The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - “Can You Train Your Mind to Be Happier?” (with Dr Tal Ben-Shahar)

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

How do you train your mind to be happier? That was the question posed to Dr Laurie by Dr Tal Ben-Shahar at a live webinar for his Happiness Studies Academy.  Tal is a leading expert in positive psychology and co-founded the academy to share his knowledge online with students from around the world. Dr Laurie is just one of the scientists he invited to give lessons and take questions from the audience. If you want to learn more about the Happiness Studies Academy, or are interested in taking one of the certificate, masters or PhD courses - visit Happiness Studies Academy.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Pushkin. Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. Over the summer, we've been sharing episodes from other shows, or instead of being the host, I'm the one getting interviewed. So far, you've heard me on the Daily Stoic and the Rich Roll podcast. But this time, I'll be tackling the subject of whether you can train your brain to be happier. The conversation you're about to hear is from a live webinar that I did with the happiness expert, Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, founder of the Happiness Studies Academy. The Happiness Studies Academy is an online school that teaches the fundamentals of positive psychology.

Tall is a leading figure in the field, so it was super fun to get a chance to talk to him. If you enjoy the conversation, you should talk to you. check out Happiness Studies. Academy. But for now, enjoy my webinar. Can you train your brain to be happier? Hello, everyone, and welcome. It's great to be here. My name is Tal Ben Shahar.

I'm the co-founder of the Happiness Studies Academy, where we focus on helping people become happier, as well as spread happiness, two sides of the same coin. Today we have a very, very special guest whom I've known since my days in graduate school. So I was studying organizational behavior. Lori Santos was studying cognitive psychology. We were both on the PhD track.

And here we are today. We're going to talk about happiness. And I'm going to ask Lori how, why? she got into studying this wonderful feel. But before, I call on Laurie, just a very brief introduction. And again, person who needs no introduction. So Dr. Laurie Santos is the Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon, professor of psychology at Yale University and host of the Happiness Lab podcast.

She has won numerous awards, both for her. scientific work and for her teaching and was recently voted as one of popular science magazine's brilliant 10 young minds and was also named in time magazine as a leading campus celebrity so lorry welcome so great to see you here thanks so much for having me so lori we've we've known each other for a year or two we won't say how long um And here we are today. So, you know, I've shared with our community why I'm here. I'd love to hear what brought you to the world of happiness.

Yeah, well, Tal, you made the transition a lot earlier than I did. I think you're on top of it, like way before I was. My transition happened pretty late into my career. I became a professor. I was teaching about cognition and specifically about comparative cognitions or studying how animals make sense of the world. And the pivot to happiness happened when I took on a new role at Yale. I became what's called the head of college, which is one of these faculty members who lives with students on campus, right?

And it was in that role that I really get to see student life up close and personal. And I honestly was pretty saddened and shocked by what I was seeing. I was seeing the college student mental health crisis up close and personal, where, you know, if you don't know the stats right now nationally, more than 40% of college students report being too depressed to function most days, more than 60%. percent say that they feel hopeless and anxious, more than one in ten has seriously considered taking their own life in the last six months. Like this is not just Yale statistics. This is what was happening nationally. And so I wound up getting into the happiness studies in part because I wanted to do something to help students, right? I had the sense that our field has lots of answers about questions about the things you can do to live a happier life, to live a life that's

filled with more positive emotions, to live a life where you feel like you're flourishing more. And I kind of wanted to get that content out to my students. So I did a kind of little mini retraining and happiness studies to develop this new course psychology in the Good Life. And it was such a journey because I didn't expect the course to go as viral as it did. I know you historically had taught the original huge Ivy League big happiness class at Harvard 10 years before I started my class. Even knowing the success of your class, I didn't really expect mine to kind of go so big. we had a quarter of the entire Yale student body taking the class the first time I taught it. But yeah, that was my kind of, that was my entry in, right?

It was really realizing just how many people need this stuff, especially how many people at the college level need this stuff. And just the fact that, you know, our field has lots of answers. And, you know, we need to do a better job of translating those answers into things that people understand so they could put that stuff into practice. Yeah. Wow. So, you know, you mentioned these numbers, you know, 40% depressed.

60% hopeless one in 10 considering taking their own lives. Now, granted, I know today we're measuring a lot more and probably better than we did, you know, when we were in college or, you know, 100 years ago. But still, the numbers are astounding and they're shocking. Why do you think they are where they are? I mean, is there a reason, reasons why we see those numbers on college campuses and beyond?

I mean, I think, honestly, it would be so much easier if there was one reason because then we could fix that and then we'd, you know, have a whole society that was flourishing and happy. I think it's been lots of things. I mean, I think we have, especially at the college level, there's just a lot more ambition and pushing, a lot more sets of goals that may or may not be contributing to happiness in the way we think, right? I watch my students get so stressed out about grades and what their summer internship's going to be and the career they're going to have after, you know, graduation. And they're often worrying. about that stuff at the expense of the things that matter in the moment, right? Their sleep, their level of social connection, their level of presence, right? So I think the kind of cultural norms about the things you need to do to quote unquote succeed, I think we're kind of off there and especially off when we're kind of talking about elite students in colleges today. I think we also have had tremendous changes to technology that are affecting us in lots of ways that I think we're only beginning to understand. One of the things that was really shocking for me, you know,

going back to college as a, you know, 40-something professor was realizing just how little social connections students got on college campuses. One of the surprises I experienced was going back into the college dining hall, which I remember, as you probably do, taught, like, it's just like the loudest place on campus. You know, it's still pretty loud, but you get a lot of students who are wearing, you know, super big headphones, sitting, looking at a screen and typing, not talking to one another, right? Even though college is a place where lots of people are around other people, I think students are lonelier than ever. And I think our technology has a lot to do with that. And so I think there's lots of different factors going on. It'd be so much easier if there

is one smoking gun and we could blow on it and get the smoke away and fix everything. But I think that it just shows how important it is to be studying happiness scientifically and trying to figure out, okay, what are the things that really do matter for a flourishing life? And how can we put more thing, more of those things into effect in our own lives, but also kind of think about our schools and get more of that stuff in schools. Think about what we value in terms of society and get more of that into the kind of culture that we're building around one another. Right. And when you talk about schools, yeah, of course, college campuses, but we need to start a lot earlier. Definitely. High school, even kindergarten, I think there is a lot that can be, that we can do.

Yeah. One of our most recent projects was to do a version of the class that I teach for Yale students for middle schoolers and teenagers, right? Again, I think we don't even have to stop there, right? So many of the practices that I know you talk about at the academy that I talk about my podcast are really the kinds of things that you should be doing as young as possible. Yeah, yeah. So let's go back to our topic today, which is can you train your mind to be happier? Now, I'm sure that people attending this. this conversation, are assuming that it is. What does the science actually say about whether happiness can train or something that

we're born with? Well, I think the science, you know, is like, is kind of careful about this, right? Because I think what we often when we ask a question like that is in either or answer. Like, yes, it can train or it's fixed. And I think the science tells us that it's a little bit of both, right? On the question of whether or not some of our happiness seems to be built in, relegated to our genes, the kinds of things we should be pan-intentioned to. There's lots of studies, as you well know, trying to look at this by studying different twins, right? To try to look at whether or not you can look to genetically similar individuals, you might have different environments and ask, okay, what's playing the bigger role?

Is it our genes or is it our environments? These are studies from what's often called heritability, right? What's the percentage of the variance in the population? we can explain by looking to someone's genes. And whenever you do those studies, you ask the question, are identical twins who share 100% of their DNA more similar in their happiness than, say, fraternal twins who only share 50% of their DNA? You often get the answer, yeah, there seems to be more similarity in the identical twins

than the fraternal twins. There is a component of things like happiness, our life satisfaction, our positive emotion that seems to be heritable. But like most psychological traits, it's not a high heritability, right? It's not that, you know, if you happen to be born to your very happy parents and you yourself are going to be very happy, the heritability estimate is kind of small. It's around 30 percent. What does that mean? It means around 30 percent of the variation we see in the population, you know, whether somebody's happy or not so happy can be due to someone's genes. And that's pretty small. So on the one hand, we get the answer of like, yeah, some of your happiness might be built in, right? The variance that we see in people's happiness across society might be due to some genes versus other genes. But that also means, there's a big window that we can change things, right? I think the other misconception we often have about whether we can train happiness is that we have this mistaken assumption that our happiness is based only on our circumstances, right?

You know, you're born in a wonderful country and you're incredibly rich and you're like, you know, you get into the perfect Ivy League institution that you want to get into, et cetera, et cetera. Then you'll be happy. Yeah, so often we tend to think that our circumstances matter a ton for happiness. And they do matter some, right? you know, if you're living below the poverty line, getting more money might increase your level of happiness, your level of flourishing. If you're living in really dire circumstances, it is true that changing some things around might help. But for most of the people on the call,

most of the people listening right now, changing your circumstances is not going to matter as much as you think for kind of improving your happiness. And so what we often think is that like, you know, our circumstances matter a ton. They don't matter as much as we think. It really is about changing our behaviors and our mindsets for kind of improving our happiness over time. Right. Okay. So what are some of the practices that we can do to change specifically our mindset? Yeah. And what are some of the practices that you teach in class? And what are some of the things that you do? Yeah. Well, I try to do all the things that I teach in class because I find that if you're not practicing what you preach, like, well, first of all, my students will totally call me

out on it. They'll be like, well, you're not engaging in gratitude or you're not getting your social connection. So it's really great to have a thousand, you know, undergraduate students around you watching. Holding you accountable. Holding me accountable, exactly. But yeah, in terms of some of the mindset changes I recommend, you know, a big one is sort of engaging in a little bit more gratitude, right? This one's really just a matter of trying to figure out what your mind is attuned to and trying to get it to attune a little bit better to the positive stuff out there, noticing the blessings rather than the hassles. You know, there's lovely work from Sonia Luper Merski and Robert Emmons and others just showing the power of, you know, simply writing down a few things that you're

grateful for every day, just noticing some of the blessings. And studies suggest you can improve your life satisfaction, you can improve your positive mood and so on. And so that, that I think is like such an easy one, right? It's just a matter of training your brain to notice and scribble down a few things. Some of my students find that gratitude practice a little tricky. And I think they especially find it tricky sometimes in the world we live in right now, right, where you can look out and be like, there's so many terrible things happening, like, it can feel a little disingenuous to focus on what you're grateful for. So I often suggest maybe an even lighter version of the practice where you look out and try to find some delights out there, you know, like the warmth of

my morning coffee cup or, you know, like a child's laughter, a really funny YouTube clip, right? It's just like a delight. It's just like a nice thing out there. And even just the act of noticing those, I think, can wind up training your brain away from the thing that our brain tends to pay attention to, which is all the negative stuff, right? We have this terrible negativity bias where our brains lock on to all the terrible things out there. But if you can just kind of with a little intention, shift your focus to the positive stuff, you'll wind up feeling a lot better. So that's a big mindset one. Other big ones we talk a lot about in class are behavioral changes, right? Just stuff you can do like physically to achieve more happiness. And honestly, the biggest one really is

engaging in more social connection, right? Just like, as you know, like pretty much every available study of happy people suggest that happy people tend to be more social, right? Whether that's more social, spending time with their friends and family members, more social talking to the brista at the coffee shop and making a little weak connection, right? Other people are really a critical key to our happiness. And so just finding time to get that social connection in, even scheduling it if you really need to get it in your calendar, winds up being really critical and really important. I think also asking yourself the question of like, in some ways, what are the things that are interrupting your social connection, right?

You know, if you're on your phone at dinner and not talking to your spouse, that's a big opportunity cost of some social connection you could be getting. You know, if you're standing in line, you know, at the checkout at the grocery store and like, you know, staring at a screen rather than talking to the person around you, just connecting and sharing a smile, that too is a big opportunity cost on a kind of happiness boost you could be getting. And so I find that committing to the behavior of building in a little bit more social connection can be really critical when it comes to becoming happier. Yeah, and I think what's also important to think about when we build those social

connections is that micro-interactions or micro-moments can make a very big difference. I mean, you mentioned standing in line for, you know, in the grocery store. You know, it doesn't have to be, you know, I'm spending, you know, three hours a day with my BFFs and I have, you know, and three days every week fully with my family. Yeah, nice, nice, but not. essential if you also have these micro moments. And these micro moments are accessible, available to us literally, you know, at every, almost at every moment in the day. Yeah. And it's shocking how easily we give those up, right? And I think this is a big hit that

we get from our technology. One of my favorite little factoids that came out in all these changes that happen after the iPhone and smartphones were introduced. But one of the biggest ones that I found so striking was that the sales of chewing gum plummeted. And I was like, why does the sale of chewing gums matter? You know, think back to that moment at the grocery store. When do you tend to see the chewing gum? Well, you're in line and you're kind of looking around. Like, oh, chewing, I actually get some chewing gum in my mouth.

You know, I'm going to be a minty or whatever. But that moment of you not noticing the chewing gum in the checkout line is the same moment that you're not noticing, you know, the smile on the kid in the line behind you or, you know, the fact that, you know, someone asks like, you know, how's your day today or something, right? Our technologies are stealing these tiny moments of attention that before technology we were often devoting to the people around us and we sort of stopped.

Liz Dunn, who is a professor now at the University of British Columbia, another one of our colleagues in graduate school back in the day, she did this lovely study where she just tried to look at how much less you smile when you have your phone around you than not. So she brings participants into the lab, sits them in a big waiting room, and either has them with their phones or not. And she finds just, you know, naturally in the waiting room,

you see 30% less smiling between the people that are sitting there. Right? I often think about that in my residential college with all my students, right? It's just like how much less smiling in the courtyard and in the dining hall there is just because we're all walking around looking at these screens all the time, you know, and what's that cumulative emotional effect of all that stuff? Yeah, and I think the key point here is the cumulative emotional effect because we know, you know, what a smile.

Again, micro event, what a smile can do, A to us, because when we smile, and you know this from cognitive psychology, it has an effect on our inner world as well, not to mention the mirror neurons that when we smile, others are more likely to smile as well. So the loss given that is significant. You talk, you know, we talked about these, you know, standing in line or the smiles, these small events. And yet, you know, many people. people ask, and I often ask about the difference between feeling happy in the moment, so when I exchange smiles, for example, versus, or in addition to developing a long-lasting sense of happiness. So more of a, you know, trait versus state question.

Well, I think these things kind of work as feedback loops, right? Like take the smiling example, right? You know, if I have a little micro moment of smiling at the brista, the coffee shop, you know, that just gives me a sense that the world is a friendlier place. I'm more socially connected. I like my community more. That's a kind of in the moment feeling, but it winds up building up to, I think, a much broader kind of state attribution, right, that I'm just feeling more connected over time. And my sense is that a lot of the micro moments wind up becoming bigger moments. Those small moments that you take, you know, to notice something that's delightful to you or something that's a blessing in your life, that can, like, pump up.

to become more of a state-like situation, in part because you're doing it over and over and over again. So these things become habits that you put into effect. So the more you do the little things over time, the more that becomes your life is what Aristotle famously said, right? It's our habits that become what our life is. But also I think it can kind of contribute to a sense that your life is flourishing. Often these kind of state moments or sort of long-term happiness assessments are really an assessment of how is our life going, right? How satisfied am I with my life? But I think that that satisfaction can often come from the accumulation of a lot of these micro moments. So the micro moments kind of wind up infecting these long-term state moments, part because they

become habits over time, but in part because I think they do change our overall interpretation of how things are going. So those investments that feel really tiny can wind up being kind of long-term happiness investments too. And of course, the key here is to do them, to engage in them repeatedly. Correct. So it's not just that, you know, I'll do my gratitude. you exercise today, and I'll smile at the grocery store tomorrow, and then I'll live happily

ever after. Push your hands together, like one and done. Yeah. I mean, I think we understand this more in the physical domain. You know, I mean, I would love it if I met up with my trainer for one hard workout. You know, my calves were sore and stuff. And then I was good, good for a lifetime. We'd get, okay, that's not going to work, right?

I think in the happiness space, we sometimes forget this, right? that we can train ourselves to be happier, but it takes work. You know, it takes constant work. And I think that's kind of the bummer about happiness, but like it would be nice if it was a one and done kind of situation. But the good news is that when you continue to put that work in, it works. You wind up feeling better, feeling more satisfied with your life. And it becomes easier as you do this stuff more and more often.

I think it's really fair to say that, you know, before I got interested in this stuff, there were lots of these practices that I just did not put into effect. in my own life. I tended not to be a very grateful person. I was really much more focused on the hassles and the bad stuff. I was, you know, well socially connected with friends, but I definitely wasn't the kind of person who would strike up a conversation with a stranger. You know, I'd have my face buried in my phone quite quickly. And as I've taught more and more of this work, I've started engaging these practices myself more and more. And it does become easier over time. It just becomes the kind of thing that you go to. And that just makes it much easier.

Yeah. And again, I think that the sports analogy that you gave is spot on. It's like, you know, if I just pick up tennis and I learn how to hit a forehand, initially it's awkward and I don't do it well. But then after a while, you know, with a coach, I get better and better. It becomes more comfortable, more quite literally second nature because in the brain with the neural pathways are created and it becomes a habit. Yeah. And so I think putting in the effort now, you can recognize that even if it feels awkward at first, you're paving a path to make it easier for yourself. Right. Yeah, paving a path, creating a neural pathway. I've heard you talk about the annoying features of the mind that get in the way of happiness. What are, you know, some of these annoying features that you refer to? Yeah, they're just like features of our mind that, you know, in theory are probably helpful of something, but when it comes to our happiness are kind of sucky. You know, one of the worst ones when it comes to our happiness is the simple fact that we get used to stuff, which doesn't sound that bad, right?

You know, you get used to things over time. But the problem is that we get used to the good stuff over time, right? You know, you get a raise, right? You have this new salary that you can use to buy all this stuff, you know, maybe go out to eat and so on. It's great at first. but over time you kind of get used to it. You know, my Ivy League students, right,

who work so hard to get into college, they found out they get into their dream school. The first time you announced to your parents, your grandparents, that you got into your dream school, it feels great. You know, time number 300 where someone says, hey, where do you go to college? It just is just not as exciting anymore.

This, I think, is one of the worst features of the mind when it comes to happiness. The best, the best, best moment in life that if it's repeated over time, becomes just kind of boring. The example I often like to give is, you know, if you're partnered up, the first time your partner said, I love you, that felt great. But, you know, this morning, you know, Monday morning when they said it, like, no, nobody cares, right? This is what, as you know, to all psychologists refer to as hedonic adaptation.

We just adapt to the good hedonic stuff in life and we stop noticing it. And that means the best circumstances can stop having a really good impact over time. And so to truly feel the effect of the good stuff around us, we need to do stuff to. fight hedonic adaptation and one of the best ways honestly is gratitude right taking time to remember and notice like hey hang on like there's you know i'm this this couple coffee tastes great like this is wonderful there's delights in the world right we kind of have to forcibly train our attention to notice stuff so that we don't kind of fully adapt to them over time um another great way to fight hedonic adaptation um comes i know the happiness studies academy focuses a lot on

history and philosophers, this is one that comes from the Stoics and one that the psychologists haven't focused on too much. But it's the practice of negative visualization, right? Imagine what life would be like without this thing, not in a terribly ruminative way that all the terrible things are going to happen. But just, you know, some wonderful thing that's happening in your life, just what would it be like if that wasn't there anymore? The example I often give in my podcast and when I'm giving talks is, you know, if you're a parent, imagine that the last time you saw your kid, whenever that was, that was the last time, never going to see them again. And like, if you're a parent, my guess is you just had a, like, your breath just caught in

your throat. And my guess is the next time you see your kid, just with that short two-second example, you'll hug them a little bit more closely, right? Like, that's the power. If we, if we just take a moment to realize what it would feel like if we lost something, we can start to appreciate the stuff we have. But all of those are very intentional practices, right? Like all these habits we've been talking about, you have to do that to overcome heat on adaptation. It doesn't happen naturally. Yeah. You know, Irvin Yalom, who's was professor at Stanford, psychiatrist, in one of his studies, talks about how when he interacted with terminally ill patients, they just heard that they're about to die, say the following. They say, for the first time in my

life, in a very long time, I truly feel that I'm alive. Or I truly appreciate, you know, my loved ones or this meal or the miracle that's all around me. And the question, I mean, the begs is, do we need to wait? Yeah. Do we need to wait for something tragic, terrible to happen? And I think what the Stoics did is they simulated it with that question. You know, just imagine, again, you don't need to make it so radical. But even if something that you enjoy, you know, I had a.

I had an amazing smoothie this morning. You know, by the way, Lori, I'll tell you this, in full confidence, my next career, I'm going to have a smoothie stall. So this is going to be just a fly. I feel like it'd be very fruity, very excited. So, you know, I had my smoothie this morning. And now if I imagine, what if I couldn't have a smoothie anymore? What a difference that would make in my, again, something small, seemingly trivial.

But it can help us be more grateful for those seemingly trivial. important things. You know, one of the quotes that I love, which is attributed, I know I think he actually said it, but it's attributed to Einstein is there are only two ways in which you can live your life. One way to live your life is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle. And that's about, you know, savoring, not taking for granted. And I think we all have experiences, you know, hopefully most of the people listening right now art experiencing, you know, a terminal cancer diagnosis. I think we've all had experiences where good things have gone away and we kind of recognize

this, right? You know, like, you thought you lost your phone. You're like, oh, my gosh, my phone. And then you find it, you're like, ah, I appreciate your phone more. Or, you know, take a situation we all went through not that long ago, right? COVID, right? I remember in the depths of like spring of 2020 that I was like, oh, my gosh, if I could just go to the movies again, I will love being at the movie.

If I could just go to a restaurant again, I will love being in a restaurant so much. you know, sadly it doesn't stick around, right? But even just remembering that, you know, if I go to a restaurant later tonight, I'll think, oh my gosh, this isn't guaranteed. None of this stuff is guaranteed. In some ways, it is a miracle that we get to enjoy all these kind of cool things. So, yeah, getting back in the attitude of noticing that and and savoring it can be so powerful. Yeah, you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking about one of the main ideas that we talk about in the Happiness Studies Academy, whether it's in our, you know, short programs, in our MA program is around the three hours of change. And the three hours of change

are, the first hour is reminders. So we need to remind ourselves to express gratitude. We need to remind ourselves to, you know, go out and, you know, and meet someone. And these reminders can come in the form of, you know, our phone reminding us. It can be a picture. on the wall. It can be a bracelet that we wear and reminds us of something like being mindful or present or kind. But we need those reminders. Second, after reminders, we need repetition. Because as you know, you pointed out, not enough to, you know, one and done. We need to do it again and again. And then if we do the first, then we get to the, you know, the sort of the promise land of change, which is rituals. The third.

or a habit. And, you know, I love the quote by John Dryden, a British philosopher, poet who said, we first make our habits, and then our habits make us. And that's when it becomes second nature. And again, second nature, you know, whether it's brushing your teeth or saying hello and smiling to a person you see on the street. These are all habits we can cultivate and form. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's really worth remembering how. important it is to kind of create those habits over time. I mean, the data just really show that by engaging in these kind of practices more and more often, you really can change your overall happiness, right? You know, so many of those statistics we talked about when we started, like,

we don't, that doesn't need to be that way, right? There are things that we can do as individuals and rituals we can set up as societies to try to fix that. Yeah. You're listening to my conversation with Dr. Tal Ben Shahar of the Happiness Studies Academy. We'll be back after the break. Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers, the pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this, do this, pull that, turn this.

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On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want a better relationship with yourself and the people around you? Honey, same. That's why, on Getting Better, I'm talking with the most brilliant folks I can find.

We are going deep to figure out how we can care for ourselves with more joy, curiosity, and compassion. We're talking mental health, financial wellness, aging brains, tiny habits, and everything in between. So if you're ready to learn and unlearn and laugh a lot while we're at it, come join me, Jonathan Van Ness, on Getting Better, available on YouTube, and we're you get your podcasts. Okay, final question, and then we'll open it up. I see there are many hands up. So in what way, if in any way at all, has your work in cognitive psychology informed

your current work? Yeah. So cognitive psychology broadly, I think, has really helped me understand so many of the different studies in happiness science, right? In a very particular way, which is that I think cognitively speaking, we get happiness wrong, right? The way we think about what it means to be happy isn't really the way happiness works, right? You know, we assume we need to change our circumstances to be happier. No, not so much. Like, we just really need to change our behaviors and our mindsets, right? We assume that what

we need to do is to get more and more money, but in practice, like, we don't actually need that stuff. I think, you know, one path to happiness is really to overcome a lot of the misconceptions we have about how happiness works. You know, I often tell my students that our minds lie to us, and then we have to kind of fight those lies to do a little bit better. And, you know, a lot of those lies are the beliefs we have about happiness, how we think about happiness and so on. And so, yeah, I think cognition matters a lot for happiness.

I'm curious how you've applied your organizational behavior training to the studies of happiness. What have you learned if I get to ask a question, while we're? Yeah, of course. So, you know, on my wall, as reminders of, you know, the important things and the values in my life of people I care about and who care about me. And one of those pictures is Richard Hackman, whom you remember. So he was on the 15th floor. He was my mentor and supervisor. And Richard Hackman, who was an organizational behaviorist, said to us

the following. He said, if you really want to understand a phenomenon and want to be able to change that phenomenon. You have to understand it at multiple levels. So even though he was an organizational behaviorist, he said, look at the neurons, look at the individual, look at the interaction, the diet, interpersonal, look at the group and look at the organization. So in order to understand any phenomenon, and again, happiness being no exception, you need to look at all those levels. As a result of his teachings, I created the Happiness Studies Academy around the interdisciplinary approach. So yes, our students, you know, learn cognitive psychology and neuroscience, and they learn about organizations as well as nations. So one of

the first classes is about systems thinking. And systems thinking is it about understanding the minute, the micro details, and the large, the macro information. That's so important because I think this is another spot where we can get happiness wrong. I sometimes get critiques from students about, you know, the fact that we often talk about, well, here's the behaviors and the mindsets that you can change as an individual, right? And I think that that can mistakenly get folks to think that that's the only path to happiness, right? You know, if you're in a dead end job that's not paying you a lot of money, if you're in an awful situation, if you're in a system that's really not allowing you to flourish very well,

it's like, well, just write in your gratitude journal and it'll be okay. I think we forget that we should be intervening on multiple levels of analysis at definitely the structural levels too, because of course, when you intervene on a whole organization, it makes it easier for all the individuals in that organization to flourish better too. Yeah. Yeah, there's a wonderful book that I know Malcolm Gladwell swears by which is called the person and the situation that talks about how again you have to look to understand something you have to look at the different levels the environment and the individual all right um i have to curb my enthusiasm here and uh call on our wonderful community so sandy please uh everyone if you can make your your questions sing short so that we can get through

as possible. This is a question for both of you, Tal and Laurie. You know, you were talking about systems and you were talking about the environment and the conditions around the subjects that obviously influence in happiness. And you were also talking about the importance of connection

and micromoments, smiles, technology, kind of blocking this. So my question is around that. What do you think, both of you, about what we need to do, talking about systems, you know, social systems, to improve and to prevent what we already see going on, you know, since 2010 in the social media and the screens, that is setting our brains for unhappiness.

It's creating habits that we know will make us unhappy. And I think that is a teamwork, as you say, it doesn't have to do only with individual discipline. But because it is so ingrained and even more with AI, it's going to become even more ingrained and have the fantasy of connecting or having someone that cares about us with, you know, the AI thing. things. How can we, what can we do that I think it's urgent? What would you think we could do as a society, as a team, to prevent this from going even worse? Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm interested to hear Tal's answer, but I'll mention kind of two things. I mean, there's many more that we could talk about, right? One is, I think we need to find ways to

perhaps regulate and curb the spaces where we're using our technologies, while at the same time building spaces where it's much easier to interact socially, right? So I think structurally on the second point, we need more spaces. The political scientist Robert Putnam, another person that Tal and I probably interacted with back when we were in school back in the day as grad students talked about this idea of third spaces, right? These are places that are not home and not work where you can get together and interact with people from all different walks of life. Ideally, you don't even have to buy something there, right? Putnam talked about how third spaces really flourished in the U.S. back in the 1950s where there were

rotary clubs and churches and sports leagues and bowling alleys where everyone could get together and kind of hang out with one another. Not so much anymore. I really think we need to think and kind of energize our approach to building those kinds of spaces to make it easier to interact in real life. At the same time, I think we need to figure out ways to avoid the temptation of interacting on our phones. And I think this is something I think about a lot. in the school setting, right, where we know, of course, like having your phone out is probably impacting, say, my college students or even younger students' ability to learn, but I worry more about its impact on their ability to be social in the dining hall, hanging out with others in,

you know, in the school yard and so on. And so I think that we really need to take seriously the idea of kind of getting phones out of schools, right, or even having time limits on phones at schools. And I think this is the spot where doing it, like system-wide can be really helpful. It's so hard as a parent of a teenager to be like, you know, for you're flourishing, I'm going to limit your phone use when all their friends have access to phones. But if a whole school says, hey, no phones until 15 or no phones until 16, it just makes it easier because there's not the fear of missing out that you have is the one individual trying to do this. And so I think as we think about kind of adjusting our spaces so that our temptation to use our screens

and our technology is not as high, just going to make it easier to engage in more social connection in real life, tall, curious way. Yeah, thank you, Lori. So I'll second and third everything that you said. I had a bit of a aha moment around this a couple of years ago, and I know many in our community know Udi, who's a member of the HSA community. And I told him about all the limitations that I was putting on, you know, screen time. time. And I said it's challenging, but, you know, it's a fight worth, it's a battle worth,

you know, fighting. And after a few minutes, after I told him about all the restrictions and limitations, he said, you know, you've, you're a positive psychologist, but until now, you just talked about all the knows, you know, what they don't do. How about some yeses? In other words, finding positive alternatives to, to the phone. And you talked about, you know, Putnam talks about those spaces that are pleasant, that are in joy that people want to go to. And I think one of the most important yeses today, especially for all of us, but certainly for kids, it's the sports, athletics. Because, you know, when they're playing basketball with one another, they're not on the phone. Nor are they complaining that they're not on the phone.

in something which is healthy. Not you mention all the other benefits associated. You know, so it's the social, it's the physical. It's resilience that they cultivate through sports. So I would put a lot more emphasis on sports in schools, in homes. I love that. I love that. All right.

Thank you, Sandy. Christina. Ciao, Tal. Good morning. Dr. Santos and hi everybody. I just came back from a Bipassan retreat where we stayed in silence completely, 10 hours meditation.

And so you can imagine it was not so easy. And we completely were really strangers. We didn't know each other, but we spend time close to each other. And at the end, we had this wonderful teacher, Carlos Fiel, is very good, quite famous in Europe. And at the end, we made a heart meditation in which we just look at each other straight in the eyes with the hand on our heart. And it was one of the most incredible experience in my mind. Wow.

So I just want, would like to ask you, in your experience during these years, how much importance do you put on cultivating this kind of practices, meditations, yoga? How important are they? Yeah. I mean, I think those kinds of practices from meditation to yoga do, bunch of things that are very relevant for cultivating a mindset that's relevant to happiness, right? Most of those practices engage in some form of mindfulness, right? Being present in the present moment, hopefully in a way that's kind of non-judgmental. So you're not in the present

moment thinking, I hate this, I hate this, you're kind of non-judgmentally accepting the present moment. And there's tons of studies showing the importance of that, not just for kind of experiencing more positive emotions, feelings of contentment and so on, but also for things like, you know, decreasing craving over time. One of the most interesting kind of remedies for substance use disorders is through these practices of radical acceptance of craving and so on. So I think these practices of mindfulness can be incredibly powerful. But a second thing that the particular form of mindfulness that you describe, the sort of heart meditation can do, is to allow us to experience another mindset that we know is really important for happiness, which is a mindset of

compassion, right? Kind of having these positive feelings for other people, wishing them well and so on. And there's studies from Tanya Singer's lab and others showing that practices like loving, kindness meditation, really wishing to others, may you be happy, may you be safe, and so on are incredible ways to feel good ourselves. And this comes from work that I know everyone in Happiness Studies Academy talks about a lot, which is it doing nice things for other people, having positive wishes towards the nice things for other people. Those are the kinds of things that wind up making us happier. And so, yeah, I think that these practices of meditation and mindfulness can be incredibly powerful, not even just in one way, but because they allow us to

cultivate these mindsets that tap into so many different tinier practices that can be good for our flour. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you, Lori. And you know, I think about this, you know, the heartfelt experience a lot. I think for me, I've been doing the gratitude exercise since the 19th of September 1999. My track record is not nearly as good. Yeah. Well, but I did it, you know, as you recall, you know, Emmons and McCullough did their research in 2003. But I learned about the gratitude journal from Oprah, of course.

You know, we talked about it then. And I was thinking, you know, I was watching one of her shows and I was thinking, well, what a nice idea. And I tried it. And of course, you know, I haven't looked back. And then it really upgraded my experience of, The very simple gratitude exercise is Barbara Fredrickson's work on heartfelt positivity. So it's not just going through the motion and writing what I'm grateful for.

It's, yes, it's writing it. And then maybe closing my eyes and thinking, okay, so what does my daughter mean to me? Or, you know, what does the smile that I receive today mean to me? So really experiencing those things that I write down in the heart. And that can make all the difference. in many ways that is also an antidote to hedonic adaptation. You're really savoring it, you're experiencing it. And I think this is so critical.

I see this in my students, right? We assign them these practices of engaging in gratitude journaling and so on. And like so many things in their lives, I feel like they're kind of dialing at it. It's like, you know, my parents, my grades, you know, food and water, whatever, you know, health, you know, just like you can kind of do your gratitude journal like that or you could do it in a way where you ask yourself, you know, how does it truly make me feel the love I feel for my parents. Like what would it feel like to not have them? And so on that that moment of savoring, that moment of noticing can be so powerful. I'll add one other practice that I think we should

all squeeze into our gratitude practices to kind of, you know, like supersize them in terms of their impact. And that's to express gratitude to other people. Again, Tal, I don't know, your gratitude journal has been going on for a long time. I don't know what's in it. But for me, a lot of times what's in it is other people, right? I'm grateful for things, you know, smell of my morning coffee and so on. But I'm really grateful for, you know, the people who work on my podcast team, my students, like my husband, right? And I might even take time to kind of notice, oh my gosh, I love my husband so much. You know, I'm so grateful for him. But rarely do I stop at the end of that moment and walk over at him and be like, you know, honey, I'm so grateful for you.

Thank you so much that you emptied the dishwasher, help me with this problem or whatever. We tend not to express gratitude to other people. And there's work by Nick Geppley at the University of Chicago showing that one of the reasons we don't do that is we just assume they know, right? we assume they know they mean a lot to us and they're thankful for us. And that kind of, you know, cognitive distortion, assuming that they know when they don't actually know, this sort of failure of perspective taking, means we leave a moment on the table to do something nice to somebody else. When I expressed to my husband, oh, I'm so grateful for you. That feels good to him. It kind of boosts up my gratitude because it's hard to be saying that and not feeling it. And it's usually a moment of social connection.

Sometimes with people who haven't talked to in a while, you know, I know sometimes moments in my gratitude journal. I'm just like thinking about an old friend or something that somebody did for me weeks ago, maybe even sometimes years ago, you know, reach out to that person and actually express gratitude to them. The studies really show that they don't know that you appreciate them that much and it can have a huge impact on their well-being and yours too. Yeah. Yeah. That's such an important, powerful amplifier of the gratitude exercise. And then you have the cognitive and the behavioral working in tandem, yeah. Itai. Thank you so much. So I'm going to make a quick question, especially as a college professor, we all know the political climate in colleges has been spoke about everything

very charged, especially in the past 20 months. I wonder what are your thoughts on the positive implications and the negative implications it has on students' welfare and happiness. On one hand, there are social connections that are being made. Students become politically involved. When I was a student in a U.S. college 20 years ago, there was nothing like that. On the other hand, obviously there are many people who are very stressed and anxious about it. And I'm especially curious to know because all the reports show that the well-being, the mental well-being of students, especially in the U.S., is declining. Yeah. Yeah, this is a great question. I think it's what I think about a lot, especially on a U.S. college campus. I think part of the problem starts with the loneliness crisis that we're seeing and in some ways the crisis of these third spaces. One of Robert Putnam's original insights when he first started writing about third spaces was that there often spots where we can meet someone who thinks differently across the political divide. He talked about growing up in a small.

town in Ohio where during his at his bowling league there are people from many different races, many different political parties, many different wealth levels, right? I think more and more in modern times, especially in the U.S., you just don't interact with someone that's a Republican if you're a Democrat, right? You just don't interact with people who have a vastly different wealth level than you, right? Especially on like even footing and even terms where you can have fun conversations about something else. And so one of Robert Putnam's points is that if we really want to fix this problem of the political divide generally, but also the kind of fraught nature of having tough political conversations. Like, it would be great to build spaces where we were talking

like across the aisle generally. And then that would make it easier to have these conversations later. And so I actually see a lot of these problems as ones of social connection generally. Like we're just not interacting with people who, you know, share views that are different, that have views that are different than ours and so on. I also think that in general, when I watch my college students, it's not so much even that they're having a tough time with these hard political conversations. They're having a tough time with conversations generally, right? They have to call someone to, you know, update something on their financial aid or something. It's like, call someone. I'm, you know, fraught with social anxiety to be able to do that. One of the funny,

you know, as ahead of college, you often have these funny moments where you realize how different life is for Gen Z and Gen Alpha than it is for you. And one of the ones that I remember so well during my head of college days happened when one of my students was like, Hux Santos, that's my title, Head of College, Hawks Santos. There's this weird number on the wall in my room. Like, what's this number?

And I was what she talking about? So I go in a room and I'm like, oh, that's a phone jack. That number used to be a phone because you used to have a landline that people could call you in your room. And she was like, oh, that's so great. And she said, well, did each of my roommates have one?

Like, is there one that would have been mine and like four other ones for my roommates? And I was like, no, like back in the day, there was just one number. And she literally asked, She's like, well, what would happen, you know, if I was roommates with Tall and someone called for Tall and Tall wasn't there, but I answered the phone. Like, what would happen? And I said, well, you would say, you know, Tall's not here. Can I take a message? And I realize, like, wait, many college students,

many 18-year-olds today have never had that experience. You know, they don't have landlines in their own home. They never, you know, many college students have never had the experience of having to go to somebody's house, knock on the door, you know, say, hey, where's Tall? Can he come out to play and talk with a parent? like these tiny social interactions that, you know, if you're of a certain age like me and Tall, maybe you remember as being ubiquitous in society, just aren't the things that kids today grow up with. And so like if they can't do that, you know, if they can't be like, hey, Tall's not here, can I take a message, you know, how are they going to talk about, you know, like the bills that are coming out in the United States and fraught political politics and what's going on in the Middle East? Like that's way harder than the simple things. And so I actually think if we could find ways to build in spaces where those simple conversations become easier and more practices to get kids to kind of engage in the habit of doing social connection generally, then we'll actually solve a lot of the tougher political conversation issues that our young people are facing today. You know, Lori, I'm thinking, as you were talking about one of the practices that we have at the Happiness Studies Academy is we have retreats.

And the reason we have those retreats is so that we can have, you know, face to face. in-person interactions rather than just being online. And our last retreat was in Finland. And we had one of the professors from a Finnish university talk about why is Finland, you know, time and time again, the happiest country in the world. And he said one of the reasons is the sauna. And we were all like saying the sauna. And he said, yes, Finns are obsessed with sonnas.

And he said, if you think about it, what it does, and he didn't use that language, but now, you know, using urine and Putnam's language, it's a third space. He says, we get in there, and it doesn't matter if you're, you know, a CEO of a large company or, you know, a bus driver, you know, a street sweeper, a stay-at-home parent, or whatever. You're there together. He added often naked, so, you know, no-wise. Yeah, very intimate, third space. Very intimate. And, you know, you talk about life. And that's a, that's a third space.

So maybe, you know, one of our recommendations should be more saunas across. Or son as I'm in, yeah, we can put some around Yale's campus, although I think with its own problems, perhaps, but we'll work through it. I know, I know. Yeah, we'll think about that one. Yeah. So creating more of those, again, they don't need to be major. Even micro interactions can make, can make all the difference on campuses and the workplace and beyond.

Thank you. You're listening to me speaking with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar of the Happiness Studies Academy. We'll be back after the short break. Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this. Do this, pull that, turn this.

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available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. At Sheree. Hello. So I have a question, Dr. Santos, about this is kind of following the same line, about students. So I have a college-age student, and he is completely mortified when I speak to anyone in public. If I pass someone on the sidewalk and say hello,

If I talk to someone in line at the grocery store, he's like, why are you always talking to people? And then we had a conversation recently about this Gen Z stare. I don't know if you're familiar with this, but this idea that when you ask a Gen Z person, a question, and they just stare back at you with no response. And so we were having a long back and forth about this. And I was trying to express him the importance or the value in just communicating with other people, recognizing someone else just having these small conversations, a little chit-chat. And he's like, if I'm working at a food counter and they get their food, I'm doing my job.

Why does it have to be all this extra? So my question is, when you have students who have come to your class, I would imagine for a reason. They're choosing to take this class. And then you offer them these things that they can do. Do you find that they struggle to recognize the value in doing those things? And then what do you do with that? Yeah, no, it's a great question. And I resonate.

Believe me, I get a lot of the Gen Z stare in my life. I mean, I think one of the strategies I've had for convincing people that this stuff is important is really showing people the data, right? I mean, in my course, you literally get to see the graph of what happens if you engage in the conversation with the brief at the coffee shop versus if you don't. And then you see that graph and you're like, well, I actually want more. of life satisfaction. I want more of positive emotion. Maybe I should try it out. And I think this is critical. You know, I mentioned before this idea that our minds lie to us about the kinds of things that make us happy. And I think our minds lie to us about so much of what the benefits of social connection could be. This is definitely true for Gen Z, but I think it's true for adults, too. Some of the

original studies on the benefits of these really micro interactions happened not with individuals who are Gen Z, but kind of like, you know, middle-aged adults in the workforce. Nick Epley did this study where he had people on a commute to work. He's, again, like kind of middle-aged people hopping on the L train to go to work because he did this study in Chicago in the U.S. And he either told people, hey, for the entire train ride, I want you to enjoy your solitude, be by yourself, or, hey, for the entire train ride, I want you to talk to someone, right? He does the study and finds that when you talk to someone, you wind up feeling happier, enjoying more positive mood and so on. But the other thing he does is to have subjects predict.

hey, if you were in one of these two conditions that enjoy your solitude condition versus the talk to someone condition, which would make you feel better? And that was like, you know, one of the most striking effects in positive psychology. People think that talking to the stranger on the train is going to be awkward, crummy, anxiety provoking, et cetera, et cetera. Our predictions are wrong. And one of the things Nick argues is that our predictions are wrong because we don't often engage in these activities. In fact, he finds, for example, the introverts really strongly predict that this is going to be terrible. But the benefits that they accrue are the same as those that extrovert might accrue. Kind of surprisingly, this is a finding, I guess, I'm pushback on.

So I often like to cite it like, no, no, no, here's a graph. You could look at it yourself. But his argument is that introverts tend to engage in these little micro interactions less. So they don't notice the benefits. And their misconception about what it's going to feel like gets bigger and bigger, right? Because you never get the data to show you, oh, that's not as bad as I thought. And I think that's actually what's going on with Gen Z a lot of the time, right? Is that they don't engage in these interactions.

As we mentioned, they don't have this moment to, like, you know, quickly answer the phone and talk to somebody or talk to folks on the street. They just have no practice. And so when they simulate what this is going to feel like, it feels really cool and it feels like it has a lot of friction, it feels like it's going to be really hard. And they never engage in these practices to get the data to say, not only it wasn't that bad, but like it actually kind of made me feel good. It made me feel a little bit more connected. It made me feel a little bit happier than I would have felt on that train ride. So I like showing the data and kind of convincing folks, hey, just experiment. Just try it once, notice, and see what it feels like.

Yeah, thank you. That's great advice. You know, Laurie, the idea of just experiment. See what happens. You know, the worst that would happen, okay, you're a little bit embarrassed. So what. And then also to recognize that for many of these interventions, there is a startup cost. Yes, it's easier to sit by yourself and, you know, be, you know, inside your, you know, your screen.

It's a little bit more challenging to, you know, smile at someone and strike up a conversation. But once we do that, once, you know, the first step, it becomes an upward spiral. I think it's so important to recognize that, like, our intuitions about how bad it's going to be are wrong. You know, and they're wrong for so many things in the domain of social connection, right? We assume that other people don't want to talk to us. This is another finding from some of Nick Epley's work, right? That the person you're talking to is hating it the whole time, being like, who's this weirdo who's talking to me on the train?

no, it turns out that the people who are talked to actually enjoy it as well. We worry that it would be tough to ask someone for help to show that we're vulnerable. But social psychologists have long documented this so-called beautiful mess effect, where if you seem like you're a little needy and that you seem like you're a little vulnerable, that actually enhances your likeability to other folks. And so I actually think I honestly tell one of my roles is to tell college students about all these kinds of biases that like you think social connection is going to be bad, you think you're going to be bad at it, you think other people aren't going to like it, but not only is it going to be

neutral, it's going to be good for your happiness, for your likeability for all these other things. Sometimes we need to overcome all these misconceptions. Yeah, love it. Wonderful. Valentina. Thank you, Tal. I'm going to make a quick question, but I think it has a lot of deep meaning behind. In Spanish, we can relate to ideas to happiness. Estabal which is joy or emotional state, and ser felix, which is fulfillment, whole person, well-being, et cetera. So I started a project four years ago that promotes happiness as whole person well-being as a personal responsibility.

So I just want to listen to your insight on that, Laurie. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a couple of threads on that. One is that I love that you're bringing up the way different. languages refer to happiness, because I think this is one of the problems we face, right, is that we have really limited tools to talk about incredibly complicated states, whether those are states of emotions, states of short-term happiness, state happiness, and so on. One of my favorite projects coming out of the work of Tyler Vanderveal's lab at Harvard these days is a whole repository of words for happiness and words for emotions from around the

world. And what you find is English, the language I speak from a terrible monolingual American, it's just like so impoverished when it comes to other countries. And just like a concept that many folks know, even if they don't know German, you know this word schadenfreude, right? It's like, it's an American, I don't know German, but I'm like, I hear that word. I'm like, oh, I get schadenfreude, that kind of good feeling you get when something bad happens to somebody else, know what it means.

So many of the words in this kind of big corpus that they're putting together are concepts that you're like, when you hear it, you're like, oh my gosh, I totally kind of have that concept, even though I don't have a word for it. One of my favorite ones, I'm going to forget the word, which is even more embarrassing, but it's a word in Norwegian that means on the first hot day of the year, the cold beverage that you have outside. And as someone who lives in the northeast of the United States, I get, I'm like, oh, my gosh, there's that day and you have the beer, and oh, so good, right? But the point is that we have impoverished words when it comes to all these concepts. And so I think making distinctions, for example, between, well, what I mean by happiness,

when I mean the joy, the short-term stuff, and what I mean by happiness, when I mean the long-term stuff, right? Those distinctions, you know, are really critical. And in terms of, like, which one should be prioritized, I think the science shows us something interesting, right, which is like prioritizing both is pretty good, right? As you kind of have more joy in your life, more of these short-term moments of feeling good, that can contribute to a life where you feel like you're overall flourishing, you're kind of all overall, you know, promoting your happiness. And finally, I love this idea that you talked about it as a personal responsibility, right? I think sometimes we can kind of poo-poo happiness because we assume it's selfish, right?

It's just like me, like, oh, you know, poor me, I'm not as happy as I could be, like, you know, me, me, me, I want to feel better. But I think more and more data are coming out showing just how powerful people's mood can be for the kinds of ways that they interact in the world. And in particular, the good things they do in the world. Constantine Kushleff, who's a professor at Georgetown, has been doing these studies asking the question, like, who's out there, like, fighting the good fight for the big problems, right? Like, who's out there trying to deal with the climate crisis that we're facing? In the U.S., when we face social justice problems, you know, who's going to, for example, a Black Lives Matter protest? Like, who's, like, really trying to put in the work to fix the problems that you perceive us facing? And what he finds is that a lot of it is predicted by your positive mood.

You know, if you ask who are the people that are really worried about the climate crisis, it tends to be people who are a little high anxiety, a little high depression. But if you ask the question, who's getting solar panels, who's going to a protest, who's calling, you know, their congressman or a politician to try to help and fix things, it tends to be the people who are feeling happier. And his hypothesis is that, like, actually, if we want to fix the structural problems out there, we kind of need to put our own oxygen mask on first because that's how we're going to help others. And that's how we're going to help others. And that's how we're going to. help the world. And so I love this notion that, like, you should see your own life satisfaction. You should see your own kind of flourishing as a personal responsibility. I actually think based on Kushchev's work, it becomes kind of a moral responsibility to take care of yourself. That might be one of the best ways to make sure we have the bandwidth to be helping others and helping the world too. That's great. And Laura, I just want to connect the, you know, the two strands of your response You know, you talk about how language is important.

And, you know, we talk about how words create worlds and how concepts conceive. And one of the words that we use is rather than think about the pursuit of happiness as being selfish or selfless, we talk about it being self-ful. And within the idea of selffulness, that's when you take care of yourself and you take care of others. more than that. It's through taking care of yourself that you take care of others. And by taking care of others, you're also taking care of yourself. So you're potentially creating an upward spiral of goodness and happiness. I love this. I love this concept of self-ful. It's a good, it's a good word. Thank you, Valé. Gaddi.

Thank you. First of all, thank you both for everything that you do to help other people you were both my heroes so thank you very much um i have i i'm very much on board dollars also know me for many years i'm very much on board with doing things proactively to become happier i have two teenage daughters uh who are 17 years old uh who uh will not listen to any of this and would love any advice that you have for how we can get these messages through to them. Well, I will say one of the things you can do sounds like something you're already doing, Gadi, which is that we know our behaviors are contagious, right?

If you're at the dinner table talking not about the terrible things that happened at work, but your delights, that's the kind of thing that's going to make other people tend to do that too, and especially your kids. While it doesn't often feel like it, you know, there's lots of evidence from Segal-Barrisade and others that the contagion that we experience, both in our behavior, behaviors in our emotions happen through the people who are in charge to the people who are a little bit less in charge. And even though it doesn't feel that way, especially with a 17-year-olds, you as a parent are actually in charge. But what that means is that you actually have some agency

over the emotions in your family and in some ways the behaviors in your family. You just kind of have to practice yourself. And I love this piece of advice because it gives parents and even if you're not a parent a leader at work and so on, a manager, permission to take care of yourself and to make sure you are doing the kinds of things that you need to do to promote your well-being because those kinds of behaviors and the emotions that emerge from those behaviors will transmit. The other thing I'll suggest, though, is that, you know, what I find works so much with our young people today in terms of getting this message out is really just sharing the data. One of the insights I had from, you know, the fact that my happiness class went viral and I think

the fact that Tall's happiness class went viral and so on is that I think our young people aren't looking for platitudes about the kinds of things they're supposed to do, right? Like, I think they get a lot of that. I think they're really much more evidence-based than previous generations. I think they're like, show me the data and then I'll do what I need to do. And I think that, you know, in the case of happiness studies, we just have tons of data on the simple kinds of behavior and mindset changes you can make to feel happier. And so I think rather than tell them what to do, show them what they can do, like, you know,

hey, did you know, there's a study that you just talk to somebody, you know, in the grocery store, you'll wind up feeling happier. huh you know it's kind of like pointing them to the water but not trying to force them to drink give them a sense of the kinds of things they can do and i find that that can be much more powerful than you expect yeah you know my wife just recently shared a study with our kids that's part of the harvard study that doing house chores contributes to self-esteem well-being and success and i actually think it helped. Yeah, that's right. Another general thing I talk a lot about on the podcast is that sometimes when we want people to do something, the easiest way we think we can get

them to do it is to tell them to do that, right? But if we reflect on how we get motivated to do things, we instantly realize what a bad strategy that is, right? Like the way to get the dishwasher, never to get empty it is for my husband to like nag me about it, right? I could have been immediately about to go to the dishwasher, but he's like, are you going to empty the dishwasher? I'm I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm going, you know, like, those are the kinds of dynamics that we have. As parents, we often forget that with our kids. We're often in the mode of telling rather than showing, right? And I think if we can get back to a mode of showing, either through our own behavior, or just like, you know, revealing the consequences of different forms of action, you know, kind of like you were saying to all like, hey, did you know that doing chores, like actually increases self-esteem?

Like, these folks are like smart, agentive individuals, even if they're a little younger than us. and they're going to hear kind of what they should do and be more likely to engage in it when they kind of figure it out on their own and make a decision themselves that, hey, this might be a good thing to engage with rather than you just sort of telling them or worse trying to force them

or give them rewards for it or so on. Letting them find their own intrinsic motivation is a really powerful strategy. Love that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Gadi. Danny.

Thank you, Dan. Hi, Clarice, so good to see you again. I am wondering how I have a six-year-old who is here. And sometimes I wonder what can I do for him to remain happier and feel happy for the rest of his life. Because sometimes, although he's a lot of life and everything, at some points I see that he becomes in this state of hedonic adaptation. And so I wonder how can I explain him without that. to continue his happiness. So thank you. Yeah, well, I think I think that's a spot when you're dealing with younger kids where your actions matter a lot, right? Watching your behavior matters a lot.

I think, I think we kind of implicitly know this a little bit with the not so good behaviors, right? You know, what's one way to get kids really addicted to screens is if they see you on your screen all the time, right? They're going to, they is, you know, or, you know, another thing in my house is when you hear your parents swear and the kid instantly picks up on the bad word that they're not supposed to say, right? You know they're soaking that stuff up, but they're also soaking the good stuff up, right? So I think that the more you can engage in these practices, the more they're kind of learning the right kinds of things to do. One I think matters a lot for parents is really talking through the emotions you're going through, especially if they're bad emotions, right? I think one of the things that we can do, a mindset shift we can engage in to feel a lot better is to give ourselves some self-compatency.

when we're not having a good time, right? I think this is a talk through that really helps with kids, right? You know, Mommy's feeling really frustrated today, and she's having a bad day. I'm actually feeling really frustrated and maybe a little lonely. What I'm going to do is I'm going to call, you know, call my sister tonight because that's what I need to do. But, like, it's okay. Everybody goes through bad emotions. Like, that kind of stream of consciousness, set out loud, teaches kids' words for emotions.

So they know it's not just a yucky feeling. You can be feeling frustrated or lonely or sad or angry or whatever. And it kind of lets you articulate what you're going to do that it's okay that you're going through it. Everybody goes through it. But here's what I'm going to do to fix it. Those are powerful practices for little kids to hear. When we finished our project sharing some of these happiness strategies with teenagers, we also did a project with Sesame Workshop, which is the group in the U.S. that builds Sesame Street to try to think about like, well, what are ways we can fill this into little kids? And one of the most powerful ways we figured out. It's like, well, parents can articulate some of these things, too, right? Parents' behavior matters. This is like a lot of the direct transmission we have. And so finding ways to just articulate what you're going through, let them hear it. They'll pick up on it. Not immediately, not perfectly, not 100% of the time, but you're getting that information in there in a way that you'll be surprised will stick when you least expect it.

Yeah. Thank you so much. And just to add to that, stories. Whether it's stories of, you know, mom or stories of, you know, grandpa or a story of, you know, of Helen Keller. It's stories that the children, that have a value base that communicate an important. And this is one of the things I think you all do so well at the Happiness Studies Academy, right, is that not only you're not just focused on psychology, but you're also focused on the system and focused on neuroscience. you're also focused on the ways that we often share narrative about our values, right? You know, I love that there's novels and movies that you are all studying as part of the academy because these can be fantastic ways to learn about our emotions, to learn what we value,

to learn what are the kinds of paths to a flourishing life. So, yeah, that earlier we can get those good stories into our kids, the better. Yeah. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to see you both here together. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you.

Sandy. Yes, hello. I wanted to circle back on the social connection piece and really, really unpack it at the micro level. I know Sandy had that excellent question at the macro level and we've been sprinkling it throughout, but kind of the dynamic between still feeling loneliness, but not necessarily being alone. Right? So you're in a crowd or you're with people, you're talking to people, and yet you still come away. from the situation feeling lonely.

I heard a podcast about this peripherally about, you know, small talk versus deeply connecting around things that bring you meaning, but things that light you up. But I'm interested in how it plays out in like different human ecosystems. Like are there studies around gender norms or even cultural norms about what gets talked about and how does that facilitate building the connection or even like in microcosms of small communities that everyone knows each other. And so there's, you know, worry around gossip. I saw this on the small college campus I worked at. And so

people struggle with being vulnerable because they're worried about gossip. And also, is the relationship transactional on nature or does it focus on connection first? So if you can unpack any of that, that would be great. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's a great question. And I think it's worth thinking about how loneliness can emerge due to our kind of fears about being vulnerable in these populations, whether it's gossip on a college campus, you know, connecting with folks at work, right? You know, this is something I think about a lot that, you know, work, it's not a third space. It's like, you know, homework. It's like the second space, but it's a spot where we spend a lot of time with other people, you know, where we really could be boosting our social

connection and our vulnerability if we wanted to, right? And so my read of the data is that pretty much what it says is that the path to feeling connected and feeling less lonely is in some ways like about as universal as they come, right? Which is that you need to share and get vulnerable with other people. And often a way to do that is through a little bit deeper conversation, right? This is again some work by Nick Epley and his colleagues where he points out that we're often having shallow conversation. We're talking about the weather, you know, what sports game we're going to, but we're not talking about the things that reveal our values, right? We're not talking about the things that really matter. And I think that's the kind of conversation we need to get to,

right, where we're really kind of sharing the kinds of things that matter. And, you know, there's some nuance there, of course, but that kind of strategy can work often in lots of different situations, right? You know, take the, again, the kind of idea of friendship at work. I think this is when we're like, well, we definitely don't want to overshare at work and there's things that, you know, they're different boundary conditions and so on. But all of us can share a little bit about what's going on. And all of us can ask questions. Often the path to reducing our loneliness isn't about getting other people to know us, but it's about asking questions that allow us to get to know other people,

which is sort of always on the table. You know, so if you've read, you know, hey, you know, you're at work, like, what are you doing this weekend? Like, oh, you know, I'm like, you know, going to Rhode Island for the weekend or something. Like, oh, what's in Rhode Island? How did you connect with that? Do you have family there? Right. Like, that's not a kind of overshare that's going to, you know, get you into HR trouble.

It's just trying to understand, oh, you're going fishing. Like, how did you decide to go fishing? Like, when did you start doing that as a kid, right? Like, what's your favorite part about fishing, right? Like, those are just questions where you can kind of get to know people like one more step deep, more deeply. And that can resonate a lot with kind of feeling more connected. Because the next thing is they're going to ask you the same thing and you'll feel a little bit better. And so I think the instinct in whatever situation we're in is actually to go like half a step deeper than we would normally go in that situation.

And when in doubt, ask other people questions, right? like really try to follow up and get curious with them because that's really a quick path to getting to know someone else. And it might even be a quick path to kind of overcoming some of the political divides we were talking about before. One of my favorite strategies for having tough conversations and even seeing eye to eye across political little differences is this lovely work on deep canvassing. This is a work of Josh Kala, who's a colleague of mine at Yale, where he asks a question like, you know, what are the ways that we might be able to see eye to eye on these tough issues. And he says, well, rather than kind of

perspective giving of like, hey, here's, you know, what I think about the issue I care about, do some perspective getting. So for example, he does a study on individuals who are kind of, you know, anti-LGBQ issues, right, maybe anti-trans rights and so on. And what he'll do is go up to folks during a canvassing situation. And rather than say, hey, let me tell you about an experience, you know, I had as a queer person that was really tough, he'll say, hey, person I'm talking to, what was a situation where you felt like you didn't really belong or you felt really marginalized or you felt somebody didn't get you? And he does this work, you know, in situations where there are a lot of individuals who are, you know, not as familiar with

queer individuals, right? So they'll say, you know, well, one time I was, you know, in the military and I had PTSD and no one really understood it and stuff. But the individual who's canvassing will sit and listen to that for a while, right? And you say, huh, you know, that situation which you felt like you didn't belong, like that's the kind of thing a lot of queer people go through. their situations, right? And like, they're making a connection, right? But the key to decanvassing is you're asking the question first, you're listening. And Kala's work suggests that it doesn't necessarily completely change people's political opinions, but it gets everybody to listen to the lived experience of other folks. And it gets people to kind of, you know,

not necessarily see to eye to eye and maybe not change their situations, but to hear them and often to realize that there's more in common than you actually think. what are the examples that comes not from Josh's work, but this is from the work of Jamil Zaki, who is also doing this lovely work on having these tough political conversations where you ask questions is you often have these situations where people actually see eye to eye more than you realize. Jamil did ones on gun violence, right? Should we be able to own guns and so on?

And he had someone who was kind of staunchly anti-gun, talk to someone who is pro-gun. And the pro-gun person said, you know, I live in the South. I'm actually queer and I'm afraid all the time. And so owning a gun makes me feel a little bit safer, right? And that might not be the, you know, the stereotype you have about the person who's going to be, you know, super pro-gun. And it wasn't like the anti-gun person was like, oh, we should all have gun. But it was like, oh, I see eye to eye a little bit more. I get your lived experience.

I don't feel as alienated from you. I feel like we can actually have the conversation and start that. But the point is that all starts from listening. It starts with getting curious and asking questions, which I think is the key to, you know, maybe seeing a little bit better across politically. divides, but it's also the key to reducing our loneliness. Yeah. I like that a lot, Lori. You know, so on the one hand, you want to share and be vulnerable, and on the other hand, you want to ask questions and listen. So both input and outputs, and that's how you create. So it's sharing vulnerability and ask questions and listen.

That's great. So I think we have time for one more. I'm going to take two more. The first one, Cristiana. Hello, Toll, thank you. Hello, Lori. I met you in Lago di Como. In Italy, remember, I said, Lodi Santos, you said, you are the Brazilians are the only one who can pronounce my last name correctly.

Great seeing you here with all and having this inspiring conversation. I just graduated from the master in the science of happiness. and we told, yes, very happy, and I had two memetic leaderships here inspiring. Today, I'm going to have an important lecture at a place near my parents' house in Sao Paulo, and I always get excited because intensity can be my strength and also my weakness to take everything that we know from the science of happiness and how can help people. And one thing that I always say is you teach you, trying to connect with that. But I would like to love to listen from both of you, very experienced teachers.

All this path have created both in Harvard and in Yale, a program that became the most popular ones. If you need to take something out there to talk about happiness, what would be one or two key message? that you really think that help people that they need right at this moment. Well, I think that the way, you know, the way to do the talks best is to use as many stories as possible. I mean, I think what Tal is talking about is you teach you is like find something that resonates with you, a story, a narrative you can share, and that's going to be powerful. But on the one topic that I think I wish everyone knew about happiness, you know, it might be the theme of this overall webinar, right? Which is that you can change.

you can train your happiness you know if you're not feeling good right now there are behaviors you can engage in mindset shifts you can engage in to just feel better and i think that can be so empowering for people thank you larry so yeah thank you for this laura and i'm gonna you know quote someone whom you've heard me quote christiana many times before um call rogers who wrote that what is most personal is most general so So remember the Dalai Lama once said, I'm all for cross-cultural research, which is very important, and we need to do more of it. What we mustn't lose sight of is the fact that we're also at the same time very similar, that there is a universal nature. So when you go deep into your own mind, soul, spirit, call it whatever you want, you're also going into.

the universal spirit, soul, and mind. So, you know, look inside, again, be prepared to be vulnerable and share. Look outside, ask questions, and listen. Thank you. Are both such an inspiration. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, Alyssa, can you make this very short? I can. Thank you very much for both doing this for free. Dr. Lurie, I click your class in five years ago and it was fantastic thank you here's my question yeah i remember i have the notes in front of me i have two quick things to say and they'll be brief one was when we had this class you talked about random acts of kindness like you mentioned to the barista and the second thing that i don't think was discussed but thought you could consider doing the two of you is about

trying new fun things to add your happiness factor you had mentioned this in your prior i'm take a knitting, take up crocheting, try a new sport, take classes. And so I'm a current 70-year-old California resident taking classes through Long Beach State, highly influenced by you. I'm in five classes. And on my age, I've actually formed a small group where a band and we perform in Southern California. So that's to thanks to you. So if you wouldn't mind addressing the random acts of kindness thought and doing new things to help you become a happier person. Thanks. I mean, this is like, you know, why it's so tragic to, you know, only have such a short time to talk about this when you need a whole academy to talk about this. But yes, so much data showing the power of random acts of kindness. You know, I think Tal talked about this idea of selfful, right? They did not selfless or, you know, kind of selfish that doing for others, right, kind of being selfless is selfish in the fact that it winds up making you feel better. And there's just so much evidence suggesting that doing for others, thinking about others, reaching out to others, It winds up making us even happier than we think.

A bias I think everyone should know about is this phenomenon of under-sociality, that we don't predict the positive effects of sociality nearly as much as they are there, right? We assume like, oh, it'll feel okay to do something nice for someone else. But it feels much better for us than we expect than others. So yes, random acts of kindness, glad we got that in there. But fun was something we haven't talked about, and I think something that the research really shows can be really important. You know, I think of fun as having these three components. It's a moment where you tend to be really social, right, which we've talked about a lot.

It's a moment where you tend to be a little bit present, you know, which you talked about a little bit, these moments of mindfulness. But it's also a moment in which you're often engaged in play, right? Just something for the intrinsic joy of doing it. And there's less and less of that stuff out there these days, you know, especially among my college students where they're always doing something to, like, boost their resume or it's a side hustle or something, right? But the act of just doing stuff for fun, these socially connected moments. of presence in play, you know, studies really show that they can make you feel better. One of my favorite studies show that play is one of the easiest ways to reduce stress, that college students who tend to say, I play a lot, actually report less stressed and seem

to use play as a coping strategy. So get that play in there, you know, join a, try out a new hobby, join a singing group or join a band as you've done. And don't worry about being a beginner because as we've talked about your habits will allow you to get better at it over time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Listen, what a lovely way to end on fun. Because, you know, while happiness is not the same as fun, fun is an important element of happiness. This has been a lot of fun, Lori, to be meaningful. And I can thank you enough for all that you are doing and for taking time to spend with us today. Well, gratitude right back at you. I feel like I'm just like, you know, continuing the fine legacy of big Ivy League classes that you began yourself.

So thanks so much for all the work that you do and thanks for having me on today. Great. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you all from being here. And again, take good care of yourselves and of others. Bye, bye, bye, bye, thank you. Bye, thanks. Thanks. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hood of your take it all. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming? I can't expect what to do.

Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No such thing. This is an IHeart podcast.