Insight with Chris Van Vliet - The Happiness Lab: Dr. Laurie Santos On The Science Of How To Be Happy

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Today's guest is Dr. Laurie Santos. Laurie is a cognitive scientist and Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She is also the host of the extremely popular podcast called "The Happiness Lab" which is on the Apple Top 100 charts. She joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about the science of being happy, 3 simple things we can do in our daily life to be happier, the course she teaches at Yale University called "Psychology and The Good Life" and how you can take her course for free on Coursera, how Covid has affected our well-being and much more! For more information on Dr. Laurie Santos visit: http://drlauriesantos.com If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests.  For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are go. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris! We go again! Welcome back to another audio adventure on Insight. I'm Chris Family. Thank you so much for being with us on this episode and on every single episode. Take a second right now to make sure you're subscribed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening right now, wherever you're filling your ear holes with this right now.

We've got a back catalog of more than 250 episodes for you to. dive into as soon as this one is over. And this is a conversation that I didn't want to end. Dr. Laurie Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale University. She's also the host of the incredibly popular podcast called The Happiness Lab, which I can't recommend enough. Happiness is something that we all struggle with. And her podcast gets down to the science of what actually makes us happy and why it makes us happy. And there's some incredible interviews on there and some amazing stories, big fan of Dr. Lari Santos and the podcast. Take a screenshot. Let us know that you're listening right now. Tag us on social media. She's just at Dr.

Laurie Santos. And I'm just at Chris Van Vleap. It's that easy. Let's dive right into it. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dr. Lari Santos. Lari, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on the show. I have been listening to your podcast, basically since you started, and I just think it's so brilliant. It actually takes me back to my time being in college. I feel like I'm in your class as I'm doing this. I get that a lot. I mean, I think that's one of the reasons so many people kind of resonate with the happiness

lab is they feel like they're getting this Yale education for free. No SATs, no exams, right? It's kind of the easy narrative-filled version of that. Yeah, the majority of us can't afford to go to Yale. So thank you for bringing us this for free every week. In listening to it, I'm just so curious, do you think happiness is a science or is it an art? I mean, I think in some ways it's both. I mean, the reason I err on the scientific side is, in part because we have so much scientific work

studying the kinds of things that make us a little bit happier, right? Which you might not think is a scientific topic, right? Even like, how do you study happiness? But when you start to think about it, it's kind of interesting. easy thing to do. Basically, researchers bring folks into the lab who are happy, and then they kind of reverse engineer what they're doing. You know, how are they spending their time? What are they doing? And then you can bring other folks into the lab who aren't feeling so happy, make them engage with the practices that the happy people are doing in a really controlled way. You know, do your randomized

controlled design. And then you can see if those practices significantly improve people's well-being. And, you know, these are the kinds of studies that have been done for like the last few decades. And so we know literally from an empirical perspective, the kinds of things that really can make you happier. So what kinds of things are we talking about? In fact, like, what are three things we could do today to make ourselves happier? Yeah, well, they're not the things we think. It's not like, hit the lottery or, you know, like, you get your job or something like that. You know, I think the fastest thing you can do to improve your happiness is to get in a little social connection. You know, even really simple studies show, you know, if you chat with the priest at the coffee

shop, if you talk to somebody on your commute, you know, those quick moments of social connection, even with a stranger, can boost your positive mood. You know, and that's with a stranger, let alone, you know, pick up the phone and connect with your best friend, you know, or talk to someone, you know, in college you haven't spoken to in a while or something like that. We forget the sheer power of social connection for boosting our mood. You know, so that's kind of, you know, tip number one, social connection. Second one is, you know, something we can conjure up at any moment, you know, because social connection requires another person to talk to. Yeah. But the second tip gratitude is something that all of us can do, you know, right now. We're talking right now. I see in the

background, you have this wonderful quote, be great, be grateful. And I think, you know, it could just as easily say, be happy, be grateful. Because, you know, there's so much evidence that shifting our mindset to one that just focuses on the blessings rather than the griping, you know, is something we can do to feel happier. And I think, you know, this is another one where we get it wrong. We just assume, you know, I'll feel better if, you know, I go out with my friend and I just kind of complain about everything that's happening at work and gripe about, you know, all the nasty stuff. But the studies show that you just instead just talked about a few things that were going well, talked about a few things you were grateful for. You know, you show significant improvements in your well-being. So that's kind of number two. And I think number

three would be just presence, like being present with whatever's going on, you know, in your body, what it feels like to be breathing right now or to be sitting in the seat, wherever you're listening to this podcast, or even present with the negative. emotions. That was a shocker for me when I got interested in this research was to realize that the simple act of being present, even if you're not feeling good, whether it's sadness or anxiety, just being with that can be a way to improve our well-being in this odd way. Three great tips here that we can all do literally right now. Well, maybe wait until the episode's done, but then start doing it. I feel like at the core, every single human on earth just wants to be happy. Why is this something that's so difficult for some people? Yeah, well, I think it's partly difficult because I don't think we were built to be happy. You know, natural selection, evolution, it had a plan for us, but it wasn't to be happy. It was just like, survive, pop out some kids, like, that's good.

It didn't care whether we were anxious and horrendously sad the whole time we were popping out kids. It just wanted us to get the job done. You know, so we're not necessarily built for it. But I think a bigger issue is that, you know, many of us are really trying to be happy. You know, we're sort of defying natural selection's goals for us really trying to focus on our well-being. but we wind up doing it wrong because we have these incorrect theories about what we should be doing. We're focused on the accolades and the achievements and the money and the next step and the buying stuff. And the research shows that none of that really makes us happy.

And even if it makes us happy briefly, it doesn't do so for very long. And we pursue all those things at an opportunity cost of some of the things that really would make us happy. And so I think that's where we get wrong. It's not that we're not trying or not putting effort in. We are putting effort in, but we're doing it the wrong. wrong way. Lari, how much do you think there's a link between happiness and fulfillment? I think there's a really big link there. And I think, you know, that that question kind of underscores another thing we get wrong, which is what happiness really is. I think happiness is hedonic

pursuits, you know, like hot fudge Sundays and orgasms all the time. Like, that's all happiness is. But, you know, real happiness is being satisfied with your life in addition to all that other, you know, being satisfied kind of in your life with these local pleasures. And the being satisfied with your life part is really about finding purpose, finding meaning, finding fulfillment. And that doesn't necessarily come with all the unicorns and rainbows of hedonic pursuits. Oftentimes that sort of meaning requires doing hard work, you know, putting yourself out there, you know, trying things that you might fail at. But that is really the path to true fulfillment, which is sort of part of an important part of happiness. All right. So let's talk about your path. Where did

this begin for you? When did you start studying the science of happiness? Yeah, well, I've been a psychologist basically forever. I've been interested in psychology broadly for a long time, but the specific interest in happiness came for me when I took on this new role on Yale's campus. So I've taught at Yale, you know, now for embarrassingly a long time. But in just the last couple years, I took on a new role as a head of college on campus. And so Yale's one of these strange schools like Harry Potter's, where there's like schools within a school, you know, kind of like Gryffindor, you know, Slythering head. I'm the head of Silliman College,

which is one of the residential colleges. That sounds like it's from Harry Potter, too. It's totally Hogwarts here on campus, yeah. But this new role meant that I was living on campus, like a faculty member who lived with students. And when I signed up for the role, I assumed, you know, it would be just great. You know, it's like happy college students and young people

and curious minds running around. And it's that, but it's that embedded in the context, of this college student mental health crisis. You know, right now nationally, over 40% of college students report being too depressed to function most days. Over 60% report feeling overwhelmingly anxious. And more than one in 10 college students right now has seriously considered suicide in the last year. Like, these are dire, dire statistics. And I didn't know this stuff until I kind of started interacting with students. And, you know, we have students who are in those dire straits, but even just, you know, the run-of-the-mill student

who's like so stressed out, you ask them, how to be. How's it going? It's like, oh, if I could just get to midterms or if I could, you know, just get to the weekend. And I was watching these students fast forward, this brief, you know, wonderful time in college when they're young and can study anything they want. And, you know, I just felt for them. I just really realized that we hadn't given them good strategies. And so my interest in the science of happiness started because I wanted to help my students. I knew there was, you know, scientific work on this topic. And I decided to like kind of pull it all together to teach students this stuff in the context of a class.

because that's, you know, what I did. I was a professor. I, like, taught Yale student classes. Yeah. I didn't expect the class to go as viral as it did. It turned into the largest class ever in Yale University's 300-plus year history with over a quarter of the entire campus taking the class at the same time. Wow.

Yeah, it was one of those, like, when the class ended, it was like the Super Bowl where everybody flushes the toilet at the same time. One of those were like, you know, everybody was running to the dining hall at the same time. But, yeah, I mean, I think that was exciting. it was also just telling, right? Students are voting with their feet. They don't like this culture of feeling depressed and anxious. They really wanted evidence-based strategies they could use to feel better. How much of this unhappiness, especially at Yale, is just the pressure that these students are putting on themselves. Like, look, when you get into a school like Yale, you feel like, all right, I've gotten in, that was a lot of work to get in.

Now I've got to achieve great grades while I'm here. Exactly. And I think, you know, just all the things students had to do to get here, right? You know, I mean, obviously these are incredibly bright, incredibly driven students, but, you know, I watch them excel at the opportunity cost of their sleep. You know, their social connections. They're like just time affluence. Another thing, if I had a fourth tip for something we could do to be happy. You know, having free time, you know, this idea of just feeling wealthy in time is another big booster to happiness. If you, the studies show that if you self-report being time famished, like you're just, you know, strapped for time and you can't fit anything in your schedule, that's as bad. for your well-being statistically as if you self-report being unemployed, right? You know, like it's a huge hit to your well-being, and I was watching students do this to themselves all the time. So I think part of it's, you know, the pressure of being at a place like this, but, you know, those scary statistics I quoted you, that's not Yale. That's nationally, that's students at, you know, state schools, community college all over. It's really a generation

that's facing this kind of mental health crisis. I think in part because we've kind of sold them a bad bill of goods, we'd say, hey, you know, to get ahead in life, you got to make a lot of money, you got to get it to the perfect college, you got to achieve, achieve. We haven't necessarily said, hey, maybe prioritize presents or gratitude. Maybe you don't need the money to buy stuff because you can just be thankful with what you have, right? That's not really the capitalist way that we teach people. And so, yeah, so I think it's particular to Yale students, but it really is a generational thing. Well, I mean, we live in a world right now where it's hustle, hustle, hustle if you open up social media. It's, you know, it's not 24-7, it's 25-8. And the harder that you work,

the more that you will get out of that, which I don't necessarily think is true. You need that free time that you're talking about and like, sleep. Sleep is so important. Sleep is so important. I show students one study where, you know, these evil psychologists do the sleep deprivation study and they make college students for a week only sleep five hours a night. And I put up this, this, you know, PowerPoint slide, and my students burst into lab. after because they're like five hours a night. That's awesome. Like that's really good for me. Like, I haven't gotten that all week. And then I go on to show them the data, which shows that within a few days of doing that, your mood levels drop to the point that you look like you could be clinically

depressed. I honestly think we could solve a lot of the college student and young teen mental health crisis by just getting them to sleep more realistically. Yeah. So your class is called psychology and the good life. Is this in person? Like as a quarter of the campus, in, like, how big is this lecture hall? Yeah, yeah. Well, the first time I taught it was in 2018, so pre-COVID. You know, very prescient to be thinking about happiness, I think, pre-COVID. And because of kind of some sabbaticals and podcast stuff, I'm teaching it again this coming spring.

So this will be the first time back teaching it again since I first taught it. And I don't know, TBD. So far classes are in person, but we'll see how COVID plays out. Like, are you going to have to start teaching these at the football stadium? Right now we have a concert hall on campus. very large ceilings and, you know, with everyone in masks, we should be safe. All right. So if I were to attend your class, what would it look like and what are like, what are you grading us on? Are there exams? How does this work?

Yeah. So, you know, you'd walk into this big concert hall with a quarter of your campus friend, like a quarter of the entire campus. So is that like 10,000 people? No, Yale's small. So it's just over a thousand students, which, you know, for those who are, went to state schools and stuff who are listening, might feel like just a thousand students. But for our campus, that is pretty big. We, you know, the class really is a class. Like, it's a psychology class. They're hearing about specific studies. You know, there are exams and grades and, you know, problem sets and things like that. And that's in part because one of the hints I've seen with these students is, you know, it's one thing to tell students like, hey, you should be, you know, grateful. You know, it's great to be grateful or you should get more sleep. But then I put up that graph that shows what your average mood score looks like after only five hours of sleep. And students see that and they're like, wait a minute. And minute, I don't want to be there on the graph. I want to be somewhere else. So I think there's something

really powerful about seeing the scientific effects. You know, this is true for so many other things in nutrition and exercise, right? I think for our well-being, when we see what really matters, when we see what really works and what doesn't, it can kind of help us supercharge changing our behaviors. Behavior change is always hard. I think if we see some evidence that it will work, it can motivate us a bit more. I wish this class existed. Like I'm from Canada, so I went to a great school just outside of Toronto in Waterloo, Ontario. I wish this class existed where I went to school. But there is the opportunity to take this or a version of this class online, right? Yeah. So when, you know, the class went so viral on campus. What was more surreal was that

the class went viral off campus. You know, I had these national and international news media outlets coming to like film the class and talk about it. We realized, you know, I was so taken by the mental health crisis in Yale students. But, you know, it's not just the Yale students, right? Like people, like a college students everywhere need this, but adults everywhere need this. Right. The emails I was getting was like, you know, let these 19 year olds who are at Yale and have their whole life ahead of them, you know, let them deal with themselves. Like, help me. You know, got a single mom working, you know, super hard or whatever it was. And so, yeah, so we put the class online on corsera.org. It's totally free. There, it's called the Science of Wellbeing. But you can log on and sign on and try it for yourself,

get the kind of short Yale version totally for free kind of, but the same sorts of tips that my students learn. A free Yale class. It's amazing. How did it start to go viral? I think it was really, you know, I think on campus really students were looking for a solution, right? Again, they just don't like this culture of being so stressed and anxious all the time. And I think, you know, off campus, it's a kind of an interesting question. I think people were really taken with the story of, you know, again, Yale students, right? Like they've gotten into one of the best universities in the world. They're young. they have everything going for them. Yet so many of them were depressed and anxious that they rushed to a class on happiness,

not a class on like game theory or computer science or whatever. Like they all were worried about their well-being. And I think, you know, that puts stuff in perspective for us. You know, I think one of the other misconceptions about happiness is we think happiness comes from our circumstances. You know, if you're young in an Ivy League school and achieving like you're going to be happy. And when we see examples of people who are achieving, in these classic ways that don't seem so happy.

You know, that kind of jars us. It kind of catches our attention. So I think that's part of why it went viral sort of off campus as well. Was there one particular article or news coverage that really started to spike the interest? Yeah, the first one was an article in the New York Times, which incidentally was by the editor of the Yale Daily News, who was taking my class at the time. I think he'd gotten a new job at the Times or an internship there. I'm sure the Times editor was like, pick something cool.

wrote this article about my class. But I think that and the pictures that went with it, you know, this like enormous concert hall filled with students wanting to learn about their own well-being. Again, I think it's just kind of captivated people and kind of got people talking about the class. So how did this turn into an amazing podcast called The Happiness Lab, which everyone can find wherever they're listening to this right now, but how did this springboard into your own podcast? Yeah, I think that also came from, you know, so many of the emails I was getting. So many of the emails was like, you know, I'm just this random hotel or I'm going through this issue. I need this too. And we put the class on Coursera.org, which is great. You know, now 3.5 million people have taken it, which is incredible.

But I also got lots of emails from people who are like, I'm time famished. I'm like, you know, anxious and depressed. I do not have time to take an Ivy League class. Thank you very much. Like nice of you to put it on for free. But like, I'm really busy. Like, can I get the like cliff notes version? Yeah. And what we do is, as you know, as you know, from running this podcast, like podcasts are a wonderful. cliff notes version for so many things. You know, it's a way in your heads. You're these interesting people talking about cool ideas and to learn something. And, you know, especially in the happiness domain, you know, one of the things we do a lot on our podcast is, you know, share people's narrative stories. You know, you meet Olympians who are going through their own tough times.

You know, people who've lost loved ones, but now report that they're happier than ever, right? You hear these narrative stories of people who've put the science into practice in their own way. And I think that goes a long way, you know, beyond just the scientific effects to show you a path for how you can feel better. Well, the great thing about podcasts is this is learning by osmosis. You put it on, you hit play, and it's like people are eavesdropping on our conversation right now. You can take notes if you want to, but you don't necessarily need to take notes. Maybe one or two points here will stick with you and may end up changing your life. Yeah, I mean, we get so many emails from the Happiness Live podcast, people who literally write and say that this is,

is life-changing or they've put these things into effect in their own life. And it's so powerful. I mean, one other example of practices you can use to feel happier that we didn't mention is this idea of doing for others, right? Random acts of kindness, like really doubling down and thinking about how can you benefit others. And on my podcast, I shared a kind of extreme story about this, a researcher who studies altruistic kidney donors. So these are healthy individuals who are just like taken with the plate of people who need a kidney and decide to donate a kidney to a stranger. And it turns out that there's some of the happiest people out there. You know, we kind of talk about this, kind of using this as an example of like, well, you know, you don't have to donate a kidney,

but you could do some random act of kindness in your life. And what's incredible is we've gotten emails from people who've said, you know, hearing that episode, I decided to donate a kidney. Wow. We've literally saved a life with this podcast episode. Wow. So did Malcolm Gladwell himself, reach out to you about this. Sorry, I'm choking not because of Malcolm Gladwell, but because I... And I say this because I am a huge fan of his work as a fellow Canadian, but I've also, I love his books, and he now has this great podcast network.

Yeah, I know Malcolm is great, and, you know, Pushkin's really been fantastic. You know, I think, you know, so many of their podcasts come from, I think, you know, what I consider to be like the Malcolm Gladwell School of Entertainment, which is, you know, you really can learn something at the same time as you're being entertained. And Malcolm's been, you know, incredibly great to work with, you know, as the kind of, you know, like the runner of the company that I work in, you know, he's been super great about kind of his support for the Happiness Lab too. The United States Soccer Federation presents the U.S. Soccer Podcast. My name is David Goss, and I'm joined by my co-host, Megan Clevenberg. And now we're

giving people an inside look at the World Cup. Times ticking. I think you can feel the intensity. All the guys are wanting to really take their claimant, and they want to be on that World Cup roster. There's no doubt about it. Hosting the World Cup on the home soil comes with its pressures, but we're just really excited just as the people are. The U.S. Soccer podcast, presented by Henko, follow and listen on your favorite platform. Someone sends you an email and says, we think that this might be a great podcast. And is your immediate reaction? Absolutely. I've got nothing but time to make a podcast. Well, honestly, it really was, you know, thinking about ways that I could share this stuff. And, you know, one of the reasons that this, what making my podcast makes me happy is that

I get to do it really closely with my producer and very good friend, Ryan Dilley. I had, Ryan, who's a producer for my podcast, was working on other things at the time producing, these really other fantastic podcasts. And so when we had the opportunity to do this one, I was like, me, I could work with this person who I think is, you know, creative and fantastic and an amazing professionally, but it's also like one of my best friends. And so, you know, it's a real way that, like, I can be bringing my social connection into my work. With the amount of exposure that you've got through your class going viral, now with your podcast being, you know, on the top charts, imagine there's a, you're being pulled a lot of different directions now.

So how do you focus on your own personal happiness when you only have 24 hours in a day? Yeah. Well, one of the things is, you know, it is nice to be a happiness expert. in the sense that you kind of have to start practicing what you preach or people will sort of call you out on it, especially my students, right? Like I live with students on campus. If I'm griping about things and not being grateful or if they see me, you know, not sleeping and things like that, they'll call me out on it. The term for me is ahead of college, so they call me Hawk, HOC. So they'll be like, Hawk Santo is like, you know, you look like you haven't slept or you look like you're really stressed. And so I'll get called out, you know, if I don't call on these things. But in another great, I

reason is that, you know, it's like I have to practice what I preach, right? You know, I have to be the person who's kind of trying these strategies out. And that's been huge for navigating this strange change in my life where there's so many new things on my plate, you know, I'm sure you might remember trying to schedule this podcast. It's tricky because I say no to lots of things. And I do not because I'm like disinterested or they don't sound fun. I say no because I'm trying to protect my time affluence. I have this really over the top away message that's like, look, I got to practice what I preach. And you might have asked that something really cool that I actually want to do. But if I say yes to that, then I can't say yes to, you know, some downtime with my husband tonight or seeing my family this weekend or, or that's

going to make me frazzled when I deal with my students. And, you know, I have to just kind of shut off those opportunities to make sure I'm, I'm more present. And that's hard. You know, it goes against the hustle culture that's been built into me and my upbringing for so long. But I think ultimately it's made me a lot happier. Yeah, I do. I do want to talk about this away message. So when you send Laurie an email, you get this auto response that basically says, I don't have been in a nutshell, like I'm busy and like it's really nice for you to reach out and thank

you, but there's a pretty good chance I'm not going to respond to you. When did this start and why did it start? Yeah, it started because I was realizing that, you know, I inadvertently might not be explaining why I might not be able to get back to people. I mean, you know, we've millions of people taking my class. I get, you know, literally hundreds of emails a day. And this is the problem with being an academic rather than a different kind of celebrity. You know, if I was like, Beyonce, no one could find my email.

But, you know, as Yale professor, you just Google, Yale professor email. And it's pretty obvious what these things are and really hide them. And so what that means is I just get tons of people reaching off. And the first thing they say in the email is like, I can't believe it was so easy to find your email. You're like, damn you. But, you know, these are people who, you know, have been moved by my podcast. to have interesting questions about the course, who have these cool opportunities they want to follow up on,

who want to share something really personal and important with me, I wish I could triple my time so that I had time to answer all of these in detail. But since I don't, I wanted to find a way to reach out to folks and say, hey, you know, I read every one of these, but if I added up all the time it would take to literally answer all of them back, again, like the sacrifice for me are the things that really matter for my happiness and the happiness of the people around me because I won't have time for them either.

And so, you know, I'm doing the hard thing where I'm not going to write back. It's not that I don't appreciate it. I promise you I read it and I promise you I'm cherishing it. But, like, don't have time to write back necessarily. Is this a practice you would recommend for other people who maybe have a time crunch? I think so. I think we don't realize that time is as valuable for our happiness as we think. You know, again, because we have this opportunity cost.

We think money is valuable for our happiness. If we double or triple our salary through this hustle, you know, somehow that will make us happier or if we maybe not money but increase our accolades, you know, get a promotion at work or something like that. And again, like pretty slim evidence that that's going to work. I mean, again, you know, if you are completely not able to put food on the table or don't have a roof over your head, yes, improving your salary and your wealth level will help. But for, I'm guessing, a lot of the people listening to this podcast, like more money is just not going to increase your happiness. Definitely as much as you think. But all the evidence suggests that more time will.

Like taking something off your plate, canceling something, canceling a meeting that could have been an email, all of these things can have measurable effects on your happiness. And so, you know, I think prioritizing time affluence is a really critical way, an underutilized way in the modern society of improving our happiness. So much more effective than buying something is like a meeting and getting a free hour. Yeah. You did an episode recently which focused on dogs and how much happiness they may or may not bring to us. And you talked about the canine cognition laboratory during this episode. And I was like, so this sounds like an amazing magical place. So tell me more about what the canine cognition laboratory is. Yeah, I mentioned that I've been a psychologist, you know, for longer than I care to discuss.

But most of my research before I got interested in the science of happiness was focused on this question of what makes the human mind special, right? You know, why are we sitting here having podcasts and, you know, squids and, you know, bonobos and dogs aren't doing the same thing. And one of the ways we studied that was to study, you know, a non-human creature, so it's not a human, but it lives in a really human-like environment. To tend to test, like, you know, how much do you get just by being around other people using tools and talking and these kinds of things? And so the canine cognition lab really studies how dogs think and how they make decisions. And so people bring, you know, their pet dogs in for studies. You know, we don't like have dogs in cages or anything like that. Dogs kind of come in to do studies

just like humans come in to do human studies, and we sort of test how they make sense of the world. And so, you know, I always, I'm glad you bought that episode up because I've always wanted to do an episode kind of connecting my old day job work of studying what's called comparative cognition, studying how dogs think with this work on happiness. And so it was nice to kind of explore, do dogs really make us happy? And if so, like, how, right? How does that work? Yeah, and I think what was funny about that episode is people forget that, yeah, dogs are awesome. And there was a lot of studies that show that they do make us happy. But what you pointed out in the episode is like you forget like that puppy stage or you forget like when the dog, you know, pee's on the carpet or all these things that dogs do.

Yeah. I mean, I think what, you know, what the literature really shows ironically enough is that dogs make us happier because they change our behavior. Like they get us out to exercise more. They get us to be more socially connected as we've talked about. They get us to be more present because we're noticing stuff because the dogs notice. stuff. But, you know, if you're allergic to dogs, you can do all that stuff on your own, right? Like, you can just commit to being more present, commit to being more socially connected, commit to exercising. So dogs kind of make it easier. But ultimately, the behavior change is in us. It's nothing

magical about dogs. How much you think COVID has had an effect on people's unhappiness? Yeah. Well, there's, you know, there's growing evidence on this. And I would say that evidence is kind mixed in this interesting way. So I think when COVID first hit, you know, if you look at people's depression and anxiety scores right in like March of 2020, like a huge dip in our depression and anxiety, like so awful. But I think everybody expected that, you know, to continue, maybe to get worse over time. And in practice, not perfectly, but for the most part, like it hasn't been as bad as we thought. Like many people have kind of gone back to baseline. You know, this thing that, you know, definitely like week three of March when I was like, I cannot get used to this. I cannot wear a mask

everywhere. We cannot, you know, be socially distance. It's not like it's fun, but you kind of get used to it. And, you know, this is another misconception we have about circumstances. We think good circumstances like winning the lottery or, you know, getting some promotion at work will make us happier. But we also think that bad circumstances will make things worse. And they do in the short term, but it doesn't last for as long as we think. We have this incredibly powerful what, what researchers call this psychological immune system. It kind of kicks in to sort of make us feel better. You know, just like our immune system, if we get sick, would like, you know, jump in and sort fight it. You know, we have these psychological mechanisms. We rationalize stuff. We come up with

coping strategies. We like do stuff to feel better. And many of those coping strategies have kicked in during COVID, you know, to the point that, you know, this devastating pandemic, you know, really engineered to affect our mental health, right? You know, we're breaking our social connections, screwing up our routines, people are losing jobs. And so, And even that horrible thing didn't negatively impact our mental health. Statistically, it seems, as much as you would have guessed. I think the biggest thing that I realized personally out of this pandemic was it kind of ties into what you were talking about with your tips, the social connection, that my greatest

memories are things that are shared experiences with other people. It's a concert. It's a baseball game. It's a party. It's a great dinner. And that felt like it was very stripped away from us in March of 2020. Yeah, and I think it was, right? I mean, I think we've come up with, you know, some stop gaps, right? You can do the Zoom happy hour, you know, a lot of, you know, artists are doing like concerts on Zoom, but like not the same for sure.

I completely agree. Yeah. Did you really meet someone? Like, this is so great to be talking to you right now, Laurie, but are really meet. Yeah, totally. I think, you know, one one thing, though, that I think is a positive of it, you know, as, you know, vaccines are coming on, you know, as we're kind of kind of coming up with mechanisms to deal with the pandemic more and more is I think we're coming back to some of those things. You know, like I remember the first time, you know, even sitting outside that I went back to a restaurant, you know, like, I was like, I'm at a restaurant. You know, I would go to restaurants all the time and it was like, yeah, it was date and I, like, no big, but now I'm like, I'm at a restaurant. This is amazing. Or, you know, even, you know, once my mom got vaccinated, the first time I could like see her and give her a hug. And it was like, wow, you know.

And so I think, you know, one thing hopefully the pandemic can do is to make us not take this stuff for granted anymore. I mean, I think we're already getting that. Like, you know, just to go to the grocery store and pick up some toilet paper without, you know, hand sanitizing and wearing a mask and all this stuff. You know, it's like just the simple things in life that we absolutely took for granted. You know, this coffee shop that, you know, pre-COVID I would go to, you know, like every morning you get the coffee right and chat with the brist and stuff. And I just couldn't do that for a year. Like the first time I went back there, it was just like, I appreciated it so much more. Again, this thing I just did daily without deriving terrific joy from it. One realized how fragile it is.

I think we can, you know, enjoy these things more and derive even more joy from them. So it sounds like happiness is almost like something you can design. So I'm curious for you, what's your morning routine look like? It depends on the busyness level, you know, this week. We're at the first week of classes, so it looks different. But now, I really do try to get in some of the happiness tips as early as possible. So, you know, I wake up and I really try to exercise very soon. I don't like love it or kind of go to it with joy, but it's kind of a habit that I try to.

Taking your medicine. Yeah, it's a good medicine. And then immediately after exercising, I do a quick practice of sort of savoring. I'm trying to train my brain to recognize like, oh, exercise feels good afterwards. but you don't kind of notice the benefits, you kind of miss it. And so I do kind of a quick meditation after that. That's sort of a breath-based meditation, but also just like paying attention to my body and paying attention to the fact that I'm proud that I'm living up with my values and things

like that. And then I wish it, you know, kept to like the Zen like state throughout the whole day. But I think immediately after that I'm showering and then checking emails and so on. And so, you know, I try to kind of like sprinkle in the day some reminders to stop and breathe and be grateful and these kinds of things. And I think, you know, this is something I tell my students all the time. I think my students expect me to be this like Zen Jedi master of happiness, like just exuding smiles and unicorns all the time. And I'm not. And I'm in, and I think that's important is to realize that like, you know, even though I teach this stuff, my intuitions are bad too,

right? Like just learning these studies hasn't magically changed my intuitions. I'm human like everyone. But what I realized is you can design happiness. And it is a design, right? It's almost like I was designing a kitchen or something, you're to build in the right features. And I'm building in the right features to move my behavior more towards the kinds of practices that will improve my well-being rather than hinder it. I love that idea of savoring. And I think that so many of us are just quick to have the moment and then move on from there. And I've actually started doing this recently where you're at a really cool event or you're sharing a great moment with some people that you love. You just take 10, 15, 20 seconds to look around and appreciate where you are and who you're with.

And then maybe store that in a little compartment in your brain. Maybe you can go back to that in a few months or a few years. Yeah, I mean, I think so many of us think, you know, oh, to savor, I need to take a picture, you know, which you can do. And there are ways to do that well. But I think part of the reason we need the picture is that we just, we're so frantic. We don't give our memories time to just like load it, right? You know, we're just like on to the next thing.

And, you know, I find this even with my own exercise routine, like at the end, I feel great. You know, it's such good evidence to come back the next morning and feel it. But, you know, as soon as I step off, you know, the elliptical, just like my common thing, it's like, there's a text message and I'm answering it. And it's like, wait, I didn't have that time to just be present with how good my body felt or how present I felt or how my breath felt different. And we're just kind of on to the next thing. And so, you know, savoring can be a really powerful way to notice the good circumstances. One of the reasons good circumstances don't make us happy is that we tend not to notice them. I'm just kind of like, you know, push on to the next thing.

So taking time to savor good moments can really be a way to notice them, be present, and kind of derive the joy that comes from them. There's so many great stories built into every single one of your podcast episodes. And I'm curious to know if there's one specific study or one specific story that when you learned about it, you went, oh my God, this is so good. I mean, so many, honestly. Right. Like, you know, the science violates our intuitions.

I think if I had to pick one guest who I loved the most, It was meeting a guy by the name of Don Wetzel, an 80-year-old Texan man who happens to have the distinction of creating the first ATM machine. He came up with the idea for the ATM machine, in fact, and he did it because he was really annoyed waiting in line at a bank teller back in the 1960s. And we use his story. I mean, he's just like this wonderful, interesting gentleman and so sweet. But his story is particularly funny because his wife refuses to use a

in ATM, even though her husband has built one and built all of them, in fact, or came up with the idea for all of them. And the podcast kind of looks at like, well, who's right? You know, like, is it better to spend your time, you know, stuck in a bank line talking to the teller and things like that? What do we lose when we start to kind of create technology for all of our social interaction from, you know, talking to the driver on Uber to, you know, going to a restaurant or going to the movies and we just pop and watch Netflix? Like, what are we losing with the technology that's telling us, you know, kind of like it gives us this illusion of being social where we're not really being social. But mostly it was just fun to like sit in this beautiful Texan house

with Don Wetzel and his wife as they fought about whether or not you should use the ATM. I loved the story about Michael Phelps and how he broke the world record and won the gold medal when he couldn't see his goggles filled up with water and he couldn't see. And he finishes the race and he's pissed off thinking he could have done it faster and realizes, oh, actually, I broke the world record. Yeah, and one of the fantastic things about that story is that, you might ask, how on earth was he able to do that? It's just like, you know, superhuman fast or something. It turned out that he practiced that specific scenario in his head, just as he practiced all kinds of bad things in his head. And you might say, like, wait a minute, wait a minute, practicing bad things. Like, that's, you know, I'm supposed to think positive and, you know, be on all the time. You know, it turns out, again, just like, you know, feeling negative emotions can help us, kind of thinking through negative scenarios can help us. Thinking positive doesn't often work as perfectly as we always think. And even thinking positively didn't even work for Michael Phelps. I have really enjoyed this conversation.

And you mentioned it here. Be great, be grateful. I end every episode, practice in gratitude. So, Laurie, what are three things in your life that you're grateful for right now? Oh, man. It's always hard to nail it down to three things. And then it gets silly as like the coffee this morning. That's which is fine.

Three big things I'm grateful for is my. my husband, who's amazing, so understanding all the time. My students in my residential college, they're amazing and they're back in person, not just on Zoom screens, and I just am so thankful that I get to experience them that way. And just like my health that I'm here, you know, I've had lots of friends recently who've had some pretty big health scares, and it's caused me to kind of be grateful just for a fundamental that we, you know, take for granted a lot, which is just we get this amazing opportunity to be here and to do what we do.

So again, the Happiness Lab is available. Wherever you're listening to this right now, wherever you get your podcasts, where else can people find you online? Yeah, well, they can check out this short version of the Yale class on Coursera.org called the Science of Wellbeing. Or you can follow me on Twitter at Lori Santos. And your website is Dr.LoriSantos.com? Correct, yep. There we go. This has been amazing.

I feel happier just having this conversation. Then my job is done. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me on the show. I love that conversation. Huge thank you to Dr. Lari Santos for finding the time to do this. And a big thank you to you for squeezing us into your day. There's so much from that that you can start applying to your life right now to feel happier.

Share this episode with someone who you know that it'll really speak to. Take a screenshot, share it on social media, and make sure to tag us both. Laurie is at Dr. Lari Santos. I'm at Chris Van Vleet. And I'll leave you with this quote that I love from Steve Mariboli. He says, happiness is not the absence of problems. It's the ability to deal with them. So good.

Be great. Be grateful. We will see you on the next one for some more insight. Have a great week. Jim Rome takes on sports. Why? Because I have a job to do. With rapid fire takes.

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