Something You Should Know - How to Think Outside Your Brain & Proven Secrets to A Long and Fulfilling Life

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

Human beings seek out novelty. That’s a good thing in many ways – but it is also troublesome. This episode begins with a look at why we seek out new things, places and experiences and how we quickly adapt to them so that we then need to seek out more new novelty. Source: Winifred Gallagher author of the book New (https://amzn.to/3XsAxRb) When you have a problem, you are often told to, “Use your head!” While that may be good advice, you can actually use things outside your head to help you think. Gestures are a good example. We often use gestures to help us figure out what we are trying to say. Computers help us think and so do pictures. But there is a lot more to this idea of thinking outside the brain which you will hear when you listen to my guest Annie Murphy Paul. Annie is science writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Scientific American, Slate, Time magazine and she is author of the bestselling book The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain (https://amzn.to/3Hp3k3R) What if you followed a group of people for decades and watched how they lived? Think of it - you could discover a lot about what makes people happy and healthy over a long period of time. Well, that’s exactly what happened. The Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed the lives of two generations of individuals from the same families for more than 80 years. And you will be fascinated by what they have found. Listen as I speak with Dr. Robert J. Waldinger, who directs the study and is author of the book, The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness (https://amzn.to/3HpbFVc) Ever wonder where you fall on the introvert/extrovert scale? Listen as I explain the difference between extroversion and introversion and how to tell which one you are. I also discuss why being shy is not the same as being introverted. Source: Susan Cain author Quiet (https://amzn.to/3XQUH7d) PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Packed with industry-leading tools ready to ignite your growth, Shopify gives you complete control over your business and your brand without having to learn any new skills in design or code. Sign up for a $1/month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk to take your business to the next level today! Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions and manage your expenses the easy way by going to https://RocketMoney.com/something ! With With TurboTax, an expert will do your taxes from start to finish, ensuring your taxes are done right (guaranteed), so you can relax! Feels good to be done with your taxes, doesn’t it? Come to TurboTax and don’t do your taxes. Visit https://TurboTax.com to learn more. Intuit TurboTax.  Did you know you could reduce the number of unwanted calls & emails with Online Privacy Protection from Discover? - And it's FREE! Just activate it in the Discover App. See terms & learn more at https://Discover.com/Online Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, why human beings have an insatiable desire for novelty and the consequences that result. Then, thinking outside the brain. There are interesting ways you think you may not have noticed. For instance... If you've ever had the experience of not quite knowing the right word,

it's on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't seem to remember exactly what that word is, your hands will often be giving you hints, and that can help you locate that word. Also, are you an introvert or an extrovert? I'll tell you how that word. Also, are you an introvert or an extrovert? I'll tell you how to tell. And the best advice to create a fulfilling life and great friendships from an 80-year study. If you see the same people casually over and over again, you're more likely to start to have conversations with them and then deeper conversations and then develop friendships that

last. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick that's why bumble is changing how you start conversations you can now make the first move or not with opening moves you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches then sit back and let your matches start the chat download bumble and try it for yourself Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Hi. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Have you ever noticed how human beings have this tendency to seek out novelty and then relatively quickly become bored with it. And what I mean is, for example, if you've ever moved into a new home or an apartment, just a beautiful home that you've always wanted, and then before too long, it just becomes your home.

This human quest to seek out new things, novelty, and change, it dates back to early human history when we were forced to cope with huge upheavals in weather and environment. In order to survive, we had to adapt to those changes. Now we adapt to those changes and we become bored with it. Winifred Gallagher, author of a book called New, says if you show a newborn baby a picture, the child will stare at it for about 40 seconds and then become bored and will seek something else to look at. Our level of desire for change is really, it's programmed into us. We know instinctively that reward comes from trying new experiences. Rewards seldom come from the same old thing. Research has found that about 15% of us like a lot of change.

These are the real thrill-seekers with a huge appetite for new experiences. 15% of us are cautious and tend to like just a little bit of change. And 70% of us are somewhere in the middle. It's good to know where you are on the scale and realize it's neither good or bad, it's just who you are. And that is something you should know. When you think, you think with your brain. Thinking is all in your head, right?

Well, maybe not. You can think in other head, right? Well, maybe not. You can think in other ways. And in fact, those other ways can improve your overall thinking. This is according to Annie Murphy Paul. She's a science writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times,

the Boston Globe, Scientific American, Slate, and Time Magazine. She's author of a book called The Extended Mind, The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. And she's here to explain how outside the brain thinking works and why it's so powerful. Hi Annie, thanks for coming on. Hey Mike, it's great to be here. So first of all, explain what you mean by thinking outside the brain. Sure, well what I mean by thinking outside the brain? Sure. Well, what I mean by thinking outside the brain is that we usually imagine that thinking

does go on inside the brain. That's kind of our assumption as a society, as a culture. But an idea borrowed from philosophy says that actually, no, we think with all these resources that are available to us outside the brain. And by that, I mean things like the movements and sensations of your body or the physical surroundings in which you're doing your thinking or your relationships with other people or even your tools like your devices or a pencil or a piece of paper. All those things can be considered part of the thinking process. And that gives us a lot of additional ways to improve how well we think. So give me like a practical example of instead of doing all my thinking inside my head, when I'm laying

out a chapter or an article, for example, I try as much as possible to get those ideas and that information out of my head and spread it out onto physical space. So for me, that's a big bulletin board that I cover with Post-it notes that I can then move around and rearrange. And I find that getting information and ideas out of my head and seeing it spread out that way and being able to manipulate it allows me to think differently and better than if I were trying to do all of that inside my head. Well, there has been, you know, a lot of talk about the brain is not a good place to store stuff. It's not a good place to do a lot of things about the brain is not a good place to store stuff. It's not a good place to do a lot of things.

And that even getting your problems out on paper, out of your head and onto a piece of paper, is a better way to go than to try to keep it all floating around in your brain. That's right. And what you're saying there, Mike, brings out the point that we're already extending our minds. This isn't something that we need to start doing so much as something that we need to be more thoughtful and intentional about what we're doing already. So we want to think, for example, about the point that you just made that the brain is not a great place to store information.

It is a great place to do higher level cognitive activities like planning and creating and imagining. So the more we can intentionally use our devices and other tools and outside the brain resources to take care of the more mundane and routine tasks that we might usually lean on our brain for, like remembering things and keeping things in order. If we can bring in outside the brain resources to do that for us, then we free up mental bandwidth to do the things that only human brains can do. So you said, and you write about thinking with your body. So explain what that means. Yeah. so one of my favorite lines of research about how we think with our bodies concerns how we think with gestures. And a lot of us, if we think about

gestures at all, which mostly we don't, but if we think about gestures at all, we think about them as communicative devices, you know, like they're a way to communicate what we're trying to say to another person. And they do play that function, but they are also a part of our own thinking. And what research shows is that our hand gestures are actually a few milliseconds ahead of our verbal expression and even of our conscious thought. So before we even are saying something in particular, and before we even know that we're going to say something in particular, our hands are actually beginning to express that for us. And if we pay more attention to our own gestures, and if we allow ourselves to gesture freely instead of, you know, inhibiting our gestures, as many of us do, then that can feed into our thinking process such that our

gestures are actually helping us to think more fluently and more coherently. But wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How can my hands know what I'm going to do before I know what I'm going to do? Yeah, well, the funny thing is that we associate mental activity with our conscious minds. But in fact, there's a huge amount of activity that's going on non-consciously, and a lot of that gets expressed through our bodies. So if you've ever had the experience of not quite knowing the right word, it's on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't seem to remember exactly what that word is. Your hands will often be giving you hints and trying to sort of, in their own way, express and capture what that word is. And that can help you locate that word that is just outside of your conscious

awareness. And so what would be a hand hint? What would be a hint that my hand would give me, for example, to remember a word, to pull a word up? Well, let me tell you about a line of research that gave rise to this understanding of the function of gestures. So children, when they are trying to understand how the material world works, their psychologists give them a set of challenges that involve, say, for example, pouring some water from a tall skinny glass into a wide shallow glass. And then the researcher asked the child, is the amount of water still the same? And of course, older children will say, yes, that's still the same amount of water. It's just sort of changed its form. But younger children are still grasping that concept. And a lot of them will say, no, there's less water now in the wide glass because the level of the water is lower.

But in children who are just about to grasp that very important conservation principle, their hands will be forming the, you'll watch the videos of these children explaining their reasoning, and you'll see that they're starting to form with their hands, the shape of the glass and sort of working out with their hands what their minds are just beginning to grasp. And scientists have figured out that children and adults also who are in that kind of transitional period where their hands are expressing something different from what they're saying verbally, that they're just about to get a big insight. And that's a moment when they're particularly receptive to instruction and a teacher or a parent can step in and say, oh, I think what you might mean is this. And they're ready for that insight, ready to take that on.

Yeah. Well, you know, it seems right. It sounds right. Because when you're trying to explain something and you're having trouble explaining, doesn't it seem like you gesture more, that you're using that as almost like a second language to try to explain yourself when you're having trouble? Like there is something there. That is absolutely true, Mike. Actually, research shows that we gesture more when we're trying to figure something out, when we're trying to explain something that we don't quite understand yet. And that's because that activity we're engaging in is so mentally burdensome and taxing that

we offload some of that labor onto our hands. And that gives us more bandwidth to think about and solve the problem. So when you talk about thinking with movement, do you mean like sometimes you think better when you go for a walk kind of movement? Yeah. And one of the best ways to get our thinking moving is by going outside. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that we get our blood pumping, more blood flows to the brain. But also there's the fact that our brain tends to think in metaphors, you know, and if you think about, if you're not, if your work isn't going so well, you might say something like, well, I'm really stuck in a rut, you know, or things are really

stalled for me here. And if things are going well, you might say, wow, this is, I'm really on a roll here, you know, or things that my ideas are really flowing. So we really understand things in terms of metaphors that tie back to our bodies. So when we move our bodies in ways that sort of prime those metaphors for us, when we're actually moving through space and seeing, you know, things flow past our eyes and feeling that dynamic sense of new vistas coming into view, that really primes us to think in that same way. And if you think about how most of us try to do our thinking, sitting still, you know, seeing the same stuff around us all the time, that's not going to be an ideal setting for us

to have the best kinds of thoughts that we could be having. Well, I have that experience often when I like when I do interviews, and I'm sitting, I'm sitting in a room, and I'm surrounded by equipment and monitors and stuff. And later, I'll be like out in nature. And, and I'll, I'll think much of I'll think of much better questions I could have asked or taken the conversation in a different direction. But I didn't think of it at the time. In fact, I often will just, when I'm trying to come up with ideas or whatever,

sitting here is like the worst place, going outside or sitting on the couch or laying down, doing something other, sitting here is like the worst place. Going outside or sitting on the couch or laying down, doing something other than sitting here trying seems to yield better results. Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's why I think the kind of cultural assumption that if you want to get work done, you really have to just bear down and kind of power through and keep yourself in your seat until it's done is really counterproductive. And I'm glad that you mentioned getting out into nature, Mike, because that is another way of thinking outside the brain, thinking with our surroundings. And

in fact, nature is one of the most generative and fertile kind of places, no pun intended, for us to think, to do our thinking, because the kind of stimuli that we encounter when we're outside tends to naturally kind of relax the brain and put it in a very sort of easeful state where new ideas can occur to us, new sort of combinations of ideas can occur in a way that won't happen when we're engaged in very sharp-edged focus inside or looking at our computers. We are discussing thinking outside the brain, which sounds weird, but the more we talk, the less weird it sounds. My guest is science writer Annie Murphy-Paul, and she has a book out called The Extended Mind, The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. This is an ad for BetterHelp.

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Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Annie, we discussed how being out in nature can help you think, but I also find that different rooms in the house or different rooms in other built, the inside surroundings can also make you think differently. Like, I think better in a less cluttered environment than in a cluttered environment. And did you look at that? Yes. And, you know, that's another way in which that sort of brain is computer metaphor falls down because a computer does its job just the same way, whether it's next to a window or in a dark basement or whether it's, you know, outside on a park bench or inside on your kitchen

table, but the human brain isn't like that. You know, we are exquisitely context sensitive, we really are affected by where we are at a given moment. And so that really tells us that we need to pay very close attention to the place where we're doing our thinking, you know, one of my favorite ways to improve the place where we do our thinking involves what researchers call evocative objects. And that just means filling your space, the space where you work or think or create with objects that are inspiring to you, you know, that remind you of your aspirations, that remind you of the groups that you belong to, that you feel a kinship with,

and having those objects, those material things around you can really shape and prime your thinking. I've always noticed how there are certain people in my life that when I speak with them, I feel smarter. And there are other people that I know that make me feel really stupid. And so I imagine that has something to do with what you're talking about, that the people that we talk to, that we relate to, affect how we think. Absolutely, Mike. And this is a really common phenomenon that you're mentioning. I tell a story in the book about a researcher who said that when he met with his graduate advisor in psychology, you know, his psychology PhD program, this advisor was a very intimidating, very kind of scary figure. And he felt that this researcher

felt that his IQ dropped by 20 points whenever this guy entered the room. And he started calling it conditional stupidity, you know, because he wasn't stupid. He was a very bright guy. But he under certain conditions, as you say, he felt really stupid. I think that has a lot to do with the sense of psychological safety that we feel with certain people, but also their openness, their curiosity, their ability to ask good questions. Some people are just going to bring out the best in your own thinking and other people are going to shut it down. Yeah. And I think that's exactly right. When you're with somebody who thinks they know

everything and won't shut up, it doesn't inspire you to think. You're just listening to somebody drone on versus somebody who is inquiring about what you think. It goes, hmm, well, yeah, let me think about that. And it seems to inspire a better conversation. Sure. And it's nice to think, too, about whether we can be that kind of resource for other people as well, you know, whether we are a good conversational partner and are asking them questions or being open or being curious about what they have to say, because that's sort of the essence of being a good colleague or even a good friend or a good parent. And is this research ongoing? Is there more to come? Are we learning more? Is it pretty much nailed? No, this is a really dynamic area of research. And one of the sort of most exciting areas of research is pinning down exactly how we use our technological devices to extend our minds. And

as we all know, you know, our devices don't always make our thinking better. There's lots of opportunities to make our thinking worse when we're engaging with our devices. But again, if we're intentional and thoughtful about how we use our technological devices, they really can expand and extend our thinking. And so that's sort of the latest frontier of extended mind research is how our devices either extend or contract our thinking and how we can make sure they do the former and not the latter. But they do ruin our thinking. I mean, when you think about just the idea of a calculator, I mean, so you don't have to know how to add or subtract anymore. I used to remember people's phone numbers.

I don't remember anybody's phone number because you don't have to anymore. There's so much you don't have to remember and so much you don't have to think about all because of those devices. And I'm not sure that's a good thing. Yeah, well, it's somewhat inevitable at this point. So again, the key is to be intentional about it. I mean, there is the danger that some of our native abilities will atrophy if we become too dependent on our devices. For example, there's research showing that people's ability to navigate through space really does decline if they become too dependent on GPS and those kinds of technological solutions. On the other hand, there's so much that we're able to do

because we delegate, you know, routine mental tasks to our devices. Like, you don't have to remember phone numbers anymore. And so you have more space in your mind to do, you know, the higher level things that only Mike's brain can do, you know, so we need to think of our devices as, as helpers, but not as not as replacing the mental activity that, that that is really best suited to human intelligence. Yeah, but see, I sometimes think that, you know, doing things like remembering phone numbers and knowing how to add and subtract is foundational to other things. And if you don't know how to do basic memory of numbers, that you may not be able to do other things very well.

Well, it definitely is the case. You know, sometimes you'll hear in education, people saying, well, kids don't need to learn facts anymore, because they can just Google that. But that is absolutely wrong. As you're saying, we, we, we need a foundation of knowledge and skill that is stored in our minds to become, you know, masters of any kinds kind of domains. But the fact is that the human brain isn't really that good at remembering basic information like phone numbers. We forget things, you know, or we mess them up. And computers are better at that. They don't, once we enter something into a computer, it usually doesn't change the way our minds can sort of betray us. of learning to think with machines, you to think about how you think,

which I think is pretty useful. I've been speaking with science writer Annie Murphy-Paul, and she has got a book out called The Extended Mind, The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Annie. Well, thank you, Mike. It's been a real pleasure talking to you today.

I really enjoyed it. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation.

And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm

Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Happiness is a big topic. As you know, we've discussed happiness here several times from different angles and with different guests. And a lot of those discussions are about some interesting, often helpful and unique ways to find happiness. Of course, a lot of those discussions are about some interesting, often helpful and unique ways to find happiness.

Of course, a lot of it is subjective. What makes one person happy may not make another person happy. So what I like about my next guest is rather than talk about ways and ideas that might make you happier, this discussion is about a happiness study of the same people over a long period of time and the results of that study and how we can use those results in our own lives. Joining me is Dr. Robert Waldinger. He is a psychiatrist, part-time professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and he directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies of adult life ever conducted. The name of his book is The Good Life,

Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. Hi, Robert. Thanks for being here. I'm really glad to be here. So explain a little bit about this study and how it came to be. So this study is the longest study of the same people that's ever been done. It's an 85-year-long study of over 2,000 people from 724 families. It was started in 1938. Almost certainly could never be repeated again, the longest study of adult life that anybody has done. And in a very sweeping, big picture way, what's the secret of happiness?

So the big takeaway is about relationships. We found that the people who were happiest and also who stayed the healthiest as they went through their lives were the people who were happiest and also who stayed the healthiest as they went through their lives were the people who had good, warm connections with other people. And the surprise was not that it made us happier to have better relationships. The surprise was that relationships could make it less likely that we would get coronary artery disease or type 2 diabetes or dementia. I mean, this was the thing that at first we didn't believe until other researchers began to find the same thing. So define some things here for me. So when we talk about warm relationships, what does that mean?

Does that mean love relationships? Does that mean friendships? Does that mean, and how warm and how close and how much and all that? get these benefits. What we're talking about are relationships that could be anybody, family, friends, work relationships, and even casual relationships. Even the little hit of well-being you get from the barista who makes your coffee for you in the morning, or the mail carrier, or the person who checks you out at the grocery store, that all of these give us a sense of connectedness. And then, you know, to your question, we feel that everybody needs one secure relationship, at least in their life. And what we mean by that is something we studied. We asked our original participants to tell us, who could you call

in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared? And most of our people could list a number of other people who they could call if they really needed help. Some of our folks couldn't list anyone. And a few of those folks were married and they didn't list anyone. So what we think we need is at least one person who we feel will have our back when we're in trouble. So, you know, I've heard this before that having good, strong relationships in your life is good for your health. But I don't really understand how. Like, what's the mechanism? How does having people in your life translate into good health? What's the magic? Yeah. So we've been spending the last 10 years of our research lives studying exactly

the question you just asked. The best hypothesis we have, and there's good data from other studies as well as ours, the best hypothesis is that relationships help us manage stress. So stress is a part of everyday life. It happens to all of us. And if something happens to me that's upsetting, I can feel my body rev up, my heart rate increases, all kinds of physical changes happen. And that's good. That's what we call the fight or flight response. That's normal. And then when the challenge is removed, our bodies are meant to go back to baseline equilibrium. And so what I find is that if something upsetting happens to me, at the end of the day, if there's someone I can call, or if I can talk to my wife and I can really vent, I can feel my body literally calm down,

go back to equilibrium. The best hypothesis is that the people who don't have good relationships don't have anyone they can do that with. And that therefore, their bodies stay in a kind of chronic fight or flight mode with higher levels of circulating stress hormones, with higher levels of inflammation. And we think that those are what break down different body systems. And so it's not magic at all. That's how chronic stress could break down your joints or your coronary arteries. I had someone on recently, and they said something about happiness that I really liked, and I'd like to get you to comment on it, that happiness isn't like a thing you do or a thing you try to get.

Happiness is a consequence of how you live your life. That you do other things and if they make you happy, then you feel happiness. But you don't go out and try to be happy. That doesn't work. Yes, I love that actually. One of the ways that I've thought about it is happiness is kind of an accident. It happens to us moment to moment or not, but we can build our lives to make ourselves more accident prone, to make moments of happiness more likely to happen.

And so what I would say is that we know now that there are certain conditions we can build into our lives that make it more likely that we will feel content or happy more of the time. And what are some of those things? Well, one thing will not surprise you. It's that if we take care of our health, it really makes a difference in our well-being. So literally eating right, not abusing drugs or alcohol, getting regular exercise, getting that preventive health care, that all of those things make a huge difference in how we feel and in how long we live. But then in addition to that, building this network of good relationships is a really good investment in making it more likely that you'll be happy more of the time.

And so what we would like people to do is see relationships as a kind of living, the pleasurable things you do, that brings happiness, not just the people are important, but it's also what you're doing. Yes, I agree. That's absolutely right. And so we want to try to build in things that we enjoy and also things that we find meaningful. So yes, fun is hugely important for all of us. But in addition to what's sometimes called hedonic well-being, hedonism, like am I having fun now? There's also what's called eudaimonic well-being. And that's that sense of meaning and purpose in my life. So the

other thing we want to build in besides fun is activities that make us feel that our lives matter and that they are worthwhile. It's both kinds of activities that we want. And that includes things like what? Like what do you mean make your life worthwhile? Well, it could be anything. It could be raising good children, healthy children. It could be working to prevent climate change. It could be joining a bowling league and being with people you love to hang out with, not just for the fun of it, but because you love those friends and you want to connect with them. It could be being

involved in a religious or spiritual practice. There's so many things that can make life feel worthwhile and it's highly individual. It does seem that there are people who this, all the things you're talking about, friendships and meaningful life, comes easy, comes natural, and other people struggle with it. And I wonder why the difference. That's a wonderful question. And I think the answer is have been raised not to listen to ourselves, not to listen to our guts when they tell us, oh, I care about this. And when they tell us, I don't really care about that. You know, we're given so many messages about what we ought to think is important and meaningful.

And sometimes it can be very hard, given all that messaging and all that training as kids, to pay attention to what's energizing for us, what lights us up, what makes us feel like we want to get up in the morning, and then also to pay attention to those things that just aren't like that for us. Even if other people care about something, we may not care about it. It's very important to listen to those messages that we can tune into if we just let ourselves. You know, there's this saying about, you know, when people are depressed, they want to do exactly the things that they shouldn't do. They want to stay at home. They don't want to... And people get stuck in their way.

So it's great to hear that you should have more relationships and have a more meaningful life. But I know people struggle with, so what do I do now? What do I do different? What does that mean to do what he's talking about? Well, you're exactly right. And one of the awful things about depression is it makes us hide. It makes us want to withdraw. It makes us believe that other people don't want

us around. And so how do we overcome that when we're depressed? It's very, very hard. And I think in some ways, the remedy can be for other people to pay attention. So if you notice that someone in your life seems depressed, it would be such a blessing if you could be the one to be active and say, hey, I want to connect with you. I want you around. I want to know how you are. I want to help, right? Because the depressed person is handicapped in a way. It's almost like if we've

broken a limb or we're in some other way disabled, depression is very disabling. And so I think what you're pointing to is one of the scarier things about depression. And it's one of the reasons why we need help. We need a village. We need other people to notice and then to lend their energy to us and help us, help draw us out. There are people who we would classify as introverts and who might say, you know, I don't need a lot of people. I don't need all this closeness. I'm fine by myself. Are they? Yes. Yes, absolutely. So what we know is that we're all on a spectrum from being introverted, shy, or being extroverted. We're all somewhere in between. And many of us have both qualities in us. We're kind of shy and we also like being out there with people.

There's no right way to do this life in that way. We all have different temperaments. What we find is that everybody, even the shyest people need somebody, maybe just one or two of those warm relationships, those middle of the night calling relationships, people who have our back. But that beyond that, it is just fine not to need a lot of people. One of the things we know about introverts is that they find having a lot of people around exhausting and depleting. They get re-energized by having alone time. And with extroverts, it's often the

opposite. Extroverts get energy from other people. And so when you study thousands of lives the way we have, the first thing you realize is that one size never fits all. There's no right way to have relationships. There's no correct number of relationships. It's a highly individual matter. For a lot of people, I think the how is difficult. And I'm wondering if, obviously, friends come in all different ways and sizes and happenstance and all, but when people decide, okay, well, it would be great to have more people, they don't know how to draw them in. So how did the people in this study, if you looked at this,

how did they, how, when they made friends and when they made connections, how did they do it? There are some fairly tried and true ways. So the first step might be to think about what you love to do and see if there's a way to do that alongside other people, to do that in a group. That could be anything. It could be a gardening club. It could be a bowling league. It could be a gardening club. It could be a bowling league. It could be a church group. It could be working for a political cause.

Because what happens is that if you're doing something you care about, first of all, it feels meaningful or fun. If you're doing it alongside other people, you instantly have one thing in common, which is you both like this thing you're doing or care about it. And that is a natural opener for beginning conversations. And one of the things that we know from research is that if you see the same people casually over and over again, you're more likely to start to have conversations with them and then deeper conversations and then develop friendships that last.

So the bottom, you know, the instruction is figure out what you care about, what you love, what you enjoy, and try to do that with others. I guess it's hard for a lot of people because we see other people where it just seems to happen. They have all these people in their lives and it looked pretty effortless. And so you think, well, that's how it should be. It should, people just come into your life and yet they don't. And then people think, well, see, I don't know how to do this. Yeah, yeah.

I'm so glad you raised that point because it does look effortless. It looks like other people have it figured out. I mean, think about how we curate our lives for each other. Look at social media. I mean, think about what we post for each other about our lives. I don't post the mornings when I wake up feeling awful, feeling like my life is a mess and I don't know what I'm doing. Nobody posts their hangover pictures, at least most people don't. So we curate our lives. And even though we know that, when we look at each other's Facebook posts or

Instagram feeds, you can imagine that everybody's having an easy life. Everybody's got it figured out. Everybody's got people in their life except me. And that, I can tell you, is not the truth of life. Having studied thousands of life stories, that's just not the truth. And so I think part of it is trying to remember that nobody has it all figured out ever, and that every life has difficulty and struggle. You know, I like what you said a moment ago that friends, friendships develop when you see the same people and then you have, you know, fairly surfacy conversations. And then they and the more you see them, the more the conversation deepens. And that's how it really is. And yet, I think when people decide, I want people in my life,

I want them now. I want to go make a, will you be my friend, kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. And that's probably not the best way to go and do it. It does take time. Well, that's important to point out. It takes time. Also, it's not going to work every time. So you may reach out to some people and they really don't reciprocate. I think of it more like, you know, a basketball game or baseball, you know, where you have certain tries at bat or you try to make a basket. It's not going to happen every time, but it doesn't happen for anybody every time. That's okay. Expect that there will be some people who just don't respond or don't respond very warmly and try again. Keep trying,

because if you keep trying, you will find there will be people who do respond. How much does family count in this? Do family members count as those kind of relationships that you need or not? Absolutely. Family members count hugely. Many of the people we're closest to can be family. So for example, I have two first cousins who are more like sisters to me. And I don't know why, it's just that we happen to have cultivated particularly strong relationships, more than I might have with other relatives, right? And so even within our families, we choose to be closer to some people than others. That's natural. But families can play a wonderful role in that network of good connections.

Well, and I imagine, too, that it ebbs and flows. I mean, who hasn't had a friend, a good friend, disappoint and not be your friend anymore, or, you know, that there's satisfaction and dissatisfaction because people are flawed and relationships come and go. And so it isn't always rosy, even the people that do it well. That's right. That's right. And in fact, one of the dangers of presenting these ideas in the way that I am is that I could give the impression that it's all got to be rosy all the time, that relationships have to be smooth. They're not. Relationships of any significance have difficulties, have differences. We disagree with each other. We disappoint each other.

And I think what we find is that the people who worked at resolving differences, at mending fences, were the people who were the happiest and most secure in their relationships. It turns out that if we can work out our differences, that the relationships get stronger and more stable. Well, it's amazing what a few friends can do. I appreciate you sharing the information about your study. I've been speaking with Dr. Robert Waldinger. He's a psychiatrist and part-time professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. And the name of his book is The Good Life, Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.

And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Robert. Good conversation. Well, you're a really good interviewer, and I love the questions you took me to places I wouldn't have otherwise gone, you know? Do you know the difference between an introvert and an extrovert? Well, according to Susan Cain, who is author of a book called Quiet, The Power of Introverts, which was a big, big bestseller, introverts prefer quiet, minimally stimulating environments. Extroverts need higher levels of stimulation to feel their best.

That stimulation can range from things like light and sound to social and physical stimulation. If you prefer a quiet glass of wine with a friend, you're probably an introvert. If you love a wild party full of strangers, you're an extrovert. Susan also points out that if you're the shy type, you're not necessarily an introvert. There is a real big difference between the two. You see, shyness is the fear of negative judgment, while introversion is simply the preference for less stimulation. Shyness feels uncomfortable. Introversion does not. And that is something you should know. And we're out of time. Hey, please leave us a review

on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to this. If they have a place where you can leave a rating and review, take a moment and do that for us if you don't mind. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up for hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. In Don't Blame Me, we dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears

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