Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. If you're a regular fan
Speaker 1: of this podcast, then you're probably used to me sitting
Speaker 1: in the interviewer seat. But I recently had a chance
Speaker 1: to switch things up a bit and get interviewed myself.
Speaker 1: In fact, I had a chance to sit down with
Speaker 1: none other than the legendary Katie krek for her podcast
Speaker 1: Next Question. I'll be honest, it was pretty surreal to
Speaker 1: sit across from Katie in the studio. I mean, she's
Speaker 1: interviewed some of the most important and influential people on
Speaker 1: the planet. But I quickly learned that Katie's got a
Speaker 1: lot of her own thoughts about happiness, and she pushed
Speaker 1: me to think more critically about the science behind my work.
Speaker 1: I did worry that I wouldn't be as exciting a
Speaker 1: guest as Joe Biden or Anthony Fauci or some of
Speaker 1: the other amazing people that Katie has interviewed, but she
Speaker 1: still seemed pretty happy with our conversation, and so I
Speaker 1: wanted to share it with you here today. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy it. I'm Katie Kuric and this is Next Question.
Speaker 1: You know, having a podcast on happiness teaching a whole
Speaker 1: classed Ivyleague students generation after generation. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: think that we get happiness wrong. Happiness, that feeling of
Speaker 1: joy or contentment that we all seem to crave, can
Speaker 1: also seem totally unattainable in this day and age. In fact,
Speaker 1: maybe we need to replace the word happiness altogether. True
Speaker 1: flourishing is taking on challenges, embracing failure, you know, navigating
Speaker 1: these negative emotions that might be normative. And so I think,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be better to have a different word,
Speaker 1: But in some ways we're stuck with happiness. Doctor Laurie
Speaker 1: Santos is a cognitive scientist who's been studying happiness in
Speaker 1: the lab as well as through the class she teaches
Speaker 1: at Yale. But she's the first to admit even she
Speaker 1: isn't happy all the time. Some of us are kind
Speaker 1: of genetically lucky to have a little bit of a
Speaker 1: predisposition to happiness. I'm probably the opposite. I think I
Speaker 1: was born on a rainy, like, loudry, mixed kind of day.
Speaker 1: So what do we need to understand about happiness? Why
Speaker 1: is it so difficult to come by? And why is
Speaker 1: true happiness such freaking hard work? By the way, if
Speaker 1: you want to get smarter Every morning with a breakdown
Speaker 1: of the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness
Speaker 1: and pop culture. Sign up for our daily newsletter, Wake
Speaker 1: Up Call by going to katiecurreic dot com. Laurie Santos,
Speaker 1: come on down. I'm so excited to be talking to you. Ditto, Ditto.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the basics. What exactly is happiness? We
Speaker 1: did a very long time answering that, Katie, But so
Speaker 1: social scientists tend to think of happiness as being happy
Speaker 1: in your life and being happy with your life. So
Speaker 1: being happy in your life is like you've just got
Speaker 1: lots of positive emotions. There's like joy and smiling and
Speaker 1: after as opposed to kind of negative emotions like sadness,
Speaker 1: anger and saying. It's not saying you have no negative emotions,
Speaker 1: it's just that the ratio is pretty good. That's being
Speaker 1: happy in your life. But being happy with your life
Speaker 1: is how you think about your life. Is the answer
Speaker 1: to your question, like all things considered, how satisfied are
Speaker 1: you with your life? And if you say yes, then
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. And I love this definition because you know,
Speaker 1: we all know that there are times that those two
Speaker 1: things dissociate right that you know you're doing something that's
Speaker 1: making you incredibly satisfied with your life. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: you have a new baby or a new job, but
Speaker 1: it's hard, you know, in your life there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stress and things like that. And I think we've
Speaker 1: all met people, you especially being you know, with the
Speaker 1: rich and famous folks, where in a second or no no,
Speaker 1: in their life, like you know, you're flying first class
Speaker 1: and great food, but with your life there's a real
Speaker 1: sense of emptiness and a lack of meaning. And so
Speaker 1: we have these misconceptions when it comes to the things
Speaker 1: that make us happen. Are we using the wrong words?
Speaker 1: Should it be contentment? Should it be fulfillment? I think
Speaker 1: the Greeks, you know, and the ancients as usual had
Speaker 1: it right. You know, they talked about you diamondy a flourishing,
Speaker 1: and I think would be a better word, because to
Speaker 1: have true flourishing, it's not like you're happy all the time.
Speaker 1: Like true flourishing isn't toxic positivity where you're like smiling
Speaker 1: like some terrible yellow emojing where you're like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm happy all the time. And so what I try
Speaker 1: to do is to explain to folks that true happiness
Speaker 1: allows for the normal kinds of spots where you're not
Speaker 1: going to feel great, like that's typical, that's normal, that's
Speaker 1: what you need for a good, ultimately happy life. But
Speaker 1: people probably should think about the word flourishing or fulfillment, contentment.
Speaker 1: It just seems much more stable. Happiness seems like at
Speaker 1: the high end of the emotional scale, right, and that's
Speaker 1: unattainable because nobody's happy all the time. Yeah. My colleague
Speaker 1: Dan Gilbert, professor at Harvard, who comes a lot on
Speaker 1: my podcast. Dan's vond of saying that you know, happily
Speaker 1: ever after only exists if you have like three minutes
Speaker 1: left to live, like, it's just not a destination. And
Speaker 1: I think that's another thing we get wrong. We think
Speaker 1: I'm going to do something and get there. You know,
Speaker 1: I'll get married and I will be happy. Or I'll
Speaker 1: get this new raise and I will be happy. Or
Speaker 1: you know, my college students, I'll get into the perfect
Speaker 1: medical school or get the perfect rates and I will
Speaker 1: be happy. And that's just not how it works. My
Speaker 1: late husband used to say that I was born on
Speaker 1: a sunny day, which I thought was such a nice compliment,
Speaker 1: and it made me wonder if some people are hardwired
Speaker 1: for happiness, Is there a happiness set point that varies
Speaker 1: from person to person, from biology to biology. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some evidence that that might be at least partly the case.
Speaker 1: And the evidence comes from these studies on what's called heritability. Right,
Speaker 1: What is it called heritability? It's just not irritability irritability. Heritability,
Speaker 1: which is this like big word of saying, you know,
Speaker 1: how much of the variance that we see in the population.
Speaker 1: You know, some people are happy, not so happy. How
Speaker 1: much of that is due to your biology? How much
Speaker 1: of that is due to kind of how you grow up? Right?
Speaker 1: And the way we test heritability is to look at twins. Right.
Speaker 1: Some twins are identical. That means they're genetically exactly the same,
Speaker 1: the same way, raise the same way. Right. Some are fraternal,
Speaker 1: which means they're genetically different, Like they're just as similar
Speaker 1: as regular brothers and sisters. And so if happiness is
Speaker 1: really built in, then identical twins should be much more
Speaker 1: similar in their happiness level than regular brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: Tons of studies have looked at this, and what you
Speaker 1: find is that's true, but a little bit. Heritability estimates
Speaker 1: are at about thirty percent, and that's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's there, but scientifically speaking, it's kind of small. What
Speaker 1: does that mean. It means there's something to be said for,
Speaker 1: you know, being born on a sunny day. Some of
Speaker 1: us are kind of genetically lucky to have a little
Speaker 1: bit of a predisposition to happiness, but it's not as
Speaker 1: much as we, I think assume. So it sounds like
Speaker 1: nurture is more important than nature when it comes to happiness.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, and I think it's important not to
Speaker 1: discount nature. Right. There are some people who have a
Speaker 1: harder nurture than others because they've got to put more
Speaker 1: work in, but everybody can put the right work in
Speaker 1: to change things. Well, I wanted to ask you what
Speaker 1: sets you up for happiness? I mean, is it a
Speaker 1: secure home, life, loving parents, financial security, positive affirmation, success,
Speaker 1: and however you define it. I feel like I'm really lucky, honestly, Laurie,
Speaker 1: in all those categories. I think of people who have
Speaker 1: parents who didn't give them unconditional love and how that
Speaker 1: really kind of reverberates throughout their lives. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously those things have an impact. Right. You know, trauma,
Speaker 1: which is the kind of thing you're talking about, right
Speaker 1: where parents you know, your abusive parents or with whole
Speaker 1: subscene or exactly or you know, they could even be affluent,
Speaker 1: you know, successful parents, just very distant or really harsh, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all kind of grow up with different
Speaker 1: levels of that, and you can look at levels that
Speaker 1: are pretty extreme, and scientists do that, right. This is
Speaker 1: a lot of the work on trauma and what's often
Speaker 1: called post traumatic stress disorder. Many of us have heard
Speaker 1: about that, right, And it comes from the fact that
Speaker 1: when you experience trauma sometimes that can have a longstanding effect.
Speaker 1: But even though you know post traumatic stress disorder PTSD
Speaker 1: gets a lot of airtime, scientists have also looked at
Speaker 1: what you might consider the opposite, which is called post
Speaker 1: traumatic growth. Right. You go through an awful, terrible incident
Speaker 1: that you never would have wished on yourself or anyone else,
Speaker 1: and some good comes from that. You feel like you
Speaker 1: come out stronger, you feel like you come out more resilient,
Speaker 1: you feel like you come out more socially connected to
Speaker 1: the people you really care about. And this is what's
Speaker 1: called post traumatic growth. And I'm kind of curious. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you and I are talking after you've been
Speaker 1: so helpfully public about your breast cancer diagnosis. That could
Speaker 1: be a trauma that leads to PTSD. You know, individuals
Speaker 1: who experience cancer diagnosis and have to go through the process,
Speaker 1: you know, terrible and awfully traumatic. But you kind of
Speaker 1: resonate with that, this idea of the post traumatic growth
Speaker 1: a bit. I mean, I think because I've had so
Speaker 1: much experience witnessing cancer much more severely in both my
Speaker 1: late husband and my sister who also passed away, and
Speaker 1: I became so knowledgeable about cancer. I have a very
Speaker 1: really healthy and solid understanding about my particular situation, and
Speaker 1: instead of being traumatized, it actually increased my gratitude because
Speaker 1: I know, unlike them, both my husband and sister were
Speaker 1: diagnosed with stage four cancer. Mine was discovered early, when
Speaker 1: it's not only treatable but curable, and so if anything,
Speaker 1: it wasn't traumatic. It was actually weirdly life affirming. It
Speaker 1: was a death sentence for my husband and my sister
Speaker 1: when they were diagnosed, and the fact that it was
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, the fact that science has really progressed,
Speaker 1: I felt grateful and so This is what we hear
Speaker 1: a lot, both with kind of diagnoses like yours, but
Speaker 1: even cases where individuals find out they have a terminal
Speaker 1: situation or things that you couldn't even imagine, you're There
Speaker 1: are accounts of parents who've lost young children who obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, the most traumatic thing any parent could imagine.
Speaker 1: You know, Obviously they're not happy about it, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: wish it again, but they'll say on mass more good
Speaker 1: things came of it than I expected, right, And that
Speaker 1: is a profound thing about human psychology and human nature.
Speaker 1: The worst thing possible that we could ever imagine happens,
Speaker 1: and we say, there are parts of this at least
Speaker 1: that I'm grateful for, or there's parts of this that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't change. I've grown from this. This is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest mistakes that we make about happiness. We
Speaker 1: think it's only our circumstances. If things go well, I'll
Speaker 1: be great, and God forbid things go badly. But in practice,
Speaker 1: when these things actually happen to people were much more resilient,
Speaker 1: and we often take much more meaning and purpose from
Speaker 1: those events than we often expect. And I think my
Speaker 1: resilience you mentioned going public just as I try to
Speaker 1: spread awareness and educate people about calling or prevention and
Speaker 1: encourage them to get colonoscopies, and got one on television myself.
Speaker 1: I knew that by being a public figure and talking
Speaker 1: about it, I had the potential to actually save lives.
Speaker 1: And so for me translating it into I don't mean
Speaker 1: to sound cheesy, but some form of service, it actually
Speaker 1: is very grounding and satisfying and fulfilling for me. And
Speaker 1: that's what I think sometimes we get wrong about happiness.
Speaker 1: I think resilious it's finding strength within. So sometimes we
Speaker 1: are in a situation that we're unprepared for and you
Speaker 1: find yourself digging deeper into something that you didn't even
Speaker 1: know you possessed more after the break. I'm an artist
Speaker 1: in New York City, so when I'm creating or discovering,
Speaker 1: that's where i find my happiness usually most of the time.
Speaker 1: So happiness, you can try and find it, you can
Speaker 1: try to inspire it. I also think you got to
Speaker 1: give energy to get energy, so do that you can
Speaker 1: find a lot of happiness. We're back with Lorie Santos.
Speaker 1: All this focus on quote unquote self care, which I
Speaker 1: think to a certain extent we need to focus and
Speaker 1: take care of ourselves and the oxygen mask and all
Speaker 1: that jazz. On the other hand, it seems like we
Speaker 1: have become so self focused that we're missing the point
Speaker 1: about serving others, being kind to others. Those things are
Speaker 1: proven to increase your happiness, right, Lorie. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: one of the biggest cross cultural universals in happiness science
Speaker 1: right now is that doing nice things for other people
Speaker 1: makes you happier. If you look at people who are
Speaker 1: controlled for the level of income they have, people who
Speaker 1: donate more of their money to charity are happier. People
Speaker 1: who just tend to just be more self focused are
Speaker 1: less happy than the people who are out there doing
Speaker 1: stuff for other people. And even if you force people
Speaker 1: to do nice stuff for others, they wind up feeling happier.
Speaker 1: And do you think this whole emphasis on self care
Speaker 1: and wellness has had the adverse effect in some ways?
Speaker 1: Have you looked at that? Yeah, definitely. It's a relatively
Speaker 1: new phenomenon, isn't it. I mean I feel like sort
Speaker 1: of the self care wellness industry has really blossomed and
Speaker 1: just the last five years. Yeah, I think it's problematic
Speaker 1: in two ways. Again, One is this focus on the self, right,
Speaker 1: you know, me, me, me, when again all the data
Speaker 1: suggest that doing for others would be better. I think
Speaker 1: another problem is it like reflects this notion that we
Speaker 1: have that like our circumstances matter for happiness. Right, if
Speaker 1: I could just like have it be you know, bubble
Speaker 1: bats and rainbows and first class flights, then my life
Speaker 1: would be great. And it's really missing out on the
Speaker 1: things that can actually matter for our happiness. Were in
Speaker 1: some ways even just a simple act of spending our money,
Speaker 1: We're doing it wrong. Spending on things that we think
Speaker 1: are going to make us feel good, I think aren't
Speaker 1: going to bring us joy, and they might not bring
Speaker 1: us the joy we think. We're in New York City,
Speaker 1: the epicenter of type A strivers, right, and I think
Speaker 1: there's one thing that has hurt my happiness quotient, if
Speaker 1: you will, is always striving, because once you get something,
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, what am I going to do next?
Speaker 1: Where am I going to go? How am I going
Speaker 1: to achieve something? More? Talk about how these type A
Speaker 1: kind of super driven people, because I'm transitioning to your
Speaker 1: your Yale class where you at them in droves, how
Speaker 1: that impacts your happiness. I mean, it's sometimes funny to
Speaker 1: people when they hear I teach this class on happiness
Speaker 1: to Yale students, because the lay person's assumption is like
Speaker 1: Yale students haven't made They're nineteen, you know, many of
Speaker 1: them are wealthy or at least well connected. Yet you know,
Speaker 1: one fourth of them decided to take a class on happiness.
Speaker 1: What year did you start teaching it? First? In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: and it was It became the largest class ever in
Speaker 1: Yale's history, and one quarter of the students enrolled, right,
Speaker 1: And I cannot tells you that these you know, type
Speaker 1: A very driven Yale students are voting with their feet.
Speaker 1: They've especially at Yale, they've gotten everything they've wanted. You know,
Speaker 1: probably since these kids were twelve years old, they dreamed
Speaker 1: of getting into an Ivy League school, and now they're
Speaker 1: there and it's still not doing what they expect, which
Speaker 1: only proves like all these things that we talked about
Speaker 1: are not necessarily the key. What's missing for them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's often the things that they are having
Speaker 1: an opportunity cost on because they're so driven at their academics.
Speaker 1: It's simple things like sleep and taking care of their
Speaker 1: physical health. It's often social connection, right. These are students
Speaker 1: who are working on homework into the night. They're not
Speaker 1: getting the same social connection that you expect. And honestly,
Speaker 1: it's just having this kind of mistaken idea that more
Speaker 1: and more and more is going to be good. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not stopic to kind of you smell the roses
Speaker 1: and reflect on the accomplishments you've gotten, because they're thinking
Speaker 1: about what grades are going to make, and how are
Speaker 1: they going to get into a good law school, and
Speaker 1: how are they going to get that job at Goldman
Speaker 1: Sachs or you know, all those things that I would
Speaker 1: imagine detract from just being present and enjoying the moment exactly.
Speaker 1: There's work on what's known as journey mindset, right, which
Speaker 1: is this idea that you're not kind of going for
Speaker 1: the next thing, you're not looking at what you're arriving towards.
Speaker 1: The goal is not then it's not law school or
Speaker 1: Goldman Sacks, we're even getting into Yale. It's kind of
Speaker 1: what you're going to learn and get along the way.
Speaker 1: It's really being present across that and I think that
Speaker 1: we've raised, honestly, not just my Yale students, but a
Speaker 1: generation of young people that have dropped the journey mindset right.
Speaker 1: They are careerist from as early as we can detect,
Speaker 1: and that means that they're just going to jump to
Speaker 1: the next accolade. How can we tamp down this tremendous
Speaker 1: pressure that's really detracting from being a happy, whole person.
Speaker 1: You imagine if Yale and Harvard and Stanford and all
Speaker 1: the big schools got together, like a nuclear d escalation,
Speaker 1: and we all said, you know what, here the minimum
Speaker 1: standards you need to be a good Yale student. Once
Speaker 1: you meet this minimum standards, go into a lottery and
Speaker 1: you'll might get in or you might not. I think
Speaker 1: this would be first of all, I think you'd be accurate,
Speaker 1: But I think it would also allow students to see that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have to keep hustling, and I
Speaker 1: think the hustle starts earlier and earlier. I think you
Speaker 1: know what you said is correct. I think parents really
Speaker 1: have a role to kind of scale this back. And
Speaker 1: I think, you know, it can sometimes be really tough
Speaker 1: for parents because they obviously want what's best for their kids.
Speaker 1: You know, if there's a kind of accolade out there
Speaker 1: that your child doesn't have it so easy to kind
Speaker 1: of want them to strive for it. I think working
Speaker 1: with your kids to kind of back them up, talk
Speaker 1: to them about what they're learning along the journey, make
Speaker 1: it clear that you're going to love them no matter what,
Speaker 1: and don't push them just because you want that Yale
Speaker 1: sticker on the back of your car. You can buy
Speaker 1: one even if your kid doesn't go to Yale. Dirty
Speaker 1: So I'm curious what you heard from your students. You
Speaker 1: talk to so many of these kids. I mean, you
Speaker 1: had a whole case study every semester. What did they
Speaker 1: talk about and why were they taking your class? There's
Speaker 1: lots of evidence that this generation, and this is true
Speaker 1: at Yale too, is just facing the biggest mental health
Speaker 1: crisis that we've seen in the history of the human species.
Speaker 1: Like right now, there's race of depression nationally at colleges
Speaker 1: are at levels like forty percent of students report being
Speaker 1: too depressed to function most days. Over sixty percent say
Speaker 1: they're overwhelmingly anxious. More than one in ten has seriously
Speaker 1: considered suicide. So if you're looking at a group of
Speaker 1: ten college students, one of them might be contemplating taking
Speaker 1: their own life, right, Like, that's really how bad the
Speaker 1: mental health situation has gotten on campus. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: even tell you what you're just seeing in the low
Speaker 1: grade kind of stress and disappointment these students are facing.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll run into a student in the courtyard
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, how's it going, And they'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: if I could only get to mid terms or if
Speaker 1: I can only fast forward to the summer to get
Speaker 1: out of this. And I would have kind of two
Speaker 1: reactions to that of like, what college is so precious
Speaker 1: since so short, Like how can you be fast forwarding this?
Speaker 1: But then my other reactions like, oh, yeah, we could
Speaker 1: only get to mid terms, you know. So I was
Speaker 1: like realizing, like, wow, you know, these are misconceptions that
Speaker 1: I was having too. You know, even though it was
Speaker 1: so acute in my students that kind of overwhelm and
Speaker 1: stress they were facing, I kind of saw it in
Speaker 1: my self too. You know. I'm worried that we weren't
Speaker 1: being good mentors for them to help them out of this.
Speaker 1: You know. I guess maybe because I'm I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of self flagellation, but I do wonder if people
Speaker 1: of my generation parents fucked up. Well it's yes, you
Speaker 1: know it did the best secret Yeah, yeah, blah blah.
Speaker 1: And I wonder, I wonder if my generation style of
Speaker 1: parenting has contributed to this, because you know that everybody
Speaker 1: gets a trophy. You have to fix things for your kids.
Speaker 1: You can't have them suffer because it's too painful for you.
Speaker 1: You can't have them be disappointed. And are the chickens
Speaker 1: coming home to roost? I think so, although I think
Speaker 1: there's also lots of evidence that you know, society and
Speaker 1: a lot of these structure has changed, right. You know,
Speaker 1: the last twenty years were also the time when the
Speaker 1: news was talking a lot about stranger changer. You know,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be seen as a good parent unless you
Speaker 1: were trying to protect your children. Again, I think institutions
Speaker 1: like mine, you know, like focused on meritocracy, and in
Speaker 1: a way that's great. You know, anyone can get into Yale, now,
Speaker 1: anyone can get into you. Oh why aren't you giving
Speaker 1: your child the resources they need to do that? And
Speaker 1: I think that that focus on higher education in these
Speaker 1: next steps made it so that failure seemed scary. But
Speaker 1: I think that that did mean that the kids today
Speaker 1: are growing up with different kinds of norms when it
Speaker 1: comes to failures, different kinds of norms when it comes
Speaker 1: to parental involvement, different kinds of norms when it comes
Speaker 1: to what they're expected to know, just at different ages.
Speaker 1: We have college students who have never used an alarm clock.
Speaker 1: Their parents are their alarm clock. They call, you know,
Speaker 1: to make sure their child gets up in the morning,
Speaker 1: you know, at nineteen twenty one years old. Lily from
Speaker 1: New York. I'm a teacher. I think the pandemic really
Speaker 1: affected kids really negatively, and they're having a really hard
Speaker 1: time figuring out how to socialize in the way that
Speaker 1: we did when we were kids, when life was quote
Speaker 1: unquote normal. So I think the socializing, the lack of
Speaker 1: social skills is we're finding kids like really inverting and
Speaker 1: struggling to reach out to people. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: There's things within your control and there's things outside. Focus
Speaker 1: on those things that are within your control and you'll
Speaker 1: do better and we're back. You have just started an
Speaker 1: online course that's free to teenagers. It's called The Science
Speaker 1: of Well Being. What prompted you to do that, Laurie, Well,
Speaker 1: it had done this class, you know, live on Yale's campus,
Speaker 1: and we got tons and tons of press for it,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the emails I was getting from
Speaker 1: parents was saying, you could you make this available? Was
Speaker 1: there any way I could see the syllabus? I want
Speaker 1: my daughter who's in middle school, I want my son
Speaker 1: who's in high school to get this content. And it
Speaker 1: made me realize that a lot of the skills I
Speaker 1: was teaching Yale students, we want kids who are younger
Speaker 1: than that to learn these things. So is it different
Speaker 1: teaching teens than it is teaching college students. Yeah, yes
Speaker 1: and no. Yes in the sense that you know, teens
Speaker 1: face different kinds of contexts where these kinds of principles
Speaker 1: and these misconceptions come up. Right, They're not worried about
Speaker 1: salary and you know, getting married. They're worried about, you know,
Speaker 1: getting good grades and thinking about colleges and navigating how
Speaker 1: they're portrayed on social media rights. In some ways, there
Speaker 1: are lots of similar stressors, but they kind of play
Speaker 1: out in different ways, And so the new class really
Speaker 1: uses the same kind of science concepts. Those things are
Speaker 1: the same, but we're kind of talking about them in
Speaker 1: a context that teens can really relate to them. You know,
Speaker 1: so if we're talking about your circumstances don't matter. We're
Speaker 1: not using examples of like getting promotions at work. We're
Speaker 1: using examples of like, you know, the grade that you
Speaker 1: got on your homework lass Thursday. We're sort of talking
Speaker 1: about the kinds of things that are on teens minds.
Speaker 1: Are there some basic skills that you're really trying to
Speaker 1: give both the kids in college and also teenagers. One
Speaker 1: of the great things that I've seen with the Yale
Speaker 1: students in so far, with the teens who've taken the glasses,
Speaker 1: they want an evidence based approach. They don't want to
Speaker 1: hear a bunch of platitudes about what they should do.
Speaker 1: They like, what does the science say? Because that's great.
Speaker 1: But then we just walk through just really simple behavior
Speaker 1: thought pattern changes that you can engage with when a
Speaker 1: stressor comes up. You know, so if you're feeling stressed,
Speaker 1: what are good behaviors? You know, maybe spending more time
Speaker 1: on TikTok not as good the evidence suggests, But if
Speaker 1: you can move your body a little bit more, if
Speaker 1: you can contact a friend, if you take a walk, sleep,
Speaker 1: maybe take a walk or even you know, think about
Speaker 1: what you could do for someone else, you know, getting
Speaker 1: back to this idea of being other oriented, these behaviors
Speaker 1: that you could use in the moment to fix this.
Speaker 1: We also spend a lot of time on changing your
Speaker 1: thought patterns. I think we think we are our thoughts
Speaker 1: like you know, they just pop up and that's reality.
Speaker 1: But there's so much evidence to say, no, that's just
Speaker 1: the voice in our head, and there are simple techniques
Speaker 1: we can use to change our thought patterns. You know.
Speaker 1: A big one for teenagers is trying to sort of
Speaker 1: shut off that self critic in your head. You know that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for teenagers. I mean I do negative self talk all
Speaker 1: the time. And some of my friends here at Katiekirk
Speaker 1: Media say, you know you are what you say, and
Speaker 1: that actually is scientifically proven, right totally. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: so much evidence that what you're saying to yourself is
Speaker 1: affecting how you perform. For example, if you're really self critical,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to procrastinate because you're screaming yourself. You
Speaker 1: can have set up this fear in your own mind.
Speaker 1: There's also lots of evidence at what you say it
Speaker 1: to yourself can affect your physiology. The best advice is
Speaker 1: to talk to yourself like you would a friend. If
Speaker 1: your best friend was really screwing up, you wouldn't be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's fine, you know, it's great, You're wonderful, everybody loves you.
Speaker 1: You'd be like, you know, we need to deal with this,
Speaker 1: like what's going on? Like I love you and I
Speaker 1: really care about you, and I want you. Wouldn't be
Speaker 1: like you suck, like why are You wouldn't scream at
Speaker 1: your best friend and be great him or her, but
Speaker 1: you would, you know, call a spade a spade and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we got we gotta deal with this. This isn't going well,
Speaker 1: And you would be curious. You'd be like what's going on?
Speaker 1: Like why are you doing this? Like how can we
Speaker 1: fix this? You'd be you'd be gentle, you'd be proactive,
Speaker 1: you'd be problem solving oriented. But you wouldn't scream. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't be mean. And that's the kind of voice we're
Speaker 1: trying to to kind of cultivate. But the evidence suggests
Speaker 1: that these practices really work. So what can we do
Speaker 1: with social media? I means the genie out of the bottle?
Speaker 1: How are you talking to teens and to ladies like
Speaker 1: me about kind of monitoring it and moderating it. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: in some sense, the genie is out of the bottle, right.
Speaker 1: We're not ever going to go back to, you know,
Speaker 1: the way we were, you know, when you and I
Speaker 1: were in college. We're always going to have probably these
Speaker 1: devices in our pockets that have the temptation of comparison,
Speaker 1: that have these technologies available. I think what we can do, though,
Speaker 1: is that we can be a little bit more mindful
Speaker 1: about how these things are making us feel. And I
Speaker 1: think that that's important, right, because we don't want to
Speaker 1: deny the benefits of these things. One of the strategies
Speaker 1: I teach my students comes from the journalist Catherine Price,
Speaker 1: who's this lovely book called How to Break Up with
Speaker 1: Your Phone, where she argues, you don't have to break
Speaker 1: up with your phone, but like couples, counseling probably required,
Speaker 1: you know, for the relationship. And she has this acronym
Speaker 1: that she uses called WWW to help you be more mindful.
Speaker 1: It stands for what for, why now? And what else?
Speaker 1: And so she argues, whenever you find your phone in
Speaker 1: your hand, you should think, oh, www, like what for?
Speaker 1: Was was there a purpose? Like I was checking my
Speaker 1: email or I was going to text a friend. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just my addictive go to right. Why now? Right?
Speaker 1: What was the trigger? You know? Maybe again you had
Speaker 1: something to do, but maybe it was I was feeling anxious,
Speaker 1: or I was feeling bored, or you know, for my students,
Speaker 1: often it's I was feeling a little bit scared about
Speaker 1: engaging in real life social connection talking to someone in
Speaker 1: the dining hall. So I just, you know, picked up
Speaker 1: my phone. But the biggest one, I think is what else, right,
Speaker 1: what's the opportunity cost? What else could you be doing?
Speaker 1: Could you be just like taking a deep breath talking
Speaker 1: to a friend, sleeping? Right? What are you not doing
Speaker 1: because you're on your phone? And what are you missing?
Speaker 1: You know? Sometimes if I land in a new city,
Speaker 1: I am going to the hotel, and I realized I
Speaker 1: didn't even look around at this new place and take
Speaker 1: in being in a totally different environment because I've had
Speaker 1: my face and my phone, and I think this is
Speaker 1: so dumb. Why am I doing this? It is such
Speaker 1: a default, though, Lorie, you know, now, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's a default. And often the thing we're missing is
Speaker 1: other people, That's right, because it's distracting. It's very presence
Speaker 1: is distracting. It also prevents you to engage in deep
Speaker 1: thinking because it's interrupting you all the time. Right, And
Speaker 1: it makes sense, right because our brains aren't stupid, like
Speaker 1: they know on the other end of this device, you know, imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, we're having this lovely conversation here and it's
Speaker 1: very fun. But imagine if to the conversation, I brought
Speaker 1: this big wheelbarrow, and in the wheelbarrow, I had like
Speaker 1: my photo album since like nineteen ninety two and print
Speaker 1: outs of everything every politician or you know, Kardashian has said.
Speaker 1: And the last week there was like cat videos and porn,
Speaker 1: just like this huge pile of stuff in the wheel
Speaker 1: and sort of food that you could learn to make. Like,
Speaker 1: your brain isn't stupid. It knows that all that stuff
Speaker 1: is right next to you. But it's having a huge
Speaker 1: effect on our attention and our performance and our social connection.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about global happiness because I mean, look what
Speaker 1: you started learning now there than these worldwide surveys about happiness,
Speaker 1: and what are we learning about those? I think so
Speaker 1: many interesting things. I mean, first, I think we're learning
Speaker 1: that just having a metric is powerful, right. This is
Speaker 1: the World Happiness Survey that goes around globally and tries
Speaker 1: to measure happiness using the sort of standard survey tools
Speaker 1: that we have, and then they rank countries. What we've
Speaker 1: learned from the metrics so far, though, is that there
Speaker 1: are differences. There are countries that since this survey has
Speaker 1: been out there have standardly been around the top, you know,
Speaker 1: places like Denmark, Norway, you know, these Scandinavian countries. And
Speaker 1: there are otherwise very wealthy countries like the US that
Speaker 1: have been surprisingly low on the list, like sixteenth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not at the bottom, but like not as high as
Speaker 1: we would expect given that, you know, the pursuit of
Speaker 1: happiness is like literally in our Declaration of Independence. And
Speaker 1: I think that can be powerful because we can start
Speaker 1: to ask questions about like, Okay, what are those nations
Speaker 1: that are doing well doing well? And what are we
Speaker 1: missing out on? And have you learned earned anything? I mean,
Speaker 1: is it sort of quality of life? Is it providing
Speaker 1: you know, parental leave and accessible childcare, things that reduce
Speaker 1: stressors for people? It's all of those things. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's actually having access to you know,
Speaker 1: those sorts of things that we know mean for a
Speaker 1: good life. And so I think what these countries do
Speaker 1: well is that they build things into the structure of
Speaker 1: how they live their lives that make it easier to
Speaker 1: get things like social connection, presence, exercise, and so on,
Speaker 1: and what you have is a lot more equality. Surprisingly,
Speaker 1: COVID did not decrease the happiness metric in many of
Speaker 1: these countries, which says a lot about our resilience. And
Speaker 1: in fact, I think the pandemic in some ways was
Speaker 1: a reset for us. I think so. I think there
Speaker 1: was a little bit of this idea of post traumatic
Speaker 1: growth that we talked about before right where you know.
Speaker 1: It caused us to socially connect more. It caused us
Speaker 1: to recognize our own resilience. It's sort of brought back
Speaker 1: our gratitude for simple things. I think it also really
Speaker 1: taught us to reevaluate what we were doing with our lives.
Speaker 1: I think many people during the pandemic fought a little
Speaker 1: bit more critically about the hustle culture that they might
Speaker 1: have been engaged in, about what it was for. We
Speaker 1: saw that there was a path when we could work
Speaker 1: at home and spend more time with our families. I
Speaker 1: think that's what's leading to this so called great resignation,
Speaker 1: things like quiet quitting. Right now, I think people are
Speaker 1: reevaluating their relationship with work and are maybe considering some
Speaker 1: kind of patterns that might be healthier. I think many
Speaker 1: people are starting to realize that they're frantically climbing up
Speaker 1: this ladder that they might not even want to be
Speaker 1: on in the first place, and they're burning out before
Speaker 1: they even graduate from college. And it's even affecting college
Speaker 1: professors like you, because you took a sabbatical because you
Speaker 1: were afraid you were going to totally burn yourself out.
Speaker 1: So did taking a step back? I know you're still working,
Speaker 1: but getting a change of scenery, etc. Didn't make you happier?
Speaker 1: Oh definitely. I mean, and I'm a nerd, right, so
Speaker 1: I take, you know, like literally data on this. I've
Speaker 1: gone up about a point on a ten point happiness scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was really I really started to notice
Speaker 1: in the midst of this pandemic all the classic signs
Speaker 1: of early burnout. Right. I was emotionally exhausted, not just
Speaker 1: physically exhausted. It was just like kind of tired, like
Speaker 1: if one more email came like I was gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: just lose it. It It was just like too much. I
Speaker 1: was feeling really cynical, right, My fuse was really short
Speaker 1: with the people around me, especially my students. That was
Speaker 1: that was the thing that affected me most. That's not
Speaker 1: normal for me, and that was really big. But the
Speaker 1: biggest thing I think I experienced during COVID on college
Speaker 1: campuses was the third kind of symptom of burnout, which
Speaker 1: is a sense of personal ineffectiveness, like even if you
Speaker 1: did your job the best that you possibly could, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be good enough. And I was like, wait, you know,
Speaker 1: I've read the papers. I know where this leads. I
Speaker 1: need to make some changes. And the good news is
Speaker 1: I think, you know, for me, at least, the changes
Speaker 1: have been great. That actually made the very difficult decision
Speaker 1: to step down as a head of college on campus
Speaker 1: in part because I was realizing that, you know, to
Speaker 1: do that job as well as I wanted to, I
Speaker 1: just didn't have the bandwidth anymore. Have you regained your
Speaker 1: happiness equilibrium as a result of stepping back? And you know,
Speaker 1: will it change when you re enter the Yale campus?
Speaker 1: Will it change me? Yeah? I think I'll make, you know,
Speaker 1: some big changes. You know, stepping down from this role
Speaker 1: has been a big one. You know, I'm already sort
Speaker 1: of thinking about how i can have a better balance
Speaker 1: with some of the stuff I'm doing. There Again, you
Speaker 1: have to remember, happiness isn't this destination. This is going
Speaker 1: to keep and taking a more constant It's not a constant.
Speaker 1: Let's close this out with some Laurie Santo's happiness tidbits.
Speaker 1: One is, as you mentioned, it takes work. So what
Speaker 1: does that mean, Like if you were saying, Katie, if
Speaker 1: you want to be happy and happier, this is what
Speaker 1: you should do. What kind of work do I have
Speaker 1: to do? I think the first piece of work is
Speaker 1: just recognizing that your intuitions are off right, that you
Speaker 1: just have these normal things that you think, Oh, i've
Speaker 1: had a bad day, I'll you know, I'll get a manicure.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, this is I'll do, or I'll keep
Speaker 1: pushing at work. You know, for X, Y, and Z,
Speaker 1: we have these intuitions about the things that we should
Speaker 1: be doing, that we're supposed to be doing. I think
Speaker 1: you have to realize that those intuitions are wrong, right.
Speaker 1: You have to say the science says, do something else
Speaker 1: in really simple domains, right. You know, if you have
Speaker 1: a long day at work, you might have the intuition of, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I just want to PLoP down and just a glass
Speaker 1: of wine, which is a depressant, by the way, exactly
Speaker 1: when you know so much. Science suggests that if you
Speaker 1: instead called a friend, went for a walk, you know,
Speaker 1: just try to engage in something that was a little
Speaker 1: bit more challenging of a form of leisure than plopping
Speaker 1: down to watch that pickall lesson, take a pickleball lesson.
Speaker 1: You know, just like on your phone, do a lingo
Speaker 1: something right like that would be better. Text a friend
Speaker 1: that you're a little bit worried about, right, Become a
Speaker 1: little bit more other oriented. When we're in these moments
Speaker 1: where we're feeling stressed, we're feeling overwhelmed, we're feeling a
Speaker 1: little sad, there are just simple behaviors we can engage
Speaker 1: in that are going to work better than what our
Speaker 1: natural intuition is. Laurie Santos, this has been so fun.
Speaker 1: Thank you for spending so much time with me. I
Speaker 1: feel I just went to therapist and I owe you
Speaker 1: whatever a lot. Thank you, Lourie. Thanks so much. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
Speaker 1: or want to share your thoughts about how you navigate
Speaker 1: this crazy world reach out. You can leave a short
Speaker 1: message at six oh nine five one two five five
Speaker 1: oh five, or you can send me a DM on Instagram.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear from you. Next Question is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kurik Media. The executive
Speaker 1: producers are Me, Katie Curik, and Courtney Litz. Our supervising
Speaker 1: producer is Marcy Thompson. Our producers are Adriana Fasio and
Speaker 1: Catherine Law. Our audio engineer is Matt Russell, who also
Speaker 1: composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
Speaker 1: or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
Speaker 1: go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
Speaker 1: us at Katiecurrek dot com. You can also find me
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