The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 100 - A Neuroscientist Explains The Surprising Way To Be Happy TODAY!: Tali Sharot

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

What is the optimism bias? This is overestimating the good things that will happen in your future, despite all the evidence that may go against it. This is a systematic mistake that we all make as we always expect the future to be better than it ends up being and we underestimate the negatives that could happen. However, in this moment Dr. Tali Sharot discusses how the optimism bias can be a positive as our expectations of future happiness affect our happiness right now, it can motivate you to try harder to make this a reality. As Dr. Sharot says, “what we believe in our mind, changes the way we behave and the way we behave in the world changes the world”. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/PVr36vSM2xb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. The optimism bias from what I understood is that bias to believing that the future will be good. Is that accurate or is that inaccurate? Yeah, kind of. So optimism on its own means... You're agreeing with me even though I'm wrong.

No, no, no, you're not wrong. I think what you mean is right. Thank you. I'll just give you the scientific definition. So, yeah, so optimism is believing that, you know, that positive things will happen. The optimism bias means that you're either like, that you believe these optimistic things, these good things will happen, but the evidence suggests otherwise. So it's actually a mistake, right? The optimism bias. So usually we define it as overestimating the likelihood of positive events happening. So you're overestimating how much money am I going to get with my first job when I leave graduate school, right of us and underestimating the likelihood

of negative events happening. So I'm underestimating my likelihood of getting COVID, of getting cancer, of being in a car accident, going bankrupt, whatever it is, based on whatever evidence is there. So optimism bias does mean mistakes. So the word bias means a systematic mistake. So obviously when we think about the future, we can't be right most of

the time because the future is uncertain and we don't know what's going to happen. So we're going to be wrong a lot of times when we predict the future. But the optimism bias means that the mistakes that we make tend to systematically be that we expect it to be better than it ends up being. So that's basically the optimism bias, right? I expect it to be better than it ends up being. So that's basically the optimism bias, right? I expect it to be better than it ends up being, which sounds like a bad thing, but it's not necessarily so. I mean, the word bias, people usually, because it is a mistake, people usually think that that means it's not a good thing, but it's not necessarily so. It can actually have both positive and negative outcomes to it. So if you think about the positive, if I expect good things in my future, specifically good things, even though I'm overestimating the likelihood of these things happening, even if I think, oh, I'm, you know, I'm going to make

1 million in the next year. And of course, that's way more than I'm going to. But that then motivates you, right? So having these positive expectations motivates you to try harder. It's a bit like, I think I'm going to get the gold. I'm more likely to get the silver. So that's kind of the idea. And it also enhances your happiness and wellbeing, right? Because how you're feeling now is a lot to do, not necessarily with what you're doing at the moment, but what you think you'll be doing later, right? How you're feeling now is like, okay, you might maybe feeling nice talking here, but a lot of it is,

what do I think I'm gonna do later on this evening, next week, next month, in a year? Our expectations of where we will be in the future affects our happiness today, right? And so if I have these positive expectations of the future, even if they're not going to happen, they make me happier today. This is why there's a really cool study

that was done at Harvard where they were asking people who are about to go on vacation, how happy they were every day before vacation and have every day during vacation and every day after vacation for a week. So a week before vacation every day, a week during vacation every day,

a week after vacation every day. So what was the happiest day, do you think? The day before they went. Right, exactly right. The day before vacation, they were still in the office working on the computers. But on their mind, they were already on vacation. And in their mind, it was wonderful. And when they went on vacation, it was good.

But it wasn't as good as it was in their mind the day before. So it's the anticipation of these goods. So it's an optimism bias because they thought the vacation is going to be better than what it ended up being. But that brought them the happiness beforehand. Right. And also probably enhance the likelihood that they will go on vacation, which is a good thing as well. So does that mean that we should in our relationships, in our teams, et cetera, we should try and give people things to look forward to? Absolutely.

Absolutely. And I think that there's two things. You kind of want things in the diary, right? So having a vacation in the diary that's going to happen in a month makes you happy today. So whatever it is, whatever you're doing for that matters to your team, have what I call anticipatory events, right? Things that they could look forward to that will make them happy today. But also I think, you know, a lot of times I do motivate my team by telling them that I think this project is going to work really well. I mean, even I think it's going to work pretty well, but I might like exaggerate a little bit because, you know, that enhances motivation and who knows, you know, maybe it will work even better than I expected. So it's good to kind of enhance kind of the expectations and also to have these things that people can look forward to. And of course it works the other way. So also if you're dreading something that's going to happen tomorrow, next week, right? You have to go to the dentist or

whatever bad thing is happening is going to get there and that it's going to affect your mood today. So dread of things in the future and anticipation of the good stuff is all affecting how we feel at the moment. How contagious is optimism and conversely pessimism in life generally? If I'm around a group of pessimists or I'm around a group of optimists, what kind of contagious impact is there on me? Yeah. Any emotion is contagious. Anything, sadness, anxiety, joy, everything is contagious, fear. And it happens really, really fast and in an unconscious way, right? It could be even like you're sitting in the tube and someone in front of you is looking fearful. You straight away will feel fearful yourself. First of all, you will mimic the expression of the person that's in front of you without noticing it.

So if you look fearful, I'm going to start mimicking the same facial expressions. And that facial expression will make me feel fearful. Because our brain is learning from how our face, it's a signal and it goes both ways. It's like a feedback loop. And there's a good reason for it because if someone is afraid, there might be something dangerous around us. they know that they know that the other monkeys are taking a cue from them so they fake fear so they go and then when all the monkeys run off they go and get the food because they've like they've like got to level two where they realize that they're all taking cues from each other and i remember that documentary thinking wow like you know because all the monkeys would run the minute one monkey made a reaction and that's pretty much what you're describing there right yeah exactly and it works for good things as well if someone looks excited you're like you will feel excited as well you don't know why but if they're excited there, right? Yeah, exactly. And it works for good things as well. If someone looks excited, you're like, you will feel excited as well. You don't know why,

but if they're excited, there might be something good around, right? Is this why people yawn together? I was thinking about yawns are contagious. It's just mimicking. We do facial expressions. We mimic any kind of facial expression and bodily expressions as well. Yeah. I'm trying not to now, but, but okay, so why is this really important to think about? Because let's say you want to, you're managing your team. If you're stressful and you're going to start like, I don't know, even like shouting or raising your voice or they're going to get more stressed as well, right? So it's true. It's a bit like the monkeys.

You can actually change at least how you look in terms of the emotions. You need to think about what emotion am I conveying? Because the emotion that you are conveying is going to then affect how people around you feel. So there's a little bit of kind of emotional control that is helpful too. You mentioned that you might exaggerate a little bit the belief in a positive outcome to your team members and i think that's and i hope they're not listening yeah well i think we all do sometimes i mean i usually believe it because i think i have a bit of a bias optimism bias myself but um that's in part because of i guess

chapter three in the optimism bias where you talk about how self-fulfilling optimism is. And there was some really, really staggering statistical sort of studies and experiments that have been done to prove that optimism really is a self-fulfilling thing. And it kind of makes me think about this concept of manifestation. People always talk about manifestation. And it seems that it's in my mind always been this kind of pseudoscience. You just think about something and then it happens. What's your view on manifestation? Is it true?

Yeah. So it's not magic. It's not that I'm thinking something in my mind and the waves are going to change what happens in the world. The reason if you believe something, the likely they will happen is higher is because you then change your actions. Right. believe something, the likely they will happen is higher is because you then change your actions, right? You think, I think, you know, my startup is going to really succeed. And that then changes your actions. You're more likely to go out there and tell other people, right? So if you think it's going to succeed, you're more likely to convey that information to investors and so on. They can see your kind of confidence. They'll be more likely to invest in you, right?

You put more time in, you put more effort in. And that's why it can have an effect on the outcomes. So it's not kind of a magic kind of thing. It's just that what we believe in our mind changes the way we behave and the way we behave in the world changes the world. So that's why that is.