The One You Feed - Jonathan Rauch on The Happiness Curve

Episode Date: January 23, 2019

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, the author of 6 books (and many, many articles) and is a contributing editor of The Atlantic. His latest book is The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50. See what you think about the trends of happiness in your life compared to the tendency he describes in his book and this interview. It may be that the emotional peak of life is different than when you’d expect.Need help with completing your goals in 2019? The One You Feed Transformation Program can help you accomplish your goals this year.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Jonathan Rauch and I Discuss…His book, The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50Connection to othersGenerosityThe factors that most contribute to our happinessThe U shape curve of happiness in lifeThe emotional peak of lifeHow our expectations change as life goes onThat our values continue to changeThe fact that our brains change over the course of a lifetimeHow the effects of connectedness are cumulative and durableThe hedonic treadmillWhat to do to be happier at the bottom of the curveThe suffering that comes from social comparisonStaying in the present momentInternal criticismGuilt vs Shame in mid-lifeThe benefits of being other-directed, other-orientedHow the voice of impulsiveness isn’t our friendJonathan Rauch LinksHomepageTwitterThe Great Courses Plus gives in-depth knowledge on a variety of topics like psychology, science, philosophy, cooking, photography and more. Watch or listen to a course whenever, wherever for FREE. To start your free trial now go to www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/wolfPhlur makes stunning, non-toxic perfumes, listing every ingredient and why it’s there. Visit www.phlur.com and use promo code WOLF to get 20% off first custom sampler set.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As we age, we're kind of biologically gradually reprogrammed to focus less on climbing the greasy pole of social competition and more on community and connection with other people. Welcome to The One You Feed. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes

conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,, How They Feed Their Good Wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He's the author of six books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He's a contributing editor of The Atlantic and a recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award. His latest book is The Happiness Curve, Why Life Gets Better After 50. I also wanted to remind everybody that listener support is the heart of what makes this show work, and there's so many ways you can support us.

You can go to OneYouFeed.net slash support and make a contribution. You can also go to OneYouFeed.net slash Amazon and buy all your purchases through there. And finally, you can go to iTunes and subscribe and leave us a rating and review. That's really helpful for us as well. If you'd like to connect to the One You Feed community, you can also join our Facebook group at oneyoufeed.net slash group. Hi, Jonathan. Welcome to the show. Great to be here. Thank you, Eric. I am really happy to have you on. Your book is called The Happiness Curve, Why Life Gets Better After 50. And we will jump into all the details of the book in a moment, but we'll start like we always do with the parable.

There is a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter, and he says, in life, there are two wolves that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at her grandfather. She says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, Eric, it so happens that that's a very germane parable to the book I've written.

It's something I think about a lot. It turns out that pretty much the most important thing for happiness is connections to others, doing things for others, focusing on the people and relationships you really care about. I am not a naturally generous person. It's something I've learned about over the years. That's my hungry wolf. And that's the wolf which in some ways, it's hard for me to see. And I spent a lot of time since writing this book and learning about the importance of generosity. since writing this book and learning about the importance of generosity. That's kind of my goal for the next 20 or 30 years, however much time I have, to get better at feeding that good wolf. There's something that you say that leads us right into kind of the heart of the book, and we're going to talk about what the happiness curve is. But one of the things that you

talk about is how some of what you've learned comes from the science of happiness economics. But one of the things that you say is the most fundamental finding of happiness economics is the factors that most determine our happiness are social, not material. Yeah, it's kind of ironic, isn't it, that it took economists to figure out that economics won't make us happy? But that's exactly right. Some people started, in economics, started saying, well, wait a minute, we talk all the time about maximizing material stuff, and we just assume in economics that every time we make a trade, you know, I'm better off

and you're better off. But what if these trades we're making are not actually making us happier? So they started to check it out. And sure enough, it's the finding you just mentioned. Beyond a certain fairly low point, you know, we all want to have medical care and a roof over our heads. Those things are really important. But once we get pretty solidly middle class, that extra increment of money doesn't really help very much.

What really does determine happiness, single most important thing, is connectedness, having a trusting and trusted social environment, our friends, our family, a support network. That's really the key. Yeah, it's funny. I say this often on the show, but I started this show, you know, really looking for what does it mean to live a good life. And I was pretty certain that most of what I would find was things that tended towards my Buddhist leanings of internal focus, as far as, you know, meditation and contemplation and knowing who you are and finding inner peace.

But one of the things that's been absolutely apparent in so many of the episodes we do is exactly that, that yes, that's important, but an equally important part is our connection to the world outside of us. Yes, we're social animals all the way down. Yep. So let's talk about the happiness curve. What is it? That's a big question.

Maybe a short summary. All right. Here's the super short version, then we can drill down. Yeah. So there's been a revolution, a transformation over the last 10 or 15 years in how we understand adult development, which most people thought just meant basically decline. You know, you're healthy and happy or excited when you're young, and then starting around middle age, you decline into senescence and weakness and infirmity,

and then you die. Turns out that's wrong. Turns out that the aging process does have an effect on happiness, meaning not just mood, but really life satisfaction. Basically, you feel your life is good and fulfilling. And it's U-shaped. It's a curve. It bends downward until about age 50 in the U.S., and then upward right through the end of life, which means that for a lot of people, other things being equal, midlife is the hardest time of life, the time of the most vulnerability, not the time as we imagine we're most on top of our game, we're masters of the universe. And this is really

forcing a profound change in the way we're thinking about aging and middle age and every stage of life. Yeah, and I want to start off with a caveat that you use often in the book, and I think it's important that we just get it out there right away, because immediately somebody listening to this is like, well, that's not true for me. And so, you know, what we're saying here is this is a pattern that is detected by looking at large numbers of people. You say it's not an inevitability, it's a tendency.

And you describe it, I love this analogy, and I'll ask you to expand upon it. You say the happiness curve is like an undertow that pulls against you in middle age. So first, let's talk about how the fact that like, this is not, to your point, inevitability. And then let's go into a little bit of maybe, what is it about middle age that might be pulling our life satisfaction down? So yes, thank you. Those are both so important. For human beings, our well-being is very complicated. You know, we're complicated creatures and lots of things affect it. Your job, your income, your health, your marriage, your kids, your education level,

all of that stuff. Do you have a cancer diagnosis? Did you win a Nobel Prize? All of those things will influence it. However, other things being equal, there is this very important effect of time. So if you're someone like me who didn't have a lot of other things going on in his life, you know, I had smooth sailing. I was very fortunate right through my 50s. Then you may really feel this undertow. It's like pulling against a current that's working against you. You really feel that. And boy, I sure did. I had in my 40s, I was doing great. I was firing on all cylinders. I won the biggest prize in journalism. My career had traction. I had a steady relationship. Just so much to be thankful for. this nag by the sense that I was wasting my life, running out of time, and I felt trapped. And some days I just wanted to throw it all away. Well, it turned out that was almost certainly age-related unhappiness. And in fact, it went away in my 50s. So I felt that undertow, and lots and lots of

people do. Not everyone, but lots of people do. Yeah, and I think that when I read this, there was a little part of me that was like, oh, that's bad news. And then another part of me was like, well, that's really good news. And, you know, the bad news part of it was, you know, I'm 48 years old, and so I'm down near the bottom of that curve, although I think a lot of things in my life mitigate that. really what I found ultimately so hopeful about the book was exactly what you said in the beginning. Most of us have a tendency to think it's kind of all downhill from here. You get to be around, you know, the age I'm at or, you know, middle age and you're like, well, physically I'm not what I used to be. You know, it just, it feels like things are inevitably going to get worse. And what I found so hopeful is the book is really saying there's a really good like things are inevitably going to get worse. And what I found so hopeful is the book is really saying, there's a really good chance things are going to get a lot better as far as your life satisfaction.

It's so important to understand that the assumption we make that life peaks at around age 50, and that after that we go into decline, retirement, idleness, infirmity, and death, as well as depression. It's just completely backwards. In fact, for most people, the emotional peak of life is not until the 60s or even the 70s. And the aging process actually makes it easy for us to feel contentment as we age. So there's tons to look forward to at age 50.

Yeah, you've got a chapter called The Paradox of Aging, Why Getting Older Makes You Happier. And you mentioned a couple different things there. You say that stress declines after about age 50, that our ability to emotionally regulate ourself improves, that as we get older, we feel less regret, we're not as depression prone. Do you want to talk a little bit about what it is about old age? Maybe elaborate on those points I made there that you wrote about? People ask all the time, what's going on with this U-shaped curve? Why is aging having this peculiar effect that makes it, you know, other things equal, harder to be happy and grateful in midlife and then easier after that. And the truth is, we know what happens,

but we know much less about why. But it looks like three things are going on simultaneously. One is our expectations change, because when we're very young, in our 20s, we're unrealistically optimistic about how happy we'll be if we achieve all our goals. And so after years of disappointment by our 40s, we're thinking, well, I'm not feeling good about my life. But then our expectations come down to earth,

and that actually helps us. A second thing, and this gets to your question, is our values begin to change. We're kind of programmed to be very ambitious in youth. And after all, you know, ambition is what leads us to strive as young people to achieve social status and all of the perquisites and frankly mating opportunities, as Darwin would have said, that go with that. As we age, we're kind of biologically gradually reprogrammed to focus less on climbing the greasy pole of social competition and more on community and connection with other people. And that actually is a big increase in happiness because ambition just keeps moving the goalposts. Every time you achieve something, you want the next thing. But connecting with other people, what we were talking

about at the very beginning, does not move the goalposts. It's actually very fulfilling and stays that way. And that gets easier with old age. Older people put more emphasis on the core relationships and core pursuits that they really value because their time horizon is shorter. And then the third thing that changes, which you alluded to, is our brains. And that is such interesting counterintuitive research. But when you put older people and younger people in fMRI machines and study their brains, you see what's called the positivity effect. Older people have a more positive outlook. They respond more to positive stimuli and less to negative stimuli, so they're going to be more responsive to smiles. They're going to experience

less stress at any given moment, more equanimity, more positivity. They're better at balancing competing emotions. There are lots of these other effects, and you can see them in our brains. They're better at balancing competing emotions. There are lots of these other effects and you can see them in our brains. We're kind of rewired with age and all of these things, when you put them together, seem to lead to this U-shaped trajectory. in addition to interviewing guests all the time i read a lot of scientific papers about how we can make change in our lives. And I just finished one called If at First You Don't Succeed, False Hopes of Self-Change. And it's by some researchers out of the University of Toronto. And one of the things that they do in this article is they trot out the same dreary statistics about how few people make a change and stick to it. We've heard all the New Year's resolution stats, the stop smoking stats. Yes, it is in general dreary. But the thing that I found

interesting in this article was they said that what a lot of people do when they fail is they think it was a matter of effort on their own part. And what they don't do is stop and really look at the method itself, whether it's the diet, the program, whatever it is, they don't look at that itself. And that's such an important piece because you can keep trying and trying and trying to change and you can try harder and you can get your motivation up, then you're very likely to end up failing. And that's what the One You Feed transformation program does. It gives you the right approach, an approach that's based on a lot of modern science, a lot of ancient principles, and's an amazingly effective program for making change in your own life. If you are interested in learning more, go to OneYouFeed.net slash transform. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow.

I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm going to read something you wrote because this really struck me so much. And you're, again, we're talking about happiness economics. And you say, they found that growth and income correlates with life satisfaction only over a very short time span, about a couple of years after that people adjust to their gains. Over longer spans, any effect of economic growth on happiness vanishes altogether. By contrast, increases in group membership and in other measures of social connectedness are associated with only mild increases in satisfaction over the short term, but large increases over longer spans. So the effects of connectedness

are cumulative and durable. And that just really struck me as so profound and so important and so counterintuitive and how we orient our lives very differently. And that I've noticed with myself that an economic upturn is like immediate, like, great, I feel good. Whereas, you know, investing more time in social connection seems to be, as you're saying here, takes a little bit longer for it to really bear fruit. But the fruit it bears is so much more long lasting. Yeah, you hold on to it. It doesn't move the goalposts. Economists have this wonderful phrase called hedonic treadmill, which means the more you earn and the more social achievement that you rack up in terms of promotions and trophy spouses or whatever, the more you want. So actually, you get less

satisfied as you pursue those things. Whereas social connectedness, it's like money in the bank. It's exactly what you just said. It's capital. It's slower acting, but it pays increasing dividends over time. And you also make another super important point, which is if you think about the way we structured American society, for many people, it's overwhelmingly about the former. What have I accomplished today? What have I achieved? How have I gotten ahead in life? What have I accomplished today? What have I achieved? How have I gotten ahead in life? Well, if you really want fulfillment, a better question to ask is, how have I helped someone else get ahead in life today? What have I done for the neighborhood? Because those are the things that turn out to really matter most to us. Right. And the aging process appears to guide us towards those things more naturally. Let's talk a little bit about the opposite of some of those. Let's talk about what's happening in the trough of the happiness curve. You know,

what's happening when we're down near the bottom? What are the factors in middle age that are sort of pulling that life satisfaction down? You know, what are the factors in middle age that are sort of pulling that life satisfaction down? You know, what are some of the things that contribute to that? Well, we touched on them earlier, and I felt them all. And believe me, you know, my view of my 40s is that the best thing about them was that they ended. I'm 58. A big factor is disappointment. Because we're programmed when we're young to think, if I achieve the material things in life I've wanted or the career goals I wanted, well, of course I'm going to be ecstatic.

And then we're not because of what we're just talking about. So year after year, we feel disappointed because, you know, achievement hasn't done for us what we expected it to do. But then you have to pile some more things on top of that. The next thing that happened, I know this because it all happened to me. The next thing that happened is you start to feel ungrateful. I've got so much to be thankful for. I've accomplished so many of my goals, family life, health, income, whatever it is.

Yet I'm not feeling happy. There must be something wrong with me. I'm ungrateful. I'm wretched. I became ashamed of the way I felt because I had so much cause for joy, yet I didn't seem to feel it. So I felt unhappy about feeling unhappy. So that's not all. Now we add alarm. I started feeling there's something wrong with me. Maybe if all of these things that I've accomplished haven't been fulfilling, maybe I'm just curdling as a human being. I'm turning into a sourpuss, someone who will never be happy. So I began to worry about the future. So you can see where this is going. You get stuck in this kind of time trap where you're disappointed in the past and pessimistic about the future. So you can see where this is going. You get stuck in this kind of time trap where

you're disappointed in the past and pessimistic about the future, and it looks like this will never end. And so all of these things, turns out, when scholars actually do the math, this thing can become a self-propelling cycle. It's not actually about anything. Weirdly enough, It's not actually about anything. Weirdly enough, this process of bootstrapping is like this little lawnmower that runs entirely on its own. But here's the thing. Humans want to attribute unhappiness, so we blame stuff. We don't know that it's just our age getting the better of us,

just this period that we have to go through. In my case, I blamed my career. I thought, you know, there must be something wrong with my job. I almost walked in and quit. Would have been a really bad idea. I knew it was irrational, but a lot of people make mistakes in midlife, and that can lead to a real crisis. So you got all of these things going on at once, and it can be pretty complicated.

Exactly. And those negative feedback loops can be so powerful. And so you share some things that we can do if we're in the midst of that sort of thing. And so, and they are sort of the antidotes to the points you just listed, but I thought we might talk through them to sort of give some practicality to if I'm in this, the bottom of the happiness curve, what are some things I might do? And so one of the things you say is that the answer is everything, right? That all behaviors and attitudes that are good for us at any time in life are also good for us if we are caught in a midlife emotional trap. And so, you know, the normal things this show talks about all the time, exercise and eating well and meditation. But

then you go on to say, I'm going to give you some things that are more specific to this problem. And so one of them that you talk about is normalize. Yeah, this goes to the point I just make. A lot of people panic or get alarmed because they think there's something wrong with them. It's very important to know that at this stage in life, being in one of these situations where you feel trapped and pessimistic is completely normal. It's not about anything. It's a transition in your values and as your brain, it's a natural part of the aging process. It's unpleasant. Absolutely nothing wrong with you though. In fact, there may be something wrong with you if you don't go through it because it turns out there's a big emotional payoff on the other end in the form that we've

been talking about this surprising amount of rewardingness and contentment later in life. So yeah, place to begin is understand there's probably nothing wrong with you. You don't need a doctor. I mean, if you're seriously depressed, if you have acute depression, that's a different story. But most people have discontentment. And that's normal at this age. Yeah, the second thing that you mentioned is to interrupt the internal critics. And you quote someone who says, one of the biggest causes of suffering is social comparison. Status anxiety is a huge component of this kind of self-torture. Yeah, I had that all the time too. I would find myself comparing myself unfavorably to people

who had jobs that I wasn't even interested in. So I remember having these feelings like, why am I not on the Sunday talk shows in. So I remember having these feelings like, why am I not on the Sunday talk shows? And then I'd stop myself and think, but I've never wanted to be on the Sunday talk shows. I don't want to be on the Sunday talk shows. And I realized there was this cycle going on in my head that was kind of using these social comparisons and these status comparisons. So what I gradually learned helped somewhat was to interrupt those cycles. I didn't know it, but I was doing a crude form of what's called cognitive behavior therapy, which is where you get control of these tape loops in your mind that feed you bad or false or immiserating information.

bad or false or immiserating information. So I taught myself when I felt a social comparison coming on to just interrupt it, tried to make it almost instinctive. I interrupted with the phrase, no comparison. And that's not a cure. I mean, there's no cure for this transition in life, but it helped because it gave me a sense, you know, that I could have some control over these voices. I've heard the quote attributed to lots of different people, so I don't even know who to attribute it to, but comparison is the thief of joy. And that just seems so true to me. I think it's true at every aspect of life, no matter where you are and when you're doing that sort of comparison, you suffer. But the point that you make in the book is that when you do it earlier, you tend to have a sense

like, well, there's still time. I might be these other things. And as you get towards the bottom of this happiness curve, as we're talking about, more reality is starting to set in about what all might actually come true. So those comparisons can become more painful. You also talk about another type of comparison that you describe as sort of an upward comparison of where we're comparing ourselves to ourselves, or really to an idealized out of reach version of ourselves. So things like, why don't I ever do as much work as I should? Why isn't my latest article as good as the one I wrote a few months like, why don't I ever do as much work as I should? Why isn't my latest article as good as the one I wrote a few months ago? Why don't I say the right thing to my husband yesterday? We all err and fall short in all kinds of ways every day. And so we never

lack grounds for self-criticism. Yeah. And particularly at midlife, that hit me very hard. I think it hits a lot of people hard because this is the stage when we're supposed to have maxed out on our competence in life. And there I found also that I interrupted the cycle and that became beneficial. And the way I interrupted that cycle was by reminding myself, I don't have to be perfect today. This one I still fight. Any day when I do too much reading of email or too much staring into space and don't get enough work done, I still really have to fight the temptation to condemn myself as a bad person. But something that gets easier as I've grown older and it gets easier for many people as they grow older is to stay in the present and be less judgmental

about ourselves. And that's very helpful. In speaking about staying present, you also say that the trough of the happiness curve is a time trap. Life satisfaction in years past has not met expectations. Life satisfaction in years to come seems likely only to decline. Disappointment about the past and pessimism about the future squeeze out fulfillment in the present. And, you know, what you're saying there is to come to the present moment more, be here. Both the past and the future feel particularly fraught at this point. Yes, dwelling on past disappointments, where you thought you might be or how happy you thought you might be, or dwelling on the future worries about what's going to happen 10 years from now. Will I be old? Will I be sick? Is the good part of my life over?

The past and the future are not your friends in this situation. And here's where I think you mentioned at the beginning your philosophy of Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies, which emphasize staying in the present and sometimes just breathing the air around you. That's always good advice, but it's especially good advice if you're caught in one of these midlife time traps. Exactly. And you referred to something a second ago about when we were talking about this internal criticism, you know, and that how we often are hard on ourselves when we don't live up to, you said, you know, if I spend a day checking too much email

and that made me think of the concept of, of guilt versus shame and the idea of guilt being like, you know, guilt's a useful indicator. Like, you know, I'm not living up to my own standards and that can be a useful tool to say, okay, you know, let me adjust my behavior. But you address something else in the book, and it leads me into the shame piece. Because one of the things that you say is helpful to do is to share that we're going through this, that it's a very difficult thing to go through. that it's a very difficult thing to go through, and that we don't do this because, to your point earlier, when we're dealing with this sort of problem, we feel a great deal of shame about the fact that we feel this way. We feel like we shouldn't feel this way. Like you said, we feel like there's something fundamentally wrong with this. And again, back to that distinction, guilt is sort of like, okay, I'm doing a behavior that's not great, where shame is this fundamental, I am wrong piece. And you talk about how important it is to be able to start to share with others what we're going through in this phase.

Well, here, Eric, you're getting to, to me, what is kind of the core message of the book. If I wanted to leave people with one idea, it's that midlife malaise is not a me problem. It's a we problem. What we've done is make coping with midlife dissatisfaction a DIY project. We expect people to deal with it on their own. You know, they're parents. They're taking care of kids. They're taking care of parents. They've got jobs. They've got community obligations. care of parents. They've got jobs. They've got community obligations. And they're supposed to be strong. That's the message we're sending. So if they feel weak, if they feel vulnerable, if they feel lost, they don't feel like they have anywhere to turn. And often they feel ashamed and they feel scared. And they're not even telling their spouses what's going on because they're afraid of setting off

alarms about midlife crisis. So the most important things that need to change are not just inside ourselves. We need to make it easier to support each other through this period. We need to de-shame and de-stigmatize the midlife trough for people who are going through age-related unhappiness. It's a phase in life. It's a transition. It's completely natural, a little bit like adolescence in that respect. Some people do great as teenagers, but some people have a very hard time. We don't make fun of them. We don't tell them they need a psychiatrist. We give them social support, and we give them friendship and love. So we need to stop panicking if we have a friend who's in this situation and we need to make it possible to talk to each other about it.

I can tell you in my case, as a gay man, I feel like I went through two periods in the closet. The first when I was much younger and trying to deny my sexual orientation. much younger and trying to deny my sexual orientation. And the second in my 40s, when I was in this period of feeling dissatisfied and despondent about my life, but not knowing why, but deep in the closet, not willing to talk about it. And the isolation makes it so much worse. you say that we know instinctively to reach for support when hit with an external shock like a cancer diagnosis or unemployment even if we prefer to share it only with our nearest and dearest the most insidious feature of a midlife feedback trap is that it turns our instinct for sociability against us our unhappiness is not justified by our external

circumstances. Therefore, it shows a character defect. I think it's what some people, whether it be dealing with this happiness curve or people who also, you know, it's becoming less of a stigma, but deal with depression. Because if you deal with depression, but the rest of your life looks okay, you're very ashamed. Like, why don't I feel good? And I think the correlate there is that it's the not sharing that because we feel like we look ungrateful. You know, we look ungrateful, so we don't talk about it. Yes, and the two things then feed back into each other. Because we feel isolated and ashamed, that makes us feel even worse. And so that's why one of the most important interventions

is what we can do for each other. If you sense a theme of this conversation coming back again and again and again, this is about what we do for each other. Yep, I think that is so true and obviously something I believe in deeply with the show and trying to connect all of us to each other. Can I say that that's the wolf that we really need to feed? Yeah. Amen. I want to move a little bit to another topic here that comes up a lot as we're in this sort of, um, you know, the bottom of this happiness curve. Hey y'all, I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations.

We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves, and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. It's a little bit of past, present, and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love.

All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman.

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a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the idea of change. You mentioned it earlier, like this desire to be like, it's all wrong. Everything's wrong. My career's wrong. I need to just, you know, throw everything away and head in a totally new direction. And I hear this

from listeners. I hear this with people I do coaching work with, and you've got some really solid advice here about ways to think about that. And it's not that change is a bad thing, but you talk about doing it in some really wise ways. And you say it's something of a consensus among professionals, you know, change is good, but keep it real. Yeah, we should talk a bit about coaching before the call's done because I became a big fan of it. What's going on, and we touched on this earlier, in this midlife period is a change in our values, a realignment toward being more other-directed and less oriented toward ambition and competition.

And that's going to give us a desire to change up things in our life, maybe a different kind of job or a different role in life. So actually, it's natural and desirable to feel like you need change in middle age. But here's the thing. There's a right way to go about it and a less right way to go about it. These voices, this natural age-related sense of disappointment is going to be hammering away. Walk away from everything. You're in a trap. Just leave. Can't take it anymore. Leave the family. Leave the kids. Leave the job. So the voice of impulsiveness is not our friend.

That's not our rational self talking. So the advice that I give is step, don't leap. Be very suspicious of big impulsive change and instead set about change in a stepwise, Set about change in a stepwise, rational fashion. Don't throw away existing strengths and relationships and social capital. Build on those things. Make sure to consult with lots of other people in your life. Make sure there's a plan B if it doesn't work out. It's a good time for change, but it needs to be thought through and gradual, because this is a time of life when it's so easy to make mistakes. Yeah, I agree. And I love the way you, I'm just going to read a sentence because I think this just says it so well. And I believe this about change in general, but in particular at this point, which is instead move laterally, incrementally, constructively, logically. That reduces the odds of impulsive mistakes and helps keep the downside manageable. And I just think that is such good advice. You tell a story, maybe you can relate the story about a woman who at this

point does make a relatively dramatic change and heads overseas, but the way she does it really hits all these points that you talked about, about it being incremental and lateral and constructive and really builds on her skills, experience, and connections. Maybe that would be illustrative to talk about her. Yeah, I'd love to. We talk in broad generalities and scientific evidence in this conversation, but I'd like to point out to people that for me, the best part of the book, both to research and I hope to read, is its stories. Lots of people, individuals who've lived through and reacted to these situations in life, that's really what gives it the texture and richness. And I was especially interested in the story of Beth, who seems at one level to be someone who had a midlife crisis and threw everything up in the air and walked away because

she gave up her job in the United States and her husband gave up. He had retired, but they just, they walked away from it and moved to Egypt, where she started teaching in a school. So this sounds like one of those stories of disruptions, but when I dug a little further with her, I discovered that she did it exactly right. She carefully planned to make sure that her husband's retirement benefits and social security were solid enough so that they could both live on it if she failed. She carefully researched schools in Egypt and worked with an educator that she knew from her existing life and went to work for that person who she knew was a great person. So she was able to get established. She subsequently moved to India, again, building on her connections. So it turned

out actually to be a case study in how you can make these big changes and accommodate your changing values while building on those connections and all that knowledge. Yeah, I thought that was such a great story and illustration. And you're right, the book is filled with stories of people and how they've gone through this and how this looks different for every person. You know, we see a pattern in the data that shows this curve, but that some people have different curves. And the book has lots of stories about people, which I agree, make it very rich. And we just haven't had the time to go into all those. But I agree, it's one of the best parts of the book. Well, if I could put in a plug for coaching, this might be a logical thought to do it.

Because lots of things contribute to our sense of well-being and our values. And it turns out we're in the midst of one of these situations, a malaise, a crisis, whatever it might be. We're really not very good at sorting through all that. And often in this situation, we don't really need medical help. What we need is sorting through all the variables, thinking about it in a systematic way so we can resurface, okay, really, how have my values changed? And how can I, in a logical, incremental way, honor those values into the next stage of my life? And that's what coaches do. I did a deep dive on coaching for the book, and I came away a real fan because what a good coach does is instead of treating you as a patient who needs

curing, they treat you as an ally. And they're very good at asking those questions about, so where are you in your life? What do you really want? How can we move closer to that together? And that is a great model for helping this exact situation and a very, very underused model. Well, I'm glad that you put that plug in, and I would be remiss if I didn't at least just remind listeners that that's a service we offer. I agree. I mean, it's one of my favorite parts of the work that I do is really being able to work with people to sort of disentangle everything that's happening. There's so much that can be going on and so many conflicting ideas to really work with people to identify what those are and then build a reasonable and practical plan of how to get where they want to get.

Yes. It's did I mention yet in this conversation that middle age should not be a DIY project and that we need to reach out and And coaching is another one of those resources and a really good one. Yeah, I agree 100%. But back to your point, which is some people are in a position to be able to engage a coach, some aren't. But find somebody,

find somebody that you can talk about these things with because it makes such a big difference. Yeah. Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on. I've really enjoyed this conversation. There's all kinds of great stuff that in the book that we didn't get to. You reference Jonathan Haidt and his elephant and rider analogy, which is one of my all-time favorite analogies, and we didn't even have time to get to that. You talk about what wisdom means, you know, how people are scientifically studying it. So there's so much great stuff in the book we didn't get to and I'd encourage

listeners to check that out if they have a chance. You know, one of the challenges of talking about a subject like this is just in the last 10 to 15 years there's been so much going on in our understanding about aging and life transitions and so much that's different from the conventional wisdom that we have only been able to touch on it. But that's what makes the subject so incomparably fun. It feels like an adventure. I agree completely. So Jonathan, you and I are going to talk about some of those things in our post-show conversation. We're going to talk about the elephant and rider analogy, and we're going to talk a little bit about

what research is showing us about what wisdom really is. So we'll do that in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you're interested in that, being a supporter of the show, we'll get you access to that. Go to oneyoufeed.net slash support. And again, Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on. Such a great book and such a fun conversation.

It was my privilege to be here. Thanks again, Eric. Okay. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.