The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - The Hidden Beliefs That Shape Your Happiness with Shawn Achor

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

Our beliefs shape more than we realize. They influence what we notice, how we respond to setbacks, how connected we feel to others, and whether we take action to improve our lives.  As part of our series on how to spring clean your wellbeing, Dr. Laurie sits down with happiness expert Shawn Achor, author of The Power of Beliefs, to explore how our beliefs about time, work, relationships, and self-worth shape happiness, success, and long-term wellbeing. And if some of your beliefs are holding you back, Shawn shares practical ways to start shifting them. Plus, we learn one delightful fact about fireflies. Experts Mentioned: Shawn Achor, positive psychology researcher and author  Richard Wiseman, professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire Henry Beecher, anesthesiologist at Harvard Medical School who pioneered research on the placebo effect  Resources Mentioned: The Power of Beliefs: How Strengthening Seven Core Beliefs Predicts Greater Success and a Better Life, by Shawn Achor (2026) The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work, by Shawn Achor (2010) The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind, by Richard Wiseman (2004) "From Jerusalem to Jericho: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior," by John M. Darley and C. Daniel Batson (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1973) Related Episodes: "Grateful Expectations" “How to Adopt a Growth Mindset” “Happiness Lessons of The Ancients: The Buddha” "Happiness Lessons of The Ancients: Socrates and Self-Knowledge" See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. Welcome back to our series on how to spring clean our well-being. So far, we've explored the happiness benefits of things like releasing grudges, redesigning our spaces, and rethinking how our screens affect our physical health. But this episode of the Happiness Lab is about spring-cleaning the beliefs that lie underneath all that. So if I ask people about beliefs, what do you believe? They'll start with a political belief and then a religious belief. This is author and happiness expert, Sean Aker. They'll immediately go to one of those two things. But actually, we have beliefs about everything.

We have beliefs about who drives a cyber truck. Are they a liberal or conservative? We have beliefs about how tall I should be or whether or not it's good to be a stay-at-home parent. We have undercurrents of belief that shape everything. It's true that this idea of beliefs feels almost too broad to tackle. You can believe in things like free will or Santa Claus, or karma or meritocracy.

The list goes on and on, from the political to the personal, to the abstract and existential. So I asked Sean, what is a belief really? For me, beliefs is simply the lens which you view the world that change the way you act within it. So our beliefs shape how I get a sea in biology or how I have a new baby. Those beliefs help us to facilitate not only what's coming in,

but then they change what comes back out to and then they predict what happens next. In his new book, The Power of Beliefs, Sean focuses on a set of core beliefs that he argues can be predictive of positive life outcomes, things like success and long-term happiness. And that feels especially important right now, given how many people are struggling. Those beliefs are things like, I don't matter, or I'm alone, or this work isn't meaningful, or I'm missing out, or there's nothing greater than me. And on the opposite side is, of course, I'm not alone, or this work is meaningful, or I matter, right? or my behavior matters. But these core beliefs seem to not only shape our experience in the present,

they shape how I listen to a news story that comes in, or shape how I hear a geopolitical event. These beliefs are then predictive of somebody's longevity or their grades at school. And so if we have those negative beliefs, we can see exactly why we're seeing these negative impacts within our society. When I look at this world right now that seems to be suffering so much, we see accelerate rates of depression and anxiety. We see a loneliness epidemic. We see massive amounts of burnout and the great resignation, all those types of things. I think we see these symptoms of the negative version of these core beliefs. Given what's going on these days, from economic pressure to endlessly upsetting news cycles to political polarization, it's no wonder some people

have adopted these negative versions of core beliefs. But how predictive are these beliefs of our long-term well-being. And is there anything we can do to change these beliefs without totally changing everything about modern society in 2026? Sean and I will dive into all these questions and the science of better beliefs when the Happiness Lab returns from this quick break. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Well-being expert, Sean Aker and I have a lot in common. We both examine happiness, and we both studied at Harvard. But while I I was training in psychology, he was focused on something bigger, the divine. I was at the divinity school. I was studying Christian and Buddhist ethics.

I was interested in how people's beliefs shape the way that they interact with the world. How do our beliefs change the way we decide to give or forgive or wake up in the morning or why we care about what happens to other people or why we think our work is meaningful? Sean was thinking about all this from a spiritual perspective when he ran into one of the world's leading positive psychologists. A man named Dr. Talban Shahar. Tal gave Sean a chance to join his team and to rethink what he had been studying at the Divinity School

through the lens of psychological research. I realized that positive psychology was asking the same questions I was doing at the Divinity School, but with a different language, I got hooked because if you could observe and measure joy, then you could actually figure out what was actually working, what beliefs help us create a better world, what actions help us.

Today, Sean's work bridges those big existential questions with the practicality of academic studies. And at the root of all of Sean's work is the idea that our beliefs, both big and small, matter. They shape our mood, our productivity, and even our health. Take, for example, the incredible power of the placebo effect. It's oftentimes the most common example

that we think about how beliefs shape an outcome, like a health outcome. So Henry Beecher was an anesthesiologist at Harvard who was looking at the role of an inert intervention compared to an actual intervention. And what he found back in the 50s was basically in a series of different studies, he found that in 35% of the cases, the inert substance,

like a sugar pill, for example, or a fake intervention that shouldn't have an impact upon the outcome. When the participant believed that it was a real intervention, then you got similar benefits to what you were seeing with the actual medicine. And so then people started tracking this over time,

and it was the first, opportunity for us to be able to quantify in many ways the role of belief about an intervention in the medical space having a long-term outcome. And it wasn't just in one field, it wasn't just like with chronic pain, or it wasn't just with cancer or epilepsy. But what we got to is the modern world where before a drug can be approved by the federal drug administration, they tested against a placebo. They want to know that it's better than just believing that this new medication that you came up with is going to work. And they do that because they know the belief is so powerful. Your book also shared an example of the power of belief that comes from professional

sports success. Could you explain the example of home field advantage and why it's so powerful for showing the effective beliefs? Sure. So like most of your listeners who know about the placebo effect, they know probably about the home field advantage. It's pretty prevalent in our society that if you play in your home stadium or your home court, you have an increased likelihood of winning. Regardless of opponent. In college football, you have a 60% chance of winning in your home stadium. The same thing happens in soccer. There's like a 30% chance of losing at home, but there is a 50% chance of winning at home with a 20% chance of a draw. But what you see is this massive benefit to playing in your home stadium. So I got this opportunity to talk with an NFL coaching legend. This is Pete Carroll,

who was out at the time with the Seattle Seahawks. And I was like, this is amazing because I've always wanted to ask someone in a position like this about why the home field advantage exists, because it's clearly some sort of psychology seeping in. But what he explained to me was that's not what home field advantage. And what he told me at the time is what most coaches and players believed, which is the home field advantage exists because in order to get to a visitor stadium, you have to travel and you're staying there overnight and you've had flights. So you're fatigue and you're staying in a place where you don't know, playing in a different elevation that you're not used to with a different type of weather system. You don't know. You don't know

where the uprights are or the soccer goal compared to the rest of the stadium, so your perception is slightly off. And that is the reason why we have such a home field advantage. And then COVID started. And the home field advantage disappeared. Statistically, it completely was gone. But what is amazing about this is that none of the things that Coach Pete Carroll had talked about, which were all the things we knew were the reasons for the home field advantage, were the reasons for the home field advantage because they were all still true. You still had to travel. You're still in a different place with different weather. All of that had actually remained constant.

The only difference is for the first time in the history of sports, we got to see players play in their home stadium, but without fans in the stands. Something about the fans being there was changing the performance and the outcomes for the players, which makes me believe that is one of two things, that either they believe that they're not alone or they believe that people are for them, not against them. And you can see when people start to boo in the stadium, the performance actually starts to drop for the home team in most of the case. So what you're seeing is either way, beliefs seem to be predictive of the future outcomes in a way that we didn't realize what's

happening before. And one last thing I thought was fascinating. I learned this while writing the book. I started looking up superstitions, which of course are beliefs that athletes have that they think will affect the outcome. And what I found was that Michael Jordan, he used to believe that if he wore his UNC college shorts underneath his professional Chicago Bulls shorts. So he was wearing two pairs of shorts that increased his likelihood of winning. So for his professional career, he didn't wear one set of shorts. He wore two sets of shorts. And the other hilarious part was that the UNC shorts were just slightly longer than the Chicago Bull shorts. So he asked for baggier longer shorts, which actually became the fashion. So, you know, if you talk to Michael Jordan,

And I'm sure he would tell you that he wins because of his never die mentality or his insane skill sets. But I bet if his UNC shorts were missing before that game, he would just freak out. And the reason for that is that our beliefs we know have a long-term outcome, right? Short-term and long-term outcome. And so let's turn to this question of how beliefs can actually shape the outcomes, because I think it's really powerful. One of the things you've noted is that beliefs can shape how we allocate attention, and that matters. You mentioned a funny study by Richard Weissman that used a newspaper set up. Can you tell me about that study? Yes, that's a funny one. If our attention for the world is finite, if our brain resources are finite, then what we attend to first becomes our reality. And the allocation of those resources happens through that lens to which we view the world. But basically what he did was he had students read through a newspaper and he asked them to count the number of photographs they're in the newspaper. And they get a correct in the allocated period of time, then they get five pounds. It was that.

in the UK. Right before taking the test, they gave him a short battery of questions. And one of the question was basically, do you think that you're a lucky person? Do good things just naturally happen to you? Do you expect good things to happen in your life? There are questions about luck, but it's also a proxy for optimism. But anyway, what he found in the study was that after people responded to that, they then go through and look for the newspaper pictures. On page two of everyone's newspaper, in big bold letters. It says, stop the experiment now. If you stop now, we'll give you 10 pounds. So double the outcome you would have if you just kept going. And what he found was that the majority of the people that claimed that they were lucky, the good things just happened to them,

they stopped the experiment and asked for their money and got double the pay. The other ones who claim that the world doesn't move in their favor, they don't expect good things to just happen to them. The majority of them finished the experiment and got their five pounds and they got the right number of photographs, but they didn't even see the possibility that was there to get 10 pounds. And in this demonstration experiment, what he was arguing was that when people believe that they were lucky or that they were in an optimistic state, their brain felt like it had enough resources to accomplish the task and then devoted more resources to look for possibilities because you know they're there. You believe that they're there. And when you look for possibilities,

your likelihood of pouncing on them rises. If you don't think there's possibilities, you don't devote attentional resources there, and it shapes the outcome within our lives. So yet another example of how the lens to which you view the world might be continually changing what happens. And if we could change the beliefs we hold about the world from like, only bad things happen to me, to I think it's possible good things could happen

or change as possible, then we might get someone to apply for that job that they might not have otherwise, or they might save more money, or they might be able to look for a relationship when they're feeling alone. And that gets to the next thing that you've argued, why beliefs change our performance? Because it also changes the goals that we strive for. What do you mean here? When I think about this oftentimes as a parent. I live in Dallas now. We moved here when our children

were young. And a lot of people around here, sports is the big thing. They've got private coaches for their kids, you know, at four years old playing soccer. And a lot of these kids and parents believe that their kid is going to be the next, you know, Michael Jordan, right? He's going to have to wear two pairs of shorts, but he's going to be the next Michael Jordan. When you look at the statistics for it, if my seven-year-old believes that he or she's going to play professional sports, if you round it to the nearest decimal point in the, you know, hundreds, it's so far down there if we're rounding. It's basically 0.00%. If someone makes it onto a high school basketball team, their likelihood of making it is 0.0.0%.

to make it into the NBA. But if someone can make it into college and make it to their senior year of playing, their likelihood goes up to 1.1%. So if someone believes, I'm definitely going to become a professional athlete, and that's the end of their belief structure or STEM, I would assume their likelihood is very low.

What we look for when we're looking and analyzing these beliefs and trying to get people to you is how do you find a way of providing qualifiers and warrants in this? So I know that the likelihood is low, but I believe that if I keep practicing and I listen to my coach and I eat right and sleep right, I will increase the likelihood of becoming a professional athlete. That has some qualifiers to it, then make me feel like that belief might work out better. Also, they could provide warrants. Like, I was the best kid on my team last year, and the best kid in my school this year, I think I can be the best kid in college. if someone's beliefs can get them from high school basketball at 0.009% to 1.1% at the end of college,

their belief and their actions that pull them through that changed their likelihood of becoming a professional athlete by 12,000%. So it doesn't sound big. It's still 1.1%. But it's a massive change. And that's what I'm trying to get people to realize in the book is that beliefs don't give. guarantee outcomes, but they propel us towards specific goals. And in the example, you point out two different things that we want to have in our beliefs to get us towards those goals a little bit better. One is this idea that you mentioned of warrants, this idea that we have some reasons for our belief. Well, it's not just delusional that I think it could be an athlete.

I was the best kid on my team, right? We want to kind of have reasons behind our beliefs. But I think one that's even more important psychologically might be this idea of qualifiers. These are kind of like these if-then statements. It's not just I'm going to become a professional athlete. it's like, well, if I really study hard or if I follow what my coach says, and that seems to be really important because it's pointing us towards the action. It's not this naive hope. We're actually getting towards an action that might help us be more likely to achieve that goal and to actually have it come true in our lives over time. I think that's what we're looking for is the cycle between beliefs and actions. These qualifiers are saying, if I do something. So if a salesperson, for example, is like, I'm going to be the best salesperson here. But they don't follow it up with if I make these calls. If I'm okay getting no nine times out of 10, if I learn this product better than anyone else,

right? Then I'm going to have the outcome I want. I see that so often in the business space is that you get these leaders who try to pump you up because they hear the beliefs are powerful. So then they're like, I believe that you can hit X billion dollars by year five. And I believe that we can hit these sales target. I know they're audacious, but I believe you can hit these next year. And everyone's year for me. There's no foothold. for the brain to take the next step. What that leader should be doing is providing both those warrants and qualifiers. We've hit our sales targets last year if we make all these phone calls. If we learn this new system and implement it well, if we are able to connect with one another

and not stay in these silos. If we are able to do that, I believe we can not only hit our sales targets, but exceed them next year. Then the brain is not having this irrational belief about the world that is pure hope without any grounding. What we're looking for is grounding that hope in previous action, but also in future behavior. Our beliefs matter for our happiness and our success. That much is clear. But which ones matter most? Which beliefs really move the needle when it comes to our long-term well-being? Sean and I will tackle those questions when the Happiness Lab returns from the break. Experience Harry Styles live in London, England at Wembley State.

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Very excited to see you with the show. Kiss all the time, disco occasionally available now. Happiness expert Sean Aker is the author of a new book, the power of beliefs, how strengthening seven core beliefs predicts greater success and a better life. Today, we're walking through those seven core beliefs and why they matter for our well-being and performance. The first core belief Sean focuses on is a simple one. It's that our behavior matters. It's also a belief that Sean has sometimes struggled to hold on to in his own life. I went through nearly three years of depression in my life, and this actually happened back when I was at

Harvard. And there's lots of reasons for it. I think it was actually a lack of social connection. And also I was at the Divinity School. So I was challenging a lot of my fundamental core constructs about the world. But what happened in the midst of depression, especially at the bottom of it, is you stop believing that any change is possible. Like, I will always be depressed. Like, I don't even remember how I got into the swamp, but there's no way I'm getting back out. And then, why would it matter if I journal about a pause of experience or write down things I'm grateful for or write a two-minute pause of email to someone else. I don't believe my behavior matters because there's nothing I can do.

And we see this not just with depression. We see it when somebody tries to diet multiple times. And they've tried different fad diets and they've tried different scientific diets. And they didn't work. So then they just stop. There's nothing I could do. This is my genes. Now eat whatever I want.

And so what happens in that moment is when we believe our behavior doesn't matter, you don't get any forward action. And it causes a paralysis. It's actually, to me, one of the biggest differences between optimism and pessimism. A lot of optimism is based not just upon thinking good things will happen, but also that if you see a problem, the pessimist believes that it's permanent pervasive, right? This problem will continue to exist. There's nothing I can do.

My behavior doesn't matter. On the other side of it is optimist. Now, irrational optimists don't even see the problems so they don't change. We're talking about more rational optimism, where they see a problem, but they believe that eventually my behavior will matter if linked to the right people within a system. So on the one hand, if you have this belief that my behavior doesn't matter, you get paralysis because it makes sense. There's nothing you can do. And that's what I think we feel oftentimes when we watch the news. I mean, every news alert we get is a reminder, hey, this terrible thing happened. Also, you couldn't

stop this. I'll text you in a little bit with a new news alert, right? I'll just remind you again that your behavior doesn't matter. And of course, our behavior didn't matter there. We have to be rational about where it does matter, but it starts to bleed over into other aspects of our life. And when someone believes that their behavior doesn't matter, they don't take the forward steps. So actually one of the core, I think, tenets of this book is that if change is going to be possible, if we're going to move from the status quo to a better place, we need to find a way of actually believing that our behavior matters and recognizing that it doesn't in most places. So we need to actually identify those places where it has mattered in the past, identify the places where it does matter, and then focus our

intentional resources there. If you have the same world, but a different belief, you'll get a different outcome. The next belief you recommend is one that we talk a lot about on the Happiness Lab. It's the importance of gratitude, noticing all the blessings in life. How can gratitude give us a competitive advantage? So there is so much research on this, right? When someone feels positive, it seems to increase their long-term outcomes, business outcomes and educational outcomes. And one of the greatest ways of being able to do that, it's a shift our lenses away from. here's what I'm missing out on to here's who I'm grateful for in the present. And I think of the base of FOMO, the fear of missing out is the belief that I would be grateful if I was somewhere else.

If I could just get that New York type of bestseller, just get that spouse, or just have that incredible vacation, or just have a crypto billionaire portfolio, then life would be great. And what happens is it denigrates our experience of the present because our brain is focused on what we're missing out on. and what we're really missing out on is what we're grateful for in the present. So when our brain is grateful for what we have in the present, it doesn't mean that we're grateful for if someone's going through domestic abuse or they're grateful for a trauma they experience, right? It doesn't mean that they're grateful for a sickness that they have.

They might be grateful for the benefits. Like I've worked with the breast cancer support group, this woman stood up at the beginning of, I'll always remember her. She got up and she said, I wish I didn't have cancer. But because of this cancer, I have the deepest social connection that I've ever had. It was identifying that, yes, that there's inherently negative things in our life, inequality, discrimination, racism, trauma. But in the midst of that, if we don't see anything we're grateful for,

there's no meaning or joy that can accelerate our brain out of that situation. And when you pair those two together, the belief that our behavior matters, and that there are some things I'm grateful for, the gratitude becomes the fuel for then taking that next step forward. And another next step forward we can take is to cultivate a sense that we matter. We need to develop a sense of self-worth. Why is mattering such a powerful fuel for our action? So if you call into a national suicide hotline, that's the very first thing that they try to make you feel is that you matter. They immediately say, thank you so much for calling. This was such a brave

step. You are not alone in the midst of this, and I'm here with you, right? I had this moment. I think everyone experiences it, this feeling of that they don't matter for some reason. And I'm going to give an example that makes me sound not great. But I think it's important because it reveals something interesting about the way that we look at the world. So eight years ago, when my last book came out called Big Potential, that week, my wife, Michelle Geelan, got rushed to the hospital. Her water broke three months early. So we were supposed to have a daughter in April. My book came out the first week of February. And three days later, after being rushed to the hospital, they rushed her into emergency surgery. And we almost lost my daughter three times in a two-day period of time.

She kept sparking back to life. Her name is Zoe Sparks A-Core. She just turned eight, and she's amazing. But instead of going on this book tour, I decided to take a step back and just be there as a father for my kids, which at first seemed great, but then I just started to disappear a little bit. And I watched all these opportunities go by that I wanted. I had this moment where I was out giving a talk at Target headquarters, and I read these two news alerts. It was about two of our contemporaries. One got a New York Times bestseller number one, and then another one who's now at Harvard got to write a book with Oprah. And I used to be at Harvard, and I was doing work with Oprah. And I got replaced. And I thought to myself, you know what? I don't matter as much. And I remember getting in the car,

going to that talk. And I just stared out the window and I felt the world was passing me by. and obnoxious and nonsensical and self-indulgent, as those feelings were, I felt like it was true. And you know what I was blind to? The reason I stopped doing the work, and the good that I had done, I couldn't see any of that. All I felt like was, that's it. I don't really matter to the world.

So the driver took me to the wrong location, and I called the target people and they said, okay, just stay right there, we'll send somebody. And this guy who had blue hair, that's all I remember about him, because it happened so fast, walked up next to me. And he said, are you Sean Acor?

I was like, yes. I thought he was the escort to take me to the event. And he shook my hand and he said, I just want to let you know that your book saved my life. That moment, I felt like it was this message of not only hope, but that you matter. And when that happened, suddenly I could see the meaning in my talk. I felt like my lens was less cloudy. I still felt replaced in this world.

I still felt envious of other opportunities. but I took a step back intentionally because of my family and I mattered to them. So once I saw that, my mood, my outcome, the way I did the talk changed dramatically. But in that moment, I needed to see that I mattered. And I think that what happened so often is when we're on social media and we see that all these other people are important or better than us at different things. We start to not just feel envious. We started to feel like I don't matter.

And that actually changes the actions we take next and predicts our long. long-term future. And when people believe that they matter, they live longer, they do better at work, and their experience of the present improves. So they can see why they matter because they're a parent or a good friend or a good teammate or a good author, whatever it is that causes them to feel like they matter. So that's belief number three. We should cultivate our own mattering. The next belief you recommend is to shift from a taking mindset to a giving one. It's this belief that you have something to give. Why is generosity a strategy for resilience? So this is the belief that I have something to give versus I have nothing.

Immediately people start thinking about money, right? They're like, oh, I don't have money to give. But what I'm really talking about is actually time and attention. So what happens oftentimes is that we feel like I'm too busy. I'm swamped right now. I've got so much going on it. So I don't have time to be nice to this random person on the bus. I don't have time to be nice to the subordinate who I'm telling to do this job,

just do the job and get this done so I can go home. Or I don't have time to, you know, volunteer. Like, I barely have time for myself. What happens in those moments is that when people feel like they don't have time or money or resources or attention, it changes how they're acting to other people. It changes the social relations that are occurring, but also the choices that we make. This is something that we know from really old social psychology studies, the so-called Good Samaritan study. Tell me about that one. Yes.

So this is one of my favorite studies. Basically, they had people at a divinity school, these seminary students, who were asked to give a sermon across campus. on a story from the Bible about how there was an injured person on the side of the road, and two or three people walk past and then help this person. And then the person you wouldn't think would help this person, the Samaritan, is the one who actually helped them. So they are giving a sermon on taking care of people that other people don't see, and they have to do it across campus, and they have a couple of different conditions.

One of them is, they tell them, you're running late, you have to get over there as quickly as possible. The other one is, you have plenty of time. there's a Confederate who's an undercover researcher who is coughing and leaning like he's injured or sick or something's wrong with him maybe having a heart attack in a dorsal. On the path to give the sermon on the Good Samaritan. It's literally the Good Samaritan story. And what they found was that people, when they felt like they had time, stopped and helped them. But the vast majority of the people who felt like they were in a time-constrained position that they were too busy don't help the person.

So they believe, I do not have enough. I do not have enough time. And because of it, it changes our fundamental core values about the world. These are people who have dedicated their life to God for giving a sermon on helping people that other people don't see. But just a time constraint, believing I don't have enough time, changed how generous and kind they were. So what we're looking at is when people start to feel like I have nothing, then they do

nothing. If they're like, I don't have a million dollars to give to a charity, then they might not give $5. If they feel like they don't have time to go out to dinner with all their friends, they might not send them a two-minute text. But when people feel like, I have something to give, you're telling your brain, I do have some resources, which means my behavior matters, I matter in these situations. You start to see how these beliefs start to reinforce one another. It's time for another quick break. But stay tuned, because Sean and I still have more. core beliefs to unpack. We'll also talk about what you can do to change the beliefs that might be holding you down. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment.

Experience Harry Styles live in London, England at Wembley Stadium. This is Harry Styles. IHart Radio wants to send you and a mate across the pond with flights from Virgin Atlantic, hotel from TripCentral.ca, tickets, and $1,000 cash. Download the free IHartRadio app. Listen to IHart New Music for 10 minutes. Enter to win. Every day is another chance to see Harry Styles. Very excited to see you at the show. Kiss all the time, disco occasionally available now. So belief number five is something else we talk a lot about on the Happiness Lab.

This importance of connection, we need to believe that we're not alone. What's some of the evidence that this belief helps us perform better? So one of my favorite studies is one I'm sure you're familiar with. These researchers out in Virginia, the perception study, where they, if you look at a hill while standing alone and you're told you're a climate, that hill looks 15% steeper compared to if the participant is standing next to someone else who they're told will climb the hill with them. And there's different versions and variations on that. You see both physical spaces, but also emotional spaces, right? It validates the role of mentors or parents or someone's going through

depression, having a friend in those places. And my father was a perception researcher at Baylor. He was a neuroscientist there. And when I told him about the study, it was amazing because because in many ways he knew that this was the case, that our perception of the world is subjective, not objective. Somebody can objectively be surrounded by friends who care about them and love them, but if they believe that they're alone and people really don't like them,

the perception of that social support changes the impact upon it, which is part of the problem of depression sometimes, is we lose that ability to see that social connection or perceive the world like other people do. But the reason I like this is if a hill looks, steeper to me when I'm feeling alone, when I believe that I'm alone, then my likelihood of wanting to climb that hill declines. I might not take that next challenge.

I might not apply for that next job. I might not apply for that college or for that scholarship, which means that the world is being warped but unconsciously. We don't even know that it's happening. And warping sounds like it's negative, but if you could have a corrective lens, those hills start to collapse, or my likelihood of being able to move forward rises,

where my ability to overcome depression rises. The other study that I polled was not on humans, it was an entomology study, but at MIT, these researchers found that fireflies when they light up individually and randomly, their success rate of reproduction per night is 3%. That's where it caps out. But two separate species on opposite sides of the globe

separately evolved to have this where they can time their pulses of light to the millisecond using these neurotransmitters. So instead of lighting up individually randomly, they all light up together and they all go dark together. which is beautiful but not that smart, right? Because we live in a survival of the fittest world. You've got to be the fastest, brightest light shining.

Otherwise, you'll never be successful. Then you'll never be rich, then you can never be happy. That's what Darwin was talking about. What I would argue is that I think we're not living in this world of survival of the fittest. We're living in a world of survival of the best fit. Best fit with the ecosystem we find ourselves in. And what happens is that when these bugs started to light up together, their success rate goes from 3% to 82% per bug.

It's not like one bug does better. The entire group of them starts to do better. I don't know what a group of lighting bugs is called it. There's probably a fun word for it. But when they lit up together, the light became brighter. You can see it further away. This is exactly what we've seen in human studies. You're finding a way of lighting up together and you take the cap off your potential.

So when people feel like they're alone, not only do they not to take steps forward, but they're underperforming the potential they have. And those moments shape the long-term outcomes from everything from longevity to their business outcomes. The penultimate belief you recommend involves how we think about our work. You've argued that we need to think about it is a bit more meaningful. Share some of the results showing that the meaning we have behind our work seems to matter for our productivity. When someone perceives that their work is meaningful, they're engaged with the task rises dramatically.

They feel like that they matter. I might believe that my behavior matters, but I might be doing things I feel like are not meaningful. And if I take two employees and give them both the belief that their behavior matters, but only one belief, that this work is meaningful, you'll get a split in their engagement levels, the retention rates, their success rates long term, their ability to succeed, not just in the business space, but students feel this. So one of the studies that I pulled into the book showed that if you have low-income students that were struggling, if you could make the connection between the work that they're doing right now and why it's meaningful to an outcome later in their life, like a job or an income level

or stability later in life, once you made that connection, their grades start to improve compared to the control group that you just left at neutral. So seeing that pathway of why this is meaningful makes me take the next step forward. And it also causes such a negative drop

when we feel like this work is not meaningful. We feel drained, right? That's one of the fastest ways to fatigue the brain. It's just to remind them that this is a repetitive action that has no long-term meaning. And as soon as you do that, you get a negative outcome.

There's so many different examples of this In the midst of high levels of burnout in the hospital systems we were working with in the middle of COVID, one of the groups decided to do was when kids would have to go for these transfusions, they would wheel them down the hallway in the wheelchair. They're hunched over there going for this painful event. They read through some of this literature. They talked about it and one the things that they decided to do is to get motorized jeeps and they spray paint in them orange and the kid could drive this motorized jeep down the hallway to what is inherently a negative and traumatic event that most kids don't have to deal with and they do. But the pathway to it is

different. They're smiling, they're honking at the other nurses and staff. But while the nurses and staff are seeing this, they're seeing this meaningful impact that's happening there. And one of the things we found is when people saw meeting in their work, patient's safety and satisfaction rates improved dramatically. So it wasn't just, my life is meaningful and it's a self-indulgent response to the world. Feeling like your work is meaningful actually improve patients. care. And that gets to the final belief you say is so important for flourishing and for our productivity. We need to believe that it's not all about us. We need to find some belief in the transcendent. Why does this belief especially help us in the worst of times? So the belief I framed

out as is a belief that there's something greater than me. And so when somebody hears me frame it like that, they might be like, well, Sean, you just mean a God, right? That you believe in a God or you don't. But someone might believe that there's something greater than them and it's justice or nature or karma or genuine connection or energy or the universe. They might be completely framed differently. But when they believe that there's something greater than them, it does some pretty important things. One of the things we kept finding is that from both religious and non-religious academics, they found this to be one of the greatest predictors of human flourishing. A belief that there's something greater than them, their longevity improves dramatically. Their happiness levels rise, altruism rises,

all those other six beliefs, you find being impacted by this final belief that when you believe that there's something greater than you, you feel like maybe I'm not alone, maybe my behavior matters, maybe I matter, I have things to be grateful for it, and it shapes what happens next. So all of these beliefs seem to have these big effects on our performance, but is there actually any evidence that we can change our beliefs? How do we know that that's really possible? beliefs can change instantaneously overnight. When our daughter Zoe was born three months early, my beliefs about what was important and what I wanted to be doing

changed radically. I've talked to the doctors who said, you know, they'll see somebody who's negative and selfish, and then they go through a car accident in their 50s, a traumatic car accident. And one person walks away from it's like, this is exactly what I expected to happen in life. And I never want to get into a car again.

I'm afraid to drive. And then somebody else who is negative or, self-centered, they get into a traumatic car accident, and then for some reason, on the backside of this, they feel like I have a whole new lease on life. They become more altruistic. They invest more in their kids. They do more meaningful things at work. But the change there was a traumatic event. How much more so could a positive event create a positive impact upon people's lives? And that's one of the things I looked at early on in the book was I went on a hike with our son. It was a long eight-hour hike, and we got stuck up on a mountain in New Hampshire with nothing. We didn't

know we were going to get stuck. We started an eight-hour hike at 9 a.m. We finished at 11 the next day, and we found an emergency hut, and it was 34 degrees on top of this mountain. And I'm actually more of a helicopter parent, although the story doesn't sound like it. It sounds like somebody should call Child Protective Services. But I would always, like, watch out for this. I padded our whole house within an inch of its life, right? Like, everything is patted. And the next day, we hike back down and we got back to our rental place. And there was this little board that went over the this creek at this rental house that we had. And before the hike, I had told my son multiple nights.

Every time he crossed that, I'd be like, hey, be careful when you cross that board because it's going to tip and you're going to fall into that creek. And my brain instantaneously thought he had 40,000 steps on his Fitbit over uneven ground, spent overnight and freezing temperatures and made it down a mountain. And my brain shifted. And it was like, he's going to be fine. He walked across and he was fine. And we went back to school.

his beliefs had changed. And he told the teacher, I'm a hiker. We have been on dozens of hikes before. But this one, he's like, I'm a hiker now. My beliefs about parenting, my son's beliefs about who he was as a person, my beliefs about what I felt like I was missing out on and what I was grateful for, changed overnight with a single event, just like with a car accident. I'm guessing lots of listeners don't necessarily want to get trapped on the mountain to change

their beliefs. Are there things we could do at the local level to start shifting some of these things around today? So I went back and looked at how do people get people to believe something politically or in religion? And I found that there was a series of patterns that I kept seeing over and over again. They had a common text. So whether that common text is a U.S. Constitution or is the Quran or the Bible or Plato, right? They share the same language. If you want to change beliefs in short, you change the text, you change the language that people hold about the world,

you change the sources of information, right? So you get a completely different belief system if you're watching CNN versus New York Times versus Fox versus you're on X or Twitter, right? Completely different outcomes based upon those sources. From the psychology side, you change what part of the brain is processing the world. And you change what actions create that virtuous cycle, that repetitive behavior that leads to some sort of interaction that creates a ripple effect into the community. So something very practical and easy to do is about length. which so where our words go, our brains go as well. And we can shape and prime oftentimes outcomes based upon what we're saying. Some people do pause of mantras. They feel sometimes hokey to people,

but I found that we were actually doing a lot of negative mantras. I was doing some of my life. Every time I get a phone call, someone would hire me to talk about happiness, I'd be like, I'm so busy. I'm so sorry. I'm so swamped. I've got so much going on. My head's barely above water. And I was repeating this mantra of how I do not have enough time, which is one of the core beliefs we talked about, but in negative form. And what I realized was that we do this in multiple ways. When my kids get sick, they don't tell me they're sick once. They tell me over and over again. I'm sick. I'm sick. My throat hurts. My head hurts. I'm sick. And what happens is we need to be authentic and being able to share with someone what we're experiencing. But at some point,

there's a tip over where the repetition of negative language causes a negative outcome. It causes symptoms to become more acute. We feel sicker. We feel busier. We feel more fatigued in those moments. So one of the easiest way is to shift beliefs is to shift the language we're using and cut out some of those negative mantras that we're using within our life. So what we're looking for is are there things we could do that change our lens long term? But also, what are those things we could start to do that have an effect very quickly in our life that shift from I'm going to this talk and I don't matter to I'm going to this talk and I do matter? Right. Or I'm going to help this patient and this work is meaningful versus I see the same thing every day and it does.

doesn't seem to help. Completely different outcomes, same world, but different beliefs and a different outcome. Beliefs aren't just abstract feelings about politics or religion. They fundamentally guide the things we notice, the choices we make, how we respond to setbacks, and how we shape our future. Sean has shown that it's natural to let negative core beliefs cloud your perception, but he's also learned that beliefs aren't fixed. Small shifts in language, attention, gratitude and connection can change the way you move through the world and the outcomes that you create for yourself. If you'd like to learn more about how beliefs affect happiness and success, check out Sean's new book, The Power of Beliefs, which is out now. And finally, for those who

are curious, a group of lightning bugs is called A Sparkle. If you have thoughts about today's episode, we'd love to hear them. You can email us at happiness lab at pushkin.fm and leave a review to tell us what you think. You can also sign up to learn more. about the science of happiness and join my free newsletter on my website, Dr.Larysantos.com. That's d-R-L-A-U-R-I-E-S-A-N-T-O-S dot com. Next up in our series on spring cleaning your well-being, we're breaking down how to refresh your relationship with negative emotions.

What is told to us by society about emotions, in what ways does that narrative actually not serve us, in fact, completely counter to making us strong and more resilient. It actually makes us more fragile. That's all next week. On the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.