We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 63. How to Live a Little Happier with Dr. Laurie Santos

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

1. The simple exercises Laurie conducts with her students at Yale to help them reset their brains and restructure their days in order to access happiness.   2. Why being “time famished” is one of the most common obstacles to happiness, the signals our bodies give us that we are starved of unstructured time, and what we can do to build more of it.   3. How understanding that our brains are wired as “comparison machines” incompatible with happiness can lead to improved wellbeing.   About Laurie:  Dr. Laurie Santos is Professor of Psychology and Head of Silliman College at Yale University. Dr. Santos is an expert on human cognition and the cognitive biases that impede better choices. Her course, “Psychology and the Good Life,” teaches students what the science of psychology says about how to make wiser choices and live a life that’s happier and more fulfilling. The class is Yale’s most popular course in over 300 years and has been adapted into a free Coursera program that has been taken by over 3.3 million people to date. Dr. Santos has been featured in numerous news outlets including the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, CBS This Morning, NPR, GQ Magazine, Slate, CNN and O, The Oprah Magazine. Dr. Santos is a winner of numerous awards both for her science and teaching from institutions such as Yale and the American Psychological Association. She has been featured as one of Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10” young minds and was named TIME's “Leading Campus Celebrity.” Her podcast, The Happiness Lab, launched in 2019 has over 48 million downloads. Instagram: @lauriesantosofficial Twitter: @lauriesantos

Well, hello, Pod Squad. Thanks for coming back to We Can Do Hard Things. How come you always get to do the beginning part? Okay, actually, everybody, Pod Squad, stay where you are. Yeah. Don't move. Go ahead, babe. It feels a little bit like one-sided here. Hello, Pod Squad. Hello. Claim your space, Abby. Claim that space. Take it up, girl. You too, sister. I just want to welcome you back. Here we are. We can do Hard Things podcast. we've been talking to Dr. Lori Santos. We love her so much. And I feel like I am killing this intro.

Do you know why? I bet you're killing it. The Todd Squad is going to be very excited about this. We're talking to Dr. Lori Santos about happiness. And so we have some happy news for you. What's the happy news? Abby is out of the... I'm out of the closet.

She's out of the closet. She is recording now in a room. We are in a room, Pod Squad. And you are out of the bathroom, honey. I know, but here's the deal. The Pod Squad has been so overtly concerned with you being in the closet, but nobody is worried about me being in a basement bathroom this entire time. Well, they didn't know that. What they don't know is that my microphone this entire time and computer has been sitting on the toilet.

And I have been in a room that is like eight inches by 10 inches. But I think there's some kind of cognitive. dissidents that people have to see Abby Wambach speaking her bold truths in the closet that makes people upset. It's a symbolism for sure. It's ironic, as Alanis Morissette would probably say. It's ironic. But what the Potswad should also know is that we have a very emotional relationship with

closets. Like I have always done my best creative work in closets. I wrote all of Love Warrior from a closet. it. Okay. Then I, Abby and I got a house and I got an actual office. And so I sat down in the office to write untamed. And I could not do it because the office was too big and there were too many distractions. And we know I'm like Dory from Nemo whenever there's any. I just, and writing is so terrible and horrible that I would find myself like organizing books or like I'm never organized anything. But when I have a deadline, I become like home edit. I'm just like all over the

place. Our house is never cleaner than when there is a deadline in the works. My friend Rachel held Evans. She died and that is one of the worst things to happen to the spiritual world. But she used to put a post it on her computer that said, Rachel, the next sentence is not in the pantry. So I did that too. But the point is that I actually, even though I had that lovely big office, what did I do? Where did I take my computer every day to write untamed? You wrote the whole book. Untamed book in the closet of the office. In the closet of the office. Which was tiny, by the way.

That thing was tiny. It was way tiny. It was not a walking closet. Storage space underneath the stairs. No, I hit my head every time I stood up or went in and screamed the F word. The angled ceiling. Yes. She would know I was done writing by it screamed,

fuck over and over again. Okay. But now we're excited y'all. So we are in an office and we're together in this room. We are in an actual room. speaking to each other and that is a happy thing. And I want to tell you one other happy thing that happened to me this week. Okay.

I don't even know this. You know it. Okay. Oh. Just, it's, I told you all about it. Okay, my friend, Kate, you know, we made two new house. Kate Lester is a friend from our area. She came over and she brought me a plant.

Okay? And now I take plants very seriously now because my son is obsessed with plants. And so he has taught me to value plants, although not to name them. because that is personal. I don't know. He told me that's wrong. That's not respecting the plantness of plants. That's trying to turn them into people.

Okay? We don't listen to that. We have grand plants. He's gone away from college. We are desperately trying to take care of his plants. So when Kate brought me this plant, I was like, oh, my God, my own chance. This is my chance. So I watered it every other day with a special little cup that I had next to the sink.

And I watched it. It was getting greener. I felt like it just, I just could tell that it was. growing and it was so happy. Okay, so Kate comes over a couple days ago. She's sitting at my table and she's about to leave and I say, Kate, real quick, how often should I water that plant? I point to the plant that's on the island. How long should I, how often should I water it? Because I'm doing it a lot. And she goes, well, probably never because it's a fake plant. Okay, so what I want you to understand is that I've been watering this plant. I've been seeing it turn greener.

I've been seeing it grow. Oh. Okay. And I just feel like there's a metaphor here. Like, so many. So many. Stop watering dead plants. Like it's good to have real plants and real friends.

I don't know something. I'm working with a metaphor. But I think that was kind of happy. Like, oh my God, this is amazing. Right. And also a metaphor for happiness, right? Because in your judgment, your experience of that situation was that that plant was thriving. Yes.

And growing. and you had an experience of that that was just based on your perception of, and I would say, it's correct to say misperception of what was happening, but nonetheless, it made you happy. It made me so happy until Kate ruined it. She ruined it, baby, but I have a question, what do you think is happening or happened to all that water? I blew dry it yesterday. You are kidding me. No, I took a blow dryer and I blew dry the fake plant because I don't want to kill a fake plant.

That feels like something even I shouldn't be capable of. Wait, wait, wait, wait, back up. You're saying you were just not going to tell us that part of the story. Oh, no. You're saying after you found out it was a fake plant. Yeah. Well, I have a problem to solve. I'll go get my hair dryer and I'll shoot it on the plant.

What else was I supposed to do? Many problems that Glennon has is solved with the hairdry. Well, Abby, when we were 10 and she was trying to make cookies, the first thing on the recipe said pre-heat the oven. Okay, so we're not a big cooking baking family. So her little analytical mind was like pre-heat. How would I preheat? How would I get the oven hot before the oven was on? So what did she go get, Abby?

The hairdryer. She got the hairdrier. So this is. And I got caught. So who was it? I think it was my friend Carrie's mom. I think I was at a friend's house. And she walked in and she said, what are you doing?

And I said, I'm preheating the oven. I'm getting it. But listen, in my own defense, I don't understand cooking. But I know words. And I looked at that word, heat before. Heat the thing up before. Okay? It's not pre if it's turning it on.

Right. They should just turn on. Exactly. Right. And wait until it's 350 degrees. That's right. Turn it on and wait till it's 350 degrees. That is just heating. And now, that's not preheating. I think that we have actually figured out the exact moment that you and cooking split. That's right. Humiliation of that moment that that my family has never effing stops telling that story. Well, also, because it didn't make sense. You're like, no, that's not the way you define it. Like, I'm not going into that territory. And I'm bitter about cooking.

I very much resent every time someone says to me, it's just following directions. Cooking is just following directions. No, no. It's a recipe. Okay. So I pick up a recipe and I'm like, okay, it's just going to tell me what to do. Okay, I'm just going to do it's number one, number two, number three. And then the first sentence is something like Julianne, the carrots.

And I'm like, what the fuck does that mean? Like, that's not a direction. That's mocking me. I don't want to get a dictionary to make a salad. So no, I'm not, I'm not. I know hair dryers. I tell you what, I know how my way around a hair dryer. When your only tools a hair dryer, every problem looks like something that needs some hot air blown on it.

That's right. All right. You guys think, I didn't really know that this was going to go this way. But neither did we. Here we are. It's trying to bring some hats. Happiness to your week. You did.

My face hurts right now. I've been laughing so hard. Okay. Let's welcome Dr. Lori Santos so she can help us bring this conversation into any sort of reality. So we are so lucky that Dr. Lori Santos is back to answer our pod squad's happiness questions. Thank you so much.

Should we just jump in and hear from them? Yeah, let's do it. Hi, Glennon, sister and Abby. My hard thing is this. Like Abby, I am a huge people pleaser. I love making people feel happy, cared for, and supported. However, I've crossed the line where it has become unhealthy for me. I drain myself for the sake of others, no matter how much it cost me.

While I'm working on boundaries and putting myself first, there's an overwhelming amount of guilt I feel when I can no longer meet people's expectations, have to say no to something or know that I've disappointed someone. Do you have any advice on how to cope with or free myself from this inevitable guilt that I feel? Thank you so much from your fan, Shannon. Yeah, well, Shannon, you're not alone in the world. I feel like a lot of people are probably nodding their heads along right now. There is lots of evidence that doing for other people can make us happy, but that's only if we have the bandwidth to do for other people. And the problem is that we sometimes don't, right?

Like, we really have to be putting our own oxygen mask on first before helping other people. Like, it's such a cheesy metaphor that comes out of the airlines. But whenever they say it, I'm always like, yeah, yeah, flight attendant. Like, you know. You're the only one in my world who'll say that to me. Thank you. Thank you for giving me permission. But, like, we all need permission, right?

And I think this is so essential. I mean, I see this in my college students all the time. Like, these are incredibly driven students. So many of them are really, you know, interpromoting social justice and action and I watch them like burning out, right? Because they're not kind of giving themselves the bandwidth to like take a break and take a breath. You need to find ways to kind of say no to give yourself the bandwidth. Like boundaries are healthy. And then kind of make sure when you're saying yes, that it really is a real yes. You know, you kind of need to kind of give yourself space to to

be able to say no and sometimes. And if you can't do that, you know, that's a spot for some self compassion, right, to interrogate, okay, why do I, you know, myself, just one human, feel like I can't say no to a million things, right? Like, you know, what's going on? Like, do I think of myself as superhuman? Do I need to give myself a little bit more self-kindness? You know, do I need to reset some of these boundaries? Like, those can often be hard conversations, especially depending on who's doing the asking, but they're really essential ones for you able to to not feel burnt out all the time. These days I'm trying to get my students to talk a lot about their specific emotions. And we all know certain emotions like sadness, anger, those can be hard to kind of figure out,

but we kind of get them. But the one they feel so much that they need better ways to articulate is overwhelm. Like overwhelm where you're just like, I freaking can't. Like this is just so much. It's not anger. It's not sadness. It's not frustration. It's just like I don't have the bandwidth.

And emotions are signals, right? Like an overwhelm is a good signal of like this this means you got to step back. Like you got to start saying no to some of these obligations, right? This is an honest signal of what you're capable of. And when you don't listen to those honest signals, you know, you get into really nasty territory. So yeah. What does that nasty territory look like? Like when we don't say no.

I think it looks like addiction, right? It looks like addiction. It looks like, you know, really having a full nervous breakdown. It looks like burnout when you become cynical about even the things you love and the people you love, right? You don't want to get there. You want to act on it ahead of time. Have you ever hit a point at work where everything just feels heavy?

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And with a new year starting, it's the perfect moment to rethink how you want to feel. You can get matched with a coach in just a few minutes and sessions are flexible, private, and built around the reality of your life. Go to strawberry.combe slash we can do hard things and try a coaching session for 50% off. Strawberry dot me because your career should feel good again. Can I sneak in a question between voicemails? How do we talk about, cultivate, deal with happiness with our children? I don't think we do a very good job of that in our culture because we just keep telling them they should be happy in a million different ways.

So can you give us, like, what does the research say about that, what parents can do? Yeah. I think one thing you can do to make you. your kids ultimately happier and definitely to make them psychologically healthier is to let them be unhappy. It is to let them fail. It is to let them screw up. It is to let them cry. It's to let them see you do the same things because that is the way by which they do stuff. Yeah. I'm interviewing from my podcast this wonderful woman, Julia Lithcott Hames, who wrote a book about how to raise an adult. And she talks a lot about helicopter parenting. And she goes through this idea that in all of

our anxiety to protect our children. We're like ruining our own mental health, but we're kind of messing them up too. Right. Like we've all had the satisfaction of what it means to get through like a difficult task or to like, you know, struggle a little bit and then get to the other side or even struggle a little bit and not get to the other side where you like learn something from it. And we generationally are taking that away from our kids and not letting them feel any negative emotion. We teach them that like negative emotion, there's a cure for that. Like there's a cure for everything. We'll just blanket it. And that doesn't help them when like, like, like actually in reality, there's like death and taxes and all these things you don't have good

cures for and like we're kind of not preparing them for the right world. Yeah. Okay, let's hear from our next pod squatter. Hi, Glennon. I recently asked my husband for a separation and also stumbled on your podcast around the same time. And it, you know, has been my saving grace. And I guess my hard question is, you know, am I doing the right thing? Will I get past these feelings of I'm an awful person?

And does my happiness really matter? Falling out of love with my husband has been awful. And I wake up every day hoping that maybe today's the day. I convinced myself to be in love with him. Will I miss pass this? I know nobody can give me the answer that I really want. Do I ask him for a divorce or do I not? But only I can answer that question.

But anyway, I appreciate you guys so much. And I adore Abby and your relationship women. know that even though you don't have all the answers, you are helping in ways that you don't even realize. I love you guys. Thank you. Well, I mean, lots of threads here. I mean, first, just acknowledging the pain, like, that sucks. Like, it sucks to be in a position where the person you thought you were going to be with wherever you're not having those feelings for. It sucks to have the uncertainty about what to do. Like, that's a tough, tough situation to be in. And I think this is a spot.

where, you know, these practices of self-compassion can be so good. Like, even if it feels like this is a horrible thing and you're a horrible person, you are not the only person to fall out of love with someone. Like, this happens all the time, in fact, probably in like 50% of marriages. So, like, let's do a little common humanity and recognize that, like, these things come up. Then kind of engage in some self-kindness, right? Like, this hurts. This sucks. This is a bad thing to go through. You know, what can you do to kind to yourself? And researcher Kristen Neff has this wonderful suggestion that like when all things, when everything else fails, just give yourself some kind touch. She literally recommends like just taking your arm and like stroking your arm, like stroking your forearm like you might for like a child who is going through something.

And the beauty is like your brain doesn't know the difference. If it's like yourself stroking or someone else, you just feel this touch and feel a little comforted. So, you know, do things that feel kind and then you try to notice a little bit when those thoughts. come up, but like, you know, I'm a horrible person. Like, no, you're like literally like 50% of marriages out there that people go through this, right? Kind of common humanity and mindfulness. You know, in terms of the question about, you know, what you should do, I think, you know, she said it right. Like, you probably need to kind of make the decision for yourself. But the thing to know is that either way it goes, you're much more resilient than you think. I mean, it sounds

like she already has the answer that she's out of love and she might just need to make the hard decision. But I think the reason that decision is hard is you're doing some forecasting about how bad it's going to be. Like there's this idea that I'm never going to get over it, you know, that my partner's never going to get over it. Like it's just going to suck forever. And this is the good side of hedonic adaptation. It will suck. You know, when you first make that decision, it's going to feel like it's going to suck for a while. But all the evidence points to the fact that it's not going to suck as badly or for as long as you think. And so you can kind of trust in your own resilience there. And most people who are in that situation, once they finally make the decision,

often have the thought, why didn't I decide to like pull the Band-Aid off sooner? Yeah. And so, yeah. Yeah. And I just always remind myself, it's hard either way. Like, I think in this position we're always like, well, which one's going to, which one's the right one, the wrong one? Which one's the easy one, the hard? Like, but actually there's hard both ways. Like staying in a in a relationship that you know is not right for you as hard. Leaving a relationship that you know is not right for you as hard. So you really do have to just decide what's the right kind of hard. But she also has this thread where she says, but does my happiness even matter? Like that can can you speak to the idea of happiness

as kind of this zero sum game and how our happiness works in ecosystems that she's saying if I, if I choose my happiness, it means they're unhappiness, my kid's unhappiness, my partner's unhappiness. Like, how does that actually, is there studies on that? Yeah. I think this is another spot that we get wrong all the time. I think this is like a common perception. I think moms do this all the time where it's like, I need to sacrifice my happiness for like my kids' happiness.

Like, yeah, I'm super anxious about everything in their whole life. But like, how else do I make them happy? What we forget is like a very core mechanism of our emotions is that they are contagious. like if you're a super anxious, super unhappy mom, like your kids are going to pick that up. They're going to like soak that up. Are you sure? Are you sure Dr. Santos? I think it's, is there a loophole? Let's just really look for a loophole. But for our caller, we'll get off the mom. But for our caller, you know, if you're deeply unhappy in a relationship, you're not making the other person as happy as they could be. You know, in some ways you might be giving them a gift to just like, you know,

again, rip off the bandaid so that that person, and again, that person at the time, might feel like it's never going to get better. But all the study suggests it's not going to be as bad as you are forecasting. And even if it takes some time, because grief takes time, right? Like grief is about any loss that we didn't really want, right? And, you know, that even if you're in the position of kind of falling out of love of your partner, you have to grieve what you thought it was going to be at first or what it was in the beginning or something. And so you need to kind of give yourself some time to grieve, but you will get stronger even if it doesn't feel like it. I remember when I was deciding about my marriage and feeling this way. Like, does my happiness even matter? Can I free myself from

this without ruining everyone's lives? Liz said to me, there's no such thing as one way liberation. When you free yourself from something that wasn't meant for you, you are automatically freeing the other person because if it's not meant for you, it's not meant for them. It's a new year, and instead of trying to reinvent myself, I've been asking a simpler question. What would actually support me right now? And honestly, a big part of that answer is my home. I want my space to feel calmer, more functional, and a little more like a place that can reflect my goals and energy for this year,

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Get organized, refreshed, and back on track this new year for way less. Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair. Every style, every home. Okay, let's get to our next voicemailer. My name is Ellie in my 20s, and I just look up to y'all so much for different reasons. I would love to know what advice would y'all have told yourself in your 20s, just starting out with career relationships, all those things. Would love to hear it.

Love it. I think that was 20-year-old Dr. Santos. I was going to say, I think that wasn't for me. I think that was for you all. I want to hear you all go with that question. This is good, especially because I have lived a life that, I mean, I would say that I basically wake up thinking what fun things can I do today. And I usually actually put them off to later on in the day, but something that I've been

trying to do more recently is to actually put it on the to-do list of my life so that I don't miss out. Like, for a long time, I gave myself the reverse. reward of doing the fun thing after doing all of the other things that I needed to do, whether it be pay bills or workout or whatever. And so now I give myself the gift of maybe going surfing first in my day. I mean, it also helps that surfing in the morning is better. But I just am happier all day long. And then I go for my run like right after I surf so that I get that thing done. That's cool. Yeah. So it's like instead of holding your breath all day and then

breathing, breathe first, and then the rest of your day has more joy infused into it. Yeah. Cool. And you are literally putting in your to-do list stuff that is fun, right? Like, you might need the remedial step first of not like, when does the fun stuff happen in my to-do list, but like make sure it gets in there anyway. Yeah. And I think the problem is that for some of us when we're feeling really time famished, it's the fun stuff that goes out the window. Right. Like sometimes when I'm looking at my calendar, I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to squeeze extra stuff in. It's not that work meeting that I hate that goes. It's like, you know, my yoga class with my friend. I'm like, well, I guess I'm going to have to skip yoga this week. Or I guess I'm not going to have to sleep as much this week. Sleep also so

important for mental health and happiness. So just that it is in the priority list at the same level as the bills and all the other stuff is really powerful. Not to dodge this question, but I have a question about research on this because what she's saying is go back and look at your 20s. And it's like we all know that at the end of our lives, there's only, you know that at the end of our lives, going to be a few things that matter. I mean, like, we intellectually know that. No one would argue, but then even though we know that right now, we're not acting as if that were true. What's wrong with us? No, I'm honestly wondering what when what is wrong with our brains and our lives that we know that, but we're not doing anything. Like everyone has advice for the person's in

their 20s, but no one has ever done the thing they should have done in their 20s. Right. This is like sometimes when I talk about my happiness tips, like, and there's people say this about my Yale class too, they're like, all of this is common wisdom. Like, we already know this stuff. And I'll say, well, it's not common practice. Like, did you just do all this stuff today? Like, no, right? Like, we need some kind of help with it. And like, you know, why don't we do it? Our brains are built wrong. There's that wanting, liking disconnect, you know, capitalism. There's lots of messaging coming in that's not telling us to just like, be present and enjoy the joy and like look out your window that doesn't like sell iPhones,

you know, so there's a lot of outside pressure to kind of keep us stuck in this in this rat race. But then, you know, if you do look at people at end of life, like none of that stuff is going to matter. And again, you know, not to go back to like, you know, the Greeks and the Romans here, but, you know, this is the concept of Carpe Diem. It's like seize the day. They don't mean like, get through your whole to-do list. It's like, seize the day because tomorrow you may die. And when you do the reflection on, what if, what if, what if tomorrow was the last day? You know, what if someone came down and was like, you know, just going to give you a window. When you walk outside, you can get by a car, nothing you can do about it. Like, today's the last day. Just wanted to, like, give you a little FYI. Probably the to do-do list would go away, you know, and probably you'd be present with the people you care about in a different way. You know, you'd want to, like, be present with the food that you eat or whatever. Like, you just do things differently. And so that's the, I hate that, like, there's like, carpe die on, like, planners and things. And, like, And I'm like, no, they meant something different. They meant like, constantly your death.

Lori, you'll be shocked to know that my entire career started with an essay called Don't Carpe Diem. Love it. Love it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I do think that there is such a wisdom to that.

It's like how do we avoid the big deathbed regret is like avoiding bedtime regret. It's like how the Annie Dillard idea of how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. So it's like how do we divide that up and make it smaller and make sure if like, like what we really love at the end of the day is our family and our peace and our joy and our friends. Like, did we spend any time on that today? Yeah. And I think the sad thing is how little, how little we do. We do this values exercise with my students where I have them come in and, you know, they write a big list of, you know, what are the things you value and they circle, you know, all these virtues of like a spirit of adventure and learning and all this stuff.

And then we do this exercise. Like, okay, new exercise. New exercise. We're going to have you just write down how you spent your day, just like a typical day, like seven. am and then I go back and I say, okay, let's match those up. Like, you know, how did those things go together? And they have this moment where they're like, crap, like, you know, the things that really matter to me, I'm not kind of putting my time into. And then there's like the further exercise of like, okay, well, you know, what would you do differently? And I think it's an exercise we can all do. And, you know, I'm no better here, right? Like, if I looked at my day today, I mean, this part's fun. But like, I had a bunch of stuff that was like staff meeting and boring and emails and da,

it's like, wait, you know, if tomorrow was the last day, I really wouldn't have wanted to spend it this way. And so, you know, what can we do to restructure our lives? That might mean setting up boundaries. That might mean saying no. That might mean recognizing, hey, I'm not going to get to this next accolade in the way that, you know, careerist me would want. But that's okay because deathbed me is going to be a lot happier about it. Yeah. And wise me knows. I mean, I think what I would tell my 20 year old self that my 20 year old self would never believe and would still go ahead and live her life the same way she does. did. You know, I was talking to my almost 20 year old when he just, he's a freshman in college now and just like trying to promise him that, you know, he's working his ass off in high school so that he can get into this college so that then he can work his ass off in this college so that then he can get to this job so that then he can work his ass off into this job so that then he can, that it's just this constant destination promise of happiness and there's no there there. I mean, as a writer who, you know, decided that eventually, if I just reached this thing, if this many people read my, if this, then I'll be happy. And then you get there. And there's no, they're there. And no matter what happens,

you all, you learn that the good news and the bad news is it's just the little freaking things every day. And this is, this is another bias that researchers call the arrival fallacy. I'll be happy when, you know, fill in your one. I'll be happy when I get married. I'll be happy when I get that promotion. I'll be happy when I buy a house. Right. Then it happens. And it's not. it's awful. I mentioned before my Yale students who film their admission acceptance video and they find out you got into Yale. Yale, they actually play this little song. It goes, Bulldog, bulldog, wow, wow. And they know like, oh my God, they get in. They cry. My students will say that was like one of the happiest moments. But the instant after it was one of

their darkest moments because they're like, crap now I got to like, it was all for that. And I have to chase the next carrot to get into med school or chase the next carrot to get, you know, my banking job or whatever. It's quick. And we're constantly chasing these carrots. We really believe, I think Disney sold us a line. Like we really believe happily ever after. But as my colleague, Dan Gilbert, who I mentioned before, is fond of saying,

happily ever after only works if you have six minutes to live. Like, it doesn't last that life. Like, whatever you think it's going to be, it's going to just back to baseline quickly. Oh my gosh. I mean, I relate so much to what you just said, having literally gotten a gold medal put on my neck, seeing the flag and watching, you know, listening to the anthem and then literally stepping off of that podium and being like, okay, I guess I want to do that again. And like the whole thing starts all over. And like I always just thought, that's the only

amount of time I'm letting myself celebrate because I've got more work to do here. And that's how I rationalize it. And that's how you just stay on that rat wheel running and running and running for the happiness that is always actually there. You have access to it, right? Like, however you wanted to find happiness, I just feel like we as humans have more control, like you're saying, Dr. Santos. I mean, oh.

Yeah. We often do the same thing you just mentioned, which is like, you get the gold medal, you're on the stand, you find out you get into you, whatever, you have this moment, and then you have this deep, dark despair. And instead of saying, well, hang on, maybe it wasn't the arrival,

maybe it was the path in the journey, and I should do, we say, oh, maybe it wasn't one gold medal. I need to be triple gold medal. And this happens with salary all the time, right? You get to some, you know, you get a promotion and you think, oh, if I get more money, I'll be happier. And then you get more money and you're like, I'm not happier. And you don't think maybe the connection with money and happiness isn't what I think.

You think like, must be more money. One of my most harrowing interviews that I did for my podcast was this with this guy, Clay Cockrell, who's a wealth psychologist to the point zero zero zero one percent. And first of all, like there is a job. like wealth psychologist to the point zero one percent will say you know like I have 500 million dollars but I'm not a billionaire like I just got to get to the billion and he watches them go through these financial hurdles so we never think like oh it's not the arrival we always think like oh I just need a different arrival a bigger one like that'll make me happy it's how capitalism always wins

right it's like the house always wins because you can go in and win a little bit but you don't leave. You don't say, oh, now I have enough. You stay and then the house wins at the end. And I think that's a cool part of it because it doesn't mean we're naturally greedy and we're naturally, I mean, to actually think about it in terms of like I've heard you say Dr. Santos that like the brain is just a comparison machine. Like it's not that there's something wrong with you. It's just that's the function of your machine is that it can't process absolute. It can't look and say, look, I have food and shelter and health, therefore I'm happy. It can only process the comparison to what you just were or what somebody else is across the street. That's literally

the only processing it can do, right? So that's that we have to understand about that about ourselves to say like, you are incapable of actually assessing your situation. You are only capable of comparing it to something else. Totally. And that's and that's where, and that maybe like that's where this issue of recognizing a thought is just a thought is powerful and emotion is just emotion is powerful. Like, just because I want to do that doesn't mean it's real. Just because my brain is delivering me this information doesn't mean it's real. And that's the one extra thought process we have, right? We can have a meta level, say, do I really want to follow that? You know, do I want to shirk capitalism? Do I want to do hard things, but the hard things that don't destroy me

and don't destroy my happiness? And we can think at a meta level if we have the bandwidth to do so. Sometimes it can be really powerful for our well-being to do that. Let's end with that. We're going to hear from our pod squatter of the week. We're going to let you go. And we're going to leave you with that thought that we don't have to believe everything we think. Right. We can be smarter than our brains.

You're just a freaking delight. I'm so damn smart. I'm so grateful for all of your work. I will be listening to all of your podcasts on the Happiness Lab. We actually have our children listen to them too when there's something. stuck with us in the car on the way to soccer. And thanks for taking care of those college kids. We have one now and they're under so much pressure. Thank you. Thank you so much. This time of year, I am always looking for my sweaters. Luckily, Quince has all of the staple

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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E-com slash hard things to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash hard things. And sister and Abby, if you're there, my name is Caitlin, and I just had to share a fun little moment with you. I was just listening to your latest episode and sharing it with my friend Rebecca. Say hi, hi, Rebecca. I was introducing her to the podcast, and we are actually driving right now. She is helping me move across the country. And as we started listening to Tish's song, a truck drove by me that said Melton on it.

And I just had to share that little bit of joy with you because this has been a very hard process getting here. I'm changing careers. I'm changing cities. Everything just feels very overwhelming right now, and this podcast and everything that you guys say has helped me feel a lot less alone. And I just had to thank you for everything that you all do. It really helps.

I'm really excited for this next chapter. And that's it. Great day. For Caitlin, right? We did, of course. Yeah. Yeah, we know when you're making big changes and you're doing hard things

and we send just little signs so that you'll know you're on the right track, which you are. I kept thinking about Caitlin and Rebecca just traveling across. I kept thinking of, wide open spaces. Just congratulations.

I was thinking of Thelma and Louise, actually. Oh, that's better. I kind of hope that that's what they're doing over there. We love you, Rebecca and Caitlin. Good job taking care of each other and doing the hard, exciting, life-giving things. All right, the rest of you, we already are excited to see you the next time we all get together. I feel that. Yeah, don't you?

I just, I love this. I love them. Love Dr. Santos. I love my sister and Abby. I love the pod squad. Okay, we'll see you soon. Bye. Bye. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn't, don't worry about it. It's fine. Thank you.