Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 225: Happiness Takes Work | Sonja Lyubomirsky

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

Sonja Lyubomirsky has been studying human happiness for 30 years. As a professor at the University of California Riverside, her research has centered around things people can do to become happier. In this episode she talks about her findings, including the power of social connection and how that might just be the key ingredient to happiness. She also talks about how we can increase our level of social connection. Show notes: www.tenpercent.com/podcast Sonja’s Website: http://drsonja.net/about-sonja/ Sonja’s Books: https://www.amazon.com/Sonja-Lyubomirsky/e/B001JP269S/ Sonja at UC Riverside: https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/sonja Sonja on Ten Percent Happier: https://10percenthappier.app.link/0E69lbTsH3 Check out the new Ten Percent Happier course on Health Habits with Kelly McGonigal and Alexis Santos: WWW.TENPERCENT.COM/HABITS In the App: https://10percenthappier.app.link/gAd07mXoo2 References in the show: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking Susan Cain https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/dp/0307352153 Nick Epley, research on talking to strangers on the train https://www.nicholasepley.com/publications Liz Dunn - UBC Barrista researcher https://dunn.psych.ubc.ca/curriculum-vitae-2/publications/ Ed Dieiner - https://eddiener.com/ Barb Frederickson - Love 2.0 https://www.positivityresonance.com/ Dacher Keltner - UC Berkley https://psychology.berkeley.edu/people/dacher-keltner Ken Sheldon https://psychology.missouri.edu/people/sheldon Susan Nolen-Hoeksema https://www.amazon.com/Susan-Nolen-Hoeksema/e/B001H6IJH2 Martin Seligman - UPenn Positive Psychology https://ppc.sas.upenn.edu/people/martin-ep-seligman Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Flow https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061339202 Lisa Walsh - Expressing gratitude on the other person https://www.lisacwalsh.com/ Nial Bolger - Columbia (visible versus invisible social support) https://psychology.columbia.edu/content/niall-bolger Ezra Klein’s Podcast with Allison Gopnick https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2019/6/13/18677595/alison-gopnik-changed-how-i-think-about-love) Ten Percent Happier Podcast Insiders Feedback Group: https://10percenthappier.typeform.com/to/vHz4q4 Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. For maybe see, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, I know we're now in February, January has passed and some of us have already failed at our resolutions. But maybe it's not just failing, it's just temporarily halting and we just need to learn how to start again. Speaking of which, we've got a new course that I've mentioned before on the on the pod, but I just want to remind you a brand new course up on the 10% happier app all about helping you make and break habits in a sane shame-free way. It features two recent guests on the pod, Kelly McGonacol and

Alexis Santos. If you're not a subscriber to the pod, you can get a seven-day free trial. Go download it. Check it out. If you want to take a look directly at the course, you can go to 10% dot com slash habits. Let's get into the show this week. This is a really good one. I had a lot of fun interviewing Sonia Lyubemerski. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Sonia is a PhD at Distinguished Professor and Vice Chair of Psychology at the University of California Riverside. She's originally from Russia.

She then came over here to the states where she got degrees from Harvard and Stanford and has spent her life studying happiness and coming up with ingenious ways to figure out what makes us happy, what makes us unhappy. She's written a pair of books, The How of Happiness and The Myths of Happiness. And we talk a lot about the various skills that can make us thrive and the various bad habits where we wither. And I think we can whittle down at least one of her core ideas to the idea that happiness is a habit.

It does take work. So we talk about one of the core areas where she's really excited these days in terms of a source of happiness for human beings, which is social connection, extraversion versus interversion. We talk about talking to people on elevators, how we can use social media, the counterintuitive benefits in this day and age of actually seeing your friends face to face. We talk about how social comparison is so insidious and dangerous.

And we talk about how the pursuit of happiness can actually, notwithstanding her argument that it does take work. The pursuit of happiness, she says, can also backfire in really interesting ways. One quick note before we start, she mentions all of these research projects and resources throughout the course of this interview. And if you're really interested in them

and don't have a pen, don't freak out, you can find them all in our show notes at 10%.com slash podcast. So here we go. Here's Sonia Liu-Bumersky. Great to meet you. Great to meet you. Well, I'm already impressed with you because the first thing you told me before we started rolling is that you're tired today because you went to an all night party on Saturday

night. So you're close to my age. I'm in my late 40s, we don't have to name your age, but the fact that you did that is I respect it. Yeah, I think life is short and I study happiness and I'm a happy person and I like to connect with people and have fun and dance all night. So why not?

I wouldn't do it every day, but once in a while, it's really fun. So it jibed the decision to do something like go to an all night party which is not a normal thing for you. I know this because you told me it is not disconnected from your research. Yeah, not at all. I mean, it's about friends and actually dancing is really it's energy, right? And so actually happiness, a lot of it is about energy. And connecting with people, actually my new research interest is about connection and sort of how to connect more with other people in our daily lives. It could be with your barista or a stranger on the subway

or your friend or your husband. And I really think that connection is what makes life worth living. And so you might connect at a party, you might connect in a coffee shop. And I really think that connection is what makes life worth living. And so, you might connect at a party, you might connect in a coffee shop, and no matter how you do it, I think it really makes your life richer and makes you a happier person. Well, let's go with that since we're on it. Why connection and what are you learning in your research?

Well, I'm just beginning, really. I mean, I've been doing research on happiness for now 30 years, actually just celebrated my 30th anniversary of starting doing this research. And a lot of it has been on how to make people happier. What can we do to become happier? And so my lab does what I call happiness interventions. And they're basically clinical trials, or like clinical trials, where we prompt one group of people to practice a certain strategy like express gratitude three times a week or do acts of kindness every week for a month.

And then we measure their happiness and then we have a control group, we have various comparison groups. And I start thinking that a lot of what we're trying to do to make people happier is about connection. So when we get people to express gratitude, they end up really feeling more connected to the people that they are expressing gratitude to because it's almost always about other people. I mean, sometimes you might be about your health or your opportunities in life, but usually when people express gratitude or think about gratitude, they're thinking about the people in their lives. And then we do a lot of studies on acts of kindness or pro-social behaviors it's called in the psychology literature.

So we ask people to do usually three acts of kindness that you don't normally do on one day a week for a few weeks. So let's say every Monday, like today is Monday. So every Monday do three acts of kindness that you don't normally do and then do the same thing next Monday, it's so on. And then people become happier and they feel more connected. But we realize that both gratitude and kindness

are really about connection. And when you engage in these prosocial interactions, you're really connecting with other person. And so we actually did a study to see, is it really the prosocial part, the kind part that makes people happier? Or is it the social part? Maybe you don't have to actually do an act of kindness, you can just talk to someone.

And so we did a study where we actually, we had two groups, and one group did three more kind acts every week for four weeks. And another group did three more social interactions every week for four weeks. So like three interactions that you don't normally have extra three today. And we didn't find differences. So they both groups felt equally sort of more connected, more positive emotions. So we think maybe, but it really matters the social interaction. It's so interesting. It sounds like you're saying we've been studying gratitude and kindness

and what we realized is while those are two really important things, in some ways we're dancing around the edges of the issue. Yeah, that might be, now I think there's other things too. I mean, I think there might be multiple pathways, right? So I think maybe connection is the strongest one, but certainly there's other things that are going on with gratitude and kindness, right? So when you're kind to someone else, not only you're connecting, but you're also maybe you feel like a better person, right? You you might feel just better about humanity as a whole. And then when you're grateful, you know, you also might feel like humbled because your success is not just about you, it's about other people. You might feel inspired or elevated. So it's not just about connection, but maybe

connection is the key, it's kind of the key magic ingredient. So is it possible that the common denominator among all three of them is that they all get you out of your own story? Yes, I actually think that most, this is kind of my intuition, I'm not a clinical psychologist, but I think that most or many problems that people have in their lives are due to too much self-focus and self-absorption. So whenever you're focused too much on yourself and it's often you're dwelling or ruminating and I used to do research on rumination which is kind of the success of thinking about, oh what's about your problems in yourself. I think

whatever can help you turn the focus off of you and to other people, which could be just destruction. I mean it could even be just you're watching a play and you're really focused on it or you're working and you're really focused on your work, I think that makes people less unhappy or less anxious, you know, less sad. Let me ask a question that may seem not entirely germane. I'm going to own that it's kind of a selfish question. And I'm also going to own that many of my questions can be selfish. But this is kind of selfish in a reasonably crass way in which that I'm writing a book kind of notionally at least about kindness.

And I've been thinking about how to frame this because one of the sort of obstacles I'm bumping into is that I think that men and women think differently about kindness and that this is a lot of women I know, especially young women who are coming up in their careers, have said to me, well, kindness isn't my issue. I'm kind enough. I really need to worry about standing up for myself, which I actually think there's a lot to that. Whereas some, and this I'm speaking broad, gross generalities here, but a lot of the

men I know much more resonate with the idea of, hey, yeah, if I stop having such sharp elbows, maybe things go better for me. And so the angle I've been vectoring toward is the getting out of your own head. Do you think that has unisex appeal or do you think that there are a lot of people who would say, you know, actually, I'm not totally self-obsessed.

I'm a nurse or I'm a social worker or whatever. My whole job is about helping other people. Yeah, that's a great question. And there's a lot of different answers. So one is, and we have a chapter that we wrote about how the pursuit of happiness might sometimes backfire. And one example we had is when you're asked, when you want to do exo-kindness, but you already are a caregiver or you're already a very giving person and

then that's not the right fit for you. Then you don't want to just do even more of that. So you have to be careful and everyone has different values and goals and jobs and personalities and so they need to sort of choose the right kind of strategy for them. So for some people, they're already kind of so giving of themselves, they shouldn't be even more giving to others. Although, when I say ex of kind of sometimes they're just very little things, I mean, it could just be, you smile at the clerk that you see in a store and you make them happier

by that. So, it's not like you have to, it's not a burden necessarily. So that's one point is that it really depends, and I think there probably is a gender difference. Another point is that I think what being in your head might mean different things for different people or different genders. So it could be that you're self-absorbed because you're arrogant and you're just like or you're narcissistic and you think about yourself a lot because you're so great and you're entitled.

Or it could be that you're kind of dwelling on things. Oh, I don't know. I can't believe I said that to that person. And so it could be because of insecurity or it could be just because you're a little bit depressive and anxious. So the in your head could be due to different things. But all of those different reasons to be in your head, I think, can be toxic.

Now, obviously, I'm not saying we should never think about ourselves in dwell. And that's natural that that's, yeah, there's a great quote about how like each of us is the protagonist of our own little, you know, Play like and that's true. We're kind of going about the day and we're the protagonist and so that's normal But I do think that no matter why people are too much in their own heads It's always sort of productive and valuable to get them a little bit out of their heads

And this is not to say that some people are maybe Perfectly fine and they're just just the right amount. They're just balanced. I think I know people like that. Second point, we did a study recently. It was just in press in Journal of Experimental Psychology, where we asked people to act more extroverted. And what's interesting about extroversion is they actually has three components. So one is sociable, talkative, and one is assertive, and one is basically energetic, spontaneous. And we ask them to do all three things. And I think the assertive part is, might be valuable for some people,

maybe especially women, in that we were talking about women maybe being needing to sort of take control of the situation more. And that made everyone much really, really happy. Actually, we got the biggest effect sizes we've ever gotten. I think in any experiment we ever run, where we asked people to act more extroverted. So to say more about how we can eat more extroverted.

Yeah, so in this study, we had people for one week who just said act more extroverted. We didn't use the word extroverted. By the way, were you studying, was this part of your connection research? I guess you could say that, because I'm interested in social interaction, but it's all related. Okay, so for one week, we asked people to act more extroverted and for the second week, or vice versa, we asked people to act more introverted, but we didn't use those terms because

they have connotations, right? So for the extroversion week, we asked them to act more. We wanted to kind of make them a little bit even in terms of social desirability because in our in American culture, certainly extroversion is more highly valued. So for the extroversion week, we asked people to act more assertive, sociable, I think, and or talkative. Yeah, because talkative can be better good. Talkative assertive and spontaneous.

And for the introversion week, we asked people to act more. I think it was like reflective, oh gosh, I forgot, introspective. And then we gave examples. And it's like sort of like, we asked people to make plans. Like the next time I'm at lunch, I'll speak up more. Or I'll listen more, you know what I want to say as much. And it was really incredible. So people who were asked to act more extroverted got much happier, much more positive emotions, like every

variable we measured after that week. And the introversion week, they got less happy, including introverts, because we expected the introverts would not really enjoy acting more extroverted. And they might get fatigued. And I read Susan Cain's really amazing things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things.

I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things.

I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to do a lot of things. I'm going to doverted now. I used to be introverted. My daughter will sometimes change. Yeah, yes. Well, sometimes it changed for me, but with a lot of will. But my daughter sometimes says, Mom, you talk so much, I can't think. And she's just like listening and taking it in. But anyway,

so Susan Cain says that introverts, yeah, they get fatigued, right? So like one of the symptoms of introversion is you go to a party and afterward you're afterward you might enjoy it, but you're just so tired. I need to recover for it. If you're an extra word, you go to a party, you're energized by it. So we expected the introverts in our study to sort of get fatigued. And maybe it was too short, it was just a week. And if we did it for a month, they might get fatigued. And there's another study out of Melbourne that did find that introverts didn't benefit from doing from acting more extroverted. Did not. Did not benefit as much. So, but ours didn't find any differences.

But when we asked people to act more extroverted for a week, we didn't ask them to act extroverted like 24 hours a day. I mean, they might, it might be for five minutes here, five minutes there. So, it's very possible that it wasn't so, you know, burdensome and fatiguing for the introverts. But I think it's so fascinating that just increasing social interactions,

just, and there's some studies that show, just talking to a barista at Starbucks, or talking to strangers on a train, there's a great study from Nick Epley at University of Chicago, where he found that people who take trains, I think he used people in Chicago who were commuted by train every day, and he asked them, like, would you enjoy talking to a stranger on the train? And they said, no, I would not enjoy that.

And I certainly feel that way. I'm like, I would much rather work or whatever you read. But then he asked them, okay, I don't exactly what the instructions, I don't remember exactly instructions, but I want you to tomorrow to talk to a stranger on the train. And they did and they got happier. So they didn't even realize they would make them actually happier to connect. So even the small talk could work. I'm really interested in more the deeper talk. It doesn't have to be revealing your deep secrets, but like really, you know, kind of showing a little bit of yourself, you know, a hairy Reese and University Rochester, what I'm

collaborating with as a theory that the key to relationships is to feel understood, valued and cared for, understood, valued, and cared for, or loved. And I think it's just so impactful and powerful and it applies to many situations in any kind of relationship. And what he describes is how do you get there? You have to have someone express something about themselves, which basically means self-disclosure. So I self-disclose, I told you about this party I went to, and then you respond in a way that makes me feel understood and respected or valued, and that's a connection. And then you have more moments of connection like that.

And that can lead to a relationship, it can lead to chemistry. We're just writing a paper right now about what creates chemistry. So yeah, so that's a little bit of a deeper conversation. It's not just about the weather weather about sports. What creates chemistry? Yeah, that's You think you were gonna get away with it. No, I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. It's a it's a complicated question because I'll send you my paper our paper

We haven't a why would I need to read the paper? I have you that's right. We haven't submitted yet But basically it starts with these repeated moments of connection, right? So there's person A and B. I disclose again, disclosure doesn't have to be Supersecured or anything. It could just be my opinion about something and then you and then you Respond in a way that makes me feel understood valued and cared for and then maybe you disclose something and then we have sort of this connection repeated moments of connection and that leads to chemistry and chemistry we propose as three components connection, repeated moments of connection. And that leads to chemistry. In chemistry, we propose as three components. The first component is a sense of kind of a shared identity that we have.

That we feel like there's a similarity between us and a complementarity between us. And it could be a sense of sort of, if it's a team, it's like a team spirit or it's a couple, it's a couple identity. And if it's friends or acquaintances, it's sort of just a sense of shared identity. So that's one component. Another component is basically positive affect and attraction. Positive affect, right? We feel, you know, good talking to each other, attraction and abroad sense.

It could be actual, like, romantic attraction, or it could just be, you know, attraction and abroad sense, like I like you. And the third component is we are able to sort of pursue goals together in a coordinated way. So the idea is that we can accomplish more together than we can apart. And so the goals could be to have a great conversation or it could be that we're writing a song together

or we're writing a book together or we're working on something together or we're trying to find a building together and somehow together we're like better off than apart. So yeah, it's, you know. Are there some people with whom I just never will have chemistry? Probably, yes. So somebody could express an opinion and I don't have to be rude about it, but I find the opinion abhorrent and there we go. Of course, and that's why we don't have chemistry with everyone. We meet.

So just staying on extra just looping back again to being an extrovert for those or I guess more on point having social connection, you started to talk a little bit about it with trains, but for those of us who maybe don't take a train and are intrigued by the growing body of science that says social connection, which by the way, let's put some context on it, is under assault right now in the era of, you know, tech-induced atomization and political polarization and urbanization, et cetera, et cetera, all these forces driving us apart. How, what are the little things, or maybe big things we can do to increase our level

of social connection, especially given the data that suggests it really is key to happy. Yeah, that's a great idea. That's a great question. So Liz Dunn out of UBC did a study where she was asking people to connect or to sort of chat with their barista in the coffee shop. So a lot of us, even in an urban, you know, just in an environment, my go-to coffee shop

or a restaurant, and even that kind of connection can work. I mean, I'll, I go to Whole Foods a lot in my neighborhood in Santa Monica and sometimes like the cashier will be so good at her job so she'll be so fast. I really like people to go fast and I'll just say you are so good at your job and I think it makes her day. She's just like no one says that or I'll tell people that this is easier for women than men but I'll see someone I'll say you are so beautiful and that's it you know and I go along or I mean, that doesn't have to be like that. I mean, it could just be, hey, you know,

and you could just be anything, you know, or did you see that over there? I think, you know, we, hopefully most of us, at least interact with other people in some way and they're like, I actually started taking Uber pool more often, or. Oh, wow. That's a big lift.

That's a big, I would have to really think about that. I know, but you know what, I always think, oh, I don't want to do that. But like, we did it the other day with, there are two different people. They're both really young, like in college or right after. And we like had this great conversation with both of them. It was just, it was a friend of mine night,

like it was four of us. That's how much of these, a number of times. You have to be kind of in a, right mood for that, I guess. Sometimes you just don't want to talk to anyone. How do you do when you get in? See, I read a study recently about chatting with people in elevators. Yeah.

And this was a big challenge to my MO. And I've been able to do it sometimes, but sometimes I just feel this lack of generosity of spirit kicking in. How do you do in elevators? I know, I think I have to be in the right mood, but you know what, if I could put you in a study, or everyone really sends you this,

can say I can say to them, look, this week, three more times this week, do something like that that you wouldn't normally do. And it could be one time in elevator, one time in a coffee shop. You know, I was in a, I was in a pizza coffee, and someone was wearing like a cool shirt. And I said, oh, that's, I really like that shirt.

And we had like a very, I mean, it was so easy. And it is, think of it as an act of kindness. Like you're, you know, you're making someone smile. And it could be what other, anyway, make it a recalolution. And then it gets easier, the more you do it. Cause I'm actually not a person. I'm extroverted, but I'm extroverted with kind of friends

or people I know a little bit. And I used to, like my husband will just chat people up when we're just strangers. And I used to be like, why are you doing that? Like stop, stop talking to people. But now I'm doing it a little bit more myself because I realize like it's nice, you know. It really does make their day and especially people who are serving you, you know, really talking to them, how are you, you know, they, they, you know, you want to have people, people want to feel respected and appreciated for who they are and you want, you want to have people want to feel respected and appreciate it for who they

are. And you want people want to be seen as a person and not just like as a valet or as a, you know, waitress. So yeah, it's challenging, but I think like anything, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. I really think, like, you will be happier if you do that more. I've seen it. I've tried it a lot.

I was trying it more after I read the study in the weeks after that. I think I fell off the wagon a little bit. I resonate though with what you said about, I see myself and what you said about being extroverted. I'm extroverted with my friends. I don't think my friends would say I'm warm to them. But there are many instances, especially with people I'd either I work with and don't

know that well or people I don't know at all, where I can feel the armor go up with no provocation. Yeah. And that's okay. I mean, you don't have to write, you don't have to be connecting with every single person. Yeah, and that's okay. And sometimes we just want to like be alone, but maybe just a little bit more than usual. You want to do it more. A couple

more points. So Liz done the reason that she did the study with the barista or what's the male barista. That's a lawyer. And you know, now like Starbucks peets, they have this you can you have these mobile apps now, right? Where you just get your coffee without ever talking to a barista and her sort of her thought was, this is not a good thing because it's like, now we're not gonna connect even with the person that we're gonna give our change to. So that's kind of interesting.

In terms of social media, we are now also really interested in that question. Is the use of smartphones and social media or even listening to music where you can't like talk to people on the street. I'll sometimes try to ask directions in New York because I don't live here. And I can't ask anyone for directions

because they all have their headphones in and they can't even hear you. So we are actually doing some studies now. One big study trying to sort of discover sort of what are the effects on happiness and connection of people using or not using social media or just their smart friends. And there's lots of lots of hypotheses about that because certainly there are ways that

people are finding to connect on social media, especially if you're shy or if you're living in a rural area and you're not able to see your friends and family. We have opairs from Germany mostly and it's amazing for our kids. So we've had opairs because we have four kids. We've had opairs since for 20 years, actually, for our kids. So we've had our pairs, because we have four kids. We've had our pairs since, for 20 years, actually, literally for 20 years. And at first, there wasn't really no internet. And they would miss their friends and family at home

and they would talk on the phone with them once in a while. But then we realized like 10 years ago, it didn't matter. They were connecting with their friends and family in Germany all the time, all day long. And so, I don't know, it wasn't a problem, like home sickness was just not as big of a problem anymore. So that's wonderful.

And people who are really shy, it's wonderful for some of them because they can connect better and easier over social media. And certainly lots of people have started relationships over social media, great for them, people they would never have otherwise met their husbands and wives. But we also know that it's not, often it's not real connection. And it's interesting, it's like a snacking. So it satisfies our need for connection just enough that we don't maybe make the effort to truly connect in person.

There was a great article in the Atlantic about the sex recession. Did you see that? Oh, it's fascinating. It was a cover story. It was about how young people are having less sex now. And partly because I don't know. They're just on social media all the time and they're maybe they're texting or sexting, but they don't actually get together in person, which doesn't make sense to me at all, but that's supposedly a trend.

I don't know what the data are really. So that's not good. We're not connecting in person as much. But you know, there's a lot of research that needs to be done in this area. You know, like, how can we use social media to connect? I think it's great to connect with someone and then make a plan to meet in person. And I think that is happening. But that's, I really think, human beings were like, you can argue, were sort of evolutionarily hardwired to connect in person, right? Not obviously not to connect digitally. I contact touch smell, gesture is so important for connection. We obviously can't have that

in, you know, when we're texting. Although texting can also be like really fun in connecting. So we also did a study where we looked at how much people connected over different forms of media. So in person face to face versus like FaceTime, video chat, versus phone, versus social media text, web, I think that's it. And we found like this beautiful linear relationship. The most connection was with, well, actually the three most was in-person video and phone. Actually, video and phone were not distinguishable in terms of connection and positive emotion,

which is really interesting. I think maybe video and phone can approximate that in-person connection pretty well. Texting social media was a lot less connecting, not surprising. So just to button up this topic, if we have heard you, if we're convinced by what you're saying, the move to boost our connection quotient would be

to push ourselves out of our comfort zone a little bit, and is that it? comfort zone a little bit. And is that it? Yeah, a little bit. And then maybe more. And by the way, you can, let's say, you're married. And you know, if you're married for a while, you're not necessarily connecting with your spouse all the time.

Sometimes, if you have kids and you have jobs, you might be barely speaking to each other. I mean, even if you're sort of happily married. And so you could also try to connect more with the closest people in your life, maybe really, and when you talk to your spouse or your girlfriend or your best friend, like truly listen to them, or ask them questions that you don't maybe have forgotten to ask them, maybe you sort of are taking them from granted. So it's not just about sort of connecting with strangers.

But yeah, I think at the very least, try to connect a little bit more than you are, and I think all of us can connect more. Like the extroversion study, it's interesting, because we're doing another follow-up. And we're sort of thinking, like, what if, like, I'm a huge extrovert now, and we're sort of my students said, well, what if people already really extroverted? Are they really going to want to be more extroverted? And so we change our instructions to be like, well, you know, like, I'm an extrovert, but

I'm not necessarily extroverted in every situation. And I'm not necessarily assertive. Like, there might be situations that I wish I were more assertive in. And so you could always kind of be more sociable or spontaneous or energetic or assertive in some situations or with some people. And so we can all kind of use a little bit more of that. I think we all can connect a little bit more. Even if you're happily married and you have lots of friends,

you can still benefit for more connection. And when you're connected, it's like you feel life is richer, you're just happier, and when you're happier, you know this. You're more productive at work, you're healthier, you have better relationships, you know, you're more creative, like all kinds of good things come from being, having more positive emotions. You're more generous to others.

So it's a good thing. Stay tuned more of our conversation is on the way after this. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the build up, why it happened, and the repercussions.

What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them.

It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. It angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on Amazon music or the Wondery app. Let me step all the way back for a second and ask the question I usually start with, but I just was going with the flow. Why did you, you, become so interested and happy?

Three decades of studying this, what drove you to it? It was serendipitous, actually. So I started grad school. And the first day of grad school is with Stanford. I met with my advisor, his name is Lee Ross and I just saw him in Toronto, wonderful advisor. But his expertise is in conflict and negotiation. So totally different, I mean kind of the opposite to happiness. But that first day we walked around campus and I remember we went to the Rojda sculpture garden and was telling about what a great experiment, that a great experiment is like a great sculpture. And we just started talking about like what is happiness?

And you know, how, you know, what's the secret to happiness? And why are some people happier than others? And I don't know who, it was probably him. I mean, I don't remember who first asked the question. And back then, this was in 1989. There was really only one person who was studying happiness, Ed Deener, who's really kind of the most- Ed Deener. Ed Deener at Illinois. And he was really the founder of the Science of Happiness,

another wonderful person. But he was sort of setting it at that point, and really correlationaly kind of like, are women happier than men, or people who have more money happier than people have less money. And so we, you know, so we just were starting in this like total wild west, like no one really knew,

you know, we only knew very little. Actually, I was kind of insecure at first about it because I felt that all my other grad student friends were doing like real science, and I was just kind of exploring and it was all kind of fuzzy and seems like, seemed unscientific. But then with time, you know, we learn more and now happiness is a huge topic and lots of fields, there's economists studying happiness and neuroscientist studying happiness is become like, you know, a very serious field of inquiry. Was there anything in your personal background

that made the subject resonate with you? Well, a little bit. So I'm from Russia. I was born in the Soviet Union, and I immigrated. I was almost 10 when I came to the US. Where in Russia? Moscow. Moscow.

And in Russia, people, well, they report themselves as being less happy. But and they look less happy if you're walking on the street, and they have a lot of reason to being less happy. But, and they look less happy if you're walking on the street and they have a lot of reason to be less happy. But when you go in their homes, I mean, they're drinking and having fun and they're really connecting. We actually did a study showing that they're just less likely to express happiness to strangers. And there's a notion of the evil eye and, you know, you know, I don't know, supposed

to express happiness sort of publicly. Don't your culture is really interesting in Russia. I spent a little bit of time there. People, even people who are middle class have a house in the woods, and everybody goes there, you're sitting a hot tub. I mean, it's not fancy. And drink vodka, and you're really connecting, and you're making little dumplings together.

Were those called? Yeah, Pimini. Yeah, Pimini. But any key, yeah. I can't pronounce it. But there is this doing of stuff together that does seem very, family seem tight. I, you know, I, as a cameraman, I've worked with for a long time, who lives in Moscow, and I've done a bunch of stories with him and Max.

And, you know, his, him and he and his adult children will get together at their dacha, which again, not fancy. There is this connection embedded into the culture. Absolutely. It's a more of a collective, a collective as culture, I guess you would say. But, you know, when I came to the U.S., one of the, you know, I was like nine and a half. One of the first things I noticed is that people walk on the street and they smile at you. And if you go to the bank, people will smile at you. I remember getting stamps in Russia like when I returned liars later. And my Russian wasn't as good and the woman was just

yelling at me at the post office. And I'm like, why are you yelling at me? I mean, she was like really mad and she was angry. And like, anyway, and that would not happen here. And I was just so amazed that people would just smile at you and they say, and they say, it's a high. Like, why are they saying hi to me? So I was kind of fascinated by that.

And I think I'm a pretty happy person. I'm not like a 10, but I'm maybe an eight. So I wasn't studying it because I wanted to be happier, which sometimes, like sometimes students want to work with me because they say they want to be happier, which is usually a red flag for me. Because. Interesting.

I mean, you could do that, but I really want someone who wants to do the science. And they don't, this is not just because they want to be happier, which is usually a red flag for me. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, you could do that, but I really want someone who wants to do the science, and they don't, it's not just because they want to be happier personally, although you could do both, effectively. So yeah, I think I was already kind of interested in it. I mean, it's an interesting topic. I mean, most people find it interesting. So when I start talking to my advisor Lee about that, it just, yeah, I mean, it just was interesting, and then it really took off. So for the first about 10 years of my career, I really compared happy and unhappy

people kind of to see how different they are as a window and just sort of what really is the secret to happiness. I also had a whole line of research with Susan Olin Hooksam on another advisor I had was wonderful on rumination, which is kind of the flip side of the coin, but it's because it's really about sadness and depression. People hard to press or more like a woman or more like a ruminate, but also gave me a lot of insights into happiness too. And then 10 years after that, the media kept calling me and they would ask me, I still remember this, my dissertation was about social comparison. And I found that happy- The enemy of happy-

Yeah, so I found that happier people are less likely, well it's not that they're less likely to compare because we all can't help but compare, right? It's just out there. We can see other people are more beautiful that I'll sort of make more money or whatever, but they just don't care as much. They're just, they don't focus on it,

they don't dwell on it. They use their own standards more to come, you know, for their own success or whatever they want in life. But the unhappy people are like dwelling on it. And so that's what I found. And so journalists would call me and they'd say, well, what does this mean? Like, what should I tell my readers should we compare less? And I would say, well, first of all, that's a very applied question. I don't know. And I'd say, I don't know. They answer because that's a correlation. What

I found was a correlation. And just because happier people are less likely to compare themselves with others or don't care as much, doesn't mean that if you're unhappy, and if you did that, that you would also get happier, right? Because, you know, correlation does not imply causation. We know that. But then I realized like, wow, that's actually a really interesting question.

Yes, it's kind of applied, but it's also really... What do you mean by applied? Applied meaning, I was a basic science researcher, right? I didn't really want to study how to make people happy because that sounded like, I don't know, it didn't sound like basic science. But then I realized, that's false. It is basic science. Studying how happiness can shift over time, how it can go up and down.

That is an interesting research question, scientific question, but it's also applied in that it has like very clear implications for the average person, for you. So then my students and I started doing, you know, what we call interventions and try to get people to be happier. We actually never did the study where we asked people to compare less to other. So we probably, 20 years later, we should probably do that. So, yeah, so it was, it was starting to put us, as I said, how we started doing research and happiness, but, but like it led to so many questions because I said, at the beginning, there were so few people studying it, and then positive, the field of positive positive psychology was born, and I was at that one of the initial meetings with Marty Selegman and Mike Chicks at Mihai. And we're all so I can't just tell people who those are. Marty Selegman is the founder of knowing as the founder of positive psychology. He was a you pen. He's a pen. And then

Chicks at Mihai I can never pronounce his name Mike you called right. Mike, you called him Mike. I thought it was McAley or something like that. Yeah, but Mike is what, yeah. Okay. He wrote a book called Flow. Right. So he's written, yeah, lots of books, but he's famous for writing about Flow, which I think actually is a really beautiful concept, you know, where you're really so absorbed in what you're doing that you don't even notice the passage of time and in the sense of self. But the two of them really started this field.

But what was great about that is that they had all these meetings. So we would meet in Alcomal, Mexico, which is near, well, near two hours from Cancun in this beautiful place. And we would sit under Palappas and talk about, you know, happiness. But the best thing about those meetings is that we connected with other sort of younger people in the field. So Bart Friedrichson, for example, I'm reading her book right now. She wrote a book called Love 2.0. She's amazing. So she's become a good friend and collaborator.

So I connect to her. She's listening. I want you on the show. Yeah, I'll ask her to be on the show. So she's at UNC Chapel Hill. And I'm going to see her actually next week. We're going to meet at the Vatican for some meetings about happiness. So Bart Friedrichson, Ken Sheldon, who is at Missouri, who actually wrote a book called Optimal Human Being.

And he's wonderful too. So he became a collaborator. So wonderful people that I met there. And so we started collaborating together. And so there's all this synergy. And so this field was born and so now tons of people are studying that just happiness but gratitude, Dacquer Keltner also from Berkeley, who says gratitude and awe.

Yeah, but he also studies kindness. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so he was there and so it's just wonderful that now we all kind of know each other, we work together or we talk to each other about ideas, we see each other conferences. So that's really important, because that's how the field is created. I don't actually like the term positive psychology. I don't know.

I think it implies that the rest of the psychology is negative, but so I just use well-being science or gratitude science or what you're working on. Not happiness science. I mean, it could call it happiness science. It doesn't matter, yeah. Foundational question, what is happiness? Okay, I use a deeners definition of happiness. I think a lot of people do.

And the idea is that happiness is two components. And I think the best way of thinking about it is that you can be happy in your life and you can be happy with your life. Okay, to be happy in your life is basically to experience positive emotions on a regular basis. But positive emotions, I mean joy,

tranquility, enthusiasm, curiosity, affection, pride, et cetera. Doesn't mean you experience them all the time, negative emotions in particular circumstances are important also, you know, sometimes when you see injustice in the world, you need to be angry and that will prompt you to change things. And that happens a lot these days.

So, so, but positive emotions is the being happy in your life, being happy with your life is life satisfaction, sort of the sense that your life is good, that you're progressing towards your life goals. And I think you really need both of those components to be a truly happy person. There's two big questions I want to ask. I'll throw them both at you and then we can decide together what the order is. How would you sum up what you've learned in these 30 years? What are the primary learnings? And then the other question I wanted to ask and you can take them whatever order you want

is how good are you at applying your own advice or learning? Okay, I'll start with the first one. And that is a ridiculous question to ask because it would take me like three hours, six hours to answer. But we have plenty of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The next party, you know, we could go and talk about happiness for six hours. You're invited.

Okay, what have I learned? Well, as I said, the more I do research on happiness, the more I think it's about connection. It's all about connection. What have I learned in the last 30 years? And that it takes, okay, it takes effort to become happier. Do you know what people are putting that effort in, are thinking? I know, I think the Buddhist stuff and say the common denominator among all living beings is we all want to be happy.

And yet, do you think most people are actually thinking about how to become happy? No, and some people don't want to be happier for various reasons. Sometimes they just feel like they see the world, sometimes they just feel like they see the world as it truly is, and they don't want to, which, and they don't want to see it with rose colored glasses. You know, that's fine.

I don't want to, you know, I'm not forcing people to become happier. So I know plenty of people who are like, I'm fine with the way I am and I don't want to become happier. That's fine. But lots of people, I say the majority want to become happier. But just like anything, right, if you want to lose weight, be healthy. It takes effort and it's not like you can go on a diet for two weeks and you're done for the rest of your life.

You have to watch what you eat and how you move and exercise your whole life. Every week of your whole life, you need to be thinking about it, but ideally, it becomes a habit and you enjoy it. Same thing with happiness. Or if you want to have a strong marriage, if you want to raise happy and successful children, it's a lifelong kind of thing, pursuit, and the same thing with happiness. And some people do it, definitely, and sometimes we kind of fall off the wagon. I certainly know lots of people.

They try to be grateful, and then they're like, they get busy, you know, and they stop. I'm not, again, I don't want to force people to do that, but if you want to do it, it takes work, it takes effort. But ideally, that work is not like, it's not a bad kind of work. It's actually very rewarding kind of work and you can also make other people happy. And that's another way to think about it. That happiness is not selfish. When you're happier, you make your partner happier, you make your friends and your colleagues

happier. You're going to be a better, nicer, more productive person, a more generous person. So you're not just doing it for yourself, you're doing it for the people around you. I think that's one good way of thinking about it. So that's one take-home message. Effort. Yeah, effort. It takes work.

Another one is that it's different for everyone. There are lots. I've become a personality psychologist with time, not just a social psychologist as I started. Personality psychologists are interested in individual differences. Everyone is different. Not every happiness strategy is going to be right for everyone. And my first book, The How of Happiness, that was one of its main themes, is the theme

of fit. Because a lot of books will kind of say it's going to be about one thing. Like you need to do this to become happier. So gratitude, gratitude is amazing. And I think it's very happiness inducing, although it can backfire at sometimes. I just had it interview with someone about that, about Thanksgiving, and how it's not always good to sort of force people to be grateful. But it doesn't work for everyone. I actually find gratitude kind of hokey, and I don't like counting my blessings. I do like to sort

of write an email once in a while to someone who I care about and really express gratitude to them. So we might express gratitude very differently and some people just don't want to do that. That's fine. So we different kind of things work for different people. So I don't want to kind of, you know, I don't want to suggest the same strategy for everyone. So the second theme is really fit. Before we go to the third team, I'm going to force you to go down the tangent that you already started.

Why is it that gratitude can backfire? Sure. And by the way, I have an interest in how the pursuit of happiness can backfire. Like we already talked about how kindness can backfire, like if you're already a caring person. So gratitude can backfire when it makes you feel indebted. So it's it's very, very common when you express gratitude to people in your life, which is, by the way, what mostly gratitude is about. Sometimes we express gratitude for our health, our opportunities, et cetera, but mostly it's about people. It might make you feel indebted because you feel like you haven't really paid them back. Maybe you haven't really expressed the gratitude, the way you should have, in some languages,

the word grateful and the word indebted are the same word, which really is telling. And so by the way, indebtedness is not a bad thing. I mean, it might feel unpleasant, but it can trigger sort of motivation, inspiration, to sort of pay back, which is a good thing. Graduate can also make you feel uncomfortable, embarrassed as shame. Maybe you're uncomfortable,

uncomfortable, embarrassed about sort of needing help in the first place. It might be awkward when you share it. You know, one of my students, Lisa Walsh, is doing a series of studies about the effects of expressing gratitude on that person, on the other person, because it could be awkward for the other person and there are cultural differences in some cultures that we found. You know, it's kind of awkward to express gratitude.

So sometimes it's, but I think those unpleasant feelings are not necessarily a bad thing. It also can humble you. Actually, this is really interesting. We have a line of research and humility. When you are truly grateful for people in your life, it makes you feel like, you know, my success and my happiness is not just about me. It's about other people helping me, right? And that's humbling.

And in fact, we were listening a while ago to some like Oscar speeches and a lot of them are about that, right? It's like and it's believable like you feel like or they really humbled to get this award But I think some people are they're like really I could not have gotten it with like this team of people I often don't buy I've joked about this in the past I sometimes when people get up and say I'm humbled by this award. I'm like, yeah, you know look humbled to me And that's probably true, but I think for some people it's certainly very believable that it could happen Yes, if you're like I'm like, yeah, you don't look humbled to me. And that's probably true. But I think for some people, it's certainly very believable that it could happen. Yes. If you're like, kind of, yes, yes, yes.

Anyway, so gratitude can feel sometimes, you can feel unpleasant. And that's not necessarily a backfiring thing because it could then trigger you and inspire you and motivate you to do more and to be more generous yourself, to pay back. So, but any kind of strategy can backfire. And I mean, that's true for anything. And so I'm just interested in that. Like kindness can backfire because it might make the other person feel like they're needy, you know, vulnerable.

In fact, often there's some research by Nile Bulger at Columbia about visible versus invisible social support. So when social support, which is basically helping others, when it's visible, sometimes it could be really, it can backfire, it can make, you can make people feel sort of patronized, like here, let me help you. But when it's invisible, it can actually work better.

It's like you're helping people without like making it, you know, making it really obvious or something. Right, right. That's very interesting. That's very interesting. That's really interesting. I'm just, I'm processing how that may or may not play out in my own life. Like I'm thinking about my mom.

My dad's had some health problems recently and my brother and I have been very active in sort of just supporting our mom and we're not doing it invisibly. I think it would be impossible to do it invisibly. And she's just repeatedly thanking us all the time, but I could see a world in which she could start to feel like we're infantilizing her or something like that.

Right. So yeah, that's kind of, that seems like a very important balance to keep. I really think it is. I think it's a really important research finding. I wonder if kids and parents are one of the exceptions. If my kids were helping me a lot, I think I would just feel so wonderful about that. But maybe not always.

But yeah, you could help sometimes in a way where the person doesn't even know that you do something. Yes, right. Of course, then you wouldn't get the credit. Well, yes, but if you're a good person, right? You wouldn't care, but it's very hard not to, but you know, if you're, let's say you're helping lots of ways,

but you know, two of the 10 ways are invisible. Yeah. And maybe that could be a resolution we could all make. Like do something this week, where you're helping someone and they don't know it. Yeah, well. And that you will feel really good about yourself. I just, I'm an end of one here, but I have noticed in the,

I've noticed my mother will be quite effusive in thanking me and sometimes it kind of takes me back because I don't experience it as a pain in the butt. You know, my mother and my father were wonderful parents. I love my parents. And giving back to them actually is invigorating. And yeah, sometimes it's another thing in my to-do list, or if I have to hop on the phone to talk to my mother for an hour about various things. And then she's very thankful at the end. I was like, wow, I just had a hour on the phone. My mom. That's cool. So, yeah, even when I'm doing things that I know she's not gonna know about,

it still feels good in some way. Of course, of course it does. Now, not everyone is lucky to have the kind of relationship with their parents that you have. No, I know that. And for a lot of people, it really is very burdensome. You know, or friends or partners. But yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah, I mean, you'll be a better person if you get something out of helping people without any credit. And you have, I've heard countless stories about people, countless, I've heard stories about people who've had difficult relationships with their parents. And then they have to help them in their hour of need. Maybe some is maybe the 11th hour, and then they have to help them in their hour of need,

maybe the 11th hour, where the relationship can switch. There's an expression that I've mentioned on the show before, that I heard on a different podcast, Ezra Klein, has a podcast that I think is really excellent. And he had this woman on Alison Gopnik, I think, for sure. I've never met her, Alison, you're also invited on the show. And she said something that has really been reverberating through my skull recently, which is, you don't care because you love, you love because you care.

And it is the exercise, the practice of caring for somebody that generates the love. And, you know, I've always loved my parents, but I even in this time when, you know, the tables are turning and I'm a little bit more in loco parentis, I find there's more love there in some ways. That's beautiful. You should write about that in your book. You're going to write about it. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. There's a theory, an old theory in social psychology called self-perception theory. And it's when you sort of see yourself doing something and you make an attribution and explanation, you have to explain it. And so, like, look, you see yourself helping this person. And so you kind of conclude, well, I must really care about them. Or I must love them, because the behavior comes first and the emotion comes later.

So that's what this reminds me of. And but yeah, you can make anything a habit, I think. And so you first start doing it and first it's maybe it's unnatural. And then it's like just like extra virgin, right? You might act more extroverted and it feels very natural. Um, but then with time, it becomes more natural. So you and it all comes back to, and this is I think, I'm leading up the question here, you have said before it all comes back to connection, but I'm wondering whether as I posited gingerly earlier, whether in fact the level deeper than connection still is getting out of your own head. Whether that, you know, the source of so much of our suffering

is this rumination that you have studied, you study for a decade and connection does that for you. Right, right. I mean, that's a great question. And I'm gonna do, I'm gonna try to do some experiments to try to disentangle those things. Like for example, we could compare one group can connect with others, and another group

might just be very distracted. So for example, video games get you out of your own head. And they make a lot of people happier. We actually just found it was just a point-to-correlation, but the more college students spent on gaming apps, the happier they were. I mean, it wasn't significant because we hadn't, it was point two,

but we didn't have enough people in the study. So you can compare something like that or even just focusing on work. So it's not connecting to others, but it's getting yourself out of your head because you're really focusing on something else. And I don't think it's gonna be as enduring because the thing about connection

is that it's enduring and it produces these upward spirals, right? So you connect and then you feel like you care about them more and that will lead you to the next moment of connection and it can create lots of positive benefits over time, like downstream effects, whereas just pure distraction or absorption, something may not do that. Well, it's so interesting. Maybe it's a double helix, you know, self-reinforcing upward spiral, but I'm thinking of meditation. So meditation

Gradually we learn to focus on something that isn't our story It's usually the feeling of your breath coming in and going out or any sensory object that's arising and There are many ways in which this makes us happy but I think a foundational way is in that you're no longer taking your inner dialogue so seriously. And that has nothing to do in the moment with connection, and yet it makes you happier. Yeah, yeah, so that's a great comparison. But loving kindness meditation, which is maybe the most powerful one, I'm not sure if... I think some people have tried to compare, that really is you're trying to connect to it, not you know, others

sort of in your mind. Yes. So I think that's even more powerful, but that would be a great comparison. So you have trying to connect with other person, other people actually in person, you know, meditation, gaming, you know, work, I mean, those would be great to compare with. Maybe it doesn't matter, you know, I mean, maybe this is truly academic, but these two things seem super important. We are wired for social connection, as I've said many times, and I ripped this off from somebody.

A lonely human on the Savannah back in the day was a dead human, so we of course need, it's deep in our wiring to have the social connection. And we know, and you know better than anybody just having studied it so long, that rumination is makes us unhappy. So these two things seem somewhere near the core. I don't know which one is the other. I agree. So we're taking through the lists of, I asked you this ridiculous question of what are the things you learned after 30 years of doing this work. I did this dumb thing of, as I mentioned to you before we started rolling here, Grace Livingston, one of the producers on the show, wrote me, compiled for me this great research

pack on you. And I took all these notes on it, circle all these things, and then I left it in my office and didn't bring it here. But if my memory serves, one of the other big learnings was something about savoring positive experiences? Well, that's one of the strategies. So there's actually 10 or 12 or 20 strategies that we can use to be happy. And I focused today on gratitude and kindness and connection.

But savoring, that's actually not about connection. Truly living in the moment and savoring is basically extracting the maximum positive emotion from an experience. Now we can't live in the moment all the time. In fact, studies show that most people are more future oriented and I think that's appropriate. We're kind of focusing on what we're going to do next in our goals in life, but I think it's really great to also be a sometime when we are when I'm talking to you or when I'm with my kids Or when I'm watching a movie that I'm really in the present

I'm really savoring that what I'm eating across on you know I'm really savoring that and enjoying it not thinking what I have to do next And I think that will definitely that definitely maximizes happiness, but we have to have a balance I mean, there's a study that showed, for example, that people who are homeless are almost completely living in the moment. And that's actually adaptive for them, but it's not obviously that's not going to be adaptive for everyone. Yeah, it's probably because they're under enormous amount of stress. And they have to excel. They're living from one moment to the next. So they have to be present focused. So we can't do that all the time.

But when we are, and I realized this, actually, when I was, and this is relating to your last question, I think about, you know, whether I'm happier or how I relate the research to my own life, I realized when I was writing the How of Happiness and I was literally every chapter I would write, I would think because I spent so much time, it was like this deep dive into forgiveness, into kindness, into gratitude,, and to savoring, and to rumination, I would start thinking about my own life. It was kind of funny, like the kindness chapter. I'm like, I should do more lactocaineous for my husband.

And I literally started doing that. I'd like bringing something from the store, just a special something, things like that. Or like, take out the trash, I don't usually do that, but that's his work job. But with savoring, I noticed that was one I had two little kids. My two kids in college now, they were little, and then I have two other kids. Don't ask, but so they were like four and six, five and seven.

And I remember thinking like when I was with them, I was thinking like, oh, I have to take them to the orthodontist tomorrow, or I have to, you know, I was thinking about what I have to do next. So I wasn't really savoring, like I wasn't really living in the moment with them. And I remember thinking like, that's ridiculous. Like when I'm with them, I should just be all in. And then, you know, I could go do the other thing I need to do. And so it really made me realize how important it is. And I've tried to do that more.

Like when you're walking from your office, from your home to office, or the subway stop to your house, and you truly are savoring. Maybe you're savoring the architecture, or that bird song, or the flowers, or the music. You know, why not? And standing in line, standing in line. Hey, you know what, you? You know, and standing in line, you know, standing in line.

Hey, you know what, you can connect to the person standing next to you. I don't usually do that, but sometimes I do. Or you could just feel your feet on the ground or listen to the sound. Exactly. So do you engage in rumination around falling short at times? Falling short? Yeah. In terms of like, ah, here, I'm just a happiness evangelist. I'm the expert, but I'm having a crappy day. Well, I certainly ruminate not necessarily about that, I'm not happy enough, but I just, you know, about things that happen. Like, some conversation I had with someone,

oh, no, like that didn't go well or something had worked, or, you know, yeah, my family, you know, there's always things like right now, you know, there's a fire next to my, you know, near our city and the schools, I just found out this morning, the school's closed, you know, so I'm like thinking about that. And so I definitely ruminate about things. Yeah. And I, and I think that's fine. Like sometimes we have to kind of think about things. The problem with rumination is that it's going in circles. It's like you're going from A to B back to A to B. You're not problem solving, not getting any insight. So you have to go from rumination to problem-solving. Okay, what do I need to do next? Not just like, oh my god, this is so bad, this is bad, this is bad. Or like, oh my

god, this means that person really doesn't like me, you know. So I'm pretty good at stopping that, but of course I do that. I think most people do that at least once in a while. Some people remain at a lot. As you said earlier, we could talk for six or seven hours, which actually sounds really fun. But for this conversation, is there something that I should have asked you but didn't? I'm wondering if there's another take home message that I wanted to tell you about.

I mean, not really. There's lots of, we actually covered lots of my, certainly my recent interests. I think we covered really a lot of ground. Yeah, it's really been great talking to you. It's really fun talking to you, especially, I'm so impressed given that you exerted yourself quite a bit over the weekend and you're in good form.

But I feel like we really connected. Yes, that is true. So in closing, can you plug everything that if people wanna do a deep dive on on you can you just plug all your books web Presence etc etc wonderful. Yeah, so I have two books. I'm trying to work in a third one But that's gonna be a while and they're the how happiness about how to become happier and then the myths of happiness And that's about some misconceptions people have about happiness. I think that's better to read second And if you're interested in everything I do, including my academic research and my

media stuff and interviews, my website is sonialubumirski.com. Now that's kind of a hard name to, or and also Dr. Sonia. Dot something. Well, whatever. We'll put it in the show notes. Put it in, yeah, yeah. So, and I'm a professor at UC Riverside. So, the easiest way to find me and find my email, actually, I love to get emails for people and I do respond sometimes very briefly, but I do respond. It's just go to the website for University of California Riverside, Psychology, Faculty, and I'll meet I'm there. So, it's easy to find me. Wow, you're okay answering emails.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just, I answer every email, but I often answer very briefly. Okay, I don't answer emails. Go for it, try it. I'm better person than you are. Yes, well that, that, we should, but I don't answer phone messages from strangers, so we'll need more.

Need for things, yeah. Such a pleasure to sit and talk to you, thank you. Thank you, pleasure to talk to you. As I. Thank you. Pleasure to talk to you. As I said, I love that chat with Sonia. And if you want more from her, she's got some content up in our app. She's done some talks. If you go to the talk section of the app and she's writing a piece for the newsletter, which comes out on the 10% weekly newsletter for which you should sign up and her piece comes out on Sunday, February 9th. We've got some voicemails this week. If you, before we do them, I just want to tell you if you want to call and leave your own voicemail. Here's the number 646-883-836-646-88383-326.

Love the voicemails. Here's number one. Hi Dan, thanks for listening to my message. I come to meditations from a more scientific perspective, but I recently attended my first retreat that was definitely more on the spiritual side of things. And I appreciate your work because it seems to bridge those two worlds. And I actually ended up leaving the retreat early because I was having

trouble reconfiling some things and as much as I wanted to go deeper into my practice I also just got scared of the unknown and ended up leaving so I'm still working through some of that but something that came up on the retreat that I hadn't experienced before is that while I was sitting, I just started rocking back and forth, and I couldn't control it, I could stop it if I wanted to, but I wasn't doing it, it was just happening. And it's continued to happen in my practice as I returned home, so I'm wondering if you could help me answer from a scientific standpoint what the heck is going on with that. Thanks.

Okay, so much in that question is a great question. First of all, I can hear, I think, some sort of guilt, maybe some hope not, but maybe a little shame about having left the retreat early. To the best of my ability, I wish I could just surgically remove that from your mind. It's super brave to go on a retreat. They're hard and maybe tough stuff came up for you and you decided the best thing to do was leave. And so what?

So you can go again or not. It's just like at the top of the show when I was referencing the fact that we're now into February and by now most of us have failed, quote unquote, at our resolutions. The quote unquote failure does not preclude you from starting again. And starting again is one of the most incredibly powerful life hacks. So you were super brave to go on retreat and you can always do it again if you are moved to do so. The rocking back and forth is very common. I happens to me. There's a word for it in the ancient language of Polly, reputed to have been spoken by the

Buddha, and the word is P-T-P-I-T-I. I think it translates into rapture, but it's known to happen when a meditator gets concentrated, when the chatter in the mind goes down, and the meditator is, or a yogi is getting better at staying focused on the object of meditation. Usually that's the feeling of breath coming in and going out, or it couldn't be the phrases that we send in so-called loving-kindness meditation. As you get concentrated, the body and the mind have all sorts of interesting reactions.

And one of them is this sort of rocking back and forth that sometimes accompanied by a body high, it can be sort of a rhythmic rocking back and forth or it can be a little spasm of movement, very, very, very common. I once talked about this with Joseph Goldstein, I've talked about it many times with Joseph Goldstein. He has pointed out that some of us like this feeling of rocking back and forth and we may be feeding it, sort of unconsciously. So that's a thing to look forward in meditation. But in terms of the question you actually asked, which was, what's the science behind this? I have no earthly idea. I don't know.

There are so many things about meditation, and this kind of connects back to some, the top of your question, which is sort of the balance between the scientific and the spiritual. There are, as I've sort of grown in my practice, I've retained my skepticism to, I think, a large extent, but I've become most sort of, maybe, embarrassingly open-minded about things about, and it's really not that embarrassing. It's a more of a sort of open-minded, respectful agnosticism about things that I might have reflexively rejected here to four. And things like PT just raise all sorts of questions. Why does that happen? I have no idea. Does that mean that I'm open to all sorts of unprovable metaphysical claims? Like, you know, if I say something mean right now,

I'm going to be reincarnated as a goat? No. Am I slightly more open to those claims? Yeah, I'm a little bit more open, but I still, at my backstop is, I'm definitely not gonna be pounding the table about points where I don't have any evidence. So, there was a lot there to your question, but one way for you to look at PT, and I hesitate to say this because it can feed the sort of striving mind

of a type A meditator, but one way to look at PT or the rocking back and forth is assigned to actually your meditation is going well. The mind is concentrated, but I would advise you not to get too attached to it because things are always changing. All right, great question. Keep up your practice. Try another retreat if you're feeling brave.

Here's voicemail number two. What's up, Dan? This is Zach from Austin, Texas. I was wondering what you would think about combining like meditation retreat with a rehabilitation like 30 day rehab program. If you know if any of those exist and just your thoughts on it. Thanks. Bye. So I hesitate to say too much because I'm not and I've never been to rehab and I don't know, I just don't know that much about the process. What I do know is that many of my friends who've been and many people I've met who've been, and this could be rehab for

drugs and alcohol, I've also been to rehab centers for people who could have both addiction and also underlying psychological issues and that sort of comorbidity as I understand it quite common. Meditation from what I can tell is increasingly common in these contexts. And that makes a lot of sense to me. I'm thinking right now about the work of my friend, Judd Brewer, Dr. Judson Brewer, who's at the Brown University and has been from, is an expert in addiction. And for many years, it's been looking at the ways in which we can use mindfulness and meditation to not be so caught up in our desire to say smoke or use opioids.

And he's had a lot of success in using this with patients. So I think I am really optimistic based on the evidence I've seen out in the world that this is a great combination. I don't know of anybody who's specifically running 30 day rehabs or 28 day rehabs and combining it with a meditation retreat. But I do think the introduction of meditation and mindfulness into this context sounds extremely promising to me. Really appreciate the call, Zach, thank you.

And I just want to remind everybody, we love your voicemails. So here's the number again, 646-883-836. We'll put that in the show notes if you don't have a pen. Before I go, just want to say a big thanks to all the people who work really hard to make this show a success, Ryan Kessler, Samuel Johns, Grace Livingston, Lauren Hartzog, Tiffany Oma, Hundro, big thanks to all of you,

big thanks to everybody who's listening, and we'll see you next week. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early next week. Here you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.