Something You Should Know - Why You Spend Money the Way You Do & The Benefits of Adding More Pleasure to Your Life

Episode Date: February 10, 2020

They tell you on airplane that in the event of an emergency an oxygen mask will drop from the ceiling and when you breathe into it the mask may not inflate. Why don’t they know if it will inflate or not? This episode begins with the answer to that and other things about the plane’s oxygen system you should know. http://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/oxygen-masks-on-planes People spend money for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes those reasons are irrational. Other times we are not really aware of how much money we are actually spending on things. Michael Norton is a professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and author of the book Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending (https://amzn.to/3baWJaX). He joins me to discuss why we spend money on some things and why we regret NOT spending money on other things. He also offers some great advice on how to get a good handle on your spending so that you spend money on things that are important without wasting money on things that are not.  What makes for a good and safe password? Most people think random characters are best. Listen and discover why there is something else that is really important and it has nothing to do with randomness. http://www.businessinsider.com/common-password-format-worst-protection-2017-1 Indulging in pleasurable activities can make you feel guilty. But it shouldn’t. Treating yourself to pleasure is one of the best things you can do for yourself. That’s according to Dr. Nan Wise, a psychotherapist and author of the book Why Good Sex Matters (https://amzn.to/390avvc). Listen as she explains why some hedonism (not just sex – any pleasure) is somethings humans need. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, what you may not know about the oxygen mask that falls from the ceiling on an airplane in the event of an emergency. Then the fascinating and sometimes strange things that cause us to spend money. You can actually see that people's spending is heavily influenced by what their siblings are

doing. If you try to see, for example, when someone's going to buy a new car or buy a new house, one of the predictors of someone doing that is just the fact that one of their siblings just did it. Also, what's the one characteristic that makes a great password? And why, if you ever feel guilty indulging in pleasure, don't. Pleasure is not a luxury. Our ability to experience pleasure is necessary for a good functioning emotional brain. Nature wired us to pursue things that are pleasurable that we need. All this today on Something You Should Know.

People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. 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. I hope you are ready for another fun, fascinating, fact-filled episode of Something You Should Know. Because I have one right here, ready to go. And we start today with flying. Now, whenever you fly, the flight always begins with a safety presentation. And during that presentation, they tell passengers that in an emergency, oxygen masks will fall from the ceiling. You should put them on and breathe normally.

But then they always tack on the end of that, the fact that the oxygen mask may not inflate, but that it's still working. Well, why don't they know whether or not it's going to inflate? And why do you have to tug on it to get it to work? Well, actually, there are a few things about the airplane oxygen masks that you should be aware of. First of all, there really isn't all that much oxygen. There's only enough oxygen to last for several minutes. The masks are only meant to keep passengers supplied with oxygen

until the pilot is able to bring the plane down to less than 10,000 feet, where passengers will be able to breathe more easily. Tugging on the mask is what kickstarts the process and allows the oxygen to flow through. But that isn't what makes the bag inflate. The size of the bag is completely reliant on the rate at which the passenger is breathing. Heavy breathers will have thinner bags, while people who breathe less will see their bags inflate more. And that is something you should know. I bet there have been times in your life when you have bought something and later regretted it. Or I bet there have been times in your life when you didn't buy something and later regretted it. Or I bet there have been

times in your life when you didn't buy something and later wish you had. People don't always make smart choices with their money. Why is that? Why is money such a hard thing to manage and hard to talk about and hard to really understand? Michael Norton is a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, and he's author of the book, Happy Money, The Science of Smarter Spending. And he's about to help you better understand your complicated relationship with money. Hi, Michael. Thank you for having me.

So what made you take a look at this? Why is how people spend their money so interesting to you? I think it's because people's behavior is so crazy around their money. The decisions we all make, you know, we look back and we say, why did I buy that? Why didn't I buy that? Why am I not saving enough? Money is very emotional, so we can get carried away with our spending. As a psychologist who studies decision-making, money is one of those things that we have in our lives that is really important for all sorts of reasons,

but our decision-making often gets a little off-kilter, and I try in my research to understand what's going on, why we make the decisions that we do. Well, I imagine it's different person to person and decision to decision, but in broad strokes, why is it so much trouble? Why is it so hard? Why do we say things like, why didn't I buy that? Or why did I buy that? Is there just a general sense as to what the why is? I think there's two big things that I think we get wrong. One is we believe that more money will make us happier. So we have a very strong theory that, and we can do surveys, if we ask people,

how much more money would you need to be a perfect 10 in happiness? Everyone will say two to three times more. And it's true that having more money doesn't make you unhappy in general, but it doesn't solve our problems. So first off, the belief that just getting more money will make us happy isn't really true. And then the second big mistake we make,

and this is one that's for everyone, I think, what we do with the money, we don't always get right. And in particular, people seem to think that if they just buy more stuff, it'll be great. So if I just get a new TV or new shoes or new pants or a new car or a new house, whatever it might be, that stuff will make me happy, really nice stuff. And that's also really not true. So we're trying to earn more money because we think it'll make us happy. And that's not exactly right. And then when we have money and we spend it, we're buying a bunch of stuff for ourselves. And that doesn't seem to be paying off either. We're doing some things right, but those are two big categories that we're kind of missing the mark. But what's interesting is that, okay, so people buy stuff because they think that'll make them

happier, and you say, well, no, it really doesn't. And yet it doesn't stop people from doing it again the next time. Yeah, I think of it a little bit as trying to eat healthy or exercise. You know, we all know now that eating pizza all day every day is not good for us. And we can all say today, I'm definitely not going to eat pizza tomorrow because that's easy, because it's not tomorrow yet. And it's a little bit the same with buying stuff. You can say to yourself, hey, you know what? Buying the 10th pair of shoes or the 10th device is not going to make me happy. But when it's in front of you, just like when the pizza is in front of you, it's all over.

There's no way we can resist because it's new and it's shiny and it's really exciting. And in the moment, it actually does feel great. So when we buy a new thing, we really are happy about it. Just like when we eat pizza, we really are happy about it. But what the data show is that in the longer term, buying the stuff doesn't seem to pay off. So we're a little bit like pizza, like longer term, not so good for us. It's hard for us to go longer term because in the moment, pizza and new stuff is always better than not. Well, and so, you know, I've heard the conversation about, you know, is it better to spend your money on experiences or things? And there's a lot of

talk about how experiences are more fulfilling and more rewarding. But don't you, well, do you agree? Absolutely true. So in general, and sometimes people think experiences, they're thinking, you know, well, yeah, vacation's great. But I can't afford to go on vacation all the time because I'm a person. But experiences can be little things, too. So instead of buying something for, you know, $20 for yourself, taking someone out for dinner, that's an experience, right? So in little ways, experiences can also make us better than stuff. When it's time to make a decision, though, between do we buy the couch or do we go on vacation?

And yes, you would say, well, the experience is a better use of your money because you have time to look forward to it. And then after it's over, you can look back on the memories and isn't that great? Whereas a couch is just a couch. But if you really need a couch and you don't buy it, well, then you've got that nagging at you. That can definitely be the case. And in fact, thinking about the issue of, you know, does earning more money or having more income make us happier? It's not a magical solution by any means, but particularly for people who are struggling to make ends meet, you know, who are actually worried about the roof over their head, their additional

income does seem to be associated with happiness. So when money is solving problems for us, then it's a really good use actually actually, of that money. So if you actually really needed a couch, it's not a bad idea to buy that couch. The mistake that people make is, let's get a new couch every three months, or let's get 10 new couches, because those will be somehow better. That's where we start to get the decisions a little bit more wrong. Isn't there something almost universally good about just having money just in the bank? You're not buying stuff with it. You just know it's there. Isn't that, for most people, pretty rewarding and a nice thing?

It is, but it's not super exciting is the problem. So if we were all smart, we should absolutely be saving way more for retirement and living very simply right now. That would be economically a fantastic idea. But then we'd be kind of sitting in our house staring at the wall. So part of the reason that we earn money is because we want to do stuff with it. I don't mean buy stuff. I mean literally do stuff. And there, we know that people are going to use their money to do some things. They'll keep some of it in the bank, which we love, and it's very good for you, as you said. But given that people are definitely going to spend some of it, then we try to say, given that,

what can we help people do to spend it in a way that really pays off in happiness? And they're not really just throwing that money away because if they're just throwing it away, I really wish you had saved it. But if you're spending it on something that's really meaningful and really important for you or for your family, it might still be better to have saved it. But in terms of living your life in line for your family, it might still be, you know, better to have saved it. But in terms of living your life, you know, in line with your values, well, then we might say, well,

at least I feel better about how he spent that money. At least he didn't buy himself his fifth pair of something. I don't know if you studied this or not, but I'm wondering at the end of life, when you look back, is it more satisfying to look back at a life that you spent all your money and everybody had a lot of fun, but there's nothing left? Or that you were more prudent and you saved money to leave to the next generation? Because, you know, that's what responsible people do. So if you think about, I mean, family vacations are a fantastic example. So I'm one of five children, so family vacation was like a sitcom. Basically, we didn't always go particularly well, and for people who have kids, you know, it can get expensive fast.

Now, would it have been great in a sense to have invested all of that money over the years, and then there's an inheritance? Maybe. But those vacations that we took, even though they didn't always go perfectly well, those are our strongest memories of our family. And so there's a sense in which that using money to buy these kinds of experiences, even when they're a little bit bumpy along the way, as they nearly always are, it still can be a better use in terms of, you know, did I live a life consistent with my values? Yes, we'd also love to provide for people after we're gone, but if that's all we do our whole life, again, if we sit in a room and never see our family because we're busy earning money, at the end of life, they might

be happy because we gave them a bunch of money, but they would have missed having a parent, and we would have missed having a family. So there's a balance, I think, in the middle that some people get kind of right, but a lot of us get a little bit confused along the way. The thing we spoke of at the beginning about how people buy things or don't buy things and then wonder, why did I or why didn't I? So is it good advice to, when you're thinking about buying something that's relatively expensive, sit on it for a while. For sure. And it's true even of small things. So if you're at any time, actually,

you find yourself reaching for your wallet, or more commonly now, you know, reaching for your phone or credit card, or you could be online, you know, about to press purchase or confirm or whatever the button says, taking a beat and just thinking, is this kind of like pizza? You know, is this something that is going to feel great to buy? And then for a day, I'm going to love it. And then nothing.

Or is this something that actually really might be meaningful? And it's hard to know sometimes, but sometimes it's not. And so, for example, when we ask people about the coffee, how much coffee they drink, people say, well, you know, I go to Starbucks every morning or Dunkin' or whatever, and I get a cup, you know, I get a thing of coffee every day. And we say, you know, do you get it every day? And they say, yes. And we say, we can do the math, basically.

And we say, do you know you're spending $1,000 a year on coffee? And people say, oh, I didn't realize that. We say, is that how much of your income you'd like to spend on coffee? And people say, oh, I didn't realize that. We say, is that how much of your income you'd like to spend on coffee? And people say, of course not. That's way too much. And we say, could you go to a coffee every other day? And they say, sure. And now suddenly they have income that they were kind of buying this thing over and over again without thinking about it. And they have this new income that they can do something with. They could save it, which would be great, or at least they can use it in a way that's not just their 5,000th coffee of the year, but maybe it's something that's a little bit more meaningful.

When people do that, when they, for example, cut back on their coffee 50% of the time, and so now they're saving $500 a year, isn't it human nature to kind of always have that in the back of your head that, oh, I'm saving $500 so I can spend it on something else. And so, yeah, you're saving $500 on coffee, but you're probably spending that savings somewhere else. And so it all evens out. This is a big problem that we do is that Sometimes even when we make the right financial decisions at time one, well, time two is another day. And we don't have the willpower to do the right thing yesterday,

but today not so much, and then I buy the silly thing as well. You're also right, by the way, that not all people, but many people get a lot of happiness out of getting a deal. So the feeling that you behaved financially prudently, and everyone knows people who are like this, can be a really powerful motivator to behave well. However, even there, for example, there's research that shows people who care about deals and saving money, they'll do the classic thing, which is if they're interested in getting cheaper gas,

they'll drive 50 miles and then drive 50 miles home to save, you know, 22 cents. No, not only is it silly financially, but they just wasted an hour in a car instead of being with their family or doing something they love. So sometimes even when we're doing the, in a sense, the right thing financially, we're still trading off something that might be more valuable, like, for example, our time doing things we really like. We are talking about your money and how you spend it, and we're talking with Michael Norton. He's a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School,

and he's author of the book, Happy Money, the Science of Smarter Spending. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. So, Michael, there is this whole mentality about the sale, getting the deal, that is so attractive to a lot of people that, yeah, we don't really need this, but look how cheap it is. Look at how inexpensive, you would be an idiot not to buy it. Right, you'd be, I guess you said, I'd be an idiot. That's exactly what, I'm in the marketing group here at the

Harvard Business School, that's exactly what not so in the marketing group here at Harvard Business School. That's exactly what not so nice marketers want you to feel, even if it's something that you really don't need, is what kind of a person wouldn't buy this when it's so cheap? This happens often in big box retailers. If you have anyone in your family or you're the person who comes home with 6,000 rolls of toilet paper because you could buy them way cheaper per unit, and your family says, we don't need 6,000 rolls, or you have pasta for 25 years because it was cheaper. When you buy it, you're thinking, I am smart, right? I mean, this is way cheaper pasta than I could get anywhere else.

But was it really that smart of a purchase? Not probably so much when you have to go home and face your family. I think you're an idiot. Right. Because where are you going to put it? And it's probably not going to last that long. Exactly. So these are all good examples of why money is so difficult, because seemingly reasonable people will do such unreasonable things for strange reasons. You know, another one that came to mind, it's related, it's usually the same kind of people who drive 50 miles to get cheaper gas. These are people who, if they buy something, no matter what, they'll stay or finish it. So they'll go to a movie that they hate. But in order to, quote,

unquote, get their money's worth, they can watch the movie that they hate until but in order to, quote-unquote, get their money's worth, they can watch the movie that they hate until the very end, or they buy a book and they don't like the book at all, but in order to get their money's worth, they finish the entire book. Now, there's something called sunk cost, which people are familiar with, which is, it's a sunk cost, right? You've spent the money. What are you possibly going to get back by doing something you hate? You've already spent the money, but it feels good to us when we're doing it, right? I got my money's worth.

But from this other perspective, it's a sunk cost. You've got to just walk out of the movie, because you're not going to be any happier watching a terrible movie than you would be leaving and talking to a friend. Well, and sometimes you do it, you keep reading or you keep watching because you keep hoping it's going to get better, but it doesn't. That's true. That's right. It never does, or almost never does. Don't you think we spend a lot of money trying to impress other people? It's huge.

I think you can actually see that people's spending is heavily influenced by what their siblings are doing. So if you look, if you try to see, for example, when someone's going to buy a new car or buy a new house, one of the predictors of someone doing that is just the fact that one of their siblings just did it. So you can see, you know, there's a random thing when we all buy cars and things like that, but a little more than you'd expect by chance, as soon as my brother or sister upgrades, I got to do it as well. And you see it with your siblings and you see it with your neighbors. So the closer a neighbor is to you that renovates, for example, or gets a new car, the more likely I am now to do that this year

instead of waiting for another year. So we're really, and we're often not even aware of it. You know, we're not saying I'm going to beat them. It just feels like it's time to get a new car. And so these are huge purchases that we're making, and they are definitely influenced by the notion of keeping up with the Joneses or ideally keeping up and then going just one little degree further so that I'm ahead. And the other place this comes up is, you know, you spend a year researching the very best flat screen TV with all everything, and then you finally put it up. It's a mile long in your house. And then the next day, your neighbor gets one that's slightly better. And now yours is garbage. Because it's slightly better. Mine, even though I could have enjoyed watching so many things on mine, the fact that I know someone who has one that's slightly better,

now I hate my TV. It's completely irrational, just like not buying a Camaro, but it's very hard emotionally to let go of it. I guess that there is comfort in numbers. It's good to know that everybody else does this too, because I don't suppose there's any real cure for this. It's good to know that everybody else does this too, because I don't suppose there's any real cure for this. It's human nature, right? It's very difficult. There's world religion that stress the idea of stop trying to compare yourself to other people. That's not the route to success. And I know some people who are very enlightened who are able to do that. I'm not one of them.

I don't know many people who are, because you're right, it is built into us to look around and see how well we're doing compared to other people. Even with things like height, you know, we look around a little bit sometimes to see where we rank with height. It's not so different than where we rank with our car or income or anything else that we're counting up. Lastly, talk about this idea that the way payment apps affect your relationships. So this is some interesting research we've been doing recently with Tammy Kim, who's at the University of Virginia. First off, had to explain to me what payment apps are because I don't really use apps very much. So now there's many of them. And they're a

great idea, I should say, where, for example, roommates who have to split the rent. In my world, when I had roommates, somebody would write a check to the landlord and then everyone would either write them a check for their amount or cash. It was very complicated, very pain. Every month, it was kind of a pain. Payment apps, just click a button and instantly, all of our money goes to the place and we're all done. Out for dinner as well, splitting the bill. It's like, what did you order? What did I order? Who's going to use a card? Who has cash? Again, a whole problem. Payment apps automatically split the bill among the four of us. We can all go home. So efficiency-wise, fantastic. I mean, there's no doubt that these are fantastic.

But from a social perspective, they're a little bit weird because if we're always, always right down to the cent with what we're doing. So if you and I had dinner and it was, you know, $20.02 and each of us made sure that we put in that penny, you know, 10.01. Like, I wouldn't even let you spot me a penny. It kind of suggests that we're not really friends because I don't even trust you with a penny. And now it feels more like a bank or something like that, where we're right, literally the phrase nickel and diming. We're right down on that all the time in our relationships. And a lot of relationships are about, hey, I'll get this this time. You'll get me next time.

Or even just let me treat everyone this time. Payment apps accidentally, in a way, make us all petty. We're all now down to the penny in all of our relationships with everybody. And what Tammy shows in the research is that we don't like people who are that way. And so when people use payment apps that do this automatically, we kind of start to think that maybe they're a jerk. We start to feel like we're not really that close. Well, but we're a jerk too. Right. But luckily, my behavior, I'm never a jerk. It's just that you do it for the exact

same thing. You're a jerk. Right, right. Isn't that interesting that it actually has that effect on people? Because you wouldn't think so. You would think, as you described, that it is such a convenient way to split the check that it's all good. There's no bad part to it. Exactly. And I mean, this is what we thought, you know, when credit cards were introduced. It's all good, right?

Because now we don't have to have cash and it's more efficient and everything. And then credit cards have this problem where because they're not linked to cash, well, now we overspend on them because they're so efficient and easy to use. They mess up our psychology a little bit and we start to feel like things are free and we're swiping everywhere we go. So very often when technology changes our interaction with money, it changes other things in our lives as well, for better and for worse, but definitely different. And that's why we're always, when we study financial decision-making, having to keep up with technology to make sure we understand in people's everyday lives, what are they experiencing, what products

are they using, and how is that changing their behavior? So when the dust all settles, I mean, is there any kind of blanket advice that applies to pretty much everybody when it comes to making financial decisions that will help you make better ones, or is it just it is what it is? I would say, so we encourage people to do this, actually, and it's very easy to do it. And I'll, I'll warn anyone who does it. It can be very painful. Your credit card statement that comes every month. Many people actually don't look at the purchases at all. Believe it or not, they just pay the bill and send it off. Some people look at the purchases, but more sort of

for accuracy, you know, that let me look at the big ones and make sure that's something I bought. What we encourage people to do actually is, and you can do it online, but printing it out actually is pretty helpful. Print out your next credit card statement and actually go through the purchases and think about them just for a sec. And you can ask yourself a bunch of questions. One is, do I even remember that? You know, I bought that thing. I forgot. Well, that probably that thing. I forgot. Well, that probably wasn't something really meaningful. And you can go all the way down the list to think about, was that a good purchase or not? I'm not sure.

And you can bucket them. You can start to say, well, how much did I spend on stuff for myself last month? And then you can start to say, wow, 50% of everything I bought was stuff for myself. Is that really the kind of spending that I want to engage in because of my values or because of what's important to me? And if not, you can say next month let's do 40. And then after next month you can print it out again and see how well you did. So it's painful because it shows you who you are and me too and all the dumb things we do with our money.

But it can be really useful and doesn't take much time to get you to think about your priorities for what you're doing with your money, and if you feel like it, start to make some small changes. Which is probably very telling if you can stand the pain of doing it. Michael Norton has been my guest. He is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and his book is Happy Money, The Science of Smarter Spending. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Michael.

Perfect. Thanks, Mike. 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. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events.

Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. What could be bad about pleasure?

Pleasure is good. Yet, it seems a lot of us have this weird relationship with pleasure. That somehow, pleasure is bad. I mean, how many people don't take a vacation? I bet you thought at some time in your life that it would be great to go to a nice restaurant or get a massage or something, but you didn't because you felt guilty or thought if you did it, you would feel guilty. Well, it turns out that pleasure is not just a luxury.

It isn't the dessert after the meal. Pleasure is absolutely necessary. Dr. Nan Wise has been helping people to indulge in pleasure and feel good about it, and she's about to help you too. Nan is a psychotherapist and author of the book Why Good Sex Matters. But our conversation is not about sex, it's about all human pleasure and its role in your life. Hi Nan, thanks for being here. And thank you so much for having me. So this idea that pleasure for its own sake is somehow bad, and that you're a more virtuous person if you deny yourself pleasure,

that makes you a better person. Where did that come from? Well, we are a nation that was settled by Puritans and Protestants, and there's a real difficulty with people implicitly having these attitudes that somehow pleasure is bad, that pleasure gets a bad rap, and what we need to do is accomplish and work and do and all of this other stuff. And I think what's happened is that over time, because of the way that we're living, we are less and less able to experience the pleasures that I call healthy hedonism, the things that are good for us, good food, good company, good connection, and intimacy across the board in our lives is missing as we get so distracted by the ferocious pace of life, and it actually derails the wired

in emotional brain. Well, and it seems as if there is this underlying message that, yes, if you want to have pleasure, it only comes after, dessert comes after dinner, after you eat your broccoli, that you can go on vacation after you finish this work, that it's a reward that comes and you've got to earn it rather than being something that you should do just because you should do it. And that's a big piece of the whole puzzle, which is pleasure has a bad rap. And pleasure is not a luxury. Our ability to experience pleasure is necessary for a good functioning emotional brain. Nature is not stupid. Nature wired us to pursue things that are pleasurable that we need, such as food, connection with other people, intimacy, air, safety, all of that.

And generally, that works pretty good, except if we're pursuing food and it's a bag of Doritos, it tastes good, but it's not good for us. So we've become derailed. And we are, for example, looking for social connection. And we spend hours on social media getting our emotional systems all tweaked by dopamine, which makes us crave and want, but it's not satisfying. And what we really need is contact with other people. We need to be in the room with people. We need to be connected emotionally, intimately. Kids need to play, rough and tumble play in the playground, not to be plugged into devices. And so it's really important that we understand that. So the lack of being able to experience pleasure is a symptom of anxiety,

depression, and stress, as well as a contributor. Pleasure is not a luxury. It's a necessity for us to learn to have healthy hedonism, to eat food that's good for us, to play in ways that are good for us, to connect with people in a way that's satisfying. I'm hearing what I think people could perceive as a bit of a mixed message here, because you're saying, you know, you should have pleasure, eat food that's good for you. Well, that is the opposite of what some people think would be pleasurable food, is food that is good for you. Well, that is the opposite of what some people think would be pleasurable food, is food that is good for you. Pleasure would be that greasy, juicy burrito, not food that's good for me.

And when you say, well, we're spending too much time on social media, many people think going on Facebook is pleasurable. So I can see where people would hear this as a mixed message, and so would you please rectify that? That's a great point. So we need to make a distinction between what I would call healthy hedonism, things that feel good and are good for you, versus things that we do that might feel pleasurable

but have the price tag of keeping us, for example, eating, eating, eating, eating, social, social, social media, they're not satisfying. So it's not a value judgment on my part, but it's really looking at why we get derailed into seeking things in a way that's unhealthy. For example, being out of balance with spending too much time on social media or not being able to regulate our emotions enough to regulate our body weight. You know, all things in moderation, as my dad would say, including moderation. But if you look at how often we are seeking things that we experience as pleasurable but not satisfying, that's a sign of our emotional systems being out of balance.

So tell me how to make that distinction. How do I look at something and decide, well, this is good pleasure or this is bad pleasure? That's a great question. And I think the answer more and more is about really paying attention to our bodies, the sensations in our bodies. And when I work with clients, a lot of the time, no matter what they've come in for, whether it's a problem with mood or a sexual dysfunction, and I say, what's going on in your body? And they look at me like I'm crazy. People are so in their heads that they're not really paying attention to the cues that the body gives you.

If you eat food and you're really paying attention to your body and you're noticing the sensations as you're eating, you're more likely to stop eating before you have overeaten. You also will be more attuned to when you eat or when you, for example, move your body. The things that feel good are going to be registered if you pay attention to your body in a much more nuanced and consistent way. As we discussed, though, pleasure is often the reward. Finish your homework, you can watch TV.

Eat your dinner, you can have dessert. That we first have to earn it. And so if we don't do that, if you're suggesting that we have pleasure just for the sake of having pleasure, well, how do you insert it into your life when you're used to inserting it into your life as the reward for work? Well, one of the things that we really need to look at is how we can become more present to each moment and more mindful of what we're doing. And if we do that, we can actually experience pleasure all throughout the day. We can experience pleasure in being engaged in our work.

I'm having a great time talking to you right now. This is fun for me. I'm here. I'm in it. When we're in the moment and we're not so distracted, and this is one of the very bad things about what they call continuous partial attention, you're looking at your phone, you've got your computer, your attention is spread all over the place. And it's even hard sometimes, even if we're not distracted with the phone or

computer to take our minds that go off in all sorts of different directions. And believe me, I have a mind like that. My whole family suffers from anxiety. So I needed to learn how to teach what I myself need to know, how to be able to harness attention and learn how to enjoy and savor everyday life and not have to wait to dessert to have fun. So give me an example. Well, when you are going through your day and you start to pay attention to, okay, what's on my mind? What's in my emotional weather? Okay, how am I feeling in this moment? I'm thinking about blah, blah, blah.

I'm feeling a way. I might be, you know, feeling a little depressed or a little excited or a little anxious. And what's going on in my body? And then you notice the sensations in your body. What you've done is essentially become mindful more of your own experience. And then what you can do is whatever you're doing, whether you're writing a story or whether you're interviewing somebody or whether you're going to work and selling things in the store, you can take your mind from the wandering, because that's what minds do.

You can bring it to the moment. And then you can facilitate some of the things that actually do give us pleasure, being present, connecting with people, even small conversations with people during the course of the day with strangers has been shown to improve our mood and make us feel better. So it's really about harnessing attention to be more where you are and see the possibilities for play and fun, even in your work. How do we know this is so? How do we know, I mean, this sounds great, that we should be, but what's the evidence that the payoff is there? Well, when you're talking about what's effective for giving people more joy and more pleasure,

there have been studies that have been done. For example, Marty Seligman, who was the past president of the American Psychological Association, he has a lot of studies that are about what gives people joy what gives people pleasure one of the things that's been shown is when people pay good attention when they're present and they become able to find things that engage them and things that give them meaning. But what we do know is the most important thing is being present. People can be basically much happier being present, driving home in traffic, when they're paying attention to that than when their mind wanders. So let's talk about sex for a moment, because it is in some ways, you know, the ultimate

physical pleasure, and yet it is also very taboo. Do you see a change? Is it becoming less taboo? Is sexuality not so naughty anymore? When you look at it, I say we kind of live in a lewd, prude nation. So we have like, we talk about sex, we're obsessed about sex, but we still do a lot of shaming of people. Like there's something on The Bachelorette that's popping all over social media, which I now have time to look at because it's a part of my job. So we have a very ambivalent relationship about sexuality.

And, yes, people are still very uptight about it. And I'll tell you how I know. When I go through the world, I assume that people are somewhat comfortable with sexuality because I am. But when I talk to people and I tell them what my book is about, they start giggling and they start making kind of sort of either jokes or they kind of make comments. Even in my own psychology department, when I was doing my PhD, when I went back to school at 50 to study neuroscience, one of my colleagues saw me outside the building and yelled across the way, hey, you sex maniac. And I don't think that he was trying to shame me, but I think people get so uncomfortable. And if you look at it

in the psychology department, ostensibly where we're supposed to be, you know, kind of experts on human behavior and all of that, that people giggle. And I'm talking about the faculty members. I think the graduate students were better about it. So I think people are deeply uncomfortable, almost as uncomfortable talking about sex as they are about money, or maybe they're more uncomfortable talking about sex. I'm not sure. Well, I like this message of, because you're kind of giving

people permission, and with some research to back it up, to enjoy yourself. Just enjoy yourself. The cascade of the good kinds of neurotransmitters and peptides through the best antidepressant is social joy in relationships. Now, sex is a window into connection for people, for some people, but it's just not really about sex. It's about the core emotional systems and how we need to be mindful of operating them so that we live better, we're nicer people to each other. You know, people who pay attention to their bodies and feel empathy

are not going to be as cool to other people. You know, it's really about feeling nature, feeling our reactions to things can be very helpful and very informative. So indulging in pleasure is good, and although that seems obvious, we often don't act that way. Dr. Nan Wise has been my guest. She's a psychotherapist and author of the book, Why Good Sex Matters. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for coming on and talking about this, Nan. My pleasure. It's been a lot of fun. You've asked some very

interesting questions that make me think, which is fun. I like to think. If you want to create a secure password, make it long. One of the best ways to do that is to string several words together to make a phrase. For example, Bottle Baseball Shark Trophy. Why is it good? Well, it's easy to remember Bottle Baseball Shark Trophy, but it's also hard to hack. An 11-character password will take

three days at 1,000 guesses per second to hack. The same system will take 550 years to crack Bottle Baseball Shark Trophy, which is 25 characters. Using symbols and numbers may make your password a little more secure, but not much. Length is what counts. And that is something you should know. We have had several very kind and complimentary reviews about this podcast posted on Apple Podcasts lately, and you are free to add yours to the list.

I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro,

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and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes.

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