The Science of First World Problems | Michael Easter & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | Life feels hard.

00:00:04.080 | It's like work is hard.

00:00:06.840 | Things are expensive.

00:00:08.360 | It's hard to get enough sleep.

00:00:10.040 | Everyone's always blaring at us at all the things

00:00:12.080 | we're supposed to be doing, the world that seems unstable.

00:00:14.760 | So I think many people already feel

00:00:17.040 | like they're inundated with challenge,

00:00:19.640 | even though we're talking about the creature comforts

00:00:22.320 | that we all enjoy.

00:00:23.760 | So if somebody wants to start exploring

00:00:26.680 | leaning into discomfort in the way that grows them

00:00:29.680 | and actually makes those other discomforts

00:00:31.720 | that we're talking about kind of dissolve away,

00:00:34.680 | how should they start to go about that?

00:00:37.320 | - So a couple things come to mind,

00:00:39.920 | and I'm trying to think how to get into it.

00:00:42.400 | And what I think that I will use is an example of myself,

00:00:46.240 | and then I'll kind of unpack that,

00:00:47.560 | and I'll unpack it at a level where we talk about something

00:00:50.000 | where it's kind of a big challenge,

00:00:51.720 | and then also something like people can use every day.

00:00:54.280 | So I'll give you the example of,

00:00:56.000 | for the comfort crisis I go and I spend 30 days in the Arctic

00:00:59.360 | a little more than 30 days.

00:01:01.600 | Now, when I fly up there, I fly from Las Vegas to Anchorage,

00:01:06.360 | Anchorage to Kotzebue, which is this little town,

00:01:09.000 | just 20 miles above the Arctic Circle.

00:01:11.000 | And then from Kotzebue, you get in a plane

00:01:12.600 | that is about the size of a pack of gum,

00:01:14.600 | and you take that plane out, you know,

00:01:16.320 | more than a hundred miles into the Arctic,

00:01:17.800 | and it drops you off.

00:01:19.600 | Now, when I get on that plane from Vegas,

00:01:22.360 | it's like a 747.

00:01:23.600 | And I'm like you, I hate flying, right?

00:01:27.360 | Because seats are too small and cramped, planes too hot,

00:01:31.600 | and the movies in the seat back, they suck, right?

00:01:34.000 | The coffee, not very good.

00:01:36.000 | There's usually a baby crying.

00:01:37.600 | If I need to go to the bathroom, bathroom's totally cramped.

00:01:40.360 | Like flying is just terrible.

00:01:41.360 | I'm like, flying is the worst.

00:01:43.360 | And then I go spend this 30 days in the middle of the Arctic, right?

00:01:48.360 | So if I want to drink anything, I got to hike down to a stream,

00:01:51.360 | and I got to carry the heavy water bags back up to camp.

00:01:54.360 | I am freezing cold the entire freaking time.

00:01:58.360 | If I want to go to the bathroom, I have to hike out under the tundra,

00:02:03.360 | and I have to bring the rifle because there's grizzly bears.

00:02:06.360 | I'm starving the entire time.

00:02:08.360 | If I want to get warm, it requires picking up firewood,

00:02:13.360 | of which there's not many, hauling it back.

00:02:15.360 | Like everything is hard.

00:02:16.360 | Everything is uncomfortable.

00:02:17.360 | That whole experience for the whole month.

00:02:19.360 | So then when I get onto the plane that goes from the Arctic back to Las Vegas,

00:02:26.360 | it's like what do you think my experience of that flight was like?

00:02:30.360 | Pure luxury.

00:02:31.360 | Holy shit.

00:02:32.360 | Greatest thing that ever happened to me.

00:02:34.360 | It's like that chair.

00:02:35.360 | I sat in a real chair for more than a month.

00:02:37.360 | It's like this is so comfortable.

00:02:40.360 | Coffee was hot.

00:02:41.360 | I'm like this is the best thing I've ever drank.

00:02:44.360 | I had like 12 bags of pretzels.

00:02:46.360 | Right?

00:02:47.360 | The crying baby.

00:02:48.360 | I'm like oh yeah, just hand me that baby.

00:02:50.360 | I got it.

00:02:51.360 | Movies in the seat back.

00:02:53.360 | Like it was so boring up there that we were reading the labels on our energy bars.

00:02:58.360 | And so when you show me Fast and the Furious like 79, it's like this is the greatest thing I've ever seen.

00:03:05.360 | And then when I go to the bathroom, right?

00:03:09.360 | Not only do I not have to take the rifle, right?

00:03:11.360 | That would have been problematic on the plane.

00:03:13.360 | But I hit this button in this bathroom.

00:03:18.360 | It's a metal thing.

00:03:19.360 | A little red button.

00:03:20.360 | And hot running water comes out of a faucet and hits my hands.

00:03:26.360 | I hadn't had hot running water on my hands for more than a month.

00:03:29.360 | And it was just like oh my God.

00:03:32.360 | Now let me remind you too that this is happening in a tube of steel that's hurtling through the air at like 600 miles an hour, 35,000 feet above sea level.

00:03:42.360 | And it was one of those moments where I'm like holy shit.

00:03:45.360 | It is so amazing to be alive today.

00:03:48.360 | Like we have the most amazing access to just luxuries and comforts ever.

00:03:55.360 | And yet we often forget that.

00:03:58.360 | Right?

00:03:59.360 | So what did it take for me to realize that that flight is a freaking miracle instead of this huge in personal injustice to Michael Easter.

00:04:10.360 | I had to go out and I had to sort of reset that goalpost and go out into a world that was totally different.

00:04:16.360 | That was totally challenging that taught me that the world I came from was actually quite great.

00:04:21.360 | So there's this psychologist, I believe he's now at Brown.

00:04:25.360 | When I spoke to him, he was just finishing up his PhD at Harvard.

00:04:28.360 | And he did the study that was published in Science.

00:04:32.360 | I can't remember its title, but he basically came up with this theory that's called prevalence induced concept change.

00:04:37.360 | So what they did in this study is they took a group of people.

00:04:43.360 | There was like three different phases of the study, but I'm going to talk about two of them because I think they're most relatable.

00:04:48.360 | What they did is they took a group of 800 different people in the first study, or I can't remember how many people, but they had them look at 800 different faces in a row.

00:04:58.360 | So they'd look at face after face after face.

00:05:02.360 | And these people had to deem whether these faces were threatening or non-threatening.

00:05:09.360 | So you're going non-threatening, non-threatening, oh, threatening, threatening, face after face.

00:05:15.360 | Now, at the 200th face, what they did is they started showing these people fewer threatening faces.

00:05:22.360 | Okay, so successively fewer.

00:05:25.360 | The second study they did, it was a similar setup, but they used research proposals and these people had to deem whether these research proposals were ethical or unethical.

00:05:34.360 | Same deal, about midway through, they start feeding these people fewer and fewer unethical proposals.

00:05:40.360 | Now, these two scenarios, they should be pretty black or white, right?

00:05:45.360 | Either you look at a face and it either threatens you or it does not threaten you.

00:05:48.360 | You read a research proposal and it either crosses this, like, moral line you have in the sand or it doesn't cross it.

00:05:54.360 | What they found, though, is that people basically see gray.

00:05:59.360 | So as people started encountering fewer truly threatening faces, they started judging faces that were on the borderline as threatening.

00:06:06.360 | So they said threatening just as many times, even though the faces weren't truly threatening, faces that they would have let slide before.

00:06:14.360 | Same with the research proposals.

00:06:16.360 | As they get fewer and fewer unethical ones, they start to get nitpicky, right?

00:06:21.360 | They're like, oh, well, there's that one line in there, you know, that's unethical.

00:06:25.360 | Throw it in the pile.

00:06:26.360 | So the guy calls this prevalence-induced, his name's David Lavar, he calls it prevalence-induced concept change.

00:06:31.360 | And it basically finds that as people experience fewer and fewer problems, we don't actually become more satisfied.

00:06:37.360 | We simply sort of lower our threshold for what we consider a problem.

00:06:41.360 | So when you apply that to life today to make this practical, it's like, as the world has become a lot more comfortable, as we encounter fewer sort of traumas and real problems in our life, we don't necessarily stop and go, this is amazing.

00:06:58.360 | We simply broaden our definition of what a problem is, of what a discomfort is, and so we end up with the exact same number of problems, of discomforts.

00:07:09.360 | But they've just become progressively more hollow over time.

00:07:12.360 | I like to think about that as the science of first world problems.

00:07:15.360 | I think you can think about it as a moving goalpost.

00:07:18.360 | So it's like, you go into one environment and that sort of sets your expectations, right?

00:07:23.360 | And we're sort of designed to search for problems, more or less designed, designed to search for problems.

00:07:29.360 | So you're going to find them in your environment, no matter how unproblematic your environment is, sort of objectively unproblematic.

00:07:37.360 | So when I talked to Lavari, he basically said like, yeah, I think it makes theoretical sense that if you're going into a place where your problems are more acute and say objectively, more realistically problems, when you go into this less problematic environment, you'll sort of be like, wow, this is fantastic.

00:07:59.360 | Now, of course, over time, you're going to adapt back.

00:08:01.360 | And I found that under myself.

00:08:03.360 | So when I got back from the Arctic, I'm like a Zen monk, man.

00:08:07.360 | I'm just like, nothing's rattling me.

00:08:09.360 | That was my wife's comment.

00:08:10.360 | Like, nothing rattles you since you're back.

00:08:12.360 | For how long?

00:08:13.360 | Probably a month.

00:08:14.360 | Probably a month.

00:08:15.360 | Then my question becomes, well, I can't go to the Arctic every month.

00:08:19.360 | One, I can't.

00:08:20.360 | Two, nor do I want to.

00:08:22.360 | So what can I do in my life that sort of constantly pushes that goalpost back into a place where I'm less neurotic, more or less?

00:08:30.360 | It's almost like we live on a neurotic treadmill in a way.

00:08:33.360 | As problems fade, we just keep searching for problems and finding them.

00:08:37.360 | So I think there's a lot of things that a person can do, like in their daily life, and people can get creative around this.

00:08:42.360 | For example, volunteering.

00:08:45.360 | Like, if you live a decent life, well, why don't you go help people whose lives are a little harder than yours?

00:08:51.360 | And you'll see what it could be like and what it's like out there.

00:08:54.360 | And that'll give you some sort of perspective.

00:08:56.360 | And that's something you can do.

00:08:57.360 | It takes an hour a week or something, right?

00:09:00.360 | I've talked to people who go to recovery meetings, including myself.

00:09:05.360 | You go into a meeting, and you hear these stories from people who are at the most rock bottom moment of their life.

00:09:13.360 | I'm like, that'll reset what you consider a problem pretty damn fast.

00:09:18.360 | You just walk out going, wow, I was complaining that my tax guy was asking for a lot of papers.

00:09:24.360 | And this guy just told me a story that just blew my mind.

00:09:28.360 | Like, that's a real problem.

00:09:30.360 | And so I think we need to have moments like that that sort of press back against us and put things in a little bit more context.

00:09:37.360 | And I do think you need the sort of moment where you think about that and you tell yourself the story around that.

00:09:44.360 | Like, that's a really important part.

00:09:46.360 | And I'm going to, this is kind of going off on a weird path.

00:09:49.360 | I don't know where it'll take us, but we'll find out.

00:09:51.360 | When you think about something like a rite of passage, what people would do in these, like these are, you know, tribes around the world have these different rites of passages all throughout time.

00:10:02.360 | And this was not like they're all communicating and figuring the same, no, these things arose spontaneous.

00:10:07.360 | And the point of a rite of passage is that we have a person who's at point A in their life.

00:10:11.360 | And we need them to get, and we need to get them to point B where they're going to be more capable, more confident, more competent.

00:10:18.360 | We don't just say, hey, you're ready to go to point B.

00:10:22.360 | We would often send them out to do something challenging.

00:10:25.360 | Could be like extended time in nature.

00:10:27.360 | There's all these different things.

00:10:29.360 | And in that process, the person would struggle.

00:10:32.360 | They would face all these different problems.

00:10:34.360 | They would have to figure their shit out.

00:10:36.360 | And then they would come back and they would be at point B.

00:10:40.360 | But there was a point where people would sort of gather around and say, what did you learn about that?

00:10:45.360 | What story you're telling yourself about that?

00:10:47.360 | And so shaping the narrative around a life event becomes critically important, I think, for mental health and how you frame issues.

00:10:56.360 | And so if you think of the concept of like event centrality, it's like how central is an event going to be to my life and what story am I going to tell around it?

00:11:07.360 | Right?

00:11:07.360 | So people who tend to take like something bad that happened in their life and they take that in as the central component of their personality tend to have worse mental health.

00:11:17.360 | Whereas people who take it and say, hey, this thing happened, but what can I learn from it?

00:11:22.360 | How can I grow from it?

00:11:24.360 | What might happen in the future?

00:11:25.360 | Yes.

00:11:26.360 | This sucks hard right now, but where might it take me in the past or in the future?

00:11:32.360 | And those two people are going to have completely different trajectories.

00:11:35.360 | So the narrative you tell yourself becomes really important.

The Science of First World Problems | Michael Easter & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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