Speaker 1: Pushkin, Hey, doctor Lori Santos. Here. This week, the Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab is bringing you a special crossover episode with the
Speaker 1: Immigrantly podcast. Immigrantly is hosted by Sadia Khan, a social
Speaker 1: entrepreneur and the founder of Immigrantly Media. She and I
Speaker 1: had an incredible conversation where we explored the origins of happiness.
Speaker 1: We talked about whether happiness is just a fleeting moment
Speaker 1: or whether we can sustain it over time. We also
Speaker 1: explored how our backgrounds, personalities, and choices shaped our perceptions
Speaker 1: of happiness. I really enjoyed the conversation, so I hope
Speaker 1: you do too.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Immigrantly. I am Sadia A. Khan.
Speaker 2: This week on Immigrantly, I embark on a jamie into
Speaker 2: the fast, vibrant, and our predictable world of happiness. Is
Speaker 2: happiness a fleeting moment or a lasting state? Can it
Speaker 2: be actively pursued or is it intrinsic to human existence?
Speaker 2: How do our backgrounds, personalities and life choices shape our
Speaker 2: experiences of happiness? And what is this elusive state everyone
Speaker 2: seeks but seems hard to grasp consistently? And lastly, is
Speaker 2: happiness a universal language that transcends different lives and cultures,
Speaker 2: or is it as divis as the individuals seeking it? Yes,
Speaker 2: we will address all those questions and more in our
Speaker 2: today's episode. According to my today's guest Lauri Santos, a
Speaker 2: cognitive science and psychology professor at Yale, happiness isn't just
Speaker 2: an emotion you feel, but something that can be taught,
Speaker 2: almost like a muscle that can be worked out. Santos
Speaker 2: saw that his two dents were increasingly anxious and depressed
Speaker 2: and decided she wanted to give them some tools on
Speaker 2: not just how to be happy, but how they can
Speaker 2: make themselves happier using science. Her course, Psychology and the
Speaker 2: Good Life became the most popular course in Yale's history
Speaker 2: when it launched in twenty eighteen, with about one force
Speaker 2: of Yale's undergraduates enrolled in it. She's also the host
Speaker 2: of the Happiness Lab, which has over ninety million downloads.
Speaker 2: I'm honored to interview Laurie today, so let's get started.
Speaker 2: How are you doing.
Speaker 1: I'm good, I'm good. Thanks so much for having me
Speaker 1: on the show.
Speaker 2: How is your heart today?
Speaker 1: How's my heart today? My good friend from college was
Speaker 1: just in town this morning with her daughter. They're on
Speaker 1: a college tour, and so I just had breakfast with her,
Speaker 1: and so I think my heart isn't a warm place
Speaker 1: this morning. It's kind of nice. It's been a good day.
Speaker 2: I was at a friend's house yesterday and I told
Speaker 2: her about the interview and she was freaking out. She
Speaker 2: was like, Oh, my gosh, You're going to interview Laurie Santos.
Speaker 2: She was like, I listened to her podcast every single week.
Speaker 2: You've become very very popular. How are you handling it?
Speaker 1: It's good. I mean, it's really humbling, right to see
Speaker 1: the fact that sharing these strategies for improving happiness can
Speaker 1: really help people, right. I mean, that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I get into this. But it's so nice that
Speaker 1: it's actually working. I think a challenge of it is,
Speaker 1: really there's so many more demands on my time, right
Speaker 1: There's requests to give talks and podcasts and these things,
Speaker 1: and so I've had to be very careful about what
Speaker 1: I say yes to. And it's really a challenge to
Speaker 1: say no to things that are great, but to just
Speaker 1: say I have to protect my bandwidth. I have to
Speaker 1: prejet burnout, you know, And so that can be really tricky,
Speaker 1: but overall it's just been an incredible experience.
Speaker 2: Before we delve into the science of happiness, let's go
Speaker 2: back to your childhood. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about where you grew up and what are some of
Speaker 2: the happy memories from your childhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which
Speaker 1: is a large working class down It used to be
Speaker 1: the richest town in America when whaling and those kind
Speaker 1: of things were going on, but nowadays they don't really
Speaker 1: have whaling as an industry, so it's been a kind
Speaker 1: of struggling town when I was growing up. But I had,
Speaker 1: you know, an incredibly happy family situation, at least for
Speaker 1: the kind of first part of my life. You know.
Speaker 1: I remember like we had a house that I would
Speaker 1: have a little yard that I could run around in
Speaker 1: and things. You know. My brother is four years younger
Speaker 1: than me, and he was a kind of constant playmate.
Speaker 1: You know. I had fun just kind of being a kid,
Speaker 1: being unscheduled, coming up with my own weird activities, whether
Speaker 1: that was like making up little games for me and
Speaker 1: my brother to play in the basement, to just kind
Speaker 1: of like creating and doing things. I feel like I
Speaker 1: wrote like lots of fake books, and you know, like
Speaker 1: this little kind of camera, so we would, you know,
Speaker 1: make little videos and things on it. And so I
Speaker 1: remember my childhood as being incredibly fun and incredibly creative.
Speaker 2: What were those fake books about?
Speaker 1: Well, I think they were kind of massively taken from
Speaker 1: some of the cartoons I watched. You know. One of
Speaker 1: them was called like the Cat and the Mouse, which
Speaker 1: I think was a basically plagiarized version of Tom and Jerry.
Speaker 1: I didn't never try to publish it, you know, so
Speaker 1: the plagiarism wasn't an issue, but it was kind of
Speaker 1: you know, drawing the pictures of the cat and the
Speaker 1: mouse and kind of coming up with these sort of
Speaker 1: fun stories and things and so yeah, so I kind
Speaker 1: of enjoyed doing all that stuff creatively.
Speaker 2: Very fast, while would do today. You are a professor.
Speaker 2: Why did you want to become a professor? What led
Speaker 2: you to that bath?
Speaker 1: Well, I've always been interested in psychology and sort of
Speaker 1: how people work, and I think growing up, I really
Speaker 1: just thought that the way you were a psychologist, as
Speaker 1: you were kind of a clinical psychologist, like you'd have
Speaker 1: to be a therapist or put people on a couch.
Speaker 1: But when I realized there was like this field where
Speaker 1: you could try to understand how the mind worked and
Speaker 1: how people fought, and that you could do research and publish,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, man, this sounds amazing. And I
Speaker 1: really only learned that when I first started college. I
Speaker 1: had a great grad student mentor who kind of showed
Speaker 1: me the ropes and even honestly explained that like, you know,
Speaker 1: and actually, you know, many PhD programs like they don't
Speaker 1: even charge you, like you can go for free. You
Speaker 1: get your education for free. And I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: this is amazing. You know. It was kind of in
Speaker 1: that phase that I learned that being a professor was
Speaker 1: a possibility. What I really wanted to do was to
Speaker 1: find ways to study the mind, and I realized like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a career where you could do that.
Speaker 2: From being a professor to being a professor of the
Speaker 2: most sought after class at Yale, tell me about that process.
Speaker 1: So I've been teaching at Yale for over two decades now,
Speaker 1: which makes me feel very very old. Honestly, the time
Speaker 1: goes by very fast, and for most of my time
Speaker 1: at Yale, I was, you know, a professor at the
Speaker 1: front of the classroom, taught classes about my research, which
Speaker 1: focused a lot on animals and what makes the human
Speaker 1: mind unique. And I thought college life was a lot
Speaker 1: like what college life was like when I was in college,
Speaker 1: which was fine and mostly happy. You know, there was
Speaker 1: some stresses, obviously, but it wasn't nearly as bad as
Speaker 1: the kind of thing we're seeing today. But I was
Speaker 1: kind of blind to really what young people are going
Speaker 1: through today. And then I took a new role on
Speaker 1: campus where I became what's called the head of college.
Speaker 1: And so heads of colleges at Yale are faculty who
Speaker 1: live on campus with students, and so I lived on
Speaker 1: campus with students, I ate with them at the dining
Speaker 1: hall and kind of hung out with them. And that
Speaker 1: was when I really first started to see the college
Speaker 1: student mental health crisis up close and personal. Where right
Speaker 1: now nationally, not just at Yale, but nationally, more than
Speaker 1: forty percent of college students report being too depressed to
Speaker 1: function most days. More than sixty percent say that they're
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly anxious. More than one in ten has seriously considered
Speaker 1: suicide in the last year. I mean, it's like a
Speaker 1: really terrible crisis that our young people are going through
Speaker 1: And that was when I realized the need for a
Speaker 1: class about strategies that all my students could use to
Speaker 1: feel I really wanted to teach them, Okay, what does
Speaker 1: the evidence say about how you can behave in different ways,
Speaker 1: develop different mindsets, ones that will really make you feel better.
Speaker 1: And so that was how the class was born.
Speaker 2: You know what's interesting about your class is you're looking
Speaker 2: at happiness through science. And when I think of happiness
Speaker 2: when I was growing up or even now, in my
Speaker 2: conscious mind, happiness is a very visceral emotion and it
Speaker 2: comes when it comes, and I can't really control it
Speaker 2: because a lot of times our happiness hinges on external factors,
Speaker 2: whether it's relationships, career, and sometimes different types of happiness
Speaker 2: almost conflict with one another. Right, So happiness in career
Speaker 2: may conflict with happiness at home. How do you teach
Speaker 2: balancing all those different aspects of happiness?
Speaker 1: Well, I think you know. One of the ways the
Speaker 1: scientific approach can be really helpful is that it tries
Speaker 1: to just get people to notice what all those factors
Speaker 1: feel like.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It tries to get you to notice, Okay, what are
Speaker 1: some of the kinds of things that help you feel happy.
Speaker 1: And the way that people take a scientific approach is
Speaker 1: really just to ask people, Hey, how are you feeling
Speaker 1: right now on a scale of one to ten, how
Speaker 1: satisfied are you with your life? You know, let me
Speaker 1: give you this list of positive emotions. Have you felt
Speaker 1: those today? So, ultimately it's a scientific approach, but it's
Speaker 1: a scientific approach that really takes into account people's subjective
Speaker 1: experience of how things feel like, how things feel like
Speaker 1: in people's lives, so kind of their emotions and things
Speaker 1: and how they think their life is going. And it
Speaker 1: really just encourages people to maybe do little experiments to
Speaker 1: ask like, Okay, did you feel better in your life
Speaker 1: when you were hanging out with family or when you
Speaker 1: were at work, or when you had a little bit
Speaker 1: of free time in your day versus when you were packed, packed,
Speaker 1: packed to the brim, right, And so you're kind of
Speaker 1: doing these experiments to just notice subjectively what feels good
Speaker 1: and what doesn't feel as good as I expected. And
Speaker 1: I think when you do that, you get some really
Speaker 1: interesting hints about how to balance all those competing factors.
Speaker 1: I think the first is that we often put our
Speaker 1: kind of like career achievements in the domain of happiness, right,
Speaker 1: we think, like to be happy, I need to be successful,
Speaker 1: or I need to be rich, or I need to
Speaker 1: get this promotion at work. When researchers get people to
Speaker 1: start paying attention, what they quickly realize is that those
Speaker 1: kind of career accomplishments don't really make us as happy
Speaker 1: as we think. Especially money, it really doesn't make us
Speaker 1: as happy as we think. You know, with the caveat
Speaker 1: that you have to have enough money to put food
Speaker 1: on the table and get by, right, if you're living
Speaker 1: below the poverty line, that doesn't work. But you know,
Speaker 1: for at least many of the people listening right now,
Speaker 1: if you can put food on the table and keep
Speaker 1: a roof over your head, getting a lot more money
Speaker 1: doesn't really make you as happy as as you think.
Speaker 1: That's what a lot of the data show. And so
Speaker 1: I think that as you start to pay attention to
Speaker 1: what this research shows, and again the research is just
Speaker 1: you subjectively thinking about, Okay, what really does matter? When
Speaker 1: I pay attention, what you find is that the career
Speaker 1: stuff maybe needs to get kind of downplayed relative to
Speaker 1: the social connection stuff, the kind of true relationship stuff.
Speaker 1: Even when we think about what makes us happy at work.
Speaker 1: What we often find is it's not our achievements professionally,
Speaker 1: it's the relationships we develop at work. This new study
Speaker 1: that just came out in twenty twenty three, which took
Speaker 1: data from this big job site, indeed, they found that
Speaker 1: one of the biggest predictors of your happiness at work
Speaker 1: isn't your salary or how good your manager is. It's
Speaker 1: really whether or not you have a best friend at work.
Speaker 1: So even at work, our social relationships seem to matter
Speaker 1: for feeling good. Yes, so I think we get some
Speaker 1: hints about how to kind of bring balance to all
Speaker 1: these different competing factors in our lives when we start
Speaker 1: to genuinely pay attention to what feels good.
Speaker 2: You know, what you're think makes so much sense. But unfortunately,
Speaker 2: especially living in a capitalist society, I still see people
Speaker 2: are unable to make that conscious connection. And I can
Speaker 2: give you so many examples, even in our house, where
Speaker 2: my husband and I have had these arguments about what
Speaker 2: makes us happy, and he looks at happiness differently more
Speaker 2: in the context of career, in the context of development.
Speaker 2: It may be immigrant mentality, but I think it is
Speaker 2: very common across the board. I wonder how do we
Speaker 2: make that cognitive shift. How do we really teach our
Speaker 2: brains and almost reorient ourselves to saying I can be
Speaker 2: happy if I am not extremely successful in career or
Speaker 2: if I am not making money beyond is it in threshold?
Speaker 2: What is the process of achieving that zen mode?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's really tough, and I think this
Speaker 1: is something that I definitely see in my students. You know,
Speaker 1: we cover some of the studies like literally showing that
Speaker 1: more money doesn't make you happy. You know, I make
Speaker 1: my students read these studies, and at the end of
Speaker 1: every lecture where I talk about money and happiness, I'll
Speaker 1: have a big long line of students who want to like,
Speaker 1: you know, well that can't be true, or maybe if
Speaker 1: you spend it differently, and so on. And what's interesting is,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, we just have such a diverse range
Speaker 1: of students. You might think that pushback would be from
Speaker 1: the students who were themselves really wealthy or grew up
Speaker 1: in a you know, really privileged background. But the pushback
Speaker 1: I often get, interestingly, is from students who haven't had
Speaker 1: that sort of privileged background, or they're coming as a
Speaker 1: first gen student, or from an immigrant background. I think
Speaker 1: for immigrants, there really is this mentality of like push, push, push,
Speaker 1: you know, pull your stuff up by your bootstraps, you know,
Speaker 1: and maybe even like sacrifice part of your mental health
Speaker 1: to get that kind of of typical capitalist success. Right.
Speaker 1: So again, those are kind of anecdotal data of just
Speaker 1: which students I talk to, But yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: think these kinds of misperceptions are alive and well in
Speaker 1: the kind of immigrant mind. You know, there's this idea
Speaker 1: that you kind of push for money, push for external success,
Speaker 1: push for accolades at work, and that will be the
Speaker 1: thing that brings you a sense of this sort of
Speaker 1: zen piece. But when you look at the data, what
Speaker 1: you find is it just doesn't work that way. And
Speaker 1: so your question is really like how do we overcome this, right,
Speaker 1: Like how do we fight this bias? And I think
Speaker 1: it's really tough, Like it's tricky myself, Like I'll say,
Speaker 1: you know, I know all the data about this stuff,
Speaker 1: but I still share these intuitions. Right, every time I
Speaker 1: say no to a talk that was going to, you know,
Speaker 1: give me a nice honorarium, I'm kind of like, oh gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm like saying.
Speaker 2: No to money.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Or every time I turn down
Speaker 1: the opportunity to do something more and more and more
Speaker 1: at work. I know the research, but it's I kind
Speaker 1: of have this twinge of like, oh am I going
Speaker 1: to regret this? You know, is this going to be
Speaker 1: the last opportunity I get? Right? So I completely get it,
Speaker 1: But I think something that's really helped to me is
Speaker 1: like no knowing what the science says, right, Like I
Speaker 1: can look at the graph and be like, oh, I
Speaker 1: see I'm not going to be that much happier if
Speaker 1: I double my income, or I've read the studies showing
Speaker 1: of what's called the arrival fallacy, where we think I'll
Speaker 1: be happy when I'll be happy when I get a promotion,
Speaker 1: or I'll be happy when I make this much money,
Speaker 1: and study after study shows that we just misperceived, that
Speaker 1: we just are wrong about what our predictions about what's
Speaker 1: really going to make us happy. And so for me,
Speaker 1: hearing the studies can be kind of helpful because you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I know the research shows that I'm wrong. Like I
Speaker 1: can't change my kind of intuition that I have about
Speaker 1: this stuff, but I'm going to kind of not follow
Speaker 1: my intuition. I'm going to kind of follow what I
Speaker 1: think is right. And then often when you do that,
Speaker 1: you get new data to be like, oh, actually that
Speaker 1: opportunity that I turned down so i'd have more time
Speaker 1: with my family, that was actually a good move, right,
Speaker 1: Like that actually did make me happy, Or like that, no,
Speaker 1: I said in my calendar, that feels great. When I
Speaker 1: kind of noticed, like oh that was when I was
Speaker 1: supposed to take that trip where I was supposed to
Speaker 1: have that meeting, it's like, oh, this feels great to
Speaker 1: have a little bit more free time. And so I
Speaker 1: think when you start to see the outcomes of doing
Speaker 1: things a little differently, you can get your own data like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is working better than I expected.
Speaker 2: Lottie, you said something so interesting about looking at the
Speaker 2: data looking at grafts. Are you ever concerned about over
Speaker 2: pathologizing the science of happiness.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's great about this particular form
Speaker 1: of science, right, is that it's based on people's subjective reports.
Speaker 1: In some ways, these are people who are saying, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: at a scale of one to ten, this is how
Speaker 1: I feel about happiness and so on. That means it's
Speaker 1: kind of taking away some of the experience. Right, If
Speaker 1: I had richer narrative reports, obviously we would learn more about,
Speaker 1: you know, all the nuances of people's subjective experiences. But
Speaker 1: because like what the research is doing is really getting
Speaker 1: people's actual opinions of what's going on, I think I
Speaker 1: can actually be a powerful way to really understand how
Speaker 1: people are feeling. So I'm a little bit less worried
Speaker 1: about the kind of pathologizing. I think it definitely is
Speaker 1: missing something about people's complete experiences, obviously, but it does
Speaker 1: let us get a kind of important glimpse that I
Speaker 1: think has been at least for me, really helpful as
Speaker 1: I kind of puzzle through what's the right way to
Speaker 1: live a healthy and a happy life.
Speaker 2: You know, this is a great segue into bringing culture
Speaker 2: and cultural nuances into the idea of happiness. Now. I
Speaker 2: grew up in Pakistan, a collectivist society. Happiness is defined
Speaker 2: very differently there. It is less materialistic in some ways, right,
Speaker 2: So spending time with your parents, with your grandparents, siblings,
Speaker 2: having extended relationships is in a way manifestation of happiness.
Speaker 2: And then you come to the US, and I felt
Speaker 2: very lonely in the beginning. I felt disoriented. I recognized
Speaker 2: my depression and anxiety more in the US than in
Speaker 2: Pakistan because I was always surrounded by family and friends.
Speaker 2: What differences have you seen across different cultures, especially Eastern
Speaker 2: versus Western cultures.
Speaker 1: I think this is a really great question. It's actually
Speaker 1: one are starting to get you a better handle on
Speaker 1: right where you're doing the right studies with big enough
Speaker 1: samples of people from different cultures. One of the best
Speaker 1: research tools that we have to look at this comes
Speaker 1: from this report that's known as the World Happiness Report,
Speaker 1: where they survey all these things about people's emotion and
Speaker 1: happiness across all kinds of different countries. And what they
Speaker 1: find in the report is pretty interesting. You know, first
Speaker 1: of all, there is great variance and happiness across cultures.
Speaker 1: They do things with the World Happiness Report where they
Speaker 1: rank the different countries in terms of their happiness, which
Speaker 1: I think gets a lot of headlines but misses a
Speaker 1: lot of the nuance. But when you do those rankings,
Speaker 1: you often find that Scandinavian countries kind of kind of
Speaker 1: out happiest, you know, Norway, Denmark, those are the ones
Speaker 1: that are happy. But then countries that you might not
Speaker 1: expect you know, so countries in South America, places like
Speaker 1: Costa Rica and so on, tend to be a little
Speaker 1: bit happier and so on, at least relative to the US.
Speaker 1: And so often what you get from that is to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: what are the happier countries doing a little bit differently?
Speaker 1: And what you find is they're prioritizing some of the
Speaker 1: same things you noticed about your kind of home life
Speaker 1: back in the day, which is that like you're prioritizing
Speaker 1: things like social connection. Family is you know, kind of
Speaker 1: considered more valuable than work. When those two things come
Speaker 1: into conflict, famili is always going to win out. People
Speaker 1: are around other people more often, so there's much less loneliness,
Speaker 1: much more social connection, and there's cultures that tend to
Speaker 1: be happier, tend to be a little bit more on
Speaker 1: the collective side, right. You know, you think of Scandinavian
Speaker 1: countries and they have things like universal income and like
Speaker 1: allowing to kind of help other people. Right. It's not
Speaker 1: kind of like you live and die by your own
Speaker 1: sort of hard work alone. Right. It takes a village
Speaker 1: kind of approach rate, Yes, exactly. And so I think
Speaker 1: when we start looking at those cultural differences. One thing
Speaker 1: we can say is like, hang on, maybe the values
Speaker 1: that we have in the US, this kind of super
Speaker 1: individualism and capitalism at all costs, you know, maybe we're
Speaker 1: kind of missing something that really does matter for our
Speaker 1: actual happiness. And so I think these kinds of comparisons
Speaker 1: across countries can be really powerful. I think another thing
Speaker 1: we see in these comparisons across countries is that it's
Speaker 1: not all about the individual happiness. Like, what's happening politically
Speaker 1: obviously matters a lot, you know, So the equality of
Speaker 1: a country seems to matter a lot. The trust that
Speaker 1: people have in government matters a lot. That's actually one
Speaker 1: of the reasons in the United States that we've dropped
Speaker 1: a lot in our rankings of happiness is because there's
Speaker 1: less and less trust in the political process, trust of
Speaker 1: our fellow man, with all the political polarization we see
Speaker 1: in the country. And so I think also these kind
Speaker 1: of cultural comparisons make us realize, hang on, you know,
Speaker 1: A lot of the strategies are about, well, hey, you
Speaker 1: you know, you change your personal behaviors and your personal mindsets.
Speaker 1: But also we need to think about the structural issues
Speaker 1: that people face and the political issues that people face
Speaker 1: if we really want everyone to be as happy as
Speaker 1: they can.
Speaker 2: Be, I want to cycle back to young folks. There's
Speaker 2: so much to talk about when we think about gen
Speaker 2: zs in terms of their politics. Right, they are looking
Speaker 2: more and more towards their friends as being politically aligned
Speaker 2: with them, moradly aligned with them, Right, So that's a
Speaker 2: measure of how they choose friendships. How do you think
Speaker 2: that redefines happiness for them? Because they are putting a
Speaker 2: lot of pressure not just on themselves but on their
Speaker 2: friends and friends of friends. And also how does social
Speaker 2: media play into all of this. They think they are
Speaker 2: not lonely because they are on social media and they're scrolling,
Speaker 2: but then they're basically doom scrolling, right, It's like enragement
Speaker 2: is equal to engagement kind of deal. What are some
Speaker 2: of the things you're seeing, Laurie within that realm? And
Speaker 2: what is your advice to any young person who's listening
Speaker 2: to this podcast right now?
Speaker 1: So I'll take the second one first, This idea of
Speaker 1: you know, how is social media and our technology in
Speaker 1: general honestly kind of affecting our happiness? You know, one
Speaker 1: of the biggest predictors of people's happiness is our sense
Speaker 1: of social connection, our sense of true social ties, having
Speaker 1: people that you can count on, that you really care about,
Speaker 1: and just being around other people in real life. You know,
Speaker 1: in theory, social media and our technology, our phones in general,
Speaker 1: we're supposed to help with that, right, We're supposed to
Speaker 1: be able to, you know, even be more social connected.
Speaker 1: That's why it's called social media. But I think by
Speaker 1: and large, what these tools are doing is more disconnecting people,
Speaker 1: at least in real life or especially in real time.
Speaker 1: It turns out you don't necessarily need to connect in
Speaker 1: real life to get the kind of social connection nutrition
Speaker 1: that kind of comes with being with other people, but
Speaker 1: you need to do it in real time. You know,
Speaker 1: you and I are right now talking, you know, not
Speaker 1: we're not in the same room, in the same studio.
Speaker 1: We're talking across with the podcast software, and research shows
Speaker 1: that's pretty good, right, because we're kind of you can
Speaker 1: see each other's facial expressions, we're kind of talking in
Speaker 1: real time. Doesn't work as much if you're just like
Speaker 1: texting or posting, you know, a comment on someone's Instagram feed,
Speaker 1: or you know, scrolling through TikTok videos or something that's
Speaker 1: not as nutritious in terms of our psychology of what
Speaker 1: we need for social connection. And so I think that
Speaker 1: one of the biggest hits that people get from social
Speaker 1: media is that it's just an opportunity cost on hanging
Speaker 1: out with each other in real life. You know, how
Speaker 1: often have you seen a group of young people are
Speaker 1: honestly a group of adults for that matter, like sitting
Speaker 1: around to dinner table and everybody's get there for you know,
Speaker 1: they're with each other in real life, but they're not
Speaker 1: connecting in real life because they're looking at their phones, right,
Speaker 1: And so that's a big hit. I think social media
Speaker 1: is also a big hit we know for young people
Speaker 1: just in terms of their sleep. Making sure you're getting
Speaker 1: the appropriate amount of good sleep is super important for
Speaker 1: our mental health. And these days, what you find, as
Speaker 1: many students claim when young people claim not to be
Speaker 1: sleeping as much because like they're on their phones and
Speaker 1: they're staying up late at night watching TikTok videos and
Speaker 1: other kind of screen time things. So I think there's
Speaker 1: lots of reasons our social media is hurting happiness generally,
Speaker 1: and that hit on happiness is especially bad for young people.
Speaker 1: But I think the loneliness hit that young people are
Speaker 1: going through kind of gets to your first question about
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, what's happening with young people kind
Speaker 1: of feeling like it's harder to kind of connect with
Speaker 1: people across the political divide. I think that's a generation
Speaker 1: that's heading the most hit of the political polarization we're experiencing.
Speaker 1: And I think that that winds up being really tricky
Speaker 1: because it means that we're not kind of getting the
Speaker 1: usual social connection we get. I think that people feel
Speaker 1: really limited in the number of friends they can make
Speaker 1: and who understands them and so on, and I think
Speaker 1: that just contributes to the loneliness crisis that we're seeing
Speaker 1: among young people today.
Speaker 2: You've talked about third spaces for younger people. How important
Speaker 2: are those third spaces and whose responsibility is it to
Speaker 2: build those government societies individuals.
Speaker 1: So third spaces is a term that political scientists and
Speaker 1: sociologists us to talk about places that are not your
Speaker 1: home and not your work if you're an adult, that
Speaker 1: you can be around people you know and hang out
Speaker 1: with one another a lot, right, So I think of
Speaker 1: in my youth, there were third spaces like the mall
Speaker 1: we were in the nineties, you just go to the
Speaker 1: mall and people would be at the mall and everyone
Speaker 1: would see each other. It wasn't work. It wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: a home or a school, but it was like a
Speaker 1: place that I could go that I knew. I would
Speaker 1: run into people that I knew who were my age
Speaker 1: and similar like my did things. I think even when
Speaker 1: I grew up in the nineties, there were less third
Speaker 1: places than there were in the heyday of third places,
Speaker 1: which is kind of in the nineteen fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: where you had lots of churches and lions clubs and
Speaker 1: barbershops and just places where people got together all the time.
Speaker 1: The joke is from that nineties TV show Cheers of like,
Speaker 1: you know, the place where everybody knows your name, right,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what you're going for with a good
Speaker 1: third place. And the evidence really suggests that third places
Speaker 1: have been going away from the nineteen fifties to now.
Speaker 1: If you just plot the number of churches or bowling
Speaker 1: leagues or barber shops, right, those things have gone down
Speaker 1: over time to the point that our young people say,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the reasons I don't get together
Speaker 1: with other people is like, I have nowhere to go,
Speaker 1: right We have to go somewhere where you spend money, right, Like,
Speaker 1: It's kind of there's not these kind of free places
Speaker 1: you can go to just be around other people as
Speaker 1: often right now. And I think that, you know, the
Speaker 1: evidence really suggests that that's a bummer. It's a bummer
Speaker 1: for our loneliness. It's a bummer for our ability to
Speaker 1: like connect across different kinds of people. If you're going
Speaker 1: to your church, your barbershop, you're likely to see somebody
Speaker 1: who like, maybe has a different background than you, or
Speaker 1: maybe a different political belief than you, and so on.
Speaker 1: I think we just get that less and less often.
Speaker 1: We have less third places to kind of connect in
Speaker 1: these you know, kind of comfortable, leisurely ways where we're
Speaker 1: not really talking about politics, but it kind of comes
Speaker 1: up in this sort of subtle way. And so without
Speaker 1: those third places, I think we're becoming more lonely, more
Speaker 1: politically polarized, and so on. In terms of who should
Speaker 1: fix that, I think everybody should fix that. There's a
Speaker 1: role that we have as individuals to create these spaces,
Speaker 1: and I think we can do more than we often expect.
Speaker 1: I have a friend here where I live in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Who a while ago now it's kind of two decades
Speaker 1: running started this thing that he calls Monday Movie Night,
Speaker 1: and every Monday Movie Night, like he just invites a
Speaker 1: bunch of people to come over and watch movies and
Speaker 1: people make a kind of collective you know, kind of
Speaker 1: healthy meal, like a big chili or something, and everybody
Speaker 1: gets together. And it's really been so nice to be
Speaker 1: part of this because it's just like every Monday, I
Speaker 1: know there'll be people there, and you know, you can
Speaker 1: kind of connect with these kind of interesting folks who
Speaker 1: are doing stuff. And so I think there's there's a
Speaker 1: way that we as individuals can set up our own
Speaker 1: third places and really kind of put time into doing that,
Speaker 1: making these spaces that. But there's also lots of sociological
Speaker 1: research suggesting the power of governments being really involved and
Speaker 1: creating third places right and just organizations kind of doing that.
Speaker 1: Many of the most famous third places aren't ones that
Speaker 1: are necessarily created by an individual, for like, you know,
Speaker 1: a social group around their neighborhood, but by institutions, you know,
Speaker 1: so things like the Lions Club or the NAACP or
Speaker 1: the kind of communal barbershop or something like that.
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Speaker 3: with Celeste Heedley, Join us.
Speaker 2: Lari, I want to talk a little bit about your
Speaker 2: own relationship with happiness. You've talked about how people should
Speaker 2: find happiness and little things. Do seek happiness or does
Speaker 2: happiness come to you through activities that you're just generally doing?
Speaker 2: Like is it a conscious mind seeking happiness or it
Speaker 2: just comes organically to you?
Speaker 1: You know, if I've been having a rough week, one
Speaker 1: thing that I often do is to say, Okay, how
Speaker 1: can I get a little bit more social connection in,
Speaker 1: Like which friend do I need to call this week?
Speaker 1: Who do I need to see to kind of get
Speaker 1: that social connection in? And so in some ways it's
Speaker 1: both organic to certain activities that we engage in that
Speaker 1: they feel good and boost our positive emotion and increase
Speaker 1: our satisfaction with life. But if we're not getting those
Speaker 1: kind of behaviors in naturally, we can really intentionally decide, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this more often, and the consequence
Speaker 1: usually is a boosted sense of well being.
Speaker 2: So recently, what is one thing that made you happy?
Speaker 1: At this lovely breakfast with this friend of mine from college?
Speaker 1: And I had a really good like bagel sandwich, and
Speaker 1: I took a moment to like savor like this is great,
Speaker 1: like that bagel's really crunchy, Like just the act of
Speaker 1: that paying attention, being a little bit more mindful in presence,
Speaker 1: it can kind of boost your positive emotion and make
Speaker 1: you experience things like gratitude, this sort of thankfulness for
Speaker 1: having this interesting experience. And that's just a sort of
Speaker 1: small retuning of our attention to pay attention to stuff
Speaker 1: that feels nice, and then all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: start feeling better.
Speaker 2: Do you differentiate between being content and being happy? And
Speaker 2: is happiness really a need or is it a want?
Speaker 1: When I think of happiness, I think of it as
Speaker 1: kind of being almost like happiness with a capital age.
Speaker 1: It's kind of equivalent to sort of living a good life,
Speaker 1: living a happy life. And it has these kind of
Speaker 1: two components. One is sort of an emotional component, where
Speaker 1: it's kind of how you feel in your life, and
Speaker 1: the second part is sort of a like thinking component,
Speaker 1: like how you think your life is going. If you
Speaker 1: kind of feel good in your life and think your
Speaker 1: life is going well, you're living a happy life. This
Speaker 1: term is sort of this kind of big capital age
Speaker 1: term happiness is often equivalent to what like the old Ancients,
Speaker 1: like Aristotle thought about when they thought about things like
Speaker 1: you die minia, like the idea of a good life generally, right.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of what I think about when I
Speaker 1: use the term happiness. When I think of something like contentment,
Speaker 1: I almost see that as like one of the positive
Speaker 1: emotions that makes up happiness. Contentment is just the sense
Speaker 1: that you're kind of at peace in life. It's a
Speaker 1: kind of like low arousal, but really high positive state
Speaker 1: like joy or surprise or sort of laughter might be
Speaker 1: a kind of higher arousal, a high positive state, whereas
Speaker 1: contentment's like low arousal. You're just chilling and everything's fine,
Speaker 1: but things feel good when you sort of reflect on
Speaker 1: how they feel. And so the way I think of
Speaker 1: the connection between the two is contentment is an important
Speaker 1: but one of many important emotions that you want to
Speaker 1: get in to sort of have a happy life, to
Speaker 1: have you diamondia or a good life.
Speaker 2: Laurie, I wonder if other emotions, like grief and loss
Speaker 2: inform people's happiness differently. People who've experienced, say, grief or
Speaker 2: loss look at happiness differently than people who haven't. Have
Speaker 2: you seen that in your studies?
Speaker 1: Definitely. There's a lot of work on a topic that
Speaker 1: researchers called post traumatic growth. You know, so many of
Speaker 1: us have heard this term post traumatic stress. You go
Speaker 1: through some terrible, stressful period and you have these consequences,
Speaker 1: you know, high arousal, high anxiety, and things later on.
Speaker 1: But post traumatic growth are cases where you go through
Speaker 1: something terrible, you go through loss, and you go through grief,
Speaker 1: but on the other side, you experience like a sense
Speaker 1: of growth, right, Like it's not something that you choose
Speaker 1: and you know it sucked, and it's like worth recognizing
Speaker 1: the bad part of it. But like on the other side,
Speaker 1: people self report feeling a deeper sense of connection, a
Speaker 1: deeper sense of spirituality, you know what is meaningful in life,
Speaker 1: you're a deeper sense of purpose and kind of a
Speaker 1: deeper sense that you can sort of go through things.
Speaker 1: I think this term resilience, as I know you've talked
Speaker 1: about in your podcast, is a really really complicated one.
Speaker 1: But people who've gone through to the other side often say,
Speaker 1: I know what I'm capable of now again, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have chosen that. You know, it's awful, but like, I
Speaker 1: feel like I've grown and I'm stronger on the other side.
Speaker 1: This is what post traumatic growth is. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the cool things about the research on post
Speaker 1: traumatic growth is it shows that that kind of like
Speaker 1: positive thing that you get at the end had to
Speaker 1: come through the struggle. It had to come through the
Speaker 1: dark times and so on. And I think this gets
Speaker 1: to a misconception that we have about positive emotions. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, one big misconception I see when people come
Speaker 1: to my work and happiness is they kind of embrace
Speaker 1: this sort of toxic positivity approach that you know, a
Speaker 1: good life, this happy life is positive emotion all the time.
Speaker 1: But when you look at the science, what you find
Speaker 1: is like that's not true. A good life involves some anxiety,
Speaker 1: involves some loss, It involves some grief, It involves some frustration,
Speaker 1: some justified anger. Right. The way you get to a
Speaker 1: good life is to not just have these negative emotions,
Speaker 1: but really learn from them and push through them to
Speaker 1: see like how they're teachers and so. I think this
Speaker 1: is another misconception we have, just like oh, money and
Speaker 1: successes matters for happiness. I think people think a happy
Speaker 1: life has none of the bad stuff, But a happy
Speaker 1: life includes the bad stuff. The bad stuff is really
Speaker 1: important for getting us to kind of grow and become,
Speaker 1: you know, the people we really want to become someday.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right, and bad stuff is part of human existence, right.
Speaker 2: We experienced so many different emotions throughout our lives. How
Speaker 2: can we disregard the bad the ugly stuff, because that
Speaker 2: makes up who we are. Do you think being attention
Speaker 2: to the present also matches because a lot of times
Speaker 2: we look at the past and then we look at
Speaker 2: the future. Yesterday I had an argument with my husband.
Speaker 2: I went to bed a little angry. I woke up
Speaker 2: in the morning. I wasn't thinking about it, but it
Speaker 2: was part of my subconscious self, and then my husband
Speaker 2: and I talked and we were like, okay, now we're fine,
Speaker 2: and it changed my mood. How do I start thinking
Speaker 2: about today in this moment?
Speaker 1: Well, it takes some work, right, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: we have brains that are just built to kind of
Speaker 1: mind wander. Can I think about the past, think about
Speaker 1: the future, we're anywhere about the present. But there are
Speaker 1: techniques and you can use to get better about being
Speaker 1: more present. One is a technique that's just called savoring,
Speaker 1: which is just what it sounds like. That was kind
Speaker 1: of what I was doing with my big old this morning.
Speaker 1: We're just like what does this taste like? What does
Speaker 1: this feel like? How would I describe this? You just
Speaker 1: like become force yourself to become curious about whatever is
Speaker 1: going on in the moment. And interestingly, that includes when
Speaker 1: things are bad. One way that we can get through
Speaker 1: bad emotions like grief or anxiety is to really pay attention, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: how does this feel like? My chest is heavy?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: You know, my phase feels tight? Right? Like I feel
Speaker 1: like I have pressure like pushing on me.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: When you really kind of get to know and be
Speaker 1: present with those negative emotions, that can actually help you
Speaker 1: feel better, So.
Speaker 2: Being super aware of negative emotions or positive emotions for
Speaker 2: that matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean I think we
Speaker 1: just kind of don't notice our experience right kind of,
Speaker 1: and that means we don't really get to learn from
Speaker 1: it or get to really feel it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: In some ways, that's really kind of sad, right, that
Speaker 1: we're sort of fast forwarding our life or rewinding our
Speaker 1: life and never kind of just playing it right there.
Speaker 1: So I think, yeah, so savoring and just kind of
Speaker 1: being part of the present moment is powerful. But but
Speaker 1: then a second technique we know works from the researchers.
Speaker 1: You know, so many spiritual techniques for kind of being
Speaker 1: a little bit more present. So practices like meditation or prayer,
Speaker 1: all these practices where you really kind of pay attention,
Speaker 1: you know, to a particular mantra or you know a
Speaker 1: particular set of words and so on. Like those rituals
Speaker 1: the research shows can really build up your presence over time,
Speaker 1: particularly practices like meditation where the practice is really all
Speaker 1: about intentionally noticing the present moment without judgment. Those kinds
Speaker 1: of practices over time like literally change your brain. You
Speaker 1: literally change the amount of gray matter in your brain,
Speaker 1: even if you just start meditating as a novice.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you mentioned spirituality. I feel like spirituality is
Speaker 2: almost frowned upon. When I'm feeling lolow or when I'm
Speaker 2: feeling anxious, I do pray and it calms me down.
Speaker 1: There's actually lots of research, you know, studying kind of
Speaker 1: happiness in people of different religious faiths and religious backgrounds,
Speaker 1: and one of the clear patterns suggests that religious individuals
Speaker 1: tend to be happier. It seems like that happiness, though,
Speaker 1: comes a lot from religious practices. So it comes from
Speaker 1: the not the belief part, but the prayer part, the rituals.
Speaker 1: The rituals exactly go to services, right, you know, taking
Speaker 1: time off, whether it's a sabbath or whatever. Right. And
Speaker 1: what's interesting is it kind of doesn't matter which religion
Speaker 1: it is. You see booths of happiness in people of
Speaker 1: Muslim faith or Buddhist faith, or Catholic or you know,
Speaker 1: Jewish faith all over the board. It kind of doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what rituals you're doing. It's just that you have
Speaker 1: rituals that give you a sense of connection to something
Speaker 1: bigger than you that seem to matter. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I think as we you know, become a more secular society,
Speaker 1: at least especially here in the US, in some ways
Speaker 1: we do that at our peril, right, we're missing out
Speaker 1: on a real path to happiness. That doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: that you have to become religious, but it means that
Speaker 1: if you're not getting your sense of purpose and connection
Speaker 1: from religious faith, you might in those rituals, you might
Speaker 1: need to find other rituals and other ways to get
Speaker 1: a sense of purpose.
Speaker 2: What are some of the other rituals that you've seen
Speaker 2: people follow to the place religion.
Speaker 1: There's a great kind of religious scholar, Casper Turkyle. He
Speaker 1: also has a fabulous podcast who's actually been doing work
Speaker 1: on these kind of other traditions that look a lot
Speaker 1: like faith traditions. For example, Well, he writes a lot
Speaker 1: about CrossFit, which sounds kind of funny, but it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, people go every week and it becomes a
Speaker 1: third place, and it becomes something that you know, you
Speaker 1: have a whole set of values and meaning. It becomes
Speaker 1: a spot where people wind up doing things for each other.
Speaker 1: You know. He talks about these cases of you know,
Speaker 1: somebody in your CrossFit group gets sick and everybody rallies
Speaker 1: and you know, makes food for them and things like that.
Speaker 1: And so what he finds is that you can sometimes
Speaker 1: get these other organizations that work a lot, like faith traditions,
Speaker 1: that have a lot of the same obviously not all
Speaker 1: of the same benefits, but some of the same benefits.
Speaker 2: That's so fascinating.
Speaker 1: As humans get creative, we can come up with lots
Speaker 1: of versions that work that way.
Speaker 2: On a scale of zero to ten, how happy are
Speaker 2: you in the all life?
Speaker 1: And why, Well, I'm usually around like a seven or eight,
Speaker 1: And I think I wasn't that way before. I think
Speaker 1: I'm at a seven or an eight, in part because
Speaker 1: I do engage in all these practices a lot. My
Speaker 1: instinct is not to in the age in as much
Speaker 1: social connection. I'm really not a present person. I'm much
Speaker 1: more RUMINATIV and stuff like. But I think as I've
Speaker 1: studied this more and more, I've recognized how important it
Speaker 1: is to act this stuff like happiness is possible, but
Speaker 1: it takes work. It's just like having a fit body, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's possible to eat healthy and go
Speaker 1: to the gym all the time and move your body,
Speaker 1: but you got to put some work in. My analogy
Speaker 1: is that happiness works just like that, like you can
Speaker 1: do it, but it takes kind of constant work and
Speaker 1: constant practice. And that's the thing I think too, is
Speaker 1: that it's just like my colleague Nick Eppley is fond
Speaker 1: of saying that happiness is like a leaky tire. You know,
Speaker 1: It's like you're happy, but then it kind of goes
Speaker 1: down and you have to do something to pump it up.
Speaker 1: And so remembering that your mental health is something that
Speaker 1: takes kind of constant work has been helpful for me
Speaker 1: because it's really allowed me to put that work in
Speaker 1: and the act of doing that has made me happier.
Speaker 1: So I'd say, yeah, I'm like a seven and a
Speaker 1: half eight out of on a ten point happiness scale.
Speaker 2: Give me one habit that people should make part of
Speaker 2: their lives to feel happier.
Speaker 1: Another great one that I think we haven't talked about
Speaker 1: yet is the act of feeling a little bit grateful.
Speaker 1: This is a mindset shift that this science shows because
Speaker 1: really powerful we're real complainers, and I think we become
Speaker 1: complaining socially. Like I use the analogy you know last time,
Speaker 1: you you know, hung out with a friend, like the asked,
Speaker 1: how's it going. Did you immediately list all the blessings
Speaker 1: in life, like if you're in this s us probably no,
Speaker 1: you listed, like you know, all the things that are
Speaker 1: going wrong. You didn't talk about any of your coworkers
Speaker 1: that you adore. You talked about the one coworker that
Speaker 1: like gets on your last nerve and like you know,
Speaker 1: and in general, we have this bias, I think universally
Speaker 1: of us, even more so in the United States, towards
Speaker 1: what you might call undersociality, Like we just don't realize
Speaker 1: the happiness benefits of being social, whether that's expressing our
Speaker 1: gratitude to other people, complimenting other people, trying to help
Speaker 1: other people. We just don't realize how much these kind
Speaker 1: of little social mindset shifts matter so much for making
Speaker 1: us feel better.
Speaker 2: When you mentioned grateful, my mind just went to what
Speaker 2: my mother says. My parents live in Pakistan and I
Speaker 2: talk to them very often. And every time I talk
Speaker 2: to my mom and if I'm feeling low, obviously she
Speaker 2: knows and she always says this to me. She's like,
Speaker 2: be grateful for what you have. Just say it verbally,
Speaker 2: how grateful you are for all that you have, and
Speaker 2: I always brush it off, Laurie, I don't pay attention.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, yeah, how will that make a difference
Speaker 2: in my life? Just saying I am grateful for X
Speaker 2: y Z things. And now when you mentioned it, maybe
Speaker 2: that's a mantra, that's a ritual that I should probably
Speaker 2: incorporate in my daily life, right, just getting up in
Speaker 2: the morning and saying I am grateful for X y
Speaker 2: Z and then starting my day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it sounds like your mom's reading the studies,
Speaker 1: because like literally there's literally a study where you have
Speaker 1: people scribble down three to five things are grateful for
Speaker 1: every day in the morning or in the evening. And
Speaker 1: what you find is it within two weeks, people statistically
Speaker 1: report higher subject well being a high level of happiness
Speaker 1: after that. So, like it's just this simple act. And
Speaker 1: it's because one of the problems is like we have
Speaker 1: this mind that's built to be very negative. You know,
Speaker 1: it made sense in our back in the day to
Speaker 1: like notice the bad stuff so we could kind of
Speaker 1: fix it. But that means that there's good stuff in
Speaker 1: our lives that we've kind of just gotten used to.
Speaker 1: We're not getting the kind of happiness benefit from all
Speaker 1: those good things because we don't take time to notice it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the studies show that just the act of
Speaker 1: what your mom is saying, just take time to notice
Speaker 1: it every morning. Now, all of a sudden, you're kind
Speaker 1: of paying attention and you can kind of get the
Speaker 1: emotional rewards that come from the good stuff in your
Speaker 1: life that you otherwise would have just taken for granted.
Speaker 2: So do you think our brain is conditioned to look
Speaker 2: at the negative only, or at least for the most part,
Speaker 2: so we are almost fighting against it to achieve happiness.
Speaker 1: Definitely. I mean, I think there's lots of evidence for
Speaker 1: a negativity bias. There's even evidence that like three month
Speaker 1: old and five month old babies are more likely to
Speaker 1: pay attention if you show them a scene of something negative.
Speaker 1: They kind of lock onto the negative stuff. So it
Speaker 1: seems like we have this bias, and it seems like
Speaker 1: it emerges really early. The good news is that you
Speaker 1: can train your brain away from that. Right, This is
Speaker 1: what I think think is what the gratitude practice that
Speaker 1: your mother was talking about can be so powerful. Right,
Speaker 1: you just force yourself to notice the good stuff, so
Speaker 1: you kind of push against this natural tendency, and I
Speaker 1: think that's the case in so many aspects of our lives.
Speaker 1: You know, I think we use the fitness analogy before,
Speaker 1: but I think it's similar, right, Like, I don't know
Speaker 1: about your general take, but my general take would be
Speaker 1: to like eat unhealthy stuff. I'm not like a kind
Speaker 1: of physically minded person. My instinct would be to stay
Speaker 1: on the couch and not push myself. Right, those are
Speaker 1: our natural instincts. But of course we can push past
Speaker 1: those natural instincts, and we need to if we want
Speaker 1: to be a little healthier. And I think the same
Speaker 1: is true for our happiness. We have this natural negativity
Speaker 1: bias that might even be innate, but with a little practice,
Speaker 1: we can move past it.
Speaker 2: In the end, Laurie, if you were to describe the
Speaker 2: United States of America in the context of happiness, how
Speaker 2: would you do that?
Speaker 1: I think I would describe it Unfortunately, is going down
Speaker 1: right now. And that's really what these recent data from
Speaker 1: the World Happiness Report show is that overall the happiness
Speaker 1: in the United States has been going down. We've dropped
Speaker 1: out of the top twenty in the world for the
Speaker 1: first time ever since the World Happiness Report has started,
Speaker 1: and sadly a lot of that increased unhappiness is because
Speaker 1: of young people, is because young people are feeling so
Speaker 1: depressed and so anxious, and so I think the way
Speaker 1: I would describe it is the United States isn't doing
Speaker 1: very well. But in that challenge, we really have an opportunity.
Speaker 1: This is a real opportunity. We have to kind of
Speaker 1: follow what the science show is and our behaviors in
Speaker 1: our mindsets to feel happier.
Speaker 2: Lottie, thank you so much for coming on immigrantly. As
Speaker 2: I said, you are a superstar. A lot of people
Speaker 2: love you, and I am so glad that you're doing
Speaker 2: what you're doing because we all need the Happiness Lab
Speaker 2: podcast in our lives to feel happier. But thank you
Speaker 2: so much. This was wonderful, such.
Speaker 1: A great time. Thanks so much for having me on
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad I got to talk to Laurie. I've
Speaker 2: been listening to the Happiness Lab for I don't know
Speaker 2: how long. This was such an important, fun, introspective conversation.
Speaker 2: And here's what I want all of you to do.
Speaker 2: On a scale of zero to ten ate your happiness.
Speaker 2: How happy are you in life and what makes you happy.
Speaker 2: I really think doing these exercises, being intentional about how
Speaker 2: happy we are, how grateful we are, probably makes us happier,
Speaker 2: and if not, it at least gives us a pathway
Speaker 2: to work towards happiness. This podcast was produced by Me
Speaker 2: Sally Ahhn, written by Ramier Harris and Me. The editorial
Speaker 2: review is done by Shay yu Are, sound designer and
Speaker 2: editor is Haik and Mudfarid. The music for Immigrantly is
Speaker 2: done by Simon Hutchinson. Come back next week when I
Speaker 2: have another incredible guest, and try to be happy