Speaker 1: Pushkin. The twenty twenty holiday season is the strangest one
Speaker 1: I can remember. Thanks to COVID nineteen, nearly all of
Speaker 1: the festive traditions that I share with my family and
Speaker 1: friends are canceled. The parties, the shopping trips, the dinners,
Speaker 1: They're all gone. It really sucks, especially since I know
Speaker 1: these social interactions are vital ingredients to my happiness. And
Speaker 1: that's why I decided to throw a little holiday zoom
Speaker 1: party Hello, Happy Holiday, partly to let me catch up
Speaker 1: with good friends from the world of psychology a holiday party, right,
Speaker 1: but also to pick their brains for the latest scientific
Speaker 1: insights on how to have a happier holiday season. And
Speaker 1: here was the guest list. Doctor Jamil Zaki from Stanford University, Jamale,
Speaker 1: are you there? Yes, I can hear you now, Doctor
Speaker 1: Liz Done from the Universe Stay British Columbia, let's try
Speaker 1: yelling at you guys a little bit. And doctor Nick
Speaker 1: Epley from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Speaker 1: I start listening to Christmas music and Labor Day, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm that guy. And again, so God rescue Mary. Podcast fans,
Speaker 1: get ready to rule your Yule with the Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: Expert Guide to the Holidays with me, Doctor Laurie Santos
Speaker 1: and friends. In a regular year time famine, that feeling
Speaker 1: of being overwhelmed, overcommitted, and up against the clock, that
Speaker 1: would be a real driver of my holiday stress and unhappiness.
Speaker 1: But with the pandemic pretty much emptying my schedule, I
Speaker 1: suddenly have minutes, hours, even days opening up in my diary.
Speaker 1: Liz helped me connect the dots on why this might
Speaker 1: be an opportunity I should appreciate more. I think interestingly,
Speaker 1: COVID may be helpful in this way, right because people
Speaker 1: just aren't going to have as many commitments and stuff
Speaker 1: as they usually do, and this could be pretty helpful
Speaker 1: in terms of enabling people to take a little bit
Speaker 1: more time to enjoy things that they otherwise might just overlook. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we did this study once where we went
Speaker 1: to the Old North Church in Boston, which is like
Speaker 1: a nice tourist attraction. It's like pretty good, it's not
Speaker 1: the taj Mahal, and we either made people feel like
Speaker 1: they had traveled quite a lot in the past or
Speaker 1: like they'd hardly ever gotten to do anything cool basically,
Speaker 1: and then we measured how much time they spent exploring
Speaker 1: this pleasant tourist attraction. And what we found is that
Speaker 1: when people feel like they hardly get to do anything
Speaker 1: cool at all, they spend more time like savoring this
Speaker 1: small tourist attraction. Right, And so you know, I think
Speaker 1: that's potentially a cool thing about COVID is that we
Speaker 1: may feel like we have the time to sort of
Speaker 1: linger and appreciate these sort of low key, enjoyable experiences
Speaker 1: that otherwise we might not. How can we get people
Speaker 1: to like dig in and savor the moment? Right again,
Speaker 1: normal holiday season? This is terrible, right, because I'm running
Speaker 1: from thing to thing and I've got a million things
Speaker 1: on my mind. Right, It's hard to be there when
Speaker 1: I'm like making you know, gingerbread houses with the kids, right, Like, like,
Speaker 1: how do we have folks dig in and actually pay attention? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, mindfulness is one clear way to increase savoring
Speaker 1: of the moment, right, I mean it sort of brings
Speaker 1: us out of because I think one thing with the holidays,
Speaker 1: at least for me, you know, my parents have split up,
Speaker 1: and so I've got multiple extended families. I'm in the
Speaker 1: car all day, bouncing from one town to another in
Speaker 1: a typical holiday and wherever I am, I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: about the next place that I'm going to be in
Speaker 1: the last place that I was. It sort of intensifies
Speaker 1: this sense of existing outside of the here and now,
Speaker 1: where we're anticipating and remembering and not experiencing. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that anytime, and this might be sort of
Speaker 1: a mundane tip, but I mean I think anytime that
Speaker 1: you could just take a couple of deep breaths, look
Speaker 1: around you pay attention to the details of what you're seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling,
Speaker 1: Just to get yourself back into your senses might be
Speaker 1: one way to sort of turn down the volume on
Speaker 1: how hectic everything feels. And the key is, like you
Speaker 1: have to do that very explicitly, I think in the
Speaker 1: modern age, right, you know, we all want a multitask,
Speaker 1: but the act of monotasking sometimes take some work, you know,
Speaker 1: like literally like move your phone out of the room
Speaker 1: when you're doing the gingerbread house with the kids so
Speaker 1: you're not tempted to check your email and things like that.
Speaker 1: It sounds so silly, but it can completely change the
Speaker 1: experience that you're having. Oh and don't worry about taking
Speaker 1: so many pictures. Man, what people take just infinite pictures.
Speaker 1: My wife's and you know, not to throw under the
Speaker 1: bus here, but my wife's camera role is like just
Speaker 1: a it's like a trash heap. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: ninety pictures of every moment. It's like, I'm not ever
Speaker 1: going to look through that. And in fact, you know,
Speaker 1: with Diana Tamir, we ran a study again, Liz, this
Speaker 1: is another study in a mundane tourist attraction. But we
Speaker 1: had people take a tour of the church that's in
Speaker 1: the middle of Stamford, and it was a self paced tour,
Speaker 1: and in some cases we had students just leave their
Speaker 1: phone with us and sort of be tech free while
Speaker 1: they did the tour, and in other cases we had
Speaker 1: them take pictures, and in a third case, we forced
Speaker 1: them to log into their social media accounts, take pictures,
Speaker 1: and then post those pictures to their accounts. And we
Speaker 1: found that people reliably remember the event less if they
Speaker 1: documented it, especially if they documented it in order to
Speaker 1: share it later. And it feels like that's just another
Speaker 1: super reliable way to take ourselves out of the moment,
Speaker 1: is to try to turn this moment into a future
Speaker 1: memory by documenting it in some way. And I think
Speaker 1: that's a huge one. Right, It's not just our technology
Speaker 1: that's distracting us, Like sometimes we are actively and explicitly
Speaker 1: using our technology for things that are going to make
Speaker 1: our memories and our experiences worse. Yeah, all of these
Speaker 1: things make them worse, and part because they divide our attention.
Speaker 1: So happy experience as positive experiences, need to be things
Speaker 1: that we are focused on. The attentive too. That's what
Speaker 1: it means to be mindful, as Jimmie was saying, and
Speaker 1: divided attention pursuing multiple goals at once just sucks, just unpleasant.
Speaker 1: So behavioral scientists like, help fix this, right, because I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure everyone who's listening is like, it's the holidays,
Speaker 1: it's COVID, it's a pandemic. My attention is divided naturally, right, Like,
Speaker 1: how do we get it back? So I have one idea,
Speaker 1: which is give it as a gift to somebody. Right,
Speaker 1: if your spouse is always slightly annoyed by the fact
Speaker 1: that you are like refreshing five thirty eight or like
Speaker 1: checking the latest news, give them three days where you
Speaker 1: put your phone away and then you have to like
Speaker 1: it just and I think it could also be really
Speaker 1: helpful in breaking the habit. Right. So, I know, I,
Speaker 1: although I try to be pretty good about not being
Speaker 1: on my phone all the time, election season really got
Speaker 1: me in the habit of just constantly checking it. And
Speaker 1: now I'm having trouble stopping that habit. And so I
Speaker 1: almost need, you know, an external force, like having promised
Speaker 1: somebody as a gift that I'm not going to look
Speaker 1: at it for three days. I need something like that
Speaker 1: as like a phone cleanse, to like break me out
Speaker 1: of this habit. Oh, I love that idea is first
Speaker 1: of all, is the same way I deleted Twitter from
Speaker 1: my phone after hearing Lorie's episode on that and then
Speaker 1: put it back for the election, to my strong detriment.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I think that in many cases we
Speaker 1: think of nudges, you know, things that will change our
Speaker 1: behavior for the better, and they're often focused on us,
Speaker 1: so like put the salad closer than the chocolate cake,
Speaker 1: for instance. But sometimes some of the most powerful nudges
Speaker 1: are things that actually are service to other people. So
Speaker 1: I think there have been a couple of these studies
Speaker 1: where you can have an app where like every mile
Speaker 1: you run donate some amount of money to charity, some
Speaker 1: very small amount of money to charity, and that actually
Speaker 1: prompts people to do the thing that's healthier for them
Speaker 1: by leveraging their desire to help other people. So I
Speaker 1: love the idea of then wrapping that into the holidays
Speaker 1: as well by saying, you know, everyone would benefit. You know,
Speaker 1: my spouse, my kids, and I would all benefit if
Speaker 1: I could just get off my phone, So I might
Speaker 1: as well give that as a hopefully not the only gift,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a terrific idea. Often when behavioral scientists
Speaker 1: thinking about how to change behave, we try to think
Speaker 1: about situation management. How do we change the environment we're
Speaker 1: in so that we are more attentive to this moment.
Speaker 1: So scheduling can be good for this. Jamio was pointing
Speaker 1: out the challenge of going from one family to another
Speaker 1: to another and so on, and that's hard. But COVID
Speaker 1: this holiday, you know, when we're all in pandemic runs
Speaker 1: potentially a different risk, which is we don't ever commit
Speaker 1: to spending time with some set of family members or
Speaker 1: friends or people who would otherwise commit to And I
Speaker 1: think that's critical to premit get that on your schedule.
Speaker 1: So if normally your family would come a day or
Speaker 1: two before the holiday start and stay with you, well,
Speaker 1: pre commit to that, announced that and make sure that
Speaker 1: that has set aside before and because if you don't
Speaker 1: do that, it ain't going to happen. You just won't
Speaker 1: get it done. And I think that's important to do
Speaker 1: also for the subtle kinds of social connection we get
Speaker 1: over the holidays that we forget right. You know, every
Speaker 1: year I go with a friend of grad school and
Speaker 1: we go to New York and we go holiday shopping
Speaker 1: together and all the stores, and it feels like during
Speaker 1: COVID we're not naturally going to do that right now,
Speaker 1: But that's a kind of social connection that I feel
Speaker 1: like if I don't put that in, I'm going to
Speaker 1: miss out on it, right So think of like, you know,
Speaker 1: the work parties and all the subtle things that you're
Speaker 1: missing out on this year. How can you squeeze that
Speaker 1: part into that seems really important? I have a question
Speaker 1: for the group. So I totally agree that it's critical
Speaker 1: that we carve out time for social connection in a
Speaker 1: time that this holiday season we won't be having it
Speaker 1: that much in person. But I think there's something that
Speaker 1: is unsatisfying about replacing synchronous social connection with zoom. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think if there's something that we don't need more
Speaker 1: of in our life many of us, it's zoom conversations.
Speaker 1: And they also are a poor replica of meaningful social
Speaker 1: connections in at least some ways, right. I mean, when
Speaker 1: I go see my family for the holidays, we don't
Speaker 1: just stand face to face about eighteen inches apart, steering
Speaker 1: at each other, having to sustain a single conversation. Right.
Speaker 1: We just sit around, watch a movie, have some eggnog.
Speaker 1: It's much more low key. And I wonder whether you
Speaker 1: all have thoughts on how to replicate that sort of
Speaker 1: not just connected feeling, but a relaxed connection. We've got
Speaker 1: these great electronic tools for connecting, but they like they
Speaker 1: exert a type of pressure that regular social interaction doesn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there're two pressures. One is the pressure of the forcedness, right,
Speaker 1: like we're all facing each other, we're all in a
Speaker 1: really specific spot, or are we, you know? But the
Speaker 1: second is the setup cost, right, which is high. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not just like I'm going to run into you
Speaker 1: at work or you know, if you're spending two days
Speaker 1: with the family. You're going to run into them, right.
Speaker 1: You don't have to schedule like you're going to walk
Speaker 1: downstairs and they're going to be there, right. And so
Speaker 1: how do we get over those two kinds of costs?
Speaker 1: So I think we can harness the pro social idea here.
Speaker 1: So what has worked for me is I have a
Speaker 1: group of friends. We all live in Canada, but we're American,
Speaker 1: and so we were getting together and doing volunteer work
Speaker 1: leading up to the election, writing letters to voters, and
Speaker 1: so that was a And even though we were all
Speaker 1: crazy busy and we're saying no to everything that anyone
Speaker 1: asked us to do, we would get together on Sundays
Speaker 1: every Sunday and do that together, sort of socially distanced
Speaker 1: out on someone's deck, and that pulled us together and
Speaker 1: it was really nice because we were there to do
Speaker 1: something else like we would have had a hard time
Speaker 1: justifying just all getting together to sit around and talk.
Speaker 1: So that was really nice. And so we've just decided,
Speaker 1: you know what, we're just going to keep doing it.
Speaker 1: And now that there's a health order in place actually
Speaker 1: where I live, that we can't even a few of
Speaker 1: us get together even outside. We're going to do it
Speaker 1: over zoom, which won't be nearly as good. But I
Speaker 1: think it is nice that we're doing something else and
Speaker 1: we're just there to kind of like support each other
Speaker 1: and like, you know, run things by each other. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think there is something really important about
Speaker 1: being around other people without having to be constantly maintaining
Speaker 1: a conversation. So that's the brilliance of the book club. Right.
Speaker 1: I'm not in a book club, but my wife Jen is,
Speaker 1: and you know, once a month or so, she gets
Speaker 1: together with three of our friends. They're not even that
Speaker 1: close friends, but they've gotten closer together through this book
Speaker 1: club experience. They get together once a month. Then they
Speaker 1: spend like a little bit of time talking about the book,
Speaker 1: but mostly they just spend time talking about stuff, and
Speaker 1: it's wonderful time for her. And one thing I'm wondering
Speaker 1: is if something like that wouldn't be possible during this
Speaker 1: holiday season, so over the month of December, say, if
Speaker 1: there couldn't be short books like that with chapters, advent
Speaker 1: stories or whatever, that people might be able to get
Speaker 1: together with their families and just read out loud to
Speaker 1: each other. There will be some conversation around it. It
Speaker 1: would be maybe over zoom or over the phone, but
Speaker 1: you wouldn't all be sitting there staring at it. It It
Speaker 1: would just be a speaker in the room. The thing
Speaker 1: that's hard about zoom is that we all have to
Speaker 1: be attentive to this thing. You don't just have floating conversation.
Speaker 1: That's one idea, But that's another thing I think we
Speaker 1: can break nick, is this idea that we all have
Speaker 1: to be attentive. I've been trying to do that in
Speaker 1: a forced way by my family gets together every Friday
Speaker 1: night and we do dinner together, and like sometimes I'm busier,
Speaker 1: i haven't had a chance to cooked inner yet and whatever,
Speaker 1: and I've just kind of done this force thing of
Speaker 1: like I'm putting the Zoom on while I talk to you,
Speaker 1: but I'm just walking around the kitchen and I'm just cooking. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: At first, when I started doing that, it was like
Speaker 1: out of necessity because I hadn't potted anything yet, I'm starving,
Speaker 1: I need to do something. But in practice it worked
Speaker 1: really well for a couple reasons. One is it allowed
Speaker 1: people to see the informality of my life. Right, You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're in the kitchen now, like, oh, you have this
Speaker 1: pot right, Like it's not this sort of staged thing
Speaker 1: that we often set up when we're zooming with people.
Speaker 1: But the other is, like, you know, the conversations kind
Speaker 1: of go the way they go when you're not trying
Speaker 1: to be really formal about it, right. I think in
Speaker 1: the holiday season, where we're so busy, that's a way
Speaker 1: to be social while we're doing other stuff, while we're
Speaker 1: wrapping presents, while we're making cookies or all the other
Speaker 1: stuff we need to be doing. I feel like the
Speaker 1: moderate level of structure that we're used to in like
Speaker 1: regular conversations doesn't work well on zoom because we constantly
Speaker 1: interrupt each other. And it's not us, by the way,
Speaker 1: It's not just that we're like bad at this one podcast.
Speaker 1: Like I've talked to I've talked to engineers that work
Speaker 1: in this world basically on these issues, and the problem
Speaker 1: is they just can't get the electrons to like move
Speaker 1: fast enough so that there's constantly this like teeny tiny
Speaker 1: microscopic delay that's just enough to throw things off such
Speaker 1: that it is very hard to have a fluid social
Speaker 1: interaction with more than one other person. Therefore, you can
Speaker 1: either go super casual like the kitchen thing, where it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter if you interrupt or you're not talking
Speaker 1: all the time, or I've experienced you can go higher
Speaker 1: levels of structure where you actually have like, you know,
Speaker 1: an organized games. So one of the few Zoom conversations
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed in the past six months was with
Speaker 1: my friends where we took the questions from that classic
Speaker 1: art Aaron's study where people go deeper and deeper right
Speaker 1: asking like if you could have dinner with one famous person,
Speaker 1: who would it be? All you know, all of these
Speaker 1: questions and I had my friends email their answers to
Speaker 1: my husband, who made an Excel spreadsheet for us of
Speaker 1: like everyone's answers, but they were covered, and then we
Speaker 1: had everybody's answers. We had everyone on Zoom and each
Speaker 1: person had to guess who had given which answer, and
Speaker 1: so there was like structure to it, so nobody in disrupted,
Speaker 1: but we also got to know each other better. So
Speaker 1: it was actually an opportunity with my really good friends
Speaker 1: to go, hey, there's probably some stuff we don't know
Speaker 1: about each other because we've never answered these questions together.
Speaker 1: And so in a way, if you induce a little
Speaker 1: bit of structure, this like bizarre situation can potentially give
Speaker 1: you an opportunity to get to know your friends better
Speaker 1: than you would in like the normal kind of world
Speaker 1: where we just rely on our ability to have a
Speaker 1: standard social conversation. And I think the structure Just a
Speaker 1: quick aside and a note on this, I've heard this
Speaker 1: as well from engineers that in essence, as you put it,
Speaker 1: is really beautifully the electrons just can't go fast enough
Speaker 1: for us to really pick up that millisecond level queue.
Speaker 1: To me, though, that is such a credit to mammals
Speaker 1: and our species in particular, like we do this so quick.
Speaker 1: I mean, just the fluidity of in prison interaction is
Speaker 1: the thing, you know. I don't know about you all,
Speaker 1: but I feel that when I do interact with someone
Speaker 1: in prison after seven hours of zoom, it's like running
Speaker 1: with a backpack on and then suddenly taking it off,
Speaker 1: and you realize the facility that we have for this.
Speaker 1: I hope that's something that we can keep on savoring
Speaker 1: after we're all allowed to be three dimensional again. You
Speaker 1: can also, I think, improve the nature of these conversations
Speaker 1: by kind of reducing the bandwidth requirements. It's right that
Speaker 1: the electrons can't move fast enough to move all of
Speaker 1: this video, but audio works great. And in a lot
Speaker 1: of experiments that we've run, the sense of connection with
Speaker 1: another person doesn't really come from seeing them, it comes
Speaker 1: from hearing them. I mean, when you're connected to somebody else,
Speaker 1: it's because you sort of know them. And what does
Speaker 1: it mean to know somebody? Means you know what's on
Speaker 1: their mind. And the closest you get to somebody's mind
Speaker 1: through their voice, through their words that they share with you,
Speaker 1: that communicate what's on their mind with you, it's not
Speaker 1: seeing their body or their physical presence. So we can
Speaker 1: scale down some of those bandwidth requirements and go old
Speaker 1: school and use these old phones for what they're actually
Speaker 1: good for, which is talking to each other. Liz pointed
Speaker 1: out that these zoom calls don't work really well when
Speaker 1: you're with lots of other people, but they can work
Speaker 1: really well in one on one conversation. In lots of
Speaker 1: experiments that we conduct, we have people do like the
Speaker 1: art errand questions, we have people discuss some of the
Speaker 1: deep and meaningful intimate questions that are there. We modify
Speaker 1: them a little bit and We compare those against shallower conversations,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that people really underestimate how much
Speaker 1: they're going to enjoy deep and meaningful conversation. Never fear,
Speaker 1: the deep and meaningful talk is only just getting started
Speaker 1: on the Happiness Lab Expert Guide to the Holidays. When
Speaker 1: we return from the break, Jamil, Nick, Liz and I
Speaker 1: will tackle the thorny topic of what to do when
Speaker 1: you're festive Holiday celebrations don't go quite to plan. You
Speaker 1: guys can have your compassion. I just like to yell out,
Speaker 1: Christmas is ruined. The Happiness Lab Expert Guide to the
Speaker 1: Holidays will be right back. When we left the Zoom party,
Speaker 1: Nick Epley was explaining how much we dread engaging in
Speaker 1: deep and meaningful conversations with people, how vital it can
Speaker 1: be for boosting our well being. Twenty twenty has been
Speaker 1: an extraordinary year in so many ways, but one of
Speaker 1: the aspects I worry about most is how many of
Speaker 1: us have come to dread engaging in just the sort
Speaker 1: of open and honest dialogue. Nick recommends. There are so
Speaker 1: many heated, contentious and politicized topics right now that even
Speaker 1: dinner conversation with our families can feel like a minefield. Luckily,
Speaker 1: Jamil is a leading expert on how we can all
Speaker 1: do better at navigating this during the holiday season. For
Speaker 1: many of us, our families are some of the only
Speaker 1: people that were really close with who have very different experiences,
Speaker 1: in very different backgrounds and beliefs than we do, and
Speaker 1: bridging that is always difficult. But I mean, right now,
Speaker 1: it just feels impossible. And we've talked about this before, Laurie,
Speaker 1: but I think we often underestimate the utility of empathy
Speaker 1: in those conversations, right. We often try to write people
Speaker 1: off or think that there's no common ground, and when
Speaker 1: we actually try to connect and share stories and listen
Speaker 1: to people who are different from us, it's not just
Speaker 1: that we listen and feel happier we're actually we end
Speaker 1: up often finding some common ground that we didn't realize
Speaker 1: was there, and maybe even being more persuasive. In fact,
Speaker 1: my graduate student Louisa Santos has this amazing work that
Speaker 1: she's just conducted where she convinces some group of people
Speaker 1: that actually, empathy is a great tool for relating to
Speaker 1: people who are different from you, and it actually can
Speaker 1: be effective in helping you represent your own position really well.
Speaker 1: She then tells a separate group of people, you know,
Speaker 1: empathy is overrated in political conversations. It doesn't really work.
Speaker 1: And then she had those people who had read one
Speaker 1: of those essays write a note to somebody who they
Speaker 1: disagreed with about an issue. And then we found people
Speaker 1: who actually disagreed with them and had them read the notes,
Speaker 1: and we found that when people were convinced that empathy
Speaker 1: was useful, they wrote notes that were perceived as more
Speaker 1: empathic by someone they disagreed with. But it wasn't just
Speaker 1: that the person they disagreed with was more persuaded and
Speaker 1: came closer to the opinion of the original note writer.
Speaker 1: In essence, when we know that empathy is useful, we
Speaker 1: use it and it becomes useful. And I think that
Speaker 1: we underestimate how useful it will be, and therefore don't
Speaker 1: try to make connections, even though there might be some
Speaker 1: to be made. One critical component of empathy is listening,
Speaker 1: rather than presuming you know what's on the mind of
Speaker 1: another person. Jamil noted that we often dread these kinds
Speaker 1: of conversations, but it's important to recognize where that dread
Speaker 1: is coming from. It's not coming from the actual conversation
Speaker 1: we've just had with someone. It's not coming from the
Speaker 1: actual connection experience. It's coming from our expectation of how
Speaker 1: this is going to go. We are playing out this interaction,
Speaker 1: imagining all of the stupid things that they are going
Speaker 1: to say and all the hateful ideas they're going to
Speaker 1: present to us. And usually when you then end up
Speaker 1: talking to somebody like that, ask them, Hey, I got
Speaker 1: to sing that's kind of bugging me. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: talk about or we got this kind of difficult conversation
Speaker 1: that maybe we ought to have. You often find well,
Speaker 1: I wasn't so bad after all, At least we find
Speaker 1: that in our research, because the mind that you imagine
Speaker 1: in these difficult circumstances or with these difficult relationships often
Speaker 1: isn't quite as extremely bad as you imagine, And you
Speaker 1: don't learn that if you are just talking you have
Speaker 1: to be listening to what the other person has to say. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, Mina Chakara and others have found something that
Speaker 1: I like to call phantom polarization. Right. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: true that people are far apart on issues. It's also
Speaker 1: true that there's a lot of animosity, but even worse
Speaker 1: than that is what we imagine other people to think
Speaker 1: about us. So if you ask liberals, for instance, what
Speaker 1: do you think conservatives believe about you? How do you
Speaker 1: think they feel about you? They'll say, oh, my god,
Speaker 1: they hate my guts entirely. They see nothing of value
Speaker 1: in me. And if you ask conservatives, you know, how
Speaker 1: do you feel about liberals? They don't love. But it's
Speaker 1: they by no means feel as much animosity as liberals believe.
Speaker 1: That's and that goes in the other direction as well.
Speaker 1: So to Nick's point, I mean, we're imagining this conversation.
Speaker 1: We're making assumptions both about this person's beliefs but also
Speaker 1: about their beliefs about us, and we might be wrong
Speaker 1: in both cases, but we'll never know, and we'll never
Speaker 1: have a chance to find any common ground unless we
Speaker 1: ask them. And I think one of those spots this
Speaker 1: year in particular, where we have a lot of kind
Speaker 1: of negative expectations is around these conversations that are specific
Speaker 1: to COVID right now. Right like, one of the hard
Speaker 1: conversations I think a lot of families are having right
Speaker 1: now is this, should we get together? Maybe we're not
Speaker 1: going to get together. Maybe different members of the family
Speaker 1: have different expectations about whether it's a good idea to
Speaker 1: get together. How do we navigate the sort of COVID
Speaker 1: norms and COVID conflict during this time of year. Here's
Speaker 1: my idea, which is that this isn't for convincing a relative,
Speaker 1: it's just for sort of managing this challenge. So where
Speaker 1: I live, throughout most of COVID, we've been able to
Speaker 1: get together, but only in small group. So you've been
Speaker 1: allowed to have six people. The challenge is that you're
Speaker 1: in this position of like choosing your favorite people in
Speaker 1: a way that has to be like super exclusive and explicit,
Speaker 1: which is terrible, right. So I proposed this idea to
Speaker 1: my friends, which they did not go for, but I
Speaker 1: still think it's a good idea, which is that we
Speaker 1: should have like a pot luck where basically everyone puts
Speaker 1: their name in a hat and then you draw like
Speaker 1: five people that are your safe six then for that month.
Speaker 1: And what I think that does is allows us to
Speaker 1: follow this rule of like keeping our groups small, but
Speaker 1: without implying that oh, because I didn't choose you for
Speaker 1: my safe six, I don't care about you, I don't
Speaker 1: like you because we know that the sense of being
Speaker 1: socially excluded is just devastating to people, even if they
Speaker 1: know that, like, hey, there's a really good reason for
Speaker 1: doing this right now, it feels awful. And so I
Speaker 1: think acknowledging this upfront and creating like a pool and
Speaker 1: then you know it, making it explicitly random and like
Speaker 1: doing the drawn zoom or something might be a good
Speaker 1: way to go. Another avenue for convincing relatives that might
Speaker 1: want to get together and might not understand why it's
Speaker 1: not a great idea to do so, is again to
Speaker 1: leverage our desire to be kind to one another. There's
Speaker 1: evidence now Juli and Jordan published some work recently demonstrating
Speaker 1: that people are more willing to engage in social distancing
Speaker 1: if it's framed as a way to protect other people
Speaker 1: as opposed to protecting ourselves. So, for instance, you know,
Speaker 1: my parents, they understand that we're going to be having
Speaker 1: a distant holiday, but if they didn't, it might not
Speaker 1: strike them that great as saying, well, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be around you because I don't want to get sick.
Speaker 1: Perhaps a more effective message would be I don't want
Speaker 1: to be around you because I don't want you to
Speaker 1: be sick, right, I want to protect you from a
Speaker 1: potential risk here. Yeah, I've heard this to you of like,
Speaker 1: you know, if something happened to you, how could I
Speaker 1: ever think of Christmas the same way? Again? You know,
Speaker 1: I really need to I know this sucks right now,
Speaker 1: but kind of future us is going to be so
Speaker 1: pleased that we did it this way kind of thing.
Speaker 1: A different challenge of folks are facing with COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: is that, you know, those people who like the holidays
Speaker 1: and like Christmas. That is not me, but that is
Speaker 1: some people. Nick Maybe people are really grieving the fact
Speaker 1: that our holiday traditions might be broken or really different
Speaker 1: this year. Right, how do we kind of navigate that?
Speaker 1: Do you mean our holiday traditions of sort of togetherness
Speaker 1: or just all kinds of stuff? Right? You know my family,
Speaker 1: you know, often there's a Star Wars movie that comes
Speaker 1: out around the holiday season, so typically in December we
Speaker 1: get together and we watch the new Star Wars or
Speaker 1: you go shopping at the mall with your family members. Right,
Speaker 1: we have this family tradition when I go visit my
Speaker 1: husband's family in Iowa that we all go to Target
Speaker 1: together because we've never sorted it out and gotten our
Speaker 1: shopping done. So we always go on like Christmas Eve
Speaker 1: to Target, but we each get a peppermint moocha at
Speaker 1: the Target and it feels so nice and like it
Speaker 1: sounds silly, but I'll actually miss the peppermint moocha. It's
Speaker 1: like the best thing about Christmas season for me personally, peppermutmocha.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so how do we kind of navigate kind
Speaker 1: of just being sad about those those moments and those
Speaker 1: traditions being broken. So this is a good question. Maybe
Speaker 1: for the group, we may have different opinions of at this.
Speaker 1: I can see going one of two ways here. One
Speaker 1: is to try to recreate these right, So you know,
Speaker 1: we can think of lots of different ways where Laura,
Speaker 1: you could have your peppermint mocha. You all set up
Speaker 1: a time and we're gonna go Wednesday night at six
Speaker 1: o'clock and off we go and get it. And you
Speaker 1: know that there might be some experiences that we can
Speaker 1: recreate like that that would be just as good as
Speaker 1: the original. But there are a lot of experiences that
Speaker 1: we probably can recreate, and for those, I think it's
Speaker 1: probably best not to try. Like, you know, a b
Speaker 1: plus version of the holidays. It's you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like what we used to do, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of a sucky version of what we used to do.
Speaker 1: Like that's not worth trying. Instead, you'd be better off
Speaker 1: just doing something totally different. We're going to come up
Speaker 1: with a totally new thing that we're going to do
Speaker 1: just this one weird holiday season. I'm curious to hear
Speaker 1: what other folks think about about this tension. Do we
Speaker 1: recreate and try to come close or do we just
Speaker 1: scrap it do something totally different. I'm on the recreate side,
Speaker 1: I think, because first off, if you have little kids,
Speaker 1: I think they still want things to be a certain
Speaker 1: way and to be familiar. And so, you know, the
Speaker 1: most recent holiday that I experienced was Halloween, and you know,
Speaker 1: my eight year old had ideas about exactly how everything
Speaker 1: should work because that's how Halloween is, and it was
Speaker 1: freakishly important to him that like things be that way,
Speaker 1: and so you know, we actually not to overindulge our child,
Speaker 1: but just with these times being so weird, we really
Speaker 1: wanted to try to recreate that for him. So we
Speaker 1: actually managed to do most of the things in the
Speaker 1: same way. You know, we still went trick or treating,
Speaker 1: and there were things we could do safely that I
Speaker 1: think had enough of the characteristics of the usual experience.
Speaker 1: I said to my husband at the end of the night,
Speaker 1: a trick or treating, Like, even though we noticed so
Speaker 1: many differences tonight, it had enough of those features. It
Speaker 1: will feel like he had a Halloween this year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's part of it is trying to diagnose, like
Speaker 1: what are the necessary features, right, And some of it,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we could recreate over zoom of like,
Speaker 1: oh we're together in this other way, but some of
Speaker 1: it's like, no, it's really about the candy, right, Like
Speaker 1: if you don't have the candy, it just like doesn't count.
Speaker 1: So I too would fall on the recreate side. My
Speaker 1: dad and I also, like we have a tradition of watching,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever crappy blockbuster movie comes out right around Christmas,
Speaker 1: and I think we'll probably contingent on a seventy plus
Speaker 1: year old a man being able to run this, try
Speaker 1: to do one of those Netflix watch parties that you
Speaker 1: can do. And likewise, my mom always cooks proving food
Speaker 1: and so I'll try to recreate some of it's like
Speaker 1: she's sending me recipes and I'll try to make them,
Speaker 1: which you know will probably cause some small explosion, but
Speaker 1: is still worth it, and it's actually will be new
Speaker 1: for me to do it instead of her and might
Speaker 1: be meaningful in a different way. But if I could
Speaker 1: just add one thing, I think we can try to
Speaker 1: find fixes. We can try to either recreate or we
Speaker 1: can do something totally new. I'd like to also acknowledge
Speaker 1: that we can also mourn the loss of this holiday season,
Speaker 1: and that's okay. It's okay to focus on the struggles
Speaker 1: that we're going through, acknowledge them, and be mindful of
Speaker 1: them as well. I mean, that's part of what self
Speaker 1: compassion entails, is not just escaping suffering, but paying attention
Speaker 1: to it and especially acknowledging that it's a part of
Speaker 1: our common humanity. I mean, I think in some of
Speaker 1: the self compassion exercises that I do, for instance, you
Speaker 1: imagine something that you're struggling with, something that's causing you pain,
Speaker 1: and then you imagine a soccer stadium full of other
Speaker 1: people who are suffering in the same way right alongside you.
Speaker 1: And I mean, there are enough people in the world
Speaker 1: that there's probably a soccer stadium worth of us suffering
Speaker 1: in any way at any given time. But I think
Speaker 1: this holiday season, millions or billions of us will be
Speaker 1: united in the loss of things that we have celebrated
Speaker 1: in our lives. And that's tough, but it's also something
Speaker 1: that we share together, and I think remembering that that's
Speaker 1: just a common experience and focusing on it in that
Speaker 1: way it can take a little bit of the edge
Speaker 1: off of it. I also think this is where the
Speaker 1: human capacity for adaptation comes in really handy, because I've
Speaker 1: been finding that experiences that normally weren't that amazing to me,
Speaker 1: like going out to dinner with a couple of friends,
Speaker 1: now I'm like, who look at us out for dinner
Speaker 1: with two friends. This is amazing, you know. And so
Speaker 1: what might have been a B plus Christmas in a
Speaker 1: normal year might feel like an A because we're grading
Speaker 1: it on the curve of like our COVID level experiences.
Speaker 1: And I would argue that we may have had a
Speaker 1: bit of a happiness reset where it's easier to derive
Speaker 1: joy from sort of simpler, less impressive pleasures, and we
Speaker 1: might be able to capitalize on that in recreating some
Speaker 1: of these experiences. So the last question before we kind
Speaker 1: of wrap up is, you know, hopefully our listeners are
Speaker 1: putting into effect all these holiday tips, but what if
Speaker 1: it's an absolute disaster, you know, worst holiday ever? Right?
Speaker 1: How do you pick yourself up afterwords and recover? You know,
Speaker 1: I come back to self compassion. I think that this
Speaker 1: is just unequivocally an unhappy time. If you look at
Speaker 1: the Hedonometer, I don't know if you if you all
Speaker 1: have seen. This is this sort of device that computer
Speaker 1: scientists and psychologists have put together that scrapes Twitter and
Speaker 1: basically uses language processing to estimate how happy the world is.
Speaker 1: And they've had these estimates estimates every day since two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. And I mean, we're just in far
Speaker 1: in a way, the least happy year at least since
Speaker 1: since they've recorded those data. And I think it's it's
Speaker 1: fine to not feel okay right now. It's it's a
Speaker 1: very common experience, and it's common during the holidays in
Speaker 1: other years. So you've got a compound. You're getting this
Speaker 1: double whammy of the holiday season, which can be stressful,
Speaker 1: plus twenty twenty, which is stressful. And so I think
Speaker 1: if if you're not feeling well, right now. Some acceptance
Speaker 1: might be a good way to treat yourself well, even
Speaker 1: even when you're not feeling great. Can I shift gears
Speaker 1: on that just a little bit? The self compassion part,
Speaker 1: I think is a good point, but compassion towards others
Speaker 1: is also a very critical And if you've had a
Speaker 1: really bad experience that you have been involved with, it's
Speaker 1: possible that there's something that you've done that you could
Speaker 1: apologize for, like, look, I shouldn't have reacted that way.
Speaker 1: We're all stressed. I should have spent more time at this.
Speaker 1: I should. And you can recover a lot by saying
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. And so if something has gone bad, you
Speaker 1: know it's not likely that you're going to be the
Speaker 1: only one who's responsible for it going bad, but taking
Speaker 1: some ownership of that and writing any wrongs you may
Speaker 1: have contributed to by calling somebody up and saying you're
Speaker 1: sorry for what happened, and you hope this won't happen again,
Speaker 1: and here's what we're gonna try to do to make
Speaker 1: things better next time. I think that's how you recover,
Speaker 1: and that's not just a bad holiday. That's how you
Speaker 1: recover from anything you've screwed. Up at is you accept
Speaker 1: responsibility for what you did, and you grab hold of
Speaker 1: your agency and you say I'm sorry for screwing up.
Speaker 1: You guys can have your passion. I just like to
Speaker 1: yell out Christmas is ruined, and that makes me feel better.
Speaker 1: Remember the Santo's family, because I feel like we might
Speaker 1: have some Christmas is ruins. Well. I think that gets
Speaker 1: to the last thing. Is this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: one tendency this holiday season is going to just be
Speaker 1: to complain a lot, right, Like, there's so much we're
Speaker 1: missing and our routines are messed up and it's not
Speaker 1: the same as before. You know, any strategies for either
Speaker 1: complaining better or doing something that's a kind of instead
Speaker 1: of complaining that might be good. I would suggest complaining
Speaker 1: first and then get it out of the way. All right,
Speaker 1: we've had that. Now, let's get on with it and
Speaker 1: you acknowledge it. As Jimill pointed out, it's good to
Speaker 1: acknowledge when times are sucky, say that and then get
Speaker 1: on with it. Onward, Let's have holiday. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: my wife is a therapist, and you know she says
Speaker 1: that any loss, not just the loss of people, but
Speaker 1: the loss of experiences are things that you hope for
Speaker 1: can be mourned, right, And one interesting thing about morning
Speaker 1: is that it's intense. You really focus on it, and
Speaker 1: that makes it easier to move on. So yeah, to
Speaker 1: Nick's point, I mean, I think that complain intentionally, right, Like,
Speaker 1: rather than have this ambient thing that's floating around you
Speaker 1: like pink pins, cloud of dust, right, is just to
Speaker 1: do it intentionally, really focus on what has been lost,
Speaker 1: and then hopefully that can help one cool. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think this is where New Year's comes in handy. So, like,
Speaker 1: even if the holidays don't go great, right, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think everyone's going to feel like, you know, hey
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, don't let the door hit you on the
Speaker 1: way day. And so I think New Year's Eve, even
Speaker 1: though we're all probably just going to be like home
Speaker 1: drinking champagne on our couches, is going to be awesome
Speaker 1: because ce in hell twenty twenty, right, and so like
Speaker 1: it does, I think it's going to give us this
Speaker 1: fresh start. So no matter how badly the holidays go,
Speaker 1: we get to have that fresh start with like, hey,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, it's already looking better. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say be worse, but it is this. We
Speaker 1: know that things like a new year arriving give us
Speaker 1: this opportunity for a fresh start. So even if we've
Speaker 1: gotten into this like complaining mode, like bitter modes, it's
Speaker 1: unhappy mode, like okay, then have at it throughout Christmas
Speaker 1: and everything, but then when New Year's comes, like, use
Speaker 1: that opportunity for that fresh start. Thank you behavioral scientists
Speaker 1: for making one of my worst holidays maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit better this year. I'll text you on December twenty
Speaker 1: six and I'll let you know how it went. It
Speaker 1: was great fun, It was fantastic as always. We got
Speaker 1: to do this every year or every major holiday. Maybe
Speaker 1: we will make this a new tradition. I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: hosting this virtual party. But I'll let you in on
Speaker 1: a secret. It didn't go as planned. The wine I
Speaker 1: sent my friends is a thank you gift, never turned up,
Speaker 1: and we had some technical hiccups that really ate into
Speaker 1: the time we'd hope to use just for goofing around.
Speaker 1: And yes, we talked over each other by mistake a lot. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: oh I love that idea. But on the whole, I'm
Speaker 1: really really glad we made the effort, and I hope
Speaker 1: you learned something that will make your holidays a little
Speaker 1: happier despite all the challenges of this really difficult year.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will return in twenty twenty one. For
Speaker 1: that fresh start Liz was talking about. Starting January fourth,
Speaker 1: We'll bring you four special shows looking at the things
Speaker 1: many of us get wrong when we try to adopt
Speaker 1: that new year Knew you attitude. I don't want to
Speaker 1: spoil any of the surprises, but we've booked some amazing guests,
Speaker 1: including some folks that I really fangirl over. So thrilled
Speaker 1: that you check time to join my podcast. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, It's very mutual the appreciation. Oh thank you
Speaker 1: so Until then, I wish you a happier holiday season
Speaker 1: and here's to a fantastic new year. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley. The show
Speaker 1: was mastered by Evan Viola, and our original seasonal holiday
Speaker 1: music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to the
Speaker 1: entire Pushkin crew, including Mia LaBelle, Carlie mcgliori, Heather Faine,
Speaker 1: Sophie Crane, mckibbon, Eric Sandler, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent
Speaker 1: Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries and me Doctor Laurie Sanders