Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | 3 Simple Science-Backed Ways to Boost Your Happiness | Professor Laurie Santos #523

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

We all want to be happy, but what truly brings us happiness is often not what we think. Today’s clip is from episode 151 of the podcast with Laurie Santos, Professor of Psychology at Yale University. Laurie’s ‘Science of Wellbeing’ course has developed into a global phenomenon, with over 4 million people signing up to study her evidence-based strategies for happiness. In this clip, she explains that our intuition is often wrong when it comes to happiness and shares the results of some surprising research that could help us live happier lives. Thanks to our sponsor https://www.drinkag1.com/livemore Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/151 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

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with your first order. See all details at www.drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More Byte Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 151 of the podcast with Laurie Santos, professor of psychology at Yale University. Laurie's science of wellbeing course has developed into a global phenomenon with over four million people signing up to study her evidence-based strategies for happiness. In this clip, she explains that our intuition is often wrong when it comes to happiness and shares the

results of some surprising research that could help us live happier lives. Let's go through what really matters when it comes to happiness. Are there some universal practices that without knowing an individual's circumstances, you can say with a high degree of certainty that if you do this, you are likely to improve your wellbeing score and your happiness. Yeah, I mean, we know this now. We know lots of these practices for exactly that, with the idea that these are things that won't just help a few people, but that really pretty much universally are going to help if you engage with them the right way. Like, it'd

just be nice if our brain was, like, pointing us towards the things that were really going to make us happy. But the data suggests that that's just not the case. There are all these domains where we think, if I could only get X, then I would be happy. But then we get that X, and it just doesn't work. Many of us think, oh, if I could just get that beach house,

or that new car, or even just at a local level, I'm just going to buy these new shoes, they'll make me happy. The data suggests that, yeah, it makes you happy for like a split second. It doesn't kind of give you lasting happiness. It doesn't even give you happiness that lasts for as long as we think. And so there's all these ways where we think

that changing our circumstances is gonna boost happiness, but in fact, it just doesn't work. The flip side though, is there's all these different interventions we can do to boost our happiness. One of the biggest behaviors that works super well for improving well-being is social connection. One of the most famous papers in positive psychology by the psychologist Marty Seligman and Ed Diener say that social connection and feeling socially connected is a necessary condition for very high happiness. You just simply don't find highly happy people who don't also feel socially connected.

But we also know from the intervention work that improving your social connection, making new social connections, even talking to strangers on your commute, can actually boost up your well-being in ways we really, really don't expect. And these types of effects hold across personality variables, you know, so you get the same sort of boosts of happiness for social connection for introverts and for extroverts. It seems to work in ways we don't expect. What does the research say about talking to strangers and talking to people we don't know? Because I think there's some quite nice research there, isn't there, showing us just how impactful those interactions are? Yeah, and just how wrong we are about those interactions. You know, this just how wrong we are about those interactions.

This is another domain where, at least my intuition, is that, yeah, maybe it'll make me feel okay, but it's not a major force in our happiness. In fact, if you plot me on a train, going to work in the morning, maybe I'd talk to somebody, but usually I'd put my headphones on, or get some work done, or try to get through some email. And it turns out that this is a mistake when it comes to maximizing your happiness. There's some lovely work by the University of Chicago psychologist, Nick Epley, who did direct studies on this where he found some subjects who are about to do their daily commute on a train. What he tells subjects is either, for the rest of the train ride, don't talk to anybody, please try to enjoy your solitude. Or for the rest of the train ride don't talk to some anybody please try to enjoy your solitude or for the rest of the train ride just do what

you normally do it's kind of the control condition or for the rest of the train ride I want you to try to make a meaningful social connection with somebody like talk to someone and don't just talk about the weather like really try to get to know them what do people predict because he has one group of subjects predict ahead of time which is gonna make people feel. And people predict that the enjoy your solitude condition is going to feel awesome, right? They predict that that's going to maximize their happiness. And they don't just predict that the social connection

condition is going to feel neutral. They predict that it's going to actively suck. It's going to take them down from baseline. And what Nick finds is just the opposite. It's that solitude condition that feels yucky. The social connection condition makes you feel great. And I think this is a problem, right? This is another domain where we have these bad intuitions about what makes us happy.

Like the simple kinds of interactions we have with, you know, the grocery store teller or the person who works at the coffee shop, like even those weak ties the research show matter for happiness. Those things we forget really kind of build up our happiness. I think this is another big misconception we have about happiness, is we think of happiness as sort of a destination. You get there and you're sort of happily ever after. But that's not the right metaphor for happiness.

Happiness is more like a leaky tire, right? It's gonna kinda go flat a little bit, but then you chat with the barista at the coffee shop and that kinda makes you feel a little good. but then you chat with the barista at the coffee shop and that kind of makes you feel a little good. And then you go about your day and chat with someone else or have another joyous moment. We kind of can use these moments of joy to sort of boost up our happiness over time. And a lot of those moments were social moments. We assume all these technologies are there to make us happy. We both have podcasts where happy podcast technology exists and people can listen to us.

But it's also worth recognizing that there's an opportunity cost. If you're listening to your podcast, instead of talking to your family at dinner, that might not be necessarily the best way to boost your well-being. And this is the kind of thing I see all the time with technology, with my students, who I know are lonelier than they've ever

been in college history. And I think a lot of that has to do with my students, right, who I know are lonelier than they've ever been in college history, right? And I think a lot of that has to do with, ironically, has to do with technology, right? Like these devices that they're using to connect are actually leading them to not form connections in real life. And the students think they're being social, you know, they're probably scrolling through their Instagram feed or like, you know, like, you know, using one of these weird new social media apps to kind of talk to one another. But they're not physically talking to one another in the way that primates are used

to. And I think it's in part because the technology is easier. I remember what it was like to be a new college student and to walk to the dining hall for the first time with your tray and you have to talk to somebody. There's an awkward startup cost with that. And I think technology just gives us an easy way to kind of do something else, right? You know, to avoid that anxiety. But it means because we don't ever get over the startup costs, we never develop these kind of weak ties with people.

We just chat and get that little enjoyment. It means my college students are less likely to make these close friendships. My colleague Liz Dunn, who's a professor at UBC, studies the impact that technology has on happiness. She does this lovely study where she has people sitting in a waiting room and they can either have their phones out with them or not. Their phones are away in another room. And what she finds is that people smile 30% less when they just have their phones present.

And I think this makes sense, right? If you've got your phone there, you're just going to be tempted to look at it. It's kind of drawing your attention. You're just naturally less inclined to look at the people around you. And if you multiply that 30% effect by, say, walking around on the tube in London, or just walking around any major city and everyone has these phones, what is that

doing to our social connection? I think we simply don't understand the magnitude that we're getting our attention stolen by these devices. Yeah, it's insidious. And I think it's an experiment that I don't think any one of us has consciously signed up for. You know, I feel sometimes when I talk about these things that you're literally, you're going up in the face of the direction that society is going. And I think that makes it really challenging. I know you talk about when the phone's not there, some of my happiest moments recently when I've lost my phone or it's been in my car, I left it on my mom's

house and I thought, ah, screw it, I'll get it tomorrow. I just, there's this lightness surrounds because- Yeah. You're noticing you're like trees, like the sun, you know, gorgeous people, I smile at people. No, it's really profound. I think, you know, one of the ways to deal with it, because it's not going away, right? You know, this stuff is going to stick around. We just need better strategies to engage with our technology in more intentional ways. And one of my favorite piece of advice comes from the journalist, Catherine Price. She has this lovely book called How to Break Up with Your Phone, where she doesn't really

advise you to break up your phone, but just to develop a more mindful relationship with it. And she has this acronym that she uses called WWW. Whenever you pick up your phone, think WWW, which stands for What For, Why Now, and What Else. What did I pick this up for? Was I going to do something with it? I was gonna check my email,

or I was gonna look at the weather? Or was I just bored or anxious? Or something, what was happening? And then why now? What was the emotion that caused you to do it? Was it just like, wrote, and you're just kind of anxiously picking it up? Or was it really like to do something at that moment?

Or is there something else you could be doing at that moment? And that gets to the sort of what else, which is like, what's the opportunity cost? Even if you're bored and you're gonna pick up your phone to like play a game or check your email, like what else could you be doing during that time that might make you happier? And the what else is often a social what else.

When I'm picking up my phone, it's often like I could, you know, go into the room to talk to my husband and check in how he's doing, right? You know, I could look up at the sky, I could take a mindful breath, right? You know, what are you missing out on by using your phone? And that has kind of caused me

in using that sort of WWW strategy myself, it's made me realize a lot like why I pick up my phone, which is often out of like boredom and anxiety, but also sometimes when it's like useful, you know, there's times I need to check my phone, which is often out of boredom and anxiety. But also sometimes when it's useful, there's times I need to check my email, like look at the weather or something. It's when it's not mindful or not intentional, and it's just yanking my attention,

and when there's a real opportunity cost on other social interactions. Even with the weather app, sometimes I've been like, I could just walk to the window and take a little walk around the block and look at the clouds and get a sense of probably what's going to happen, right? It's funny you say there's little micro moments where you could look up at the sky or have a little conversation with one of your flatmates or one of your family. I bet that time adds

up in that, in that moment. We might think, oh, that's just a couple of minutes, a couple of minutes there. But if you look at your phone, and some of the stats on how many times we look at our phone is really quite worrying. But let's say you look at your phone 40 times in the day, and let's say each time that's two minutes that you could have been doing something else. Well, that's 80 minutes, potentially. That's nearly an hour and a half of your time. And again, I think the question, as you say, is intentionality. And so I wonder what does the research say about mindfulness and happiness? And then what does mindfulness really mean? Because again, that's a term that

can mean so many different things to different people. Yeah. I mean, I think one thing we know from the research is, you know, taking time to be mindful, taking time to sort of be in the present moment in a very particular way, which is with a particular kind of attitude, an attitude of sort of non-judgment. So you're not going to judge in the present moment noticing this sucks and I'm judging it the whole time, but in the present moment, allowing it to be just as it is. The research suggests that that kind of practice can really improve our well-being. And it seems to improve our well-being for a particular reason, which is that the

opposite of being present, when we're kind of, you know, not in the present moment, we're kind of mind-wandering and thinking about the future and worrying about things and ruminating, that has a really negative hit on our happiness, right? And so just the act of being present where you sort of shut off that kind of mind- mind wandering to yucky other things can really make us feel better. Now, it too is the kind of thing that requires some work. This is being present is not the natural state of the human mind. But yeah, but the research really suggests that practices that allow us to improve our mindfulness, to improve our presence, can really improve our well-being. So practices like meditation, even more spiritual practices like prayer and so on, you know, even just the act of like taking three deep belly breaths where you're kind of noticing what it feels like. All of these

kinds of things really can allow us to be a little bit more present. And just the act of being present means we notice. You know, we were talking before about, you know, one reason that technology is messing with us is that, you know, we miss the like, you know, looking at the trees or looking at our partner's smile or seeing the sunshine. Being present means we're there to notice the stuff that really matters. And so it really can allow us to have these little, you know, filling our leaky happiness tire moments of joy that we otherwise would have missed because our minds were kind of going off in all these directions. In terms of other things that can influence our happiness, a lot of spiritual practices,

a lot of religions talk about doing things for other people. And there's a lot of research on that, isn't there? Yeah. And this is yet another spot where our minds lead us astray. And we know this because again, you know, first, first move in happiness research is to look at the happy people. Look at the happy people. What are they doing? Happy people are disproportionately other-oriented. They matched for a salary level, give more of their money to charities than people who are not so happy. They give more of their time. They volunteer.

They just tend to be more focused on helping other people than in kind of doing selfish pursuits. The research shows that then if you go and do an intervention where you force people to do nice stuff for others, that will actually improve people's well-being more than they think. This is actually a study by Liz Dunn who we mentioned earlier. She goes up to people on the street and hands them some money and says, okay, you just got this money. Here's how you have to spend it.

One group is told you have to spend this on yourself. Do something nice. Treat yourself. Another group is told the way I want you to spend this money, here's how you have to spend it. One group is told you have to spend this on yourself. Do something nice, treat yourself. Another group is told, the way I want you to spend this money is to do something nice for someone else. Then she has subjects agree that they can be called later in the day or later that week. And what she finds is that subjects who spend the money on other people

tend to be significantly happier than those who spend the money on themselves. Now, this is not, again, what we think, right? But it's what the data show. And again, I teach this class, but I get this intuition wrong. If I'm having a crappy day, I'd be like, I'm going to go out and get myself a latte, or I'm going to get a manicure, right?

I don't think like, I'm going to go buy my coworker a latte right now, or I'm going to get a little gift card from my friend to get a manicure. I think, me, me, me. But the data suggests that just sort of switching years, spending our money and our time on other people is a way to bump up our happiness. Again, it violates the intuitions, but it's a powerful way to do that. Yeah. What strikes me, Laurie, is that a lot of the things you're talking about are very simple.

are very simple. Philosophically, when I think about happiness, I think about these phrases that are there in the vernacular, the pursuit of happiness, the things you can do to create happiness. And then I came across this quote by Krishnamurti, which I've got here, which says, happiness is strange. It comes when you are not seeking it, when you are not making an effort to be happy, then unexpectedly, mysteriously, happiness is there. And that really speaks to this wider point that is what I sort of feel that happiness is already there inside us. You see this in a child when they're just playing with their Lego, they're just happy, calm, content with life. And my feeling is that a lot of these practices, they're not necessarily

creating happiness. I feel society has moved us away from our innate happiness and all these practices are doing are helping to turn that ship around and just return us back to the happiness that already naturally exists within us. I wonder what your view is on that. SONIA DARA Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I mean, I think one thing that we know about happiness is that when we try to pursue it, we get it wrong, right? You know, when we try to pursue it, we go after the money and the fame and accolades, and we end up spinning our wheels, because those are not the kinds of things that will allow us to feel happy.

What will let us feel happy is kind of, in some ways, going back to our natural state, being present, being challenged by a particular activity, being social, having fun. You mentioned kids running around and doing things. Those are kind of being in the present moment. Those are cases where you're being social, right? I think that's right that our natural state is doing the kinds of things that would make us happy.

But the modern world tends to lead us away from that, right? It's hard to get back to that natural state in a lot of ways. And I think, you know, for all the reasons we've talked about, from technology to busyness to the wrong theories about the sorts of things that will make us happy. And I think that's why I think right now there is a way to pursue happiness. What we need to pursue is getting back to that natural state. It's not going to take the form we're used to, where we're buying ourselves something or trying to get that next accolade on our CV, but it's about putting into effect intentional

practices that let us go back to the more natural state. So if we were in a different environment, if we were plopped on a desert island and there were no smartphones and no things to do for work and no emails, we might naturally get back to that state of, you know, playing around and being present and enjoying ourselves. But in the modern world, I think we have to kind of fight against the tendencies that are natural. And those that are natural are not kind of evolutionarily natural. You know, there's the kind of cultural tides that might be taking us in the wrong direction. So I do think right now it works like a pursuit because you do have to put a little bit of work in.

But what that work is doing is kind of getting us back to the natural state that we should have been in anyway. Everything I just said might be, you know, 20 minutes more of work in your day, you know, like connecting with that friend, doing something nice or whatever. But that simple 20 minutes will be a way to boost up your wellbeing in this really evidence-based way. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family.

If you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest? If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite-sized Friday email. It's called The Friday Five, and each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity,

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