The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Q: "Can You Be Happy Alone?"

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Since Covid hit, many of us have seen fewer people and experienced more loneliness. Listener Ivana Cole wants to know what we can do to reconnect and asks, if we can't reconnect: "Can we be happy alone?"  Dr Laurie Santos looks at social connections and how make them with Stanford's Jamil Zaki (author of the War for Kindness). See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. or take some time for exercise. But there is one way to improve your mood that could literally be staring you right in the face this very second. There are 7.7 billion people in the world, and talking to just one of them can often make you feel so much better. Social interaction is usually available all around us, but many of us, even in the busiest cities, can go a whole day without properly engaging with another human being. I'll admit, I sometimes hide away from social situations too. I skip work gatherings to stay at home. I eat by myself. When I'm on a train or plane, I often check emails on my phone rather

than starting a conversation with a stranger. I repeatedly fall for the lie of the mind that talking to people will be awkward, annoying, or just draining. So when I put out a call for listener questions, I was really glad to see that so many of you were also looking for ways to master the art of becoming more socially connected and making new friends. I was also thrilled that I'd have a chance to bring in an expert on empathy who just happens to be one of my favorite Happiness Lab all-stars. I'm Jamil Zaki. I'm a professor of psychology at Stanford and author of The War for Kindness. Jamil's going to give us a crash course on how to be better at building meaningful social connections. If you're struggling to connect with

an abrasive coworker, or if you're feeling like your social skills have atrophied a bit during lockdown, or if you're worried about taking on someone else's misery. Never fear. Jamil, as always, has some great advice. So sit back, relax, and learn how to get out there and interact in the social world. You're listening to the Happiness Lab Listener Questions Special Edition with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. Jamil, I'm so excited that we have you

on the Happiness Lab today because when we put out these questions to listeners, the main thing that we get questions about are how we can deal with social relationships and social connection, how we can increase empathy. It was exactly the stuff that's up your alley. So hopefully you can help all of us like figure this stuff out. I mean, I feel like for me, the pandemic has put into stark relief both the importance of social connection, but also how fraught it can be, like how out of practice I got very quickly living in the pandemic. Is this something you've experienced or seen in the work? Oh my goodness. Yeah. I still remember, it's been several months, but my first in-person talk and conference after being locked away, mostly at home for a year and a half. And I love that stuff. I mean, that's part of why I got into this field because I love the community. And yet going back, it was the most terrifying thing. I literally was on stage and I actually thought I was going to faint and had to hold on to the podium just to keep myself upright, which is not something that I've ever experienced. us, our social muscles have just atrophied. And it's like taking a cast off. You know,

if you've been in a cast for six months, you don't take it off and then immediately try to lift weights. But that's what a lot of us are doing. And I think it's critical for us to be gentle with ourselves and understand that we need to restrengthen. We need to reacclimate to this social world that we have been part of for all of our lives, but then abruptly taken out of for a super long time. And so I love this idea of being gentle with ourselves, because I think that's what a lot of our questions involve is this idea of how can we face the challenges that come with re-socializing, but also be gentle with ourselves in the process. And one of the listeners that we got a question from was

really struggling with this idea of connection, especially during the pandemic and some of the changes that happened during the pandemic. And she had a question that I found really sad. And so I'm hoping we can help her out. This is Ivana Cole, who asked this on Instagram. Ivana asks, the pandemic has made it difficult to start a new life in a new country or city. It seems impossible to make meaningful friendships. Loneliness seems inevitable in this post-pandemic era. So my question is, can you be happy alone? Which was a very sad question. So I want to pivot from that question and maybe ask kind of what she implied, which is, is loneliness inevitable right now or are there paths out? Well, I think it's, first of all, loneliness is totally normal right now. And I resonate completely with what this

person is saying. You know, what's more boring than water? Water is the most boring beverage on the planet, unless you're thirsty, in which case it is the single most interesting thing on earth, right? And I think that we have gone from sort of having water all around us to being in a drought, a social drought. And so it's totally normal to feel lonely. You know, one of my favorite parts about the Happiness Lab, out of many, is this theme that you come back to a lot, that our minds lie to us and that those lies make it harder for us to find fulfillment and happiness. And a lot of the lies you talk about pertain to ourselves, what will make us feel good or bad in the future. I think that it's important to know that our minds also lie to us about other people. lie to us about other people. So we systematically think that other people are more judgmental,

less friendly, and even more extreme than they really are. We even think that people are way more selfish than they really are. I think Jean-Paul Sartre said that hell is other people. I think maybe hell is our imagination of what other people are. But here's the problem. We often interact not with the people who are really out there, but with the people in our minds. And in many cases, instead of interacting with the people in our minds, we stay by ourselves because the scariest thing on earth is to get in an argument or even worse, like ask someone out even on a friend date and have them reject us out of hand, right? Those experiences are so terrifying that we just stay home because we want to avoid, again, the mean people we imagine. Here's the even worse part. When we avoid the mean people we imagine, we don't get the data we need to realize that our minds were playing tricks on us all along. We don't get to meet the actual friendly people who might have turned into our new bestie or colleague or business partner, even our new love of our life. Well, maybe the only love of our life.

No, but this is such an important point, right? It's not so much that we're doomed to loneliness. We're doomed maybe to be worried about loneliness or worried about the kinds of things that might make it scary for us to interact with other people. But so much of the data suggested if we could just try it, if we could just take some baby steps and talk to someone, ask someone out on a friend date, you just make that first connection with a stranger where you talk about the weather, it's probably going to go a lot better than we expect. And then we'll start getting the data that you talk about, right? You can say, oh, that wasn't so bad. Yeah. You know, as a kid, I was terrified of the ocean because I always thought that I would get

attacked by a shark. You know, shark attacks turn out to be basically the least common way you can die ever, you know, except, I don't know, getting struck by lightning four times in a row. But I didn't know that. And shark attacks loom large in our imagination and change our behavior in a way that we don't really need to change it. I think that rejection and mean people are like the shark attacks of the social world. We think way more about them than we need to. And so we adjust our behavior because we think rejection is everywhere. When it turns out, if we just take, as you're saying, that little leap of faith, that little step to put ourselves out there and try to connect, we might be shocked by how accepting and friendly people are. And that might then empower us to take that next

step to pull ourselves slowly but surely out of loneliness. And I think one thing, if you're hearing this and you're still feeling like, oh my God, it's the shark attack of rejection is looming really large. I think one thing to know is that social scientists have data on this, right? Like they've really looked at when you reach out to somebody and talk to a stranger for the first time, are they going to reject you? Are they going to think it's awkward? Are they going to be annoyed with you? And by and large, I mean, you correct me if I'm wrong, Jamil, but my read of the data is no, it's just going to go fine. Better than okay. Our friend Nick Epley talks about this all the time, that when you ask people, what would it be like to talk to a stranger today? Or even to talk with a friend, but instead of

just discussing your day, actually going deep with them and asking what matters to them, what they're struggling with and telling them what you're struggling with. Any of those social risks, you ask people what it will be like and they say, oh my goodness, it will be the most frightening, worst part of my day. It will be so awkward. It'll be horrible. And then Nick actually gets people to do these things and he says, well, what was that like? And they say, oh my goodness, it was the best part of my day, the most meaningful and connected that I felt in weeks. So again, the data are exactly opposite to not right near the beach in Cape Cod, which is where I was always terrified. Then you can use that information as fuel to take

those little steps. I think another thing that feels scary about connecting right now is that the world socially feels like kind of a fraught place. We all have these really distinct identities that feel very salient, that feel different than a lot of other people's identities. You know, politically, we're super polarized. And that on top of everybody's kind of out of practice with social stuff. And so I think it can feel especially scary when you're trying to connect in ways that might involve contacting somebody who has really a different perspective than you. And that was another set of questions that we got a lot about. I'll just read another from a listener on Twitter, Nomfundo.

Nomfundo says, Hey, Lori. First, thank you for an amazing podcast. Thank you, Nomfundo. I'm super keen to hear how to build healthy relationships with friends and colleagues and even in the romantic context, especially across social, economic and political differences. Jamil, I know this is a spot where you've done a lot of work in terms of what we can do to build up empathy. And so how can we build these healthy relationships across what feels like a scary divide?

Well, first of all, I totally resonate with what Nonfundo is saying here. If it's hard to connect in general, it's especially hard to connect when we feel like we're different from someone else. I think one issue here, and again, another social trick our minds play on us, is that we focus on other people's statistics instead of their stories. It's almost like instead of seeing someone as a person, you see them as a baseball card. I don't know, Lori, if you ever collected baseball cards. I did. And you'd see every season a player had played and what their batting average was, how many runs they batted and all that stuff. And I

feel like these days we look at each other as though we're reading statistics off of a baseball card. And sometimes those statistics can be super misleading, especially when they make someone seem different from ourselves. I'll give you one example from the political domain. So it's true that people see folks on the other side of the political divide as extreme and evil and all that stuff. They also just don't know who they are as people. So there was one statistic that was incredible where Democrats believe that 38 percent of Republicans earn more than a quarter million dollars a year. The actual percentage is two. And likewise, Republicans believe that 32 percent of Democrats identified as LGBTQ plus and the actual percentage is six. So, right. It's not just that

we think the other side is bad. We literally don't know who they are because we're over relying on statistics and their associated stereotypes to figure out who's there. A quick salve for this is to try at least temporarily to forget about statistics. Now, they do matter. It matters that we're different from each other. I'm not saying that we should be blind to those differences or act like we're all the same. In fact, I think we should understand that we're all different, not just from people on the other side of a divide or difference, but from people on our own side, right? When we ask people about their individual stories, we don't pretend that they're similar to us. We realize that they're

different from every other person on the planet. And it turns out that when people can access each other's biographies, when they can understand and also feel heard telling their own stories, it's not that differences melt away, but we find points of commonality that would shock us or surprise us if we were to keep in this baseball card model of social interaction. One of the ways I know you've talked about doing that is to really make sure you're getting access to the stories, right? Because that can be a little bit hard if you're not really trying to connect with people and hear their side of some perspective, right? Absolutely. It feels hard to get other people's stories, but in fact, it's extremely easy. People,

including people who are different from ourselves, often will open up very quickly if you show any genuine curiosity in them. Now, if that curiosity feels like it's going to be weaponized in like five seconds, then maybe people will clam up and maybe they have a right to. But, you know, I think this is one lesson from work that we've talked about before on deep canvassing. This is work by Josh Kella and David Brookman, where they show that when people go door to door talking about political issues,

but start out asking people, what's your story like? What's the time that you felt like people were rejecting you or like you felt judged for who you were? People are more than willing to share those stories. And then after sharing those stories, they're more than willing to hear other people's stories. It turns out if you want someone to listen to you, one of the best things you can do is listen to them first, because we are

a highly reciprocal species, right? We tend to pay back what other people give us. So if we judge people, guess what? They're probably going to do the same to us. And if we listen to people and invite their stories, they'll probably want to hear ours too. So far, we've talked about lots of wonderful ways that we can connect with people and maybe even find new friends across the political divide. When we get back from the break, we'll take all of these challenges one step further to figure out how we can deal with people

who really disagree with us. We'll tackle that big challenge when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment. so far we've been talking about what we can do to make new friends in this strange post-pandemic era we're all feeling a little bit socially out of practice now i want to turn to the question of how we can navigate some of the challenges that have come up in the friendships that we've had for a long time a lot of our listeners had a question about how they can support people who are going through some tough times during the pandemic. Because again, this has not been a cakewalk for most of us. A lot of people are really struggling right now. And we had one question from a listener that I want to get the producers to play now because I thought it was really powerful. So producers, can you play Megan's clip for us? powerful. So producers, can you play Megan's clip for us? Hi, Lori. My name is Megan Hyun. I live in Omaha, Nebraska. I've been listening to the show for a long time and I love it. And my question is, how can we contribute to the happiness of our friends when they're suffering without acting

like their happiness is our responsibility? I have a lot of friends who have mental illness or come from a trauma background and it's really hard to see their suffering, you can watch that mental illness eroding their happiness. And especially when those friends don't seek therapy, it starts to feel like I'm their therapist and I'm not trained to be a therapist. I can start feeling like this friendship has become toxic for me.

It's really draining a lot of my energy and a lot of my happiness. And so I want to be able to support those friends, to be there for them, to be mindful of their happiness without compromising my own. So Jamil, this feels like a really tricky one. Any thoughts on how we can navigate this? Yeah, lots of thoughts. I mean, first of all, I think many of us have been through what Megan is describing here, feeling as though we care for someone and can't do anything. And that helplessness can be a real killer. It can be so difficult and painful.

You and I study empathy a whole bunch. And one of the pieces of empathy that we talk about in this world is empathic concern, the desire to improve somebody else's well-being. Empathic concern is a desire. And like any other desire, it produces a goal in our mind, an assignment to fix this other person. And it's very easy to feel as though empathy has failed if you're not able to change somebody else. Now, that can be dreadful for everyone involved, right? It can be really difficult for the person experiencing empathy. And in the worst of cases, and I see this a lot in healthcare workers, people can start to decide, well, if I can't change other people, if I can't fix them, if I can't make them happier, then I've failed at empathizing. So I'm a bad empathizer. I'm a bad

caregiver. And I'm going to stop. I've literally seen people pull back from their entire profession, like social workers, because they don't feel like they're able to fix other people. But guess what? The job of empathy is not actually to fix other people because other people are not in our control. Megan said that she's not trained as a therapist, neither am I, but my wife is. And I asked her about this very issue. And she says, you know, that one of the most important things is to realize that when we try to show up for other people, all we have control over is what we bring to the situation. Can we be as attentive, as supportive, as nonjudgmental as possible? If we do that, then I would say that our empathy has succeeded, irrespective of how it lands with the other person, because we've done what we can. There's a lot of talk about this in

the world of self-compassion. And I have to shout out Kristen Neff and Christopher Germer, who have excellent resources online that you can look for here. One of their practices is known as equanimity. And it's this practice of understanding that we want the best for other people. We want to express our goodwill for them and to be there for them, but that we cannot control whether our help actually makes a difference for them. We can't even control whether they accept our goodwill. All we can do is provide to them what we can.

Now, the other side of this, and some good news here for Megan and the rest of us, is that oftentimes that's all people really want from us. I think oftentimes we overestimate how much people want us to solve their problems. In fact, when people think about giving support to others, another trick that their mind plays on them is that they think that they'll be bad support providers if they don't know the exact right thing to say. In fact, if you ask support receivers what they want, oftentimes it's not for someone to fix their problems.

It's just for someone to be there. So Megan, even without fixing your friend's problem, you might be doing a lot more than you realize you are just by being a friend to that individual. And I think that's so important, especially when you're in that position, you know, because of course we've all been there. I've been there too, of feeling like, oh, I'm not making the difference that I'm hoping to make. Just remembering that the listening is the difference and that matters more than we can often realize. I think that was super helpful advice. Is there any point at which

you think you might need to step back? I think sometimes we can feel empathically beholden to people, but then there's sometimes when we're struggling ourselves where we might need to take a break and really focus on our own health. Is that the kind of thing that we need to consider when we're thinking about empathy? A hundred percent. I think equanimity allows us to realize that, okay, I can bring the best version of myself to this situation, to this other person that I can, but it's not my responsibility to fix them. Along with that, it's also important to practice self-compassion. Being around somebody that we care about who is really struggling is its own type of suffering

for us as well. And so I think it's important to also turn that compassionate lens that we have for, in Megan's case, for her close friend and point it back at ourselves and realize that we too suffer when we're around people who suffer and that we need to care for ourselves during those times too. Megan's case is kind of particularly extreme, right? It's a case where you have a close friend that's really going through a tough time that you're trying to help. I think a lot of us also have peripheral people in our lives that are either going through a tough time or just have the kind of personality where they're not, let's say, as consistent with our happiness goals as we might like, right?

Yes. Our next listener's question is really asking a question about this. How can we navigate people whose moods and whose goals for happiness might not be as consistent with ours? This question comes from MassCom84 on Twitter. MassCom asks, good afternoon, Lori. Do you have any advice on how to stay happy or focused, even though sometimes you're in an environment where the individuals around you don't share the same mood or the same goals, especially in a work environment? So I think this is something that, Jamil, you're uniquely qualified to answer, In part because you're just like a super happy person. I feel like your mean happiness is much higher than everyone else. So you're constantly in a

position where people's mood is like worse than yours. But also, since I know you've been thinking a lot about how we can navigate the moods of other people and stay empathic and try to help folks, even when their moods and their goals might differ from ours. Yeah. Well, you know, Lori, if you don't mind, let me first say that I appreciate that positive sentiment, but I think it's way off base, which is not your fault. But I don't consider myself someone who's happy all the time by any stretch of the imagination, including over the last two years.

I think it's been a really hard time. And, you know, I try to emphasize the positive when I'm out in public, especially when I'm thinking about the science, because I think that the science, especially the science that I study, the sunny side of human nature, gives us all this information that people are really wonderful in all these ways. And I do believe those data in my mind. That doesn't mean that I believe those data in my heart all the time. Yeah, like when you're stuck in traffic and looking at the person next to you.

Why do people in San Francisco just not use turn signals? That I'll never know. There's so many times that I've struggled in so many different ways. And so I don't want anyone out there to think that just because we study this stuff, that makes us natural experts at being awesome at it all the time and just feeling terrific. But I think that we, like everybody else, hope that tools from psychology can help all of us access happiness just a little bit more than we would have otherwise. So to get back to MassCom's question, which I think is a really good one, we all have that person in the office or in our apartment building or whatever who maybe is a little bit gloomier or maybe has a bad

attitude. Pro tip, if you don't have that person around you, you might be that person for others. You got to listen to extra episodes. So yeah, definitely. Stay tuned for more of the happiness lab. But I think one thing to remember is that oftentimes just because someone comes off as unhappy doesn't mean that they don't want to be happy. Just because someone comes off as a little bit mean doesn't mean that they don't want to be friendly or kind. I think that people by and large share our goals and values. The issue is that a lot of the times they feel disconnected from them. So I often try to get past the way that people present and try to be curious about what's underneath that.

try to get past the way that people present and try to be curious about what's underneath that. You know, so often anxiety shows up as anger or boredom. Sadness might show up as frustration. People don't always perform outwardly what they're feeling inside. So the first thing that I would encourage someone to do if they have someone around them who seems to not share their happiness goals is to really ask yourself, are you sure? Because maybe they do share your goals, but there's something getting in their way. And I think that there's also a couple of techniques that we can all use, but also encourage others to use to get a little bit more happiness and meaning. For instance, in the workplace, there's a great study that came out just a couple months ago on burnout in the workplace, which I mean, goodness, what is more common these days? I feel like burnout is just like the vibe of the 2020s so far.

It's like vibe of the decade, burnout. But you know, the decade is not over yet by a long shot, but nonetheless, it's super common experience. And it turns out that there are different ways that compassion can help us overcome burnout. The first is, in order to know how, we need to know that burnout actually is more than one piece. There's exhaustion, just a sense of being totally overwhelmed by what we have to do. And there's also cynicism, a sense of depersonalization and disconnection from the people around us. So if you have someone around you who seems really unhappy, I might start by saying, well, in what way are they unhappy? And might I make a difference in helping them get on board with those goals or even become happier?

If people are really exhausted, it turns out that self-compassion and self-care matter a lot, right? Just giving yourself that time to recharge. But interestingly, if people feel cynical and disconnected, sometimes what they need is not to binge watch Ted Lasso and eat a box of bonbons, which, I mean, are two excellent activities, especially when performed together. But it turns out that one of the best salves or treatments for depersonalization, for cynicism, for that sense of disconnection is not to retreat into ourselves, but rather to help other people. When we express compassion for others, we often end up feeling, well, like there's more meaning to our connections with them. So I guess for mass comm, I would say, think about what your coworker is going through

and maybe ask yourself, what could they do to feel better? And you know, if you express compassion to them, you might feel better too. That's the beauty of so many of these social strategies is they're like this wonderful win-win. You do this nice thing for somebody else, you extend them compassion, you try to help them in the workplace, and then you feel better too. It's like such a wonderful thing. I think we're so many of us are locked in this vicious cycle where we imagine people are worse than they are. So we interact with them as we imagine them to be and we miss out on connections. But just flipping the switch on our behavior can change that vicious cycle into a virtuous one where beliefs turn into positive actions and positive outcomes. So far, we've been talking about ways that we can re-envision

humanity as the kind of thing where a lot of people are fighting with us rather than against us and ways that we can hear people's stories. When we get back from the break, we'll take this one step further to how we can do that with people who are really in a spot where they're disagreeing with us. We'll tackle the challenges of that kind of social connection when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment. The Happiness Lab will be right back. We were chatting before the break. We were talking about how to manage people who weren't feeling so happy i think our next two questions really fit nicely with that they're again kind of how can you navigate people who seem to think and have a mindset that's different than yours but a lot of

our listeners wrote in about a mindset of what you might call pessimism or this idea of feeling cynical like you were talking about so one of the questions we got comes from brand Brandon Harris. Brandon writes, I'd love more insights on how to help people that are prone to focusing on what's wrong or thinking too critically or negatively. Basically, how we can turn an extreme pessimist into an optimist. Brandon goes on to say that his wife tends to focus on what isn't right or what hasn't been done or all the negatives. He says that she's aware and wants to be better about focusing on the positives, but it's just hard to be thankful because it's kind of ingrained. And we got a similar question from another person who joined in from the Happiness Lab

classroom on Facebook. This is from Katie Canning, who writes specifically about how to do with the same kind of thing, but with kids. So Katie asks how to help children work towards happiness when they feel utterly despondent due to life events and can't see anything to be grateful for. I think this comes up a lot, right, Where it's easy when times feel tough to focus on all the negatives, to just like be into the griping rather than the focusing on the blessings. And I know this is something that you've been thinking about more and more because I know you had this cool TED talk about cynicism, which everyone

should check out. But yeah, any advice for how to get people out of this pessimism trap, this kind of griping trap? Yeah, I mean, it's such a great set of questions. And the first thing I would say is that things are really screwed up in a lot of ways. So it's not all in our heads. You know, Lori, both you and I are psychologists, so we love thinking about people's minds and in particular, you know, some of the tricks that our minds play on us. But if you think things are bad, it might not be your mind playing tricks on you. That's not a trick. That's not a trick. That's not a trick. Things really, you know, along a bunch of dimensions are really tough right now. So the first thing I want to say is just to validate people who are having a hard time

seeing the bright side. You know, I don't think that right now what we have is only an optimism deficit. I think that we have a world in which pessimism can be a really natural reaction to what's out there and to what's out there, and especially what's out there that we hear about in the news, because there's this disproportionate focus on negative information that we receive when we're doom scrolling, at least for me, at like 11.30 p.m. when I need to wake up at 6 a.m., right? So it's a totally natural response to a topsy-turvy world. That said, one of the things that I come back to over and over again is this idea that people are better than we realize they are, right? So yes,

horrible things happen and people do awful, awful things. And it's easy, very easy to focus on those. I mean, those are the shark attacks of the social world that are actually worse than real shark attacks. Oftentimes what we see people doing, the horrible things that we hear about in the news. But that's not representative of most people. In fact, one of the books that I've been reading to my own kids who are six and five is this book called Most People. And it's really beautiful. It's about the idea that the vast majority of people want to help one another, want to connect with others, want to have a positive impact on the world. And I know that's a book for six-year-olds, but honestly, the last time I read it, I started crying because I think it's so easy to forget that. But really, it's true. When you

look at opinions around what people want from the world, whether they want to be rich and famous or whether they want to be part of community, people think that others around them want to be rich and famous or whether they want to be part of community. People think that others around them want to be rich and famous. But in fact, the vast majority of people are much more interested in connection and community. So again, we've got it backwards. And I think that turning that upside down perception right side up can be really empowering. I mean that not just in terms of optimism, like a complacent view that everything is actually great when things are really messed up. I mean that when we realize that most people around us want what we want, a peaceful and

connected world, that actually can make us the opposite of complacent. It can help us agitate for change because it can be really paralyzing to think I'm the only one who wants things to change for the better. That can make us pessimistic if we feel alone. Optimism doesn't have to be the same as thinking everything is great. Optimism can mean wanting a better future and understanding that most people want it with us. And so fighting for that even more fiercely. Now I want to tackle a different challenge that a lot of listeners asked about, how we can manage not seeing eye to eye with the people in our lives, particularly when there might

be disagreements. So we had a couple of questions that came up about this. One that comes from Suva I am on Twitter asks, how can we better create happy teams at work? Specifically, how can we disagree and still work happily together? Similarly, we got a question from Samir that asks, can we talk about disagreements and reasoning with others? Because naturally I'm right a hundred percent of the time. I think Samir is being a little facetious there, maybe. But he says, I find it demoralizing when the people I talk to do not see things the way I do. And then Samir goes on to explain that he grew up in Pakistan, but has since traveled the world. And he finds himself constantly struggling to explain where he learned about these new experiences. He finds it hard to kind of connect with people because he's had these

new experiences and his experiences make it really hard to see eye to eye. And one of the reasons I'm so happy we have you here in particular to answer this question is you've written an entire book about strategies we can use to increase our empathy. For listeners who haven't checked it out, they should definitely check out The War for Kindness because it's amazing. But any tips for Suva, Samir, and all the others who might be navigating this challenge of dealing with people they disagree with? I mean, it's the challenge of our age, or at least one of, I put it in the top five. It's in the conversation for challenge of our with people they disagree with. I mean, it's the challenge of our age, or at least one of, I put it in the top five. It's in the conversation for challenge of our age. It's so common and so difficult at a number of levels. I mean, I think that it sounds like these folks are talking about two different

types of challenge and disagreement. So let me take those one at a time. First, for Suva's great question around conflict at work, but I think this also pertains to conflict outside of work. I think that one of the most productive things we can do when we disagree with someone is be really clear right off the bat about what we disagree on and what we agree on. Because oftentimes I think that disagreement raises people's walls, right? It sort of raises their defenses to such a degree that they start to think in zero-sum terms about the other person full stop, right? Like if you disagree with me about this thing at work, then I must just like not like you and we must disagree on everything else. And that's probably not true. In fact,

usually conflicts at work are very local about how a particular project should get done. And oftentimes people share, if you just zoom out a little bit, their big picture goals. They are working together on a team. So one of the big differentiators here in the sort of organizational psychology world is between task conflict and relational conflict. So task conflict is where you just have a different opinion about how something should get done. Relational conflict is where, well, you kind of don't like each other for lack of a better term.

I think we often confuse the first of those for the second, because when we are threatened by task conflict, we start to think, this is scary. I don't like it. And so I don't like the person who's here with me right now. It's critical when we can to not extrapolate or overgeneralize in that way, but instead to have open conversations about, well, we disagree about this, but let's refocus. Let's just back up a little bit and zoom out. What do we agree on? And oftentimes starting with that common ground makes discussion of task conflict of what you disagree about feel much less dangerous and therefore go much more productively. I've even heard this as a strategy in work meetings, right? Where you start with,

okay, let's start with where we're all on the same page. We all agree on this. We all agree on this. We all agree on this. And sometimes if you zoom out, that could that could be a long part of the meeting where you're listening. It's like, here's this one tiny spot where we don't agree. And that can make like, oh, we're all on the same page. We just have to deal with this one tiny task conflict. And it can feel completely different than we are at odds. Completely. I mean, I think that it's sort of a group meeting version of the compliment sandwich, you know, but much more authentic, though, right? Because oftentimes people really do agree on, I don't know, 80, 90 percent of things in a workplace context. And yet it's so easy to focus on the 10 percent until it becomes 100. Right. So just interrupting that process is critical. And then to Samir's question, I think that, I mean, which was hilarious, by the way, Samir. Yes, I too am right 100% of the time, which I imagine means, Samir, that you and I would agree 100% of the time as well. So what happens if we disagree? My goodness, one of us is in an existential pickle, aren't they? Or maybe both of us. You know, this is something that Adam Grant writes beautifully about in Think Again, right, around the idea of intellectual humility, which is,

how do we face challenges to what we know or what we think? Do we view them as threats to who we are, or do we view them as chances to grow and learn? And I think that oftentimes we do the first, because we confuse our opinions with our self-worth, right? And I think that oftentimes we do the first because we confuse our opinions with our self-worth. Right. And I think that oftentimes, especially in a social media environment where people are very uncharitable and waiting to pounce on any inconsistency or hole in somebody else's argument, it makes sense to be very protective of our opinions. But that's probably not the world we want to live in.

I don't know about you, but if Twitter was somehow turned into a three-dimensional space, I would try to get as far away from it as possible. Instead, I think we want to live in a world where we can support each other at a broad level and challenge each other at a specific level. Again, getting at that idea of task versus relational conflict, but at a bigger picture level. So, I mean, oftentimes with my own students and in my own lab, we love to disagree because disagreeing is one of the ways

that we can test our own assumptions and become a little bit less wrong in the future. There's an element of intellectual bravery to being open to your assumptions being challenged. The thing is, and this is what I think a lot about as well, is that it's not enough to be intellectually brave in conversation because that's not always our default. In order to cultivate that bravery, we need to feel as though we are socially safe.

So empathy, compassion, and mutual support, shared values, conversations about all of these things and about our connections to each other lay the foundation for more open-minded and productive disagreement. I love ending on this idea of bravery because I think that it really underlies a lot of what we've been talking about today. We kind of need to be brave to challenge our assumptions about what other people are like. If we want to reconnect and make friends, we kind of have to be brave and face the fact that we might not be able

to fully help somebody who's feeling like they're in a difficult spot. But, you know, we are brave enough to kind of take those first steps and listen. And if we want to deal with the disagreements we're facing, we kind of need to be intellectually brave and allow ourselves to feel challenged, but do that with a bit of a growth mindset. In all these cases, we're just taking the research on social connection and sort of bringing it to the fore. But do you think that understanding these things better can really make us brave in that way? Like, do you think that knowing the science has helped you become braver in terms of your social connection and in terms of your empathic concern?

I think that it has when I can apply it. There are so many cases when we really feel like we're under a lot of threat and it's really hard to do much of anything except try to survive. a threat and it's really hard to do much of anything except try to survive. But I think when I'm able to have the patience with myself to slow down and remember what the science tells me, then yeah, I have found it to be extremely helpful. And I think a lot of your listeners have as well. You know, one thing that I want to say about bravery is that oftentimes we think of expressing bravery as doing something brand new that we've never done before. It's like the psychological equivalent of being Alex Honnold

and climbing the face of El Capitan with no rope. But a lot of us have been in a giant valley over the last two years. We've lost altitude. And so one thing that I want to emphasize to everybody is that it's also brave to return to where we were. It takes a lot of work to get back to that sense of connection, that sense of togetherness that we had before the pandemic. And I hope people give themselves credit, not just for being brave and trying new things,

but for being brave and trying old things too. Well, a lovely way to end. As usual, Jamil, you are amazing. Thank you so much for reminding me about the importance of being brave and being self-compassionate as we all return to the old normal, new normal, one of the normals

that we're all going back to. You've been fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on Happiness Lab today. Oh, Lori, my friend, it is always such a delight to talk with you. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks again to our rockstar guest, Jamil Zaki. For more wonderful wisdom from Jamil Zaki.

For more wonderful wisdom from Jamil, check out his book, The War for Kindness, Building Empathy in a Fractured World. And thanks so, so much to all of you who wrote in with questions for this episode. If you have a question we didn't cover, then send us an email. You can reach us at thlvoiceatpushkin.fm. That's T-H-L-V-O-I-C-E at P-u-s-h-k-i-n.fm. You can also contact me on Twitter or Instagram. And I hope you'll be back really soon for the next episode of the Happiness Lab Listener Questions Special Edition with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is co-written and produced by Ryan Dilley, Emily Ann Vaughn, and Courtney Guarino. Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering by Evan Viola.

Special thanks to Mia LaBelle, Heather Fane, John Schnarz, Carly Migliore, Christina Sullivan, The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Dr. Laurie Santos. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.