The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 151: Neuroscientist Reveals The 3 Things You Need To Do For A Fulfilling Life: Tali Sharot

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

In this moment, neuroscientist, Professor Tali Sharot, discusses why happiness is not the most important thing in life, and actually it is just 1 of 3 critical factors for a complete life. Most people think that the meaning of life for humans is to try and find the maximum amount of happiness, however this just factor one. Tali says that the second factor is meaning. Often in your life you do a task not because it will give you happiness but because it gives you a sense of completeness that comes from meaning. Finally, Tali says that we need what is called a ‘psychological rich life’, which is basically a varied life. She says that this diversity in life is absolutely crucial as humans have evolved to have a desire to explore and face uncertainty. Listen to the full episode here - Apple - https://g2ul0.app.link/UxbjZ8pxAHb Spotify - https://g2ul0.app.link/gfyuxwlxAHb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Tali: https://affectivebrain.com/?page_id=161 You can pre-order Dr. Sharot’s new book, ‘Look Again: The Power of Noticing What was Always There’, here: https://amzn.to/3SEbVp5

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. You know, when you started studying neuroscience and psychology, were there some like fundamentals about the nature of life and the nature of human beings that, I'm sure there's so many of them, were there any like real fundamentals that were debunked or reversed as it relates to your own personal perspective, whether it's about personal responsibility or about, I don't know, agency or

autonomy, about how much control we have, about how much influence we have over our happiness? Were there anything foundational that had a real impact on your personal life? You know, there's one thing that recently is just, it's just something that I recently changed my mind on. And that was actually while writing the current book that I'm writing, which I'm writing together with Cass Seinstein, who is the co-author of Nudge. And it was actually, in fact, about happiness. And I remember this clearly. I was in a workshop at the LSC, and they did a survey. They asked, who thinks that happiness is the most important thing, that everything you do is for happiness? And everyone had to stand on a scale. If you think like it's all about happiness, stand here.

And if you think it's not at all, stand here. And I was standing here. I was thinking anything that we do, we do for happiness and that all that matters. And while writing this book, actually, we both came to the conclusion. And for me, it was a change of mind. The happiness is actually one of three factors that matter.

So one is happiness. The second is meaning. A lot of things you do because it gives you meaning, and it doesn't necessarily give you happiness. Sometimes the two go hand in hand, right? But sometimes it doesn't. So you could do work that's meaningful, and it doesn't necessarily give you happiness,

and sometimes it does. And then there's a third factor that's also really interesting, which is called a psychological rich life, which is basically variety. A lot of people just do things for diversity, for variety, to try a lot of different things. And again, sometimes it goes hand in hand with meaning and happiness, but sometimes it doesn't. And that kind of explains why many times we make choices that we understand is not necessarily going to gain us more happiness, but it will gain us some other thing, one of these two other things that together, I think, is what brings a good life, right? And that is something I think I changed my mind on that it's we're not actually motivated for happiness probably defined as a good

feeling kind of joy why variety why do humans care about having variety in their life um i mean there's kind of the unconscious evolutionary reason give me that one um so i think it's exploration right to move forward both as an individual and as a society, we have to explore a lot of different things. Some of these things are not necessarily going to give you happiness immediately or for you at all. But a lot of times, if you explore a lot of things, you will find something that is going to be very important, maybe for yourself, maybe for our species. I always give kind of, you know, the really simple example of our ancestors leaving Africa to explore the rest of the world, right? They had, I mean, why would they do that? I mean, either they thought there was something better for them to find, right? And it was probably very hard to do, but that's just kind of an example of exploration, right? You're

trying different things. And I can see it in my own life, right? I often do something and then I kind of, okay, I had enough with this, let's try something else. And so variety is kind of a factor that I'm trying to maximize. It's kind of a balance, right? It's exploration and exploitation, right? So you need to do a little bit of exploitation because if you found something that works and something that you're good at you don't want to just leave it be but on the other hand if you just stick with one thing you may be missing a whole other a lot of different things it's like farming and hunting it's like the analogy from that book who moved my cheese when i think about um variety my brain was going well i know some people that get so caught up in their comfort

zones that they never go exploring. And so the thought that we'd be motivated or fulfilled by variety, by new things, by adventure, seems to sit in conflict with a lot of people that I know that are like stuck in a situation and maybe not happy, but there's more comfort in the known than they are leaving that place and venturing out. Right. Because exploration is risky because there's uncertainty. You don't know what's going to happen. Risk means that there's a high likelihood of both good and bad and you just don't know where it's going to go. And so that can cause fear. Uncertainty is a state that usually people don't like and don't enjoy.

And that's definitely something that keeps you in place. And in fact, one of the kind of points that we make is that it seems that people are not making enough change in their life. That a lot of times if people think about changing something in their life, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's a profession. It could be something stupid like, you know, the color of your hair or something like that. There is a great fun little study that was conducted by the Freakonomic, Stephen Levitt. What he did, he wanted to see if on average,

making a change, when you think you might want to make a change, this is not just like, oh, I think you should get divorced when you're not even thinking about it. But when you're thinking about a specific change, on average, are you more likely to be happy if you go ahead with a change or not? Right. And this is a tricky thing to study because normally you could say, well, let's test people. Let's ask them how happy they are before and after they decide to make a change after they made a change. And then also let's do the same for people who didn't make a change and see who's happier.

That's not going to work because people who go on and make a change, they probably had more reason to do it, right? So it's not kind of a good experimental design. So he wanted to randomize whether people are going to make changes or not. So what he did is he had people go online and he asked them, are you thinking about a change? And it could be small and it could be big. And they said what the change was. And then he had them flip a virtual coin. So heads, you go with a change, you know, you take the new job. Tails, you don't. The likelihood that people would change if they got the heads, the change was 25% more than the people who didn't.

So basically people were thinking about a change. They did it. They flipped the coin. If they got the change, they're more likely to have a change. And indeed, people who went actually and committed and did the change were happier than people who didn't. So that kind of suggests that we're probably not making enough changes than we should be, potentially because it's scary, right? Trying something new is scary

and sometimes it's not gonna work. I think that's so much in friends of mine and like lots of DMs from young people who are in a situation where they're, it's certain, but it's miserable. And they have a potential option to like, go through that dark chasm to this potentially better place,

but they're choosing to stay in that certain miserable situation, whether it's a relationship, a job, whatever it might be. And I've always felt that our relationship with uncertainty has a huge sway on our overall outcomes. And what I mean by that is people who are okay with jumping into that sort of dark hole where there isn't certainty about their outcomes and just persisting because they'd rather not be in certain misery, end up having better lives. But I don't know how to get people to have a better relationship with uncertainty.

I mean, that's a compelling argument. I can say to them, but you know, just stats and facts, because I've read your books, aren't enough. There needs to be some kind of emotional pitch to them to get them to dive nose first into uncertainty. Any advice? Yeah, that's a really good question. First of all, I mean, you're absolutely right. There's individual differences on how comfortable we are with uncertainty and how comfortable we are with taking risks. So I think probably it would be something like, to some extent, helping them through the change. So it might be difficult to change people's relationship with uncertainty in a global general way, but perhaps every single time when there's a specific issue in front of

them of what they want to change, kind of like helping them along the way with that change, holding their hand and, you know, so to speak, is probably the only thing that you could do, right? To be like, I'm here for you, whether it's a friend or a mentor. In their mind in that moment, the thing that's causing the resistance, you describe it as fear, right? Yeah. So what's the opposite of fear? Is it hope? You know, it's not an opposite.

Okay. But I think it is something that will be likely to drive you to take that step. And it's not so much just hope, it's optimism, which kind of takes us to some of my research. So, okay, what's the difference between hope and optimism? So hope is you want something to happen in the future, right? I want to get that job. I want to find that relationship. Optimism is believing that I'm likely to get that job. I'm likely to find that wonderful relationship. And it's absolutely true that if you're optimistic, you think this is gonna go somewhere good,

then you're more likely to go ahead and try that, which makes sense, right? Because my expectation is gonna change my actions and my actions is gonna change my outcomes, right? Because if I think, well, I am going to, I'm going to try for this competition because I think I'm likely to, to get something, then I go ahead and I try. If I think, well, there's no, no chance I don't try. And so of course I'm not going to get it. So it's a bit of a self-fulfilling optimism. And so then the question becomes, if I go back to your question, then the question becomes, well, how do I enhance optimism? Right. So there's actually, and, and, and that's,

it's a good idea because enhancing optimism will cause you to take more risk. I want to know how to enhance optimism in all of my team members, all of my companies. So there's a few ways to do it. Um, one way is a sense of control. We do have, we are more optimistic about things that we believe we have control over because we do think that when we have control, that means we can steer the wheel in the right direction, right? And so if we can cause people to get a sense that they have control, and if it's about your team, is for example let's say they there's a project that you want someone to work on so you can just tell them to do that project or you can have them choose to do that project right and you can guide them to the choice that you think is correct

but if they believe that they made the choice that enhances a sense of agency enhances the change of the sense of control and they become more committed to that option. So you can give them, oh, well, there's two options, two projects you can work on. Which one do you prefer? And again, you can frame it in a way that maybe perhaps will make them more likely to choose one over the other.

But once they made the choice, it's amazing. We've done studies on this, where we give people options. For example, going on holiday. Do you want to go to France or Rome, right? Thailand or Hawaii? If they make a choice, there are two things that are exactly, they want it the same. They really want to go Hawaii. They really want to go to Florida. But once they make a choice, seconds after making a choice, they now believe that Hawaii is much

better than they did just a few seconds ago before making a choice, and that Florida is not that great, right? Because once you make a choice, immediately your preferences change. You rationalize why that choice was great, and now you're more committed to it. So that's true for holidays, but it can be true for work as well, right? Should I go work on project A or B? If I make the choice, I become more committed to it, and it doesn't work if someone else makes a choice for you. If someone else makes a choice for you, don't get into this rationalization mode where you have to rationalize your choice because it wasn't your choice. And once I feel I have control, then kind of that also enhances my expectations of how good it's going to be. But it also boosts your happiness, right?

Because I read about the study in care homes where they had an agency floor and the other expectations of how good it's going to be. But it also boosts your happiness, right? Because I read about the study in care homes where they had an agency floor and the other floor where people didn't feel like they had a lot of agency and choice over their lives. And there was a pretty significant impact on levels of happiness, right? Yes. So what they did is they gave them some plans. Is that the study? Yes. Yes. Yes, absolutely. So when we feel we have control, we have agency that enhances well-being. When we feel our agency has been restricted, that causes anxiety, right? And this is one of the reasons that people are quite anxious on planes. It's not just because we fear the worst, but because we have no control at all, right?

No control about when are we going to get there? What are we going to eat, right? And that causes a lot of anxiety. So by enhancing agency and control, you are lifting people's well-being, happiness, and reducing stress and anxiety. Yeah, and that study with the plants, it works with kids as well, right? You can give kids some plants to take care of or have kids make their own salads. They'll be more likely to eat it. So that's just a few examples.