The Dr. Hyman Show - The Science Of Creating Happiness with Laurie Santos

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

Over 40% of college students report feeling too depressed to function on a daily basis. Over 60% are overwhelmingly anxious. This was not always the case. COVID-19 aside, what is it about our modern times that is leading to stress instead of joy? One of my observations is that we’re meant to be human beings, not humans doing, yet we’re constantly just trying to get things done, to accumulate more possessions, to achieve power and success. But we can reframe our perspective of what matters and focus more on simply being—on sitting, listening, noticing—to improve our happiness and satisfaction in life. Today’s guest on The Doctor’s Farmacy, Laurie Santos, is the perfect person to talk to about actively working on increasing our happiness.  Laurie Santos is a Professor of Psychology and the Head of Silliman College at Yale University, as well as the host of the critically acclaimed podcast The Happiness Lab. After observing a disturbing level of unhappiness and anxiety among her students, she began teaching a course entitled "Psychology and the Good Life," which quickly became the most popular course in Yale's history and has also reached almost 2 million people from all over the world online. Although she’s now best known as a "happiness expert,” Santos's research explores the much broader question of "What makes the human mind unique?" and often includes comparing the cognitive capacities of non-human animals to humans. Here are more of the details from our interview:  When Laurie began to notice the mental health crisis among her students (2:18) How we are misguided about what will make us happy by our culture and our intuition (5:32) The happiest countries in the world and one likely reason why the United States doesn’t make the list (9:09) How happiness is created through gratitude practices and serving others (12:17) Using social media and our technological devices more productively (22:49) Hacking your stress through your breath, diet, and more (40:24) Exercise your compassion muscle and fight compassion fatigue through metta, or loving kindness meditation (44:34) Creating new habits and rituals to build happiness (50:43) Ways in which the coronavirus pandemic is changing and affecting us (55:08) Post-traumatic growth (58:00) Check out Laurie’s podcast, The Happiness Lab at https://www.happinesslab.fm/ and follow her on Twitter @lauriesantos

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Gratitude gets us to be a little bit more future-oriented. So not only does it feel good and boost our well-being, it also helps us make healthier choices in general in life too. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman and that's Pharmacy with an F. F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. And if you are unhappy, depressed, trying to find the meaning of life or trying to figure out how to survive this crazy pandemic of

COVID-19, lockdown and all its psychological, emotional and spiritual consequences, this conversation is going to matter to you because it's with an incredible thought leader in the space of happiness, Lori Santos, who's a professor of psychology and the head of Sillman College at Yale University. And she's a host of one of the top podcasts in the world, The Happiness Lab, which is an awesome title. And you saw so much unhappiness in your students and anxiety, and you decided to teach a course called Psychology and the Good Life, which turned out to be the most popular course in Yale's history and has reached almost 2 million people from all

over the world through an online version through Coursera. You are known as a happiness expert and your research explores lots of questions including what makes the human mind unique and includes comparing our cognitive function and happiness with that of non-human primates and some other animals like dogs. So quite a diverse background. And I, you know, looking at your story, Laurie, I can't help, and your work, I can't help but think that somehow you were, you know, influenced by Buddhism and that, and that there's, you know, you're this Yale professor, but underneath it, you're sort of like a kind of meditation guru, spiritual guide that is masquerading as a university professor at an Ivy League college. So how did that happen? And what drove you to sort of come to the conclusions you came to about life, your life, and just happiness in general?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think part of it, it's actually honestly less Buddhism. I've come around to Buddhism recently. It's more, it's more Stoicism, which I think is a different, yeah, exactly. A different Anglicist philosophy that I think has lots, lots of similar wisdom to Buddhism actually framed a little differently, but very close. So, but no, but the journey for me really started in this new role that I took on as head of college. So Yale's one of these weird schools like Hogwarts and Harry Potter, where there's like colleges within a college. There's like the Slytherin and Gryffindor and kind of thing. So I'm head of Silliman College, but that means I live on campus with students. Like my house is in the middle of our big courtyard. I eat with

them in the dining hall. So I was really seeing students up close and personal. So even though I taught at Yale for like 18 years, I wasn't really in the trenches with students. And that meant that I was kind of missing this mental health crisis that was imploding around me. And I just kind of wasn't paying attention to it. Right now, nationally, there's over 40% of college students who report being too depressed to function most days. Over 60% say that they feel overwhelmingly anxious. And more than one in 10 has seriously considered suicide in the last year. And so this is what I mean, this is true nationally, but it was what I was seeing in the trenches at Yale. And I was like, this is just incredible. It's so different than when I went

to college. And it's not, you know, what some people think it's like, you know, a couple snowflakes who, you know, can't handle getting a B plus, like this is like a national crisis where suicidality is that high. And so I kind of just retrained in some of the scientific work on well-being. It's kind of like, well, what do the experts really say about quick and dirty interventions that are evidence-based that I can get these students to do to try to deal with some of this crisis? And so I kind of slapped this whole class together with a lot of this stuff, you know, thinking that 30 or so students would take it. And so you can imagine my surprise when I walked into a concert hall filled with my students, because over a thousand students, one out of every four students was

trying to get into the class. And so it was a little surreal, but I think it showed us that the students are voting with their feet. Like they don't like this culture of unhealthiness and feeling so overwhelmed. They really wanted to do something about it. And I think we're to the point, they didn't want like platitudes, like they wanted some evidence-based approaches to feeling better. I think that's what the class offered. Incredible. And, you know, you talk about the elements of happiness that are quite different than what we have in our culture, which is, you know, consumerism, accumulation of stuff, money, power, success. And you talk about something very different, which is the power of investing in experiences that may be fleeting, but actually provide lasting value. And that is

far more important than getting stuff. And you sort of looked into why that is for human beings. I remember when I was in college, my best friend and I were really close. And he, his mother, once when I was at his house said, Mark, the secret of life is happy memories. And so I had this sort of bifurcated choice every time I was making a decision about what to do. Was this going to end up being a happy memory or was I going to forget about this? If I was going to kind of sort of like, so I followed my way through college on Mark Twain's advice, which is I never let my, I never let my education get in the way of learning or something like that. What was that quote? I forget, but you know, it was, it was great. I found that to be really helpful and it sort of guided my whole way of being. And I think it's led to a fairly high level of happiness. But it's obvious, it's success, it's money, you know, for my college

students, it's perfect grades, you know, it's the perfect body. It's like, it's not about health and vitality, or just presence, or, you know, good memories. It's about getting the marks of like, you know, what is successful in a capitalist culture. And so that would be one thing if it was correct. But I think all the science suggests it's absolutely wrong. And there's a couple different markers of it. I mean, one is what's known as the Easterlin paradox, which is this economics paradox where folks thought, as GDP goes up, happiness should probably go up in a country over time and so on. And then it turns out like, not so, right? Like, absolutely not so, right? If you look at the amount of stuff Americans have had over the last few decades, since the 1950s, our houses have gotten bigger.

We've gotten more stuff. We've gotten more gadgets. But if anything, happiness overall has kind of gone down, and risk of mental health and associated dysfunctions has gone way, way up, including things like loneliness, right, which is a huge marker of health. And so we're kind of doing something wrong culturally. But that's not the only spot our intuitions come from. I think an even bigger issue isn't just that we have advertisers telling us to take on this like cultural path to capitalism. We also have internal intuitions that like money is going to be good, right? That we just think that buying stuff and material possessions are the way to go. And I think it's those internal intuitions that we really need to work on.

We basically just have really strong, incorrect intuitions about what we're going to like, what are going to form good memories. And it causes us to take action in the world. You know, we're putting work into feeling happier, but we're kind of doing it the wrong way. You know, it's not like people aren't trying. They're like actively trying. They're just kind of getting it wrong.

And so I think that's one of the reasons that learning about the science of happiness can be so powerful is that the science can show you like, no, no, no. If you actually study how happy people become happier, they're not doing that stuff. Like our intuitions about it are wrong. And then specifically on the experiences point, there's lots of data to suggest that if we want to be happier, we should really be investing in experiences, not things. In part for, it's actually lots of reasons. One is that things stick around and you kind of get bored with them over time. You know, bad feature of human nature is that we're a subject to adaptation. We kind of just get used to stuff. But most

experiences don't last long enough. You know, if you go to a good concert or you take a vacation, like, I don't know about your vacations, but mine aren't long enough. Like they're not like a new car or an iPhone. It's not going to stick around for that long. And that means they're not subject to adaptation. But a bigger thing is that experiences seem to connect socially in ways that material possessions don't, right? Like it's hard to have a fun conversation about, you know, your new phone with a friend, right? But if you went on a cool vacation or you saw a cool concert, you can talk to people. Like experiences let you connect with other folks. They also like form part of our identity.

You know, if you kind of, you know, learn a new language or go to this cool concert, like that's kind of part of you. But you look like a jerk if what's part of you is like a really cool coat or like a really nice pair of shoes. Like it's kind of a sucky thing to have as part of your identity. So yeah, so I think that's just one of many different tips that come from the literature that sort of violate our intuition. We think like a good, a good buy is something that's going to stick around and that will last for a long time. But in practice, well being wise, that's how it works. Yeah, so you've been studying data driven happiness, which is pretty awesome. And I don't think most people think that even exists as a field, but that is your field. I wonder if you've looked at Bhutan, which measures gross national happiness.

And I've been to Bhutan, and it's an incredible place where most people are far, far less well-off materially than we are. We really have very, very little in terms of possessions or material goods, very, very basic life. And yet the level of happiness is off the chart compared to the rest of the world. Can you share a little bit about that, what you've learned from it and what insights we might have about our own happiness? Yeah, I think, you know, there's lots of variants across countries in terms of happiness where some folks self-report in different countries self-report like really high happiness whereas right now in the U.S. not so much. It doesn't correlate with the stuff you think it correlates with like material wealth overall in a country. It does correlate with some structural factors like inequality it turns out is

really bad for happiness. It's one of the reasons I think the U.S. takes such a hit is that we're such an unequal nation but it really seems to hang on different countries' practices. And so, surprisingly, Bhutan's up there, but not like one of the highest ones. The highest ones tend to be sort of Scandinavian countries. You know, I think Denmark, Sweden, that kind of thing. Places like Costa Rica. So really close-knit Latin American countries are pretty good. And they tend to have a couple of features in common, right? I mean, first kind of getting to a lot of the stuff you

talk about on your podcast, they tend to be eating stuff that's like, they're really close to the plant sources and like comes from their kind of native environment and stuff. They also tend to spend a lot of time being social. So they have rich community ties, lots of other oriented behavior, but they're also kind of present. Like they spend a lot of time savoring, you know, like being in the present moment. Like, you know, Scandinavian countries have this idea of hygge, you know, the H-Y-G-G-E that a lot of folks have made a lot of, which is like kind of comfort and take savoring in these cold months.

And so those are the kinds of practices that we know empirically seems to boost up well-being. So savoring, that is quite a concept. It's something that we are not good at. We rush through our life. We rush through our food, rush through experiences, and we don't actually stop and smell the roses. Essentially what you're talking about is just be. We're human doings, not human beings for the most part.

And that happiness comes from actually just being and noticing and watching and sitting. And, you know, I was interviewing Senator Bill Frist, who was the former Senate Majority Leader, who was telling me about sitting on his porch on his farm up in rural Tennessee and just noticing what was going on in front of him. The birds, the bees, the animals, the leaves, the trees. I mean, just all the things that were going on all the time that he never took a moment to savor. And now that we're all settled, stopped, locked down and have more spaciousness in our life, it is a time of more savoring. And I think while it's also a time of incredible stress for so many, I think it also sort of waking us up to, wow, do we want to go back to normal? Because

maybe the normal that we had is not what is going to create the most well-being or happiness for us. And I think that's really striking to me. And you also share a little bit about the attributes and behavioral actions that you can take to actually create happiness. And now, more than ever in this time of COVID-19, I think a lot of us are struggling. And you talked about simple practices like gratitude, for example. Talk about gratitude and why that is so much better than commiserating. Like, oh, yeah, our life's miserable. And, you know, like misery loves company, that whole thing. I think how does gratitude provide an antidote to that?

And how do you how do you practice gratitude? Yeah, I mean, I love I love bringing up this idea of misery loves company, because I think when we hear that quote, we think it's about like, well, you know, when you get misery, you kind of love it. But I think it's the opposite. It's like when one person's miserable, there's emotional contagion, right? Like other people pick up your misery. So you probably felt that if you're around somebody who like gripes all the time, you know, that can feel depleting when you're around them like that. And so gratitude is kind of the opposite. It's just this emotion where you're taking time to count your blessings, just feeling thankful for the good things in your life. And happy people, the research suggests, do that naturally. So people with high self-reported

happiness tend to spontaneously bring to mind all the things that they're grateful for, which suggests that it could be powerful. And so now you need an experiment. You need to force people to experience gratitude and to think about things they're grateful for. And the research shows that if you get people to do that, say just like scribble down three to five things they're grateful for at the end of the day, all of a sudden their happiness starts to increase. In fact, you can get significant increases in happiness within about two weeks. And so then there's a question of why does it work? And I think it works for a couple of reasons. One is that gratitude feels really good, but there's also evidence that as a social emotion, it's kind of doing something evolutionarily. I think this is something we forget that our emotions aren't these like annoying things that

kind of stick around and make us feel that are bad. They're like for something. And the research suggests that gratitude is for what like researchers call self-regulation, right? It's there because you want to like help someone. It's there for cooperation, which sometimes means foregoing your own benefit to help someone else. And there's studies suggesting that people who feel more grateful or if you can make someone feel grateful,

they're more likely to do things that benefit their future selves. So they're more likely to save for retirement in these like little experimental scenarios. They're more likely to choose things that allow them to eat healthier over time because it feels like less of a sacrifice. Like gratitude gets us to be

a little bit more future oriented. So not only does it feel good and boost our wellbeing, it also helps us make healthier choices in general in life too. And it's totally free. Like another thing I love about all these interventions, like you don't have to buy anything. You don't have to like buy a gratitude app

or something like that. It's just, you just think stuff and it just can be completely free and like a nice boost for your wellbeing. Like a little gratitude journal. You know, you can get a nice notebook, but you know, you can also just like scribble it down on scrap paper, just think about it. And, and so, yeah, I think, I think that's,

that's another kind of way that a lot of this work is sort of anti-capitalist, right? It's like, if you really understand what the science is telling you, no one's going to make money off this stuff, right? Most of these tips are just completely free. Yeah. It's not about buying more stuff to be happy. It's about being and noticing. You know, I remember being really unhappy as a teenager and, you know, early on in college.

And I remember sitting down with my best friend in his little apartment and we had a futon and pretty much nothing else than a few clothes on the floor. And he said, Mark, he said, if you have enough food to eat and clothes on your back and a roof over your head, the rest is gravy. The rest is gravy. And that little mantra has guided me

and it shifted my whole perspective about life so everything is gravy pretty much and for some people they don't have a food they don't have a house they don't have enough clothes and that's fine and then those are the sort of Maslow's hierarchy of needs but once you've got those met and you know for the most part most of us do then everything else can be perceived as a blessing or as gravy and if we do that it really it really changes the quality of our experience, the quality of our happiness, the quality of our interrelating with the world. And I think I never thought of it before, but you're right. When you come from that frame, you're more likely to be engaged with others in a positive

way, more likely to be of service, more likely to think about creating goodness for others in your life. And that's a very also powerful strategy, which seems paradoxical. Why would being of service and helping others actually lead to happiness? It just seems doesn't make sense to most people. Yeah, totally. It's like me, me, me, me, me, instead of you, you, you, you, you, right? Exactly. And I think, you know, it's our own personal intuitions, but it's also the culture, right? You know, like, especially now in the context of coronavirus, like, if you look online,

it's like, well, treat yourself during the crisis or self-care, like self, self, self. And again, if you look at those findings, and again, all the, what the findings do is they just go out and find happy people, like researchers find these happy folks and like, what are you doing? And they find like, oh, that maybe that's what we should all be doing. And when you look at actually happy people, they're not focused on themselves. They're doing nice stuff for others. So controlled for income, happy people give more to charity than unhappy people. And controlled for, it's hard to control for it, but controlled for sort of set amounts of time, happy people are volunteering, giving their time more to other people too. And then, so now that's like a

correlation. Now you do the research where you say, okay, let's force not so happy people to do nice stuff for others and see if that bumps up their wellbeing. And when you do that, when you force people to give more money to charity, say, what you find is that they get happier over time. And that's true no matter what your income level. In fact, Liz Dunn, who's a professor at UBC,

has some data that even if you go to rural parts of the world where people can't put food on the table, if they're donating more money to charity, even in that horrible financial situation, they're happier than if they're not. And so there seems to be something really fundamental about becoming other-oriented, like doing nice stuff for others. And I think it kind of comes out of this attitude of like, if you can really share with others, it sort of convinces you that you have enough yourself, you know, and it forms really strong social relationships, right? Like you kind of can believe that you're in this web of a community that's going to protect one another. You know, you have other social connections that you could go to when you're down, you know? And so it can be, again, we don't realize the power of it. And I don't realize the power of it, right? Like I teach this class, I know all these findings. If I'm having a super bad day, my instinct is like, you know, I'm going to, you know, do something nice for myself or buy something or have a good experience myself,

like get a massage or something. I'm not thinking, let me gift a coworker a massage. Like, I know I'm supposed to do that now, but that's just not the natural intuition. But, but, you know, if you want to be happier, we have to overcome those natural intuitions to kind of follow what the science suggests. Yeah, that's true. You went to Harvard and there was a guy there, E.O. Wilson, who I'm sure maybe you took a class with, did you? Yeah, I not only took a class, but my freshman year of college, I took a class with him. And I got so excited that I went to his office hours as like kind of doe-eyed, you know, two-week-in freshman. And I think he thought I had something like important to talk with him about. And I got so excited that I went to his office hours as like kind of doe-eyed, you know, two weekend freshmen. And I think he thought I had something like important to talk with him about,

and I didn't. And so he was like, well, can I show you pictures from my recent trip to Japan? Because I just got them. And so I sat with you, Wilson, he showed me pictures of his trip to Japan. Yeah, he was fantastic. Well, he wrote a book called The Social Conquest of the Earth about the interdependence we all have on each other for survival. You know, a human being out by himself in the world or herself won't last very long without our social network and community. And we are so interdependent on each other. And most of us don't realize it. And I think now more than ever with COVID-19, we're realizing that our behaviors impact our entire community, our family, our nation, our global pandemic. And that

that's why, in some ways, we're staying home is not just to protect ourselves, but for the social contract we have. And I think that is incredibly ingrained in us from an evolutionary point of view. And also from a biological point of view, it's fascinating to see the benefits of altruism. As a doctor, I've studied, you know, what are the benefits of altruism on the brain, and it seems to activate the same reward centers in the brain as heroin or cocaine or all the sugar. So rather than eating a cookie, do some for somebody else, and you'll get a hit of dopamine and pleasure that is much better for you and longer lasting. So I think there's is acts of service. How would you, how would you sort of

guide your students and people who are listening into ways of acting that can activate this and are doable for people in their average daily lives? Yeah. I mean, one of the ways, one of the ways to convince people is just honestly to show them the science, right? Like I think people kind of understand the evidence. If you see the, you know, the graph of your wellbeing, if you're regularly doing acts of service, you're like, well, I want to be there on the graph, right? Like, I think people kind of understand the evidence. If you see the, you know, the graph of your well-being, if you're regularly doing acts of service, you're like, well, I want to be there on the graph, not here on the graph, so let me bump this up. But then I think you just need kind of practical tips, and I think right now there's this really interesting opportunity in this context of this crisis to do more stuff for other people, right? Many of us are experiencing one of two different windfalls right now. So some of us have a tiny

financial windfall, right? Like we're not paying to go out to eat as much. We're not buying our morning coffee. You're not paying gas for our commute, right? Although my wife made me buy a latte machine. That was like, that took a hit on that one. For those that don't, those that are, you know, but, but we forget, I mean, this is like, you know, four bucks a day or something, right?

Like that could go to help a local business. Like that could go to, you know, help someone in need. But even if you're not having a financial windfall right now, and, you know, latte machines aside, many of us are not, right? You know, stocks are plummeting. People are losing jobs and things. But sometimes even people in those situations have a different windfall, which is a temporal windfall, right?

Like they're having a little bit more time. You know, maybe you're not spending time on a long commute to work, or maybe you're not working, right? Like, what can you do to use that time to help other people? Can you call an elderly neighbor, call a friend, you know, can you advocate for PPE for healthcare workers or do, you know, do something political, if you don't like the way this crisis is playing out, you know, contact someone about it, like, these momentary little windfalls can be used for positive effect to help other people. We just forget that that's there. And there's like a little bit of a startup cost, right? Like, you know, if I have a little bit of free time, it's

just easier to like plop on social media or like read something stupid. But like you could actually use it for something that's much more, in some sense, nutritious for your wellbeing. I use a lot of metaphors about food because I think, again, there's this kind of opportunity cost, like some ways of spending our time and some behaviors are a little bit more nutritious for our well-being than others. It doesn't mean we always have to make the nutritious choice. But if we're not kind of feeding ourselves nutritious behaviors, at least some of the time, there's going to be a problem. I love that idea. It's sort of like nourish happiness. How do you nourish happiness? It's such a great concept. And most of us don't think about that directly. And I think, you know, you mentioned social media. And I know in your class, you tell your students for a time

being to delete all their social media accounts as an experiment. Why is that important? And what do they find? And what is your experience? Yeah, I mean, so in full truth, there's actually not much really good data on social media and whether it affects happiness, mostly because we can't do the right experiments, right? There's no control condition. There's not like, you know, college students today that have not interacted with social media and don't want to, right? Like, this doesn't exist. We've inadvertently put these tools in the pockets of 6 billion people without really understanding how they're going to affect our lives, our well-being, our attention, all this stuff, right? And also with the caveat that social media is just a tool that we could use for all

kinds of different things. The problem is that the way we tend to use it allows us to do things that don't look a lot like the behaviors we know map onto happiness. So take social connection. You know, one of the things that we know is super important for happiness. In theory, these tools should be great for social connection, but in practice, they're often at the opportunity cost of social connection. You know, I remember sitting, you know, in a restaurant, looking over at different tables of families who all have their, you know, they're together as a family in this setting that's for, you know,

millennia has been used to allow humans to connect really closely with the people they care about. And they're all privately on their own devices doing things. Yeah. I just want to tell you a quick story before you go on. I went to Google to give a talk. And I got a tour after. And I walked around and there was a lunchroom. And, you know, when I met with the human resources folks there, they said one of the most important requests was for

more connection with each other. They felt isolated, alone, and they wanted more interaction and connection. So I walked around campus, and over lunch, I walked into this room where we were sitting on a couch on their computers. There must have been 30 Googlers, they call them, and I'm like, is this the silent lunchroom? And they're like, no, it's not. And they were all literally sitting next to each other on their computers, disconnected from each other. And it was just the most funny, strange experience I've had. And it's not just Google. I mean, this was one of my most shocking observations when I became a new head of college was that I walked into the dining hall, which in college I remember is like the loudest

place on campus. You know what I mean? And it's not so much that it's dead quiet, but it kind of feels more like a library because they all have, you know, these big Bose headphones on and their little things, they're sitting at tables all together, completely disconnected. And then you have, you know, 65% of college students report feeling very lonely most days, right? And they're around hundreds of other people that they could connect with. But the, you know, the around hundreds of other people that they could connect with. But the startup cost of having that first conversation can be tough and it's just much easier to kind of go online. And so I think of a lot of the kind of social connection

we get on social media, sort of the NutraSuite of social connection. You know, it kind of feels like it's sort of like that and it's easier to get and stuff. But the other thing is that it, we know that not social media per se, but I think just devices in general, because I think, you know, you don't have to be on Facebook, like your email, like, you know, games, like all, you know, the internet, like all the stupid stuff on our phone is just as much of a culprit

in stealing our attention. You know, these things are known to affect sleep, right? In part because of things like blue light before we go to bed, but just the, you know, attentional opportunity cost of like, I know I'm supposed to go to sleep, but, you know, I just want to scroll through one more page of Reddit, right? Like, you know, these, again, these things might feel fun, but there can be a real opportunity cost. One of the things we teach about in class is this funny feature of the brains that there's like this interesting disconnect between the stuff that we really like this interesting disconnect between the stuff that we really like in the world, like the stuff I would say we find really nutritious, we really

get some benefit out of, and the stuff that we want. Like there are literally different circuits in the brain for wanting and liking, which you see dissociate most strongly in the context of addiction, right? So like an active heroin addict really craves, really wants a drug, but when they finally get it, you know, they're habituated to it. So their reward system doesn't even fire for it that much because they don't even like it that much. And then I see disconnects of the opposite way, right? There's stuff that we really like in the world. You know, I think of really hard cardio session or, you know, like, putting the work in to have a really nutritious meal or gratitude or social connection, all this stuff we're talking about, but we don't like have circuits that crave it, right? Like there's not, you know, our dopamine system kind of misses that, right? And so people

get addicted to exercise. I don't like that. If I don't do it, I get depressed. That's true. I think there's a big individual difference there. I exercise, but I wish my brain could like develop a craving for it. And in the same way I crave like sugar or like, you know, but yeah, so I think we have to, you know, and I think one, but there is one way to hack this system. And that gets to the stuff we were talking about before with Buddhism that, you know, one way researchers are finding you can hack the system is through mindfulness, right? If after that activity that you find really good, you take a moment to realize like, huh, when I was scrolling through Reddit, that didn't feel

super hot. But like when I had a really nutritious, like deep conversation with a friend that felt better, like when you kind of force your brain to notice that what you're feeling, that can kind of remind your dopamine system, wait, wait, hang on, there is a reward there. Like, let me update what I want to create in the future. And so this practice of mindfulness research by folks like Heidi Kober and colleagues at Yale are showing, like can help us update the craving system. It can help us kind of come to terms with the fact that even though I thought I wanted this before, it's actually not as good as I thought. And, you know, even though I didn't really think I needed to seek this out, I noticed that it feels good. Like maybe I should bump that up in my own behavioral repertoire a bit more.

So when your students do this digital detox, what do they report? Do they love it? Do they hate it? Are they feeling they get withdrawal and seizures? Yeah, yeah. Many, many people report withdrawal at first. I think that's the strongest. Withdrawal, but also like noticing their own behavioral tendencies. People can't even walk into another room without their phone. It's like, you know, I got to bring my phone with me everywhere I go.

And if you don't have it, like if you go to the kitchen or living room, it's like, where's my phone, right? It's like a weird thing. It's like an appendage. No, it's super, super hard. For my podcast, I interviewed this woman, Catherine Price, who has this wonderful book called How to Break Up with Your Phone. And she suggests putting like, you know, a little hairband or an elastic on your phone so that every time you go to use it, you notice this thing. And it can just make you a little more mindful of like, wait a minute, I didn't even realize I was picking it up, right? She has this wonderful acronym she calls WWW, which is like, you know, what for, why now, what else? You know, what was I even picking up for? You know, why did I need to do it now? And like, what else could I

be doing? And, you know, having read her book, now using that technique myself, I can watch it. It's like, you know, what for is for nothing? Or is it just, I was just anxious or I just was like momentarily fleetingly bored. Yeah. Like even in social situations, you know, like having a conversation with some friends and I have this momentary feeling of boredom and I'm like already, you know, there's my already reaching for the phone and it's like, is that going to be nutritious in the context of this otherwise good conversation? i think you know it's when you when you think about evolutionary history like never in the history of our species have we had a stimulus that's so compelling is this object like our brain knows that on the other side of that phone is you know every cat video on

the internet my email since 1999 like porn like know, like good recipes, like politics and like our president's Twitter feed, like my brain knows that, you know, and it's making opportunity costs to realize, like, I'm having a fun conversation with my husband, but, you know, is that as good as every cat video that could be out there? I don't know. And so, you know, it's taking an attentional cost that I think we don't realize a lot of the time. And I think that cost is stealing us from presence that would normally be bumping up our well-being. And those students, are they happy after a little bit, after they go through withdrawal and the seizures? Yeah, yeah. So some of them, once they get through, often they report just like having just super awareness of it. Like,

I didn't realize how much I was doing it. Some of them stick with it. A lot of them, you know, like any addict, go kind of go back to it. but I think hopefully they go back to it with a little bit more mindfulness. So some of them do say that they end up deleting the apps that are most problematic, you know, so that after having done it, it's like, well, I didn't really get rid of, you know, Snapchat, cause that's my lifeblood, you know, in the college these days, but I kind of got rid of, you know, like that one video game that was stealing my attention or, you know, I noticed the Instagram push specifically was making me feel bad. so I got rid of that, you know. So I think they come out with a little bit more awareness.

And that's really the goal. It's not to say shut off your social media forever because that's probably not realistic for most of our lives. Like phones and these tools are not going away. It's more just finding a, like, slightly more mindful relationship with some of these devices and techniques. Yeah, I think it's true. I love the NutraSweet analogy. It's really like fake sugar. It's like fake social interaction. And, you know, it's almost like know, one of the domains where I notice this a lot is like in interactions with strangers. So there's lots of compelling research suggesting that one of the positive hits we get to our mood is like, you know, the quick chat with the barista or somebody in the coffee shop line or someone on the street. Right. And when we have our phones out, we just don't do that as much, mostly because we just don't notice those folks as much. But also because like, you know, it's just easier to go check my email than it is to like strike up a conversation with a stranger. There's like a startup cost to that. Um, and,

and, you know, device makers have made going to our phones incredibly easy, incredibly addictive. Like they've basically made the startup cost zero. Right. Um, and are they, are they the new drug pushers? I think they know. I mean, you know, the, one of the main companies that was working on like different apps and sort of developing stuff for Facebook and Google was called dopamine labs. They know what they're doing. So for people listening who don't know what dopamine is, it's an amino acid that your body makes that stimulates the pleasure center in the brain. So when that gets activated, it's what's good activating with with sugar or heroin or cocaine right so it's like wow that's a scary title for a digital lab i mean another another compelling

fact is that if you look at some of the main makers of some of these devices they definitely don't let their kids use them like steve jobs wouldn't let you know his kid have access to an iphone so i think those are those are telling right like i think people know what they're pushing and the power of some of these things behind the scenes um and i think a scary thing to an iPhone. So I think those are telling, right? Like I think people know what they're pushing and the power of some of these things behind the scenes. And I think a scary thing as we think about moving forward is like, you know, is the next version of the iPhone going to be more addictive, more pleasurable, like lower startup costs than the one now? Yeah. The next round of apps that we all get taken by, are they going to be even more compelling and interesting

than Facebook? Like, yeah, like not only are these things not going away but the machine learning algorithms that they're using are getting more sophisticated at stealing our attention and getting more individualized to what's going to compel me Laurie Santos and what I'm going to look at like you know and that's that's scary and I think our one way to combat that is to just mindfully be paying attention to what they're doing so that we're using these devices in ways, again, that are a little bit more nutritious. I mean, should they be regulated? Are they dangerous for well-being and happiness and health?

I mean, I think it's, I think there's a worry that they're basically cigarettes. You know, we are the way we were thinking about cigarette regulation before we really knew about cancer. Right. I mean, look, if you look at, it look at, again, it's hard to have really good RCTs, right? Because you can't look at people who don't. It's not like smoking where there's some people who just don't do it, right? Like, it's just everyone's doing it, right? But, you know, correlationally, if you look at things like rates of loneliness, rates of anxiety, and so on, they begin spiking around 2007, which was right around the time that the iPhone and the first smartphones came out. Interesting. So, I don't know. It's hard, but I think definitely, again,

it's not that they're bad in and of themselves. It's that they need to be more nutritious. And I think that companies know this, right? You know, now iPhones, if you look online, your iPhone will tell you how much time you spent on your iPhone. And that's not so that you can use it more. I don't think anyone's ever looked at that measure and be like, man, I need to spend more time on my phone, right? Like they put that on there to help you. And so my hope is that these companies, because they don't want to be cigarette companies, because they don't want to be regulated, are going to slowly put some stop gaps in to help people. But you know, their business model is our attention. So it's tricky. I think that's a good trick for people to track their pickups. You know, I have sitting next to a friend of mine at a lecture, she was constantly

picking up her phone. I'm like, give me your phone. I grabbed her phone and I went to the settings and I looked at screen time and I, and it said, how many pickups? And she had like a thousand, more than a thousand pickups. And it wasn't even the end of the day. I'm like, okay, check this out. This is not necessarily giving you the quality of experience that you want. And right now I think there's this paradox of social distancing, but need for more social connection and isolation. How do we handle that? How do you advise people in the midst of all this that happiness is derived from social connection interaction, not social media, but now we're in the social distancing, which seems like an antithesis

of what we really need right now, which is more connection. Yeah. I mean, I think this is a spot where you need to think about using the technology we have more nutritiously, or what's your other nutritious option, right? Like the most nutritious option for social connection might be getting together with friends through touch. That's no longer nutritious anymore because it's very dangerous for our physical health, right? And so the next best thing is the kind of social connection that we're having right now, right? In real time, if it can't be in real life, we can do it in real time. And the brain kind of responds to in real time as though it was in real life. You know, if I'm looking at you and seeing your facial expressions or hearing the intonation in my voice, like that works pretty

well. And so finding ways to use that to connect with other people can be really powerful. But I think we need to also think about how we get our social connection and try to use technologies to mimic that. Like, I think we all know we can use technologies like this for say a business meeting or something very formal, but the stuff we're missing is the informal stuff, you know, like, like somebody to pop over, like while I'm chopping my vegetables or the quick high on the street. And so what I've been encouraging my podcast listeners to do is to try to find ways to use these technologies more informally. Like, it doesn't have to be a very formal, like thing you've set up, just like, you know, call people

or text them, like, can we zoom while I'm chopping my vegetables? Or like, I'm going to do a yoga class, you know, online, do you guys want to hop on and do it? Those kinds of informal things can be really powerful. But the good news is, I think, you know, a lot of if you can pay attention to how you're feeling after these things, I think a lot of us are setting up new ways to connect that feel really good. And we might want to incorporate into our real life afterwards, you know, like my mom lives in a different state, she's, she has COPD. So I definitely can't see her during this time, but I'm very worried about her. And we've started like weekly zoom dinner nights, you know, like we just never hung out that much, but now we have this

kind of nutritious moment. Yeah. I have friends in different time zones, my college roommates who are all over the place. You know, we're doing like these zoom spa nights together and we haven't, the four of us gotten all together and forever, but we've been doing that, you know we're doing like these zoom spa nights together and we haven't the four of us gotten all together in forever but we've been doing that you know once every two weeks and so I think you know or like you know like shared exercise classes right like it'd be weird you know to meet up with friends in different time zones to like go to an exercise class together but we can do that with these technologies and so I think these are habits that hopefully we're going to put into place now they're going to help us through this crisis when we're done. I hope we keep doing some of these things, even when I can be together with the people

in real life socially too. Yeah, it's true. My wife's birthday was recently, and our family's in New Zealand and Arizona and Utah and here and there and everywhere. And I secretly coordinated a surprise party for her and got her blindfolded, brought her to the table, made a nice dinner, and then opened the computer, and I hit the button, and everybody was there from all over the world, and we had like a prolonged, you know, hour and a half dinner together where they were hanging out. We were just chatting out with conversation. We were sharing, and, you know, it wasn't like just all being together, but it was

pretty sweet, and yesterday, I had a couple of my friends who I haven't seen in a bit who are, you know, struggling mentally with, you know, what's happening to the world and had lots of questions for me as a doctor. And so we had this great conversation and hang out. And it just was awesome. It was really nourishing. So I love the idea of distinguishing between nourishment that you can get through technology and things that are depleting or disconnecting. And I think that's an important distinction that most people don't make. And I think this is sort of highlighting

some of the ways that we haven't thought of using technology to do this. You know, my nephew's in Israel, my niece is in Houston, my daughter's in Utah, my son's in New York, I'm in Massachusetts. So once a week we have a Zoom hangout and we just like, nothing, you know, nothing about anything, just like,

how you doing, what's happening? You know, it's like, how you coping? And it's just so great. And we never did that before, you know, so we might have seen each other, you know, every, every few months, or maybe a couple times a year, we'll get together. But now it's like, okay, you know, get to be in each other's lives in a different way. And the flip side, I think we need to notice what feels because again, it's going to vary. And it might vary throughout the day, right? You know, again, I love this kind of nutritious time that I've been having with my family where we get together over Zoom calls. But there was one week we did it that just that day at

work, I was just on Zoom all day. I think I was sitting literally in the same chair, like staring to me. And like, by then I was like, actually, this isn't nutritious anymore. Like now I just need to, you know, take a break and like, you know, go stare at the trees outside my window. Just, I need something else. And that's why I think, especially in this time, we just need to be paying attention to what we need. I think a thing about this crisis is that, you know, we're going to be hit by it in different points. Like there's going to be points where we feel uncertain or depressed or points where we feel lonely. And I think noticing those emotions and honoring them and trying to nurture them in whatever way is going to feel nutritious can be really powerful. Yeah. And you also talk a lot about stress and how that impacts us. And it's sort of the

antithesis of happiness, right? When there's high stress, your happiness goes down. And you talked about how do we use simple tools to enhance our happiness and well-being like meditation? Yeah. I think there's different ways to hack our stress, right? Like there's getting rid of the stressors, which, you know, in daily life, I think is a good thing to do. You know, if you have a stressful job or you're going through a stressful period, like there are ways to get rid of those, but that's not always possible. And I think for the main stressor that a lot of us are going through right now, like, you know, we can't snap our fingers and get rid of COVID-19 and it's probably going to be with us for longer than any of us

really want to admit, right? And so we need to find ways to hack our stress response that don't involve getting rid of the stressor. And the good news is that biology gives us one good way to do this, which is through our breath, surprisingly. And so, you know, quick, quick, like primer on the autonomic nervous system for folks out there, right? You know, we have this sympathetic nervous system that's basically our fight or flight response. That's us freaking out to the uncertainty of the virus and its scariness. It's causing our chest to get tight and, you know, our breathing to move around and our muscles to kind of clench and basically shutting off all these functions we need, like immune function and sleep and digestion and things like that. You know, we can't get rid of the

stressor that's causing this fight or flight response, but we can trick our bodies in some ways to thinking that it might have gone away. And we do that through our breath, right? So if you're running from a tiger that's attacking you in full fight or flight mode, you're not going to stop and take a deep belly breath. Like you're just not going to be able to do that, right? But if you stop and take a deep belly breath during Corona 19, which we all can do, your body's like, well, hang on, you know, maybe we don't need the fight or flight system anymore. Your vagus nerve kind of kicks in and that can activate the

parasympathetic nervous system, which is sort of the rest and digest, right? So it's one kind of, we don't have many hacks on our autonomic nervous system because it's mostly unconscious. Thank goodness. It's like helpful that it kind of goes on its own. This is one hack we can all use. And I've been telling listeners this a lot to just make sure, especially if you're kind of in panic frame, take time to just do three deep breaths. Like when you're upset, it can sound pedantic for somebody to be like, just take a deep breath, but like there's science to it and it really can make a difference. It's especially a tip that I've been giving first responders, right? Who I think, you know, they're so busy, they can't do much to kind of hack their

happiness right now. But a deep breath in between working with patients in a scary time can be really powerful. Yeah, you just made me take a deep breath. I, you know, I, I once heard Tony Robbins speak, and he talked about this concept of changing your state to change your mind. And I really focused on that a lot in my own life. And I found all kinds of ways to do that. One is meditation. One is exercise. One is yoga. Another one I use is hot and cold treatments, whether it's just a hot shower and a cold shower, or it could be I have a steam shower in my house and a bathtub and I fill it with ice cold water. I go hot and cold, that changes your state and your physiology.

It discharges the stress. Avoiding actually foods that cause a stress response. And most people don't understand that sugar increases adrenaline and cortisol, which are the stress hormones. So even if you're relaxed and happy and you eat sugar, your body thinks of it as a danger, as a stress response. So changing your diet to lower your stress response is important. So I focus on all your diet to lower your stress response is important

so i focus on all these ways to change your state and i do it on a regular basis because i like everybody else i get stressed but i've learned over the years how to discharge my stress and change my state and i think it's a really important practice now whatever works and maybe it's just laying down on the couch with your spouse and snuggling you know just cuddling is a great stress reducer yeah if you have people in your house, a hug can be an incredible, powerful, like, you know, state changer. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a cat person. My wife loves cats. We got these cats and I have this little cat, Yoda, and he just always liked to snuggle and he just purrs and just like, oh, I feel relaxed and happy afterwards. So whatever it is, you know, it's your dog, your

cat, your guinea pig, whatever, whatever makes you happy. But I think that concept of changing your state is what you're talking about to deal with some of this. And now we do need to know how to do that. You also talk about this idea of meta meditation, which is sort of a Buddhist concept of loving kindness meditation and how powerful it is. It's a different type of meditation than we normally think of. Can you talk a little bit about what that is and how it connects to happiness, compassion, and not being overwhelmed? Yeah, yeah. So this is, it's a practice that's basically, it's called meta or loving kindness, which I wish there were better terms for this stuff because especially scientific-minded people can be like, this sounds really cheap.

Like a loving kindness meditation is what we're doing. Yeah. You're not going to lose your tenure at Yale. If you say that too much. They didn't do the branding right. But what this meditation is, is it's a practice where you're trying to exercise your compassion muscles. Functionally what you do is you sit, you know, you kind of do the same thing, sit, close your eyes in a nice quiet space. And you think about the people in your life you really care about and you just

extend them kindness and compassion. One way of doing it is to just, you know, and think, may you, that person, be happy. May you be safe. May you care for yourself joyfully. Just extend these kind of positive things. And the goal is to kind of feel what it feels like to do that. Some people describe kind of having a warmth in their chest. Some people don't feel anything, but the key is to do this. And the typical practice is you start with individuals that are really easy for you,

like a kid or a pet sometimes is super easy for folks to extend kindness to. And then you kind of gradually work up to folks that are harder and harder, you know, that annoying coworker. Go slow and get there. You also have to put yourself into the mix at some point. And for some folks, extending compassion to themselves is easy. Sometimes that's hard. But the idea with the research shows is that there's amazing effects of this practice where it basically is building up your muscle of compassion and allowing you to turn it on and off really systematically. So that if you kind of need to

have this other oriented emotion, you can turn it on. And the research also shows that the emotion of compassion is interestingly different than the emotion of empathy. So empathy is really kind of feeling other people's pain. But if you're constantly taking on other people's pain, you can get really burnt out, which is especially true for people who are first responders or healthcare professionals, especially in this time of COVID-19. You know, if you're experiencing the suffering of these people who are, you know, dying alone on ventilators, like that's going to burn you out really fast. this loving kindness meditation is used now as an intervention to prevent compassion fatigue and burnout among healthcare professionals. There's also wonderful evidence that people who are like expert practitioners at this technique, like say Buddhist monks who do this kind of,

you know, training for hours a day, there's work suggesting that if you look in areas of the brain that kind of feel other people's pain and feel other people's compassion, they can kind of turn it on and off almost linearly. So you can give them instructions like feel 40% compassion for the people in this sad video. And you can see their brain response sort of titrating linearly. This is some work by Tanya Singer and her colleagues. So it's a really powerful practice. And I think it's useful during COVID-19 for a couple reasons. One is even if we're not first responders, a lot of us are taking care of people, you know, who require some help, right? You know, like kids in our house, you know, who we're experiencing the compassion fatigue of teachers for the first time, or elderly relatives who need our care, people who are actually sick. some compassion to ourself. I think one of the strangest things about this time is that a lot

of us are just beating ourselves up, you know, like, we're not, you know, you know, we lost our job, or we're not doing well at the work we do have, or we're not really great parents, or we're not cooking as healthy during this time, or we're not, you know, like, being productive, right? Like, you know, we're not at our max. And I think, you know, that it's one thing to kind of feel that way. But it's another to like, beat yourself up, you know, like, if, if you had feel that way, but it's another to like beat yourself up. You know, like if you had a compassionate friend, they would be like, dude, give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Like we're in a global pandemic, like chill, right? But we forget that we can extend that kind of compassion to ourself. And there's evidence that this practice, in addition to kind of helping you not kind of burn out when you're dealing with other people's, you know, issues, can also help you not burn out as much when you're kind of taking care of yourself too. That's true. I mean, I think it's paradoxical that compassion is the doorway

to happiness because it's other focused instead of self-focused, but it is actually the foundation of Buddhist teachings, which is the cultivation of compassion through things like loving kindness meditation. And you can just Google, just Google loving kindness meditation, and there's a little script that you can get started with. You can modify it, but it's the same framework. And when one of my friends, Daniel Goleman, who coauthored with Richard Davidson, Altered Traits, talks about these Olympic meditators who've been practicing these technologies for thousands, tens of thousands of hours over their life, and their brains are different., their ego structure, this part of the brain called the default mode network gets quieted down, which is what keeps us feeling separate from others. And the parts of compassion

and connectivity and sort of being one with everything that kind of, you know, joke instead of like, I'm one with it. Like the Dalai Lama was apparently asked once on a, on an Italian TV show by the, uh, the news reporter, uh, you know, what like the Dalai Lama was apparently asked once on an Italian TV show by the news reporter, you know, what's the Dalai Lama's favorite pizza? And he's like, one with everything. And the Dalai Lama's like, what? I don't really get it. Like, what are you talking about?

So I think that that is, it's interesting that the science of happiness, the science of brain function and structure, and these ancient technologies are all sort of merging in the 21st century to teach us actually that maybe they figured stuff out i mean it's fascinating to me that these cultures which were so materially poor like bhutan and tibet uh and and so devoid of just some of the material comforts we know and have that we think create happiness, actually didn't focus on productivity in the outer world, but creativity and productivity on the inner world. And so they were, you know, inner space explorers and developed incredible wisdom about how to access these traits that are reproducible. And then now we're understanding. So these all sound great, but one of the challenges for people is how do you get this to be a habit and

habits are hard and building new rituals are hard. So how do we teach people to build these habits and to create these rituals that can rewire the brain? Yeah. I mean, that's like the real challenge, right? It's that in my happiness class, the students hashtag that, you know, cause there were these hashtags for social media, despite the fact I'm telling them not to go on social media, but they hashtagged it hardest class at Yale. And that was not because the class itself was hard. It's like if putting this stuff into practice was really hard. But one way is to kind of harness the power of situation. So if we know anything about the science of habits, cues matter a lot. Think of the drug user who sees their old place where they used to get drugs, and now all of a sudden the cravings come back and so on. But we can hack our own cues to form new habits. And this is one of the reasons that I like the idea of the fact that so many people are sort of jumping into my online class and trying to learn about the science of happiness right now because for better or for worse the time of COVID-19 for many of us is one where our cues have completely shifted right like we're in the house in a different way now you know we're starting our days differently we have different people around us all those cues are ones we can use to start new habits and there's some lovely work by the psychologist Katie

Milkman at Wharton Business School that shows the power of what she calls the fresh start effect like when our cues different, that's a moment where you can say, oh, let me plop in a new habit now. Because now I got these new cues that can convince me like, you know, like when I go downstairs and say, make my morning coffee on my new latte machine, because I don't go to the coffee shop anymore. That's the time that I meditate, right? And I never had that cue before. It's a cue that now I can use it. And so I actually think this is a great time, again, with some validation that it's a global pandemic, like don't beat yourself up. This is not like, you know, full like Instagram level wellness time, right? But it is a time that because our cues are

different, we can start some new baby step habits, you know, so if you've never tried meditation, like, you know, maybe use your new morning cues to try to set something up, right? If you and your family haven't practiced gratitude before, now that you're in the house in a different way, you know, set some time to set up a new gratitude ritual where you express, you know, one blessing around the dinner table or something like that. It's weird, but because of this new situation, it's actually a time for lots of fresh starts ones that hopefully can stick

around once this crisis finishes too. Yeah, I think that's it. I mean, you know, I think we're trying to figure mean, you know, I think we're trying to figure out how to implement things that are going to be lasting. I did want to ask you a question is after you began studying all this about happiness and learning about the science of happiness, has your happiness increased? And what have you done to actually implement some of these things? And what are your challenges? And what are your successes? Oh, yeah, definitely. No, like, definitely, definitely has improved. I mean, I was not naturally a happy person. You know, I, I kind of

naturally have very strong intuitions in the other direction still, even after knowing the science, my intuitions have not changed. It's just my behavior has changed, right. Cause I kind of know what the, what I'm supposed to do and how to set situations up. Right. But yeah, no, I mean, just even on standard, you know, self-report wellbeing measures, my wellbeing has gone up. I think what I'm doing differently is I'm behaving differently. Like I'm making much more time for exercise. I'm making things like meditation non-negotiable. I'm taking control and trying to be mindful of situations. And I kind of have to do that because I'm now this happiness guru. Like if I'm not doing it, people are totally going to call. My students definitely will call me out on it. If I get seen eating a bowl of ice cream cream or a couple of donuts i get in trouble yeah i was i just we did a episode of a podcast with a um uh kind of health professional from my hometown who runs kind of this wellness vlog and is like a cardiologist himself and he said you know sometimes he has this craving for a burger but he like can't go out and ever have one because if anyone ever sees him like eating

a cheeseburger like he'll lose all his credibility, but there's something great to that. Right. You know, another thing we know allows for habits to stick is some social support and some social pressure. Right. And so those can kind of nudge you in the right direction. But, um, but no, I think, I think it's been, it's all of that stuff, but it's also that, you know, this stuff has created really new meaning in my life in the sense that, you know, people really need these tips, right? And people are really struggling. I think, you know, in COVID-19, but like, we also weren't flourishing before that. I think, you know, we've gotten away from all these ancient traditions that got it right and are in a structure of capitalism that's systematically pointing us towards things that are not going to

make us happy. And I think, you know, seeing the science and knowing the kinds of things you can do better can be really powerful. So what do you hope that lasts, that we have learned from this lockdown and COVID-19 pandemic that has sort of changed, changed us and that you hope it sticks? Yeah. Because what you were saying before is that the normal before was not leading to happiness. In fact, it was generating massive unhappiness. So how can we shift that? Yeah, honestly, I think there are lots of things. I think, again, validating this is a global pandemic. People are dying.

People are losing jobs. But I also think there's lots of blessings. First, I think a lot of us are seeing a different kind of way of socially interacting with the people who are closest to us, our families and things like that. Again, if you're alone, it's a different story. But, you know, people are reporting, like, I kind of feel guilty about how much I'm liking having people around, whether or not at school, right? I'm kind of feeling guilty about how much I like being in my house, you know, people are discovering cooking, you know, for the first time, right? You know, partly because you can't go out and get fast food and things, but probably because people are

bored, they have more time. And one thing we know is that when people experience a little time affluence, they get more social and they end up doing more creative kinds of habits, like, you know, cooking healthier food and things. I also think that this crisis is causing us to miss the things we really do miss, right? I think a lot of us are realizing we didn't notice how much we cared to see the people in our lives, you know, we didn't notice how much, you know, we cared for, you know, being outside in parks or just being able to like, you know, be around other folks. And once this crisis ends, and it really will end in a different form. I mean, again, it will go on for a while and we'll be different afterwards. But once we are allowed to go back to those things, I think we're going to experience them in a much more joyful way than we did before.

Because so many of us were adapted to things that we took for granted. You know, like I could have my students in a classroom. Like I could see my mom. I could get a latte. I could walk around without a mask. I could grocery shop without fear. Like, you know, those were not like, those were fragile. They were much more fragile than we thought.

And I think once we get them back, I think we'll be able to savor and be really grateful for things that we absolutely took for granted before. You know, like, I can't believe I wasn't like joyful at getting my latte every morning that like, I just like, that was just the thing I took for granted. And now once we finally get it back, I think we're going to appreciate things even more. I think that's a great note to leave it on that we need to think about savoring as a recipe for happiness and that we miss the things that we miss. And when we get them back, we need to continue to savor them. And I think it can be as simple as just noticing and paying attention. It can be practicing gratitude

practice every day. It can be loving kindness meditation. It can, you know, it can be just one of three great things that happened to me and share them with your best friend every day and have a little exchange you do. So I think there's all kinds of ways to do that, but we've created a world where savoring is almost absent and dissatisfaction is rampant. And I think what we're going to notice even more now, I mean, you know, we often talk about post-traumatic stress, but the psychological research suggests there's also a lot more post-traumatic growth than we talk about. When you get through something awful, you appreciate things differently on the other side. You see meaning differently on the other side.

You have stronger social connections on the other side. And I think we are collectively, as a world, going through a crisis that can lead to a lot of post-traumatic growth if we let it. I love that. Post-traumatic growth syndrome. I'm down for that. We all need it. Well, Lori, thank you for your amazing work. Everybody should go and listen to the Happiness Lab, Lori's podcast. It's just rife with wisdom and incredible guests. And I just think she's a light in this dark time. And you can just find her work all over her TED Talk. She's just her course on Coursera, which is the science of well-being. And just check it out because we all need a little bit of more joy and happiness and find ways to get there.

So, Tori, thank you so much for being on the Doctors Pharmacy podcast. If you've been listening to the podcast and you love it, please leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you, share it with your friends and family. They're going to need it right now and, uh, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and we'll see you next time on the it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love

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I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash pics to sign up. That's drhyman.com forward slash pics, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter. And I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger, longer. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other

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