Science-Based Tools for Increasing Happiness

00:00:00.280 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.880 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.080 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.000 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:14.880 | Today, we are discussing happiness.

00:00:17.480 | We are going to discuss the science of happiness

00:00:19.640 | because indeed there are excellent laboratories

00:00:22.720 | that have worked for many decades to try and understand

00:00:25.200 | what is this thing that we call happiness

00:00:27.600 | and what brings us happiness in the short and long term.

00:00:31.640 | In fact, we could probably point to happiness

00:00:33.820 | as one of the most sought after states

00:00:36.500 | or commodities or emotions, whatever you want to call it.

00:00:39.480 | Happiness is what many people are seeking

00:00:42.160 | in work, in relationships, and in general.

00:00:45.840 | And yet most of us can't really define

00:00:47.840 | exactly what happiness is or means for us.

00:00:51.600 | We can point to certain experiences,

00:00:53.400 | we can try and describe our states of mind and body,

00:00:56.440 | but most people recognize the feeling when we have it.

00:00:59.880 | And we certainly recognize the feeling of not being happy,

00:01:03.400 | whether or not that means simply not being happy

00:01:05.720 | as the absence of happiness or all out depression.

00:01:09.560 | One of the key problems in trying to understand happiness

00:01:12.760 | and indeed the science and psychology of happiness

00:01:15.720 | is that it does indeed involve other similar things,

00:01:19.700 | things like joy and gratitude and meaning.

00:01:23.400 | And indeed, many scientists and psychologists

00:01:26.120 | have argued for many, many decades

00:01:28.560 | about what happiness really is.

00:01:31.400 | We can come up with so-called

00:01:32.840 | operational definitions of happiness.

00:01:34.620 | Operational definitions are basically agreed upon terms

00:01:38.580 | or agreed upon definitions and conditions

00:01:41.680 | that will define something such as happiness,

00:01:44.060 | much in the same way that we can all

00:01:46.000 | probably come up with an operational definition of milk,

00:01:48.680 | but of course, milk can be cow's milk, it can be oat milk,

00:01:51.900 | it can be soy milk, et cetera, et cetera.

00:01:54.100 | So too, something like happiness can be micro divided

00:01:56.820 | and sliced and diced into as many things as we decide.

00:02:00.700 | Today, we are really going to focus on three main things.

00:02:03.700 | First, we are going to define happiness as a brain state

00:02:07.120 | and as a state of mind and body.

00:02:09.400 | We're going to take a look at what the science says

00:02:11.000 | about all of that.

00:02:12.080 | Second, we are going to talk about tools and practices

00:02:15.140 | for placing ourselves into states of happiness.

00:02:18.600 | And while for most of us, we think of happiness as something

00:02:21.580 | that only arrives through the acquisition of some goal

00:02:25.020 | or some thing external to us, and of course that is true,

00:02:29.520 | there is also something called synthetic happiness

00:02:32.180 | or synthesized happiness, which turns out to be

00:02:34.380 | at least as powerful and perhaps even more powerful.

00:02:38.020 | I'll just say right off the bat that I'm not going to tell

00:02:39.900 | you that all you have to do is sit in a chair

00:02:41.860 | and imagine being happy in order to feel happy.

00:02:44.540 | Synthesized happiness actually involves

00:02:46.140 | some very concrete steps that have been defined

00:02:48.820 | by excellent labs in psychology.

00:02:50.580 | So we're going to talk about synthesized happiness

00:02:53.860 | as it relates to what you can do to obtain happy states

00:02:57.200 | more readily or more frequently.

00:02:59.260 | And then third, we're going to talk about some

00:03:01.340 | of the misconceptions or what I would call

00:03:02.940 | the contradictions of happiness research.

00:03:05.700 | And what I mean by that is most of you have probably heard

00:03:09.180 | about the general conditions for obtaining happiness.

00:03:12.260 | And they always seem to circle back to some

00:03:13.720 | of the same basic features of get great sleep,

00:03:17.700 | have great social connection, pursue meaning,

00:03:20.660 | don't focus to any overextend on things like pursuing money

00:03:25.660 | because there are indeed these studies that show

00:03:27.800 | that the amount of money that people makes

00:03:29.860 | does not necessarily scale directly with happiness.

00:03:33.600 | We'll talk about those studies

00:03:34.660 | in some detail a little bit later.

00:03:36.540 | And while all of that literature is very powerful

00:03:39.260 | and informative, there is what I see as a contradiction,

00:03:43.440 | which is for instance, that for many of us,

00:03:46.100 | including myself, especially in the years

00:03:48.260 | when I was in graduate school and a postdoc,

00:03:51.020 | there were times in which pursuing and being involved

00:03:54.740 | in work and pursuing degrees and finding meaning

00:03:57.620 | in my vocation actually separated me from the opportunity

00:04:01.620 | to have quite as many social connections

00:04:03.920 | or quite as much sleep or quite as much exercise

00:04:06.420 | or even quite as much sunshine for that matter.

00:04:09.460 | So all of the things that we're told that we need

00:04:11.640 | in order to access happiness on a regular basis,

00:04:14.340 | oftentimes contradict with the pressures

00:04:16.980 | and the requirements of not just daily life,

00:04:19.040 | but in building a life that allows us

00:04:21.340 | to have the kind of resources that we need

00:04:23.460 | in order to have things like quality social connection

00:04:26.980 | and the time and opportunity to get regular exercise

00:04:30.380 | and great nutrition, et cetera, et cetera.

00:04:32.720 | So again, while this isn't necessarily a complaint

00:04:35.220 | with any of the research out of the fields of psychology

00:04:38.020 | on happiness, it is important that we acknowledge

00:04:42.400 | these contradictions that exist

00:04:44.420 | in the discussion around happiness,

00:04:45.860 | in particular, the popular discussions

00:04:48.000 | around the science of happiness.

00:04:49.820 | So today, what we are going to arrive at,

00:04:52.520 | what you will finish this episode with,

00:04:54.660 | is a set of tools and a framework

00:04:56.360 | for understanding the pursuit of happiness

00:04:58.680 | in the short and long term as it relates

00:05:00.740 | to the research from psychology, but also the neuroscience.

00:05:04.580 | And my goal today is really to try and place that all

00:05:07.340 | into a structured framework so that you can know

00:05:10.620 | where you are in your journey or the landscape

00:05:13.720 | around happiness and your pursuit of happiness.

00:05:16.400 | And what I won't tell you is that you need to abandon

00:05:19.340 | all goals in terms of pursuing money, career, et cetera,

00:05:23.960 | and simply focus on relationships.

00:05:25.520 | But we will talk about what constitutes

00:05:28.480 | an excellent social bond or even an excellent conversation.

00:05:31.760 | There's excellent research that points to the fact

00:05:34.740 | that even rather shallow connections,

00:05:37.760 | that is connections between people

00:05:39.480 | that you happen to just see in the hallway

00:05:41.460 | on a regular basis, not even requiring close bonds

00:05:45.580 | of any kind, can be built into close bonds

00:05:48.340 | that can deliver a tremendous amount of feeling

00:05:50.980 | and genuine social connection

00:05:52.820 | provided certain conditions are met.

00:05:55.400 | So today, again, is really about understanding

00:05:58.720 | the science of happiness,

00:05:59.960 | understanding the mechanisms underlying

00:06:01.780 | what we call happiness, and providing you a framework

00:06:04.840 | by which you can pursue and achieve happiness,

00:06:08.080 | not just as a long-term goal

00:06:09.440 | and not just as a day-to-day goal

00:06:11.360 | of little micro exercises of gratitude, et cetera,

00:06:14.460 | but rather as a way to think about happiness

00:06:16.960 | as a state that you have control over,

00:06:19.480 | at least in terms of your ability to access

00:06:21.760 | what I would call the algorithms that enable us

00:06:24.460 | or open the opportunity to experience happiness.

00:06:27.640 | Now, before we begin today's episode,

00:06:29.680 | I'd like to talk about a very specific tool

00:06:31.840 | that applies, yes, to our pursuit of happiness,

00:06:34.880 | but actually to our pursuit of everything,

00:06:36.320 | including quality sleep and ongoing motivation, et cetera.

00:06:40.200 | I've talked many, many times before on this podcast

00:06:42.520 | and on other podcasts and on social media

00:06:44.880 | about the critical value of getting regular bright light,

00:06:49.480 | ideally sunlight in your eyes

00:06:51.200 | within the first hour of waking,

00:06:52.480 | or if the sun isn't out when you wake up in the morning,

00:06:55.700 | to turn on a lot of bright artificial lights

00:06:57.440 | and then get sunlight in your eyes

00:06:58.680 | for anywhere from five to 20 minutes,

00:07:00.540 | depending on how cloudy it is,

00:07:02.740 | in the early part of the day.

00:07:03.920 | Absolutely outsized effects on mood and focus during the day

00:07:07.120 | and quality of sleep at night.

00:07:09.440 | Now, there's another sort of central tenet

00:07:12.080 | of getting great sleep and improving mood

00:07:14.880 | and focus throughout the day,

00:07:15.760 | and that's to avoid bright artificial light exposure

00:07:18.520 | to your eyes between the hours of about 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.

00:07:22.000 | Now, leaving shift workers aside,

00:07:23.600 | and we have an entire episode devoted to shift work,

00:07:25.760 | most people are asleep at night and awake during the day,

00:07:28.640 | and you would be wise to avoid exposure of your eyes

00:07:31.540 | to bright artificial light between the hours of 10 p.m.

00:07:34.380 | and 4 a.m.

00:07:35.680 | If you're going to use screens or artificial lights,

00:07:37.420 | dim them down as far as you can.

00:07:39.820 | Now, there are several studies that point to the fact

00:07:42.340 | that one of the major issues

00:07:44.340 | with getting bright light in your eyes

00:07:46.180 | between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.

00:07:48.280 | is that it has a negative impact

00:07:49.980 | on the so-called dopaminergic or dopamine circuits

00:07:52.260 | of the brain and body, which can enhance depression,

00:07:55.540 | that is, lead to ongoing lower mood and affect.

00:07:59.100 | So that's a reason to dim the lights

00:08:00.500 | or avoid bright lights between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.

00:08:03.060 | However, I and many others

00:08:05.040 | need to use artificial light in screens,

00:08:07.380 | sometimes even between the hours of 10 p.m. and midnight,

00:08:10.060 | or even midnight to 3 a.m.,

00:08:11.820 | depending on what's going on in my life or your life,

00:08:15.340 | that may include you as well.

00:08:17.220 | Now, it turns out that there are powerful ways to offset

00:08:20.260 | some, not all, but some of the negative effects

00:08:23.020 | of viewing artificial lights

00:08:24.320 | between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.

00:08:26.860 | And one of the most powerful ways to do that

00:08:29.420 | is to simply adjust the overall brightness

00:08:31.760 | of your artificial lighting

00:08:33.020 | throughout the day and in the evening.

00:08:35.360 | So one of the issues nowadays that we're really facing

00:08:38.400 | is that people are simply not getting enough bright light

00:08:40.960 | in their eyes from sunlight

00:08:42.220 | or from other sources during the daytime,

00:08:44.260 | and they're getting far too much bright light in their eyes,

00:08:47.840 | largely from artificial sources, of course,

00:08:50.040 | in the evening and at night,

00:08:51.560 | not just from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.,

00:08:53.060 | but also in the evening hours from 6 to 10 p.m.

00:08:55.320 | and so on and so forth.

00:08:56.660 | So a very simple yet powerful solution

00:08:59.100 | that's supported by peer-reviewed research in humans

00:09:02.420 | is to try and make your indoor working

00:09:04.900 | and/or home environment during the day

00:09:06.900 | as bright as possible.

00:09:08.580 | Now, if you can achieve that through direct sunlight,

00:09:10.400 | terrific.

00:09:11.240 | If you can get outside a lot during the daytime, terrific,

00:09:13.760 | but many people simply cannot.

00:09:15.340 | But most people do have some windows in their environment.

00:09:18.460 | I realize some don't, but most people do.

00:09:20.380 | And as a consequence,

00:09:21.380 | most people are using rather dim artificial lighting indoors

00:09:26.420 | during the day, and then very bright artificial lighting

00:09:29.740 | indoors in the evening and at night.

00:09:31.700 | That's a problem.

00:09:33.420 | And if you think about it, logically,

00:09:34.800 | you want to do the exact reverse.

00:09:36.980 | So it's been shown that if you simply increase the amount

00:09:40.000 | of bright artificial light that you were exposed to

00:09:42.060 | during the day, and remember, this is not an excuse

00:09:45.060 | to not get your morning sunlight viewing,

00:09:47.340 | but in addition to that,

00:09:48.740 | to make your indoor artificial lights very bright, bright,

00:09:51.800 | bright, bright, bright throughout the day,

00:09:53.680 | and then much dimmer from the hours of 6 PM until bedtime.

00:09:58.240 | Or if you can't do that, then maybe as soon as you get home

00:10:00.620 | from about 8 PM until bedtime and then dim them way,

00:10:04.520 | way down between 10 PM and 4 AM or off entirely,

00:10:07.920 | that's going to be a far better pattern

00:10:10.080 | for your sleep-wake cycles, focus, mood, et cetera.

00:10:13.040 | Then what most people do, which is to have a few windows

00:10:15.920 | in their indoor working environment during the day

00:10:17.880 | and keep the indoor lights rather dim at a time

00:10:21.440 | when they need more photons, more light energy,

00:10:23.440 | and then in the evening when they get home,

00:10:24.740 | because it's dark outside,

00:10:26.320 | they tend to turn the lights much brighter.

00:10:27.960 | You actually want to do the reverse.

00:10:29.720 | Now there's an even simpler solution,

00:10:31.280 | which is to get some bright sunlight in your eyes

00:10:34.760 | right around the time of sunset.

00:10:36.600 | It doesn't have to be exactly at sunset.

00:10:38.760 | It could be in the late afternoon and evening,

00:10:41.700 | but it's been shown now in studies on humans,

00:10:43.720 | and I'll provide a link to at least one of those studies,

00:10:46.000 | that by getting some bright light in your eyes,

00:10:48.560 | ideally from sunlight in the late afternoon and evening,

00:10:51.600 | and of course the timing will vary

00:10:52.880 | depending on time of year

00:10:54.200 | and where you are located on the planet,

00:10:56.460 | but facing the sun around sunset,

00:11:00.120 | you don't actually have to see the sun

00:11:01.360 | cross down below the horizon,

00:11:02.600 | but facing the sun around that time

00:11:04.480 | for anywhere from five to 10 minutes or even less,

00:11:07.440 | even two to five minutes,

00:11:09.400 | can adjust the sensitivity of neurons in your retina

00:11:12.840 | that communicate light information to the brain

00:11:14.720 | and make it such that in the evening

00:11:16.440 | when you use artificial lights,

00:11:18.320 | they aren't going to have as much of a detrimental effect

00:11:21.380 | on your dopamine system and for impairing your sleep.

00:11:25.160 | Okay, so the idea is as much bright light,

00:11:27.080 | ideally from sunlight, but also from artificial sources

00:11:29.360 | from the time you wake up in the morning until the evening,

00:11:32.340 | maybe around six or seven o'clock,

00:11:33.880 | maybe in the summer months, a little bit later,

00:11:35.480 | and then really try and get as little bright light

00:11:38.640 | in your eyes as you can in the evening and nighttime hours.

00:11:43.080 | And ideally you would also get some sunlight exposure

00:11:47.500 | right around the time of sunset or in the late afternoon.

00:11:49.980 | Go outside, take your sunglasses off.

00:11:51.960 | Don't try and do this through a windshield

00:11:53.660 | or through a window.

00:11:54.560 | It will not work.

00:11:55.800 | You have to get outside.

00:11:57.260 | If you're under an overhang,

00:11:58.200 | at least try and get some direct sunlight

00:11:59.940 | in your eyes at that time.

00:12:01.440 | And that will adjust the sensitivity of your retina

00:12:04.360 | such that bright artificial lights

00:12:06.280 | or artificial lights of any kind

00:12:08.000 | that you're exposed to in the evening

00:12:09.440 | and in the late hours of the night

00:12:11.240 | won't have as much of a detrimental effect.

00:12:13.320 | That said, if you go to the bathroom

00:12:14.560 | in the middle of the night, try and keep the lights dim.

00:12:17.100 | Many people have asked whether or not, for instance,

00:12:19.240 | a nightlight or a flashlight is going to have

00:12:22.440 | as much of a negative effect.

00:12:23.940 | This is very straightforward.

00:12:25.000 | If you think about it, if you shine a light at something,

00:12:27.640 | you can see into your environment.

00:12:29.420 | If you've ever been camping

00:12:30.260 | or you've walked with a flashlight,

00:12:31.320 | you can see things around you

00:12:32.760 | that you wouldn't otherwise, of course.

00:12:34.480 | But if you were to shine that light in your eyes,

00:12:36.020 | it would be far brighter.

00:12:37.280 | So yes, of course, if you get up in the middle of the night

00:12:39.840 | and you can use your phone flashlight

00:12:41.500 | to illuminate the environment that you're in

00:12:43.040 | so that you can safely go to where you need to go

00:12:45.120 | and then back to bed,

00:12:46.200 | that's going to be far better than turning on the lights

00:12:48.620 | or, of course, shining light in your eyes, right?

00:12:51.300 | So the idea is bright, bright, bright

00:12:53.640 | in the morning and throughout the day

00:12:55.240 | and as dim and dark as possible at night.

00:12:58.280 | And that afternoon light viewing provides

00:13:00.360 | sort of what I call a Netflix inoculation

00:13:03.280 | that will allow you to adjust your retinal sensitivity

00:13:06.080 | and give you a little bit more flexibility

00:13:07.660 | in terms of allowing some nighttime light exposure

00:13:10.400 | without the detrimental effects.

00:13:12.000 | Now, I realize today's episode is about happiness.

00:13:14.680 | It's not about sunlight or dopamine.

00:13:17.580 | And yet, as we'll talk about more in just a moment,

00:13:21.200 | if you're not optimizing your sleep

00:13:23.320 | and if you are using or being exposed to light, rather,

00:13:27.520 | at the wrong times of the day/night cycle,

00:13:30.360 | that is going to make it very hard

00:13:32.160 | for the other sorts of practices that relate to happiness

00:13:35.240 | to have their full impact.

00:13:36.720 | So the backdrop, or I would say the kind of landscape

00:13:39.800 | of your chemicals and your hormones is powerfully controlled

00:13:43.520 | by not just the brightness of light,

00:13:44.840 | but the timing of light

00:13:45.960 | and your exposure to light.

00:13:47.680 | In particular, your exposure to light to your eyes

00:13:50.440 | is something that you have a lot of control over.

00:13:52.720 | You don't have absolute control,

00:13:54.320 | but you have a lot of control over.

00:13:56.300 | And it's been proven that even these small steps,

00:13:58.740 | which are completely cost-free,

00:13:59.940 | they require just a few minutes of time,

00:14:01.640 | but no purchase of product or anything else,

00:14:04.660 | can allow you to greatly adjust your neurochemistry

00:14:08.200 | and your hormones in the direction of better mood,

00:14:12.320 | better sleep, and happiness.

00:14:14.360 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize

00:14:16.120 | that this podcast is separate

00:14:17.500 | from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:14:19.880 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:14:21.800 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:14:23.640 | about science and science-related tools

00:14:25.700 | for the general public.

00:14:27.020 | In keeping with that theme,

00:14:28.120 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:14:30.820 | Our first sponsor is Thesus.

00:14:33.040 | Thesus makes custom nootropics.

00:14:35.240 | And as I've said many times before on this podcast,

00:14:38.040 | I am not a fan of the word nootropics

00:14:40.380 | because it means smart drugs.

00:14:42.300 | And frankly, there are no specific neural circuits

00:14:44.860 | in the brain or body for being quote unquote smart.

00:14:47.920 | Thesus understands this,

00:14:49.380 | and they've developed custom nootropics

00:14:51.480 | that are designed to bring your brain and body

00:14:53.320 | into the state that's ideal for what you need to accomplish.

00:14:56.940 | They use the highest quality ingredients,

00:14:58.460 | things like phosphatidylserine, alpha-GPC,

00:15:01.400 | many ingredients that I've talked about before

00:15:02.980 | on this podcast and that I happen to use myself.

00:15:05.660 | I've been using Thesus for over a year now,

00:15:07.420 | and I can confidently say

00:15:08.460 | that their nootropics have been a game changer.

00:15:10.780 | For me, I like their nootropic for clarity.

00:15:13.680 | I use that before cognitive work often,

00:15:16.020 | and I like their nootropic for energy,

00:15:18.040 | and I often use that before workouts,

00:15:19.600 | in particular workouts that are especially intense.

00:15:23.220 | To get your own personalized nootropic starter kit,

00:15:25.100 | go online to takethesis.com/huberman,

00:15:27.620 | take their three-minute quiz,

00:15:28.680 | and Thesus will send you four different formulas

00:15:30.820 | to try in your first month.

00:15:31.940 | Again, that's takethesis.com/huberman,

00:15:34.780 | and use the code HUBERMAN at checkout

00:15:36.580 | to get 10% off your first box.

00:15:38.580 | Today's episode is also brought to us by InsideTracker.

00:15:41.700 | InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform

00:15:44.220 | that analyzes data from your blood and DNA

00:15:46.820 | to help you better understand your body

00:15:48.520 | and help you meet your health goals.

00:15:50.460 | I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done

00:15:53.300 | for the simple reason that many of the factors

00:15:55.320 | that impact your immediate and long-term health

00:15:57.440 | can only be analyzed with a quality blood test.

00:16:00.040 | One of the problems with a lot of blood tests

00:16:01.420 | and DNA tests out there, however,

00:16:03.500 | is that you get information back about lipids

00:16:05.940 | and levels of hormones and levels of metabolic factors

00:16:08.980 | and so on, but you don't know what to do

00:16:10.460 | with that information.

00:16:11.480 | InsideTracker has a very easy to use online site

00:16:14.660 | where you can monitor your levels

00:16:16.780 | and you can click on any specific marker,

00:16:19.740 | any specific hormone or metabolic factor,

00:16:22.100 | and it will tell you the behavioral tools,

00:16:24.840 | for instance, exercise, the nutrition tools,

00:16:27.780 | and the supplementation-based tools that you can use

00:16:30.020 | in order to bring those numbers into the appropriate ranges

00:16:32.700 | for your immediate and long-term health goals.

00:16:35.060 | If you'd like to try InsideTracker,

00:16:36.460 | you can visit insidetracker.com/huberman

00:16:39.260 | to get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plan.

00:16:41.900 | Again, that's insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off.

00:16:46.220 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep.

00:16:48.900 | Helix makes mattresses and pillows

00:16:50.580 | that are of the absolute highest quality.

00:16:52.620 | I started sleeping on a Helix mattress well over a year ago,

00:16:55.360 | and it's been the best sleep that I've ever had.

00:16:57.980 | One of the things that makes Helix mattresses so unique

00:17:00.540 | is that they match the design of the mattress

00:17:02.360 | to your unique sleep needs.

00:17:04.020 | So for instance, if you go onto their website,

00:17:05.580 | you can take a brief quiz.

00:17:06.680 | It only takes about two or three minutes,

00:17:08.880 | and you'll answer questions like,

00:17:09.720 | "Do you tend to run hot or cold throughout the night?"

00:17:12.020 | Or whether or not you sleep on your back,

00:17:13.420 | your side of your stomach, or maybe you don't know.

00:17:15.960 | Regardless, they will match you to the custom mattress

00:17:18.680 | that's ideal for your sleep needs.

00:17:20.320 | For me, that was the Dusk DUSK mattress,

00:17:23.020 | which for me was not too firm, not too soft,

00:17:24.920 | and was ideal for my sleep patterns.

00:17:27.380 | You take the quiz and you'll find out

00:17:28.860 | what mattress is ideal for your sleep patterns.

00:17:31.100 | So if you're interested in upgrading your mattress,

00:17:32.780 | go to helixsleep.com/huberman,

00:17:35.420 | take their brief sleep quiz,

00:17:36.540 | and they'll match you to a customized mattress,

00:17:38.140 | and you'll get up to $200 off any mattress order

00:17:40.760 | and two free pillows.

00:17:42.240 | They have a 10-year warranty,

00:17:43.340 | and you get to try out the mattress

00:17:44.520 | for a hundred nights risk-free.

00:17:46.500 | Again, if you're interested,

00:17:47.420 | you can go to helixsleep.com/huberman

00:17:49.860 | for up to $200 off and two free pillows.

00:17:52.520 | Let's talk about happiness,

00:17:53.860 | this thing that everybody seems to want,

00:17:56.180 | and yet not everybody can agree upon what exactly it is

00:18:00.260 | or how to get it.

00:18:02.380 | Now, I want to start by quoting a previous guest

00:18:05.940 | on the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:18:07.840 | and that is a colleague of mine

00:18:09.100 | at Stanford School of Medicine, Dr. Carl Deisseroth,

00:18:11.660 | who's both a bioengineer and a clinician.

00:18:15.660 | That is, he's a psychiatrist who spends a lot of his time

00:18:19.220 | both running a laboratory and seeing patients,

00:18:22.340 | human patients, of course.

00:18:23.980 | And I once was at a meeting where I heard Carl say

00:18:27.520 | something to the extent of,

00:18:29.580 | we don't know what other people feel.

00:18:32.020 | In fact, most of the time,

00:18:32.960 | we don't even really know how we feel.

00:18:35.360 | And while that statement was meant to report

00:18:38.320 | several different things about the way that the brain works

00:18:40.720 | and emotions, et cetera,

00:18:42.740 | one of the things that he was emphasizing,

00:18:44.740 | and I know he was emphasizing it

00:18:45.960 | 'cause he confirmed this for me,

00:18:48.160 | was the fact that language,

00:18:51.300 | things like the word happiness or joy or meaning

00:18:56.040 | or pleasure or delight are actually not very precise

00:19:00.420 | when it comes to describing our brain and body states.

00:19:03.380 | So for instance, if I tell you I'm feeling pretty happy,

00:19:07.340 | I know what that means for me, at least in this moment,

00:19:11.400 | but you don't really know whether or not

00:19:13.260 | it means the same thing as what pretty happy means for you.

00:19:16.980 | If I say I'm extremely happy and I have a big grin,

00:19:20.140 | I have a grin on my face

00:19:21.420 | that I can't seem to wipe off my face,

00:19:23.220 | well, then you might get a sense of how much happier I am

00:19:26.780 | than pretty happy,

00:19:28.540 | but it's still hard to calibrate my level

00:19:30.980 | of internal state or happiness.

00:19:33.060 | And the same is true for you and for everybody else.

00:19:35.580 | And it's important for us to acknowledge this

00:19:37.540 | because at this point in human history, 2022,

00:19:41.860 | we don't really have a measurement like body temperature

00:19:46.360 | or heart rate or heart rate variability,

00:19:48.840 | or even a way to measure neurochemicals

00:19:51.360 | in the brain and body that give us anything better

00:19:54.300 | than a crude correlate or an estimate at best

00:19:58.340 | of what happiness is.

00:20:00.220 | So that's really important to understand

00:20:02.140 | and to keep in mind throughout this episode.

00:20:03.620 | It doesn't mean that we cannot have

00:20:06.140 | a strong data-driven conversation about happiness

00:20:10.260 | and what brings us to a state of happiness,

00:20:11.900 | but it's very important to understand

00:20:13.820 | that language is not an ideal

00:20:15.780 | and maybe even a deficient tool

00:20:18.400 | in terms of describing our emotions

00:20:20.620 | and our states of mind and body.

00:20:22.480 | Now, equally important is to understand

00:20:25.140 | that while we do have neurotransmitters,

00:20:28.060 | that is the chemicals that are released

00:20:30.300 | between neurons and nerve cells

00:20:31.740 | that allow neurons to communicate,

00:20:34.180 | things like glutamate and GABA, for instance,

00:20:37.540 | and we have what are called neuromodulators.

00:20:39.720 | These are chemicals also released by neurons

00:20:42.700 | that impact the electrical firing

00:20:45.420 | and chemical release of other neurons,

00:20:47.040 | things like serotonin and dopamine

00:20:50.180 | and acetylcholine and epinephrine.

00:20:53.060 | Neuromodulators and neurotransmitters

00:20:55.960 | are always present in a cocktail in our brain and body.

00:21:00.060 | That is, they are present in different ratios

00:21:02.380 | and at different levels.

00:21:03.640 | So we need to completely discard with the idea

00:21:05.940 | that any one neurotransmitter or any one neuromodulator

00:21:10.440 | is solely responsible for a state of happiness

00:21:13.980 | or for a lack of state of happiness for that matter.

00:21:16.840 | That said, it is true that for people

00:21:21.000 | that tend to have lower baseline levels

00:21:23.740 | of, for instance, dopamine, their levels of happiness,

00:21:27.840 | or we should say their self-reported levels of happiness

00:21:30.620 | tend to be lower than for those

00:21:32.840 | that have greatly elevated baseline levels of dopamine.

00:21:36.500 | Now, this can be best appreciated at the extremes

00:21:40.080 | where, for instance, in conditions like Parkinson's disease

00:21:43.720 | or other conditions where people's levels of dopamine

00:21:46.280 | in their brain is severely depleted.

00:21:48.700 | Mind you, we also see this in drug addicted individuals

00:21:52.720 | that are in a withdrawal state

00:21:54.180 | because they're trying to quit

00:21:55.280 | or they don't have access to the drug

00:21:56.720 | that normally stimulates release of dopamine.

00:21:58.420 | Think the cocaine addict who can't get cocaine

00:22:01.240 | or the methamphetamine addict that can't

00:22:03.340 | or is trying to avoid taking methamphetamine

00:22:05.880 | or the Parkinson's patient who has fewer dopamine neurons

00:22:10.080 | because they degenerated.

00:22:11.760 | Those individuals do tend to be more depressed.

00:22:14.420 | They tend to have lower affect.

00:22:15.840 | They are less happy.

00:22:17.440 | At least that's how they report themselves to be emotionally.

00:22:20.720 | And that's what we observe when we look at them behaviorally

00:22:23.560 | in terms of the amount of smiling,

00:22:25.280 | the amount of energy they seem to have.

00:22:28.240 | At the opposite extreme,

00:22:30.140 | and while still focusing on the kind of pathology

00:22:33.140 | of neurotransmitter and neuromodulator systems,

00:22:35.640 | an individual who is in a manic phase of bipolar

00:22:40.040 | will tend to have very elevated levels of dopamine.

00:22:43.320 | And those people will talk a mile a minute

00:22:45.080 | and they won't require sleep.

00:22:46.280 | And at least to them, every idea is an exciting idea

00:22:49.280 | and one that they want to pursue.

00:22:50.480 | We did an entire episode about bipolar depression,

00:22:54.360 | AKA bipolar disorder.

00:22:55.920 | So if you'd like to learn more about that,

00:22:57.080 | please check out that episode.

00:22:58.720 | That and all other episodes of the podcast,

00:23:00.560 | of course you can find at Hubermanlab.com in all formats.

00:23:03.860 | But the point here is that very low levels

00:23:06.480 | or very high levels of dopamine

00:23:08.780 | are correlated with certain states of, for instance,

00:23:12.540 | low happiness or the absence of happiness.

00:23:15.720 | We could even call it depression in some cases,

00:23:17.780 | or extreme happiness, or even euphoria,

00:23:20.460 | sometimes even inappropriate euphoria,

00:23:22.080 | as is the case with bipolar depression,

00:23:25.260 | or sometimes called bipolar mania or bipolar disorder.

00:23:29.660 | Now, of course, there's a range in between

00:23:32.780 | depressed and manic.

00:23:34.780 | And most people fortunately reside somewhere in that range.

00:23:38.580 | And it is indeed a continuum.

00:23:40.380 | And I think it's safe to say that levels of dopamine

00:23:43.020 | probably do correlate with levels of happiness,

00:23:45.420 | but there is no one single chemical nor chemical signature

00:23:50.380 | that is no specific recipe of two parts dopamine

00:23:55.380 | to one part serotonin to one part acetylcholine

00:23:58.820 | that we can say equates to happiness.

00:24:01.700 | Indeed, there's now tremendous controversy

00:24:03.380 | as to whether or not, for instance,

00:24:05.060 | having lower levels of serotonin

00:24:07.460 | is actually the cause of depression

00:24:09.620 | or merely correlates with depression,

00:24:11.180 | or maybe doesn't even correlate with depression at all.

00:24:13.220 | This became especially controversial

00:24:14.700 | because in the last year,

00:24:16.500 | so-called serotonin hypothesis of depression

00:24:18.960 | has been called into question.

00:24:20.500 | And indeed, it does seem to be the case

00:24:23.060 | that for individuals that are depressed,

00:24:24.920 | their levels of serotonin can sometimes be normal.

00:24:28.660 | However, and this is an important however,

00:24:31.460 | that does not mean that administering drugs

00:24:33.560 | that increase levels of serotonin in depressed people

00:24:36.040 | does not sometimes, and indeed often,

00:24:38.700 | help ameliorate some of their symptoms.

00:24:40.700 | And I should mention that many of the selective serotonin

00:24:42.860 | reuptake inhibitors, so-called SSRIs,

00:24:44.900 | such as Prozac and Zoloft, et cetera,

00:24:47.800 | are still considered excellent treatments

00:24:49.940 | for conditions like OCD and so on and so forth.

00:24:52.960 | But what I'm trying to do is make two important points.

00:24:55.420 | First of all, that language is not a great indicator

00:25:00.420 | of internal state, especially when trying to understand

00:25:03.960 | other people's internal state,

00:25:05.060 | and that is especially true for things like happiness,

00:25:08.380 | and that there is no one chemical signature of happiness.

00:25:13.380 | There's no one neuromodulator

00:25:15.180 | or combinations of neuromodulators that we can say

00:25:17.580 | is the cocktail for happiness.

00:25:19.860 | But, and it's a very important but,

00:25:22.600 | when levels of dopamine and serotonin

00:25:26.300 | tend to be chronically low for an individual,

00:25:29.420 | below their typical baseline,

00:25:31.380 | they will, yes, tend to be lower in affect

00:25:34.460 | and have lower mood and less episodes of happiness

00:25:37.260 | per day, per week, per month, per year, et cetera.

00:25:40.440 | Conversely, when an individual has elevations

00:25:43.420 | in dopamine and serotonin levels,

00:25:44.860 | in particular dopamine levels,

00:25:46.780 | and the other so-called catecholamines,

00:25:48.660 | which include epinephrine and norepinephrine,

00:25:50.700 | so the catecholamines are dopamine,

00:25:53.300 | epinephrine, and norepinephrine,

00:25:54.860 | they're all very similar biochemically,

00:25:56.500 | they all lead to states of elevated motivation,

00:26:00.060 | energy, and so on.

00:26:02.020 | When those chemicals are elevated above baseline,

00:26:04.860 | people do tend to have elevated sense of mood and wellbeing,

00:26:08.340 | and in particular sense of possibility

00:26:10.860 | about what they can do in the world

00:26:12.740 | and what the world can offer them.

00:26:14.940 | So we need to acknowledge those two features

00:26:17.060 | of language and neurochemistry

00:26:19.300 | as we wade into the discussion

00:26:21.120 | about the psychology of happiness,

00:26:23.540 | and in particular about the controlled experiments

00:26:26.940 | that have been done in excellent laboratories

00:26:29.020 | focused on the psychology of happiness

00:26:31.060 | and what brings happiness and what does not.

00:26:33.540 | There have been some excellent studies on happiness,

00:26:35.880 | and these come in two forms, generally.

00:26:38.980 | One form of these studies

00:26:40.460 | is individuals come into a laboratory,

00:26:43.300 | they participate in an experiment

00:26:45.060 | over the course of a day or months,

00:26:47.260 | and then data are collected, analyzed,

00:26:49.620 | and the papers are submitted and published and discussed.

00:26:53.560 | The other form is a so-called longitudinal study

00:26:56.140 | where individuals come into the laboratory

00:26:58.140 | and they are studied over a very long period of time

00:27:01.020 | ranging from months to years and sometimes even decades.

00:27:06.020 | And then the variables of age, life circumstances,

00:27:12.060 | and other factors can be incorporated into the data.

00:27:15.780 | And typically there are multiple papers,

00:27:19.020 | there's data published throughout the longitudinal study,

00:27:22.620 | or sometimes it's just one paper

00:27:24.000 | at the end of the longitudinal study.

00:27:26.580 | Let's talk about one of the more famous

00:27:28.580 | and perhaps the longest running longitudinal study

00:27:32.400 | on happiness.

00:27:33.240 | This is a study that was initiated or conceived in 1938

00:27:37.780 | at Harvard University,

00:27:38.820 | the so-called Harvard Happiness Project.

00:27:40.960 | Some of you have probably heard about this.

00:27:42.640 | It involved Harvard College sophomores

00:27:46.040 | and other individuals were incorporated

00:27:48.020 | into this study as well.

00:27:50.820 | It's a study that initially had more than

00:27:53.820 | a couple of hundred subjects,

00:27:55.900 | but because some have either dropped out

00:27:57.900 | and not been able to be contacted

00:28:00.220 | and monitored over time or died,

00:28:02.700 | or for whatever reason are no longer participating

00:28:05.340 | in the study,

00:28:06.180 | there are very few of these individuals left.

00:28:08.220 | And yet there's tremendous power to a study like this.

00:28:10.660 | It's such an impressive study.

00:28:11.780 | And we're all so grateful that laboratories at Harvard

00:28:14.580 | decided to initiate and continue this study

00:28:17.580 | because it is one of the few studies,

00:28:19.700 | perhaps the study that has allowed us to understand

00:28:23.060 | happiness in our species over a very long period of time.

00:28:27.220 | Like any study, it's not perfect.

00:28:28.860 | It didn't include a lot of matching by sex

00:28:32.560 | or matching by vocation or matching by income and background.

00:28:35.740 | And back then there was also a lot less discussion

00:28:38.420 | about trauma and histories around trauma,

00:28:40.420 | as well as positive episodes in people's lives.

00:28:42.980 | Nonetheless, there's a lot of power in a study like this.

00:28:46.700 | And there's some very basic takeaways,

00:28:49.140 | some of which you may have heard before,

00:28:50.560 | but some of which may be surprising

00:28:52.780 | those of you who haven't.

00:28:54.740 | So one of the key things about this study

00:28:57.620 | is people in the study,

00:29:00.220 | at least those who still have intact memory,

00:29:02.260 | and which many of them do,

00:29:03.980 | are able to think back on not just their previous year

00:29:07.540 | or week, but 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago,

00:29:11.020 | and compare what makes them happy at one age

00:29:14.380 | versus another age.

00:29:15.900 | A number of things have emerged from that conversation.

00:29:18.340 | So I just want to discuss some of the highlight points.

00:29:21.000 | Then we'll get into a little bit more

00:29:22.280 | of the nitty gritty of the data.

00:29:23.900 | First of all, it's been discussed many, many times

00:29:27.180 | that the total amount of income

00:29:30.020 | that an individual makes or has,

00:29:32.220 | and again, this could be income from work,

00:29:34.640 | or it could be money that they inherited,

00:29:37.380 | does not seem to directly relate to their level of happiness.

00:29:42.220 | Now, a lot of people take that point

00:29:45.220 | and think, ah, money doesn't matter.

00:29:47.780 | Other people hear that point and think to themselves,

00:29:51.540 | yeah, right, easy to say if you have a lot of money.

00:29:54.620 | We'll talk about the interpretation of those data

00:29:56.540 | in just a few minutes,

00:29:58.020 | but I do want to earmark that finding

00:30:00.900 | because I agree that while money or total resources itself

00:30:05.900 | does not predict happiness in any kind of direct way,

00:30:10.920 | that is not the same thing as saying

00:30:13.320 | having very few resources will make you happier, of course.

00:30:16.540 | I don't think anyone would imagine that.

00:30:18.580 | But it also tends to overlook an important point,

00:30:22.060 | which is something that I certainly have learned

00:30:24.060 | to appreciate in my life,

00:30:25.620 | and something that I especially appreciated

00:30:27.620 | when I was a student and postdoc, which is the following.

00:30:31.140 | People will say money can't buy happiness,

00:30:33.500 | and we'll talk about the buy aspect of that in a moment.

00:30:36.780 | And indeed, that's true.

00:30:38.260 | If you look at this longitudinal study

00:30:40.260 | or you look at other studies

00:30:41.740 | that are done on a more short-term basis,

00:30:44.260 | once people get past a certain level of income

00:30:46.780 | relative to their cost of living,

00:30:48.860 | the amount of happiness does not scale with that income.

00:30:52.580 | That is for every additional $1,000 or $10,000 that they earn,

00:30:56.640 | they don't report being that much happier on a daily basis.

00:31:00.240 | Now, that said, I venture the argument

00:31:05.240 | that while money truly cannot buy happiness,

00:31:08.400 | it absolutely can buffer stress.

00:31:10.900 | And in particular, it can buffer stress

00:31:12.700 | in the form of the ability to purchase or pay for

00:31:16.900 | goods and services, and in particular services.

00:31:19.580 | You're not going to tell me that having children

00:31:24.300 | doesn't involve some increase in the demands on your life,

00:31:26.820 | less sleep and more demands.

00:31:28.340 | And it certainly is the case

00:31:29.760 | that if you can hire help to clean,

00:31:32.700 | you can hire nannies if that's your thing,

00:31:35.620 | you can hire help to assist with babysitting

00:31:37.680 | or even night nurses if you're having trouble sleeping

00:31:40.100 | that will literally allow you to sleep

00:31:41.860 | while they take care of your child

00:31:43.300 | in the middle of the night,

00:31:44.700 | often give excellent care, one hopes excellent care,

00:31:47.840 | that that won't offset some of the stress

00:31:49.460 | associated with lack of sleep.

00:31:51.100 | So there are a million different examples

00:31:53.220 | one could give of this,

00:31:54.140 | but I certainly experienced this during graduate school.

00:31:57.200 | In fact, I experienced both sides of the equation here.

00:31:59.820 | I made very little money as a graduate student.

00:32:02.340 | I had essentially no savings when I started graduate school

00:32:05.300 | and I made very little money.

00:32:06.500 | The amount doesn't matter at this point,

00:32:08.220 | but I could just barely afford rent and my food,

00:32:11.040 | I actually opted to live in the laboratory

00:32:13.300 | a lot of the time.

00:32:14.960 | And by doing that, I had more money to spend

00:32:17.920 | on other things that were important to me.

00:32:19.340 | Now, I did not have a family at the time

00:32:21.660 | and so I was able to do that,

00:32:23.180 | something that not everyone can do,

00:32:24.820 | but I made very little money,

00:32:26.820 | but at the same time I was in laboratory all the time

00:32:29.900 | and that's where I wanted to be.

00:32:31.460 | And so my level of stress was actually pretty low

00:32:34.020 | because I was investing all my time and energy

00:32:35.960 | into the very thing that I knew would eventually

00:32:38.420 | help bring me more resources.

00:32:40.680 | When I moved from being a graduate student to a postdoc,

00:32:44.320 | for instance, a postdoc is a generally

00:32:46.840 | a three to five-year period.

00:32:48.620 | So like residency in medicine,

00:32:50.540 | where you're no longer taking courses,

00:32:51.860 | but you continue to do research.

00:32:53.160 | In fact, entire new lines of research

00:32:55.840 | and prior to getting a professorship,

00:32:58.120 | my income went up slightly,

00:33:00.960 | went up by about 30 to 40%,

00:33:03.920 | but because of where I moved and because of the times,

00:33:07.920 | my cost of living went way, way up

00:33:09.740 | and I was extremely stressed.

00:33:11.800 | So it wasn't my absolute income.

00:33:14.680 | It was my absolute income relative to my cost of living.

00:33:18.280 | The other thing that one needs to consider

00:33:20.400 | when considering income versus cost of living

00:33:23.480 | is there's also this notion of peer group.

00:33:25.980 | And we're going to talk more about social bonds

00:33:27.480 | and connections later.

00:33:28.900 | But one thing that I noticed when I moved

00:33:30.280 | from being a graduate student to a postdoc was

00:33:33.040 | I was a graduate student in a small town

00:33:35.280 | where I had access, if I chose,

00:33:38.360 | to participate in most, if not all, of the social gatherings

00:33:41.900 | because they were all very low cost.

00:33:43.240 | People tended to aggregate at the farmer's market on Saturday.

00:33:46.580 | Most people wouldn't even purchase anything,

00:33:47.940 | at least not the graduate students

00:33:49.340 | wouldn't purchase anything.

00:33:50.180 | It was just a place to aggregate.

00:33:51.360 | People would sometimes play pickup games of soccer

00:33:53.320 | or just hang out and have a cup of coffee.

00:33:55.620 | There was a volleyball game on Fridays.

00:33:57.700 | Sometimes people would go out to eat that evening,

00:34:00.060 | which of course cost money, et cetera,

00:34:02.260 | but it was relatively low cost of living

00:34:03.860 | and social connections and peer group interactions

00:34:08.260 | were all generated around

00:34:09.520 | the same fairly low cost activities.

00:34:12.400 | When I transitioned to being a postdoc, I made more money,

00:34:16.700 | but cost of living went up.

00:34:18.800 | But in addition to that,

00:34:20.220 | my peer group tended to want to engage

00:34:23.560 | in the same kinds of activities

00:34:24.940 | that people in that larger city were engaged in.

00:34:28.380 | So peer group has a tremendously powerful influence

00:34:31.260 | on whether or not we gauge the amount of money that we have

00:34:35.340 | as bringing us happiness or not.

00:34:37.620 | And that really speaks to the critical importance

00:34:39.620 | of social interactions

00:34:41.220 | and certain kinds of social interactions in particular.

00:34:44.420 | Now, if any of that was unclear,

00:34:45.460 | what I'm basically saying is,

00:34:46.780 | it's not just about being able to pay your rent.

00:34:49.140 | It's also about being able to access

00:34:51.380 | the kinds of social interactions that you deem

00:34:54.300 | are quote unquote correct for you at that stage of life

00:34:58.900 | and in the place where you happen to be living.

00:35:00.920 | Because if you can meet all the demands of costs of rent

00:35:04.820 | and paying your power bill and food, et cetera,

00:35:07.660 | but you are socially isolated because your peer group

00:35:11.420 | or those around you that you want to engage with

00:35:13.860 | are engaging in activities

00:35:15.340 | that you either don't have time for literally

00:35:18.060 | because you're doing other things

00:35:20.100 | or that you don't have the financial resources for,

00:35:23.240 | then that can actually severely impact

00:35:26.280 | this rating of what we call happiness.

00:35:29.220 | Why am I parsing this so finely?

00:35:31.020 | Well, I'm parsing it finely

00:35:31.900 | because I think that most of us have heard the outcome

00:35:35.220 | of this study from Harvard

00:35:36.900 | or the more short-term studies,

00:35:40.300 | also many of which are from Harvard.

00:35:41.760 | We'll talk about the just phenomenal work

00:35:43.520 | from Dan Gilbert's laboratory and other laboratories

00:35:45.600 | who have focused on issues like these.

00:35:47.560 | And I certainly don't want to take anything away

00:35:49.060 | from those results.

00:35:49.900 | They're very powerful and important results.

00:35:51.980 | They really point over and over to the fact

00:35:53.860 | that people's happiness

00:35:55.820 | does not necessarily scale with income.

00:35:57.820 | In fact, it tends not to past a certain level.

00:36:01.740 | And yet I think we'd be remiss,

00:36:04.180 | I think actually it would be inappropriate for me to say

00:36:06.360 | that the amount of income that one makes is not important

00:36:09.900 | because if the amount of money that you happen to have

00:36:13.420 | or are making does not allow you to meet your basic needs

00:36:17.940 | of shelter, healthcare, et cetera,

00:36:21.620 | and or doesn't allow you to access

00:36:23.760 | the kind of social interactions that can renew and reset,

00:36:28.340 | or I would say directly enhance

00:36:30.540 | the kind of neurotransmitter systems and hormones

00:36:32.960 | that lead us to feel that we are happy in our life

00:36:35.740 | and we're having quality social connections,

00:36:37.900 | well, then that's very stressful.

00:36:40.360 | And this brings me back to the statement I made earlier,

00:36:42.220 | which is indeed money cannot buy happiness,

00:36:45.280 | but it certainly can buffer stress.

00:36:47.380 | And one of the ways that it buffers stress

00:36:49.500 | is by allowing options

00:36:51.100 | of different kinds of social interactions,

00:36:53.740 | options of different types of recreation

00:36:56.580 | that one can engage in

00:36:57.420 | to access new forms of social interaction.

00:37:00.300 | And so on and so on.

00:37:01.540 | So we need to be a little bit careful

00:37:03.140 | or at least nuanced about this statement

00:37:05.220 | that money can't buy happiness

00:37:06.540 | and that the data support the fact

00:37:07.740 | that wealth doesn't determine happiness.

00:37:10.280 | I think there is a truth to that,

00:37:12.000 | but there's another side to that

00:37:13.700 | that I think is less often acknowledged

00:37:16.180 | and that certainly I've experienced

00:37:17.940 | and that I think many of you out there

00:37:19.560 | probably experienced as well.

00:37:21.260 | One other major finding

00:37:22.180 | of the Harvard longitudinal study on happiness

00:37:24.580 | as well as shorter term studies on happiness

00:37:27.480 | is that much as you've heard perhaps

00:37:30.640 | that no one on their deathbed

00:37:32.600 | says they wish they had worked more.

00:37:34.860 | Well, indeed the total amount of time

00:37:37.000 | that one spends working

00:37:38.640 | does not seem to determine one's happiness.

00:37:42.320 | And yet I also want to earmark that result

00:37:44.880 | as one that we need to parse a bit more carefully

00:37:47.920 | because work, last time I checked and certainly for me,

00:37:52.340 | is the way typically that people earn an income.

00:37:55.080 | And as we just talked about a moment ago,

00:37:57.520 | income is often a way that people have access

00:38:00.860 | to or provide access for their family

00:38:03.740 | to things like recreation that opens up the opportunity

00:38:07.560 | for more social connection, right?

00:38:09.520 | So we have to be careful

00:38:11.420 | with how we interpret these blanket statements

00:38:13.400 | that have become very popular

00:38:14.980 | that money doesn't determine happiness

00:38:17.380 | and that the amount that you work

00:38:19.140 | isn't going to determine happiness.

00:38:21.420 | It certainly is the case

00:38:22.540 | that if you earn more money from working more

00:38:25.960 | and that money is devoted to things

00:38:28.760 | that bring more opportunities for social connection

00:38:31.440 | or for buffering stress in other areas of your life,

00:38:33.840 | including healthcare, care for your children,

00:38:36.800 | care for yourself, recreation, other things that you enjoy,

00:38:40.880 | well, then I think it's a little bit naive

00:38:43.020 | to assume that work itself is somehow counter to happiness,

00:38:48.020 | which of course it isn't.

00:38:50.080 | And it especially isn't if we combine that feature of work

00:38:54.660 | with another important feature of the human psyche,

00:38:57.200 | which is this notion of meaning.

00:38:59.080 | Now, in the not too distant future,

00:39:00.440 | we will do an episode of this podcast on meaning

00:39:03.400 | and what constitutes meaning in a given endeavor,

00:39:05.720 | work or otherwise.

00:39:07.280 | But much of the psychology of the last century

00:39:11.360 | and still today focuses on this feature of meaning

00:39:14.380 | as a critical one in terms of what makes us happy

00:39:17.660 | and what doesn't make us happy.

00:39:19.380 | Certainly in the longterm.

00:39:21.480 | And I can certainly say for myself that learning

00:39:23.840 | and teaching and doing research in my laboratory

00:39:26.360 | brings me tremendous feeling of meaning and happiness.

00:39:31.280 | Some people consider their work simply a way

00:39:33.900 | to gain a paycheck and other people find

00:39:37.540 | that they would do the very work they do

00:39:39.360 | regardless of whether or not they were paid.

00:39:41.040 | In fact, many people will do volunteer work

00:39:43.040 | and other forms of work for zero money.

00:39:45.680 | So this idea that money isn't important

00:39:48.240 | or that work is not as important as we deem it to be,

00:39:51.840 | that also needs to be considered

00:39:53.820 | from a number of different perspectives.

00:39:55.560 | And again, by no means am I trying to undermine the data

00:39:58.060 | of these impressive studies,

00:39:59.460 | both the longitudinal and short-term studies,

00:40:01.560 | but I think we do have to be cautious

00:40:04.020 | in our discussion of results like these

00:40:06.360 | because the internet is replete with conversations

00:40:10.000 | about the big factors that determine happiness.

00:40:13.920 | It's going to be social connection, not income.

00:40:16.280 | It's going to be the amount of time

00:40:19.100 | that you are able to have open thinking and creativity,

00:40:23.080 | which I think is an essential feature of happiness,

00:40:25.100 | by the way.

00:40:25.940 | Physical health, in particular one's ability to stay mobile

00:40:30.940 | and to be able to access the kind of daily activities

00:40:33.900 | that one needs to accomplish unassisted

00:40:36.420 | is a strong correlate of happiness and so on and so on.

00:40:40.220 | And of course there are the basic physiology factors,

00:40:44.080 | the things that feed back onto our overall feelings

00:40:46.960 | of wellbeing.

00:40:47.800 | And I've talked about these before,

00:40:49.520 | and we'll just put these quickly into a bin.

00:40:51.680 | You can think of this as a toolkit of things that you

00:40:54.560 | and everyone really should be constantly trying to access,

00:40:57.880 | if not optimize on a regular basis,

00:40:59.660 | because they raise the tide or what I would call

00:41:02.080 | the buoyancy of your overall system,

00:41:04.760 | meaning your brain and body.

00:41:05.760 | And that would be getting sufficient deep sleep

00:41:09.040 | at least 80% of the nights of your life.

00:41:11.000 | And ideally the remaining 20%,

00:41:12.600 | you're not getting deep sleep or as much of it

00:41:15.140 | because of positive events.

00:41:17.400 | Quality nutrition, quality social interactions,

00:41:20.740 | and we will define that a little bit better.

00:41:22.720 | In fact, we will define that in a lot of detail

00:41:24.520 | later in this episode and actually how to get better

00:41:27.000 | at creating quality social interactions,

00:41:28.800 | even very brief social interactions.

00:41:31.800 | So we have sleep, we have nutrition,

00:41:35.160 | we have social interactions, we have purposeful work,

00:41:38.160 | whether or not it's paid work or non-paid work.

00:41:40.840 | And of course there are things like exercise

00:41:43.960 | and maybe relationships to pets and things of that sort.

00:41:47.100 | And there are a few others as well.

00:41:49.040 | All of those are known to increase your overall state

00:41:51.600 | of wellbeing that puts you in a position

00:41:54.300 | to access more meaning and happiness, et cetera.

00:41:57.000 | But for most people, I think it's fair to say

00:41:59.620 | that earning a living and earning a living by working

00:42:03.840 | is the typical way in which we spend most of our time.

00:42:07.080 | So I think we need to put a special bracket

00:42:09.480 | around those activities.

00:42:10.540 | And it's something we'll return to a little bit later

00:42:12.600 | in terms of trying to understand how periods of life

00:42:15.400 | in which there are big or extensive work demands

00:42:19.160 | or extensive family demands on us are indeed compatible

00:42:22.880 | with states of happiness or frequent states of happiness

00:42:25.240 | and how better to access those.

00:42:27.120 | Rather than simply say money isn't important

00:42:30.300 | or the amount of time at work really isn't important.

00:42:33.280 | That's not what people are going to pay attention to.

00:42:35.100 | In fact, I don't know how I will feel on my deathbed.

00:42:37.720 | How could I?

00:42:39.200 | Human beings are pretty good about understanding

00:42:41.680 | how they feel in the present.

00:42:43.000 | If not describing it, they are pretty good at feeling it.

00:42:46.340 | If they have any sense of internal state

00:42:49.100 | that is interoception, you get some idea

00:42:51.060 | of how you feel in a moment.

00:42:52.460 | We're pretty good about describing our past feelings,

00:42:57.160 | at least in broad contour, but we are not very good

00:43:00.700 | at projecting how we will feel in the future.

00:43:02.760 | And in fact, that's a theme that's going to come up

00:43:04.320 | again and again today.

00:43:06.580 | Nonetheless, what we do know on the basis

00:43:09.600 | of really solid data are that certain aspects

00:43:13.920 | of our wellbeing tend to change across our lifespan.

00:43:17.180 | Now, lifespan is something that we need to consider

00:43:20.780 | from also a bit of nuance because humans are indeed

00:43:24.360 | living longer and longer.

00:43:25.900 | And if we look at the data on happiness

00:43:27.820 | across the lifespan dated maybe 30 or 40 years back

00:43:32.120 | or even 20 years ago, it is consistently described

00:43:35.740 | in that literature as a so-called U-shaped function

00:43:38.760 | where people in their 20s report being very, very happy.

00:43:43.580 | But as time goes on and they acquire more responsibility,

00:43:49.080 | so typically getting married and having children

00:43:51.640 | in their mid to late 20s and 30s and into their 40s,

00:43:55.860 | having more work demands, et cetera,

00:43:58.140 | happiness tends to be rated lower and lower,

00:44:00.220 | at least in those previous studies.

00:44:01.840 | And then happiness tended to increase

00:44:04.560 | as people approach their 50s and 60s,

00:44:07.440 | and they tended to retire and their work demands

00:44:09.700 | were shed from them and they were able to enjoy

00:44:11.740 | the small things of life, despite the fact that in general,

00:44:16.140 | I would say almost always people's health

00:44:18.200 | is not as vigorous when they're 70 as it is when they're 20.

00:44:21.720 | There are exceptions to that, of course.

00:44:23.480 | And of course you can adjust the rate of cognitive

00:44:26.220 | and physical decline.

00:44:27.120 | But in general, people in their 20s feel more physically

00:44:29.760 | and mentally vigorous than they do

00:44:31.320 | in their 60s and 70s in general.

00:44:33.500 | That U-shaped function that I just described

00:44:36.360 | still holds true today,

00:44:38.240 | but of course there've been some major shifts

00:44:40.760 | to the general life stages

00:44:43.900 | and when people undergo those life stages.

00:44:46.000 | For instance, many people are getting married much later.

00:44:48.460 | Many people are opting to not have children.

00:44:50.480 | In fact, if you look at the data

00:44:52.140 | on whether or not people have children or not

00:44:54.780 | and how that relates to happiness,

00:44:57.220 | everyone will tell you that their kids

00:44:58.820 | are their greatest source of joy,

00:45:00.180 | at least most people will tell you that,

00:45:01.960 | and are a tremendous source of happiness.

00:45:04.100 | It's obvious kids are delightful

00:45:06.820 | and raising kids while hard is a wonderful experience.

00:45:10.940 | If you look at the ratings of happiness

00:45:13.620 | among people that elected, elected,

00:45:16.740 | to not have children versus those that had,

00:45:19.180 | most people who have children

00:45:21.240 | report their overall levels of happiness

00:45:23.280 | as lower than that of people who opt not to have children.

00:45:28.200 | Now, there are a lot of ways to interpret those findings

00:45:31.040 | and by no means am I encouraging people

00:45:32.860 | to not have children.

00:45:33.920 | That's a issue that you have to resolve

00:45:37.220 | for yourself, of course.

00:45:39.060 | But we could imagine, for instance,

00:45:41.540 | that people who opt not to have children

00:45:44.100 | have more income to devote

00:45:45.520 | to things more focused on themselves or their partner

00:45:48.460 | or other aspects of their life.

00:45:50.500 | We don't know if that's the underlying reason.

00:45:52.740 | We could perhaps conclude

00:45:54.760 | that people who opt not to have children

00:45:57.080 | are getting more sleep on a regular basis

00:45:59.860 | or have more time for exercise

00:46:01.200 | or the other sorts of things

00:46:02.300 | that elevate states of mood and wellbeing.

00:46:05.300 | Again, we do not know

00:46:06.560 | what the underlying reasons are for this finding,

00:46:08.840 | but it does seem that despite most every parent

00:46:12.480 | reporting that their kids are their greatest source of joy

00:46:15.140 | and "happiness" in life,

00:46:16.960 | that people who opt not to have children

00:46:19.140 | are at least as happy or report being at least as happy

00:46:22.560 | or even happier than those that opt to have children.

00:46:27.120 | And of course, I want to be very clear

00:46:29.180 | that I'm not trying to settle any arguments

00:46:32.260 | about whether or not people should have children or not.

00:46:34.140 | I happen to find children and animals delightful,

00:46:37.300 | and I'm always happy when people opt to have children,

00:46:40.780 | provided they are taking good care of their children

00:46:43.340 | or doing their very best

00:46:44.460 | to take good care of their children.

00:46:45.800 | So that's my stance,

00:46:47.420 | but of course, you're all entitled

00:46:49.060 | to your own stance on this.

00:46:50.620 | There are also the general arguments

00:46:52.600 | that people like to have

00:46:53.440 | about whether or not the population of the earth

00:46:55.700 | will be sustained or not sustained

00:46:57.120 | based on current birth rates, et cetera.

00:46:58.740 | Indeed, many areas of the world birth rates are going down.

00:47:01.980 | Is actually something that,

00:47:03.980 | just as a perhaps point of interest,

00:47:05.620 | has been studied from the somewhat unusual,

00:47:08.740 | but logical perspective of whether or not child diapers

00:47:13.740 | are selling at the same rate as they were some years ago,

00:47:16.580 | and whether or not adult diapers for the elderly

00:47:20.300 | are being sold at the same rate or greater.

00:47:22.860 | That, if you think about it,

00:47:24.020 | is one indirect measure of whether or not

00:47:26.980 | people are living longer and/or opting to have children.

00:47:29.940 | Definitely a discussion for another time,

00:47:31.560 | probably for another podcast entirely.

00:47:33.920 | I'd like to take a quick break

00:47:35.300 | and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Athletic Greens.

00:47:38.340 | Athletic Greens, now called AG1,

00:47:40.800 | is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink

00:47:43.180 | that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs.

00:47:46.060 | I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012,

00:47:48.740 | so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.

00:47:50.980 | The reason I started taking Athletic Greens

00:47:52.580 | and the reason I still take Athletic Greens

00:47:54.660 | once or usually twice a day

00:47:56.620 | is that it gets me the probiotics that I need for gut health.

00:48:00.220 | Our gut is very important.

00:48:01.340 | It's populated by gut microbiota

00:48:03.900 | that communicate with the brain, the immune system,

00:48:05.640 | and basically all the biological systems of our body

00:48:08.040 | to strongly impact our immediate and long-term health.

00:48:11.680 | And those probiotics in Athletic Greens

00:48:13.540 | are optimal and vital for microbiota health.

00:48:17.380 | In addition, Athletic Greens

00:48:18.540 | contains a number of adaptogens, vitamins, and minerals

00:48:20.840 | that make sure that all of my foundational nutritional needs

00:48:23.460 | are met, and it tastes great.

00:48:26.180 | If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,

00:48:27.620 | you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman,

00:48:31.020 | and they'll give you five free travel packs

00:48:33.000 | that make it really easy to mix up Athletic Greens

00:48:35.320 | while you're on the road, in the car, on the plane, et cetera.

00:48:37.900 | And they'll give you a year's supply of vitamin D3K2.

00:48:41.300 | Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman

00:48:43.980 | to get the five free travel packs

00:48:45.360 | and the year's supply of vitamin D3K2.

00:48:48.300 | So this U-shaped function

00:48:49.920 | of people being happier earlier in life

00:48:53.340 | and then reporting feeling far less happy

00:48:55.920 | and then happiness returning to them,

00:48:57.700 | that is the rising of the U again in their later years,

00:49:00.660 | is something that I do believe

00:49:02.340 | should be repeated in modern times

00:49:05.100 | and repeated in a way that takes into account

00:49:07.820 | that that U might be shifted to the right.

00:49:10.940 | That is, I am certainly aware

00:49:13.620 | that people are tending to get married later.

00:49:15.860 | Many are opting to not have children.

00:49:17.420 | So for instance, the question arises

00:49:20.580 | whether or not that U-shaped curve

00:49:22.060 | should have a bump down at the bottom of the U

00:49:24.300 | among those that opt not to have children,

00:49:26.080 | because the argument was made in the discussion

00:49:28.600 | of those papers that the reason why happiness is lower

00:49:32.360 | when people are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s

00:49:34.320 | is because they're devoting more time

00:49:35.600 | to raising their children and devoting more time to work.

00:49:40.160 | I would hope people would enjoy their work,

00:49:41.760 | but not everybody really enjoys their work.

00:49:43.560 | And many people, even if they do enjoy their work

00:49:46.080 | and they find meaning in it, still find it stressful,

00:49:48.960 | which certainly can run counter to happiness.

00:49:53.040 | Nowadays, you could imagine that

00:49:55.280 | because a number of people are opting perhaps to work less

00:49:58.320 | or to not have children or both,

00:50:00.520 | where they find tremendous meaning from their work,

00:50:02.240 | that there would be a bump at the bottom of that U

00:50:04.440 | among those that decided to simply not take on

00:50:08.960 | these additional responsibilities.

00:50:10.260 | That would be an interesting test, I think,

00:50:12.160 | of whether or not the total load of responsibility

00:50:16.160 | is really what's correlating with reported happiness or not.

00:50:20.480 | Now, one very consistent finding

00:50:22.020 | that has absolutely stood the test of time.

00:50:24.680 | That's kind of an interesting one.

00:50:25.720 | It's a little bit of a pop psychology finding,

00:50:27.440 | but I think it points to something interesting

00:50:29.640 | that we'll return to again and again

00:50:31.160 | is that people tend to report

00:50:33.600 | feeling lower levels of happiness,

00:50:36.480 | believe it or not, on their birthday.

00:50:38.800 | And the argument for why this is is the following,

00:50:43.280 | that typically we go through our year

00:50:46.920 | not comparing ourselves to our peers terribly much.

00:50:50.560 | We might do that a little bit more

00:50:52.380 | when we're in elementary school, high school, et cetera,

00:50:54.540 | when we're sort of age match, maybe even college as well.

00:50:57.040 | But an evaluation of ourselves to our age match peers

00:51:00.360 | is not typically something that we do on a daily basis.

00:51:04.000 | Whereas on our birthday,

00:51:05.320 | we get a snapshot of where we are in the arc of time,

00:51:09.060 | or at least in our life.

00:51:10.640 | And many people report feeling rather low on their birthday

00:51:14.280 | because they use that as a benchmark or a window

00:51:17.900 | into the things that they have not accomplished,

00:51:20.600 | the things that despite being age blank,

00:51:23.780 | they still haven't accomplished.

00:51:25.580 | And so that's interesting

00:51:26.800 | because of what it really points to is two things.

00:51:28.780 | One, the extent to which much of our feelings of happiness

00:51:32.140 | are relative, in particular relative to our peers.

00:51:34.980 | So there's that social aspect again.

00:51:37.740 | And the fact that most of the time

00:51:40.500 | we are not very good at orienting ourselves

00:51:43.260 | in the longer arc of time.

00:51:44.660 | We're pretty good at knowing where we are

00:51:45.940 | in the arc of a day or the arc of a week

00:51:47.580 | or the arc of a month or even a year,

00:51:49.540 | but that most of us are not very good at reflecting

00:51:52.040 | on where we are in our life arc.

00:51:54.060 | And of course, most of us don't know

00:51:55.520 | how long we will live anyway,

00:51:57.180 | but we do have some general sense.

00:51:58.940 | I mean, very few people live past the age of 100.

00:52:02.420 | Many people live to be 70 or 80.

00:52:05.060 | And again, lifespan is extending

00:52:08.540 | as far as we know from year to year.

00:52:11.140 | But in general, people report that on their birthdays,

00:52:14.380 | and I should say these are for birthdays aged 25 or later,

00:52:19.220 | at least in the studies I was able to access, right?

00:52:21.920 | I don't think that a lot of three-year-olds

00:52:23.560 | sit around comparing themselves to other three-year-olds

00:52:25.860 | and how well they're doing or 12-year-olds.

00:52:27.780 | You can imagine some people might do that at 18, et cetera.

00:52:30.700 | But it's really by the mid 20s

00:52:32.500 | that people start evaluating themselves to their peers

00:52:35.000 | in terms of life progression and so-called milestones.

00:52:38.160 | It's been argued that that's one of the reasons

00:52:40.160 | why people report lower affect,

00:52:41.900 | lower levels of happiness on their birthday,

00:52:43.480 | something that's a little bit counterintuitive.

00:52:45.880 | And of course, there are things

00:52:46.720 | that are anti-correlated with happiness.

00:52:48.940 | I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a few of these.

00:52:51.140 | That's longitudinal study.

00:52:52.860 | The Harvard Happiness Project has reported, for instance,

00:52:56.640 | that people that are chronic smokers of nicotine

00:53:00.340 | and chronic consumers of alcohol,

00:53:02.060 | in particular alcoholics,

00:53:03.800 | that is people who suffer from alcoholism

00:53:05.560 | or what's sometimes called alcohol use disorder,

00:53:08.620 | that is strongly anti-correlated with happiness.

00:53:11.220 | And I should also mention that the family members

00:53:13.340 | and in particular, the romantic partners of people

00:53:15.700 | who are chronic smokers and the partners of people

00:53:20.260 | who are chronic alcohol users

00:53:22.840 | often will report lower levels of happiness,

00:53:24.740 | especially if they themselves are not chronic smokers

00:53:28.200 | or regular consumers of alcohol.

00:53:31.380 | So we've done episodes on nicotine in particular,

00:53:35.020 | and that touched on smoking, of course,

00:53:36.700 | and we've done an episode on alcohol

00:53:39.340 | and the effects of alcohol on health.

00:53:41.700 | Again, you can find those at hubermanlab.com.

00:53:43.960 | This study from the Harvard Happiness Project

00:53:47.020 | really has strong data supporting the fact

00:53:50.080 | that avoiding being a nicotine smoker, right?

00:53:52.780 | There are positive health effects of nicotine

00:53:54.900 | that are discussed in the episode on nicotine,

00:53:56.660 | but smoking nicotine in particular is counterproductive

00:54:01.020 | for people's at least self-reported happiness

00:54:04.260 | and certainly overall health.

00:54:05.500 | I think there's zero question

00:54:06.900 | that smoking increases cancers of different kinds

00:54:09.900 | and that alcohol consumption,

00:54:11.660 | in particular alcohol consumption

00:54:13.080 | beyond two drinks per week,

00:54:16.420 | two drinks being the typical volume of a beer,

00:54:18.820 | a glass of wine or a cocktail, et cetera,

00:54:21.060 | is detrimental for various aspects of health.

00:54:23.600 | And of course, there are other things that you could imagine

00:54:26.000 | would relate to a lack of happiness.

00:54:28.100 | For instance, a major trauma, physical or emotional trauma.

00:54:32.460 | That could include the loss of a major relationship,

00:54:34.620 | a death of a close one,

00:54:36.980 | being the victim of a violent crime and things of that sort.

00:54:40.300 | And yet it's been argued, in fact strongly argued,

00:54:44.220 | that when you look at people's levels of happiness

00:54:47.980 | after a trauma, that if you wait about a year or so,

00:54:52.980 | sometimes even as short as three months after a trauma,

00:54:57.700 | that people's self-reported levels of happiness

00:55:00.440 | are not significantly lower

00:55:02.480 | than they were prior to the trauma.

00:55:04.520 | Now, I very much want to highlight, underline,

00:55:08.120 | and bold and asterisk that statement

00:55:10.980 | as one that we really need to explore carefully

00:55:13.000 | because there are other data

00:55:15.480 | that strongly point to the fact that major life traumas

00:55:18.840 | can severely disrupt one's sense of happiness and wellbeing.

00:55:22.320 | And I think as long as we're going to have this discussion,

00:55:24.200 | we should point to a useful definition of trauma.

00:55:27.880 | And the definition that I'll paraphrase

00:55:29.800 | is one that was supplied by a former guest

00:55:33.160 | on the Huberman Lab podcast, Dr. Paul Conte,

00:55:35.480 | who's a psychiatrist who's written a book called "Trauma."

00:55:38.640 | I personally think it's the best book on trauma

00:55:42.000 | and tools for alleviating trauma.

00:55:43.440 | It's incredibly thorough, easy to read, and well-informed.

00:55:47.500 | And here, again, I'm paraphrasing,

00:55:49.920 | but Dr. Conte describes trauma

00:55:51.380 | as something that fundamentally changes

00:55:53.760 | the way that our brain and body function

00:55:56.600 | in a way that makes other aspects of living more challenging.

00:56:00.620 | Again, an event, either emotional or physical or both,

00:56:03.940 | that fundamentally changes the way that our brain

00:56:06.620 | and/or body, our nervous system and other organs function

00:56:11.620 | in a way that prevents us from enjoying daily activities.

00:56:15.880 | And that could even be ongoing distraction, right?

00:56:17.800 | Traumas can create rumination

00:56:19.820 | or they can create obsessive thought

00:56:21.220 | or they can create dissociation,

00:56:22.820 | any number of different things.

00:56:24.100 | Again, check out that episode with Dr. Paul Conte

00:56:26.920 | if you'd like to learn more about trauma

00:56:28.540 | and how it manifests.

00:56:29.440 | But the idea that's been put forth

00:56:31.980 | by a number of researchers in the field of happiness

00:56:34.720 | that three months after a major trauma,

00:56:37.080 | people aren't reporting that they are feeling

00:56:40.120 | any less happy than before the trauma,

00:56:42.120 | that was surprising to me.

00:56:43.220 | So I went into this literature a bit more deeply.

00:56:46.240 | One of the basis of that general line of thinking

00:56:49.640 | is what I consider now classic and very important

00:56:53.260 | and frankly, excellent talk that was given

00:56:55.640 | by Professor Dan Gilbert on the science of happiness.

00:56:58.720 | You can find this on YouTube.

00:57:01.680 | I say a classic one because it was done some years ago.

00:57:04.820 | It's received millions of views.

00:57:06.700 | And one of the points that he makes in that talk,

00:57:08.840 | which is grounded in research carried out

00:57:11.100 | by his laboratory and other laboratories,

00:57:13.060 | is that, you know, he poses a question.

00:57:16.100 | He says, you know, let's do a quiz.

00:57:18.780 | Would you rather be someone who wins the lottery?

00:57:21.520 | And he shows a picture of somebody who just won,

00:57:23.260 | I think it was several hundreds of millions of dollars

00:57:24.960 | in the lottery, or was recently made paraplegic,

00:57:28.620 | lost use of their legs.

00:57:30.140 | And then goes on to state that one year

00:57:34.240 | after people have won the lottery,

00:57:36.040 | this major, you know, monetary windfall

00:57:38.320 | versus have become paraplegic,

00:57:39.940 | is that their self-reported levels of happiness

00:57:42.800 | are the same, which I think is incredibly surprising.

00:57:46.620 | Now, I heard this and I immediately thought of an experience

00:57:50.840 | that I've had where I teach a course

00:57:53.760 | at Stanford School of Medicine on neural regeneration.

00:57:57.180 | And it's actually a course that I attended some years ago

00:57:59.680 | when I was a postdoc at Stanford,

00:58:01.120 | so well over a decade ago.

00:58:02.960 | And we had, excuse me,

00:58:05.560 | we had an individual come into the course.

00:58:09.120 | This was an older gentleman.

00:58:11.000 | So older meaning he was in his early 70s

00:58:13.480 | and he had become paraplegic fairly late in life

00:58:16.360 | from a cycling accident.

00:58:18.000 | And he was and is an expert in what it is

00:58:23.880 | to become a paraplegic, of course,

00:58:25.420 | 'cause he had that experience,

00:58:26.360 | but also because he spends a lot of his time

00:58:28.140 | doing volunteer work with people who have become paraplegic

00:58:31.560 | and have become paraplegic at different ages.

00:58:33.560 | And what he described to me was that the overall outcomes

00:58:37.440 | for people that are rendered paraplegic

00:58:40.120 | in terms of their mental health and their physical wellbeing

00:58:43.820 | and their sort of management of general life skills

00:58:46.100 | scales with how early they had that injury

00:58:50.400 | and how long they had the use of their limbs.

00:58:52.440 | So it's not straightforward.

00:58:54.020 | When I heard this result described by Dr. Dan Gilbert

00:59:00.220 | that winning the lottery and becoming paraplegic

00:59:02.440 | basically don't impact your levels of happiness

00:59:05.300 | to any different degree.

00:59:07.720 | When people look back a year later,

00:59:10.240 | I was pretty surprised given my experience

00:59:13.080 | of hearing this lecture at Stanford.

00:59:15.040 | So I thought, wow, from what I understand,

00:59:17.080 | indeed there are people who are rendered paraplegic

00:59:19.540 | and manage that transition very easily.

00:59:21.960 | It doesn't seem to disrupt their feelings

00:59:24.240 | of wellbeing, et cetera.

00:59:25.160 | But for other people, it can be severely disrupting

00:59:28.400 | to their sense of wellbeing and so on and so forth.

00:59:32.300 | I went back and examined these data

00:59:35.440 | and in fact, a subsequent talk,

00:59:37.520 | it's actually a podcast that was given

00:59:39.680 | by Dr. Dan Gilbert some years later.

00:59:42.240 | So this would be just a few years ago.

00:59:43.720 | I think 2019 is a specific date in which it was recorded,

00:59:47.680 | but just a few years ago.

00:59:48.920 | And indeed he corrects himself in that podcast.

00:59:53.180 | What he says is that he misspoke in that earlier talk

00:59:57.160 | that the difference in self-reported levels of happiness

01:00:01.040 | for those that have been rendered paraplegic

01:00:04.020 | versus those who've won the lottery

01:00:06.620 | is not as great as one would expect.

01:00:09.760 | I think most people would expect

01:00:10.820 | that being rendered paraplegic

01:00:12.000 | would make people far less happy.

01:00:14.200 | That's the expectation, I think, anyway.

01:00:16.120 | And that people who would win the lottery,

01:00:17.840 | at least for some period of time,

01:00:19.360 | would be far happier than they were

01:00:21.220 | prior to winning the lottery,

01:00:24.000 | especially given the tremendous amount of money.

01:00:26.360 | And again, the fact that money can't buy happiness,

01:00:29.480 | but that money does indeed enable the ability

01:00:32.360 | to buffer stress provided people

01:00:34.520 | were responsible with that money

01:00:36.080 | and just didn't blow it or spend it all right away,

01:00:38.240 | that they could start to afford things

01:00:40.080 | that they couldn't afford,

01:00:40.920 | not just in terms of luxury items,

01:00:42.800 | but also the ability to hire help that would free up time,

01:00:45.800 | that would allow them to do anything from travel

01:00:48.460 | that they couldn't access before to meditate,

01:00:50.380 | if that was something that they didn't have time to do before

01:00:52.520 | and so on and so forth.

01:00:54.000 | So the result, quote unquote,

01:00:56.600 | that winners of the lottery and recent paraplegics

01:00:59.640 | have the same levels of happiness is actually not true,

01:01:02.280 | at least according to the author of the original study.

01:01:05.560 | Now, what he did not point to

01:01:06.760 | is the degree to which that is not true,

01:01:09.440 | but he did point to the direction of the result

01:01:11.320 | and the fact that people who are rendered paraplegic,

01:01:13.380 | in fact, are reporting themselves as less happy

01:01:17.800 | than they were prior to their injury,

01:01:19.500 | and certainly that their levels of happiness

01:01:22.220 | are lower than those that simply won the lottery,

01:01:25.120 | hundreds of millions of dollars,

01:01:26.200 | which I think is the more intuitive result.

01:01:28.900 | And so I think it's important to be aware

01:01:30.460 | of that discrepancy because it's something

01:01:32.700 | that was lost in the communication

01:01:34.380 | around those results the first time around.

01:01:37.220 | And indeed, Dan Gilbert is an excellent scientist

01:01:40.480 | and was quite good about trying to correct the narrative.

01:01:44.360 | I myself as a podcaster who puts information on the internet

01:01:47.720 | know that the challenges of correcting narratives,

01:01:50.160 | especially of things that came out some time ago,

01:01:53.020 | we always attempt to do this as best we can,

01:01:54.800 | but not everyone that saw that first video

01:01:56.920 | will necessarily hear the discussion

01:01:58.680 | that happened subsequently.

01:02:00.180 | So my hope is that Dr. Gilbert will interpret

01:02:04.480 | me communicating this now,

01:02:05.860 | not as an attempt to criticize him,

01:02:07.200 | but rather as an attempt to praise his willingness

01:02:09.440 | to try and correct the narrative to be more accurate.

01:02:12.040 | So to be very clear about what this study did

01:02:14.160 | and didn't show, and here I'm going to combine these results

01:02:18.680 | with other studies that I was able to find

01:02:21.100 | that explored similar phenomenon.

01:02:22.840 | So major trauma, for instance,

01:02:25.000 | not necessarily becoming paraplegic,

01:02:26.940 | but traumas of a different sort, emotional traumas.

01:02:30.800 | When you look at the whole of those data,

01:02:32.760 | at least my read is that when people win the lottery

01:02:37.160 | or acquire wealth through inheritance,

01:02:39.480 | some form of wealth acquisition that is sudden

01:02:42.200 | and that wasn't preceded by a specific effort

01:02:44.660 | to gain that wealth, right?

01:02:45.840 | Buying a lottery ticket is a pretty quick thing.

01:02:48.320 | Inheritance is something that you simply get

01:02:51.040 | by virtue of who you are, not necessarily by effort.

01:02:54.440 | Well, that led to increases in self-reported happiness

01:02:59.440 | compared to prior to the inheritance of the lottery win,

01:03:02.460 | but it wasn't as substantial as you might imagine

01:03:05.920 | if you're approaching the notion of happiness

01:03:08.880 | simply from, well, more money equals more happiness.

01:03:12.180 | And while it is true that people

01:03:15.020 | who are rendered paraplegic

01:03:16.680 | or who undergo psychological traumas

01:03:20.000 | or physical traumas of any various kind

01:03:22.400 | are and, frankly, are remarkably resilient in many cases,

01:03:28.140 | they can still manage to go about life and work

01:03:31.280 | and engage in relationships, et cetera,

01:03:33.840 | there is a visible decrease in overall levels

01:03:36.920 | of happiness and wellbeing, in particular,

01:03:39.960 | if the psychological and physical trauma

01:03:42.800 | renders their nervous system different in a way

01:03:46.520 | that impacts other major areas of life

01:03:50.000 | and enjoyment for them.

01:03:51.800 | And that's certainly true one year out from the trauma.

01:03:54.800 | So the point is that we do need to reframe this idea

01:03:57.720 | that whether or not you win the lottery

01:03:59.120 | or become paraplegic or suffer some major trauma,

01:04:01.560 | your levels of happiness are going to be the same

01:04:03.640 | three months or a year later.

01:04:05.200 | I don't think that's accurate.

01:04:06.760 | And in fact, Dr. Dan Gilbert emphasized

01:04:09.480 | that that's not accurate even in that initial study.

01:04:13.240 | And I think it's an important thing to frame

01:04:15.400 | because that's such a popular notion

01:04:17.680 | or that that idea combined with the idea

01:04:19.920 | that increased earnings don't make us happy

01:04:22.600 | combined with the idea that we are happy earlier in life,

01:04:27.020 | but then as more demands arise in life,

01:04:29.400 | we become less happy and then we become happy again.

01:04:31.360 | And that idea as we already explored

01:04:33.800 | is not necessarily true.

01:04:34.920 | Frankly, I knew a lot of teenagers

01:04:36.340 | and people in their early 20s are pretty unhappy

01:04:39.180 | who then become happier later

01:04:40.440 | as they acquire more resources.

01:04:41.580 | Sometimes distance, let's be honest,

01:04:43.720 | sometimes distance from our family of origin

01:04:46.200 | makes us more happy, sometimes less so.

01:04:48.520 | It's highly individual.

01:04:49.960 | So I think those general themes

01:04:52.280 | that we've heard over and over while they have merit

01:04:54.340 | and they certainly stand up in some of the more powerful

01:04:56.960 | longitudinal and short-term studies,

01:04:59.440 | there is nuance and in some cases,

01:05:01.300 | there are now additional data

01:05:02.600 | that are causing us to revise those understandings.

01:05:05.440 | Now, there is an important point

01:05:06.700 | or I should say the important point

01:05:09.600 | that we can really credit Dan Gilbert

01:05:12.460 | and others in the field of psychology with

01:05:14.600 | and that we owe them a great debt of gratitude for

01:05:17.760 | is that we do have far more control

01:05:21.380 | over our levels of happiness than we might think.

01:05:24.240 | And many of the things that reside at that level of control,

01:05:29.200 | that is the things that we can do and think and say

01:05:32.080 | and access don't come from external things, right?

01:05:36.820 | They don't come necessarily

01:05:38.560 | from the acquisition of material goods,

01:05:41.360 | but rather there are things that we can do

01:05:44.360 | that can allow us to so-called synthesize happiness.

01:05:47.900 | And I think this is one of the great gifts

01:05:50.080 | of modern psychology is that Dan Gilbert and others,

01:05:54.200 | the Harvard Happiness Project work at Yale and elsewhere,

01:05:57.440 | right, there are excellent labs working on happiness

01:05:59.560 | all over the US and all over the world, frankly.

01:06:03.600 | One of the great gifts that they've supplied us

01:06:05.520 | in the form of data is that there really are things

01:06:08.400 | that we can all do and think and access

01:06:11.160 | to allow ourselves to so-called synthesize happiness.

01:06:14.560 | Now, this notion of synthesizing happiness

01:06:17.140 | or synthetic happiness as it's sometimes called

01:06:20.080 | can sometimes ruffle people's feathers a bit

01:06:22.200 | because people immediately flip to the idea that,

01:06:26.240 | oh, you're just going to tell me to be grateful

01:06:28.040 | for what I have or to just navel gaze

01:06:31.040 | or just to imagine that I'm happy.

01:06:32.960 | But that's really not what synthetic happiness

01:06:34.640 | is about at all.

01:06:35.560 | Synthetic happiness actually has to do

01:06:37.100 | with some really important larger principles

01:06:40.320 | about the way that our emotional system

01:06:43.560 | and the way that the reward systems

01:06:45.540 | of our brain really function.

01:06:48.480 | And they point to important concepts

01:06:50.520 | that we're going to now discuss,

01:06:52.240 | things like the hedonic set point, for instance,

01:06:55.120 | or the dopamine system of anticipation of rewards

01:06:58.480 | versus receiving rewards.

01:06:59.440 | Just as a brief insight into that,

01:07:02.600 | our anticipation of something positive oftentimes leads

01:07:06.940 | to greater increases in the sorts of neurochemicals

01:07:09.600 | that support a state of happiness and wellbeing

01:07:12.440 | than the actual acquisition of the thing

01:07:15.720 | that we're trying to obtain.

01:07:17.040 | And this goes back to a theme I've discussed a few times

01:07:19.000 | before in this podcast,

01:07:20.960 | in particular with my colleague

01:07:22.720 | at Stanford School of Medicine, Dr. Anna Lemke,

01:07:24.600 | who wrote the fabulous book "Dopamine Nation."

01:07:26.880 | If you're interested in dopamine and addiction in particular,

01:07:29.800 | that's a wonderful, clear, and extremely informative read.

01:07:34.800 | And if you're interested in dopamine more generally,

01:07:37.200 | just not just in the states of addiction,

01:07:39.480 | but in everyday life and in pursuit and motivation,

01:07:42.480 | "The Molecule of More" is an excellent book related to that.

01:07:45.740 | And as I mentioned earlier,

01:07:46.600 | we have this episode on dopamine motivation and drive.

01:07:49.680 | The notion of synthetic happiness is not simply

01:07:54.680 | about imagining happiness or thinking about happiness

01:07:57.720 | or anticipating happiness.

01:07:59.320 | To some extent it is,

01:08:00.280 | but it relates to a number of other important themes,

01:08:03.440 | but it is grounded very thoroughly

01:08:05.760 | in the neurobiology of dopamine rewards.

01:08:09.140 | And I'll talk about some of that neurobiology

01:08:10.960 | in a few moments.

01:08:12.120 | But I want to take a couple of minutes

01:08:14.640 | and talk about what synthetic happiness is

01:08:16.840 | and what some of the conditions are

01:08:18.720 | for allowing us to access the state

01:08:20.680 | of so-called synthetic happiness.

01:08:22.560 | And I want to point out at the outset

01:08:24.640 | that synthetic happiness,

01:08:26.200 | while it might sound synthetic, AKA false,

01:08:29.880 | it's anything but.

01:08:31.040 | It actually turns out to be among the more

01:08:33.400 | and perhaps the more potent form of happiness

01:08:35.820 | that we can all access.

01:08:37.120 | And this is where themes related to our control

01:08:41.020 | over our own internal state

01:08:42.720 | really become not only valid, but very powerful.

01:08:46.040 | So for instance, Dr. Dan Gilbert and others

01:08:50.460 | have explored how opportunity and choice,

01:08:53.800 | that is freedom, can and can't lead to states of happiness.

01:08:57.740 | And the results of those studies are very solid

01:09:00.760 | and frankly, very surprising

01:09:03.020 | until you understand the results.

01:09:04.540 | And once you do,

01:09:05.860 | I think you will immediately see areas of your own life

01:09:08.840 | that you can start to access more happiness.

01:09:11.180 | Again, genuine happiness simply by framing certain choices

01:09:15.360 | in a particular way and maybe even by eliminating choices.

01:09:18.740 | Now I'd like to focus on the research aimed at understanding

01:09:21.680 | what increases our levels of happiness.

01:09:24.420 | And I'd like to frame this

01:09:25.800 | under the umbrella of two major themes.

01:09:27.680 | The first theme is so-called natural happiness.

01:09:30.700 | Natural happiness is the sort of happiness

01:09:32.680 | that most of us are familiar with.

01:09:34.800 | So the kind of happiness that we expect to have

01:09:37.800 | if we, for instance, complete a degree,

01:09:40.460 | hopefully a degree in a topic meaningful

01:09:42.520 | and interesting to us, but a degree nonetheless,

01:09:45.520 | or we find a mate,

01:09:47.620 | hopefully a mate that we enjoy spending time with,

01:09:50.040 | or for instance, making a certain income

01:09:52.120 | or finding work that we enjoy on a regular basis.

01:09:55.540 | All of those are forms of happiness

01:09:56.920 | that from a very early time in development,

01:09:59.580 | we are taught exist.

01:10:01.960 | For instance, even when we are very young,

01:10:03.520 | we are told that our birthday is coming

01:10:05.160 | and that we are going to get presents

01:10:06.520 | and those presents are going to be focused on knowledge

01:10:09.280 | of things that we already enjoy.

01:10:11.400 | So if you're a little kid and you like trucks

01:10:12.960 | or you're a little kid and you like dolls,

01:10:15.220 | you can sort of expect that those gifts

01:10:17.160 | will bring you some level of joy or happiness.

01:10:19.760 | And while that's a small child example,

01:10:22.600 | that general notion of natural happiness

01:10:24.960 | is of course one that persists into adolescence,

01:10:28.940 | into young adulthood and into adulthood.

01:10:31.640 | And we quite understandably come to associate

01:10:35.040 | this feeling of joy or happiness

01:10:37.120 | with the receiving of things or the acquisition of things,

01:10:40.960 | whether by effort, by gift, by inheritance

01:10:42.960 | or some other form, okay?

01:10:44.240 | So that's natural happiness.

01:10:45.540 | And yet, as I mentioned a little bit earlier,

01:10:48.560 | there's also this notion of synthetic happiness.

01:10:51.400 | And some of the more interesting and exciting research

01:10:53.760 | in the fields of psychology and in fact neuroscience

01:10:56.600 | point to this idea of synthetic happiness

01:10:59.800 | as at least as powerful a source of happiness

01:11:03.680 | as natural happiness.

01:11:05.460 | Again, at least as powerful and perhaps even more powerful.

01:11:09.420 | And of course, one has to take a slightly different view

01:11:11.980 | of what happiness is in order to accept this idea

01:11:14.420 | that we can create happiness for ourselves.

01:11:17.140 | But that doesn't mean that the whole notion

01:11:20.200 | of synthetic happiness is merely a passive one

01:11:22.700 | where all we do is sit back and imagine being happy

01:11:25.380 | and then we are happy.

01:11:26.720 | For better or for worse, our nervous systems

01:11:28.880 | and our neurochemistry simply don't work that way.

01:11:32.180 | In fact, synthetic happiness has almost always

01:11:34.560 | been understood as something that we have to put

01:11:36.900 | some effort toward achieving.

01:11:39.000 | But, and this is an important thing to point out,

01:11:42.360 | synthetic happiness also requires that certain situational

01:11:46.600 | or environmental conditions be met.

01:11:49.920 | A good example of this is some of the work

01:11:52.100 | by Jillian Mandich, or I should say Dr. Jillian Mandich,

01:11:55.720 | who's done some interesting work on the conditions

01:11:58.160 | for creating happiness within our mind

01:12:00.900 | and in our overall state of being.

01:12:03.400 | And she's been involved in a number of different studies,

01:12:06.220 | but one of the ones that I found particularly interesting

01:12:08.840 | is one in which they explored different types of music

01:12:13.200 | and other aspects of environmental settings.

01:12:15.400 | So you bring subjects to the laboratory,

01:12:17.360 | play them different types of music.

01:12:18.880 | There are in fact, certain aspects of music

01:12:22.160 | that can create different states of mind,

01:12:24.280 | sadness, happiness, anticipation.

01:12:26.860 | In fact, there are certain patterns of music

01:12:28.960 | that can reliably induce anticipation

01:12:31.880 | of the fear and anxiety based type.

01:12:34.420 | So for instance, think the movie "Jaws."

01:12:37.120 | If you recall, for those of you that have seen "Jaws,"

01:12:39.400 | there's this ongoing theme music.

01:12:41.960 | Anytime the shark might be present in the water

01:12:45.640 | or in a given scene, that essentially goes...

01:12:47.800 | Now for the musicians out there,

01:12:50.840 | this has basis in things like tritones

01:12:52.960 | and things that are understood from the mathematics

01:12:55.400 | and the musical side, and from the neuroscience side

01:12:58.560 | are known to create a neural state of anticipation.

01:13:02.960 | Yeah, a neural state of anticipation

01:13:04.800 | and not necessarily a positive one.

01:13:07.040 | And indeed, there are other patterns of music

01:13:10.160 | that involve uptones.

01:13:12.640 | Think some of the music that's typically been used

01:13:16.760 | in cartoons of various sorts.

01:13:19.160 | There's a long history of this.

01:13:20.580 | Indeed, there's a whole literature of psychological

01:13:23.220 | and now even a smaller but still interesting literature

01:13:26.800 | on the neuroscience of how certain patterns of music

01:13:30.280 | can induce a state of joy

01:13:31.960 | and joyful anticipation in particular.

01:13:34.200 | A lot of those patterns of music are incorporated

01:13:36.840 | into so-called happy cartoons and Disney movies

01:13:39.760 | and things of that sort.

01:13:41.240 | In any case, Dr. Mandich and others have explored

01:13:44.920 | how music in particular but other features

01:13:47.720 | of the environment can or cannot induce states of happiness.

01:13:51.160 | And the basic takeaway from those studies

01:13:53.220 | is that while having a certain environmental sound,

01:13:58.220 | musical tone or visual feature to a given space, a room,

01:14:05.240 | is necessary for a state of happiness,

01:14:08.040 | it is not alone sufficient.

01:14:09.720 | What is required is that individuals not only be placed

01:14:14.100 | into an environment that contains music or visual items

01:14:18.860 | or a combination of music and visual items

01:14:21.160 | that can induce states of joy or happiness

01:14:23.720 | or positive anticipation,

01:14:25.660 | but that they also are given some sort of instruction

01:14:29.600 | or instruction manual as to how to synthesize happiness

01:14:33.240 | inside of that environment.

01:14:35.620 | This is important because what this says

01:14:37.920 | is that our ability to create states of happiness

01:14:40.980 | is dependent on our environment

01:14:43.120 | but also requires effort from us.

01:14:46.080 | That also makes sense as to why

01:14:47.520 | when we are under conditions of deprivation,

01:14:50.400 | so it could be social deprivation or financial deprivation,

01:14:53.400 | or even for people that are very sensitive to weather,

01:14:56.440 | there are a certain number of individuals,

01:14:58.520 | about 30% of people who report feeling very, very low

01:15:02.560 | under conditions where the sky is overcast,

01:15:05.360 | especially if it's been overcast for a number of days,

01:15:07.840 | the so-called seasonal affective depression.

01:15:10.760 | Those individuals, by the way,

01:15:11.980 | can often receive tremendous benefits

01:15:14.440 | in terms of elevating their mood

01:15:15.740 | if they make an effort to get sunlight

01:15:17.340 | and if they can't get sunlight, artificial light

01:15:19.080 | of the sort that we talked about earlier.

01:15:21.520 | But in any case, there are a number of people

01:15:24.920 | that are profoundly negatively influenced

01:15:28.520 | by the lack of positive visual and auditory cues

01:15:33.040 | in their environment.

01:15:34.200 | But for most people, we are in a,

01:15:37.140 | what I would call a dynamic relationship

01:15:39.240 | with our environment.

01:15:40.400 | Our environment has an effect on our mood,

01:15:42.200 | but the research indicates that we also need to make

01:15:44.900 | some sort of effort toward being happy.

01:15:47.540 | Now, effort toward being happy is a very vague term,

01:15:50.740 | so let's better define what that is.

01:15:53.080 | In the case of Dr. Mandich's work,

01:15:55.640 | this took the form of doing so-called happiness

01:15:58.240 | inventories, right?

01:15:59.960 | That can be focusing on things that one is grateful for,

01:16:03.280 | things that they particularly enjoy.

01:16:05.900 | This is somewhat of a gratitude type practice,

01:16:09.400 | but includes some other features as well

01:16:11.180 | that are more focused on the things that bring you meaning

01:16:14.000 | and actually engaging in the things

01:16:15.500 | that bring you meaning.

01:16:16.340 | So if you're trying to think about

01:16:17.560 | how to improve your levels of happiness,

01:16:20.120 | what this research essentially says is

01:16:22.500 | that you would be smart to try

01:16:25.280 | and adjust your home environment,

01:16:26.600 | adjust your work environment

01:16:27.800 | so that it is cheerful to you.

01:16:29.280 | Maybe that means a plant.

01:16:30.320 | For me in my laboratory,

01:16:32.560 | one of the things that was really critical

01:16:33.960 | that I had as a postdoc and in my own laboratory

01:16:38.280 | when I first started my lab was I love aquaria,

01:16:40.960 | so I had multiple fish tanks.

01:16:42.320 | In fact, people in my laboratory

01:16:43.320 | were always rolling their eyes.

01:16:44.320 | Why do we have to have all these fish tanks

01:16:45.840 | with all these, I like freshwater tanks,

01:16:47.700 | not saltwater tanks for reasons

01:16:50.560 | that aren't interesting for this discussion,

01:16:52.240 | but freshwater tanks with discus fish, for instance,

01:16:56.040 | to me are just beautiful.

01:16:57.000 | They make me happy.

01:16:57.840 | I just enjoy them.

01:16:59.400 | Music is a complicated thing in laboratories

01:17:01.200 | because it's a shared space,

01:17:02.440 | so headphones are the general requirement,

01:17:05.120 | but having either silence, if you love silence,

01:17:07.960 | and I happen to like working in silence

01:17:09.540 | or listening to certain forms of music,

01:17:11.080 | I do also use the 40 hertz binaural beats,

01:17:14.520 | or I particularly like listening to Glenn Gould

01:17:18.100 | while I work or listening to whale song,

01:17:20.680 | believe it or not, while I work,

01:17:21.620 | because it doesn't have any structure that I can follow.

01:17:23.640 | I don't speak whale, and so I can't follow,

01:17:25.860 | but it fills the space in a way that I find pleasant,

01:17:28.640 | and I've put substantial amounts of effort

01:17:30.820 | into making my laboratory spaces and my office spaces,

01:17:34.160 | my work spaces, nice places to be.

01:17:37.280 | Now, I had no knowledge of this work

01:17:39.120 | from Dr. Mandich and others at the time when I did that,

01:17:42.080 | but what I found was that over the years,

01:17:44.160 | I was challenged in maintaining a kind of elevated mood

01:17:48.200 | while working in a laboratory,

01:17:49.440 | not because I didn't thoroughly enjoy the work.

01:17:51.240 | I love doing experiments with my hands,

01:17:52.840 | and I loved being in lab,

01:17:54.320 | but at least the labs that I was in

01:17:56.360 | as a graduate student and postdoc, there were no windows,

01:17:58.500 | so I wasn't getting adequate sunshine.

01:18:00.420 | The windows that we didn't have didn't open,

01:18:02.660 | so I wasn't getting a lot of fresh air,

01:18:04.300 | and so on and so forth.

01:18:05.460 | So I've personally found it very valuable

01:18:07.800 | to create an environment both at work and at home

01:18:10.780 | that I find aesthetically pleasant,

01:18:13.700 | at least in some way or another,

01:18:15.020 | and I realize people have varying levels of control

01:18:18.100 | over their aesthetic environment.

01:18:19.780 | Certainly the auditory environment can be controlled

01:18:22.360 | nowadays through the use of headphones

01:18:23.740 | if you're allowed to use those.

01:18:24.980 | So for instance, using music or using background sound

01:18:28.340 | that you find very pleasant,

01:18:30.280 | combined with a concerted effort on your part

01:18:33.580 | to create states of happiness

01:18:37.300 | by hopefully doing work that's meaningful to you,

01:18:39.640 | or at least is leading to meaningful outcomes,

01:18:42.220 | we'll talk a little bit more about that,

01:18:44.340 | but these happiness inventories also turn out

01:18:46.840 | to be interesting and important sources

01:18:48.820 | of creating so-called synthetic happiness,

01:18:51.340 | and we will also talk about other ways

01:18:52.740 | that one can create elevated levels of synthetic happiness.

01:18:55.860 | And I realized the word synthetic

01:18:57.140 | probably draws up connotations of false happiness

01:19:00.400 | or contrived happiness.

01:19:01.740 | I wish instead of calling it synthetic happiness,

01:19:03.860 | they had called it self-created or self-directed happiness

01:19:07.220 | or something of that sort,

01:19:08.380 | 'cause then it wouldn't sound as false

01:19:10.580 | because it's simply not false.

01:19:13.080 | It leads to the same, as far as we know,

01:19:15.620 | identical neurochemical and psychological states of happiness

01:19:18.200 | as natural happiness,

01:19:19.080 | and might even be more persistent than natural happiness.

01:19:22.380 | It certainly is more under our control.

01:19:24.680 | But the key point is that environment

01:19:26.420 | and self-directed work at being happy are both important,

01:19:31.420 | and they interact with one another.

01:19:33.380 | So if you're somebody who has a hard time

01:19:35.180 | synthesizing happiness through any of the methods

01:19:38.100 | that we talk about today,

01:19:39.340 | don't consider yourself deficient.

01:19:42.420 | It could very well be that the environment that you're in,

01:19:44.720 | social environment or physical environment

01:19:46.420 | or auditory environment,

01:19:47.580 | is simply not conducive to synthesizing happiness.

01:19:51.140 | And for that reason, I think the work of Gillian Mandich

01:19:53.420 | and colleagues and others in the field

01:19:55.780 | is tremendously important

01:19:56.940 | because it removes us from this pressure

01:19:59.460 | to just synthesize happiness

01:20:01.100 | from within despite our circumstances.

01:20:03.300 | I think many of us have heard of the incredible stories

01:20:06.800 | of people like Viktor Frankl or Nelson Mandela,

01:20:09.940 | who were stripped of their freedom

01:20:11.620 | and yet managed to maintain

01:20:13.220 | some sense of positive anticipation,

01:20:15.120 | or at least some sense of identity

01:20:18.380 | that allowed them to still access forms of happiness.

01:20:21.340 | Those are highly unique situations, of course,

01:20:23.580 | and they speak to the power of the human psyche

01:20:26.880 | for synthesizing happiness

01:20:28.380 | and certainly for synthesizing a sense

01:20:30.500 | that there might be a future and to live into that future,

01:20:33.720 | in their cases, incredibly impressive ways.

01:20:36.380 | But I think for most everybody,

01:20:37.620 | the environment that we're in

01:20:38.700 | has a powerful impact on our mood

01:20:41.060 | and some people more than others.

01:20:43.180 | I know people that are perfectly happy with blank walls,

01:20:45.620 | no pictures on the walls.

01:20:46.580 | Other people benefit tremendously from having photos

01:20:49.380 | or plants in their environment and so on.

01:20:51.680 | You really have to determine what's needed for you

01:20:54.100 | and do your best to try and place those things

01:20:56.260 | into your environment,

01:20:57.100 | or rather place yourself into an environment

01:20:59.060 | that is conducive to you synthesizing your happiness.

01:21:02.340 | In fact, the powerful interaction between our environment

01:21:05.640 | and our own ability to generate certain kinds of emotions

01:21:09.920 | is well-established, not just for happiness,

01:21:11.800 | but for things like gratitude.

01:21:13.040 | So for instance, there's a classic study from AIMS, A-M-E-S,

01:21:16.500 | in 2004, that was focused on gratitude.

01:21:20.540 | And we've had an episode on gratitude before.

01:21:23.220 | The basic takeaway of that episode

01:21:24.780 | is that it turns out receiving gratitude

01:21:28.380 | is a more powerful stimulus

01:21:31.740 | for the release of neurochemicals

01:21:33.780 | and activation of brain areas

01:21:35.140 | associated with so-called pro-social behaviors

01:21:37.180 | and feelings of wellbeing, including happiness,

01:21:40.440 | but also observing stories in the form of movies or books

01:21:44.820 | or other narratives of other people receiving help

01:21:47.100 | is also a very powerful stimulus for gratitude.

01:21:49.700 | Also, giving gratitude is very powerful,

01:21:52.420 | but not as powerful as receiving gratitude,

01:21:54.820 | at least that's what the research says,

01:21:55.940 | or observing powerful exchanges of gratitude

01:21:58.580 | between other individuals.

01:22:00.380 | What the study from AIMS showed

01:22:02.060 | is that gratitude as a state of mind and as an emotion

01:22:05.460 | does not exist in a vacuum.

01:22:08.220 | It's not independent of our surroundings.

01:22:11.800 | So for instance,

01:22:12.640 | just writing down all the things you're grateful for

01:22:14.140 | while it has some positive impact,

01:22:16.180 | the impact of that or receiving gratitude

01:22:18.820 | or observing gratitude is far more potent, right?

01:22:22.460 | Bigger increases in happiness and feelings of wellbeing

01:22:25.500 | and indeed neurochemicals and activation of brain areas

01:22:27.660 | associated with happiness and wellbeing

01:22:30.300 | when there's a reciprocity,

01:22:31.980 | when the person receiving understands something

01:22:35.220 | about the person that's giving to them

01:22:36.660 | and understands that the person is giving genuinely,

01:22:38.700 | for instance.

01:22:39.580 | So there's an environmental interaction.

01:22:41.020 | It's not just about receiving,

01:22:42.040 | it's receiving from somebody that you know genuinely

01:22:45.020 | wants to give.

01:22:46.340 | And likewise for the giver in that equation,

01:22:49.580 | the feelings of wellbeing are far greater

01:22:52.080 | when the person receiving whatever it is,

01:22:55.080 | money, food, assistance in some form or another,

01:22:58.340 | it could be physical assistance, et cetera,

01:23:01.020 | when the giver has knowledge that the person receiving it

01:23:03.960 | genuinely needed the thing that they are receiving.

01:23:06.080 | So the important finding within the research again and again

01:23:08.720 | is that happiness doesn't exist in a vacuum.

01:23:11.920 | It's partially our own responsibility

01:23:13.940 | to synthesize happiness.

01:23:15.300 | And I was told that many times in your life,

01:23:16.740 | happiness is in your head.

01:23:18.140 | Well, yes, indeed it's in your head,

01:23:20.140 | but it's also dependent on interactions

01:23:23.460 | with your environment,

01:23:24.300 | physical environment and social environment and so on.

01:23:27.100 | Likewise, gratitude is something that we can create

01:23:29.980 | inside of us, right?

01:23:31.460 | Through gratitude lists and appreciation,

01:23:33.220 | or we can give both powerful sources

01:23:36.200 | of evoking neurochemical changes associated with gratitude

01:23:40.300 | and happiness and wellbeing,

01:23:42.440 | but it too doesn't exist in a vacuum.

01:23:45.200 | There's a much greater positive effect

01:23:47.660 | when we have knowledge about why the giver

01:23:51.000 | is giving us something,

01:23:52.000 | or that the person receiving something

01:23:53.340 | is going to benefit tremendously from receiving it.

01:23:56.220 | So I'm highlighting this because I think that

01:23:58.900 | when we hear about synthetic happiness,

01:24:01.620 | there's a kind of automatic erasing of context

01:24:05.600 | that tends to occur.

01:24:06.780 | And in fact, if you were to peruse the various videos

01:24:10.640 | online or papers that exist on PubMed

01:24:13.580 | around happiness and synthetic happiness in particular,

01:24:16.420 | you would come away with the impression

01:24:18.420 | that synthetic happiness is just something

01:24:20.020 | that we're supposed to snap our fingers and access,

01:24:22.340 | or perhaps do very specific things in access.

01:24:24.940 | But while that is true, context really matters.

01:24:28.580 | And I think that's an important point,

01:24:30.420 | much in the same way that the point needs to be made

01:24:34.140 | that while money doesn't buy happiness,

01:24:36.260 | money can buffer stress and certainly offer opportunities

01:24:39.340 | that can provide opportunities for more happiness.

01:24:42.100 | So I think we are starting to arrive at a general theme here

01:24:44.980 | which is that nothing related to our mood

01:24:47.620 | exists in isolation.

01:24:49.140 | And in fact, that leads me to a discussion

01:24:51.300 | of one of the major scientific findings

01:24:54.700 | in the realm of what sorts of mindsets and behaviors

01:24:58.420 | can in fact lead to happiness.

01:25:00.080 | And this is a paper that was published in 2008.

01:25:03.020 | And even though that might seem like a while ago,

01:25:04.540 | it forms the basis for a large amount of literature

01:25:07.040 | that followed.

01:25:07.980 | It's a very interesting literature.

01:25:09.300 | This is work from Elizabeth Dunn and colleagues

01:25:12.980 | and was published in the journal Science,

01:25:14.920 | which again is one of the sort of three apex journals,

01:25:17.580 | Nature Science, Cell, I always say is sort of the Super Bowl

01:25:21.660 | NBA Championships and Stanley Cup of Scientific Publishing.

01:25:24.060 | Very, very stringent in terms of the number of papers

01:25:27.260 | they let in, very few that is.

01:25:29.140 | And the title of this paper makes fairly obvious

01:25:32.020 | what the paper is about.

01:25:33.200 | The title of the paper is "Spending Money on Others

01:25:36.180 | Promotes Happiness."

01:25:37.640 | And I know a number of you probably hear that title

01:25:39.980 | and think, oh boy, here we go.

01:25:41.340 | He's going to tell us that giving away all our money

01:25:43.940 | is going to make us happier than receiving money.

01:25:46.600 | And I promise you that is not what I'm going to tell you.

01:25:48.960 | But nonetheless, this is a very interesting study.

01:25:51.060 | And it's one that I think that we really

01:25:52.660 | ought to pay attention to.

01:25:54.440 | Because what the study is based on is the fact that income,

01:25:59.660 | provided one's income meets a certain level of basic needs,

01:26:03.600 | indeed has been shown to have only a weak effect

01:26:07.760 | on overall happiness.

01:26:09.240 | So quoting from the paper in the first paragraph,

01:26:13.400 | "Income has a reliable but surprisingly weak effect

01:26:16.100 | on happiness within nations."

01:26:18.440 | Within nations just mean they looked at this

01:26:20.060 | in not just the United States,

01:26:21.400 | but a number of other places as well.

01:26:24.000 | Particularly once basic needs are met.

01:26:26.220 | Okay, so if that's the case,

01:26:27.960 | then what aspects of money and having money

01:26:31.100 | are related to happiness?

01:26:32.300 | Certainly there are people who have a lot of money

01:26:34.060 | who are very happy.

01:26:35.180 | Certainly there are people who have very little money

01:26:36.840 | who are very happy.

01:26:37.920 | And of course the reverse is also true.

01:26:39.680 | There are plenty of people who don't have very much money

01:26:41.960 | who are unhappy.

01:26:43.020 | And in fact, there are people who have a lot of money

01:26:45.220 | who are very unhappy.

01:26:47.100 | A point that whenever it's made,

01:26:49.880 | often leaps those with less money to kind of roll their eyes

01:26:53.680 | because the assumption is more money

01:26:55.460 | does increase happiness.

01:26:57.180 | And in fact, it doesn't.

01:26:58.100 | And later we'll get back to this idea

01:27:00.820 | of whether or how one acquired their money

01:27:05.540 | has any impact on whether or not

01:27:09.220 | that money increases their happiness or not.

01:27:11.860 | Okay, let's kind of earmark that for later.

01:27:13.820 | In the meantime, let's talk a little bit more

01:27:15.580 | about the findings in this paper.

01:27:17.420 | This paper is interesting because what it did

01:27:20.180 | is it explored something called prosocial spending.

01:27:23.640 | Prosocial spending is a phenomenon where people

01:27:27.240 | are taking a certain portion of their income

01:27:29.920 | and they are giving it to others,

01:27:32.120 | often for causes or for things that they think

01:27:35.800 | are important to see happen in the world

01:27:37.960 | or change in the world.

01:27:38.800 | That could be a hungry individual having access to food

01:27:42.040 | or medical care.

01:27:43.560 | It could be for environmental causes.

01:27:45.280 | It could be for animal wellness.

01:27:47.280 | It could be for any number of different things.

01:27:48.780 | It could even be giving somebody money

01:27:50.780 | so that they can buy themselves a gift

01:27:52.240 | or giving somebody money and not having any, excuse me,

01:27:56.020 | understanding or expectation of what they're going to do

01:27:57.880 | with the money, okay?

01:27:59.280 | Again, one of the central themes around gratitude

01:28:02.280 | is that while receiving is great,

01:28:06.720 | giving is also great in terms of increasing sense

01:28:09.160 | of wellbeing.

01:28:10.760 | And one of the more important features to that

01:28:13.880 | is when we give either in the form of words

01:28:17.680 | or in the form of resources,

01:28:20.240 | knowledge that the person receiving benefits from that

01:28:24.640 | in some real way greatly increases the chance

01:28:28.640 | that there's an increase in happiness for the giver

01:28:31.720 | as well as the receiver.

01:28:33.120 | Again, that's a note about gratitude,

01:28:34.640 | but not an insignificant one as it relates to this study.

01:28:37.540 | So what this study found was that higher pro-social spending

01:28:40.960 | was associated with significantly greater happiness.

01:28:43.320 | This was a very statistically significant effect.

01:28:46.200 | And they found that the effects of income

01:28:48.680 | and pro-social spending were independent

01:28:51.440 | and similar in magnitude, okay?

01:28:53.700 | Independent and similar in magnitude.

01:28:55.880 | I'll explain what that means for those of you

01:28:57.640 | that might be confused by that statement in just a moment.

01:29:00.840 | Whereas "personal spending remained unrelated to happiness."

01:29:05.180 | So what this study basically found was

01:29:07.080 | if people are allotted a certain amount of money

01:29:11.160 | to give away and want to adjust for overall income, right?

01:29:16.160 | And this is important because you can imagine

01:29:18.400 | that for some individual giving away $2,000

01:29:22.360 | might represent a significant portion

01:29:24.560 | of their yearly or monthly income.

01:29:26.600 | And for another individual,

01:29:27.680 | it might represent a tiny fraction of their income.

01:29:31.300 | But when you adjust for income level,

01:29:34.800 | what you find is that people who gave away money

01:29:38.400 | benefited tremendously in terms

01:29:41.060 | of their own increase in happiness.

01:29:44.480 | In fact, "employees who devoted more of their bonuses

01:29:47.840 | to pro-social spending," that is giving away more money,

01:29:50.080 | "experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus

01:29:53.200 | and the manner in which they spent that bonus

01:29:55.280 | was a more important predictor of their happiness

01:29:57.580 | than the size of the bonus itself."

01:29:59.760 | This was an actual experiment they ran

01:30:01.320 | with real income, real money.

01:30:04.300 | I'm going to read that again just to make sure it hits home

01:30:06.360 | because I found this to be really impactful.

01:30:09.020 | "Employees who devoted a greater fraction of their bonus

01:30:14.120 | to pro-social spending," that is giving away money to others,

01:30:18.460 | "experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus

01:30:21.860 | and the manner in which they spent that bonus

01:30:23.900 | was a more important predictor of their happiness

01:30:26.100 | than the size of the bonus itself."

01:30:27.900 | So the actual bonus, the receiving of the money,

01:30:30.880 | led to greater increases in happiness if they gave it away.

01:30:35.760 | And the act of giving it away itself

01:30:39.120 | led to greater increases in happiness

01:30:41.440 | than receiving the bonus.

01:30:43.400 | So it's a twofer, as you might say.

01:30:45.720 | So the takeaway from this study and studies like it,

01:30:48.700 | I think it's pretty obvious that to the extent that we can,

01:30:51.640 | and again, when I say to the extent that we can,

01:30:53.980 | this means whatever percentage of our own income

01:30:57.520 | that we can afford to give away,

01:30:58.760 | or if we don't have income,

01:31:00.880 | the percentage of our effort, right?

01:31:02.960 | I mean, this was about money, but it's also about effort.

01:31:05.360 | We can help others, right?

01:31:06.700 | You can serve in food kitchens.

01:31:09.760 | You can do community gardening.

01:31:11.960 | You can pick up trash.

01:31:13.360 | You can do any number of things.

01:31:15.160 | You can assist a neighbor with childcare

01:31:17.480 | or assist a neighbor who is physically less able

01:31:20.600 | to retrieve their paper, et cetera, et cetera.

01:31:22.960 | The point is that giving resources,

01:31:26.720 | certainly in the form of money,

01:31:28.220 | but also in the form of effort and time,

01:31:32.160 | is immensely beneficial for synthesizing our own happiness,

01:31:36.240 | that is, for the giver, us,

01:31:38.400 | to increase our levels of happiness.

01:31:40.320 | But the degree of an increase in our own happiness

01:31:43.860 | is proportional in some way

01:31:46.600 | to the extent to which the person receiving

01:31:49.480 | actually needed that help and registers that help.

01:31:52.680 | Excellent research also points to the fact

01:31:55.320 | that another potent way to synthesize happiness,

01:31:58.480 | that is to create genuine states of happiness in ourselves,

01:32:02.360 | is to leverage the so-called focus system,

01:32:05.700 | or rather, I should say,

01:32:07.120 | to de-emphasize the tendency of our minds to wander.

01:32:11.120 | There's an excellent paper on this

01:32:12.480 | also published in the journal "Science."

01:32:14.040 | This is now a classic paper.

01:32:15.340 | I talked a little bit about it in the episode on meditation,

01:32:17.760 | but for those of you that did

01:32:19.340 | or perhaps didn't hear that episode,

01:32:21.640 | I just want to briefly touch on a few aspects of the paper.

01:32:25.340 | And in particular, a few aspects of the paper

01:32:27.960 | that I didn't talk about previously.

01:32:29.760 | And the title of this paper, again,

01:32:31.560 | is very straightforward

01:32:32.800 | in terms of telling you what it's about.

01:32:34.680 | And that is "A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind"

01:32:38.520 | by Killingsworth and Gilbert.

01:32:40.600 | This paper was published in "Science" in 2010,

01:32:42.600 | and we will provide a link to the paper.

01:32:44.320 | This is frankly a very interesting paper.

01:32:46.600 | This paper involved several thousand subjects,

01:32:48.880 | or I should say 2,250 adult subjects.

01:32:52.440 | And what they were able to do

01:32:54.000 | was to contact these subjects

01:32:55.380 | while they were going about living their daily lives

01:32:58.080 | and ask them both what they were doing

01:33:00.120 | and what they were feeling.

01:33:01.760 | There were some additional questions that they asked them,

01:33:03.560 | but they were able to establish

01:33:05.960 | whether or not people were watching television

01:33:08.520 | or doing housework or working on a home computer

01:33:11.680 | or resting or listening to music, et cetera,

01:33:14.660 | in their natural environment.

01:33:15.800 | So this is outside the laboratory.

01:33:17.680 | And they were able to assess

01:33:19.360 | to what extent those people were happy or unhappy or neutral

01:33:25.220 | or had some other emotional state

01:33:27.480 | at the time when they were engaging

01:33:28.920 | in any number of different activities.

01:33:30.560 | And they assessed whether or not those individuals

01:33:34.320 | were also focused on or focused away

01:33:36.560 | from whatever activity they were engaging in.

01:33:39.120 | And the takeaways from this study are many,

01:33:40.980 | but for sake of today's discussion,

01:33:43.980 | what I think is especially interesting

01:33:46.440 | is that regardless of whether or not

01:33:49.240 | people were engaging in activities that they enjoyed or not,

01:33:53.340 | the tendency for their mind to wander from an activity

01:33:57.780 | predicted lower levels of happiness

01:34:00.080 | than if they tended to be focused

01:34:01.420 | on the activity they were engaged in.

01:34:03.780 | Now, that itself should be surprising.

01:34:06.340 | I mean, what that says is that

01:34:07.960 | even if somebody was engaged in an activity

01:34:10.400 | like cleaning their house or doing homework

01:34:12.960 | or reading something that they weren't enjoying,

01:34:15.580 | if they were focused on what they were doing,

01:34:18.080 | they tended to report as happier

01:34:21.080 | than if their mind was drifting elsewhere.

01:34:23.620 | Now, this also points to the idea that perhaps

01:34:25.960 | our minds drift to unpleasant thoughts

01:34:28.000 | more than pleasant thoughts,

01:34:29.060 | but they also address that in the study.

01:34:31.460 | The point I'd like to make here is quote,

01:34:32.900 | "Although people's minds were more likely

01:34:34.620 | "to wander to pleasant topics than to unpleasant topics,"

01:34:38.780 | and there the difference is pretty significant.

01:34:40.640 | People's minds tended to wander to pleasant topics

01:34:44.160 | about 43% of the time as opposed to unpleasant topics

01:34:48.040 | about 27% of the time,

01:34:50.000 | or to neutral topics in the remaining 31% of the samples.

01:34:54.040 | "People were no happier when thinking about pleasant topics

01:34:57.640 | "than about their current activity."

01:34:59.420 | Think about that.

01:35:01.640 | "People were no happier than when thinking

01:35:03.580 | "about pleasant things than their current activity.

01:35:06.000 | "In fact, the mere focus on what they were doing

01:35:09.620 | "was more powerful than anything else,

01:35:12.900 | "even if they didn't enjoy what they were doing."

01:35:15.200 | So they go on here to say, quote,

01:35:16.760 | "Although negative moods are known to cause mind wandering,

01:35:19.940 | "analysis strongly suggested that mind wandering

01:35:22.500 | "was generally the cause," the cause,

01:35:24.900 | "and not merely the consequence of unhappiness."

01:35:28.140 | And so there are a lot of aspects of this study

01:35:29.900 | that are worth going into,

01:35:31.420 | but the major takeaway,

01:35:33.460 | or the one that perhaps we should all be most concerned with

01:35:36.220 | is that when we are not focused on what we are doing,

01:35:39.180 | we tend to be far less happy

01:35:41.200 | than when we are focused on what we were doing,

01:35:43.340 | even if what we were doing

01:35:44.340 | is something that we don't deem very pleasant.

01:35:46.540 | And certainly if we are engaged in something

01:35:48.220 | that we consider very pleasant and we are very focused on,

01:35:50.820 | well, then our levels of happiness are the highest.

01:35:52.900 | That's sort of obvious.

01:35:54.260 | But what this really speaks to

01:35:56.220 | is the tremendous power of building our ability

01:36:00.340 | to focus on what we're doing

01:36:01.560 | and to stay present to what we are doing.

01:36:03.660 | Now, this whole notion of staying present

01:36:05.120 | is one that itself is a little bit complicated.

01:36:07.260 | And in the episode on meditation,

01:36:08.740 | I talked a little bit about whether or not it's beneficial

01:36:11.180 | to be present to our internal state,

01:36:14.660 | or that is our interoceptive state,

01:36:17.700 | our feelings of our heart rate

01:36:19.720 | and how full or empty our gut feels,

01:36:22.400 | or our state of being from our skin inward,

01:36:25.320 | or whether or not we should focus on being present

01:36:27.880 | to things in our immediate surroundings,

01:36:29.300 | both our versions of being "present," as you can imagine.

01:36:33.140 | But in the one case, we're focused internally,

01:36:35.960 | in the other, we're focused externally.

01:36:38.020 | And of course, most of the time,

01:36:39.000 | it's some combination of the two.

01:36:40.480 | But what this study really says

01:36:41.760 | is that any practice that can powerfully impact our ability

01:36:45.800 | to remain present in the activity we are engaged in,

01:36:49.680 | that could even be a phone call,

01:36:51.100 | could be texting for that matter,

01:36:53.060 | could be social media for that matter, right?

01:36:54.940 | We're not placing judgment on the activity here.

01:36:56.980 | In fact, what we're really talking about

01:36:58.660 | is the enormous happiness increasing value

01:37:02.140 | of being present to what we're doing

01:37:03.820 | regardless of what we are doing.

01:37:06.060 | And the practice that's known to be beneficial

01:37:08.200 | for increasing our ability to focus is, among other things,

01:37:12.640 | a short meditation practice.

01:37:15.220 | In fact, work from Wendy Suzuki's lab at NYU.

01:37:18.180 | Again, Wendy has been a guest on this podcast.

01:37:20.180 | Her laboratory has shown that even a very brief meditation

01:37:23.780 | of about 13 minutes,

01:37:25.100 | and this would be the sort of quote unquote

01:37:26.920 | classic type of meditation of eyes closed,

01:37:29.540 | focusing on one's breathing,

01:37:31.100 | even a very brief meditation of just 13 minutes or so

01:37:34.660 | done consistently, so ideally every day,

01:37:38.240 | but you have to imagine that even if you skip a day,

01:37:40.740 | there are still benefits.

01:37:42.260 | That sort of meditation can greatly enhance

01:37:44.740 | one's ability to focus.

01:37:45.940 | In her studies, it was also shown

01:37:48.140 | that sort of brief meditation could also greatly enhance

01:37:50.980 | mood and sleep and various aspects of cognitive performance

01:37:55.700 | and work from my laboratory in collaboration

01:37:57.860 | with Dr. David Spiegel at Stanford Department of Psychiatry

01:38:00.940 | has shown that even briefer meditations

01:38:03.360 | of even just five minutes per day

01:38:05.280 | can have fairly outsized positive effects

01:38:07.660 | on a number of different parameters as well.

01:38:09.740 | Those very brief types of meditations,

01:38:12.380 | because they really are focusing and more accurately,

01:38:15.900 | I should say, refocusing exercises.

01:38:18.180 | When you do that sort of activity of closing your eyes

01:38:21.060 | and forcing yourself to focus and refocus

01:38:23.660 | on your breath and internal state,

01:38:25.580 | that is directing your perception inward,

01:38:27.340 | or if you choose, you could deliberately focus

01:38:30.660 | your perception on some external object or sound

01:38:33.820 | for that matter.

01:38:34.660 | When one does that,

01:38:37.460 | the circuits of the brain involved in focus

01:38:39.780 | dramatically improve, that is they rewire

01:38:42.620 | and increase their ability for you to achieve focus.

01:38:46.440 | Many of us have heard about meditation,

01:38:49.180 | many of us think about meditation as a mindfulness exercise,

01:38:53.100 | mindfulness in quotes,

01:38:54.060 | 'cause that itself needs definition,

01:38:55.820 | but I prefer to view meditations of the sort

01:38:59.500 | that I just described as perceptual or focus-based training,

01:39:03.700 | which is really what the data point to.

01:39:06.460 | Notions around consciousness and states of mind

01:39:08.420 | are very hard to define,

01:39:09.980 | but it's very clear that even a five minutes a day,

01:39:13.100 | or ideally an up to a 13 minute a day meditation

01:39:16.700 | can greatly increase our ability to focus.

01:39:18.580 | And based on the findings in this paper,

01:39:21.060 | a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,

01:39:23.540 | also make it very clear that the ability to refocus again

01:39:27.780 | and again and again on what we're doing throughout our day,

01:39:31.180 | regardless of what we're doing can have a very dramatic,

01:39:34.900 | in fact, a statistically significant increase

01:39:38.260 | on our levels of overall happiness.

01:39:40.220 | So what else does the research tell us we can do

01:39:42.340 | to increase our levels of genuine happiness?

01:39:45.440 | Well, it's very clear based on the longitudinal study

01:39:48.620 | from Harvard, as well as the Yale Happiness Project

01:39:52.500 | and the work of numerous laboratories in the US and elsewhere

01:39:56.660 | that quality social connection is extremely powerful

01:40:01.300 | in terms of its ability to increase our levels of happiness.

01:40:05.420 | What is quality social connection?

01:40:07.860 | Quality social connection falls

01:40:10.220 | into a number of different bins.

01:40:11.760 | This can be romantic connection, this can be friendship,

01:40:14.800 | this can even be coworker

01:40:16.500 | or just daily superficial interaction type connections.

01:40:20.520 | That's surprising to a lot of people

01:40:22.300 | because I think a lot of people hear

01:40:23.780 | quality social connection and they think deep conversation,

01:40:27.220 | but it's very clear from the research

01:40:29.600 | that oftentimes our conversations with people

01:40:32.980 | that we are closest to are actually quite shallow.

01:40:36.420 | If you think about it, if you've been in a romantic

01:40:38.220 | relationship or a friendship for a long period of time,

01:40:40.540 | or maybe even a sibling relationship

01:40:42.180 | or other family relationship,

01:40:44.060 | much of what you talk about is fairly superficial

01:40:48.260 | or fairly trivial.

01:40:49.660 | In fact, it's often a sharing

01:40:51.340 | of the trivial day-to-day things between two people

01:40:54.540 | or through groups of people that leads to the feeling

01:40:58.260 | that people are really connected to one another,

01:41:00.380 | in particular, if it's involving shared experiences

01:41:03.020 | of any kind, good or bad.

01:41:05.440 | So there's an extensive literature on social connection

01:41:08.260 | and how to build social connection.

01:41:10.000 | This certainly should be the topic of a full episode

01:41:12.340 | of this podcast in the not too distant future,

01:41:15.020 | but because social connection can have

01:41:17.020 | such a powerful impact on our states of happiness

01:41:19.540 | and overall wellbeing,

01:41:21.760 | I want to emphasize a few features of social connection

01:41:25.100 | that I think most people might not appreciate.

01:41:27.440 | Once again, when we hear quality social connection,

01:41:30.180 | I think most of us tend to think about

01:41:31.980 | deep, meaningful conversation or long walks on the beach

01:41:35.280 | or camping trips together or travel together.

01:41:37.380 | And while all of those certainly qualify

01:41:39.560 | as wonderful opportunities for social connection,

01:41:42.340 | opportunities for quality social connection

01:41:45.500 | are certainly not limited to those kinds of interactions.

01:41:48.400 | In fact, I can recall times in my graduate career,

01:41:52.080 | so this would be times when I was living in the laboratory,

01:41:54.940 | 'cause that was a significant portion of my graduate years.

01:41:57.940 | And one of the more important social connections for me

01:42:01.160 | was the staff that worked there

01:42:03.400 | in the wee hours of the night

01:42:04.920 | and that came in very early in the morning.

01:42:06.880 | So one of the more regular social connections I had

01:42:09.620 | is I would brush my teeth in the hallway bathroom

01:42:12.400 | and there was no one else really around at that time,

01:42:15.880 | except for the janitors that tended to leave

01:42:18.760 | early in the morning,

01:42:19.600 | they'd worked a good portion of the night

01:42:21.380 | or that were arriving very early in the day.

01:42:23.760 | And the fact that I would see them on a regular basis

01:42:25.840 | and maybe exchange a few words about their work

01:42:27.620 | or their families or the holidays,

01:42:29.280 | actually for me, it became very meaningful in part

01:42:31.960 | because my social connections at the time

01:42:33.760 | were really limited to only social connections

01:42:36.120 | that I had in the context of work.

01:42:38.520 | Now, some people might look at my schedule at that time

01:42:41.240 | and look at my life at that time and say,

01:42:43.060 | well, that was very unhealthy,

01:42:45.040 | you were lacking in certain number of ways.

01:42:47.460 | But frankly, looking back and at the time,

01:42:49.880 | and I know this because I journaled at the time,

01:42:52.160 | I was exceedingly happy, at least for that stage of my life.

01:42:55.240 | At that stage of my life,

01:42:56.120 | I wanted to be focused primarily on doing experiments

01:42:59.520 | and immersing myself in my scientific training.

01:43:04.080 | And for me, the even seemingly insignificant interactions

01:43:07.920 | of talking to the janitor in the morning

01:43:10.960 | or some of the other regular staff was not insignificant.

01:43:13.800 | In fact, for me, it was very significant.

01:43:15.640 | And over the holidays, when their hours were reduced,

01:43:18.000 | I actually missed them quite a lot.

01:43:19.520 | And even as I talk about this,

01:43:20.780 | I can recall the feelings of wellbeing

01:43:22.640 | of just seeing familiar faces.

01:43:24.520 | And that brings up an important point,

01:43:25.960 | which is there's a quite extensive literature

01:43:29.200 | pointing to the fact that when we see faces,

01:43:31.760 | especially faces in the morning and in the late afternoon,

01:43:36.760 | there is a positive impact on the emotional circuitry,

01:43:40.560 | or I should say the circuitry of the brain

01:43:42.120 | that underlies emotional wellbeing.

01:43:44.520 | And that shouldn't come as surprising.

01:43:46.360 | We as old world primates, much like other primates,

01:43:50.240 | are very dependent on faces and facial expressions

01:43:53.860 | in terms of registering our own place in life

01:43:57.160 | and our emotional state.

01:43:59.240 | Now, the origins of this are many.

01:44:00.840 | In particular, we have a brain area.

01:44:03.400 | It's actually called the fusiform face gyrus.

01:44:05.560 | This is an area of the brain that was largely discovered

01:44:08.840 | by women by Nancy Kanwisher at MIT.

01:44:11.680 | And the Kanwisher lab has done extensive work

01:44:14.320 | showing that this brain area

01:44:16.440 | that's dedicated to the processing of faces

01:44:19.240 | and not just faces in real life,

01:44:22.200 | but faces on computer screens and elsewhere

01:44:25.520 | are intimately tied to areas of the brain

01:44:28.200 | that are associated with emotionality.

01:44:29.720 | That's actually work from another laboratory,

01:44:31.680 | Doris Sal's laboratory at Caltech now at UC Berkeley,

01:44:34.180 | has shown that this face processing area in the brain

01:44:38.040 | in both non-human primates and primates

01:44:41.320 | is directly linked to the areas of our brain

01:44:44.620 | that associate with anxiety and fear,

01:44:47.140 | but also areas of the brain

01:44:48.440 | that are associated with wellbeing.

01:44:50.000 | So it comes as no surprise that when we see faces,

01:44:52.540 | in particular friendly faces,

01:44:54.040 | even if we have just brief interactions with those faces,

01:44:56.720 | and even if no words are exchanged,

01:44:59.080 | that creates the sense of social bond

01:45:01.480 | and it creates a sense of predictability.

01:45:03.760 | And I raise this again because I think a lot of people

01:45:05.840 | think that social connection always has to come in the form

01:45:08.840 | of close friendships, which of course are wonderful,

01:45:11.580 | or close romantic relationships,

01:45:12.960 | which of course are wonderful,

01:45:13.980 | or close family relationships, which of course are wonderful.

01:45:16.740 | But as we'll soon discuss in our model of happiness

01:45:20.440 | or how to achieve happiness

01:45:21.700 | based on the scientific literature,

01:45:24.000 | in a few minutes, social connection can and should come

01:45:28.360 | in various forms.

01:45:29.720 | And when I say various forms,

01:45:30.920 | I mean forms of brief interaction,

01:45:33.940 | more superficial interaction,

01:45:35.480 | and forms of deeper interaction.

01:45:38.080 | All of those are relevant to our states of happiness.

01:45:40.500 | And there's research to support that daily interactions

01:45:43.820 | with somebody at a cafe or just a brief hello or a smile,

01:45:47.960 | provided that we are both present,

01:45:50.140 | where we make the effort to be present

01:45:51.840 | to those interactions, however brief they are,

01:45:54.280 | can have a positive effect on people's overall wellbeing,

01:45:57.160 | and not just in that moment, but consistently.

01:46:00.480 | Evidenced by the fact, I think,

01:46:02.040 | that when I look back on those years of working long hours

01:46:05.260 | in the laboratory and essentially restricting myself

01:46:08.280 | either to exercising, sleeping, eating, or working,

01:46:12.640 | again, that's what I wanted at that stage of my life,

01:46:15.120 | certainly not the way I live my life now,

01:46:16.500 | but that's what I wanted at that stage of my life,

01:46:19.060 | that even those seemingly insignificant social interactions

01:46:22.720 | were important to me and had a potent impact

01:46:25.900 | on increasing my level of happiness, and frankly, still do.

01:46:28.660 | And I feel that right now.

01:46:30.540 | That said, I think all of us can appreciate

01:46:32.960 | the immense value of social connection

01:46:35.060 | that is of the more long lasting and,

01:46:37.860 | for lack of a better word, richer type,

01:46:39.820 | whether or not that is with siblings or with parents

01:46:43.280 | or with friends or with romantic partners.

01:46:45.980 | For that reason, I wanted to emphasize a little bit

01:46:48.300 | about what constitutes connection

01:46:50.740 | and what constitutes social connection.

01:46:52.360 | There are basically two forms of social connection

01:46:54.520 | that have been studied, and I'll review both,

01:46:57.180 | as it relates to increasing our levels of happiness.

01:46:59.620 | And the first one is presence and eye contact,

01:47:02.460 | and the second is physical contact.

01:47:04.620 | So in terms of presence and eye contact,

01:47:06.780 | there's been a lot of studies about whether or not

01:47:09.340 | people exchange direct eye contact during conversation

01:47:12.780 | or not, dictating whether or not each individual

01:47:16.860 | in that interaction feels as if they had a connection.

01:47:21.060 | Now, again, keep in mind that while we think of connection

01:47:24.220 | as relating to some deep or meaningful conversation,

01:47:26.820 | and oftentimes that can be the case, think, for instance,

01:47:29.940 | an excellent therapist-patient relationship

01:47:32.960 | or an excellent romantic relationship

01:47:35.140 | or an excellent friendship where you really feel heard

01:47:38.580 | and understood, or at least to the extent that people

01:47:41.240 | are willing to explore certain topics with you.

01:47:43.120 | You're willing to hear them and listen really carefully

01:47:45.500 | for what they're saying, and they're willing to hear

01:47:47.300 | and listen to what you're saying in an attempt to understand.

01:47:50.660 | That certainly can enhance the sense of social connection

01:47:53.020 | leading to what people would call social bonds

01:47:55.580 | leading to increased happiness.

01:47:57.560 | But eye contact is also known to be an important feature.

01:48:00.860 | The thing about eye contact is that most people assume

01:48:04.820 | that a lot of eye contact, and in fact, ongoing eye contact,

01:48:08.380 | is critical to a sense of connection.

01:48:11.660 | And in fact, that's not the case.

01:48:13.220 | There's a recent paper that I find really interesting

01:48:16.760 | that was published in "Proceedings of the National Academy

01:48:18.660 | "of Sciences" in 2021, and the title of this paper

01:48:22.300 | is "Eye Contact Marks the Rise and Fall

01:48:24.560 | "of Shared Attention in Conversation."

01:48:26.880 | I find this paper interesting for a number of reasons.

01:48:28.780 | First of all, my laboratory works on internal states

01:48:31.740 | and vision, so it relates directly to the work

01:48:33.940 | that my laboratory does, but also that it violates

01:48:37.300 | what I thought was a general rule of social connection,

01:48:40.220 | which is this idea that two people need to be focused

01:48:42.580 | on one another, that is, looking at one another

01:48:45.340 | directly and fairly consistently throughout a conversation

01:48:48.740 | in order for the feeling of connection to emerge.

01:48:51.220 | But it turns out that's not the case.

01:48:53.460 | And in fact, just to give you the takeaway,

01:48:55.220 | and then I'll flesh it out a little bit with some data,

01:48:58.580 | eye contact, or I should say mutual eye contact,

01:49:02.900 | so two people registering the presence

01:49:04.540 | of the other person looking at them.

01:49:05.920 | You're looking at me, and I'm looking at you.

01:49:07.620 | If you're watching this on YouTube,

01:49:08.980 | then perhaps we are actually doing this at that moment.

01:49:12.380 | And if you're listening, just know that I'm looking

01:49:13.980 | directly into the camera as I'm saying this at this moment.

01:49:16.540 | If we were to be looking directly at one another,

01:49:19.940 | that, it turns out, signals the next step,

01:49:23.500 | which is that it's very likely

01:49:25.440 | that we will each both look away.

01:49:28.420 | And that turns out to be a way in which we set

01:49:31.420 | and reset attention continually during conversation.

01:49:35.140 | So again, I really like this study

01:49:36.460 | because of the high fidelity, the high temporal precision,

01:49:40.500 | that is the precision over time at which they looked

01:49:42.940 | at eye contact and engagement of attention

01:49:47.940 | between individuals.

01:49:49.420 | And they did this by looking at things like pupil size,

01:49:52.280 | and of course where the eyes were looking,

01:49:53.580 | and so on and so forth.

01:49:54.880 | The basic takeaway of this study was the following,

01:49:56.660 | and here I'm quoting from the study,

01:49:58.380 | "Rather than maximizing shared attention,

01:50:01.520 | good conversation may require shifts

01:50:03.740 | in and out of shared states accompanied by eye contact."

01:50:07.660 | So what this basically says is that

01:50:10.220 | when two people are involved in a very,

01:50:13.020 | let's call it an intimate conversation,

01:50:14.740 | but the word intimate should not be misconstrued

01:50:17.660 | to mean something about intimacy

01:50:19.300 | or sexual intimacy or physical intimacy,

01:50:21.660 | just a conversation in which both people feel present

01:50:25.260 | to the conversation and focused on that conversation

01:50:28.220 | and that conversation and its contents only.

01:50:31.040 | The tendency is for people to take turns talking,

01:50:34.000 | although sometimes depending on the individuals,

01:50:35.780 | they might interrupt more or less.

01:50:37.600 | Again, interrupting can be a sign of interest.

01:50:40.400 | It doesn't always have to be rude by the way,

01:50:42.680 | but they're sharing information,

01:50:45.280 | hopefully about a common topic or set of topics.

01:50:48.600 | They will at some moment look at one another,

01:50:51.440 | that's what the study shows,

01:50:52.560 | and that after briefly gazing directly at one another,

01:50:56.360 | attention peaks and then they will look away

01:50:59.880 | and attention will get reduced.

01:51:01.800 | And then the conversation consists of a series

01:51:04.780 | of focusing back on one another with their eyes

01:51:08.500 | and then focusing off, focusing on and focusing off.

01:51:10.900 | And those mutual eye contact moments

01:51:13.900 | actually predict the breaking of attention.

01:51:16.660 | So it's this ramping up of attention

01:51:18.360 | and breaking of attention,

01:51:19.340 | ramping of attention and breaking of attention.

01:51:21.620 | I think these are important results

01:51:22.920 | because they violate the stereotype or assumption

01:51:25.900 | that deep social connection of the sort leading to happiness

01:51:30.620 | always involves ongoing eye contact or ongoing focus.

01:51:35.240 | Just as with meditation, just as with any activity, frankly,

01:51:39.800 | we undergo shifts in attention and focus,

01:51:43.760 | that is focus ramps up and then it breaks

01:51:46.240 | and then it re-engages.

01:51:47.200 | It ramps up, it breaks, and then it re-engages.

01:51:49.800 | And that it turns out is the basis

01:51:52.280 | of in-depth connected conversation.

01:51:55.080 | So for those of you that are interested

01:51:56.560 | in creating social connection in any context,

01:52:01.220 | and in particular, for the sake of increasing happiness,

01:52:03.980 | because it's very clear that social connections,

01:52:06.780 | even if they are fairly superficial social connections,

01:52:09.340 | can increase our sense of happiness.

01:52:11.420 | Seeing faces is important, ideally faces in person,

01:52:14.780 | although I suppose these days over Zoom

01:52:16.780 | or over other screen type medium would be a close second.

01:52:21.620 | But the point is that if you want to increase happiness,

01:52:25.440 | you need to have quality social connections.

01:52:27.600 | And if you want to have quality social connections,

01:52:29.280 | you need to be present

01:52:30.500 | and engage in those social connections.

01:52:32.200 | And that requires a viewing of each other's faces, ideally,

01:52:37.200 | which is not to say that a phone call or text exchange

01:52:39.820 | can't be meaningful,

01:52:41.180 | but that faces are really the most powerful way

01:52:44.240 | to engage in social contact.

01:52:45.980 | And that eye contact, not consistent eye contact,

01:52:49.500 | but eye contact of the sort that builds up and then breaks

01:52:52.020 | and builds up and breaks across the interaction

01:52:54.160 | is going to be the best way that we are aware of

01:52:58.100 | to feel that one had a real connection.

01:53:01.440 | This should also remove any pressure that you might feel

01:53:03.540 | to constantly look at somebody

01:53:05.500 | or to be completely eyes open,

01:53:07.360 | staring at them without blinking or diverting your attention

01:53:09.900 | at any point during a conversation.

01:53:11.940 | This also frankly is an opportunity where if somebody says,

01:53:16.400 | "Hey, you're not paying attention because you look away,"

01:53:18.820 | that you may actually be engaging

01:53:21.300 | in what is the more typical form of healthy connection.

01:53:23.860 | I talked about this long ago on an episode about focus.

01:53:26.880 | It turns out when we are listening very intently to somebody

01:53:29.680 | and trying to remember the information they're telling us,

01:53:31.800 | we will often close our eyes.

01:53:33.420 | And that's not a form of lack of attention.

01:53:35.120 | That's actually a form of attending in

01:53:37.100 | because we have so much of our brain devoted to vision.

01:53:40.700 | 40% of our brain is devoted to vision

01:53:42.820 | in some way or another.

01:53:43.860 | When we close our eyes,

01:53:44.740 | we can actually devote more attentional resources

01:53:47.220 | to remembering the specifics of what people are telling us.

01:53:50.280 | But again, please don't go through conversations

01:53:52.580 | with your eyes closed the entire time.

01:53:54.240 | I think that would certainly not be conducive

01:53:56.840 | to building social connection.

01:53:58.220 | So we know that faces are important for social connection

01:54:01.680 | as it relates to synthetic happiness.

01:54:04.300 | And we know that eye contact is really important

01:54:06.740 | for building social connection.

01:54:08.280 | Physical contact is also important for social connection

01:54:13.460 | and not just romantic or sexual type connection.

01:54:16.940 | In fact, there's a form of physical connection

01:54:19.620 | that is present in other primates.

01:54:22.860 | In fact, it's present as far as we know in all mammals

01:54:26.060 | and is also very much a feature of the human nervous system.

01:54:31.060 | And that's something called allogrooming.

01:54:33.340 | I have to imagine that most people

01:54:34.300 | probably haven't heard of allogrooming.

01:54:36.140 | The reason I'm bringing up allogrooming

01:54:37.620 | is that it stems from a fairly extensive literature

01:54:41.060 | about the prosocial,

01:54:44.220 | pro happiness effects of pets on humans.

01:54:47.740 | In fact, if you want to read up on this,

01:54:49.480 | there is a paper out of Yale University on this topic

01:54:52.760 | that was published in 2018.

01:54:53.920 | The title of the paper is

01:54:54.740 | "The Influence of Interactions with Dogs on Affect,"

01:54:58.120 | AKA emotion, "Anxiety and Arousal in Children."

01:55:00.860 | And it references some other studies

01:55:02.640 | that were performed on humans.

01:55:03.780 | And the basic takeaway is that the so-called AAAs,

01:55:07.220 | animal assisted activities,

01:55:09.200 | represent a really potent way to increase people,

01:55:14.200 | including children's feelings of wellbeing.

01:55:16.320 | Now, what's interesting about this to me

01:55:18.620 | is that dogs themselves don't really have to do much

01:55:22.920 | except be present in the room

01:55:25.520 | in order for these positive effects,

01:55:27.680 | that is the reductions in anxiety,

01:55:29.800 | increases in happiness, et cetera, to occur.

01:55:32.140 | And in fact, they can be very, very brief.

01:55:34.660 | As they describe in the paper,

01:55:35.500 | "Brief unstructured interactions with an unfamiliar dog,"

01:55:38.120 | so you don't even need to know this dog,

01:55:40.000 | "after exposure to a moderate stressor

01:55:41.980 | showed higher positive affect relevant participants

01:55:45.340 | who received a soothing object

01:55:46.660 | or waited for the same amount of time."

01:55:48.360 | So just even seeing a dog for a brief amount of time

01:55:52.340 | has been shown to reduce stress and improve happiness,

01:55:56.240 | or I should say, increase feelings of happiness overall.

01:56:00.420 | Then a child receiving a soothing object,

01:56:03.400 | which was at least for me a little bit counterintuitive,

01:56:05.640 | I would have thought that children receiving

01:56:06.980 | a soothing object would have been the more powerful stimulus.

01:56:10.780 | But in fact, it wasn't, at least not in this study.

01:56:13.480 | The real question I think we should be asking ourselves

01:56:15.440 | is what is it about interactions with others

01:56:18.460 | and with other animals that could potentially have

01:56:21.780 | this prosocial happiness-enhancing effect?

01:56:25.020 | And the reason I raise this is also because

01:56:27.440 | I think many people are interested in either owning

01:56:31.620 | or having interactions with pets

01:56:33.340 | as a way to improve their feelings of wellbeing.

01:56:35.140 | And I say having interactions with, because I myself,

01:56:39.200 | I'm a good example of somebody

01:56:40.220 | who wasn't always able to have pets.

01:56:43.180 | So when I was a graduate student in a postdoc,

01:56:45.060 | I very much wanted a dog,

01:56:46.660 | very, very, very much wanted a dog.

01:56:48.100 | In fact, there was a rule in my family at some point

01:56:50.140 | that I wasn't allowed to talk about dogs anymore

01:56:52.800 | because I was talking about all the breeds of dogs,

01:56:54.840 | going to dog breeders, examining different breeds,

01:56:58.200 | going to the pound, et cetera.

01:57:00.280 | The point was that I was obsessed with getting a dog,

01:57:03.380 | but I knew I wasn't in a good position to own a dog yet.

01:57:05.760 | I didn't have the finances.

01:57:06.840 | I didn't have the correct living situation and so on.

01:57:10.280 | Eventually I did own a dog, of course,

01:57:12.460 | but at the time I couldn't.

01:57:13.320 | So what I would do is every Sunday,

01:57:15.160 | I would go to a place where they foster dogs

01:57:16.960 | and they needed dog walkers and I would walk their dog.

01:57:19.060 | I would also walk my neighbor's dogs.

01:57:22.280 | I didn't charge them for it.

01:57:23.400 | In fact, I felt like I was being paid

01:57:25.340 | by getting time with those dogs.

01:57:27.060 | And in fact, I put an ad at that time on Craigslist

01:57:29.480 | that I would walk people's dogs for free,

01:57:31.520 | and only a few people took that seriously.

01:57:33.460 | But of the ones that did,

01:57:34.640 | I had a great little cadre of dog owners

01:57:37.560 | that would allow me to take their dogs out

01:57:38.880 | and I was super happy.

01:57:40.000 | It just made me very, very happy.

01:57:41.760 | And I really enjoyed it.

01:57:43.760 | And frankly, it was a great opportunity for me

01:57:47.160 | to also get to know the various dog breeds

01:57:49.360 | and the different dog temperaments

01:57:50.520 | and to learn a bit about my ability

01:57:52.440 | to interact with dogs in a certain way.

01:57:54.720 | I actually got to be a pretty good dog walker.

01:57:56.500 | Unfortunately, later I got a bulldog

01:57:57.880 | and it turns out no matter how good a dog walker you are,

01:58:00.120 | bulldogs just simply don't like to walk.

01:58:01.780 | In fact, if you've ever walked up to a bulldog

01:58:04.120 | and you've offered to scratch or pet that dog,

01:58:06.520 | you'll notice that bulldogs love that.

01:58:08.440 | And I would argue, having been a bulldog owner,

01:58:11.740 | that they like it because it's an opportunity

01:58:13.380 | for them to stop moving.

01:58:15.200 | But that's more about the bulldog

01:58:16.400 | than what I'm about to tell you next,

01:58:17.740 | which is this principle of so-called allogrooming.

01:58:21.160 | Allogrooming is a pattern of behavior

01:58:23.080 | that's observed in essentially all mammals,

01:58:25.380 | but very strongly in non-human primates and primates,

01:58:30.040 | where individuals within a species touch one another,

01:58:35.040 | and this is non-sexual touch.

01:58:38.000 | So this would be someone brushing somebody else's hair

01:58:42.240 | or combing their hair,

01:58:43.600 | or even using a lint roller on them, for instance,

01:58:46.540 | or someone grooming somebody else.

01:58:49.600 | Now, typically one needs to have

01:58:51.560 | an established relationship with this person.

01:58:53.520 | So it could be a professional-type relationship

01:58:55.400 | where this is a barber cutting somebody's hair

01:58:57.600 | or a hairdresser cutting or styling somebody's hair.

01:59:01.780 | It could be somebody giving someone a manicure or a pedicure.

01:59:04.480 | It could be somebody doing skincare or massage

01:59:06.480 | for somebody in a professional context,

01:59:08.520 | or it could be two people who have agreed

01:59:10.800 | that it is appropriate for the context

01:59:13.240 | and for the relationship for one person

01:59:14.780 | to be grooming somebody else.

01:59:16.920 | This can even, believe it or not, there's literature on this,

01:59:19.380 | this can even extend into the realm of people

01:59:22.900 | sort of cleaning and picking off other people.

01:59:25.160 | Now, when we see this in primates,

01:59:27.540 | it seems like a very cute

01:59:29.040 | and sort of almost understandable behavior.

01:59:32.240 | We can see these pictures online.

01:59:33.880 | If you look them up, you can just look up allogrooming

01:59:36.080 | and you'll see a vast number of pictures of, for instance,

01:59:38.820 | baboons picking little things out of each other's hair,

01:59:42.580 | or grooming and kind of perusing one another

01:59:46.520 | to find things, presumably parasites

01:59:49.720 | or like little bits of plants or something like that

01:59:51.480 | that they want to remove from them.

01:59:52.760 | Allogrooming is known to stimulate a certain category

01:59:56.880 | of neurons called the C-tactile fibers.

01:59:59.520 | These are a particular category of so-called sensory neurons

02:00:02.580 | that innervate our skin.

02:00:03.760 | So these are literally like little endings of neurons,

02:00:06.820 | little wires that end up in the skin

02:00:09.160 | that when they are touched lightly,

02:00:11.540 | tend to create a feeling of wellbeing

02:00:14.240 | in the person that's being touched.

02:00:15.720 | Again, this is consensual touch

02:00:17.480 | that's very context appropriate,

02:00:19.400 | but it's known to increase levels of oxytocin,

02:00:23.320 | a kind of hormone slash neurotransmitter, it's both really,

02:00:27.520 | that is known to evoke feelings of bond

02:00:31.080 | or of feeling bonded to somebody or something.

02:00:34.200 | And for many people, we hear about oxytocin

02:00:36.560 | and we think about the bond between parent and child,

02:00:40.080 | in particular, mother and infant,

02:00:41.460 | where it's been most extensively studied

02:00:43.000 | or between two members of a romantic couple.

02:00:45.660 | But if you look at the literature on allogrooming,

02:00:47.680 | what you find is that when humans groom one another,

02:00:50.960 | the increases in oxytocin that are experienced

02:00:54.520 | are at least on par with, and in fact,

02:00:57.820 | more often more dramatic in response to allogrooming

02:01:01.900 | than in response to other forms of touch.

02:01:04.720 | So the point here is that allogrooming

02:01:07.620 | is a pro-social behavior that tends to associate with

02:01:11.680 | and promote feelings of wellbeing and happiness.

02:01:15.200 | And this is not a trivial effect.

02:01:17.080 | If you look at the brain imaging data

02:01:19.220 | or other forms of data on this,

02:01:20.680 | allogrooming is a very powerful form

02:01:23.120 | of bonding between individuals that's completely nonverbal.

02:01:26.560 | In fact, most often it doesn't involve eye contact.

02:01:28.840 | I suppose two people could be looking at one another,

02:01:30.940 | grooming one another, but typically this is done

02:01:33.300 | from the side or from behind.

02:01:34.920 | Why did I bring up the paper on pets?

02:01:38.880 | Well, it turns out that when humans stroke dogs

02:01:43.280 | or brush their dogs or stroke cats

02:01:45.560 | or brush their cats, et cetera,

02:01:48.040 | that is a form of human to animal allogrooming.

02:01:50.800 | And it's one in which both the pet and the human

02:01:55.680 | receive huge increases in oxytocin

02:01:58.720 | and other related neurochemicals that make us feel bonded.

02:02:01.920 | I bring this up because the Harvard Longitudinal Study

02:02:04.720 | on Happiness and many, many others,

02:02:06.880 | if not hundreds of other studies on happiness,

02:02:09.080 | point to the importance of quality social connection, right?

02:02:12.280 | You hear this over and over again.

02:02:13.620 | People on their death beds

02:02:14.640 | don't say they wish they had worked more.

02:02:16.400 | People on their death beds

02:02:17.760 | talk about the richness of social connections

02:02:20.040 | or the wish that they had invested more

02:02:22.000 | in social connections.

02:02:23.320 | I think a lot of people think of social connections

02:02:25.600 | only in terms of travel with or conversation with others,

02:02:30.600 | but much of what we perceive as deep social connections

02:02:35.080 | also involves physical contact.

02:02:38.040 | And that's something that's deeply rooted

02:02:40.480 | in our evolutionary biology.

02:02:41.920 | And it's present both in us and in non-human primates.

02:02:44.660 | And it's clear that we can engage

02:02:48.160 | in these kinds of pro-social, non-verbal,

02:02:51.320 | non-eye contact type behaviors

02:02:53.260 | through things like non-sexual tactile touch,

02:02:56.660 | AKA allogrooming.

02:02:58.180 | So we've been talking about

02:02:59.020 | a number of the different things that one can do

02:03:00.820 | in order to increase levels of happiness.

02:03:03.660 | And certainly before we conclude today,

02:03:05.960 | I'm going to touch back into not just synthetic happiness

02:03:09.360 | and the various things we can do,

02:03:10.560 | such as pro-social spending, allogrooming,

02:03:13.740 | social connection, et cetera,

02:03:16.280 | but also things related to happiness

02:03:19.020 | that involve focus on vocation and work and pursuit of goals.

02:03:24.020 | Because as I mentioned at the beginning,

02:03:26.500 | those are also critical

02:03:28.520 | to increasing our state of happiness

02:03:30.420 | and certainly our state of security

02:03:32.160 | and the feeling that we can provide for ourselves

02:03:34.280 | and perhaps for others as well.

02:03:35.920 | We will talk about that,

02:03:38.040 | but I think it's also important to talk about this notion

02:03:41.440 | of choice and choices

02:03:43.400 | and whether or not having a lot of freedom to choose

02:03:46.880 | or limited freedom in choosing what we do and what we get

02:03:50.960 | and what we are able to pursue in life,

02:03:53.160 | how that relates to both natural happiness

02:03:56.400 | and synthetic happiness.

02:03:58.200 | Dan Gilbert and others have explored this issue

02:04:01.320 | of freedom of choice and how it relates to happiness.

02:04:05.000 | And there, I must say the findings

02:04:07.480 | are incredibly counterintuitive,

02:04:10.800 | but very, very well supported by all of their data.

02:04:15.180 | I'm going to summarize a large amount of those studies

02:04:17.800 | at once by saying the following.

02:04:20.740 | Dan's laboratory and other laboratories

02:04:22.620 | have done experiments

02:04:23.460 | where they give people a series of options.

02:04:26.020 | In one of the more classic examples,

02:04:27.960 | they give people the opportunity

02:04:29.600 | to rate a number of different paintings or pictures

02:04:32.600 | in ascending or descending order of preference.

02:04:36.880 | In other words, they're deciding which ones they like most,

02:04:38.800 | which ones they like least.

02:04:40.820 | Then what's interesting is the experimenter

02:04:43.520 | will vary the extent to which

02:04:45.140 | they have to stick to that choice.

02:04:46.920 | So this could be sticking to the choice

02:04:48.760 | by receiving that painting to take home.

02:04:51.200 | Or in another experiment,

02:04:52.540 | it was having to make a choice

02:04:54.380 | between giving up one photograph that they,

02:04:57.260 | the research subject took,

02:04:58.920 | or another photograph that they took.

02:05:00.420 | One of the photographs was going to go off to a publication,

02:05:03.180 | another one they could keep for themselves.

02:05:05.420 | And the conditions in that experiment

02:05:07.580 | were either that you had to make the decision

02:05:10.760 | and it was final, that is you could keep one,

02:05:13.480 | and rate your decision, or you could keep one,

02:05:16.420 | and then you had the opportunity to swap out that picture

02:05:19.600 | for the other one at some later time.

02:05:21.200 | In other words, these experiments

02:05:23.040 | really weren't about rating pictures.

02:05:24.820 | They were really about whether or not

02:05:27.080 | constraining your choice,

02:05:28.880 | meaning forcing somebody to make a choice

02:05:31.440 | and stick to that choice,

02:05:32.640 | led to greater levels or lesser levels

02:05:35.420 | of happiness and satisfaction with that choice.

02:05:38.080 | And what they find consistently is that

02:05:41.940 | when people have an ongoing set of choices,

02:05:45.980 | it leads to reduced levels of happiness.

02:05:48.500 | Now that might come as surprising to many of you,

02:05:50.460 | but I want to be clear about what this means.

02:05:52.460 | This is not to say that having a lot of choices

02:05:55.420 | of what you like most leads to lesser happiness,

02:05:59.920 | and that having fewer choices about things you do

02:06:03.500 | or objects you acquire, et cetera,

02:06:06.360 | leads to greater happiness.

02:06:09.060 | What this set of experiments really points to

02:06:11.780 | is that when we make a choice,

02:06:14.400 | if we are forced to stick to that choice,

02:06:17.300 | we tend to be far happier with that choice

02:06:19.780 | than if we maintain the option to change our mind.

02:06:23.600 | The results of these experiments

02:06:24.820 | are extremely informative, I believe,

02:06:27.360 | in terms of understanding our real life happiness,

02:06:30.560 | that is happiness outside the laboratory.

02:06:33.320 | But I think they are often misunderstood

02:06:35.640 | as meaning that if we have a lot of choices,

02:06:37.540 | we tend to be less happy than if we have fewer choices.

02:06:40.240 | That is not the case.

02:06:41.400 | Having freedom of choice is terrific

02:06:44.260 | and actually correlates with elevated levels of happiness.

02:06:48.100 | But once we make our choice,

02:06:50.580 | it's clearly the case that killing all other choices

02:06:53.860 | or having all other options killed for us

02:06:56.660 | increases our satisfaction with the choice that we've made.

02:07:00.020 | Whereas leaving doors open, leaving options open,

02:07:03.540 | greatly diminishes our sense of satisfaction.

02:07:06.940 | And this has been exported

02:07:08.780 | to any number of different domains.

02:07:10.420 | So this has been exported to the domain

02:07:12.900 | of making choices about what college to go to

02:07:16.340 | or what partner to select in life.

02:07:18.660 | In every one of those instances,

02:07:21.640 | we see that our happiness with our choice

02:07:23.700 | is very much related to that choice

02:07:25.640 | being either the only one or one of very few other options.

02:07:30.540 | There are a number of different ways to interpret this.

02:07:32.940 | Through the lens of neuroscience,

02:07:34.680 | we might say that the prefrontal cortex,

02:07:38.480 | the area of the brain that's involved in decision-making

02:07:41.760 | and evaluating different options

02:07:44.800 | is an area of the brain that's vital, frankly,

02:07:48.340 | to our evolution as human beings

02:07:50.220 | and to our daily life and to our whole life.

02:07:53.220 | It is, of course, the thing that allows us

02:07:54.600 | to evaluate different rule sets, to change rule sets,

02:07:57.760 | to switch contexts and to create meaning, et cetera,

02:08:00.740 | to interpret what's good, what's bad.

02:08:02.840 | But it's also a fairly costly process,

02:08:04.840 | meaning it's very metabolically demanding.

02:08:06.860 | And there's an entire literature

02:08:08.920 | related to what's called ego depletion.

02:08:10.780 | This is certainly a topic for a future podcast,

02:08:12.960 | but ego depletion essentially says

02:08:14.740 | that if I have you attend very intensely to a given task,

02:08:19.740 | for instance, asking you to count backwards

02:08:22.260 | from 1,000 to zero in increments of 13,

02:08:25.580 | and then have you switch about halfway through,

02:08:28.420 | that's hard for a lot of people.

02:08:30.560 | If I have you do that,

02:08:31.580 | then your ability to suppress impulsive behavior

02:08:35.620 | and to do a hard cognitive or physical task

02:08:38.820 | immediately after that is actually suppressed,

02:08:40.900 | this so-called ego depletion.

02:08:42.040 | It relates to a number of different things,

02:08:43.380 | but it certainly relates to engagement

02:08:46.740 | of the prefrontal cortex,

02:08:47.940 | which is very metabolically demanding.

02:08:49.940 | So evaluating choices and doing computation of numbers

02:08:53.880 | or attending to things with your mind

02:08:56.100 | and forcing yourself to focus intensely

02:08:58.300 | is metabolically demanding.

02:09:00.300 | And that's a limited resource that can be reset

02:09:02.980 | by things like sleep and non-sleep deep rest

02:09:04.960 | or idle time or letting your mind wander.

02:09:06.860 | In that case, a positive mind wandering

02:09:08.660 | to allow your brain to reset its ability to focus.

02:09:11.960 | But the other thing that it does

02:09:14.940 | is it impacts the reward circuitry of the brain,

02:09:18.480 | the so-called dopamine reward circuitry

02:09:20.180 | and other reward circuitries of the brain.

02:09:22.580 | And here I'm painting with a broad brush,

02:09:24.940 | but it essentially divides them such that, for instance,

02:09:29.020 | if a given choice of a, let's say a partner,

02:09:32.260 | or maybe you're buying ourselves an article of clothing,

02:09:34.860 | not that I want to compare selection of a life partner

02:09:37.740 | to selection of an article of clothing,

02:09:39.120 | but just to give multiple examples,

02:09:40.940 | might give us, and here it's arbitrary units,

02:09:43.680 | X units of dopamine increase.

02:09:48.000 | Well, if we buy that article of clothing

02:09:50.120 | or we select that life partner,

02:09:51.780 | and then we emerge from the store or the wedding

02:09:55.180 | and we are focused on what we purchased for ourselves,

02:09:58.840 | our choice or our life partner choice, and only that,

02:10:03.380 | well, then there's a certain amount of neurochemical reward

02:10:06.780 | associated with that and happiness and wellbeing.

02:10:09.620 | But it's also very clear that if we leave those choices,

02:10:14.620 | the store or our wedding, for instance,

02:10:18.180 | or a life with somebody for a moment, even just mentally,

02:10:20.900 | and start thinking about the other options

02:10:23.260 | that we might entertain as possible,

02:10:25.660 | if those are still open to us in reality or in our mind,

02:10:28.920 | well, then our reward circuitry becomes fractured in a way,

02:10:32.640 | not physically fractured,

02:10:34.220 | but less attention is devoted to the reward circuitry

02:10:37.120 | of associated with our choice.

02:10:40.200 | And as a consequence,

02:10:41.520 | instead of it being X units of dopamine,

02:10:43.760 | it's X divided by however many other choices

02:10:48.320 | we might have available to us in our mind or in reality.

02:10:51.240 | Okay, so instead of, and again, these are arbitrary units,

02:10:53.800 | but instead of a certain amount of reward,

02:10:55.880 | it's a certain amount of reward

02:10:57.040 | divided by the number of other options

02:10:59.200 | that we might be considering as alternatives

02:11:02.300 | to what we chose.

02:11:03.960 | And I think this is a very important aspect

02:11:06.920 | of understanding how limiting our choices

02:11:10.680 | after we've made them is a vital part

02:11:14.320 | of what we call synthetic happiness.

02:11:16.200 | In fact, we could even go so far as to say

02:11:18.720 | that focusing on the choices we've made

02:11:20.680 | and really investing in those choices as good ones

02:11:24.500 | or great ones, and really trying to limit our thinking

02:11:27.360 | to the choices that we've made once we've made them

02:11:29.960 | is perhaps also important to our natural happiness

02:11:34.420 | because it's so inextricably entwined

02:11:38.040 | with what we think of as a good life.

02:11:41.100 | And what I mean by that is if we are constantly in a mode

02:11:44.580 | of evaluative decision-making

02:11:46.180 | even after we've made a decision,

02:11:48.180 | we are not neurochemically nor psychologically

02:11:51.700 | able to extract the feelings of happiness

02:11:54.120 | associated with the choice that we made.

02:11:55.940 | So we've talked about a number of different dimensions

02:11:57.640 | of happiness, both in synthetic and natural happiness

02:12:00.180 | and some of the more counterintuitive aspects of happiness.

02:12:04.520 | For instance, that people tend to adjust their levels

02:12:06.960 | of happiness, not regardless,

02:12:09.760 | but often in spite of their life circumstances.

02:12:13.700 | But as we emphasized earlier in the episode,

02:12:16.600 | that is not to say, at least the research

02:12:18.760 | does not directly support the idea

02:12:20.920 | that a major trauma or loss won't impact our happiness.

02:12:25.200 | In fact, it tends to, and that's why it's important

02:12:28.280 | that people access resources and work

02:12:30.360 | devoted to overcoming trauma,

02:12:31.780 | which certainly exists out there.

02:12:33.440 | And of course, there are the longitudinal studies

02:12:37.500 | and short-term studies showing that income level

02:12:40.500 | and material things don't necessarily scale with happiness

02:12:44.760 | and vice versa.

02:12:46.200 | And yet we also acknowledge early in the episode

02:12:49.320 | that while indeed money can't buy happiness,

02:12:51.720 | it can buffer stress.

02:12:53.240 | And while work doesn't necessarily bring happiness per se,

02:12:57.700 | work can bring a tremendous feeling of meaning

02:13:00.700 | and resources, which can then put you into context

02:13:04.400 | in which things like pro-social contact

02:13:06.980 | and enhanced bonds and caretaking of others

02:13:09.880 | and they're of you can be enhanced.

02:13:13.240 | So it would be unfair and in fact inaccurate

02:13:16.440 | to simply view happiness through the lens

02:13:18.600 | of money doesn't matter, it's all about social connection

02:13:21.940 | and so on and so forth.

02:13:23.940 | Absolutely social connection is important,

02:13:26.620 | which is why we spent some minutes talking about

02:13:29.040 | some of the ways to enhance social connection,

02:13:30.700 | both with other human beings and other animals

02:13:33.180 | and them with us.

02:13:34.520 | I think there's a opportunity here

02:13:38.160 | to take the research on happiness,

02:13:40.400 | the research on the neuroscience of what happiness

02:13:43.880 | and gratitude and pro-social connection tells us

02:13:47.360 | and to combine it into a bit of a model

02:13:49.920 | or a toolkit, if you will.

02:13:51.400 | And I think indeed this will be a toolkit

02:13:53.500 | in one of our future toolkit episodes,

02:13:55.240 | likely merged with the toolkit on gratitude,

02:13:57.560 | which we haven't done yet.

02:13:59.440 | And perhaps even we will do an entire episode

02:14:03.200 | on social bonds and how to enhance or build social bonds,

02:14:06.760 | or at least what the science tells us about that.

02:14:09.200 | If we take a step back and we look at the concept

02:14:12.400 | of happiness, we can make a couple of absolute statements,

02:14:17.000 | that is statements that I think very few people,

02:14:18.840 | if any, would contest.

02:14:20.080 | First of all, there's no single molecule

02:14:22.120 | or chemical associated with happiness,

02:14:24.000 | but that the chemical milieu of the brain and body

02:14:27.680 | is important for setting the stage

02:14:30.560 | or the opportunity for happiness.

02:14:32.380 | Hence why there are treatments aimed

02:14:35.880 | at alleviating depression or mania

02:14:38.200 | that target certain neurochemical systems

02:14:40.240 | and hormone systems.

02:14:42.040 | Happiness, at least the way I'm framing it today,

02:14:45.400 | has essentially two components.

02:14:46.680 | One is meaning, that is what sort of meaning

02:14:51.680 | do certain types of interactions or behaviors,

02:14:55.420 | could be work, could be social interactions, et cetera,

02:14:59.760 | carry for us.

02:15:01.460 | And nested in that is this concept of connection.

02:15:04.000 | And we talked a bit about tools for enhancing connection.

02:15:06.340 | Things like eye contact, but not constant eye contact.

02:15:08.880 | Things like being very present to a conversation

02:15:12.600 | or an activity that you're engaging in.

02:15:15.080 | Remember, we talked about the paper,

02:15:16.880 | a distracted mind is an unhappy mind,

02:15:19.280 | the paper published in Science.

02:15:20.480 | And we talked about the study also published in Science

02:15:22.760 | in which giving money,

02:15:24.720 | but also knowing how that money

02:15:28.080 | has positively impacted others,

02:15:30.140 | leads to this feeling of pro-social connection

02:15:32.360 | and happiness in the giver and in the receiver.

02:15:35.400 | And I should mention again,

02:15:36.920 | that it's not just the giving of money,

02:15:38.500 | but also the giving of effort and time and attention

02:15:42.580 | that can have similar effects.

02:15:44.160 | So we have meaning and connection

02:15:45.800 | and a number of different ways to access those.

02:15:48.160 | And then we have this access that I'm referring to

02:15:51.200 | as performance and resources.

02:15:52.840 | And I'm talking about performance and resources

02:15:56.160 | as it relates to natural happiness,

02:15:59.520 | not synthetic happiness, but natural happiness,

02:16:01.440 | because we would be wrong, I believe,

02:16:05.280 | if we were to say that income doesn't matter.

02:16:08.280 | I think it's fair to say based on the research

02:16:11.280 | that income matters and income that can cover

02:16:14.680 | costs of living plus that includes some buffer.

02:16:17.820 | And what do I mean by buffer?

02:16:19.880 | I mean, buffer to the anxiety

02:16:21.780 | that circumstances might change is important.

02:16:25.120 | Now that's going to vary from person to person,

02:16:28.600 | meaning some people will be perfectly happy

02:16:31.120 | making $1 more than their absolute cost of living

02:16:36.120 | every month.

02:16:38.980 | Other people will require a more substantial buffer

02:16:41.940 | in order to protect them

02:16:44.200 | against the negative psychological effects

02:16:46.180 | of worrying about, for instance, inflation

02:16:48.480 | or worrying that they might lose their job.

02:16:50.180 | And this is why I think most people recommend having,

02:16:53.360 | if possible, some buffer in their bank account

02:16:56.160 | that could cover two or three or maybe even six

02:16:59.900 | or maybe in 12 months of living expenses,

02:17:02.680 | were they to lose their job

02:17:03.920 | or something catastrophic happened to them.

02:17:06.280 | So if we're going to talk about happiness,

02:17:08.900 | I think it's only fair, only accurate,

02:17:11.540 | and frankly only respectful

02:17:13.200 | to talk about living requirements

02:17:17.000 | and cost of living requirements

02:17:18.460 | that includes this sort of buffer

02:17:20.300 | and that that buffer to anxiety is going to vary

02:17:23.340 | depending on how anxious somebody gets

02:17:24.980 | about the possibility of catastrophic things

02:17:27.380 | happening to them, like losing their job

02:17:28.940 | or their rent going up or doubling.

02:17:30.520 | And here I'm talking about hypotheticals,

02:17:32.300 | but I think we all know people

02:17:33.920 | and perhaps ourselves have experienced

02:17:35.840 | those kinds of circumstances.

02:17:37.480 | So when we talk about happiness,

02:17:38.620 | we absolutely need to think about resources

02:17:41.380 | and we also need to think about performance.

02:17:43.180 | I think we would be completely inaccurate

02:17:45.780 | if we simply said, oh, any work leading to any outcomes,

02:17:50.780 | any effort, regardless of whether or not it gets you

02:17:53.780 | an A in school or an F in school

02:17:56.180 | isn't going to impact your happiness.

02:17:58.420 | I don't think anyone would agree with that.

02:18:00.740 | And yet, if you look at the major takeaways,

02:18:02.900 | at least as they are communicated,

02:18:05.560 | typically in the public sphere around the longitudinal

02:18:10.220 | and short-term studies of happiness,

02:18:12.120 | the takeaway generally is more focused on social connection

02:18:17.120 | and how money is not important.

02:18:19.280 | I don't think anyone that's saying that actually means

02:18:22.400 | that income that can cover your expenses

02:18:25.800 | plus some buffer isn't important, but it's often not stated.

02:18:29.200 | So if we were to come up with a general model of happiness

02:18:31.740 | that includes various tools

02:18:33.700 | for how to increase our levels of happiness,

02:18:36.120 | I think it's only fair to include both natural

02:18:38.460 | and synthetic forms of happiness

02:18:40.420 | and to pursue both natural and synthetic happiness.

02:18:44.000 | Just to remind you, natural happiness

02:18:46.000 | is the kind of happiness that we associate

02:18:48.360 | with obtaining something either by effort

02:18:51.020 | or because it was given to us.

02:18:52.320 | Although I definitely want to highlight the fact

02:18:54.320 | that receiving things that don't require much reward

02:18:59.320 | in order to receive them over time

02:19:01.300 | can be detrimental to our dopamine system.

02:19:03.680 | That's an important aside.

02:19:05.000 | The other form of happiness is the form of happiness

02:19:08.240 | that we call synthetic happiness,

02:19:10.100 | which is for instance, focusing on social connection.

02:19:13.560 | And we talked about ways to do that

02:19:15.240 | as a means to enhance your happiness, right?

02:19:17.720 | Again, the language, the name synthetic happiness

02:19:21.000 | implies something kind of artificial,

02:19:22.520 | but frankly, genuine social connection is genuine.

02:19:26.080 | There's nothing artificial about it or synthetic about it.

02:19:28.480 | It's that you can synthesize it through action,

02:19:30.440 | through deliberate action.

02:19:32.100 | Likewise, being focused or encouraging yourself,

02:19:36.540 | working on being focused on whatever activities

02:19:38.740 | you happen to be engaged in, positive or negative,

02:19:41.200 | is known to increase your levels of happiness.

02:19:43.580 | Again, this is a form of synthetic happiness.

02:19:46.200 | You're not obtaining anything new or additional

02:19:49.520 | as a consequence of this.

02:19:50.680 | It's entirely internal, right?

02:19:52.880 | There's no external reward.

02:19:54.360 | There isn't more money that arrives with this

02:19:56.800 | or a better grade.

02:19:57.780 | Although I would make the argument

02:19:59.480 | that if you are present to the work you're doing

02:20:01.780 | in any context, physical or mental work,

02:20:05.200 | it's very likely that you are going to perform better

02:20:07.680 | at that work.

02:20:08.840 | So we have natural happiness and synthetic happiness,

02:20:11.560 | and both of them require our attention and effort.

02:20:15.180 | And in fact, if we were to draw a link

02:20:18.440 | between natural and synthetic happiness,

02:20:20.760 | it really is this concept of presence,

02:20:22.840 | of really being focused on what we're doing

02:20:25.000 | that's most likely to lead to the outcomes that we want,

02:20:28.680 | both externally in terms of receiving monetary rewards

02:20:31.800 | or grades or praise or whatever it is

02:20:33.820 | that you happen to be pursuing out there,

02:20:35.740 | resources of some kind,

02:20:37.320 | and presence and striving to be present

02:20:41.120 | when in the pursuit of so-called synthetic happiness

02:20:44.240 | in the form of social connection

02:20:46.320 | or in the form of really focusing on the choice

02:20:49.160 | that you've made and making the best of that choice,

02:20:51.520 | especially since you made that choice

02:20:53.340 | in a way that you deemed best at the time,

02:20:56.660 | well, that also is known to increase

02:20:59.340 | your overall levels of happiness.

02:21:01.260 | So if an ability to focus and attend to things deeply

02:21:04.440 | is really what's most important

02:21:06.420 | and really acts as the greatest lever

02:21:08.620 | for both natural and synthetic happiness,

02:21:10.860 | well, then tools like a five-minute daily meditation

02:21:13.880 | or a 13-minute a day meditation,

02:21:16.340 | as well as tools that allow us

02:21:18.440 | to get excellent sleep every night,

02:21:21.060 | which of course sets the basis for attention during the day.

02:21:24.440 | If you've ever had a poor night's sleep,

02:21:25.780 | then you are very familiar with how hard it is

02:21:28.620 | to focus the following day,

02:21:31.060 | at least for long periods of time.

02:21:33.100 | But building our capacity to focus

02:21:35.500 | through a focusing exercise,

02:21:36.840 | which again is often called meditation,

02:21:38.900 | but is really simply just a focusing

02:21:41.100 | and perceptual exercise,

02:21:43.200 | that's going to create an outsize effect on all the aspects,

02:21:46.980 | all the behaviors that we know feed into creating natural

02:21:49.960 | and synthetic happiness.

02:21:51.540 | And so it's really fair to say

02:21:53.060 | that our ability to attend and focus

02:21:55.540 | really equates to happiness.

02:21:57.540 | So as is often typical of this podcast,

02:21:59.780 | today we've talked a lot about the various aspects

02:22:02.380 | of the science of happiness,

02:22:03.900 | including the different forms of happiness

02:22:05.380 | and tools to access those different forms of happiness.

02:22:08.860 | If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast,

02:22:11.380 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

02:22:13.300 | That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us.

02:22:15.560 | In addition, please subscribe to the podcast

02:22:17.600 | on both Spotify and Apple.

02:22:19.260 | And on both Spotify and Apple,

02:22:20.960 | you have the opportunity to leave us

02:22:22.460 | up to a five-star review.

02:22:23.880 | If you have questions or suggestions about topics

02:22:26.020 | and guests you'd like me to include

02:22:27.520 | on the Huberman Lab Podcast,

02:22:29.100 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

02:22:31.300 | I do read all the comments.

02:22:33.240 | In addition, please check out the sponsors mentioned

02:22:35.260 | at the beginning of today's episode.

02:22:36.960 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

02:22:39.320 | The Huberman Lab also has a zero-cost newsletter

02:22:41.700 | that you can access.

02:22:42.840 | It includes summaries of podcast episodes,

02:22:45.300 | as well as summaries of various protocols

02:22:47.040 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.

02:22:49.580 | You can sign up for the newsletter

02:22:50.760 | by going to HubermanLab.com, going to the menu,

02:22:53.400 | and look for the neural network newsletter signup.

02:22:56.460 | You just provide your email,

02:22:57.640 | and I assure you we do not share your email with anybody.

02:23:00.040 | And again, it's completely zero cost.

02:23:01.520 | Again, go to HubermanLab.com

02:23:03.120 | and sign up for the neural network newsletter.

02:23:05.340 | And if you're not already following us on social media,

02:23:07.840 | we are Huberman Lab on Instagram, Huberman Lab on Twitter,

02:23:11.000 | and Huberman Lab on Facebook.

02:23:12.600 | And at all of those sites,

02:23:14.240 | I provide science and science-related tools

02:23:16.560 | for mental health, physical health, and performance,

02:23:18.520 | some of which overlap with information covered

02:23:20.760 | on the Huberman Lab Podcast,

02:23:22.280 | but often which is distinct from information

02:23:24.600 | covered on the Huberman Lab Podcast.

02:23:26.120 | So again, that's Huberman Lab on Instagram,

02:23:27.880 | Twitter, and Facebook.

02:23:29.400 | Once again, thank you for joining me for today's discussion

02:23:32.160 | about the science of happiness

02:23:33.680 | and tools for increasing your happiness.

02:23:36.080 | And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

02:23:39.000 | [upbeat music]

02:23:41.580 | (upbeat music)

Science-Based Tools for Increasing Happiness | Huberman Lab Podcast #98

Chapters