Ologies with Alie Ward - Eudemonology (HAPPINESS) Encore with Laurie Santos

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

HAPPINESS RESEARCH, straight up. What is happiness? How do our circumstances affect happiness? Why is the word “gratitude” kinda cringey? What can we do to feel better? Should we feel guilty for feeling happy? When is positivity “toxic?” In this encore of an episode favorite,  Yale cognitive scientist, Eudemonologist, and host of The Happiness Lab podcast Dr. Laurie Santos chats about how scientists measure human happiness and what their research has shown helps achieve it, even during the worst of times. Also: silver medal face & countering counterfactuals, which will make sense when you listen.Visit Dr. Santos's website and follow her on Instagram, Threads, X, YouTube, and FacebookHer podcast: Happiness LabA donation went to DonorsChoose.orgMore episode sources and links Other episodes you may enjoy: Awesomeology (GRATITUDE FOR LITTLE THINGS), Molecular Neurobiology (BRAIN CHEMICALS), Thanatology Encore (DEATH & GRIEF), Attention-Deficit Neuropsychology (ADHD), Traumatology (PTSD), Sports & Performance Psychology (ANXIETY & CONFIDENCE), Phonology (LINGUISTICS), Neuropathology (CONCUSSIONS), Quantum Ontology (WHAT IS REAL?), Disability Sociology (DISABILITY PRIDE MONTH), Dolorology (PAIN)Smologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesSponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes!Follow Ologies on Instagram and BlueskyFollow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTokSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisAdditional editing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake ChaffeeManaging Director: Susan HaleScheduling Producer: Noel DilworthTranscripts by Aveline Malek Website by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh, hello, 2024 Allie here. This is an encore while I am napping in a human-sized dog bed in front of a fireplace for the holidays. What a way to start 2025, folks. I wanted you to have this episode at the beginning of January. This is a reminder of scientifically what actually makes us happy and keeps us happy. We all need this one. Please enjoy.

I love it. I'm happy to have you listen. Oh, hey, it's that guy who saw you see him bump his head and then you smile at each other like, that's okay. Ali Ward back with an episode of ologies is going to fix your whole life. Just kidding. Actually, maybe not. It very well might fix your life. I love the life fixer episodes and this ologist is someone I've had in my sights for a few years. We mentioned her work in the awesome ology episode with Neil Pezricha and instead of just citing her, we're essentially interrogating her now to shake her for brain science.

So she got her bachelor's in psychology and her master's and PhD in cognition and brain behavior from Harvard University and is now a cognitive scientist and a psychology professor at Yale where she has taught the course Psychology and the Good Life. Oh, she's been a TED speaker, she was named one of Time magazine's leading campus celebrities, and she hosts a podcast called The Happiness Lab. So it's been a wonky few years, we all know. And as one person who wrote a review this week of Ologies said, It always brings a smile to my face when I hear people talk about their passions.

I'm grateful every day for Ologies and giving me my life back. AJ Buxton, who left that review, I'm very glad you're here. Thank you for leaving that fresh one. And a 2024 reviewer, Vfarm, who wrote that, Without fail, my favorite episodes are those on topics I had no interest in. Y'all vampires, trees, gar, brilliantly unenthusiastic sounding crab experts, there's nothing quite so wonderful. Thank you VFarm for getting it. And thanks to everyone who leaves me reviews. They keep the show up in the charts. They keep me from crying on days that are challenging. Also heads up, if you prefer podcasts without swearing we have a slew of them. They're called Smologies and you can subscribe to Smologies

now wherever you get podcasts. They're in their own separate feed in case you need to listen while you carpool to school. Okay. Thank you to all the patrons who left questions for this ologist. You too can join that club. Costs 25 cents an episode at patreon.com. Okay, so let's get into it. Eudemonology. Will I say it right even one time this episode? Stick around to find out. So this is the science of happiness and it's been on the ology books a long time.

It comes from Eudemon, which is Greek for a benevolent demon or a good spirit. And it was a term used by 19th century humanistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, and he called eudaemonology the art of ordering our lives so as to obtain the greatest possible amount of pleasure and success. But we're talking about the science of this art. So how to shed the very comfortable crusty shell of dissatisfaction and anxiety with some good steps that have been proven by research people to make your brain less of a miserable bummer.

So press pause on your sad inner goblins and open your ears to hear about wanting versus craving, being happy in your life, being happy with your life, how happiness is even measured. Lottery winner statistics, the wealth of free time, the power of a walk, wheelbarrows of distractions. When does positivity become toxic? How to get around the ickiness of the word gratitude? And some practical tips to enjoy life on planet earth before you're a pile of forgotten bones. With cognitive scientist, psychology professor, happiness lab host, Yale researcher and eudemontologist Dr.. Santos. How are you? I'm great. Thanks. I'm sure the happiness doctor as a professor of happiness, you probably are inclined to say, I feel great more often than

the rest of us. You'd think think I'm inclined to be honest because one thing that happiness science shows is that being honest about our negative emotions is important too. So when things are tough, I'm like, you know, it's tough, but you know, but today's been a good day. That's great. So I'm already learning so much. Can I have you say really quick, your first and last name and your pronouns? Sure. I'm Laurie Santos and my pronouns are she, her. You have been on my radar for years actually.

And so I'm really stoked to talk to you because this is an ology that I've wanted to do for I think since before I even started the podcast. Are you familiar with this, that word, wedemology? No, maybe with that word? Uedemology? Uedemology? Uedemology? No, maybe. You know that word? It's U-E-D-E-M. Oh, sorry. Yes. Udemology, maybe. Udemology, yes.

Like eudaimonia is the word. Yes. So I guess this is a study of that feeling or that state. And you're the perfect person to talk to you because obviously you have your podcast and you teach courses at Yale about this. So can you tell me a little bit about your background? How did you start studying cognition and feelings? Where did it start? Yeah. Well, I've been a psychologist, you know, forever. I think I've always been interested in the human mind and how it works and things.

But you know, before I get into the study of happiness specifically, I was really interested in the origins of cognition. So the origins of how we think. And I studied that by looking at non-human animals. I studied how monkeys and dogs think about the world. And that was kind of my day job until I took on a new role on Yale's campus where I became what's called a head of college. And so Yale's kind of like one of these weird schools like in Harry Potter where there are

like colleges within a college, you know, like kind of Gryffindor, Slytherin sort of thing. I'm head of Silliman College and that means I live on campus with students. And when I started the role, I was expecting it to be, you know, like, you know, rainbows and parties and just like happy students all the time. But when I got there, you know, I was really seeing the college student mental health crisis up close and personal, you know, with so many students reporting feeling depressed and anxious. And, you know, even if they weren't, you know, at clinical levels of mental health dysfunction, they were just kind of feeling stressed and sort of fast forwarding their life, you know, and just feeling overwhelmed and really busy. And so I kind of

wanted to do something about it. You know, I didn't like being in this culture where so many students were stressed and depressed and just kind of not enjoying their time in college. And so I thought, well, let me, you know, figure out what my field of psychology says about this. And psychology gives us so many tips that we can use to feel better. And so I thought, all right, great. I'll do what professors do. I'll make a whole class on this. So I prepped this class that I christened psychology and the good life and slapped it together thinking 30 or so students would take it. And you can imagine my surprise when a quarter of the entire campus enrolled the first time I taught it. Yeah, we couldn't fit the class

anywhere. We had to teach it in a concert hall on campus because that was the only place it would fit. But that showed me students are voting with their feet. They don't like this culture of feeling so overwhelmed and stressed. And I think they really wanted science-based strategies they could use to feel better. Yeah, much different, I think, than just Instagram quotes on a page. Here you've got someone who studies the brain, who studies psychology. Probably people go into it with a little bit of faith that you'll have some evidence-based information, right? Exactly. I think one of the things that's interesting is we learn, as you look into the science, you learn that some of those ancient pieces of wisdom were quite accurate. You

know, some of the platitudes we see are quite accurate, you know, but some not so much, right? And I think that's why we need an empirical approach, right? We can just ask scientifically, okay, if we find happy people, what are they doing differently? What are their strategies? How are they spending their time? And then we can let the not-so-happy people copy that and really test, are they feeling happier? Are they feeling less depressed? And these days we have almost two decades worth of scientific work that's done that in this field of positive psychology. And we've learned a lot. There's lots of evidence-based tips out there for what you can do to feel better.

Okay. So the term positive psychology was popularized by Dr. Martin Seligman, who felt that the contemporary psychology was just too deeply focused on what's fucked up about us, not how can we live better. So it focuses on things like self-discovery and a sense of purpose and expressing yourself through creativity and authentically. So we're going to get to more of that in a bit. But first, from small hairy primates to larger, slightly less hairy primates like us. And, you know, where did you make that jump from non-human primates and dogs into humans?

Did you find that a lot of the research just correlates based on what our brain structures are, how our neurons work? Well, it's interesting. The work I was doing with dogs and monkeys was more kind of figuring out, you know, how they decide, what they know about the world. But there was a rich similarity, which is that when you start looking into the happiness science work, you quickly realize a big way that we get things wrong, which is that we have some really bad theories about the kinds of things that make us happy. You know, I talk to my students and on my podcast, I often say, you know, our minds are lying to us about the sorts of things that will

make us happy. You know, we think it's money and changing our circumstances and, you know, getting the perfect accolade or the perfect grade, but those things seem not to work. And that tied really nicely to some of the work we were doing in animals where we showed that some of the deepest irrationalities we have in our species might be evolutionarily old. They're kind of built in. And I think the same thing about some of the things we get wrong about happiness. Like even knowing these studies, it's hard for me to change my intuitions. You know, I still think, well, if I hit powerball today, oh man, I'd be so much happier. Or, you know, if it just wasn't raining today, I'd be so much happier. If we could change my circumstances drastically, that would really improve my well-being.

But I know the scientific work that suggests that's probably not the case. Okay, so I looked into some data on if Powerball winners are happier, and it's a mixed bag of money. So one thing for sure, people do take more vacations when they win the lottery and by contrast 60% of Americans take zero vacations a year. And apparently one thing that pleases us so much about vacations is just having something, anything to look forward to. So just start peppering your calendar with any excursion you can. Even if it's just like

a nice bowl of soup next Wednesday or a hike next weekend. Pack a picnic. Leisure time on any scale is apparently worth a million bucks and tax free. So hey. Is happiness more about being happy with ourselves and accepting ourselves or external circumstances? Or is it mission based? Like you're on the right path to doing something that you believe in. Yeah, it's a few of all of those things. I mean, I think one thing in terms of our circumstances, you know, it's worth noting that if you're in really dire traumatic circumstances, yes, getting different circumstances will really, you know, improve your well-being. You know, if you're living below the poverty line or if you're in an abusive relationship, you

do want to change those circumstances. But for many of the people privileged enough to listen to this podcast who can put food on the table, has a roof over their head and so on, changing your circumstances might not affect your happiness as much as you think. For many of us, changing our circumstances isn't the fastest path to feeling a little bit happier. So is it mind over matter? This is where you ask smart persons doofy questions. Often it's more about changing our mindset, which incorporates a lot of the things you

mentioned. It's about changing the way we see the world, changing the way we see our circumstances, changing the extent to which we're present with our circumstances and our emotions. And it's also tapping into things that give us meaning in life, giving us a sense of purpose. So all of those things seem to matter a lot more than what our salary level is. Or for my students, the last grade they got on their midterm and things like that. Backing up a little bit, what is happiness? How do you even define it? Yeah, tricky. I mean, we could take many, many podcast episodes up, fighting over a definition of happiness. Social scientists tend to try to be simpler than philosophers.

So they go for a definition of happiness that's pretty easy to measure. And so most social scientists think about happiness as sort of being happy in your life and with your life. And so, you know, being happy in your life is just having lots of positive emotions, right? You know, like you have experienced joy and laughter and fun and less often things like sadness and anger. Not that those aren't there at all, right? Because a full and complete life includes some negative emotions, but you know, the ratio is pretty good. That's sort of being happy in your life. Being happy with your life is that meaning, that sense of purpose. It's the answer to the question, all things considered, how satisfied am I with my life? And those

two constructs are ones that scientists measure separately. And it's worth noting that they do sometimes dissociate. I think if you go on Instagram, there are a lot of people who are happy in their life. They're eating these hedonistic meals on some plane somewhere. But if you look at how they're feeling with their life, I bet they're feeling pretty empty. And you can also have cases of the opposite. My dean, who I live with here in the college, she and her wife recently just had a baby. And newborn baby, you're really happy with your life. Oh my God, this rich sense of meaning being a mom, but in your life, dirty diapers and not sleeping and so they can dissociate.

But best case scenario is that you're feeling pretty high on both of those. So I'm going to pause us for a second just to ponder. How do you feel in your life? How are your days to days? Maybe some nice tea in the morning, some supportive coworkers, maybe some evening knitting or a walk with a friend. Or do you hate your coffee maker?

And you don't know why you started rewatching the Big Bang Theory from episode one. You're tired, go to bed. Now, what about with your life? Do you feel a sense of purpose? Are you proud of your life? Do you feel authentic? Just think about it for a second. It's totally okay if you're like, some of it? Are you proud of your life? Do you feel authentic? Just think about it for a second. It's totally okay if you're like, some of it's good, some of

it sucks eggs. Or I'm very fortunate. Why am I such a grumpy walrus? And there are lots of different hacks that we can do to improve both of those constructs. In terms of emotions themselves, is happiness an umbrella for things like joy and relief and satisfaction and contentment, or are those all individual, separate emotions? Yeah, I mean, it kind of depends. I think we and sometimes scientists, philosophers, all of us, we can get really kind of tied up on the specifics. Is joy a subcomponent of happiness or is it bigger than happiness?

What about contentment and things like that? I'm more of the opinion of you kind of know them when you see them, right? I want a construct that's easy enough that if I give people some sort of self-report measure that they can tell me about it. But beyond that, I don't want to get into a big fight about, well, is it joy? Is it contentment? Is it 45% or is it 50%? I think you kind of know it when you see it. But we could probably dig in. I mean, there's nuance there. You know, the kind of calm contentment feels different than a kind of manic, excited happiness, than, you know, a deep sense of joy. You know, these are different constructs and maybe importantly so, but overall what

we're going for is as many of those as possible. And what about you in particular? I know that you said you can read the studies and understand and know, but sometimes it's hard to do. How has your life changed since you switched a little bit of your career focus on this? Yeah, well, it's definitely, statistically speaking, made me much happier. I'm a nerd, right?

So I take these surveys myself about how satisfied are you with your life on a scale of one to 10 and stuff like that. And on most 10-point scales of both kind of happiness in my life and happiness with my life, I've gone up at least a point since focusing on this stuff. But it's not like magic, right? It's in part just because I'm doing the things that I keep telling my students to do. I'm practicing gratitude. I'm improving my social connection, I'm meditating more, I'm exercising. Like I'm doing all this stuff in a big list of, hey, if you do these things scientifically,

seems like you'll feel better. And now I'm doing those and I'm feeling better. So it kind of makes sense. There's also something wonderful about being the happiness professor because I have a whole host of students and podcast listeners who, if I'm not doing the right thing, will probably call me out. My students see me, oh, how's it going? I'm so frustrated. And they're like, oh.

My students call me head of college Santos. So it's Hoc Santos. It's what it's abbreviated to. They'll be like, Hoc Santos, aren't you supposed to be practicing gratitude? It's like, oh, okay, yes, you're right. So I will get called out if I'm not practicing this stuff. Do you feel like your friends come to you for more pep talks or fewer because they just look at your published work

instead? I think my friends are my friends. They don't necessarily see me as a happiness expert. If anything, I think the happiness expert thing can become a little bit, you know, annoying at times of like, well, you know, I have a podcast on that. You know, it's like, no, they just want me to be their friend. Yeah. And so try to separate the two a little bit. Shit. Am I not supposed to talk about podcast episodes with my friends?

Because I've told a lot of people about wildfires and how lizards have two dogs. Let's change the subject. Well, let's get into some of those factors because I know that you rattled them off and it's a lot of things that we feel like we know but we don't necessarily know why or the mechanisms of how that works. You know, exercise, practicing gratitude.

Can you run me down those things and in a nutshell, tell me why do they work? Yeah. I mean, there's different kinds of categories of them. One whole set of categories are there's a whole host of things that make us happier that are about connecting with other people, right? Literally being around other people is considered a necessary condition for high happiness in a lot of studies.

And that's true even for introverts. So just literally connecting with and being around other people, super useful for happiness. But another way that you connect with other people is to focus on what makes them happy. Lots of evidence that doing random acts of kindness, spending money and time on other people, that makes us feel happier. And in some cases, especially with spending money, you're happier spending money on others than you even are spending on yourself. So this attitude of social connection and doing for others, a powerful set of practices to make us feel happier. Another set of practices really has to do with our mindset. Do we have a mindset of griping and complaining, or are

we focused on things we're grateful for? You know, are we paying attention to the negative things in life, or are we focused on delights? Are we present enough to savor some of the good things? And just, you know, present in general to notice our emotions and notice things. There's evidence suggesting that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. So just the act of a mindset of being present can be really powerful for happiness. So for more on a daily practice of looking for things that aren't the fucking worst, I linked the Osmology episode in the show notes. Also, learning this next term killed me. I'm dead. I'm a fungus now. And then there's just a whole host of things that I think we kind of know are good for

our physical health, but we forget can be so important for our mental health. You know, things like taking time to exercise, taking time to sleep, which is a huge one, and just having like some time off. There's lots of evidence that something called time affluence, the subjective sense that you have some free time, is much more critical for happiness than we realize. And so, you know, all of those things as I say them, you know, we can go through the scientific studies and so on, and you know, your listeners might things, as I say them, you know, we can go through the scientific studies and so on. And you know, your listeners might be thinking like, well, I kind of know that.

And what I like to say is it's, you know, it's common wisdom, but it's not common practice. You know, how many of those things that I just rattled off aren't things that you're doing right now, you know, that and then that's why I think it's really critical to know the science because as you hear the science of say nutrition, you think like, oh, maybe I should eat healthier. I think as you hear the science of how things like social connection and exercise work, you start thinking, oh, maybe those are things I really do need to get in more of. You know, I kind of knew it, but now that I see the evidence, this does seem really important.

So, connecting with people, talking face to face is better for us than just text. The phone works too. FaceTime is even better than the phone. Also helping others when you can. Looking for lovely shiny things amid the compost pile that can feel like life. Also sleep and exercise. It can be immediate or like exercise. It can be a few weeks before these habits really take root and you start to feel better. So don't give up. Give it a few weeks, especially since it's free. Are you feeling lazy and annoyed? Don't worry. A lot of us feel that way when we start doing something that will keep us alive and happy. So I asked Dr. Santos for us. Why am I like this? Why do you think from some sort of evolutionary standpoint, when we're bummed out, it's harder to do the things that would make us

less bummed out. Yeah, super frustrating. Like the mind is designed in like a really stupid way. We knew this from other evolutionary studies, but definitely when it comes to happiness, that's the case. In one of my upcoming episodes of the Happiness Lab, I talk about this really stupid design feature of the brain where there's just a different, like a whole different brain system that codes for what we like, you know, so the things we really enjoy versus the things that we want, the things that we're motivated to go after or that we crave. The simplest example is like, you know, sometimes when I'm having a bad day at work, I just like crave like plopping down and watching Netflix or like eating a cupcake or having

like a huge glass of wine. But like, if you actually look at how much I would like that, the Netflix is going to make me apathetic and the cupcakes going to give me the jitters and the wine I'm not going to sleep very well. Like ultimately, the liking has this disconnect from the wanting. And you get it in the reverse direction too. I don't, after a long day at work, crave a really hard Peloton ride or a really hard yoga class or taking a long walk with a friend. I don't have the same motivation I have for that that I do for the cupcake or the boring, relaxing thing

or a hit of social media. But even though I don't have the wanting, if I actually engage in that practice, I'll feel so much better. And so this is a dumb way to design a brain. You think that wanting would kind of go with liking, but it just sort of doesn't. And that means we spend a lot of time craving and easily going after things we won't really like. And that means we spend a lot of time craving and easily going after things we won't really like. And it means we don't have mechanisms, except for a kind of rational, you know, push ourselves. We don't have these kind of low grade craving mechanisms to go after things that really will benefit our happiness, but we don't realize we want them. How do we hijack that? Like, how do we trick ourselves into doing the thing that we don't

think that we want to do, but we like doing and is good for us. Yeah, well, there's you know, there's two ways to do it, you know, one is this very rational force yourself way Which which I harness a lot which is like, okay, even though I don't really feel like calling anyone right now I know the science and if I talk to someone I'll feel better, right? You know, so you kind of the force yourself approach, right? but the force yourself approach works best if it's paired with the second practice, which is forcing yourself to notice what you like, because the wanting system can update. It just doesn't do it naturally. But after a really hard yoga class or after calling that

friend when you didn't feel like it, take time to notice like, does this feel good? And you're like, yeah, this actually feels nice. I had this, you know, pre-COVID, when I was going to a yoga studio, this wonderful yoga instructor, right at the end of a hard class would have you take this moment, we're like, okay, now take a moment to notice.

Notice how you feel after this class. Like, notice how this made you feel. And afterwards, you're like, damn, that was great. Like, I want more of this feeling, you know? So when you pick the salad and stop pretending that was great. Like, I want more of this feeling, you know? So when you pick the salad and stop pretending that Diet Coke is water, and you go for the slowest, sweatiest shuffle around the block, but you do it,

take a minute and absolutely relish how wonderful and brave and heroic your efforts were and how you feel. We deserve this. But we tend not to be present. We tend not to mindfully notice. And that's true for the stuff you really crave, but you might not like. After you open the fridge four times and grab that thing to eat that you didn't really feel like, take a moment to be like, am I satisfied now? Not really. Want to grab something else. And once you notice that your wanting system can

be like, okay, kind of duly noted, let's take note of that for next time. So kind of forcing yourself to ignore your wanting system and just act through this very rational path, but then also mindfully noticing what you really like, those things can start to update your craving system at least a little bit. But the systems are always going to be disconnected, unfortunately. It's just our minds are not really designed that well for wanting all the things that we like. What about like our self image? How much does that play into our happiness and how much does monitoring our likes and

our social media and you know, looking at pictures of our face through a distorted camera lens, how much is that affecting our happiness and how we see our lives? Yeah, well, one another dumb feature of the way our minds work when it comes to happiness is the fact that we don't necessarily think of the good things in our life in objective terms. We think of them in relative terms. And that means that seeing ourselves on social media, seeing what's going on with other people on social media, that can really affect our happiness in some dumb ways.

Take your body image, for example, right? You know, you might objectively think you have a certain, you know, body that's good or not so good or whatever, but we don't necessarily think in terms of our objective sense. We think relative. And so as soon as you go on Instagram and you look at, you know, the bikini pictures of someone else or take your objective sense of how good your vacation was or how rich you were or how nice your house is. Then you watch the celebrity TikTok feeds and you're like, oh, my house isn't that good or my vacation sucked and things like that. We're really susceptible to social comparison when it comes to evaluating anything in our life, our abilities, our amount of money, our salary or a house, whatever. And that

means that we can easily start feeling bad even when we're in objectively a good situation. My favorite extreme example of this was a study that looked at the emotions of different Olympic medalists. So probably gold medalists probably feeling pretty happy, like, you know, it makes sense. They just want a gold medal. Yeah. But what about silver medalists? You know, maybe slightly less happy. But what researchers find is that if you look at the emotional expressions that silver medalists show on the stand. Oxana Bayul has won the gold and backstage Nancy Kerrigan and Shan Lu exchanged congratulations

and consolations for silver and bronze. They're not just slightly less happy. They're actively feeling awful. They're showing signs of extreme sadness, contempt, anger. It's not just slightly less happy, it's actively negative. If you think about what I just said, it sort of makes sense, right? Because the silver medalist isn't thinking, I'm objectively the second best in the world. I objectively beat the other 7 billion people. They're just thinking

about one reference point that makes them feel awful. The gold, they were almost there and they didn't get it. So they feel like a loser. But what's striking is if you look at the bronze medalist, you see something completely different because their reference point isn't the gold, right? Like they were, I don't know, like, you know, 30 seconds off where they like lost two matches or something. Their reference point is like, if I would just messed up a little bit more, I would go home completely empty handed, right? Like I wouldn't even be on the stand at all.

Right. And so they're showing signs of true ecstasy. In some cases, they're showing expressions that are even happier than the gold medalist because their reference point is like, phew, look how lucky I am. I almost totally screwed up. So Nancy Kerrigan displayed a famously sour face receiving the silver in 1994. And then in 1995 a study was published in the Journal of Personal and Social Psychology titled, quote, When Less is More, Counterfactual Thinking and Satisfaction Among Olympic Medalists. Counterfactual thinking and satisfaction among Olympic medalists.

Counterfactual thinking? Huh? What the fuck? That is the sinking, gnawing feeling of what could have been. Oh wow, I fudged it up. So one researcher, Dr. Andrea Lewin-Grath, a University of Iowa marketing assistant professor, did follow-up studies on medalists to confirm that first study and recently said in an interview that you don't have to be the second best out of 8 billion. There are always going to be people who we can compare ourselves to that are

better, faster, smarter, or whatever and that can make us feel relatively bad. So what is the lesson here? Think twice before you get a no regrets tattoo and maybe consider a counter your counterfactuals tattoo instead. And once the sting wears off, celebrate your silvers. You did it. And I love this metaphor because you know it shows us that it doesn't matter what's going on objectively. It matters who we're comparing ourselves against. And that means sometimes we can be an objectively a really good spot but feel kind of awful about it.

And what about chemicals? Where are just the chemical hands that we were dealt? When do those have the reins on the amount of happiness we feel? So we could think about the chemicals were dealt in a couple ways. Often we think about it in terms of our kind of genetic lottery, right?

Are you naturally a happy person? Are you naturally a kind of down-in-the-dumbs person? And just like circumstances, what we find is that there is a genetic component to happiness. So if you're born from a long line of overly optimistic people, you're more likely to be overly optimistic. But the amount of that heritability is tiny. What? You know, it's probably tinier than something like height or weight in the US, and especially with like weight, we know that that's something that obviously your environment can shape a lot. And so while there is some heritable component to happiness, it's much tinier than we think.

And this is really good news, right? You know, it would suck if you're like, hey, you're just born to be happy or born to be not so happy, and that's it. What the science is really telling us is that there's some heritable component, but there's a lot of action that we can take through our mindsets, through our behaviors to change things around. And that's great because, you know, putting this all together, it means our genetics don't predict our happiness that much and our circumstances don't predict our happiness that much. Like we don't necessarily get to control whether we're born into complete luxury or born into poverty.

We don't necessarily get to control what our genetic heritage is, but we all can completely control our mindsets and our behavior. So it's good news. The bad news is that changing those mindsets and behavior, as you probably guessed, takes a lot of work. Yeah. Do you ever have students who either come to you or who you hear about who aren't quite sure if it's time for medical intervention or is it time for just trying to hack their habits?

How do we as individuals make that call? Yeah. I'm glad you brought this up because I think this is really important. So many of the hacks we are talking about today are ones that really can improve your wellbeing. But there's some points when you need to hack and there's some points where you need something that's much deeper. And the analogy like to use is, imagine you go into your doctor and you say, hey, doctor, I have high blood pressure. What should I do?

Your doctor might say, hey, get on the treadmill and exercise a little bit more, you know, eat, you know, here, eat these fruits and vegetables every day or something. But if you walked into your doctor's office and you're saying, doctor, you know, I'm having chest pains, I'm having acute cardiac arrest right now, your doctor wouldn't be like, well, get on the treadmill, you know, like for half hour a day, like your doctor would, you know, an emergency intervention would take place. And I think it's worth recognizing that our mental health works the same way. The kinds of things I'm talking about are in some sense preventative medicine. You know, they're there so that you don't wind up in a state of kind of acutely feeling clinically depressed or suicidal or something worse, right? You know, they're there so that you can protect your mental

health so you don't get to that point. But if you're experiencing true depression, you know, hard for you to do your daily activities or anxiety so powerful that you're experiencing true depression, you know, hard for you to do your daily activities, or anxiety so powerful that you're experiencing panic attacks, that's a sign that you might need professional help. All the hacks I mentioned are good, you know, once you get out of that acute state, just like the heart attack person, as soon as you get out of experiencing cardiac arrest, the next step is going to be to go back to some of those preventative measures once you kind of get out of the hospital. And I think the same thing is true for clinical parts of these diseases. You might also want to go back to experiencing gratitude and meditating in these things. But it is important to get acute care if the mental health situation you're in is

acute. Okay. That's great to know for people. You may know when you hit this level because your friends will say, I think you should see a doctor, dude, which is what happened to me when I was going through the hardest parts of my life and also had a couple medical conditions that turned my brain into bees. The doctor was like, well, shucks, you need more than a car wash. Let's check under the hood there, buddy. But yes, what is the technique for sloughing off persistent, crusty, muddy feelings?

When it comes to things like gratitude and meditation, how much is effective? Like how much can we get away with if we're feeling real down in the dumps, but we're low on motivation? How much gratitude is enough? How much meditation is enough? How much exercise is enough? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know,

one of the nice things about this being, all of this stuff being evidence-based is that it allows you to kind of do your own experimentation, right? The answer of how much meditation you, you know, particular podcast listener need might depend on all kinds of things, right? And so the key is to sort of try it out. One thing we know though is that sometimes it takes less than you really expect. It takes something like gratitude. There's evidence that just scribbling down three things that

you're grateful for every day, that can be enough to significantly boost your well-being in as little as two weeks. Like, it doesn't take that much time. There's evidence, for example, from Hedy Kober's lab at Yale that even as little as 10 minutes of meditation a day can really start to improve your well-being and some mental health symptoms, right? For more on this, feel free to peruse papers such as, Brief Mindfulness Meditation Improves Attention in Novices and Let It Be, Mindful Acceptance Downregulates Pain and Negative Emotion, both published by Dr. Hedy Kober. So scientists in lab coats have dedicated their research and their grant money budgets to proving

that yes, meditation does help. It's free, it takes less time than making a sandwich. We can do this. Let's do this. And so it doesn't It's free, it takes less time than making a sandwich. We can do this, let's do this. And so it doesn't take long. What it takes is some consistency. And so my instinct is like, because sometimes we hear these tips, like, all right, I'm gonna drop everything

and do like 70 hours of meditation. It's like, no, no, no, just start really small. Allow yourself to do these baby steps and test it out. How are you feeling? Are you feeling better? Is it making things better? Is it making things worse? And so allowing ourselves the self-compassion to engage in these baby steps I think is really important. I think that's so true. Whenever I get out of the habit of running, which is now, I'll go do a lap at the reservoir but I'll have to just tell myself the first

couple times I do it, the first month, but I'll have to just tell myself the first couple times I do it, the first month even, as long as I just get around the reservoir, even crawling is fine. You know, like expecting yourself to get back into running at a certain pace or doing things, you know, whole hog can be so intimidating. You just want to give up right away. Yeah. And I think, you know, we're not good at understanding the amount of self-compassion

we need to motivate ourselves. I think, again, this is a spot where I think our minds get it wrong. We think the right way to motivate ourselves is to become these horrid drill instructors and like yell at ourselves in our head in a way that we'd never speak to a friend or a child or someone we cared about, hopefully, right? But that kind of just doesn't work. That convinces us that it's not good to try. We end up setting our standards lower. We end up procrastinating more. Self-compassion, it turns out, can actually allow you to engage in new habits better and

more effectively and with less procrastination. That's not our theory. We go for the drill sergeant approach, but we'd be better off kind of, you know, mindfully paying attention to what's going on and recognizing that we're just human and giving ourselves a little bit more of a benefit of a doubt. Yeah, like I never want to obey a dick who's yelling at me. So why do I do that to myself? And we're like, you know, the dickiest of dicks is often the person in our head, right? You know, it's like, wait, I would never say, you know, that thing I just

said to myself in my head, I would never say that to another human. Why am I talking to myself that way? Yeah, I would want to slap my own self for saying that to me. You know, like I'm, yeah, I'm the hardest on myself more than I would ever tolerate in somebody else, which is so funny that we do that. But you know, you mentioned the term positive psychology before, and I'm so curious about that because I feel like I can't tell if it's flim flam or not, that positive psychology is totally like a legit practice or is it something along the lines of like toxic positivity at all

costs? What is positive psychology? What do scientists think of it? Yeah, I mean, the term positive psychology began when scientist Marlee Seligman, who kind of invented the field or thought that the founder of the field, you know, really had this intuition that so much of psychology is about, you know, what he called kind of below baseline, right? Like, I'm trying to cure depression, I'm trying to cure anxiety or something like that.

But he realized that we didn't have, as he called it, a good science of kind of going above baseline. You know, there's baseline and then there's feeling like you're flourishing. You know, then there's getting social connection in life, feeling really present, experiencing joy. And so he really christened this name of this field, positive psychology, in order to focus on those things. But I think positive psychology gets the wrong wrap. I think there's this idea that like, well, you have to only be positive. But you know, if you look at what this research is really showing, there's a lot of evidence that a real true happy life, a successful life, a healthy life involves experiencing negative emotions, allowing those, not running away from them. There's, you know,

lots of evidence suggesting that there are different techniques you can use to navigate those emotions and sort of feel them without getting like destroyed by them. And so I think, you know, when you hear these terms, positive psychology, positivity, they can kind of feel a little cheesy and get a bad rap that it's like positive, positive, positive all the time. But that's not really when you dig into the field what it's showing. My sense is that, you know, the whole goal is to get to, you know, this idea of eudaimonia, this rich, meaningful life. And you do that not through putting blinders on and being a Pollyanna and trying only to experience happy, happy, happy no matter what. You do that by having a full life, which is

rich with lots of emotions and experiences. Yeah, that's such a good point about letting yourself feel those negative emotions, but not necessarily like succumbing to them, you know, not letting them win all the time. Yeah. And I think we, you know, we get that wrong. Like I think our instinct, again, is this idea that while there's some negative emotion, I should run away from that or the right move would be to sort of suppress it, you know, stiff up her lip. But there's evidence from James Gross at Stanford that the act of suppressing our emotions can lead to things like increased cardiac stress or even can cause us to have some problems with memory and decision making. You do worse

on a memory test when you're trying to suppress some negative emotion. So it has negative costs. We're much better off if we can find ways to regulate and allow those emotions, to experience them, give them some time, and then be self-compassionate and nurture ourselves through them. Are there any myths about happiness that you find yourself constantly having to bust? All the time. We've been talking about our minds lie to us all the time about this stuff. The biggest one, the one that my students fall prey to so much is that happiness is about circumstances. That happiness is about money in particular. My Yale students

were all thinking about what job they want to get when they get out of this Ivy League University and what salary they're going to get and things. Now you tell them that after a certain reasonable middle-class income, money doesn't matter for happiness anymore. And they want to fight you on it. They're like, well, you know, what if I spent it differently or what if I went on vacation to these places over and over again? You're like, nope, doesn't count. Like, or at the very least, it's not so much that money doesn't matter for happiness. It's just there are so many other things you could focus on that matter much, much more. You know, maybe, yeah, you know, if you go up like that minuscule amount, if you put

all this work in and all this time in to earn more, maybe you get a teeny bump, maybe, maybe not. But like like if you just wrote down three things you're grateful for, that would work way more effectively. Like we know that empirically. Is there a test where people can go figure out how happy am I? Yeah, there's also different spots online where you can do that. In fact, Marty Seligman, who we mentioned, this founder of positive psychology has a website called Authentic Happiness. If you kind of Google the authentic happiness test.

So yes, I checked this out. And if you Google authentic happiness, you can help fellow eudaemonologists by taking scored questionnaires. They have authentic happiness inventory, the general happiness scale, positive and negative effect questionnaire, the four dice emotions questionnaire, I myself opted for the classic, the authentic happiness inventory. And on a scale of one to five, Jarrett, what do you think I got? Three. You know me too.

Did I? Yeah, 3.08. So maybe I'll meditate a bunch and then I'll take it in a few months. Also, I have no idea what all those different tests do, but I'm sure that the scientists know and that's all that matters. You know, you don it in a few months. Also, I have no idea what all those different tests do, but I'm sure that the scientists know, and that's all that matters. You know, you don't need a fancy test. It's really kind of all things considered, how happy are you with your life? I mean, this is the beauty. For better or for worse, there's

not a thermometer that we can use for happiness as scientists, where we put it in like, boop, you're 98.6, you know, happy. You know, you just have to answer it for yourself. And that kind of feels a little bit not as legit scientifically, but in practice, that's what we're really trying to get at. We're trying to get at your own perception of how things are going. And if things are going well, then they're going well. Can I ask you some listener questions? Sure.

But before that, let's aim a money cannon at a worthy cause. This week, Dr. Santos chose DonorsChoose.org, which lets teachers list their classroom needs and then regular jbronies like you and me can make their dreams come true. So DonorsChoose has fulfilled 1.7 million classroom projects from butterfly cocoons to robotics kits to pencils and paper and books with diverse characters. Okay so modern-day Ali here saying that when this first aired we funded a few classrooms and this time around we picked a few new ones to fund Mrs. Alvarado's classroom at Maynes Elementary School in Calexico, California needed funding to purchase some reading comprehension passages to motivate

students to read and write. She also needed new chairs for the classroom, for which apparently the United States does not have enough money. So teachers have to buy these things. So happy to fund that for Mrs. Alvarado. Another classroom project funded was Mrs. Myers at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School in Morro, Georgia, who says that research has shown that hunger has a variety of detrimental effects on kids and that some of her students come from less fortunate homes and require additional resources and support. And we also tossed in a donation to Mrs. Perez, Copperfield Elementary School in Converse, Texas,

for snacks for her students that may have financial barriers that limit their access to food. And the snacks will provide them with brain power to focus while also removing the social stigma of going without a snack during the day. So thanks for Dr. Santos for the heads up on DonorsChoose.org and to sponsors who made this round of donations possible. Okay, happy to ask your questions for Dr. Santos. Okay, Ariel Reagan wants to know, do animals experience happiness? Are they happier than people? Yeah, it's really

hard to ask animals about their happiness because, you know, I can do the self-report measure with you. It's harder to do that with a banana slug or a bonobo or something. Physiologically, we know they go through a lot of the same states as humans, but it's hard to know for sure if those physiological states correlate with this subjective state. I only know that you have the subjective state because you tell me. And so even though everything we can objectively look at, like suggest that it, you know, we were feeling the same thing, subjectively, it's really hard to know for sure. So one thing some scientists try to observe is play behavior like hopping around and running, chewing on stuff.

My tiny poodle angel, she rubs her butt against stuff like a tire or my shoe. That's her version of typing hashtag blessed. Courtney Graziano wants to know, can anxious people be happy? I think anxious people can definitely be happy. I think there are a lot of strategies we can use to regulate and allow our anxiety. I think part of the problem with anxiety is that we try to run away from it, that we try to avoid it at all costs. But that's yet another emotion that I think we can kind of sit with, feeling really anxious right now. It's an eight out of 10. You can sort of surf that anxiety urge and get to the other side and then do some work to sort of nurture yourself. So I think

you can be anxious and happy, just like you can be sad and happy and you can be angry and happy. To have a truly happy life requires experiencing all those emotions, but finding ways to kind of navigate them so they don't take over. Mm hmm. Oh, that's really well said. Aidan Patko and Meg G want to know, is it flim flam that smiling actually makes you happier or is that a true fact? Meg says, and laughing and a lot of other folks. Looking at you, patrons, say, see demos 101, Alexis Wallach, and Ashley Herbal. Want to know, can you fake it till you make it?

There's a lot of feedback that we get from other people's emotions, from our own feedback, from our own actions. So pretending you're happy, acting like you're happy can often put you in a happy state in part because it puts the people around you in a happy state. And we know that there's a lot of evidence for what's called emotional contagion, right? Just like if I'm around happy people, I'm just going to catch the emotions of that happy person and the reverse, right? If I'm around those negative Nellies, like that's going to, I'm going to catch that too. And so there is a kind of fake it till you make it. There's associate with the people who have the emotions

that you want to experience. It's a powerful way to kind of use your situation, your social environment to build in wellbeing. Is there anything you can do for a friend who is feeling really unhappy to help them out as well? Yeah, I think, you know, the way to do it, I think really is to try to bring some of these practices in naturally. Right? I mean, first of all, give that friend some social connection, right? Just the very act of you talking to them, being around them, spending time with them is going to improve their

wellbeing. I think you can also bring your attitudes that are positive, right? If you're expressing things that you're grateful for, if you're savoring things and feeling a little bit present, that kind of thing is naturally going to rub off on them because of emotional contagion, because of behavioral contagion. But the biggest thing you can do is I think check in. Check in and allow yourself to be present and be there for someone who needs you. Really powerful way to use your happiness to positively affect others. So if you ever think why would I check up on someone I don't know how to fix things don't worry just be alive and in their orbit and listen or tell them about how lizards

have two dicks that's what I do. Patrick Javarone says first-time question asker wants to know happiness and the microbiome connection. What can we do to improve our microbiome? Is there a connection? What's the deal? Yeah, great, great question. And it's something that we don't have that much good data on yet. Everything we know suggests that microbiome affects all kinds of stuff. It would be surprising, I think, in some ways if it didn't affect our well-being and our

happiness. But this is just a new area of work where we're learning new things all the time and we don't really have a great Verdict yet But you know if you want to throw research money onto something that I think will be really Telling in the next 10 years of happiness science. I think microbiome might be a spot to do that Nice you can just get in on poop on the ground floor Yes, right this thing to the top. Everyone's like... Poop samples from very happy people.

I'm in. I think that you literally can buy poop on the black market for your own at home fecal transplants. P.S. Of course I looked this up. And getting an enema with someone else's poop, it's called fecal microbiota transplantation and in the microbiology gut biome episode from November 2018 we go into detail about how our microbiomes are suffering from processed foods and artificial

ingredients and overuse of antibiotics for things like viral infections that don't need antibiotics. So given that up to 90% of our serotonin is synthesized in our simmering poo-filled guts, DIY FMTs, do-it-yourself fecal microbiota transplantations, as they're called, they're getting more and more common as doctors are still reluctant to shove poo up our butts, even when we ask nicely. So according to an American Journal of Gastroenterology article called,

understanding the scope of do-It-Yourself Fecal Microbiota Transplant. 82% of folks who tried it felt better afterwards and 92% of those knew their stool donor who, I don't know, I guess you find by asking your friends who seems chill and has good poops. So you can ask a doctor to screen a donor sample and see if they'll do it. Otherwise, there's plenty of instructions on the internet. Apparently, you buy a blender at Goodwill or something and then you maybe burn it later. None of this is my beeswax.

Ask your doctors. Don't sue me or make me a smoothie later. I'm good. Rahala wants to know, first time question asker, is there any truth to the notion that people who are generally happy tend to live longer? And I want to say my dad has cancer and his oncologists were saying just positivity is really helpful for patients in general. Okay 2024 Ali here. And my dad did pass away in the summer of 2022. And I talk about hospice

tips and getting through grief in an episode from July 2022. We'll link that in the show notes for anyone who's going through something similar. But I will say that my dad outlived his prognosis by eight years, and he stayed absolutely boldly optimistic throughout all of his treatment. And we all tried to buoy his spirits in that direction. Do we find that statistically sound? Yeah, I mean, there are actually some strong evidence that happiness seems to affect our longevity in super interesting ways. One of the most famous studies on this looked at a group of individuals that had really similar lifestyles.

Because if you think about it, this is a hard study to do, right? We want to ask, are happier people living longer? But of course, there's lots of things that affect whether you live longer. And so the researchers tried to find a population that had like reasonably low risk factors and a really similar lifestyle. And they hit upon studying nuns. The way they did this was that they went back to nuns journals that they had in their 20s. I guess nuns, at least in one of these convents, kind of did some journaling when they first joined the nunnery. So you go back when the nuns are in their 20s and you look at their journals and you do like a text analysis. Like, run the text of their journals through something that pulls out all the happy words

and pulls out all the kind of negative words or just like any emotion words whatsoever. And then you use those textual analyses to predict how many of the nuns live into their 80s and 90s. And what you find is that the happier nuns are just living surprisingly longer, you know, in some cases like decades longer than the nuns on average who are just living surprisingly longer, you know, in some cases like decades longer than the nuns on average who are just sadder, which is really quite striking. It suggests that happiness might really be affecting like how long we live. So yeah, important to focus on, not just because happiness feels good, but it might make you live longer too.

Patron Annika Callan asked, why are feelings of happiness stronger when you're younger? And RL, Shaul Peleg, Paige, and RJ Deuge wanted to know if happier people tend to be of a certain gender or age. RJ wants to make sure they don't become a grumpy crank who hates everyone. Yeah, I wonder do we find that people get happier as they age or crankier as they age? Yeah. On average, the data really suggests happier. There's some interesting lifespan work on happiness. You're kind of happy when you're young and then as you become an adult and middle-aged,

especially after you have children, in fact, happiness tends to dip. But then as soon as you kind of go back to empty nesting and the kids go off to college, then the slope of happiness kind of goes back up. And so it's something to look forward to as you age. On average, older people tend to be happier. How, you know, I wasn't sure about that and kids and I hadn't thought to ask that. But I have friends who have kids. I have friends who don't have kids.

I myself have a daughter. She's a dog. And that's what she's probably the only kid I'm going to have and she's an animal. But I don't know. Like in general, is that the case is just the stress of having kids, but then the satisfaction that you did it later. So it's kind of like, like it balances. Yeah, I think this is one of the spots where those two constructs of happiness can be so powerful, the sort of happiness in your life and happiness with your life. Lots of evidence that kids kind of boost the happiness with your life. You know, you get the sense of meaning and so

on. But if you look at people's time budgets in terms of what they spend their time on, the thing that often feels the most miserable is spending time with your kids. Like in your life, you know, when you're picking up, you know, the toys and dealing with the dirty diapers and things, that is the thing that people seem to on average enjoy kind of the least. No offense. It ranks up there with like commuting and like shopping for groceries, you know, not like a heavy endorsement. But that's kind of complicated.

I think that's one of these reasons that, you know, these constructs are kind of helpful. There are certain things that you do for meaning that in the moment don't feel great, but they wind up giving you meaning. And I think the tips are powerful too, because they're hacks you can do to enjoy your time more with your kids, right? If you have strategies for managing stress and negative emotions,

that can probably make your time with your kids even happier. Yeah, I'm so in awe of people who do have kids just because it seems so challenging. And I know myself, I'm like so scatterbrained that I feel like I just don't necessarily feel like that would be my strong suit. But there are some people who love kiteboarding and others who are like, no, thank you. Like I would rather be on the beach reading a book.

So it really depends on what you like, you know. And I think you're doing it right because there's a lot of evidence that the furry babies, especially dogs, there's more research on dogs, really do have a significant effect on happiness. But again, that research is interesting because it's not the dogs per se, it's kind of the benefits that we get from dogs. So dogs get us out exercising. Dogs allow us to make more social connections. They are a social connection, but then they also let us socially connect with people. They make us more present. You know, when you're with your dog and you're playing fetch with your dog, it's hard to like be distracted or checking your email, right? And so it seems like dogs don't necessarily inherently make us happier,

but they make us do a lot of the practices I've mentioned that lead to higher happiness. First time question asker Alana Rickman asks, has the rapid development in technology in the last few years had an overall increase or decrease in people's happiness? And patrons Diana, Ash Gelhouse, Jenna Mandola, Lucas O'Neill, Nicole Kleinman all echoed that. And yeah, I wonder too, in terms of being in the moment, being on our phone, does that take us out of the moment?

Is that take us into a kind of another like universe or galaxy of what's happening in this digital realm versus what's happening around us? Yeah, I mean, when you think about technology, it's worth remembering we can do technology for we can use technology for all kinds of things, right? You know, we could use technology to scribble in a gratitude journal, or I could pick up a phone and call my mom, right, and have a social connection. Often we're not using our technology in ways that boost happiness. We could, but often we're checking social media, you know, getting this sort of NutraSuite social connection, but not real stuff. I'm distracted and not paying attention to the real things in life. I could be present looking

at the trees or talking to the people around me, but I'm scrolling through some dumb thing on the internet. It's not that technology in and of itself is bad. It's just that the way we use it often is bad. And it's kind of built to make it harder for us to use it well. Every app is in some ways competing for your attention. They want to notify you of stuff and have the dings that sort of give you a little burst of reward every time you get some new piece of information. And that means that our apps and our technology is kind of constantly competing with real

life, you know, for our attention. Sadly, I think there's domains in which the technology is sort of winning, you know, which makes sense. You know, at my podcast, I talked to the University of British Columbia researcher, Liz Dunn, and she had this lovely quote where she's like, you know, imagine if to your next, you know, like dinner date with your husband, like you took a big wheelbarrow and in the wheelbarrow, it was, you know, DVDs of every movie you've ever seen, you know, a big pile of CDs of every song in the universe, like printouts of every family reunion ever, like, you know, printouts of all your emails, like, you know, big piles of porn, right? Like, you know, if there was

a wheelbarrow with all that stuff next to you, you'd be distracted. You'd want to be going through it the whole dinner. I'd be like, Oh, let me go back to my family reunion to that. But like what she says is like your brain isn't stupid. Like your brain knows that on the other side of your iPhone is all that stuff. So there's something constantly in your brain that has to be like, no, no, no, no, no, pay attention to this conversation because, you know, don't check your email, don't check your email. And that kind of is constantly a little bit depleting. It's definitely distracting, but it's a little bit depleting. It's definitely distracting, but it's a little bit depleting as well.

I mean, when you think about what's on the other, you know, like weather, you know, like printouts of weather predictions, every, every TikTok video and the history of the internet, right? I mean, it's a huge, huge slot machine. And sadly, you know, I mean, I love my husband, we have some great conversations, but is every conversation with my husband more interesting than literally everything on the internet? Like, you know, not necessarily. And what that means is we're so tempted by that stuff over in real life social connection, even though we know that the in real life stuff is going to make us so much happier. Yeah, that's such a good way to look at it is to understand

just what our brain is sort of grappling with there, why it's difficult. It's not like a personal failing that we sometimes look to that. But yeah, I definitely find that when I'm looking for something to sort of boost my dopamine or happiness, I'll go to my phone and then after an hour I'll go, I don't think that really did the trick. If I had practiced some things I knew might be longer lasting, but at least I can't blame myself for why I was looking. Anthony had a great question asked, what if certain aspects of your happiness

or the pursuit of your happiness cause others you care about to be unhappy, thereby making you unhappy? What about those circumstances where you're worried that your happiness might make other people dislike you? Yeah, well, I think, again, if we're really going for true happiness, my guess is that those cases are occurring probably less often than you think. And by that, I mean the real happiness seems to come from doing acts of kindness for other people. Real happiness seems to come from focusing on the happiness of others, right? So already, we're kind of in a bind

of like, well, if other people aren't happy, then that's probably going to mean we're not happy, right? As we've talked about, happiness doesn't seem to come from our circumstances. So it's not like we're trying to beat other people or go after these accolades, right? Happiness comes from being grateful and present from what you have. And so my guess is that more often than not, if you're pursuing happiness correctly, right? You know, based on what the science suggests, you're just not going to run into situations where you're sort of competing or hurting other people's happiness because other people's happiness is part and

parcel of getting true happiness. And if you're worried someone in your life will be upset at your happiness, just know it's your life and it's okay to feel good. If anyone has a problem with it, that is their own baggage to address. I highly suggest some of Melanie Beatty's writings about codependency. I'm just going to leave that suggestion right there for you. Ben Dewhurst says, I'm just finishing up my MBA and in one of my classes they talked about how optimism is actually an attribute of emotional intelligence and can be

learned. As an optimist myself, I'd always considered it more of a part of my personality like extrovert or introverted and unteachable. So how would someone go about learning and training to be an optimist and what's the relationship there? Also, is there a relationship between happiness and emotional or just like IQ intelligence? I feel like there's some badge of like, if you're unhappy, it must mean that you know more and therefore you're smarter. That's interesting. I don't know of any data that have looked specifically at IQ and happiness.

My guess is there's probably not the relationship that you're looking at. But there is definitely a relationship between happiness and optimism, obviously. I think optimism is sort of part of our general happy life. And the good news, according to, based on this question, is like you can in fact learn these kinds of things. You know, the fastest thing to do is really try to just train your brain to pay attention to good things out there. Our minds are naturally tuned to negative things, you know, the yucky stuff out there, the griping. But we can tune our minds towards positive things. You can focus on what you're grateful for. Another practice that I've been into lately, which I talk about on the podcast is focusing on delights. Sometimes gratitude can feel sort

of cheesy, but you can just focus on like things that are delightful out there, you know, like, you know, the sunshine, like that's delightful. The fact that coffee exists, that's delightful. You know, I don't know some funny video on the internet, that's delightful. Right? Like training your brain towards things that you really enjoy that kind of cause delight. Okay, so if the term gratitude journaling conjures up visions of sickly sweetened chamomile tea, I just opt for the term delights, which is just like a straightforward good cup of coffee. Actually for years my husband Jarrett has cited a short tally of favorite things. His are lavender soap, coffee, and sandwiches.

And he says just thinking of those three things and letting his mind wander to more helped him during a really deep depression. So gratitude journaling, delights, whatever you want to call it. Jarrett calls his his do not kill yourself list which is kind of like the Miami Cola bang energy drink of a gratitude practice branding. Would you agree? That's my favorite bang flavor. Is it really? Miami Cola? That's on the list. Again, your brain is going to focus on whatever you give it data for.

So if you give it data about things that you're feeling really grateful about or that are really delightful, that's what your brain is going to start noticing. I love that you're constantly filling evidence folders for like, things are shitty and things are good. It's like, what are you putting in your evidence folder pretty much? And it's not just like, you know, what you're picking. It's like you're training your brain to look for that stuff. In my podcast, I interviewed this fantastic guest, Ross Gay, who's a poet and an essayist who has this book called The Book of Delights. And he decided that for

every day for a year after his birthday, he would write an essay about something that delighted him. And he talks about how at first he was like really worried, like am I really going to find things that really delight me? And he said that, you know, even just a week in, like he'd kind of tuned his mind to find these things. You know, as a walking down the street, he'd be like, oh, that dude's t-shirt is delightful. I was like, oh, that like cat on the street is delightful. Like he just, he just kind of shifted his perception and tuned his mind more towards the good things than the bad things. Our brains evolutionarily are naturally tuned towards the bad things. Makes sense. You want to see the tiger that's going to jump out at you.

But we can control that tuning. And just by, you know, like taking some explicit work to pay attention to the things we're grateful for, to the things that delight us to the good stuff out there. So yes, Ross Gay, the book of delights, and again check out Neil Pezzarita's work and his osmology episode. Another fun project? Start a private Twitter just for yourself and chronicle delights of your own or a private Instagram account or something. Also I should note that in recording this episode the internet dropped out a few times,

so I had to email Dr. Santos a new link during it. And she has an auto-reply message explaining that she may not write back. And it explains that she gets more than 100 emails a day, and it reads in part, quote, keeping up with that many questions slash requests meant that I was hurting my own time affluence and having less time for the important projects

I really should be prioritizing. And so I am was hurting my own time affluence and having less time for the important projects I really should be prioritizing and so I am currently trying my own personal well-being experiment. I'm gonna try to practice what I preach and reduce the amount of time I usually spend on email. Thanks for your understanding as I try not to overcommit and protect myself from burning out. Ugh! I love her. Totally solid. Major props for walking her talk. She is the best. And in respecting her time, we wrapped it up. Last listener question, I saved it because it was juicy. Oh, it's so juicy. Bailey Ricketts wants to know, how do we find a balance between being

happy and living in the moment while acknowledging all the hurt and suffering going on in the world? Essentially guilt over being happy when you know that there's a lot of bad shit out there. How do we do it? Yeah. Yeah, tough. I mean, this is like a really real one when you know that there's a lot of bad shit out there. How do we do it? Yeah. Yeah, tough. I mean, this is like a really real one, right? Because there's a lot of bad stuff out there right now, you know, structural racism, horrible global pandemic, you know, like the list goes on. So I mean, I think one thing that helps me is recognizing that if I want to be the kind of person who's an ally for all that stuff, all the yucky stuff in the world, who wants to have the resilience to fix it, I'm not want to be the kind of person who's an ally for all that stuff, all the yucky stuff in the world,

who wants to have the resilience to fix it, I'm not gonna be able to do that if I'm incredibly anxious and overwhelmed and burnt out. I'm gonna be able to do that best if I'm really in a happy state, if I'm really kind of feeling good, like if I kind of have put my own oxygen mask on first, right? And in fact, there's evidence that so many of the things we were talking about that are parts of a happy life help for doing hard things. My favorite one is that people who are grateful are better at what's called self-regulation. They're better at doing the hard thing today to help their future self, whether that's saving for retirement or eating healthier or putting work into hard, scary problems that just require a lot of hard, scary work.

And so for me, it's made me feel like if I want the world to be a better place, I can't afford to be down in the dumps, you know, freaking out about it. I really need to put energy into doing these practices for myself so that I'll be, you know, hopefully one of the people that has the bandwidth to help with some of this stuff. So far from feeling guilty, I feel like we might want to feel guilty for the opposite thing, right? You know, do what we can to kind of fix things. It really does require not just working on these structures, but working on our emotions so that we have the bandwidth to fix those structures that might be messed up.

That just, I'm sure gave so many people permission to pursue happiness, who feel maybe guilty about it. And by so many people, I mean me specifically, but no, that's really helpful. Last two questions I asked before we go, worst thing about your job, worst thing about being a uterine-lipidologist, and the best thing. There's lots and lots of good things,

but if I have to shift towards negativity, I would say the hardest thing is that one of the things I really try to pay attention to is this phenomenon of time affluence, this subjective sense that I have a lot of free time. And being a happiness guru, especially in an age where there's a lot of bad stuff going on in a global pandemic, it keeps me pretty busy because a lot of people want advice, a lot of people want help,

and that means I have to put a lot of work in to protect my time. So the hardest thing is protecting my time in the midst of everything else going on. I can totally understand that. I just got your auto-apply that was like, yo, I get like a hundred emails a day. Thank you so much, but I gotta stick to my principles. Probably. And that's hard, right? Because I get into my inbox, I'm like, yo, I get like 100 emails a day. Thank you so much, but I gotta stick to my principles.

And that's hard, right? Because, you know, I get into my inbox, I'm like, oh, that listener has this really cool thing to say, or that student has this really cool question. But I also know that if I answer all those, that means I'm not spending time with the people I care about, and I'm not just having time to meditate and exercise. So it's hard prioritizing the right stuff. But time affluence is definitely something I need to work on prioritizing. I've never heard those words before, but I love them. Best thing about your job, best thing about your career. Oh man, there's so many best things. I mean I honestly think the best things are my students. I love them so much. I love interacting with them. They

teach me so much and I'm so privileged to get to work with them. That's great. I'm I am so happy to talk to you. I have been a fan girl for years. Ask smart people happy questions or bummer questions. They are wonderful and they're great at sharing their knowledge. Obviously get more of Dr. Laurie Santos with her podcast The Happiness Lab. Her socials are linked in the show notes. She is great. If you can take her course, take it. It's also available on Coursera for free. So look for that.

I will link all of those on my website too, which is at allyword.com slash ologies. We are at Allie Ward with 1L on Twitter and Instagram. We're also at Ologies on Instagram and Twitter. Find us there, be our friends. Thank you to Erin Talbert, who moderates and admins the Ologies podcast Facebook group and is excellent at that. Also, now we have Smology's episodes up in their own feed. Just look for Smology's wherever you get

podcasts and subscribe and spread the word. You'll find this new green logo and Smology's are all swear free. They're safe for all ages. It's S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S for your small ones. Thank you, Emily White of The Wardery. She is a professional transcriptionist who makes transcriptions available. She's great. Hire her. She's wonderful. Caleb Patton bleeps our episodes. Those are available on our website for free. The link is in the show note.

We also have Smologyologies, which are episodes we put out once every two weeks. They are cut down versions of classic ones that have already ran. They are cleaned up and kid friendly. They're ready for the classroom. So look for Smologies too if you have Smologites. Thank you to Noelle Dilworth and Susan Hale for helping me

take care of all the ologies business behind the scenes. Thank you to Stephen Ray Morris and Zeke Rodriguez Thomas who are also working on Smology's and wonderful thank you to editor Jared Sleeper and also thank you to Grimmie. We are actually recording this in the car as I'm on my way up to see my pop for his birthday and I recorded this at five in the morning this morning before I hit the road and then I realized that my mic gain was all the way down so I had to re-record it on the side of the road which is what we're doing. That's one secret of the episode. The other secret is you know how sometimes it'll be like if you need to clean a screen just use a microfiber cloth and you're like yeah well what do I use to clean

it with though? Like Windex? What are we talking here? Water? What do I use with the microfiber cloth? So I just tried just the microfiber cloth, like you're supposed to use, and it cleaned the shit out of my laptop. Like my monitor's never been so clean. All he did was use one of those microfiber, too soft on your hands cloths, and apparently they're good at

what they're supposed to be used for. So, go figure. Okay, Bye bye This is a sign of my dog drinking water in the car. Okay, 2024 me. Thank you for listening. Back next week with a very fresh new episode about something in your bed. Trust me, it's good. Okay, bye bye for real.