1: music studio and artistic retreat. Both of his kids grew
Speaker 1: up at the ranch. Mickey's daughter Rhea was even born there,
Speaker 1: born in the bed we still have now. But the
Speaker 1: multi decade commitment he's shown to Yolo Ranch is only
Speaker 1: one example of the joy Mickey gets from dedicating himself
Speaker 1: to long haul pursuits. That's the way it is with
Speaker 1: me for everything I do or I don't do it. Period.
Speaker 1: Take for example, the commitment that Mickey has made to
Speaker 1: his now five decade plus career as a member of
Speaker 1: the Grateful Dead. It's hard to make a living of
Speaker 1: being a drummer. Mickey first committed to becoming a drummer
Speaker 1: as a kid, but his loud attic practice sessions did
Speaker 1: not impress the Heart family's downstairs neighbor. And he would
Speaker 1: come up the stairs and bang on the door, and
Speaker 1: my mom would open it and she would have a
Speaker 1: broom and she would say to him, over my dead body,
Speaker 1: and she closed the door on it. Dedicating himself to
Speaker 1: the craft of percussion early on, also met missing out
Speaker 1: on other teenage hobbies. I spent all my time in
Speaker 1: the drum room in the music room in high school.
Speaker 1: That's why he never graduated, because I was in the
Speaker 1: music room with the drums. There is a downside to it,
Speaker 1: you know, because it occupies so much of your time
Speaker 1: and your energy, so you have to be careful of that.
Speaker 1: Mickey also argues that we need to be careful when
Speaker 1: a big yolo moment comes up. We need to make
Speaker 1: sure that we're ready for the commitment. It's the courage
Speaker 1: to give yourself to this feeling. You have to give
Speaker 1: a big part of who you are if you're really
Speaker 1: going to go yolo. Mickey admitted that he too has
Speaker 1: been tempted to jump ship from his commitments. A lot
Speaker 1: of things pop up you might want to do. I
Speaker 1: brought a flute home once and my mother just she
Speaker 1: almost fell down. But Mickey has seen the benefits that
Speaker 1: come from sticking things out. The biggest upside he's observed
Speaker 1: is that choosing to dedicate yourself for the long haul
Speaker 1: can provide a sort of spiritual compass to guide you
Speaker 1: when things get tough. I've wound up in trouble. You know,
Speaker 1: I've been to jail a few times, and I did
Speaker 1: all the wrong things she could do in your life.
Speaker 1: But drumming somehow sustained me and allowed me to get
Speaker 1: through all those dark times. Mickey has also observed that
Speaker 1: sticking things out comes with a second big benefit. As
Speaker 1: Pete Davis explained earlier, committing yourself to one particular person
Speaker 1: or ranch, or craft or career allows the thing you
Speaker 1: committed to to open itself up to you. If you
Speaker 1: don't make that step, the doors will never open. You
Speaker 1: don't know what door is going to open, but there
Speaker 1: will be doors that opened that aren't fantastic. Mickey likes
Speaker 1: to quote the writer Joseph Campbell. Joe and I were
Speaker 1: good friends, the guy who coined the phrase follow your bliss,
Speaker 1: doors will open where there were no doors. That's really
Speaker 1: the Campbellian way of looking at things. But Mickey's the
Speaker 1: first to admit that it takes faith to trust the
Speaker 1: power of your commitments and that your psychological immune system
Speaker 1: will be there to catch you if you fall. It
Speaker 1: takes courage to go where you've never been before and
Speaker 1: do what you've never done before. Or do something and
Speaker 1: commit to it with everything you have. But that's okay
Speaker 1: because that's the fun of all of it. That's life.
Speaker 1: That's life. I mean, if you want yolo, you gotta
Speaker 1: earn it. So Pete Davis was right. I and Drake
Speaker 1: and so many others today have Mickey's Yolo acronym all wrong.
Speaker 1: The initial use of yolo was not yolo, don't make
Speaker 1: any commitments. It was yolo dive into a commitment. You
Speaker 1: only live once, and I'd like to experience those things.
Speaker 1: And Pete is pretty excited to help set the Yolo
Speaker 1: record straight. I want to reclaim yolo for the dedicated,
Speaker 1: not for the browsers. And the science shows that the
Speaker 1: best way to use this precious life, one that we
Speaker 1: really only will live once, is to commit to the
Speaker 1: act of committing. When you commit, it's like planting a
Speaker 1: seed in the desert. It's the beginning of a reforestation project.
Speaker 1: And if you ask any Longhole hero how they feel
Speaker 1: about what they've done, the vast majority say that it
Speaker 1: makes them feel more at peace in the world, and
Speaker 1: it makes them overwhelmed by joy. When we face big
Speaker 1: decisions in life, we tend to dwell on what we'll
Speaker 1: miss out on when we make a commitment. We often
Speaker 1: worry that choosing one thing, whether it's a spouse or
Speaker 1: a career, or a craft or a place to live,
Speaker 1: we'll mean closing doors on better opportunities for our future.
Speaker 1: But what our lying minds don't realize is that the
Speaker 1: best gift we can give our future selves is the
Speaker 1: joy of the long haul, all the benefits of connection
Speaker 1: and depth and joy that can only come from investment
Speaker 1: and dedication. So the next time you're stuck on that
Speaker 1: metaphorical menu screen of life, harness your inner Mickey heart
Speaker 1: and scream yolo. I'm ready for all the incredible opportunities
Speaker 1: that lie on the other side of this new door
Speaker 1: of dedication, ones that I'll never even know about until
Speaker 1: I turn the knob and walk through. I hope that
Speaker 1: opening these doors of commitment will lead you to all
Speaker 1: the happiness and joy that Pete saw and his long
Speaker 1: Call heroes, And I hope at least some of those
Speaker 1: doors will lead you back here once again for the
Speaker 1: next episode of The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley,
Speaker 1: Emily Ann Vaughan and Courtney Guerino. Joseph Friedman checked Our
Speaker 1: x Our. Original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with
Speaker 1: additional scoring, mixing, and mastering by Evan Viola. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Milabelle Heather Fame, John Schnarz, Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Royston Preserve, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: and my agent, Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Pushkin Industries and me Doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 1: To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts,