Dr. Laurie Santos: How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.660 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

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

00:00:10.400 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.580 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.560 | My guest today is Dr. Lori Santos.

00:00:18.080 | Dr. Lori Santos is a professor of cognitive science

00:00:20.720 | and psychology at Yale University.

00:00:23.280 | She is a world expert in happiness

00:00:25.480 | and in the science of emotions generally.

00:00:28.160 | Today, we talk about true happiness,

00:00:30.520 | not in any kind of loose and aspirational way,

00:00:33.800 | but instead what the research really tells us

00:00:36.760 | about how to create lasting happiness for ourselves.

00:00:40.460 | We talk about relationships and happiness,

00:00:42.680 | that is relationships of all kinds,

00:00:44.700 | between friends, between romantic partners,

00:00:47.060 | between family members, and of course, with ourselves.

00:00:49.760 | We talk about all of that in the context of what to do,

00:00:53.360 | what not to do, and how to frame your whole notion

00:00:56.080 | of what happiness is and how to attain it

00:00:58.840 | in the context of daily to-dos.

00:01:00.680 | For instance, most all of us by now have heard

00:01:02.680 | about the power of gratitude and gratitude practices.

00:01:05.360 | In fact, I've done an entire episode

00:01:06.840 | about gratitude and the science of gratitude.

00:01:09.480 | But Dr. Lori Santos today explains

00:01:11.920 | that by shifting our orientation toward gratitude,

00:01:14.400 | toward something more aligned with what delights us,

00:01:17.600 | we are able to better tap into the mechanisms

00:01:19.960 | that enable us to feel happier in a more pervasive way.

00:01:23.440 | We also discuss topics such as hedonic adaptation,

00:01:26.760 | that is how our pursuit of things

00:01:28.760 | and our whole experience of pleasure sets the stage

00:01:31.760 | for what's going to feel like a meaningful pursuit

00:01:34.120 | and pleasurable in the days and weeks to follow.

00:01:36.800 | This is very important for everyone to hear,

00:01:38.740 | especially in this modern age of so-called dopamine hits,

00:01:42.240 | easy to achieve dopamine, highly processed foods,

00:01:45.480 | and the various things that you can find online.

00:01:47.360 | And speaking of online, we also discuss the role

00:01:50.560 | that smartphones and social media play,

00:01:52.200 | not just in our happiness, but in our cognition.

00:01:55.600 | You'll be shocked, indeed, I was shocked to learn

00:01:57.500 | that just having your phone in the room

00:01:59.620 | where you are trying to learn something

00:02:01.560 | significantly diminishes your performance

00:02:04.160 | on things like mathematics and the learning of other topics.

00:02:06.760 | We get into all of that today, the interrelated parts,

00:02:09.720 | and I promise that it's all made extremely clear

00:02:12.280 | and actionable thanks to Dr. Lori Santos'

00:02:15.040 | incredible expertise, and she is an incredible teacher.

00:02:19.000 | In fact, the course that she has taught at Yale University

00:02:21.540 | entitled "Psychology and the Good Life"

00:02:24.040 | is the most popular course ever taught at Yale

00:02:26.840 | over the course of 300 years.

00:02:29.040 | And that popularity will not come as a surprise

00:02:31.560 | as you now get to learn from Dr. Lori Santos directly.

00:02:35.040 | This was a remarkable episode, I must say.

00:02:37.120 | I learned so much, and I'll just highlight one big takeaway

00:02:39.880 | that I've implemented in my own life

00:02:41.320 | and that you can frame in the back of your mind

00:02:43.000 | as you listen to today's episode,

00:02:44.520 | is the difference between being happy with one's life

00:02:47.680 | as opposed to in one's life,

00:02:49.640 | and indeed how to achieve both.

00:02:52.100 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:55.060 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:57.780 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:03:00.060 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:03:01.900 | about science and science-related tools

00:03:03.940 | to the general public.

00:03:05.420 | In keeping with that theme,

00:03:06.500 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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00:05:57.160 | And now for my discussion with Dr. Laurie Santos.

00:06:00.660 | Dr. Laurie Santos, welcome.

00:06:02.760 | - Thanks so much for having me on the show.

00:06:05.120 | - I want to talk about this thing

00:06:06.540 | that everyone seems to want,

00:06:07.880 | but most everyone has trouble keeping themselves

00:06:12.100 | in a state of happiness,

00:06:14.320 | which raises the question of whether or not

00:06:17.320 | we should even be seeking to constantly

00:06:19.240 | be in a state of happiness.

00:06:20.360 | But just to sit back from that question for a moment,

00:06:23.460 | how should we think about the relationship between emotions

00:06:27.680 | and this thing that we call cognition?

00:06:29.400 | Because I think a lot of where we're going today

00:06:31.000 | is to distinguish between feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

00:06:35.920 | And as neuroscientists, psychologists, et cetera,

00:06:40.680 | we have to understand the difference

00:06:41.820 | between emotions and cognition

00:06:43.840 | and maybe where they overlap.

00:06:44.980 | So if you could educate us a bit on that,

00:06:47.940 | I think that will set the stage nicely

00:06:49.980 | for understanding happiness.

00:06:51.500 | - Yeah, well, I'm glad you started there actually,

00:06:52.900 | because the very definition of happiness, I think,

00:06:56.540 | as social scientists tend to think about it,

00:06:57.940 | includes both of these parts, right?

00:07:00.020 | So I think social scientists tend to think about happiness

00:07:02.360 | as being happy in your life and being happy with your life.

00:07:06.260 | So being happy in your life is sort of the emotion side,

00:07:08.660 | right, a decent number of positive emotions,

00:07:11.080 | maybe slightly less negative emotions.

00:07:12.960 | Like you existing in your life feels good.

00:07:15.240 | That's kind of an emotional part, right?

00:07:17.700 | But then there's also kind of

00:07:18.740 | how you think your life is going.

00:07:20.080 | Do you have purpose?

00:07:21.000 | Are you kind of happy with how things are going?

00:07:22.680 | It's how you think about your life,

00:07:24.640 | which is sort of a cognitive thing.

00:07:26.600 | And so even the earliest social scientists

00:07:28.400 | who started thinking about happiness,

00:07:29.800 | at the time they call it subjective well-being,

00:07:31.320 | 'cause I think psychologists were like,

00:07:32.160 | "Ooh, happiness sounds too wooey.

00:07:34.200 | "We'll call it something else."

00:07:35.040 | But it means exactly the same thing.

00:07:36.240 | It means subjective well-being, right?

00:07:38.020 | When they started thinking about subjective well-being,

00:07:39.720 | they divided it into this sort of affective emotional part,

00:07:43.080 | which is like how you feel in your life,

00:07:45.160 | but also this cognitive part,

00:07:46.520 | how you think your life is going.

00:07:48.360 | So that basic dichotomy has been there

00:07:50.400 | since the very beginning of folks

00:07:51.880 | studying happiness scientifically.

00:07:53.720 | - I'm already struck by this distinction

00:07:57.120 | between how things are going in your life

00:07:59.600 | versus with your life.

00:08:01.520 | One requires a kind of first-person experiencing of life

00:08:06.120 | in your life, you know?

00:08:07.640 | You wake up feeling good.

00:08:08.860 | Are you feeling good with your,

00:08:11.340 | inside of your friendships and other relationships,

00:08:13.740 | family, romantic relationships, school, work?

00:08:16.300 | The other involves a bit of a third-personing of self.

00:08:20.020 | I'm looking at one's CV,

00:08:23.460 | either actual CV or reflected CV

00:08:27.900 | through the lens of other people

00:08:29.140 | and kind of getting a sense like,

00:08:30.420 | am I doing well?

00:08:31.260 | Am I not doing well?

00:08:32.240 | I think this is a really important distinction

00:08:36.380 | because it seems like ultimately the goal,

00:08:40.440 | if I may, is to be happy in your life,

00:08:43.160 | regardless of the third-personing,

00:08:44.760 | provided that you're not doing damage

00:08:46.240 | to somebody else's happiness in life.

00:08:48.320 | - Yeah, well, I think ideally it'd be nice to do both,

00:08:50.720 | right?

00:08:51.560 | And I think there are moments

00:08:52.380 | when these things dissociate, right?

00:08:54.120 | So, you know, you interact with lots of interesting,

00:08:56.400 | rich people out here in California.

00:08:58.020 | I think a lot of them have,

00:08:59.720 | it kind of in their life feels pretty good, right?

00:09:01.680 | They have lots of hedonic pleasures,

00:09:02.960 | they're drinking nice wine, hanging out at the beach.

00:09:05.120 | - You'd be amazed at how much suffering they report.

00:09:09.020 | - Oh, that's interesting.

00:09:09.940 | - How much suffering they report.

00:09:10.860 | - So this is the question,

00:09:11.700 | is this sort of cognitive part the third-person part

00:09:15.140 | or is it the reporting part?

00:09:16.780 | And I think when the psychologists are thinking about it,

00:09:18.420 | they really think about it as the reporting part, right?

00:09:20.980 | And this gets tricky, right?

00:09:22.300 | Because I see folks having their nice glass of wine

00:09:24.740 | on the beach and I'm thinking like,

00:09:26.580 | that's coming with lots of positive emotion.

00:09:28.420 | Like I bet if I tested them

00:09:29.980 | and could have a direct look at their sensory experience,

00:09:32.540 | it'd probably be pretty positive.

00:09:34.220 | It's only when they reflect on their life

00:09:36.000 | and they're asking, "Well, how's it going?"

00:09:37.320 | That they say, "Oh, I don't know, my stocks went down."

00:09:40.640 | - When I hear about lack of happiness,

00:09:44.520 | let me think of some of the kind of bullet point ones

00:09:46.960 | that seem to come up repetitively.

00:09:49.120 | They are indeed not related to lack of resources,

00:09:52.240 | I don't hear that.

00:09:53.680 | What I've heard, and this is also true

00:09:56.240 | for where I spend part of my time

00:09:57.720 | and where I grew up, which is in Silicon Valley,

00:10:00.080 | which is also not everyone, but there are people there

00:10:02.840 | who've accrued tremendous amount of wealth.

00:10:04.460 | The mean has shifted very high

00:10:06.660 | and hence the cost of living.

00:10:08.100 | But it's often concerns about their kids

00:10:12.980 | or their mother is ill.

00:10:18.100 | Their child is struggling in a particular way.

00:10:21.500 | Very often that's what it is.

00:10:25.520 | They're concerned about the lack of wellbeing in their kids

00:10:29.140 | related to mental health or physical health

00:10:31.800 | or other relatives, mental health, physical health,

00:10:33.940 | or they're upset about something politically,

00:10:37.020 | but we won't go there.

00:10:37.860 | - We won't go there.

00:10:38.700 | Yeah, no, I think this is true.

00:10:40.340 | So much of our happiness is made up

00:10:42.440 | of the happiness of other people.

00:10:44.600 | Both kind of how they're doing

00:10:46.820 | and how we think they're doing cognitively,

00:10:48.840 | but literally just emotionally.

00:10:51.340 | If you've ever been around a family member

00:10:53.540 | or a spouse who was incredibly pissed off, really sad,

00:10:57.620 | it's incredibly hard not to catch those emotions yourself.

00:11:01.260 | And we as psychologists know how these processes work.

00:11:03.780 | These processes are emotional contagion

00:11:05.360 | where you're literally catching the emotions

00:11:06.800 | of other people.

00:11:07.800 | And so oftentimes the things that you most worry about

00:11:10.180 | to be happy yourself is focusing on the happiness

00:11:12.700 | of the people around you

00:11:13.540 | because that literally becomes your happiness

00:11:15.560 | at a very fundamental level.

00:11:17.000 | - Yeah, I'm pausing just to think about this

00:11:20.020 | a little bit more.

00:11:21.320 | As we grow up, and I realize it varies by place

00:11:25.500 | and lots of circumstances, but as we grow up,

00:11:29.340 | we are taught to pay attention to how our life is going

00:11:33.320 | a bit from the outside, where you gain evaluations

00:11:36.620 | starting really young.

00:11:38.140 | Little stars on our pictures, or good job,

00:11:41.580 | or nowadays they say great effort in drawing.

00:11:44.220 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:11:45.180 | - This whole thing, the growth mindset language.

00:11:47.580 | But I don't know that in the United States

00:11:52.660 | we are taught to think about being happy in our life.

00:11:57.420 | - Yeah.

00:11:58.260 | - And as kids, I think all kids, all mammals

00:12:02.300 | seem to gravitate towards joyful experiences for them.

00:12:06.500 | Playing is almost always an innate joyful experience.

00:12:10.940 | But then as the evaluations start coming in,

00:12:12.920 | we get better and better at assessing our performance

00:12:16.140 | and where we are relative to the sort of standard goals

00:12:20.120 | of the third grade, the fifth grade, the 12th grade.

00:12:22.820 | But at the same time, I don't think anyone ever sat me down

00:12:26.780 | and said, how are you going to evaluate

00:12:29.780 | if you're feeling good in your life?

00:12:33.620 | Like that you're savoring your soccer game,

00:12:36.340 | that you're savoring your time with friends.

00:12:38.180 | That was never taught to me.

00:12:40.660 | - Yeah, and I think there's a real danger

00:12:42.340 | of these kind of extrinsic rewards,

00:12:44.220 | as you might call them, all the stuff outside,

00:12:45.900 | the grades, the performance measures and so on,

00:12:48.920 | literally stealing your intrinsic rewards.

00:12:52.300 | There's this funny phenomenon in psychology

00:12:54.140 | where if you have something that's intrinsically rewarding,

00:12:56.520 | so let's say exercise, right?

00:12:57.660 | Like I want to go out and run a bunch, right?

00:13:00.780 | I love running.

00:13:01.620 | I get this intrinsic reward from running.

00:13:03.520 | Now I get some sort of tool, whether it's my watch

00:13:06.500 | or something I'm scribbling down in a phone app,

00:13:08.780 | and I have to log my running.

00:13:10.860 | Now it becomes a sort of extrinsic reward.

00:13:12.820 | It's not just like the feeling of running,

00:13:14.500 | but it sort of takes on this extrinsic idea.

00:13:17.420 | And then what happens is sometimes we end up going

00:13:19.700 | for that reward anyway.

00:13:22.220 | The fiction writer David Sedaris has this wonderful article

00:13:25.620 | called "The Fitbit Life" where he talks

00:13:27.060 | about how he wanted to get fit.

00:13:28.180 | It's intrinsic reward of exercising more,

00:13:31.060 | and he got the Fitbit, and then it was all about the Fitbit,

00:13:33.460 | and he would set the level higher and set the level higher,

00:13:35.260 | and he himself was miserable and no longer enjoying running

00:13:38.100 | to the point that at some point he just would walk around,

00:13:40.580 | you know, shaking his arm just to get up

00:13:42.020 | to those final steps, right?

00:13:43.460 | That's a really terrible case

00:13:44.960 | where your extrinsic reward winds up taking over.

00:13:48.460 | But so many of the cases you just talked about

00:13:50.020 | are ones in our real life where that comes up

00:13:51.900 | much more insidiously than with a Fitbit

00:13:53.780 | or something like that.

00:13:54.620 | You talked about play in mammals,

00:13:56.500 | the easiest thing that little kid animals do

00:13:58.900 | all over the place.

00:13:59.940 | Little kid humans don't do that as much anymore

00:14:02.220 | because even from really young ages,

00:14:04.300 | they're, you know, in toddler, you know, university

00:14:07.140 | where they're kind of learning things

00:14:08.460 | to get into the next grade and get the perfect grade

00:14:10.740 | so they can get into institutions like ours, right?

00:14:13.180 | It all becomes about extrinsic rewards.

00:14:15.260 | And so I think you're really right.

00:14:17.020 | We're kind of extrinsic sizing all the rewards

00:14:20.420 | to the point that we're not getting to internal happiness.

00:14:22.620 | It was hard already to pay attention to that stuff

00:14:25.100 | because I think we'll probably talk about this.

00:14:26.820 | It's hard to be mindful about your emotions.

00:14:29.300 | You really have to pay attention to what's going on.

00:14:31.580 | But I think it's gotten even harder

00:14:33.120 | because we have these metrics.

00:14:34.740 | They're all over the place in our culture,

00:14:36.300 | but they're just not the intrinsic thing.

00:14:37.860 | There's some extrinsic marker

00:14:40.200 | that could make the intrinsic thing even less fun.

00:14:43.380 | - For people that grow up or live in areas where,

00:14:47.540 | well, let's just say that have less disposable wealth,

00:14:52.320 | is there must be data on sort of relationship

00:14:57.320 | to intrinsic versus extrinsic forces on happiness.

00:15:01.940 | I mean, I can make up all sorts of stories in my head

00:15:04.300 | about how people starting out

00:15:05.920 | from very different circumstances

00:15:07.200 | would be more or less happy, but what do the data say?

00:15:10.340 | - Yeah, so these effects of kind of resources on happiness

00:15:13.000 | are really interesting and they're nuanced, right?

00:15:15.800 | So if you look at the lower end

00:15:17.720 | of the kind of income spectrum,

00:15:20.040 | you would obviously say that money affects happiness, right?

00:15:23.000 | If you can't put food on the table,

00:15:24.320 | if you can't put a roof over your head,

00:15:25.640 | definitely getting a little bit morning

00:15:27.080 | is gonna affect your happiness in a positive way.

00:15:29.480 | And the data sort of bear this out.

00:15:31.860 | There's a very famous study

00:15:33.080 | by the Nobel Prize winning economist, Danny Kahneman, RIP.

00:15:37.640 | Back in 2010, he did this cool study

00:15:39.280 | where he looked at the correlation

00:15:40.560 | between income and happiness

00:15:42.780 | as reported in how much stress you have,

00:15:45.940 | how much positive emotion you experience and so on.

00:15:48.240 | At the low end of the income scales,

00:15:49.640 | it just goes up and up and up, right?

00:15:51.000 | More money just almost linearly gives you more happiness.

00:15:54.200 | But what Danny found,

00:15:55.240 | and is the second part of this nuanced picture,

00:15:57.440 | is that that slope kind of levels off

00:16:00.120 | and it levels off in 2010 dollars at around $75,000.

00:16:04.320 | What does that mean?

00:16:05.160 | That means if you get more than $75,000,

00:16:08.720 | you're not gonna feel any less stress,

00:16:10.480 | you're not gonna experience any more positive emotion.

00:16:12.600 | Even if I double or triple or quadruple your income,

00:16:15.700 | on those metrics, you're not gonna see any increase.

00:16:18.380 | - Then those are pre-tax 2010.

00:16:22.100 | - Yeah, they didn't get into like the real,

00:16:23.620 | 'cause you're like, "Oh my God, well, I live in California.

00:16:25.620 | "Like, if you live in Iowa, maybe it's not so bad."

00:16:27.140 | But like, and those numbers will change,

00:16:29.100 | but the upshot is there's probably some number

00:16:32.740 | in like 2025, 2024 numbers that might be like,

00:16:36.260 | you know, maybe $100,000, $120,000, whatever it is.

00:16:39.500 | The point is that there's some number

00:16:40.620 | at which getting more is not gonna increase your happiness

00:16:44.020 | at the same slope.

00:16:45.420 | Now there's been nuanced fights about this,

00:16:47.340 | as there is a lot in kind of real research,

00:16:49.820 | about, well, is that really true?

00:16:50.940 | Does the slope really ever go up?

00:16:52.820 | And now the picture seems to be,

00:16:54.000 | well, the slope might go up a teeny tiny,

00:16:56.500 | like negligible bit, but it doesn't go up as much as say,

00:17:00.620 | getting an extra 10 minutes of exercise in,

00:17:02.820 | or another 20 minutes of sleep,

00:17:04.540 | or scribbling the things you're grateful for.

00:17:06.220 | All those things will impact your happiness much more

00:17:09.500 | than like quintupling your income.

00:17:11.620 | And so do your resources affect happiness?

00:17:14.580 | Yeah, if you ain't got any resources,

00:17:16.320 | you definitely will feel happier if you can get them.

00:17:19.540 | But if you have a lot,

00:17:20.740 | getting more really isn't gonna help.

00:17:22.740 | - Sorry to interrupt, but lately I've been saying

00:17:26.260 | on the basis of those findings about this then 75K per year,

00:17:31.260 | probably now, like you said, 100 to 125K,

00:17:34.500 | or let's just say something like that,

00:17:36.360 | would be the equivalent amount

00:17:39.660 | that money indeed cannot buy happiness,

00:17:44.220 | but it can buffer stress.

00:17:46.420 | Do you think that's true?

00:17:47.340 | You're making me rethink that statement.

00:17:48.980 | Maybe it doesn't buffer stress past a certain amount.

00:17:52.660 | - Yeah, I mean, I think in the original Kahneman data,

00:17:55.340 | he found that it doesn't, right?

00:17:56.540 | I mean, how much stress you report on a daily basis

00:17:59.480 | was literally one of the measures

00:18:01.100 | they were using for happiness.

00:18:03.060 | But I think you're right.

00:18:04.620 | The risk around it can buffer it, right?

00:18:06.900 | I think if you're at a certain set of means,

00:18:08.980 | you know that like, if a bad thing happens,

00:18:12.000 | you're going to be okay.

00:18:13.100 | So it can allow you to make riskier decisions.

00:18:14.980 | It can allow you to do things that you might not do

00:18:16.900 | if you're right at that boundary or losing some money,

00:18:19.820 | it might pop you back down.

00:18:21.460 | I think the problem is that one of the ways we evaluate

00:18:24.700 | our financial situation, but pretty much every situation,

00:18:27.660 | I think this goes back to the neuroscience,

00:18:29.460 | is that we don't do it objectively, we do it relative.

00:18:32.740 | And when you think about your relative financial status,

00:18:35.300 | there's lots of other folks around

00:18:36.700 | to whom you're comparing yourself.

00:18:38.380 | I think one of the reasons that rich folks

00:18:40.540 | don't necessarily think they're less stressed

00:18:42.700 | when they have very high levels of wealth and so on

00:18:45.260 | is because they're looking around

00:18:46.540 | and everyone's doing much better than them.

00:18:49.180 | And this is just a fundamental feature

00:18:50.900 | of the way we evaluate stuff, right?

00:18:52.540 | Is that we don't evaluate in objective terms,

00:18:54.620 | we evaluate relative to these reference points.

00:18:57.740 | And honestly, as you get richer,

00:18:59.380 | you're kind of going up this sort of logarithmic scale

00:19:01.100 | where the reference points are getting

00:19:02.180 | even further away from you.

00:19:03.940 | And I think that that can have a huge hit

00:19:05.700 | on people's perception of their own happiness

00:19:08.020 | and their perception of their stress levels, right?

00:19:09.960 | Because they're working towards a goal

00:19:11.300 | that's probably not gonna make them that much happier,

00:19:14.180 | but they haven't kind of abandoned this intuition

00:19:16.720 | that more money will make me happy.

00:19:18.740 | On my podcast, "The Happiness Lab,"

00:19:19.960 | I had this guy, Clay Cockrell, who was really fun.

00:19:21.860 | He's a wealth psychologist.

00:19:24.420 | So he's a mental health professional

00:19:26.260 | that only works with the 0.0001%.

00:19:29.000 | And already we should say, well, if wealth made you happy,

00:19:32.380 | he should be out of a job.

00:19:33.340 | But no, he's lots of clients,

00:19:34.500 | lots of, I guess, very well-paying clients.

00:19:36.060 | He looked like he was doing well for himself.

00:19:38.500 | But he talks about how those folks

00:19:40.540 | haven't abandoned this notion

00:19:41.940 | that more money will make them happy.

00:19:43.480 | They set some standard, like as soon as I become,

00:19:45.900 | as soon as I get 50 million, I'll be happy,

00:19:47.620 | or as soon as I become a billionaire.

00:19:49.460 | But then they get to that point,

00:19:50.800 | they're not feeling any more positive emotion,

00:19:52.660 | they're not feeling less stressed.

00:19:53.780 | And rather than saying, well, hang on,

00:19:55.140 | maybe that hypothesis was wrong, more money doesn't work.

00:19:57.460 | They say, ah, the hypothesis, it's all right,

00:19:59.740 | more money will make me happy.

00:20:01.420 | I just get a, it wasn't 50 million,

00:20:03.060 | now it's 100 million or whatever it is.

00:20:05.340 | And so I think that that's a lot due to the fact

00:20:07.340 | that folks are comparing their wealth levels against others.

00:20:10.180 | And our comparison system sucks

00:20:12.740 | because we constantly compare ourselves against others.

00:20:15.620 | But we never pick people that are doing worse than us.

00:20:17.940 | We always pick people who are doing better than us.

00:20:20.860 | - I know a fair number of very happy, wealthy people.

00:20:23.660 | I know a fair number of very miserable, wealthy people.

00:20:26.860 | I know a fair number of happy, non-wealthy people,

00:20:31.420 | and a fair number of miserable inside,

00:20:35.060 | where they report feeling miserable, unwealthy people.

00:20:38.500 | - Well, it fits completely with what

00:20:40.540 | a lot of the happiness research suggests, right?

00:20:42.560 | Which is that it's much less about our circumstances

00:20:45.700 | than we think when it comes to who's happy and who's not.

00:20:48.780 | And we often think, if I could get more money

00:20:51.380 | or if I could get more accolades at work,

00:20:53.020 | or if I could get a new partner,

00:20:54.360 | if I could move somewhere, I'd be happier.

00:20:56.780 | But exactly what you're saying,

00:20:58.100 | if you look at people

00:20:58.940 | with all those different life circumstances,

00:21:00.380 | both the good version and the bad version,

00:21:02.140 | you find some happy folks and some not so happy folks.

00:21:04.620 | And now what researchers are starting to think

00:21:06.300 | is that it actually doesn't involve our circumstances

00:21:09.060 | as much as we think.

00:21:09.900 | Again, I like with bracket it,

00:21:11.020 | unless those circumstances are really dire.

00:21:13.460 | Circumstances don't matter as much as we think.

00:21:15.300 | It tends to be the kind of stuff

00:21:16.940 | that's much more under our control

00:21:18.740 | than our circumstances, right?

00:21:20.020 | It tends to be how we behave,

00:21:22.060 | what thought patterns we use, the emotions we seek out,

00:21:24.660 | the social connection we experience.

00:21:26.660 | Those things matter much more.

00:21:28.180 | And so I think your experience

00:21:29.660 | with the happy and not so happy rich folks

00:21:31.820 | and the happy and not so happy poor folks

00:21:33.540 | kind of bear what we think,

00:21:34.380 | like it's just not your circumstances

00:21:36.500 | that doesn't matter as much as you assume.

00:21:38.620 | - Let's talk about this relationship

00:21:41.260 | between feelings, thought patterns, and behaviors

00:21:44.100 | in the context of happiness.

00:21:46.060 | I think anyone listening to this or watching this

00:21:48.700 | probably wants to be happy as much as possible.

00:21:53.020 | I mean, I suppose there are a few songwriters, poets,

00:21:55.100 | and I've got some friends in those domains of life,

00:21:58.620 | and they do seem to derive a lot of insight and inspiration

00:22:03.460 | and have done amazing things

00:22:05.300 | through the kind of depths of unhappy human emotion.

00:22:11.500 | We can get back to that later

00:22:13.220 | because I do think there's something about the contrast

00:22:15.620 | of moving from these more painful emotions to happiness

00:22:18.940 | that's very different than moving

00:22:20.460 | from a state of immense happiness to slightly less,

00:22:23.060 | but we can get back to that.

00:22:24.940 | But most people would like to be happy as much as possible.

00:22:29.580 | I certainly would, who wouldn't?

00:22:32.180 | And one, of course, can ask,

00:22:35.460 | "Well, should I work on my feelings,

00:22:37.140 | "like think about my feelings, try and shift my feelings,

00:22:39.980 | "let my feelings move through me in a cathartic way?

00:22:42.720 | "Should I work on the thought patterns?

00:22:45.020 | "Should I work on the behaviors?"

00:22:46.100 | I'm a big believer from my own experience

00:22:49.100 | that behaviors are powerful

00:22:51.900 | in setting the general trajectory

00:22:54.740 | of thought patterns and feelings,

00:22:56.920 | but I've also experienced it going the other way too.

00:22:59.720 | So what does the research say about this?

00:23:02.060 | And what can we do?

00:23:03.420 | 'Cause everyone wants to be happier.

00:23:04.860 | - Yeah, well, we just talked about

00:23:06.060 | the thing you're not supposed to do.

00:23:06.900 | You don't have to change your circumstances.

00:23:08.560 | And that's great 'cause quintupling your income is tricky,

00:23:11.580 | moving is tricky, switching your life around

00:23:14.420 | all over the place is hard, right?

00:23:16.620 | And the good news is the science shows

00:23:17.780 | you don't have to do that.

00:23:18.620 | That doesn't work as well as you think.

00:23:20.180 | But you can hack your behaviors and your thought patterns

00:23:23.700 | and your feelings to get some good results, right?

00:23:26.100 | Let's take behaviors, right?

00:23:27.780 | One of the biggest behavioral changes

00:23:29.620 | you can make to feel happier

00:23:31.220 | is just to get a little bit more social connection.

00:23:33.740 | Like psychologists do these fun studies

00:23:35.260 | where they look at people's daily usage patterns.

00:23:38.300 | So how much time are you spending sleeping

00:23:40.120 | or exercising or at work or whatever?

00:23:43.020 | And the two things that predict

00:23:44.900 | whether or not you're happy or not so happy

00:23:47.340 | is how much time you spend with friends and family members

00:23:50.540 | and how much time you're just physically around other people.

00:23:53.660 | Like the more of that you do,

00:23:55.100 | the happier you're gonna be.

00:23:57.380 | And that's just a correlation, right?

00:23:59.180 | So you're savvy listeners are thinking right now,

00:24:01.100 | like, well, is it that hanging around with other people

00:24:03.300 | causes you to be happier

00:24:04.380 | or do you tend to like hang out with other people more

00:24:06.840 | if you are happy?

00:24:07.680 | Like which direction does the causal arrow go?

00:24:09.900 | And here we have these lovely studies

00:24:11.180 | by psychologists who do these kind of funny experiments

00:24:13.620 | where they offer people like a $10 Starbucks gift card

00:24:17.040 | to just talk to somebody.

00:24:18.860 | Usually talk to a stranger

00:24:20.220 | like that they don't know on the train.

00:24:21.540 | Some lovely work by Nick Epley and others have done this.

00:24:24.100 | Because you force people to get social.

00:24:26.140 | And what people predict, especially with strangers

00:24:28.180 | is like, ooh, that's gonna feel awkward and kind of weird.

00:24:31.260 | But what you find across the board,

00:24:33.540 | and this includes an introverts and extroverts,

00:24:35.940 | is that talking to somebody actually feels good.

00:24:38.060 | It increases your positive emotion.

00:24:39.580 | It gives you a sense that your life is going better.

00:24:41.300 | You feel less lonely.

00:24:42.780 | It just has these positive outcomes that we don't expect.

00:24:46.380 | - I love social connection.

00:24:47.580 | The problem I have with social connection

00:24:49.460 | is that if I drop in with somebody for 30 minutes

00:24:53.620 | or a couple of hours, when that's done,

00:24:56.940 | I usually have so much that I need to tend to

00:24:59.980 | that I end up staying up later than I need to

00:25:02.020 | in order to complete that, diminishing my sleep.

00:25:04.900 | And then I feel like there's a underlying

00:25:07.700 | kind of like sinking ship sense to my physiology,

00:25:10.620 | and then I have to recover my sleep.

00:25:12.020 | So everything's a trade-off.

00:25:14.140 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:25:15.380 | - What's interesting about the study you just mentioned

00:25:17.300 | is that it's just a brief coffee, presumably.

00:25:20.260 | So maybe one doesn't need to spend quite as much time

00:25:23.140 | with people.

00:25:24.960 | I think, you know, I think like even years ago,

00:25:29.960 | actually he's dead now, but there was a,

00:25:33.060 | I guess it's okay to say it even though he's dead.

00:25:35.020 | He was a somewhat eccentric professor at UC Berkeley.

00:25:38.460 | I took a class from him when I was a graduate student there

00:25:40.460 | named Seth Roberts.

00:25:41.420 | He's known for some kind of bizarre theories about eating.

00:25:44.540 | - Oh yeah, yeah.

00:25:45.380 | - And if people want to look this up,

00:25:46.200 | I mean like really, really kind of different stuff.

00:25:48.100 | But I applaud his bravery and just, you know,

00:25:51.180 | being out there, but he was an eccentric guy.

00:25:53.340 | And he told us in this class, when I was there,

00:25:56.460 | that it was very important to see faces

00:25:59.540 | at least once a day, real faces, not on a screen.

00:26:03.500 | This was before social media.

00:26:04.660 | But, and that it was important at some point

00:26:07.580 | to leave your apartment and like see the barista

00:26:10.260 | and say hello and thank you and see people on the street.

00:26:13.420 | And now knowing what we know

00:26:16.060 | about these dedicated areas of the brain,

00:26:17.820 | like the fusiform face gyrus and Nancy Kanwisher's work

00:26:20.860 | and about these brain areas.

00:26:22.700 | Like we are hardwired for seeing faces

00:26:25.940 | and recognizing faces.

00:26:26.940 | Now that alone doesn't mean that seeing faces

00:26:29.460 | is a requirement for being happy on a consistent basis.

00:26:32.460 | But I think they were onto something.

00:26:34.460 | I think Seth was onto something,

00:26:35.900 | even though he had some also just like

00:26:38.380 | completely crazy ideas.

00:26:39.900 | This idea doesn't seem crazy.

00:26:41.500 | This has been my experience,

00:26:42.540 | even though I spent a lot of time alone.

00:26:44.300 | If I go a few days without seeing a face,

00:26:46.900 | something happens inside that shifts

00:26:49.620 | the way my internal kind of set point for wellbeing.

00:26:54.140 | And then you see somebody and it's like delightful,

00:26:56.340 | even if it's just a hello.

00:26:57.660 | - Yeah, I mean, I think, you know,

00:26:59.580 | the reason why social connection matters so much

00:27:01.700 | is it's building off this basic neural circuitry, right?

00:27:04.500 | For seeing faces and so on.

00:27:05.780 | I think that gives us a real insight

00:27:07.180 | into the kinds of social connections that work best, right?

00:27:11.100 | Which has been characterized in the field

00:27:12.540 | as sort of in real time social connection, right?

00:27:15.500 | Which we're kind of moving away from.

00:27:16.900 | So what do I mean by in real time?

00:27:18.540 | You know, you and I are sitting in a studio right now,

00:27:20.820 | chatting and we're kind of chatting in real time.

00:27:22.900 | I can see your face, we're live.

00:27:24.820 | But we might've been able to do this like

00:27:26.700 | over some sort of video chat.

00:27:28.140 | Wouldn't be as good, you know, but it's pretty good.

00:27:30.500 | And the reason it seems to be pretty good

00:27:31.780 | is we're doing it in real time, right?

00:27:33.840 | Our auditory system, our visual system,

00:27:35.880 | all these systems that are used to as primates

00:27:38.180 | processing things with other folks around you,

00:27:40.260 | it works reasonably well.

00:27:41.900 | What doesn't work so well is how we often communicate,

00:27:44.500 | which is like over Slack, over text.

00:27:46.660 | I text you, vroom, three minutes later, vroom,

00:27:49.340 | it comes back.

00:27:50.180 | Like our primate brain's just like,

00:27:51.460 | that's just not the way communication is set to work.

00:27:54.660 | And so I think sometimes when I bring up social connection,

00:27:57.460 | people think like, oh, I got to see people in person

00:27:59.340 | and my friend's gonna live far away.

00:28:00.740 | And I'm like at work all day.

00:28:02.100 | It's like, no, no, no, you can connect,

00:28:04.060 | not necessarily live and in person,

00:28:06.580 | but as much as possible, try to do it in real time.

00:28:09.020 | And I think that's in part,

00:28:10.140 | and if possible, try to do it with video,

00:28:11.880 | I think for the reason that you were just talking about,

00:28:13.620 | 'cause it's faces activate us.

00:28:15.580 | But we're primates that are also really good at language

00:28:18.860 | and paying attention to the voice.

00:28:20.340 | I think it's one of the reasons that like

00:28:21.980 | an old school phone conversation,

00:28:23.620 | no video chat with your friend

00:28:25.140 | can be some of the most emotional connective conversation,

00:28:27.940 | sometimes better than in person.

00:28:29.700 | 'Cause when we're in person,

00:28:30.540 | we're pulling out our phones and checking

00:28:32.020 | and paying attention to other stuff.

00:28:33.340 | But we got to get back towards in real time.

00:28:36.360 | The other stuff just doesn't have the same psychological oomph.

00:28:39.740 | - Is there any evidence that texting actually drives

00:28:44.740 | more of a desire for more social connection

00:28:48.220 | and thus leaves us feeling less well

00:28:50.980 | than prior to a text exchange?

00:28:53.620 | I realize it's very hard to separate out the variables

00:28:55.700 | about what's the nature of the text exchange.

00:28:57.940 | How often do you see this person in real life, et cetera.

00:29:02.020 | But I could imagine that texting,

00:29:04.620 | that I don't do the sound effect as well as you do.

00:29:07.460 | I like that.

00:29:09.220 | But that texting could be the equivalent

00:29:11.540 | of getting crumbs of nourishment, not full nourishment.

00:29:14.940 | I could also imagine that it's like putting nourishment

00:29:17.940 | just out of reach.

00:29:19.460 | And I'm asking this really at a neurological level.

00:29:23.780 | Do we know, is the reward circuitry that's triggered

00:29:26.380 | by in real life social connection triggered,

00:29:29.320 | but to a lesser degree by text exchange or by Zoom exchange?

00:29:33.280 | This would be an important study to do, I think.

00:29:36.740 | - Yeah, there's not great evidence for it,

00:29:38.420 | but my intuition is that the way it works

00:29:41.060 | is almost like it's texting

00:29:42.420 | sort of the NutriSuite of social connection, right?

00:29:44.300 | I was feeling this motivation for social connection

00:29:46.740 | and I did it and I got something that was sort of social.

00:29:50.100 | I got some information, but psychologically,

00:29:52.260 | I'm missing the nutritious part of it, right?

00:29:54.940 | So it kind of fakes you out

00:29:56.140 | into thinking that it's social connection,

00:29:57.700 | but it kind of doesn't really work.

00:29:59.540 | And I worry that that's what we're all getting

00:30:02.220 | a lot of right now, right?

00:30:03.900 | It's just so much easier to participate

00:30:05.620 | in the NutriSuite version of social connection

00:30:08.260 | because as political scientists and sociologists

00:30:10.660 | and others have pointed out,

00:30:11.500 | it's harder to meet with people in real life.

00:30:13.500 | We don't have these so-called third spaces

00:30:15.700 | where we can get together easily anymore, right?

00:30:18.380 | There's so many draws of just being on your screen,

00:30:20.940 | being alone inside.

00:30:22.860 | I think we're kind of missing out.

00:30:24.060 | And so a lot of us are kind of starving nutritionally

00:30:26.700 | when it comes to social connection

00:30:27.980 | 'cause we're going for the wrong stuff.

00:30:29.780 | - So schedule some, if possible,

00:30:31.980 | in real life time with somebody.

00:30:34.540 | - Or in real time, right?

00:30:35.860 | Call that friend that you haven't talked to

00:30:38.540 | and recognize, 'cause this is clear

00:30:40.780 | from the psychological research,

00:30:42.100 | that your brain is not telling you to do that.

00:30:45.340 | Probably even when you're listening right now,

00:30:46.860 | you're like, "Yeah, I guess that would be helpful for me,"

00:30:49.140 | but you're not kind of having a craving

00:30:50.940 | to talk to your friend.

00:30:52.460 | And I think this is the problem

00:30:53.660 | with a lot of the behaviors that map onto happiness

00:30:57.220 | is that if you think of the evolutionary pressures

00:30:59.420 | for those behaviors,

00:31:00.780 | natural selection never had to build in

00:31:02.900 | the goal of feeling social

00:31:04.380 | 'cause we were just like in these small bands.

00:31:05.980 | It was really easy, right?

00:31:06.860 | Natural selection had to build in a kind of craving

00:31:08.780 | for sweet, fatty food 'cause those were hard to find.

00:31:11.260 | Didn't have to build in the craving

00:31:12.460 | for a bunch of greens 'cause they were everywhere.

00:31:15.340 | I think the same thing is true with social connection.

00:31:17.540 | We just don't have a strong motivation to seek people out

00:31:21.180 | because it was just kind of there.

00:31:22.940 | And so I think our motivation and our reward systems

00:31:25.260 | don't cause us to kind of crave it.

00:31:27.380 | But in the modern day where there's so many substitutes

00:31:30.340 | and we're kind of more isolated,

00:31:32.140 | I think many of us are kind of experiencing

00:31:34.500 | the negative effects of loneliness.

00:31:36.360 | But then when we think,

00:31:37.200 | "Well, what could I do to get out of it?"

00:31:38.500 | There's not this like, "I'm starving for connection."

00:31:40.740 | We don't have this sort of motivational goal

00:31:42.600 | to go out and get it.

00:31:43.860 | And so what that can lead to is people making the prediction

00:31:46.180 | in their head of like,

00:31:47.020 | "You know, I just heard Laurie say that this is a good idea,

00:31:49.100 | "but like, I don't know, probably not for me

00:31:51.820 | "or maybe not as important."

00:31:53.420 | I think we just don't have systems

00:31:54.740 | that tell us to go out and get this stuff.

00:31:56.180 | So even if your brain is saying,

00:31:57.540 | "That's not that important," try it.

00:31:59.280 | Do your own personal experiment

00:32:00.780 | and get a little bit more in real time social connection

00:32:03.420 | and just take a moment to notice immediately

00:32:05.300 | after how it made you feel.

00:32:06.940 | And I bet it'll be like, you know,

00:32:08.260 | all the kind of fitness hacks and nutrition hacks

00:32:11.140 | that you talk about on the show where you're like,

00:32:12.420 | "Oh my God, that made me feel so much better

00:32:14.140 | "than I really expected it to."

00:32:15.820 | - I'd like to take a quick break

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00:33:47.180 | - If seeing faces, and I don't have evidence for this,

00:33:51.180 | but if Seth Roberts was right

00:33:52.700 | and what we're talking about here

00:33:54.460 | is clearly based on existing data.

00:33:57.820 | If seeing faces somehow triggers the reward system

00:34:01.100 | in a healthy way that reinforces the social connection thing

00:34:05.580 | that like fills the vessel that like we're connected

00:34:07.860 | because we no longer live in small village

00:34:10.180 | and tribe type formats, most of us don't anyway,

00:34:13.380 | that if we plop down onto the couch

00:34:16.700 | and kind of like assume the classic C-shaped position

00:34:19.680 | of somebody who's about to go on their phone

00:34:21.420 | and you can scroll and see faces.

00:34:24.620 | You talked about that as a bit of like

00:34:26.140 | an artificial sweetener giving the illusion

00:34:27.820 | of some sort of nourishment.

00:34:29.660 | And then, you know, you see some stuff,

00:34:31.460 | you respond to stuff,

00:34:32.620 | you can see someone kind of dunk on somebody,

00:34:34.620 | maybe hear a joke, maybe make a joke,

00:34:36.300 | and then go into your DMs and like read a few, check a few.

00:34:39.060 | And then you basically got no real social connection.

00:34:43.500 | - Correct.

00:34:44.460 | - You didn't have to move to do it.

00:34:46.920 | And in a lot of ways, this has parallels

00:34:50.020 | to the ease of highly processed foods

00:34:53.180 | or something like that.

00:34:54.380 | And I think we're starting to understand this a bit

00:34:56.540 | through Jonathan Haidt's work and other people's work,

00:35:00.580 | including your own,

00:35:01.740 | but I don't know that it's anything

00:35:06.220 | but really dangerous and bad.

00:35:08.020 | I don't wanna sound alarmist,

00:35:09.680 | but I am really concerned that certainly

00:35:14.260 | for the younger generation,

00:35:15.780 | but that if we don't have an intrinsic drive

00:35:18.500 | to go do something.

00:35:20.020 | - We stop doing it.

00:35:20.860 | - We stop doing it.

00:35:22.180 | And then the brain is pretty plastic

00:35:24.540 | throughout the entire life,

00:35:25.500 | especially for these low grade,

00:35:27.820 | like many times repeated behaviors.

00:35:29.860 | I mean, we can just slowly, you know,

00:35:31.660 | it's like there's drift.

00:35:34.660 | And then we wonder why we don't feel so good.

00:35:39.100 | - Yeah, I mean, you know how the dopamine system works,

00:35:41.260 | right?

00:35:42.100 | Like it has these mechanisms to crave stuff

00:35:44.500 | that's quick, quick hits, right?

00:35:46.120 | Our instant, you know, when we go on Reddit

00:35:48.740 | or go on Instagram and scroll through a feed,

00:35:50.620 | we're getting these kind of quick hits.

00:35:51.820 | Another thing that is rewarding is new information.

00:35:55.100 | You know, you're at Stanford College,

00:35:56.300 | Jamil Zaki's done these lovely neuroscience studies

00:35:58.380 | that just finding out some interesting social information

00:36:01.180 | feels rewarding.

00:36:02.500 | And kind of for the first time,

00:36:04.140 | we've been able to separate the reward value

00:36:06.180 | that comes from interacting with live human people

00:36:08.580 | and faces and social rewarding information

00:36:11.260 | that comes at us quickly at this dopamine hit

00:36:13.240 | that we crave a lot,

00:36:14.540 | but we don't have the craving mechanisms

00:36:16.340 | for the in real life connection.

00:36:18.260 | And yeah, I think that's causing a lot of problems

00:36:21.300 | and it means we're kind of building more tools

00:36:24.180 | to do just that.

00:36:26.020 | I had the musician, David Byrne on my podcast.

00:36:29.700 | - Talking heads.

00:36:30.540 | - Talking heads, David Byrne,

00:36:31.700 | who cares a lot about these issues.

00:36:33.100 | He wrote this really cool article

00:36:34.740 | called "Eliminating the Human,"

00:36:37.340 | where he made the claim that pretty much

00:36:39.180 | every technological invention of the last 20 years

00:36:43.020 | has been dealing with actual people is kind of frictiony,

00:36:47.260 | so let's just get rid of them, right?

00:36:48.980 | We'll have Uber or Lyft or a car company

00:36:51.580 | where I don't have to talk to the driver,

00:36:53.020 | I just plug it into the phone.

00:36:54.540 | We don't have to have a conversation, we go away, right?

00:36:56.860 | We have music and streaming mechanisms.

00:36:58.660 | I don't know, Andrew, you're like my age,

00:37:01.300 | so you probably remember

00:37:02.220 | that you used to have to go into a record store

00:37:05.240 | to flip through CDs or tapes even,

00:37:07.580 | if you're really old school, to figure out music.

00:37:10.260 | And often when you do that,

00:37:11.340 | you'd run into humans or talk to the cashier guy

00:37:13.620 | or somebody would see you flicking through like,

00:37:14.980 | oh, you like talking heads?

00:37:16.020 | I like talking heads.

00:37:17.180 | Now we just go to an algorithm, right?

00:37:19.340 | From food delivery apps to kind of education, right?

00:37:22.740 | I have an online course where students don't have to sit

00:37:25.180 | in a real classroom with other students,

00:37:26.620 | they could watch it directly.

00:37:28.260 | So many of our technological innovations

00:37:30.220 | are assuming that what we wanna get rid of

00:37:32.140 | is the friction part.

00:37:33.140 | That's what we're kind of motivated to get rid of.

00:37:35.060 | But ultimately, we're getting rid of the human

00:37:37.100 | in these interactions and our primate brains are left

00:37:39.860 | with the like little NutriSuite dribbles of connection

00:37:42.380 | when what we really need is something in real life

00:37:44.980 | and in real time.

00:37:46.340 | - It's interesting because I think just,

00:37:48.220 | but 10, 15 years ago, our knowledge of most all humans

00:37:51.940 | was based on in real life experience,

00:37:54.340 | except for, I guess, famous humans,

00:37:56.540 | and then it was not in real life.

00:37:59.140 | Now, most people's knowledge about most humans

00:38:03.020 | is based on not in real life interactions.

00:38:07.140 | Which means that most people's knowledge

00:38:09.060 | about humans generally is kind of accruing

00:38:14.060 | through non in real life electronic experiences.

00:38:17.020 | And so that has to change our entire schema

00:38:19.380 | of like what human experience is.

00:38:21.500 | I'm not trying to like ratchet up

00:38:23.180 | to something too abstract here,

00:38:24.500 | but I think it's a powerful notion

00:38:28.860 | that what Byrne is saying

00:38:30.900 | that we're kind of dehumanizing ourselves

00:38:34.060 | through getting essentially fragments

00:38:36.900 | of in real life experience.

00:38:40.140 | And video is so captivating as somebody

00:38:42.740 | who was a vision scientist for a long time.

00:38:44.980 | I mean, if a picture is worth a thousand words,

00:38:47.620 | a video is worth 10 billion pictures.

00:38:50.820 | It's just the number of videos that you can access

00:38:54.140 | in an Instagram feed or even on an X feed

00:38:57.500 | is just astonishing.

00:38:58.660 | And then of course the high emotional salient stuff

00:39:01.180 | is gonna be the stuff that you hover on.

00:39:03.940 | And then the algorithm knows your dwell time as it's called.

00:39:07.500 | And then your basic feed and discovery is set by that.

00:39:11.020 | And I don't think there's anything

00:39:13.380 | really inherently diabolical about it.

00:39:15.980 | I don't take that stance.

00:39:17.500 | It's just, they figured out some good neuroscience

00:39:19.380 | based on behavioral forging.

00:39:21.740 | - Yeah, I mean, the diabolical part

00:39:23.740 | is having a real consequence for our happiness.

00:39:26.300 | It's certainly having a real consequence for loneliness.

00:39:28.740 | You look at rates of loneliness in young people

00:39:30.900 | who've grown up with these technologies

00:39:32.340 | and you see things like young people today

00:39:34.660 | report being lonely at rates of like 70, 75%, right?

00:39:38.460 | More people are lonely, extremely lonely than not right now.

00:39:41.620 | - How do we rate loneliness?

00:39:42.780 | I'm not dismissing what they're saying,

00:39:44.660 | but since they grew up that way,

00:39:46.780 | this sounds very cross-generational judgment,

00:39:49.740 | but like, how do they know they're lonely?

00:39:51.180 | - I mean, your point is well taken, right?

00:39:53.140 | If anything, they grow up lonely.

00:39:54.860 | So if they're self-reporting being lonely now,

00:39:56.700 | it might be even worse

00:39:57.940 | than it might be kind of getting worse over time.

00:39:59.780 | Yeah, and so, I mean, this is all self-report data, right?

00:40:02.020 | So people, you know, on a scale of one to 10,

00:40:03.580 | how lonely are you feeling?

00:40:04.620 | But the fact that 75% of people are saying,

00:40:07.300 | "Yeah, I feel extremely lonely."

00:40:09.060 | That's sad.

00:40:10.180 | I mean, if our primate ancestors,

00:40:12.220 | if they could look at us, would be like,

00:40:13.340 | "What are you doing with these wonderful social brains?"

00:40:15.700 | - They were probably like,

00:40:16.540 | "Oh, I wanna go hide behind that rock for a little bit,

00:40:18.140 | "get a little bit of space."

00:40:19.580 | I'll never forget years ago when I,

00:40:21.320 | there was this time when I worked with ferrets,

00:40:23.900 | I don't miss it, and they would have these huge litters

00:40:27.060 | and there were these, in these pens,

00:40:29.540 | the mom could climb up and get up on top there.

00:40:33.780 | And so she'd have these huge litters

00:40:35.140 | and she'd kick the litter off at some point.

00:40:36.980 | She'd go up there and sleep.

00:40:38.620 | And you'd go in there to take out the moms

00:40:41.740 | and they did not,

00:40:44.460 | that was the only time

00:40:45.280 | when they didn't wanna be bothered, right?

00:40:46.700 | Because they loved to be held and things like that,

00:40:49.080 | but they did not want to be bothered

00:40:50.980 | because they just needed some peace

00:40:53.060 | 'cause they had like 16 ferret kits, you know?

00:40:55.820 | So I think that nowadays, right,

00:40:57.220 | if there's a lot of loneliness

00:41:00.140 | and people that are growing up in these electronic formats

00:41:05.020 | report feeling lonely, and I believe them,

00:41:07.260 | then what it speaks to is a yearning.

00:41:09.740 | And to me, a yearning is a neurological drive,

00:41:12.700 | the same way that a room that's too warm,

00:41:14.580 | you wanna get to a cooler space.

00:41:16.500 | If it's too cold, you wanna get to heat.

00:41:17.620 | So that loneliness speaks to an underlying yearning

00:41:20.420 | for something that they're not getting,

00:41:21.900 | I'm just stating the obvious.

00:41:23.540 | But it says that we're,

00:41:26.900 | or they are doing something

00:41:28.660 | that's inherently against the grain

00:41:30.580 | of their healthy neurology.

00:41:32.620 | - The problem is, I think what loneliness

00:41:34.620 | is a recognition of is,

00:41:35.740 | you know, you kind of don't like this state,

00:41:38.400 | but I'm not sure that loneliness is causing people

00:41:40.700 | to seek out more social connection.

00:41:42.820 | Or if it is, you're seeking out the thing

00:41:45.060 | that is the easiest, fastest social connection you can get.

00:41:48.060 | - This is just like food.

00:41:49.340 | - Which we've talked about as the nutritious food, yeah.

00:41:50.460 | - You're not craving vegetables

00:41:51.980 | because they were presumably in abundance

00:41:54.620 | at one time in our evolutionary history,

00:41:56.660 | as opposed to meat or sweets or things like that,

00:41:59.060 | fruit and meat.

00:42:00.220 | - And I think this is a problem with social connection,

00:42:02.300 | but I think it's a problem generally

00:42:04.300 | with the kinds of things that make us happier.

00:42:06.860 | Because like, we just don't have mechanisms

00:42:09.020 | to seek those things out.

00:42:10.220 | They just kind of don't code in our reward system

00:42:12.300 | in the same way as, you know,

00:42:14.100 | the NutraSweetie stuff of the world.

00:42:16.420 | - So what is the term, if there is one,

00:42:19.660 | or could you come up with one?

00:42:21.040 | I don't want to put you on the spot.

00:42:22.140 | For a fundamental desire that's healthy for us

00:42:27.140 | that we are not driven to pursue a resolution to.

00:42:33.860 | Like for everything else, you know,

00:42:37.020 | there's like the hypothalamic circuits

00:42:38.780 | for the desire to mate, to seek warmth when it's cold,

00:42:40.900 | cold when it's, you know, when it's too warm.

00:42:43.260 | You know, we know what hunger is, right?

00:42:47.060 | But there must be something about the,

00:42:49.100 | I don't want to get too technical here.

00:42:50.340 | For those that are tracking this or not tracking this,

00:42:53.560 | what I'm trying to say is, you know,

00:42:55.180 | for so many of the reward punishment pathways

00:42:59.460 | in the human brain,

00:43:00.300 | it's you're trying to avoid the feelings of pain

00:43:02.900 | and move toward the feeling of either neutrality

00:43:05.020 | or pleasure.

00:43:05.900 | But here you're talking about being in a sort of place

00:43:08.500 | of low level pain, being able to meet that pain

00:43:11.060 | with a truly low level pleasure,

00:43:13.640 | that then it doesn't mask the pain,

00:43:15.860 | but it fills the vessel just enough

00:43:18.360 | that then you drive yourself into a place

00:43:19.920 | of actually more pain.

00:43:21.620 | - But I think that this is the kind of thing that happens

00:43:23.560 | when you have easy outs for all these cravings, right?

00:43:26.480 | I mean, take processed food, right?

00:43:28.120 | You probably have a craving

00:43:29.560 | for certain nutritional requirements, right?

00:43:31.280 | You want to get vitamins or healthy stuff,

00:43:32.760 | but that stuff's easy, it's frictionless, right?

00:43:34.920 | You know, I run to McDonald's and that's much faster

00:43:36.840 | than cooking up a really healthy vegetable filled meal.

00:43:39.440 | I think the same thing happens with social connection, right?

00:43:41.680 | Like you're a lonely person at your house,

00:43:43.720 | sitting on the couch,

00:43:44.600 | you have this negative bodily state, you feel lonely.

00:43:47.480 | Maybe it kind of manifests as a craving,

00:43:49.320 | but what's the fastest thing for you to do?

00:43:51.160 | I'm gonna scroll through my friend's Instagram feeds,

00:43:54.360 | or I'm gonna get a kind of little mini hit

00:43:56.440 | of social connection that's not as nutritious.

00:43:58.760 | Honestly, I mean, not to dis our respective fields,

00:44:01.560 | but I actually think this is one reason

00:44:03.000 | that people love podcasts so much, right?

00:44:05.180 | It's a frictionless way to feel like you're part

00:44:07.600 | of this interesting conversation,

00:44:09.400 | but ultimately it doesn't work as well

00:44:11.560 | as picking up the phone and calling a friend,

00:44:13.760 | connecting with someone in real life.

00:44:15.540 | I think we have too many outlets

00:44:16.920 | for things that kind of feel socially,

00:44:19.120 | but don't give us social nutrition.

00:44:21.460 | And it's true.

00:44:22.300 | I mean, we should be honest,

00:44:23.120 | like really connecting with actual people in real life

00:44:25.960 | takes more friction than pulling out your phone

00:44:27.920 | and scrolling through your Instagram feed.

00:44:29.760 | It's just the Instagram feed doesn't work as well ultimately

00:44:32.640 | when it comes to what's really gonna end up being rewarding.

00:44:34.880 | And I think this is true for just like a lot

00:44:37.080 | of the way the reward system works.

00:44:38.400 | The things that we have craving for, that we seek out,

00:44:41.520 | that like we've really strong mechanisms to go after,

00:44:44.280 | sometimes those things don't work

00:44:45.920 | to get us towards real likability.

00:44:48.520 | You know, drugs of addiction

00:44:49.560 | are a real obvious answer to this, right?

00:44:51.520 | You know, if you have a kind of heroin problem,

00:44:54.120 | you're gonna really seek out that drug,

00:44:55.660 | but ultimately it's not bringing you towards something.

00:44:58.000 | I mean, we'll maybe feel good in the moment,

00:44:59.960 | but it's, you know, no, you're not NutraSweetie,

00:45:01.800 | but it's not getting you towards something

00:45:03.240 | that evolutionarily would be really awesome

00:45:05.240 | for your survival and reproductive success.

00:45:07.800 | - Well, I try my best not to speak in tweets,

00:45:09.960 | which I guess they now call ex-posts,

00:45:11.660 | but I've been saying a lot, and I'll say it again now,

00:45:15.600 | that I think everyone should beware any dopamine

00:45:20.600 | that is not preceded by effort in order to achieve it.

00:45:25.080 | In other words, any fast, high inflection of dopamine

00:45:29.520 | that does not require effort to achieve it

00:45:32.360 | is gonna put you in a trough

00:45:33.760 | and on a, you know, a metaphorical lever-pressing cycle

00:45:38.000 | that will drive your trough deeper and deeper over time,

00:45:40.800 | and that peak will just never go as high as it did,

00:45:44.240 | or could, again, unless you take a period of abstinence

00:45:49.060 | from that behavior or substance,

00:45:51.840 | and then introduce effort prior to adaptive behavior

00:45:56.840 | to get the dopamine.

00:45:58.220 | The other thing is I like to think of addiction

00:46:01.340 | as a progressive narrowing of the things

00:46:03.080 | that bring you pleasure, and I don't speak to enlightenment,

00:46:07.400 | but happiness or enlightenment seems like

00:46:08.960 | a progressive broadening of the things

00:46:10.880 | that bring you pleasure.

00:46:12.160 | And I'm glad we're talking about reward circuitry

00:46:14.760 | because we know how to reset that reward circuitry,

00:46:17.840 | and it doesn't require these dopamine fasts,

00:46:19.960 | although that's one approach,

00:46:21.120 | and it makes sense why people do it,

00:46:22.600 | but I think this notion of having to spend effort

00:46:25.240 | to engage in what we know as a hardwired source of reward,

00:46:29.320 | not just dopamine, but other neurochemicals as well,

00:46:31.800 | of course, in the form of social connection.

00:46:35.160 | So this higher friction thing of having to call somebody

00:46:37.920 | or drive someplace or deal with traffic,

00:46:40.720 | deal with traffic on the way home,

00:46:42.800 | well worth it if it was a good social interaction,

00:46:45.280 | but maybe it was a meh social interaction,

00:46:47.720 | in which case you're like,

00:46:48.560 | "Oh, that was a lot of driving today.

00:46:50.360 | "I've got now all this other stuff to do."

00:46:52.200 | Other times, a great social interaction

00:46:54.440 | can set you in an amazing emotional plane

00:46:57.860 | for days, if not weeks.

00:47:00.840 | So I think what you're bringing up is really important.

00:47:03.600 | How do we introduce these behaviors,

00:47:06.480 | not asking you to put it into a standardized protocol

00:47:09.000 | too much, but since we started with this issue of behaviors

00:47:12.320 | being a path to more happiness and social connection

00:47:16.000 | being the in real life social connection

00:47:18.600 | or by phone in real time, as you said,

00:47:20.520 | being one of the main paths to behavioral happiness,

00:47:25.160 | behaviorally derived happiness, excuse me,

00:47:27.500 | then what are the data on sort of the frequency of this?

00:47:31.600 | Does it vary for introverts versus extroverts?

00:47:34.720 | This question is getting very long,

00:47:35.980 | but maybe we could define introverts and extroverts,

00:47:38.000 | and then if you would, if you could give us some sense of

00:47:41.200 | how often should people seek out

00:47:42.400 | an in real life interaction.

00:47:43.720 | - Yeah, probably way more than you think you should.

00:47:46.480 | We have good data on what people predict,

00:47:48.240 | which is that people predict social interaction

00:47:50.640 | is just not gonna be that fun.

00:47:52.400 | It's not gonna be worth it.

00:47:54.040 | This seems to be a spot where our predictions

00:47:56.900 | about how good something is gonna be

00:47:58.220 | don't necessarily match how good

00:47:59.640 | it ultimately will gonna be.

00:48:01.480 | And I put it in the context of the reverse

00:48:04.160 | of something like processed food,

00:48:05.320 | where I think for a lot of people,

00:48:06.360 | you predict this is gonna be amazing,

00:48:07.840 | you taste it, you're like, "No, I feel kind of gross."

00:48:09.640 | - Processed food. - Processed food, right.

00:48:11.520 | That's a case where your prediction is like,

00:48:13.120 | "Ooh, this is gonna be awesome,"

00:48:14.240 | but your actual likability is like,

00:48:15.720 | "Eh, I feel kind of yucky."

00:48:17.480 | Where social connection, I think we predict be all right,

00:48:20.320 | but maybe not that good,

00:48:21.880 | but when we get it, we feel really great.

00:48:24.200 | The University of Chicago psychologist Nick Epley

00:48:28.120 | has this term he uses, undersociality,

00:48:30.920 | where he thinks we just kind of don't get the right

00:48:33.680 | reward benefit of social connection, writ large, right?

00:48:37.880 | He talks about examples of expressing gratitude to people,

00:48:41.280 | giving somebody a compliment,

00:48:42.600 | even things like asking for help, right?

00:48:44.640 | All these domains where we can kind of connect

00:48:46.360 | with another person, we sort of was like,

00:48:47.880 | "Yeah, it may be net good if I was rating it on some scale,

00:48:50.720 | "but it winds up being way better

00:48:52.280 | "than we predict in all these contexts."

00:48:54.620 | He does these studies where he has people

00:48:56.600 | predict how good something will be.

00:48:58.040 | Giving a gift to somebody, he's in Chicago, right?

00:49:00.720 | So he's like, "Here's a hot chocolate.

00:49:01.880 | "How good will it feel to give that guy over there

00:49:04.260 | "a stranger the hot chocolate?"

00:49:05.360 | And people say, "You know, I don't know, three out of 10."

00:49:07.360 | But then they do it, and then they feel,

00:49:08.480 | "Oh, it's more like a six out of 10.

00:49:09.780 | "It was much more rewarding for me, the giver,

00:49:11.480 | "than I thought."

00:49:12.440 | Same thing with compliments, expressing gratitude,

00:49:14.960 | calling a friend you haven't talked to in a long time,

00:49:17.080 | reaching out to somebody that you care about,

00:49:18.840 | but you haven't connected with.

00:49:20.240 | All these spots are ones where our predictions are off.

00:49:23.260 | It's not the valence that's off.

00:49:24.720 | We know it'll be good, but we just don't realize how good.

00:49:28.280 | And his argument is that if we don't realize how good,

00:49:30.060 | then we never seek it out.

00:49:31.220 | So it's kind of the opposite of what you might think

00:49:33.080 | of as the processed food problem,

00:49:34.400 | where our prediction is like,

00:49:35.740 | "Oh my God, that cupcake's gonna be so good.

00:49:37.620 | "We have all these mechanisms that are like,

00:49:39.100 | "go get it, go get it."

00:49:40.400 | But then we actually get it.

00:49:41.300 | We're like, "That wasn't as good as we thought."

00:49:43.280 | I think that the problem is that we have all these things

00:49:45.700 | that work like the processed food,

00:49:47.640 | that interfere with social connection,

00:49:49.780 | going on the Reddit feed,

00:49:51.600 | plopping down and watching Netflix,

00:49:53.200 | just kind of being by yourself, right?

00:49:54.740 | There's all these alternative behaviors

00:49:56.240 | that we're predicting are gonna feel nice,

00:49:58.240 | but then we get there, they feel kind of yucky.

00:50:00.240 | They just, yeah, this is a problem in the happiness space

00:50:03.880 | where, I know you talk a lot about the reward system,

00:50:06.760 | but the happiness space is one where the cravings we have,

00:50:09.680 | the rewards we seek out,

00:50:11.000 | the predictions we're making about what feels good,

00:50:13.440 | we're often just really wrong with them.

00:50:15.180 | You know, my podcast, we talk a lot about like,

00:50:16.740 | our mind lies to us when it comes to happiness.

00:50:18.620 | You know, we go for more money, we go for accolades,

00:50:21.380 | you know, we go for the quick dopamine hits

00:50:22.900 | without any work,

00:50:24.220 | but really it's more like social connection.

00:50:26.100 | It's all these things that we kind of don't expect

00:50:27.940 | are gonna feel good.

00:50:28.840 | And so, I actually don't know

00:50:30.260 | what that means evolutionarily.

00:50:31.580 | Like my theory is like,

00:50:32.460 | you didn't need to build in craving mechanisms

00:50:34.460 | 'cause the things that really matter for our happiness,

00:50:36.500 | we just kind of got for free

00:50:37.780 | in the evolutionary environment,

00:50:39.660 | but it means it's hard to go after them.

00:50:41.380 | You mentioned introverts and extroverts,

00:50:43.040 | and just to get back to your longer question,

00:50:45.320 | this is something that's been studied in them.

00:50:47.120 | So introverts versus extroverts

00:50:49.020 | is typically thought of as a personality distinction,

00:50:51.780 | often thought of as sort of something that's built in,

00:50:54.220 | although there's lots of evidence that over time,

00:50:55.860 | you can sort of change these things around.

00:50:57.520 | You could become a little bit more extroverted

00:50:59.420 | if you're introverted,

00:51:01.300 | but introverts tend to value deeper close conversations,

00:51:04.820 | one-on-one kinds of things,

00:51:06.220 | and a lot of alone time.

00:51:07.360 | They get a lot of benefit from alone time,

00:51:09.140 | whereas extroverts tend to be more energized

00:51:11.220 | by being around other people,

00:51:12.900 | especially bigger crowds of people.

00:51:15.460 | And so introverts tend to be a little bit more deliberate,

00:51:17.500 | a little bit more thoughtful,

00:51:18.780 | a little bit more kind of wanna have

00:51:20.100 | my own personal chill time,

00:51:21.940 | whereas extroverts tend to like people.

00:51:24.060 | And so you might think that everything I've just said

00:51:26.220 | applies to extroverts, but not to introverts.

00:51:28.900 | Folks have gone out and tested this,

00:51:30.580 | and what they find is there is a big difference

00:51:32.480 | between introverts and extroverts,

00:51:34.500 | but it's in that prediction error.

00:51:36.220 | You know, extroverts predict a social connection,

00:51:38.620 | we are right, not that great.

00:51:40.140 | Introverts predict it's gonna be terrible,

00:51:41.860 | it's gonna be awkward, I'm gonna hate it.

00:51:43.860 | But when you actually force people,

00:51:45.300 | as in these studies where you say,

00:51:46.340 | "Hey, $10 Starbucks gift card,

00:51:47.740 | "you gotta talk to somebody."

00:51:49.060 | When you force the introverts to be social,

00:51:51.420 | what they wind up doing is self-reporting,

00:51:53.220 | you know, a level of happiness

00:51:54.380 | that's like better than they expected.

00:51:56.540 | So the problem seems to be

00:51:58.340 | that introverts have a prediction error.

00:52:00.340 | I'm gonna say this, I promise you,

00:52:02.220 | 'cause I've said this on my podcast, tons of hate mail.

00:52:04.380 | Lots of the comments would be like,

00:52:05.380 | "Not me, not this introvert."

00:52:06.860 | - Or maybe they don't quite understand,

00:52:08.460 | so I wanna make sure that it's crystal clear for people.

00:52:11.420 | Introverts anticipate a less than great

00:52:14.420 | or even eh interaction, maybe even a negative interaction.

00:52:18.460 | - It's usually negative, usually negative.

00:52:19.860 | - They anticipate a negative interaction.

00:52:22.740 | So it's like saying we're gonna go to a restaurant

00:52:24.340 | and the food here, like it sucks.

00:52:27.420 | They go in, they have a decent to maybe a great interaction.

00:52:31.540 | So introverts are positioned to derive more pleasure

00:52:36.540 | from social interactions than extroverts

00:52:40.340 | who enter social situations thinking it's going to be great.

00:52:42.920 | Their anticipation is high

00:52:45.020 | and therefore they require a much bigger dopamine inflection

00:52:48.860 | in order to come away from that interaction

00:52:50.600 | saying it was great.

00:52:51.540 | Although the one kind of update to the framework

00:52:54.740 | that you just presented that I'd add

00:52:56.020 | is that you said, you go to the restaurant,

00:52:59.100 | you predict it's gonna be not that good and you go

00:53:00.820 | and you're like, "Oh, it was all right."

00:53:02.100 | I think the problem with introverts

00:53:03.220 | is they so predict that social connection

00:53:04.980 | is gonna be awkward that they don't engage in it.

00:53:07.420 | And now this becomes a learning cycle, right?

00:53:09.620 | You predicted it was gonna be crappy,

00:53:10.820 | you never got any evidence, "Oh, maybe I was wrong."

00:53:13.260 | And so you keep doing that over time.

00:53:15.740 | And so I think that this can lead to cycles

00:53:17.580 | of loneliness in introverts.

00:53:19.460 | And there are these lovely accounts of introverts

00:53:21.980 | who try to become a little bit more extroverted.

00:53:24.460 | I had this lovely woman, Jessica Pan on the show,

00:53:26.580 | who has this book called, "Sorry I'm Late,

00:53:28.420 | I Didn't Wanna Come," colon.

00:53:31.100 | - I love that title. - Colon.

00:53:32.380 | - I'm actually pretty social, but I'm late to everything

00:53:34.220 | 'cause I'm an academic.

00:53:35.500 | Noon means noon 10, which means starting at 12.15,

00:53:38.820 | which means at 1.15 when the lecture

00:53:41.660 | was supposed to end at one,

00:53:43.340 | you're still going and half the room is full.

00:53:44.820 | - But this is not just like, she had a reason, she's like--

00:53:46.260 | - Any academic knows what I'm talking about.

00:53:47.780 | - Yeah, no, I'm with you, I'm with you.

00:53:49.100 | But dude, "Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Wanna Come,"

00:53:50.540 | colon, an introvert's guide to extroverting.

00:53:53.380 | So she did this year, where as a super hardcore introvert,

00:53:56.180 | she talked to people, joined an improv comedy group,

00:53:59.580 | like went to these social networking kind of business-y,

00:54:02.060 | nasty social connection events, just did all this stuff.

00:54:04.860 | And what she found was two things.

00:54:05.820 | One is that she actually did enjoy it

00:54:07.420 | a lot more than she thought.

00:54:08.620 | At the end of the year, she was much happier

00:54:09.900 | than she expected,

00:54:10.820 | but she also watched her habits changing too.

00:54:13.620 | And this is a thing I think that we also get wrong

00:54:15.820 | about introverts and extroverts,

00:54:17.060 | is we assume, "I'm born that way, I'm never gonna change."

00:54:20.700 | And it is true that there are predispositions

00:54:22.660 | towards this stuff.

00:54:23.760 | But the data suggests that if you can maybe update

00:54:26.380 | your reward value of this, as an introvert,

00:54:28.780 | try a little social connection.

00:54:30.020 | Don't go to the hugest party ever,

00:54:31.820 | or jump into improv comedy.

00:54:33.020 | Just try, call a friend that you haven't talked to

00:54:35.140 | in a while, right?

00:54:36.140 | Notice how that felt.

00:54:37.260 | Like, "Oh, that was a prediction error, right?

00:54:39.220 | "I actually felt better than I expected."

00:54:41.300 | Then you might update your prediction.

00:54:43.100 | And so you can kind of update your introversion in part

00:54:46.020 | by trying things out and noticing the reward value you get.

00:54:48.900 | I think the thing that is different for introverts

00:54:50.700 | is like, you definitely need your alone time, right?

00:54:53.020 | So you wanna balance any social connection you get

00:54:55.180 | with a little bit of time by yourself.

00:54:56.820 | But the research really shows

00:54:59.140 | that if you're predicting right now,

00:55:00.380 | like, "I just don't like the social connection."

00:55:02.700 | You might actually like it more

00:55:03.760 | than your prediction is suggesting.

00:55:05.700 | - I don't wanna micro dissect social interactions

00:55:07.900 | to the point of becoming artificial,

00:55:09.380 | but I'm fairly introverted.

00:55:12.660 | I love New York City and I love London.

00:55:16.020 | I love busy cities.

00:55:17.340 | So I don't mind being surrounded by people,

00:55:19.940 | but one by-product of being surrounded by people

00:55:22.620 | in a big city is you're not interacting with everybody.

00:55:24.740 | You're seeing lots of faces.

00:55:25.860 | So is it the case that introverts are really uncomfortable

00:55:29.140 | in big social interactions?

00:55:32.260 | Or, you know, to me,

00:55:34.340 | the most mentally demanding social interaction

00:55:38.020 | would be one where I go to a party

00:55:39.460 | where I know there's gonna be like 20 people.

00:55:41.500 | Everyone's gonna have to go around the room

00:55:42.660 | and introduce themselves, goodness.

00:55:45.020 | Clearly I don't have a problem with public speaking,

00:55:46.760 | but that to me just like spikes my cortisol immediately.

00:55:50.420 | And then there's sort of an expectation

00:55:52.220 | of like real connection.

00:55:54.260 | The expectation of real connection

00:55:56.100 | oftentimes undermines real connection.

00:55:57.900 | Sometimes it serves it.

00:55:59.500 | But is it the case that introverts want to avoid people

00:56:02.220 | or they want to avoid the requirement

00:56:05.380 | to really engage in a deep way?

00:56:08.140 | And I like engaging in a deep way one-to-one

00:56:10.260 | or maybe with two or three people, you know,

00:56:12.500 | maybe a few more,

00:56:13.340 | but I don't know that it's the number of people

00:56:16.820 | that becomes overwhelming or daunting

00:56:19.780 | or the punishing feature.

00:56:20.900 | It's more, you know, the sort of requirement

00:56:23.140 | to like be pulled out of oneself.

00:56:24.980 | - Yeah, I think it might be all of the above.

00:56:26.980 | I mean, I think what we know about introverts

00:56:28.540 | is that they often self-report being better

00:56:31.060 | in these sort of one-on-one kind of things.

00:56:32.700 | So as an introvert, it's like,

00:56:33.700 | you're gonna have a coffee date with your friend.

00:56:35.340 | That often doesn't cause as much social anxiety

00:56:37.340 | as like the dinner party with a bunch of people, right?

00:56:39.860 | And so that's the claim.

00:56:41.420 | It's not like, well, jump into the dinner party

00:56:42.860 | with a bunch of people or join an impromptu comedy group

00:56:44.900 | or talk to everyone on the street.

00:56:46.020 | It's like just a one-on-one little mini conversation

00:56:49.340 | can be great and not necessarily great,

00:56:52.780 | but much better than you expect.

00:56:54.300 | And we'll kind of have this happiness benefit

00:56:56.820 | that kind of sustains you over time.

00:56:59.380 | Nick Epley, who does all this work,

00:57:00.620 | talks about your happiness.

00:57:02.100 | The best metaphor for happiness

00:57:03.500 | is that it's kind of like a leaky tire,

00:57:05.060 | like it sort of goes out a little bit.

00:57:06.860 | And each one of these little conversations,

00:57:08.580 | whether it's chatting with the barista,

00:57:10.420 | calling a friend, giving someone a compliment, whatever,

00:57:13.300 | kind of fills up the tire and then it kind of goes down.

00:57:15.780 | So you can sort of use these little mini micro doses

00:57:18.500 | of social connection to boost your happiness tire.

00:57:22.340 | - I'd like to take a quick break

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01:00:41.780 | - So you're talking about engaging in social connection

01:00:44.860 | in real time and perhaps even in real life.

01:00:48.220 | Yes, in real life as well.

01:00:51.380 | With some effort to engage in it,

01:00:54.740 | which might just be built into modern living now,

01:00:57.900 | as one of the primary drivers for behavioral approaches

01:01:02.900 | to improve what we're calling happiness.

01:01:05.780 | So could we say,

01:01:07.180 | and I know we don't wanna set up strict protocols

01:01:09.220 | around this, make the effort to schedule in real time

01:01:14.020 | over the phone or Zoom or in real life interaction

01:01:18.080 | with somebody maybe once a week, minimum?

01:01:21.260 | - I think more than you're doing now.

01:01:22.860 | If you're not feeling so happy, add some in.

01:01:25.620 | And again, as you mentioned before,

01:01:27.220 | like these are all kind of trade-offs, right?

01:01:29.540 | You don't wanna add so much in the now.

01:01:30.740 | You're not sleeping or exercising or all that other stuff.

01:01:32.900 | But like one more interaction than you're getting now

01:01:35.700 | and check how it feels over time.

01:01:37.820 | - Given how busy people are

01:01:39.100 | and given that we've established that some effort

01:01:42.660 | that's required to engage socially

01:01:45.100 | is going to be beneficial toward the reward and all of this.

01:01:47.980 | And we're not trying to hack the dopamine system here, folks.

01:01:50.200 | We're just trying to figure out

01:01:51.260 | what is going to be rewarding

01:01:52.400 | given that everyone has constraints on their time

01:01:54.780 | and everyone seems to have a device in their pocket

01:01:57.020 | that allows them to get the illusion of nourishment

01:02:01.020 | that leads to either same levels or less happiness overall,

01:02:06.020 | you know, what's going to be most effective.

01:02:08.460 | And it seems to me, I was thinking about this

01:02:10.780 | during one of your answers, I was paying attention,

01:02:13.220 | but I was thinking about this,

01:02:14.100 | that my memory of prior social interactions

01:02:18.900 | as really great is a useful tool.

01:02:22.020 | So for instance, one of my best memories

01:02:24.340 | of time with my girlfriend

01:02:25.620 | was driving back from her grandmother's house

01:02:28.260 | with the dog in the car and we had no phone reception.

01:02:33.260 | So we couldn't be interrupted by our devices.

01:02:35.780 | She actually had some work to do.

01:02:37.540 | So she was doing some work on her computer at one point.

01:02:40.300 | She may have taken a nap at one point

01:02:42.420 | and the dog kept jumping back and forth between our laps.

01:02:46.140 | And that to me, it was like one of the best days ever.

01:02:49.380 | Just ever, it was just an awesome day.

01:02:51.340 | That memory occurred to me now.

01:02:55.060 | And I think could serve me well in thinking,

01:02:57.480 | okay, so like going on a road trip with somebody,

01:03:00.100 | but it was the lack of kind of structure around it.

01:03:04.080 | It was just imposed on us.

01:03:05.240 | We had a drive to complete, there was a dog in the car,

01:03:07.540 | there was some work to do, there was no phone reception.

01:03:09.940 | And you know, we've had many great interactions,

01:03:12.660 | but that would be the one that I'd highlight

01:03:15.620 | as like, that was an awesome interaction

01:03:18.620 | for whatever reason.

01:03:19.940 | And so can one use memories of great social interaction

01:03:23.380 | as a compass for how to construct these social plans?

01:03:28.380 | Because I think it can be a little bit mystifying

01:03:33.700 | to people, like, oh, how do I get this thing

01:03:35.220 | called happiness by meeting up with a friend,

01:03:37.460 | we enjoy hiking or something like that,

01:03:39.100 | but maybe that's not accessible.

01:03:40.380 | And I don't want people to underthink or overthink it.

01:03:43.500 | But to me, it seems like, okay, like road trips,

01:03:45.980 | everyday things, we needed to go up there.

01:03:48.540 | There was some things to tend to.

01:03:50.020 | - So like tending to life things,

01:03:52.580 | life requirements together?

01:03:53.780 | - Yeah, I mean, if you wanna ask yourself a question

01:03:55.420 | that can highlight good memories,

01:03:56.500 | I recommend the one that the journalist

01:03:58.220 | Catherine Price uses a lot.

01:03:59.340 | She does a lot of studies on fun.

01:04:01.120 | Ask yourself the question, what were three times

01:04:04.060 | that you just had the most fun?

01:04:05.800 | The last three times you would describe as,

01:04:07.380 | oh my God, that was the most fun, right?

01:04:10.100 | And this is a helpful question

01:04:11.340 | because usually the answer, my guess is,

01:04:13.540 | at least two out of three, probably all three,

01:04:15.500 | will have someone else in it.

01:04:17.120 | Like they'll be, you'll have like another person involved

01:04:19.900 | or a dog, sometimes some other agentive being, right?

01:04:22.380 | - Oh, no, I completely agree.

01:04:23.220 | - It wasn't you by yourself.

01:04:24.220 | It probably didn't involve a screen, right?

01:04:26.620 | And so that's kind of like--

01:04:27.460 | - Definitely not.

01:04:28.540 | - And that actually gets back to your road trip.

01:04:30.980 | You know, talking about, I think the social part

01:04:33.340 | was really important, but it seems like that road trip

01:04:35.620 | also tapped into a sort of thought pattern

01:04:38.100 | that we know is really good for happiness,

01:04:39.740 | which is presence, right?

01:04:41.740 | Just being kind of mindful.

01:04:42.940 | You're paying attention to the dog flopping on you.

01:04:45.420 | You're seeing the scenery, right?

01:04:46.860 | You're not in a rush to do something.

01:04:48.580 | So your mind could kind of be on that drive

01:04:50.780 | and how it felt.

01:04:52.060 | And we know so much about how kind of these moments

01:04:54.700 | of mindfulness, really paying attention

01:04:56.340 | to your sensory experience,

01:04:58.140 | how much that matters for happiness.

01:05:00.300 | And one of the biggest hacks you can use

01:05:03.020 | to get more presence is to do exactly

01:05:05.520 | what you accidentally did driving through these parts

01:05:07.320 | of the world where you don't get phone receptions,

01:05:08.960 | which is to get rid of our phones.

01:05:11.540 | You know, our phones are just like

01:05:13.340 | the biggest attention stealers ever.

01:05:16.340 | And it makes a lot of sense,

01:05:17.700 | because what grabs our attention?

01:05:20.460 | Things that are really interesting

01:05:21.780 | and provide a little glass of quick dopamine hits, right?

01:05:24.100 | Or just kind of scream at us with information

01:05:26.260 | and announcements and so on.

01:05:27.780 | This is what our phones do really well.

01:05:30.420 | And our brains aren't stupid.

01:05:31.540 | Our brains know that on the other side of our phone

01:05:33.660 | is like such rewarding content.

01:05:35.500 | And it becomes, you know, really distracting.

01:05:38.900 | My colleague, Liz Dunn, has this kind of analogy

01:05:41.980 | she uses that is like, you know, imagine, you know,

01:05:44.020 | instead of this kind of conversation we're having right here

01:05:46.500 | or maybe I'll do with my husband at a dinner party

01:05:48.580 | where I'm sitting with my husband at dinner

01:05:50.100 | and we're chatting and I have my phone out.

01:05:52.060 | And my husband's a philosopher, he's a very smart guy.

01:05:54.060 | We have great conversations.

01:05:55.100 | But I know on the other end of that phone

01:05:57.740 | is like really interesting stuff.

01:05:59.660 | And Liz said, imagine the comparison

01:06:00.940 | is instead of having your phone there,

01:06:02.700 | I had this big wheelbarrow next to me and my husband

01:06:04.820 | at our dinner table.

01:06:05.900 | And in that wheelbarrow was photo albums

01:06:08.540 | of every photo I've taken since 2016,

01:06:11.320 | physical printouts of my emails and news articles

01:06:14.500 | and stuff that I could get, you know,

01:06:15.940 | like videotapes of cat videos and porn and everything.

01:06:19.140 | It's like piled up really high in this wheelbarrow.

01:06:21.900 | If we were trying to have a conversation,

01:06:23.100 | that wheelbarrow was there.

01:06:23.980 | I'd be like, oh, I just wanna take a quick look at the photo

01:06:26.260 | or do something.

01:06:27.100 | It'd be so distracting.

01:06:27.920 | It'd be so interesting.

01:06:29.380 | Your brain's not stupid.

01:06:30.300 | Your brain knows even though your phone

01:06:31.700 | is much tinier than that wheelbarrow

01:06:33.220 | that all that interesting dopamine rich exciting stuff

01:06:36.820 | is on it.

01:06:37.820 | And it makes it hard to pay attention to my husband.

01:06:40.380 | Again, an interesting philosopher.

01:06:41.640 | We have great conversations.

01:06:43.040 | And so there's lots of evidence showing

01:06:44.760 | that even the act of having your phone out

01:06:47.300 | is subtly stealing your attention from other people,

01:06:50.460 | from the tasks that you're doing.

01:06:52.240 | One of the biggest pieces of advice I give my college

01:06:55.120 | students is to study without your phone near you

01:06:59.020 | because Princeton studies have looked at this

01:07:00.720 | where you have somebody do say a math test

01:07:02.800 | or a studying test with your phone there

01:07:04.200 | versus the phone in the other room.

01:07:05.840 | And you see like double digit increases in performance

01:07:08.320 | just to have your phone away.

01:07:09.880 | And you might ask, well, why would that be?

01:07:11.400 | It's like, well, part of your frontal lobe is like,

01:07:13.120 | no, no, no, don't look at the phone.

01:07:14.160 | Don't look at the phone.

01:07:14.980 | Don't look at that big wheelbarrow

01:07:15.820 | of delicious interesting stuff.

01:07:17.800 | Stay on task.

01:07:18.920 | And that's this kind of constant moment of multitasking

01:07:21.760 | where we're kind of yanking our brain back onto task.

01:07:24.160 | And so a big hack if you want to be more present

01:07:26.840 | is to find ways to do activities without your phone.

01:07:30.120 | I guess if we go back to that fun question,

01:07:31.720 | if I said those three times you're having the most fun,

01:07:34.140 | you weren't in the middle of it pulling out your phone

01:07:36.080 | to look at your Instagram feed.

01:07:37.600 | You were just there.

01:07:39.140 | And what you just described

01:07:40.520 | was a dramatic performance enhancement on mathematics

01:07:45.520 | by not having this opportunity

01:07:50.200 | for distraction in the room, which is incredible.

01:07:53.040 | - Yeah, I mean, when you look,

01:07:54.860 | when you dive deep into the effects

01:07:56.320 | of having your phone around you, they're striking.

01:07:58.160 | Especially in getting back to social connection,

01:07:59.840 | especially social connection.

01:08:01.000 | Liz Dunn has this paper where she puts two people in a room,

01:08:05.000 | just kind of a waiting room together.

01:08:06.160 | And you either have your phone or you don't.

01:08:07.680 | You're not allowed to look at it.

01:08:08.840 | It's just present.

01:08:10.040 | And she finds that there's 30% less smiling

01:08:12.480 | at the other people in the waiting room

01:08:13.920 | when your phones are present, 30% less.

01:08:17.000 | I mean, I actually think of this

01:08:18.000 | when I think of the loneliness crisis.

01:08:20.600 | I walk, I was a head of college on campus,

01:08:23.400 | which as a faculty member at Yale

01:08:24.800 | meant that I lived on campus with students.

01:08:27.000 | And you'd walk through the courtyard

01:08:28.600 | and everybody's walking through the courtyard,

01:08:30.580 | but they're not looking at you.

01:08:31.420 | They're looking down at their phone, right?

01:08:33.520 | There's these like subtle interactions that we're missing

01:08:35.960 | because our phone is stealing us.

01:08:37.840 | That's the social case.

01:08:39.240 | But I think there's a real performance case too, right?

01:08:41.600 | If you wanna pay attention and learn something,

01:08:44.200 | if part of your brain is inhibiting that urge

01:08:46.720 | to look at all the interesting stuff on your phone,

01:08:48.780 | which we don't notice,

01:08:50.680 | then that's gonna be affecting your performance.

01:08:52.480 | Has good benefits too.

01:08:53.440 | There's this lovely finding that people are buying less gum

01:08:57.480 | and less candy in checkout aisles now,

01:09:00.520 | that like the national worldwide sale of gum has gone down

01:09:04.020 | and it's gone down on the same slope

01:09:06.400 | as the iPhones have gone up.

01:09:07.840 | So as number of iPhones in pockets goes up,

01:09:09.840 | sales of gum in checkout lines has gone down.

01:09:12.820 | And you can see why that is.

01:09:13.660 | - They're not looking around as much.

01:09:15.080 | - You're not looking like, ooh, that, you know,

01:09:16.800 | like double mitt looks really good.

01:09:18.160 | You're staring at your phone and looking at your Instagram.

01:09:19.880 | - Soon the ads are gonna pop up on,

01:09:22.120 | they'll know you're in the aisle

01:09:23.200 | 'cause they can know you have proximity to a lot of devices.

01:09:26.120 | I have a friend who's a very accomplished songwriter

01:09:28.660 | and musician and someone does his Instagram

01:09:32.840 | and other social media for him.

01:09:34.600 | He's not on there.

01:09:35.840 | And we met for dinner the other day

01:09:38.080 | with a couple other people.

01:09:39.240 | And I got there and I started telling him

01:09:41.140 | about something I had seen online.

01:09:44.440 | And he said, I won't use it.

01:09:46.960 | I usually will do his voice, but I won't do his voice

01:09:49.240 | 'cause I don't wanna give it away.

01:09:50.680 | People might know who he is.

01:09:52.080 | But he said, I don't wanna talk about what's on Instagram.

01:09:58.080 | In fact, I don't wanna talk about what's on the internet.

01:10:01.440 | Let's just have dinner.

01:10:03.800 | And at first I was like, dude, I was like,

01:10:07.600 | and I thought, great, he's exactly right.

01:10:11.080 | Like, it's not just having the phone there.

01:10:13.640 | It's not just being on the device.

01:10:16.240 | It's also that you're talking about things

01:10:18.040 | that you saw in the world,

01:10:20.360 | some of which are very interesting and important at times.

01:10:25.360 | But what he was saying was,

01:10:26.720 | I don't wanna talk about things that you experienced

01:10:30.680 | about somebody else's experience.

01:10:32.480 | That wasn't really an experience that you had today.

01:10:34.560 | That's an experience of someone else's experience

01:10:37.040 | that you had today.

01:10:38.560 | It wasn't about a news article or something.

01:10:40.160 | So we're playing the telephone bucket brigade game

01:10:44.720 | of social connection many, many degrees away

01:10:48.320 | from the actual interactions

01:10:50.640 | that we were kind of hardwired to experience ourselves.

01:10:53.600 | - And those are the ones that really influence

01:10:55.680 | our happiness in the world, right?

01:10:57.920 | You know, one of the great ways to increase your presence

01:11:00.340 | in addition to kind of getting rid of your phone

01:11:02.140 | is to just go back to your senses, right?

01:11:04.600 | What are you looking at right now?

01:11:06.480 | What do you see right now?

01:11:07.400 | I'm in this room.

01:11:08.220 | There's like really nice kind of cool black lighting

01:11:10.720 | and I'm sitting there.

01:11:11.560 | I'm hearing your voice.

01:11:12.440 | There's like a subtle hum in the room

01:11:14.300 | that I hope the podcast is not picking up

01:11:15.760 | that I hear in the audio, right?

01:11:16.800 | It's a little cool.

01:11:18.240 | That grounding, I can watch my breath

01:11:20.940 | completely change around.

01:11:22.360 | It's like a quick way to just kind of be embodied.

01:11:25.480 | And I think so often we're just not doing that as much,

01:11:29.000 | you know, in our discourse,

01:11:30.380 | but definitely like even when we're by ourselves,

01:11:32.460 | you know, we just wind up distracting ourselves

01:11:34.580 | from the very sensory experience

01:11:36.220 | that like literally is the experience

01:11:38.940 | that we have of the world.

01:11:39.960 | We're just not noticing it as much.

01:11:42.140 | - Now, I will say that a memory

01:11:44.420 | of a really terrific time I had alone

01:11:48.440 | was around this time of year, actually, around the holidays.

01:11:51.780 | Typically, I would be in my office organizing papers,

01:11:55.300 | maybe dealing with some end of year stuff for academics.

01:11:59.120 | You know, my life's a lot different now with the podcast,

01:12:01.420 | even though I still teach at Stanford,

01:12:03.420 | but end of year is a time

01:12:04.500 | when you kind of get your office organized

01:12:06.180 | and everyone, every academic knows this.

01:12:08.060 | And over the holidays,

01:12:09.880 | I tended to have a lot of time in my office alone.

01:12:12.640 | It was a great time to come in.

01:12:13.980 | Like parking was everywhere.

01:12:15.180 | You go in and I used to listen to Ted Talks

01:12:17.660 | or I would listen to podcasts.

01:12:19.980 | And these days I'm trying to do more physical things,

01:12:22.420 | not just exercise,

01:12:23.500 | but I'm working on some like lighting stuff in my house.

01:12:26.620 | And I like to listen to podcasts or books,

01:12:29.680 | sometimes music,

01:12:30.520 | but podcasts or books while I do that.

01:12:32.280 | And I do feel that when we're alone,

01:12:35.320 | sometimes it's nice to have other voices in the room

01:12:38.600 | that are not just the voices in our head.

01:12:41.280 | And it could be music, podcasts, books, movies, et cetera,

01:12:44.920 | that people seem to find that soothing.

01:12:46.880 | I certainly do.

01:12:48.120 | And that doesn't feel like it's diminishing

01:12:49.720 | from my experience of being present.

01:12:51.360 | In fact, it allows me to just really tend

01:12:53.000 | to what I'm doing mechanically.

01:12:56.120 | - And I have some plans to do some more like

01:12:57.980 | craft drawing type projects in the new year.

01:13:00.920 | And I look forward to being able to hear those conversations

01:13:04.140 | but not have to participate in them.

01:13:05.580 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:13:06.420 | - So would you consider that sort of healthy

01:13:08.660 | or am I diminishing my experience

01:13:10.780 | and the depth of my crafts?

01:13:13.740 | - Yeah, well, I think there's some nuance there, right?

01:13:16.700 | You're talking about your craft in a very embodied way.

01:13:20.220 | Even as you're talking to me,

01:13:21.300 | you're describing how your hands are moving

01:13:23.860 | in these motor ways as you're doing it.

01:13:25.480 | You're talking about kind of what it felt like.

01:13:26.940 | It felt like your senses were activated

01:13:29.740 | for the physical stuff you were doing.

01:13:31.980 | But you also mentioned that your mind was wandering

01:13:33.980 | and maybe you're ruminating and stuff like that.

01:13:35.660 | So it sounds like what you did

01:13:36.900 | was have a really nice emotion regulation strategy

01:13:39.300 | of like you could kind of fill your head with something

01:13:41.820 | so that you can work on the physical stuff.

01:13:43.300 | But it didn't impede your experience of the physical stuff.

01:13:46.880 | The way you described it shows that you were there,

01:13:48.580 | you were present when you were doing it.

01:13:50.140 | I think the problem is when it impedes

01:13:52.260 | our presence doing it.

01:13:53.540 | And I think it kind of depends on the activity we're doing.

01:13:56.780 | Take driving.

01:13:58.720 | Probably some of you who are listening right now

01:14:00.720 | are sitting in your car as you're driving,

01:14:02.440 | doing this other interesting motoric activity.

01:14:04.720 | And that's one where it's like,

01:14:06.280 | you're not missing out on that much on the drive

01:14:08.360 | by like listening to us.

01:14:09.400 | It's probably a positive kind of experience

01:14:11.800 | that you're having, learning something and so on.

01:14:14.300 | But you wouldn't wanna listen to podcasts

01:14:16.800 | in some physical situations, right?

01:14:19.040 | If you're a ballroom dancing, for example,

01:14:22.320 | you wouldn't wanna necessarily be listening

01:14:23.640 | to a podcast then, right?

01:14:25.680 | If you're really experiencing art

01:14:27.560 | and sort of engaging with art in an art gallery,

01:14:29.840 | you wouldn't wanna also be listening to a podcast

01:14:31.760 | at the same time.

01:14:32.600 | And so I think the thing to think is,

01:14:34.920 | are you listening to this in a way

01:14:37.040 | that you're missing something in the real world

01:14:39.400 | that your presence of it would matter,

01:14:41.880 | make you feel really good?

01:14:43.800 | Or are you kind of just like killing some other free time

01:14:47.760 | and maybe using this as a nice emotion regulation strategy

01:14:50.740 | to stop what would otherwise be a really ruminative drive.

01:14:53.740 | Now you get to listen to me and Andrew

01:14:55.360 | and that's probably better.

01:14:56.560 | But there's nuance there.

01:14:57.920 | I think our tendency is to move away from the rumination,

01:15:01.500 | is to run away from it.

01:15:02.640 | And I think if you find yourself

01:15:04.680 | kind of avoiding your thought patterns altogether,

01:15:07.080 | that probably might be the pendulum swinging

01:15:08.960 | a little too far in the other direction.

01:15:11.000 | - Noted. - Noted.

01:15:12.480 | - So we've got in real time and or in real life,

01:15:15.840 | well, in real life is always in real time,

01:15:17.360 | but in real life and or in real time social interaction,

01:15:21.780 | and if it requires some effort to plan or get to,

01:15:25.020 | organize all the better.

01:15:26.460 | You stand to gain more from those interactions.

01:15:28.380 | So that's really key presence, obviously,

01:15:30.900 | try and get the phone out of the room,

01:15:32.300 | at least off and put away, but ideally out of sight.

01:15:35.740 | - Out of sight. - Out of sight, love that.

01:15:38.180 | And shared experience, presumably,

01:15:43.060 | actually maybe doing something,

01:15:44.920 | but it could even just be talking.

01:15:46.420 | I guess it depends on what people enjoy doing, right?

01:15:49.100 | So these are powerful levers

01:15:50.420 | for shifting one level of happiness up using behavior.

01:15:55.420 | What about leading with thought patterns or feelings?

01:15:59.380 | Seems like it's a more challenging,

01:16:01.700 | but certainly tractable entry point.

01:16:04.060 | - Yeah, and I think it's important here to remember,

01:16:07.740 | like, what are our natural evolutionary patterns

01:16:10.340 | towards thought patterns?

01:16:12.380 | 'Cause some of them aren't necessarily built

01:16:14.100 | for our happiness.

01:16:14.980 | You know, take what's a kind of common

01:16:16.860 | evolutionary thought pattern,

01:16:18.060 | which is a negativity bias, right?

01:16:20.140 | We're just built to notice all the scary stuff,

01:16:22.840 | all the bad stuff, all the potentially risky stuff,

01:16:25.140 | our brains instantly go there.

01:16:26.980 | And that makes fabulous evolutionary sense.

01:16:29.100 | Like if there's a possibility that there's a tiger

01:16:30.820 | that's gonna jump out or some sort of risky thing,

01:16:33.220 | you want your brain to lock onto it.

01:16:35.340 | Not as evolutionary beneficial to notice

01:16:37.400 | all the blessings in life, just all the good things.

01:16:39.540 | It doesn't really give you that much of a survival benefit

01:16:42.380 | to notice, hey, there's the absence of a tiger,

01:16:44.480 | we don't really know, there's no tigers around, right?

01:16:46.500 | - In fact, it probably helps drive more motivation

01:16:51.500 | to go pursue resources.

01:16:53.020 | I mean, you could imagine an adaptive feature

01:16:55.060 | to lacking satisfaction.

01:16:57.840 | I mean, you'd gain more resources in a time

01:16:59.920 | where resources were presumably shared more

01:17:02.700 | in these small village formats.

01:17:04.180 | I don't know, do monkey troops share resources?

01:17:06.580 | - It depends on the monkey.

01:17:08.060 | - Depends on the monkey.

01:17:08.900 | Just like humans, depends on the humans.

01:17:10.820 | Depends on the monkey.

01:17:12.300 | But I think you're making a really critical point, right?

01:17:15.040 | Which is like, if we're noticing the negative,

01:17:17.460 | if we're noticing the bad stuff, we tend to fix it.

01:17:20.640 | But also if we're craving, if we're wanting,

01:17:23.140 | if we're kind of constantly in search of something,

01:17:24.820 | we get off our butts and go do stuff, right?

01:17:26.540 | - I mean, Steve Jobs in his parting words

01:17:28.860 | were stay hungry, stay foolish.

01:17:31.260 | Maybe it was stay foolish, stay hungry,

01:17:32.580 | but stay hungry was definitely in there.

01:17:34.500 | And I realize he's not going to represent the epitome

01:17:36.580 | of what to strive for for everybody,

01:17:38.220 | but he certainly held up as somebody who changed the world

01:17:42.380 | through the development of certain technologies.

01:17:44.480 | So we revere these people that are hungry for more.

01:17:48.980 | - Yeah. - Right.

01:17:50.740 | - And it makes great evolutionary sense.

01:17:52.860 | Doesn't make as good happiness sense, right?

01:17:55.580 | What's one of the best ways to be happy?

01:17:57.260 | To just appreciate what you have,

01:17:58.980 | to notice and appreciate the blessings out there.

01:18:01.580 | But we got to push against this natural negativity bias

01:18:04.380 | to do this.

01:18:05.220 | So how do we do that?

01:18:06.060 | Well, it turns out that this is a spot

01:18:07.300 | where harnessing attention

01:18:08.700 | and the way we were just talking about

01:18:09.900 | can be really helpful.

01:18:11.420 | Just taking time to notice the blessings,

01:18:13.780 | notice kind of all the good stuff.

01:18:16.020 | It's often talked about in terms of a gratitude practice.

01:18:18.280 | Although gratitude sounds kind of cheesy, I don't know.

01:18:21.500 | My friend, Catherine Price, who I mentioned earlier,

01:18:23.800 | she has this practice that she calls a delight practice.

01:18:26.140 | We just noticed delights in the world.

01:18:27.620 | - I love the word delight.

01:18:28.780 | - You know, I walked in your studio,

01:18:30.340 | you had a picture of your bulldog

01:18:31.860 | and I was like, that's a delight.

01:18:32.940 | That's so cute.

01:18:33.780 | - Thank you for delighting in him.

01:18:35.100 | I delight in him too,

01:18:36.100 | even though he's dead several years now.

01:18:38.880 | Delight is a wonderful word.

01:18:40.280 | - Yeah, and we can train our brain to notice them, right?

01:18:42.660 | You can literally have a practice

01:18:43.820 | where put in your notes app on your phone,

01:18:46.280 | like list of delights or even better,

01:18:48.420 | pick a friend like I have with Catherine

01:18:49.900 | where you can just like text them delight.

01:18:51.620 | You know, at the end of this,

01:18:52.460 | I'll text like saw a really cute dog, delight,

01:18:54.740 | or heard this really funny song, delight.

01:18:56.580 | Then you get the social connection and the gratitude.

01:18:58.540 | But what that does is if you have this practice

01:19:00.940 | where you got to write down the delights,

01:19:02.700 | your brain starts to automatically

01:19:04.180 | be on the lookout for them.

01:19:05.160 | It becomes rewarding

01:19:06.220 | 'cause you get to write this thing down.

01:19:07.940 | Now, all of a sudden it can be a practice

01:19:09.780 | that you're sort of shifting your negativity bias

01:19:12.460 | to notice more of the good things that are out there.

01:19:15.100 | And there's so much evidence suggesting

01:19:16.660 | that people who naturally notice the blessings

01:19:18.420 | in the world are happier.

01:19:20.500 | If you do one of these kind of gratitude

01:19:22.320 | or delight practices, you wind up happier.

01:19:24.100 | Sonia Lubomirsky has this lovely study

01:19:25.700 | where you scribble down three to five things

01:19:27.680 | you're grateful for, three to five delights.

01:19:29.640 | In as little as two weeks,

01:19:30.660 | you significantly improve your overall satisfaction

01:19:33.060 | with life, right?

01:19:33.900 | - I love that. - Super free.

01:19:34.980 | - So much so that, and because I accidentally interrupted,

01:19:38.100 | the comments always tell me I interrupt too much.

01:19:39.740 | It's out of interest, it's out of interest, I promise.

01:19:41.780 | If I could interrupt myself, I would,

01:19:43.440 | and I probably do from time to time.

01:19:45.220 | Could you repeat what the, it's three to five things?

01:19:47.660 | - Yeah, three to five things you're grateful for.

01:19:49.060 | I'm not sure if the number really matters,

01:19:50.640 | but it's committing to kind of noticing

01:19:53.100 | the good things in life

01:19:54.460 | and really trying to take a moment

01:19:56.100 | to notice how they felt, right?

01:19:57.860 | So if I look at, I do delight practices sometimes

01:20:00.020 | or gratitude practices, and it's things like,

01:20:02.060 | my husband, these big things in life.

01:20:03.960 | But then sometimes it's like, my morning coffee,

01:20:05.740 | or probably seeing your cute dog.

01:20:07.460 | It's funny to see the picture of the,

01:20:08.900 | for folks that don't know Andrew Studio,

01:20:10.980 | it's a picture of his dog on a microphone.

01:20:13.100 | It's just very funny.

01:20:14.100 | It's a giant microphone. - Giant, high quality

01:20:15.700 | photograph. - Yes, it's great.

01:20:16.540 | - He was actually standing on the table

01:20:18.580 | that I do my solo podcasts from at the microphone,

01:20:22.180 | and his tag just happened to rotate a few degrees

01:20:25.140 | toward the camera just at that moment,

01:20:27.740 | so you could see his name, Costello, you know?

01:20:30.020 | - And I invite listeners to pause right now

01:20:31.780 | and notice what's happening to their face

01:20:33.580 | as you hear Andrew say that.

01:20:34.500 | Probably you're just smiling, right?

01:20:35.860 | You didn't even see this really cute photo,

01:20:38.820 | but you're also smiling.

01:20:39.940 | That's the power of delights, right?

01:20:41.500 | Not just noticing them yourself,

01:20:43.060 | but potentially sharing them too.

01:20:45.060 | And so this is another thought pattern practice

01:20:47.340 | that we can engage in, which is like,

01:20:49.120 | just train your brain to find these things.

01:20:50.980 | And what you'll find is that there's a limited ratio

01:20:54.380 | of the stuff we can focus our attention on.

01:20:56.860 | If we start shifting towards the delights

01:20:58.980 | from the hassles and the yucky stuff in life,

01:21:01.740 | now we're just kind of filling our brain with stuff

01:21:03.420 | that gives us a little more positive emotion.

01:21:05.640 | - What I love about this conversation about gratitude

01:21:07.820 | is that, I must say, I do like the word delight

01:21:10.220 | more than gratitude.

01:21:11.060 | - Gratitude sounds cheesy.

01:21:12.100 | It sounds a little hippie-dippie, I gotta say, yeah.

01:21:13.980 | - Well, I'm from Northern California,

01:21:15.420 | so I'm cool with hippie-dippie, even though I'm not a hippie.

01:21:18.060 | I'm a punk rocker, not a hippie.

01:21:19.700 | - You're Berkeley roots, sir.

01:21:21.460 | - Yeah, I know, I'm from the other end of the peninsula.

01:21:23.820 | I love the East Bay, but anyway, this is getting...

01:21:25.940 | But the point is, it's not that the word feels soft.

01:21:30.540 | I need to think about this a little bit more.

01:21:31.860 | It's that maybe it's just that delight

01:21:36.080 | is such a powerful, unselfish word.

01:21:40.280 | Like it's not taking anything from anybody.

01:21:42.760 | It's not requiring a shift away

01:21:45.720 | from one's sort of intrinsic self.

01:21:48.080 | I feel like gratitude requires this like,

01:21:50.400 | okay, I'm gonna now be grateful.

01:21:52.680 | It's kind of like pulling...

01:21:53.840 | If you're not already in a state of gratitude,

01:21:56.740 | I feel like there's more effort involved.

01:21:58.520 | And we've been saying effort that precedes reward is good.

01:22:01.240 | But with delight, it feels like it's just very much

01:22:04.720 | in concert with almost like who one is.

01:22:08.740 | - Yeah.

01:22:09.580 | - You know, and like I delight in Costello.

01:22:11.440 | I don't expect everyone to delight in Costello.

01:22:13.520 | People who did, I delighted in their delight.

01:22:15.200 | So it was just, you know, amplifying all the delight.

01:22:17.760 | But the thing that really strikes me about delight

01:22:20.360 | is that every example you gave,

01:22:24.200 | it's very rapid timescale.

01:22:27.640 | Like you, you know, like I will say,

01:22:30.400 | I normally drink yerba mate during these things,

01:22:32.560 | which I delight in.

01:22:33.400 | But today I decided I haven't had a coffee in a while,

01:22:36.000 | took a little break from it for no particular reason.

01:22:38.040 | And I had a single shot of espresso

01:22:40.200 | and I was thinking to myself, this is really good.

01:22:41.920 | - This is delightful.

01:22:42.760 | - So this is a fast timescale.

01:22:44.120 | Maybe it was the fact that I haven't had it

01:22:45.420 | in a little while.

01:22:46.320 | And it's just really fast.

01:22:49.320 | No one suffers.

01:22:51.200 | It's all gain.

01:22:52.520 | And so it runs a little bit countercurrent

01:22:54.360 | to what we were talking about before,

01:22:55.520 | which is the requirement for effort to precede the reward.

01:22:58.760 | Delight feels like a very smooth road

01:23:02.000 | to a reward that's all net positive.

01:23:07.800 | And as you said, these delights are available

01:23:11.280 | throughout the day.

01:23:12.240 | And it doesn't, it requires just noticing something

01:23:15.640 | inside and outside.

01:23:16.840 | Whereas I feel like with gratitude,

01:23:18.600 | I love gratitude practices.

01:23:19.940 | The data are incredible.

01:23:21.320 | It is anything but squishy.

01:23:23.920 | There's like a real power tool for shifting

01:23:25.760 | one's state of mind.

01:23:26.960 | That's clear from the literature.

01:23:28.560 | But the gratitude thing, I feel like requires

01:23:30.640 | an almost like a formalization.

01:23:32.660 | Like, okay, I'm gonna be grateful now.

01:23:33.920 | Whereas delight, you're just kind of on the lookout

01:23:35.500 | for things that spark you and make you reflexively smile.

01:23:40.040 | - Yeah.

01:23:40.880 | - And the few things are better than that.

01:23:42.440 | - Yeah.

01:23:43.280 | And I think it's really sensory,

01:23:44.640 | in the way we were talking about before, right?

01:23:46.000 | It gets you back into being present.

01:23:47.440 | Most of these delights are something you taste

01:23:49.800 | or you experience or you see that's funny.

01:23:52.720 | There's a really lovely book by the author Ross Gay

01:23:55.040 | called "The Book of Delights."

01:23:56.280 | And he used a delight practice where every day

01:23:58.800 | he not only had to find a delight,

01:24:00.100 | but write a short essay about it 'cause he's an author.

01:24:02.800 | And it's just hilarious.

01:24:04.240 | It's like one of my favorite books.

01:24:05.920 | And you just kind of go, and it's really strange things.

01:24:08.080 | It's like, one is he, you know, notice the flowers,

01:24:10.540 | he notices lilacs.

01:24:11.560 | And he has this whole idea of, one delay is purple flowers.

01:24:14.520 | Why are there so many purple flowers?

01:24:15.960 | There's purple flowers everywhere.

01:24:17.560 | He also has a delight in music.

01:24:18.880 | He really likes the '80s band, El Debarge, you know,

01:24:21.440 | from "The Beat of the Rhythm" and whatnot, yeah.

01:24:23.340 | - I'm vaguely familiar with it.

01:24:24.180 | - So it's like, and he talks about his love of Debarge.

01:24:25.560 | And you can kind of have this connection

01:24:27.120 | with other people's delights.

01:24:28.280 | And it's silly, they're just silly things.

01:24:31.360 | But the fact that we've noticed them, I mean, again,

01:24:33.520 | as a listener is probably experiencing right now,

01:24:35.080 | if you pay attention, a little bit of positive emotion,

01:24:37.840 | right, if you're driving around your car,

01:24:39.640 | feeling a little stressed out in traffic,

01:24:41.000 | you can kind of take a breath.

01:24:42.160 | And so that's the power of the practice.

01:24:44.440 | You're shifting your emotions

01:24:46.780 | 'cause you're noticing these good things.

01:24:48.520 | You're noticing the good things, which is great,

01:24:50.520 | 'cause you're sort of training your attention to get there.

01:24:52.880 | And you're sort of forming this habit

01:24:54.400 | to shift that negativity bias that's sort of built in,

01:24:57.800 | but isn't really making you as happy as you could be.

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01:26:16.800 | I've long been interested in shifting one's emotions

01:26:22.680 | and when that feels good,

01:26:25.880 | when it is good and when it doesn't feel good.

01:26:28.640 | I asked our friend, Ethan Cross about this too.

01:26:34.120 | I'm not gonna compare your answers

01:26:35.680 | as a template for who's right, who's wrong.

01:26:38.200 | I think there are a lot of differing opinions on this,

01:26:40.740 | but I know from the time we are young kids,

01:26:45.400 | we don't like to be shifted.

01:26:47.840 | We don't like people to impose

01:26:49.180 | an emotional requirement on us.

01:26:51.120 | In fact, my niece, when she was little,

01:26:52.720 | I was telling her this, she's 18 now, she was not amused,

01:26:55.700 | which delighted me that she was not amused,

01:26:58.200 | but when she was little,

01:27:00.420 | she was a pretty healthily stubborn kid

01:27:05.160 | and you'd ask her to do anything.

01:27:07.840 | Like, "Hey, let's go downstairs for a walk."

01:27:09.240 | And she loved going outside for walks

01:27:10.560 | and she'd say, "No, push me."

01:27:12.920 | And then she would get her stuff

01:27:14.000 | and then you'd go for a walk.

01:27:14.840 | But I loved her, like, "No, push me."

01:27:16.600 | I love this.

01:27:17.680 | Costello was like, "Don't push me, you couldn't."

01:27:21.000 | So there was this immediate vocalization

01:27:24.600 | from the time she could speak, really.

01:27:26.440 | I was like, "No, I'm gonna decide how I feel."

01:27:28.760 | Such a healthy thing too, such a healthy thing.

01:27:30.600 | "You're not gonna shift me."

01:27:32.000 | I was like, "We're going out for a walk, it's gonna be fun."

01:27:33.680 | And she's like, "No, push me."

01:27:35.200 | And then she'd go for the walk.

01:27:36.820 | Most of the times it was a fun walk.

01:27:38.400 | But I think that we don't like to be shifted.

01:27:41.920 | And in some ways we don't really like to shift ourselves.

01:27:45.640 | Like, when we're in a given emotion,

01:27:47.660 | when people are feeling upset,

01:27:51.540 | they don't wanna be told they should feel happy.

01:27:54.600 | - Yeah.

01:27:55.440 | - And yet no one really wants to be upset.

01:27:58.120 | Although there's this, do you know this result?

01:28:00.040 | I don't wanna spin off into a long discussion about this,

01:28:03.440 | but Robert Heath, a very controversial neurosurgeon

01:28:05.600 | from the '70s and '80s, did these experiments

01:28:08.840 | of stimulating in different parts of the brain,

01:28:10.840 | allowing people to self-stimulate

01:28:12.560 | different parts of their brain.

01:28:13.880 | And there were only three subjects,

01:28:15.640 | 'cause it's an in vivo human neurostimulation experiment.

01:28:19.360 | All three subjects, by far, their favorite area

01:28:22.200 | to stimulate was this midline central nucleus,

01:28:26.520 | midline thalamic nucleus, rather.

01:28:28.720 | All three of them reported that the sensation

01:28:31.560 | that they would lever press the most for

01:28:33.680 | was frustration and mild anger.

01:28:36.080 | - Mm-hmm.

01:28:36.920 | - Humans like that shit.

01:28:38.080 | - Yeah. - Excuse my language.

01:28:39.120 | - No, no, no. - Why?

01:28:40.200 | - Look, the horror movie industry would not exist

01:28:43.160 | if we didn't like fear, right?

01:28:45.720 | Honestly, like Twitter X, whatever we're calling it now,

01:28:47.800 | would not exist if we didn't like outrage, right?

01:28:50.320 | These are kind of complicated negative emotions

01:28:53.480 | that have some positive benefit to us.

01:28:56.800 | And I think that this is something that people get wrong

01:28:59.440 | when they hear my line of research.

01:29:01.040 | You know, I tell people, like, oh, I teach this class

01:29:02.560 | about happiness at Yale, and people will say like,

01:29:05.160 | oh, you just want everybody to be happy.

01:29:07.160 | You sort of embrace this toxic positivity.

01:29:09.120 | And I'm like, no, no, no, no.

01:29:10.200 | - Toxic positivity? - Toxic positivity, yeah.

01:29:12.320 | It's this idea, I mean, you kind of see it

01:29:14.560 | in our culture right now.

01:29:15.440 | It's the sort of good vibes only, right?

01:29:17.520 | It's this idea that anything that feels mildly frustrating

01:29:21.560 | or hard to do, it's like, oh, no, no, don't do that.

01:29:24.600 | It's like good vibes only, right?

01:29:26.360 | And there's this idea that if you're experiencing

01:29:28.040 | negative emotions, if you feel sad

01:29:30.280 | or you feel a little lonely

01:29:31.560 | or you feel a little upset at politics,

01:29:33.320 | whatever it is, that something's wrong,

01:29:35.560 | or you gotta take a pill

01:29:36.440 | or you gotta do something to fix it, right?

01:29:38.560 | I think that's a really dangerous idea, right?

01:29:41.800 | Because it's getting rid of this signal

01:29:43.560 | that we've been built to experience evolutionarily

01:29:46.160 | that's really important, right?

01:29:48.400 | If you're experiencing outrage,

01:29:50.240 | that's telling you something super crucial.

01:29:52.240 | If you're experiencing kind of frustration,

01:29:54.920 | overwhelm is a big one.

01:29:56.200 | If you're kind of feeling, oh, I'm so overwhelmed at work

01:29:58.800 | and I'm burned out, that's a really useful signal

01:30:01.040 | about behavioral changes you should make.

01:30:03.040 | In class, I often tell my students

01:30:05.480 | that negative emotions are like that dashboard on your car.

01:30:09.000 | You go in your car and you're like,

01:30:10.280 | sometimes you're driving, the tire light comes on

01:30:11.960 | or the engine light comes on.

01:30:13.400 | And that's a pain in the ass, honestly,

01:30:15.320 | 'cause you're like, well, I gotta deal with it.

01:30:17.160 | So it's not fun when these lights come on,

01:30:19.120 | but it's super useful information

01:30:20.640 | that if you actively ignore it for months and months

01:30:22.800 | is gonna cause a much bigger problem later on.

01:30:25.360 | And I think this is how all of our negative emotions work.

01:30:28.480 | If you're feeling that negative emotion of loneliness,

01:30:31.880 | means you need more social connection.

01:30:33.160 | If you're feeling overwhelmed,

01:30:34.240 | it means probably gotta take something off your plate

01:30:36.480 | before you burn out or get sick.

01:30:38.240 | If you're feeling sad,

01:30:39.520 | that's probably because of some stimulus that matters

01:30:43.000 | that is like, you're not there anymore.

01:30:45.000 | If you're feeling grief and so on,

01:30:46.360 | I think too often we just wanna get rid of those.

01:30:49.080 | We don't like them, so we wanna suppress those emotions.

01:30:52.120 | But suppressing our emotions

01:30:53.680 | is giving up useful evolutionary information

01:30:56.120 | that probably means we can take action

01:30:58.400 | to fix and feel better.

01:31:00.440 | - Americans might be surprised to hear this,

01:31:02.120 | but I learned this from my father

01:31:04.440 | who's from South America, he's from Argentina,

01:31:06.720 | went to British schools when he was young.

01:31:08.880 | And he told me when I was probably 10 or 12,

01:31:11.840 | I can't remember exactly how old,

01:31:13.080 | he said, in the British formal school system,

01:31:18.080 | if you act too happy, people accuse you of being stupid.

01:31:22.480 | To be gleeful or happy.

01:31:26.600 | And I said, now I would say,

01:31:28.320 | well, they're perfectly fine being happy

01:31:30.080 | when they're drinking.

01:31:30.920 | I will say that the after work alcohol culture in London.

01:31:35.160 | - 5.00 to 14.00 p.m. crowd.

01:31:36.600 | - They drink a lot.

01:31:37.440 | I don't know if it's still the case, but they drink a lot.

01:31:39.320 | And then they get very outwardly happy.

01:31:42.560 | But there's this idea,

01:31:44.720 | and this was true when I came into academia,

01:31:47.480 | that if somebody wasn't super serious,

01:31:50.120 | that they might be stupid.

01:31:51.440 | And I think in the United States now,

01:31:55.400 | we tend to celebrate more expressions of glee.

01:31:58.520 | But that's usually in the context of celebrity and wealth.

01:32:03.320 | Like these people getting on their private planes

01:32:05.080 | or something.

01:32:06.000 | But I think there's still some elements to this

01:32:07.920 | that we internalize.

01:32:09.800 | That if you're happy,

01:32:11.640 | that you're not worrying about something.

01:32:13.400 | If you're not worrying about something,

01:32:14.440 | then you're ignoring the woes of the world.

01:32:16.360 | Maybe even the threats that are all around you.

01:32:19.640 | And so in some ways,

01:32:21.040 | we are conditioned to always wanna be happy.

01:32:22.720 | That does seem to be one message.

01:32:24.040 | But then we also get the conflicting message

01:32:26.760 | that to be happy is to be ignorant

01:32:29.720 | of what's really happening,

01:32:30.760 | if not to you, then to other people.

01:32:32.280 | And therefore, you're not fulfilling your role in society.

01:32:34.280 | So who are you to be happy all the time?

01:32:36.200 | There's a lot of judgment written into this thing

01:32:37.920 | around happiness, I'm realizing.

01:32:39.280 | - Yeah, totally.

01:32:40.120 | And I think you're bringing up something

01:32:41.840 | that I actually worry about a lot, right?

01:32:43.240 | Which is, is that hypothesis correct?

01:32:45.600 | Is it the case that if you're feeling happy,

01:32:47.840 | you just ignore the woes

01:32:49.280 | and all the terrible stuff in the world?

01:32:50.320 | Because then I'm creating a whole generation

01:32:52.200 | of Yale students who are gonna not fix

01:32:53.560 | the bad problems of life.

01:32:55.080 | And so it turns out there's a researcher

01:32:56.400 | at Georgetown, Konstantin Kuchlev, who's tested this.

01:32:58.760 | He actually asked the question,

01:33:00.320 | is it the case that people who are experiencing

01:33:02.480 | more positive emotion, more satisfaction with life,

01:33:04.580 | do they ignore the problems of the world and not act?

01:33:07.160 | Or are they the ones kind of going out and doing stuff?

01:33:09.520 | And so he did this in a couple different contexts.

01:33:11.720 | He looked for social justice causes.

01:33:13.200 | I'll tell the climate version.

01:33:15.360 | So he looked at how many people are taking climate action.

01:33:18.400 | So do you go to a protest?

01:33:19.520 | Do you put solar panels on?

01:33:20.600 | Are you donating money to climate causes?

01:33:22.800 | And he finds that the people who are really climate anxious,

01:33:25.480 | they tend to have less positive emotions.

01:33:27.480 | You're really worried about climate change.

01:33:29.000 | You tend to be more on the depressed, anxious side.

01:33:31.640 | But if you're doing stuff about it,

01:33:33.400 | then you tend to have more positive emotion.

01:33:36.360 | I think he assumes the causal arrow goes in the other way,

01:33:38.480 | that if you're happier,

01:33:40.200 | if you're experiencing lots of delights and positive emotion,

01:33:42.960 | you kind of have the bandwidth to do stuff, right?

01:33:44.880 | You can go to that protest,

01:33:46.120 | where if you're super depressed,

01:33:47.160 | you're just gonna lie in bed with your duvet.

01:33:49.000 | You don't have the bandwidth to do this stuff.

01:33:50.920 | And so this whole kind of like Pollyanna-ish hypothesis

01:33:54.160 | about happiness, it makes complete intuitive sense.

01:33:57.080 | But if you look at the data, it's actually the opposite,

01:33:59.360 | which is a good thing,

01:34:00.560 | because I think it gives us a mandate not to stay depressed

01:34:04.040 | about everything in the world,

01:34:05.080 | pissed off about what's happening.

01:34:06.440 | Yes, those negative emotions are good to notice

01:34:08.760 | and experience and act on,

01:34:10.200 | but we can take care of ourselves and it's okay.

01:34:13.040 | It doesn't mean we're gonna stop doing good stuff

01:34:15.040 | in the world.

01:34:16.560 | - I have a family member, she's wonderful.

01:34:19.000 | She saves animals constantly,

01:34:21.320 | and she knows that she has an excessive number of animals,

01:34:24.280 | but she's from the East Coast, she's from New Jersey.

01:34:26.400 | And the other day she told me, she goes,

01:34:28.200 | "You know, I like your podcast,

01:34:29.480 | "but sometimes you'll have these guests on

01:34:31.540 | "that are clearly from the West Coast,

01:34:32.980 | "and you guys get into this real like

01:34:34.240 | "West Coast, California, squishy stuff,

01:34:36.080 | "and I just can't listen to those."

01:34:38.520 | And I said, I won't say her name for sake of privacy,

01:34:41.720 | but she said, "But you know, I really like it when,

01:34:44.760 | "even if the topic is about something kind of squishy,

01:34:48.580 | "if the person's from the East Coast,

01:34:50.060 | "then like, you know, like, I believe what they're saying."

01:34:53.400 | And I said, and she goes, "Yeah, you know, out there,

01:34:55.560 | "you're into this and that."

01:34:56.460 | And I said, "Well, out there in New Jersey,

01:34:58.240 | "you know, language is kind of a weapon."

01:34:59.880 | She goes, "It's absolutely a weapon," you know?

01:35:01.640 | So I do think there are these even local cultural things,

01:35:04.240 | like people from the Midwest, to me,

01:35:05.880 | I don't wanna, you know, stereotype,

01:35:07.280 | but there's a, every time I go to the Midwest,

01:35:10.560 | I must say that there's an etiquette,

01:35:12.640 | people are just so polite and kind.

01:35:15.160 | So the level of, sort of mean level of decency

01:35:18.280 | is much higher than it is, say, in California.

01:35:20.920 | In California, there's some other things that are wonderful

01:35:22.800 | that are lacking elsewhere,

01:35:23.920 | and on the East Coast and so forth.

01:35:25.200 | But yeah, I think one can overgeneralize,

01:35:29.200 | but I think that the reason I raise this

01:35:31.920 | is that maybe we all need to pay a little bit of attention

01:35:34.120 | to the messages that we internalized in our family,

01:35:36.440 | in our culture growing up,

01:35:38.720 | and ask ourselves whether or not our degree of happiness

01:35:42.260 | or lack thereof is, you know, by some programming,

01:35:46.960 | literally social programming that we've internalized.

01:35:49.520 | 'Cause I grew up in a home where

01:35:51.560 | cynical humor was rewarded,

01:35:54.120 | and I've learned over the years,

01:35:55.200 | in part through discussions with Jameel Zaki and others,

01:35:58.600 | like I'm working on it, not all my humor is cynical,

01:36:02.760 | but I don't like cynicism.

01:36:04.400 | It bums me out, it doesn't feel good.

01:36:07.360 | And I realize it doesn't feel good.

01:36:09.040 | I love delight, but I don't like cynicism.

01:36:11.640 | That's just me.

01:36:12.480 | And for the cynics out there, like, cool, you do you.

01:36:14.740 | But I think we have to pay attention

01:36:18.540 | to kind of like where our set point is with this stuff.

01:36:21.940 | 'Cause some people are like sitting real in the no push me,

01:36:24.740 | and they wanna be unhappy, right?

01:36:26.720 | We're heading up on the holidays here,

01:36:27.820 | so like Scrooge, right?

01:36:30.420 | And other people, they're not feeling good,

01:36:32.220 | they wanna be happy,

01:36:33.060 | and then other people really are just like no worries.

01:36:35.500 | I mean, down in Australia, it's all no worries.

01:36:38.100 | And what do they say in Costa Rica?

01:36:40.300 | - Oh, pura vida, yeah.

01:36:41.920 | - Which means?

01:36:42.760 | - It's like the good life, chill life.

01:36:45.240 | - Everyone's just telling each other

01:36:46.400 | how great life should be all day long.

01:36:48.120 | - Yeah.

01:36:48.960 | Yeah, I mean, I think you're getting

01:36:50.600 | at a really important issue, right?

01:36:52.040 | Which is like, do we have a happiness set point?

01:36:54.600 | And kind of, if we do, where does it come from, right?

01:36:57.160 | In your example, kind of growing up cynically

01:36:59.560 | and having these cynical messages,

01:37:01.000 | it could be that that was some sort of

01:37:03.760 | maybe epigenetic thing, right?

01:37:05.240 | You're around all these people that are cynical

01:37:06.480 | and you learn how to do it, right?

01:37:07.680 | But it could be more of the genetic side.

01:37:09.520 | Maybe there's some pre-programmed sense

01:37:11.580 | of your negativity bias or something.

01:37:13.940 | Yeah, we don't have great answers to those things,

01:37:16.340 | but it's definitely true that our place really shapes

01:37:19.540 | kind of a lot of our tendencies that matter for happiness.

01:37:23.100 | We know this from some of the local kind of place things

01:37:25.380 | that you said.

01:37:26.220 | I think my in-laws are from the Midwest

01:37:28.020 | and like, yeah, totally.

01:37:28.860 | They're just like great, decent, kind, happy people

01:37:31.220 | if they're listening right now.

01:37:32.300 | Like, I don't know you.

01:37:33.140 | I'm trying to train to be like you, right?

01:37:34.300 | - They're wonderful.

01:37:35.700 | - But we also know from even more macro level, right?

01:37:38.780 | So for now, for decades, the world happiness report

01:37:42.120 | in collaboration with the Gallup survey

01:37:43.960 | has been surveying happiness of people across the world,

01:37:47.000 | right?

01:37:47.840 | And they come up with these like really consistent

01:37:50.040 | country level differences in happiness.

01:37:53.140 | The U.S. for a very wealthy country is like not very happy.

01:37:56.440 | We're pretty low on the scale.

01:37:57.720 | And in fact, in the most recent world happiness report,

01:37:59.800 | we dipped like below like the top 10,

01:38:02.280 | like we've kind of had this major kind of dive

01:38:04.400 | for the first time.

01:38:05.440 | - Who are the happiest?

01:38:06.800 | - Scandinavians.

01:38:07.840 | So it's usually Denmark, Norway.

01:38:08.900 | - My step mom's Danish.

01:38:09.940 | I love going to Denmark.

01:38:11.380 | Yeah, they're very, very happy.

01:38:12.900 | - So they tend to be happy.

01:38:13.740 | And so we can ask the question, what's the difference?

01:38:15.820 | Maybe it's, you know, the great Scandinavian genes,

01:38:18.620 | probably not.

01:38:19.980 | It's actually a lot of their cultural practices,

01:38:22.060 | which build on the sorts of things we're talking about,

01:38:23.980 | you know, take social connection, right?

01:38:25.340 | There's a lot less work hours.

01:38:28.620 | So people can go home and hang out with their family.

01:38:30.860 | There's a huge culture of clubs, for example, in Denmark,

01:38:33.460 | where people go off and do sporting things,

01:38:35.260 | a lot of fitness, right?

01:38:36.820 | And the structure is to kind of get that fitness, right?

01:38:38.800 | Like nobody expects you to be at work.

01:38:40.120 | So you can go, you know, ski or workout or hang out.

01:38:42.880 | - I will say they're very effective when they work.

01:38:44.960 | They're very proficient.

01:38:46.320 | I mean, I'm struck by the like average level

01:38:49.280 | of operational and intellectual intelligence of somebody.

01:38:52.760 | Like the person, your waiter in Denmark

01:38:55.600 | is an awesome waiter.

01:38:57.120 | - Yeah.

01:38:58.080 | - And oftentimes has very interesting things to say.

01:39:00.360 | Like the level of proficiency and the level of focus

01:39:02.560 | when they are working is immensely high.

01:39:05.480 | So they're not just like kicking back all day.

01:39:07.100 | - No, and I think in part it's a different attitude

01:39:09.660 | towards work, that there's a time for work,

01:39:11.380 | but you don't let your work eat,

01:39:13.100 | kind of like leak into other things.

01:39:15.460 | There's this woman, Helen Russell,

01:39:17.100 | who wrote a book about the happiness in Denmark

01:39:19.420 | or "The Danish Path to Happiness,"

01:39:20.780 | I think is the name of the book.

01:39:22.860 | And she had this quote of like,

01:39:24.220 | she was talking to people in Denmark,

01:39:26.380 | and there's often a thing that will happen

01:39:28.220 | where your manager has to talk to you at work

01:39:29.940 | and give you feedback.

01:39:31.160 | And it's in part because you're not leaving work on time.

01:39:34.620 | You're there over time,

01:39:35.880 | and they wanna have a conversation with you.

01:39:37.100 | Like, what's your problem?

01:39:38.060 | Why can't you finish your work in the allotted hours?

01:39:40.020 | Which again, to American ears is like,

01:39:41.400 | what, your manager would never say that.

01:39:43.260 | - I love it, I love it.

01:39:44.100 | - But that's the social thing,

01:39:45.600 | but country level happiness is also affected

01:39:49.120 | by some of the thought patterns we talked about.

01:39:51.520 | Like the Scandinavians, even though it's like cold and dark

01:39:54.480 | and nothing like it's here in California

01:39:56.040 | with you right now,

01:39:57.200 | they take joy in these tiny moments.

01:39:59.600 | This idea of hygge, right, H-Y-G-G-E, hygge,

01:40:02.160 | where you notice the warmth of your coffee

01:40:04.440 | or have these candles or things.

01:40:06.180 | It's a society that's really focused on presence

01:40:08.320 | in a really rich way.

01:40:09.560 | - Love that.

01:40:11.340 | Like I said, my father's Latin.

01:40:12.700 | He's from Argentina and he married a Danish woman.

01:40:15.300 | And I would say much of their life is about cherishing

01:40:20.300 | and delighting in these small things, the everyday things.

01:40:26.380 | I think that's, dare I say it,

01:40:29.020 | I think that's one of their major points of convergence.

01:40:31.180 | I know, I'm sure there are others,

01:40:32.560 | but that's a major point of convergence.

01:40:34.020 | I think growing up in the United States,

01:40:37.240 | I sort of internalized this idea

01:40:40.020 | that you're supposed to figure out who you are

01:40:44.620 | and go do big things.

01:40:46.040 | That was the message that I internalized.

01:40:48.660 | Part of that was the high school I went to,

01:40:50.180 | it was super competitive high school

01:40:51.540 | and kind of people I tended to surround myself by.

01:40:54.580 | But I think for some of us,

01:40:57.040 | the effort is in trying to learn

01:40:58.620 | to appreciate the little things.

01:41:00.120 | Having a dog, and we have to talk about dogs,

01:41:02.820 | because you've actually studied dogs extensively.

01:41:06.100 | Dogs, non-human primates in a natural setting

01:41:09.020 | and the other old world primates, humans.

01:41:13.180 | People talk about how dogs are just present.

01:41:18.420 | They're not thinking about the past,

01:41:19.660 | they're not thinking about the future.

01:41:21.340 | I'd like to challenge that just for a second.

01:41:23.260 | This isn't the cynic in me, this is the scientist in me,

01:41:25.820 | and I'm genuinely curious.

01:41:27.620 | How do we know that dogs aren't thinking a little bit

01:41:30.460 | about the past or the walk they're gonna take later

01:41:32.460 | that afternoon?

01:41:33.460 | Do we know?

01:41:34.300 | I mean, they have a prefrontal cortex

01:41:35.800 | that can anticipate things.

01:41:37.700 | They have a memory system,

01:41:38.640 | they have a hippocampus and a cortex

01:41:39.980 | that can remember things.

01:41:41.180 | So how do we know that our dog isn't sitting there,

01:41:44.180 | yes, trying to glean as much sunshine

01:41:45.900 | as they can on their belly through the window,

01:41:50.100 | but maybe they're thinking like,

01:41:51.380 | gosh, when are they gonna finish doing

01:41:53.160 | whatever it is they're doing

01:41:54.000 | so we can go outside and play ball?

01:41:55.340 | - Yeah, it's such a hard question.

01:41:56.940 | It's such a hard question.

01:41:58.260 | And I mean, I think it's one that every dog owner

01:42:00.180 | has really wondered about, right?

01:42:03.020 | I mean, I've thought about this question

01:42:04.140 | actually more in the monkeys, right?

01:42:06.140 | Who, you know, we can fight about dog neurobiology

01:42:08.420 | and they've got some of the stuff,

01:42:09.460 | but like they're kind of distinct,

01:42:11.140 | like tiny, you know, walnut brains

01:42:12.760 | rather than like primate-sized brains.

01:42:15.020 | - Well, let's just say that, well, first of all,

01:42:16.620 | dogs have, as far as I know,

01:42:18.060 | one of the most dramatic ranges in body size

01:42:20.900 | within a given species of animal.

01:42:23.380 | So Chihuahua Great Dane,

01:42:24.700 | I think it's the dosing of IGF-1

01:42:26.300 | that regulates body size in dogs.

01:42:28.100 | It's got a beautiful cover of Science Magazine

01:42:29.800 | that we can put a link to,

01:42:30.820 | with a Chihuahua and a Great Dane,

01:42:32.240 | and it's just like, whoa, same species.

01:42:34.140 | They have relatively small brains

01:42:37.020 | relative to their body weight size, regardless.

01:42:39.180 | - And if you look at what the brain's doing,

01:42:41.340 | a lot of it is sensory.

01:42:42.980 | I mean, a lot of it's olfactory, right?

01:42:44.800 | It's not the ruminative thinking about stuff

01:42:47.580 | that we kind of have like expanded a lot

01:42:50.100 | in the primate brain.

01:42:51.380 | - Not a lot of prefrontal cortex.

01:42:52.980 | - Not a lot of prefrontal cortex.

01:42:53.820 | - Stuff right behind your forehead, folks,

01:42:56.880 | is the part that allows you to say shh to your impulses,

01:43:01.320 | to quiet your impulses, suppress them,

01:43:03.000 | and also context-dependent learning and planning.

01:43:06.360 | So what to do, what to say, what not to do,

01:43:09.040 | what not to say in a given environment.

01:43:10.840 | There's a lot in your brain about that

01:43:14.160 | that is controlled by so-called executive function,

01:43:17.120 | the sort of conductor of the whole thing.

01:43:18.720 | And you're saying dogs have a pretty limited

01:43:21.080 | real estate there. - They're limited.

01:43:22.600 | And if you think about what that real estate does,

01:43:26.080 | it can kind of do that shh,

01:43:28.080 | it can take you out of the moment.

01:43:29.720 | But there are kind of related parts of cortex close by

01:43:33.560 | that's doing a lot of the work

01:43:34.720 | of thinking about past episodes,

01:43:37.160 | thinking about what other people are thinking,

01:43:38.840 | thinking about counterfactuals.

01:43:41.200 | - This is what humans are doing.

01:43:42.040 | - This is what humans are doing,

01:43:43.160 | like the human big version of this, right?

01:43:46.000 | And this is the kind of stuff that gets us into trouble

01:43:48.560 | when it comes to presence.

01:43:49.640 | I think the dog's walking around,

01:43:51.000 | it's like, I don't know what it's sniffing,

01:43:52.720 | like, "Hydrant, hydrant, hydrant, dog, dog, person, person."

01:43:55.600 | And I think it's there

01:43:57.120 | because it doesn't have as much circuitry to be like,

01:43:59.000 | "Well, this hydrant's not exactly as good

01:44:00.840 | as the other hydrant I smelled before.

01:44:02.320 | Like, what would Bob, the other dog,

01:44:04.080 | be thinking of this hydrant right now?"

01:44:05.360 | I think-

01:44:06.200 | - Or they're still laughing at so-and-so

01:44:08.960 | from the dog park incident two weeks ago, right?

01:44:11.240 | - Exactly.

01:44:12.080 | - So much of human negative interaction

01:44:14.600 | is humans exchanging good and bad information

01:44:19.360 | about other humans.

01:44:20.400 | - Oh, totally.

01:44:21.220 | - It's like kind of the basis of not all,

01:44:22.680 | but a lot of social media.

01:44:23.920 | - Yeah, and a lot of our rumination

01:44:25.300 | is us thinking about the other information

01:44:27.400 | that people have about us, right?

01:44:28.880 | You know, kind of roommate-

01:44:29.720 | - When in fact we have no idea what people are thinking.

01:44:30.560 | - Exactly, exactly, yeah.

01:44:31.840 | And so, you know, I often think about this.

01:44:34.080 | So in Buddhist circles,

01:44:36.480 | there's this discussion of the monkey mind,

01:44:38.560 | by which they mean the part of your mind

01:44:40.200 | that when you're trying to be present

01:44:41.440 | and focus on the moment,

01:44:42.880 | especially in practices like meditation,

01:44:45.080 | kind of runs off somewhere.

01:44:46.280 | That's your monkey mind running off

01:44:47.560 | and you need to kind of yank it back

01:44:48.760 | by the tail or something.

01:44:50.200 | And I've always thought that was a real

01:44:51.600 | kind of unnecessary diss to monkeys

01:44:54.000 | because my sense is at least the rhesus monkeys,

01:44:56.140 | which is a species I worked with,

01:44:57.860 | they seem a lot more like dogs than humans.

01:44:59.900 | You know, I work with this group of monkeys

01:45:01.780 | on a field site called Cayo Santiago.

01:45:04.780 | It's this island off the coast of Puerto Rico

01:45:06.620 | and it's home to 1,000 free-ranging rhesus monkeys.

01:45:09.360 | So we can do our studies and just kind of walk around

01:45:11.500 | with these monkeys who are kind of living freely.

01:45:13.900 | And you see them and they just, you know,

01:45:15.540 | I'll sometimes sit near a monkey who's like sitting there,

01:45:17.780 | looking out into the ocean and just sitting there.

01:45:20.780 | And I'm like, I bet what's going on in his head

01:45:22.420 | is not that human Buddhist version of the monkey mind

01:45:24.820 | where he's like, what about this ocean?

01:45:26.220 | When do I have to go home?

01:45:27.060 | I have to cook something.

01:45:27.880 | Oh, what did my husband say to me?

01:45:28.720 | Well, it's not that.

01:45:29.580 | I think the monkey's version is just like ocean, ocean.

01:45:33.380 | Like it's just, it's just there.

01:45:35.520 | - Or even better, like Costello,

01:45:37.360 | I used to look at him and think,

01:45:39.460 | what's going on in that brain of his?

01:45:40.780 | And then I realized it's probably,

01:45:42.580 | and this is a neurophysio,

01:45:43.940 | I wouldn't consider myself a neurophysiologist,

01:45:45.700 | but I'd done some, certainly a fair number of recordings

01:45:47.900 | from the live brain.

01:45:49.500 | And I'm guessing most of what was in there

01:45:51.060 | is what we call hash, not the drug,

01:45:52.940 | but it's just, it's background white noise, shh, shh.

01:45:56.140 | That's the sound you hear on the audio monitor

01:45:57.980 | when there's no clean signal to noise.

01:46:00.440 | I'm guessing it's just hash, like shh, shh, shh.

01:46:03.480 | I wonder if the term monkey mind,

01:46:08.080 | well, here, I'll just come clean.

01:46:09.820 | I always thought that monkey mind

01:46:11.500 | was this image of a little monkey

01:46:12.980 | swinging from tree to tree

01:46:14.580 | and that it's the adjective

01:46:17.140 | sort of superimposed on the human brain.

01:46:20.500 | So, excuse me, it's the verb of the moving monkey

01:46:23.660 | transformed into an adjective,

01:46:26.860 | judgment about the human brain.

01:46:29.300 | - But it's so sad if you're a monkey.

01:46:30.860 | Like, I think if monkeys had frontal cortex

01:46:32.580 | and talked to us, it'd be like, don't blame us for your,

01:46:35.100 | like, it's the human brain, part of the brain

01:46:37.180 | that you're on. - Well, it's like bird brain.

01:46:38.340 | - Yeah, exactly.

01:46:39.180 | - You know, as somebody who really appreciates raptors

01:46:40.980 | and diving birds, think about the computations

01:46:43.300 | diving birds have to do.

01:46:44.140 | They have to adjust for the refractory index of the water.

01:46:47.040 | So where they see the fish is not where the fish is.

01:46:49.440 | And, you know, so when people say bird brain,

01:46:51.940 | I'm like-- - Oh, yeah.

01:46:52.780 | Don't get me started on COVID cognition.

01:46:54.460 | You guys are the smartest, yeah.

01:46:56.660 | Smartest guys ever. - So monkeys,

01:46:57.820 | but you're making me realize,

01:47:00.700 | I always thought rhesus macaques,

01:47:02.140 | which are old world primates like us,

01:47:04.140 | or we're like them,

01:47:05.100 | that they had a fair amount of prefrontal real estate

01:47:10.380 | in their brain such that they could think

01:47:13.780 | and strategize and plan.

01:47:16.180 | I mean, if one just watches one episode

01:47:18.540 | of that Netflix special, which I love,

01:47:20.540 | which is "Chimp Empire,"

01:47:23.360 | there's all this stuff about who's in power

01:47:25.840 | and then they're gonna team up

01:47:26.760 | and then they're gonna wait a few days

01:47:28.020 | until that one's injured

01:47:29.160 | and then they're not gonna groom the other one

01:47:31.060 | and boom, there's an overtime.

01:47:32.400 | I mean, like very complicated.

01:47:35.860 | It's chess, not checkers for old world primates.

01:47:39.120 | - Yeah, I think there could be a big distinction

01:47:41.400 | between what chimpanzees are doing.

01:47:43.200 | I mean, they're our closest, you know,

01:47:44.360 | tied with bonobos, our closest living relative.

01:47:46.520 | You know, that was what, like 30 million,

01:47:48.000 | you know, like it wasn't so long, right?

01:47:50.240 | Whereas rhesus monkeys are pretty far off, right?

01:47:53.720 | I think there could be a lot of things

01:47:55.240 | that happened in between.

01:47:58.020 | And we know that not necessarily from the neurobiology

01:48:01.360 | 'cause it's hard to ask kind of

01:48:02.720 | functional neurobiology questions with animals.

01:48:04.800 | You can't kind of put them in an fMRI

01:48:06.280 | where they're doing behavior as easily as you can

01:48:08.400 | with a human.

01:48:09.880 | But we know it from cognition studies

01:48:11.520 | that look at things like, you know,

01:48:13.240 | how good are, say, rhesus monkeys at perspective taking,

01:48:16.320 | at kind of taking on someone else's beliefs,

01:48:18.280 | knowing, oh, somebody's thinking something.

01:48:19.720 | - Theory of mind. - Theory of mind, yeah.

01:48:21.680 | Thinking something different than I'm thinking.

01:48:24.880 | And they're not so hot at it.

01:48:26.280 | They really use their own perspective

01:48:28.480 | to make judgments pretty well.

01:48:30.080 | Same thing when we look at cases

01:48:31.340 | of like counterfactual thinking, you know,

01:48:33.440 | do you have regret over an outcome that you didn't get,

01:48:36.000 | right, something that rhesus monkeys find kind of hard,

01:48:38.560 | right, so it seems like they're very good

01:48:40.960 | at sophisticatedly planning in the present moment, right?

01:48:44.640 | You know, you and I are talking here right now,

01:48:46.160 | if you're watching the video, you can see I have a cup,

01:48:47.560 | like I might be planning to pick up the cup, right?

01:48:50.000 | But the cups here, everything, I'm not simulating,

01:48:52.920 | what if this was a lovely martini, right?

01:48:55.400 | That's the kind of thing that probably a human

01:48:57.840 | can do really well, but a monkey can't.

01:48:59.280 | So they can kind of plan and take next step actions

01:49:01.840 | when there's around the world that they experience,

01:49:05.200 | but they can't simulate worlds that are totally different.

01:49:07.560 | And that includes the kind of complicated stuff

01:49:09.760 | going on in somebody else's head.

01:49:11.920 | - So they're good at short-term strategy.

01:49:14.280 | This fits with what a friend of mine

01:49:16.000 | who studies behavior in macaques told me,

01:49:18.040 | which is that you can set up a really nice, complicated,

01:49:21.160 | on paper, perfect experiment,

01:49:22.860 | where the monkey is going to inform you

01:49:25.360 | about some important feature of how the brain works

01:49:28.440 | in terms of behavioral economics or something.

01:49:31.020 | But then what you realize is, or what the monkey realizes,

01:49:34.360 | even if it doesn't consciously realize,

01:49:37.020 | is that no matter what,

01:49:40.500 | they're going to get reward 50% of the time on average,

01:49:44.260 | and they'll just hit the lever

01:49:45.660 | or give an answer as fast as they can.

01:49:47.500 | So they get that day's ration of reward

01:49:50.300 | and just that's the end of the day.

01:49:51.860 | And so they're not cheating.

01:49:53.840 | They're just like, why would I work any harder than this

01:49:56.320 | to actually do the experiment you want me to do?

01:49:58.620 | And so what many primate behavioral researchers

01:50:02.860 | end up becoming are monkey trainers.

01:50:05.660 | - Oh yeah.

01:50:06.500 | I mean, the bane of every animal researcher's existence,

01:50:09.040 | this is whether you test dogs, monkeys, rodents, whatever,

01:50:11.980 | is what are called side biases.

01:50:13.860 | What's a side bias?

01:50:15.140 | It's you're giving an animal a choice between A and B.

01:50:17.420 | One, A is on the left, B is on the right.

01:50:19.300 | And rather than think through these complicated things

01:50:21.400 | you want them to think through,

01:50:22.240 | they're just like, whatever, A, left.

01:50:23.260 | I'll go left, left, left, left, left, left.

01:50:25.060 | And you're like, no,

01:50:25.980 | I know you get rewarded for 50% of the time,

01:50:27.780 | but I had this really creative question

01:50:29.340 | I wanted you to pay attention, and they just don't care.

01:50:32.620 | - They don't care, well, they're--

01:50:34.140 | - Or they're getting rewarded enough at 50%

01:50:37.020 | that you have to do something

01:50:38.240 | like what's researchers in the field.

01:50:40.200 | I mean, now we're getting really in the trenches

01:50:41.460 | called breaking a side bias.

01:50:42.760 | We're like, no, I'm gonna give more reward at B.

01:50:44.480 | If you're only going to left,

01:50:45.600 | then I'm gonna give more reward at right.

01:50:47.280 | We move them and stuff,

01:50:48.260 | but it does often seem to be the case

01:50:50.560 | that the monkeys are training us

01:50:52.320 | more than we're training the monkeys, so.

01:50:54.320 | - I delight in that a little bit.

01:50:57.240 | I confess, just a little bit, just a tiny bit.

01:51:00.840 | I mean, I just--

01:51:02.000 | - I'll share one story that kind of gets it,

01:51:04.040 | you know, this sort of perspective taking

01:51:05.760 | how good they are, that they are good

01:51:07.300 | when it's kind of what's in the here and now, right?

01:51:10.000 | We were doing these studies on the island

01:51:12.240 | which involved sort of showing monkeys some food,

01:51:14.140 | and we had these eggplants in a box

01:51:15.920 | that we were making the monkeys look at for various reasons.

01:51:18.520 | We couldn't find a monkey to test.

01:51:19.760 | On this island, you have to kind of hike around

01:51:21.080 | until you find a monkey who's kind of chilled out

01:51:22.840 | and whatever, and we hiked around the whole island.

01:51:26.200 | It was taking forever.

01:51:27.320 | We get back to our starting location,

01:51:28.840 | and there's an eggplant that's sitting there.

01:51:31.480 | We're like, where'd that eggplant come from?

01:51:34.240 | And we're like, and it's got like bite marks out of it.

01:51:36.520 | We're like, how did that?

01:51:37.760 | And it was like, wait a minute,

01:51:39.040 | somebody must have stolen my eggplant.

01:51:41.040 | And we're like, well, how did that happen?

01:51:42.800 | Like we were paying attention to the monkeys the whole time.

01:51:45.120 | We realized like, no, no, no,

01:51:46.480 | they must have stolen it when we were,

01:51:48.080 | like, we probably put it down for a second,

01:51:49.600 | and like, they took it.

01:51:50.440 | Like, we didn't drop it.

01:51:51.280 | It was like, and so it was like, we realized like,

01:51:53.080 | oh, not only are they good at stealing,

01:51:54.920 | but they can tell, like, if we're looking at it.

01:51:58.120 | But looking is something that, you know,

01:51:59.480 | all animals pay attention to gaze.

01:52:01.100 | Like, you know, this is the kind of thing

01:52:02.200 | that even, you know, insects pay attention to, right?

01:52:04.320 | That's why they have these kind of markings

01:52:05.800 | that look like eyes so that birds won't eat them and stuff.

01:52:08.320 | Gaze following is really robust,

01:52:10.480 | but that's different than that monkey thinking,

01:52:13.000 | I bet that person's not looking.

01:52:14.400 | It's probably like, no eyes, I can grab it, right?

01:52:16.560 | But if you look kind of more sophisticatedly,

01:52:18.480 | they're not good at it.

01:52:19.320 | But this was another case of realizing like,

01:52:21.440 | oh, the monkeys are actually a lot smarter

01:52:23.120 | than we give them credit for, and maybe us too.

01:52:26.840 | - Yeah, so what we're talking about is

01:52:28.240 | they are good at figuring out the basic rules,

01:52:32.760 | maybe even up to the level of what you call

01:52:35.520 | in computer programming, AND gates.

01:52:37.560 | If this and that are happening, then I go right.

01:52:40.920 | If that and that are not happening,

01:52:44.180 | then I don't do anything.

01:52:45.920 | And if that and a third option are happening,

01:52:48.440 | well, then I go left.

01:52:50.000 | And if all three are happening, it doesn't matter.

01:52:54.040 | Like, they can probably figure out, you know,

01:52:55.760 | two or three levels of AND gates.

01:52:57.760 | But what they can't do is simulate

01:52:59.280 | all these various situations.

01:53:00.840 | I mean, the amazing thing about being a human

01:53:02.640 | is I could, you know, I could imagine any scenario.

01:53:05.160 | Imagine like 700 podcast listeners

01:53:07.080 | jumped on this table right now.

01:53:08.400 | You know, imagine if the table was orange.

01:53:10.160 | Like, imagine if you were, I don't know, another podcaster.

01:53:13.120 | You're Malcolm Gladwell or whatever.

01:53:14.800 | Like, I can-- - More hair.

01:53:15.640 | - More hair, true.

01:53:16.760 | I mean, I can simulate all these infinite different things

01:53:20.560 | to try to program that so hard.

01:53:22.800 | But it comes to us as humans in seconds.

01:53:25.120 | It's so fast.

01:53:26.360 | And it's the kind of thing that we use all the time.

01:53:28.800 | Honestly, it's the basis of a lot of our happiness.

01:53:30.920 | Look at, you know, the fiction that we engage in, right?

01:53:33.560 | You know, we're constantly paying deep

01:53:35.240 | and close attention to fictional worlds.

01:53:36.920 | I've cared more about some fictional worlds

01:53:39.320 | than I've cared about my own family members.

01:53:41.280 | Sorry, family members.

01:53:42.120 | But it's true, right?

01:53:42.960 | Like, you're reading a novel and you're like,

01:53:44.200 | I'm crying, I'm bawling, I'm cheering

01:53:47.320 | for these people that I know are completely made up

01:53:50.720 | because our brains just kind of dive

01:53:52.320 | into these sort of fake worlds,

01:53:54.000 | these alternative worlds so easily

01:53:55.560 | and so quickly, so powerfully.

01:53:58.320 | - I definitely want to continue along the dimension

01:54:01.080 | of how we construct our happiness.

01:54:05.260 | But I just want to make sure that I ask again about dogs.

01:54:08.700 | (both laughing)

01:54:10.920 | And, you know, let's just do this 'cause, you know,

01:54:14.040 | I know it's so politically dangerous,

01:54:15.640 | but let's talk about the dog versus cat thing.

01:54:18.700 | - Yeah.

01:54:19.540 | - You know, my sister loves cats.

01:54:21.400 | I don't dislike cats, but that doesn't mean I like them.

01:54:24.320 | I once rented a place where there was a big cat,

01:54:26.580 | I think it was one of these Maine Coon cats.

01:54:28.160 | - Oh, yeah.

01:54:29.000 | - His name was Baloo.

01:54:29.840 | - They're basically dogs.

01:54:30.660 | - And he's basically a dog.

01:54:31.500 | And Costello had certain cat-like qualities,

01:54:33.860 | like he just wanted to lounge all day.

01:54:35.680 | He could really move like a dog,

01:54:37.000 | but most of the time he was kind of like a cat at home

01:54:38.920 | and it was frustrating for me.

01:54:39.840 | But what do you think it is?

01:54:43.120 | You know, you have these feline people

01:54:44.760 | and you have dog people.

01:54:46.220 | And I'm definitely in the dog camp.

01:54:49.600 | But one of the reasons I love dogs

01:54:50.960 | is I assume they're in the present,

01:54:52.800 | but mostly it's the unconditional love.

01:54:55.360 | But what do you think it is, this dog-cat thing?

01:54:57.720 | I mean, cats are presumably in the present as well.

01:55:00.200 | - Yeah.

01:55:01.640 | - They don't make long-term plans.

01:55:03.380 | And if they do, they don't actualize those plans.

01:55:05.880 | So why is it that some people feel

01:55:07.600 | that cats are like nasty animals

01:55:10.300 | that are plotting against them?

01:55:11.460 | And some people delight in cats.

01:55:12.920 | - Yeah, I don't have great data on it,

01:55:14.800 | but my sense is it gets back

01:55:15.960 | to the unconditional love idea.

01:55:17.920 | Like, if you're the kind of person

01:55:19.320 | who craves the unconditional love,

01:55:21.080 | you wind up being more of a dog person.

01:55:22.800 | - Yes.

01:55:23.640 | - But if you like the, what was it that your niece?

01:55:26.800 | - Yeah, my niece, yeah.

01:55:27.960 | - What was it that your niece said?

01:55:28.800 | Just like-- - No push me.

01:55:30.560 | She used to hold her finger up.

01:55:31.600 | - Yeah, cats are a lot more no push me.

01:55:35.160 | - Unless we said we were going for ice cream,

01:55:36.720 | it was no push me.

01:55:38.920 | And I remember, and I still delight in it,

01:55:41.320 | thinking like, awesome.

01:55:43.440 | She had just, I mean, like she had such a strong spirit

01:55:45.880 | from the time she was little.

01:55:46.720 | - You might like cats 'cause cats are a lot

01:55:48.440 | of like no push me.

01:55:49.320 | And I think this is--

01:55:50.480 | - Oh no, I don't want a cat.

01:55:52.760 | - Well, I think the like removal

01:55:54.560 | of the sort of no push me might be one of the last stages

01:55:57.960 | of evolution and domestication of dogs.

01:56:00.000 | And I know this because in my dog work,

01:56:01.440 | we also did some very fun work with dingos,

01:56:04.360 | which are the Australian wild dogs.

01:56:06.360 | And we don't fully know their history.

01:56:07.600 | Our sense is like those dogs kind of like

01:56:09.680 | got pretty close to humans, pretty tolerant of humans,

01:56:11.960 | but didn't go like all the way to Costello

01:56:14.320 | in terms of the bond.

01:56:15.760 | And one of the amazing things,

01:56:17.240 | we interacted with this group at a sanctuary

01:56:19.240 | for dingoes out in Australia,

01:56:20.920 | one of the only sets of genetically pure dingoes

01:56:23.160 | in the world with this wonderful privilege to work with.

01:56:25.640 | But we kind of had to like do our keep

01:56:27.640 | at these field stations.

01:56:28.680 | So we kind of went in and helped cleaned up

01:56:30.440 | with the dingoes and so on.

01:56:31.880 | And every morning you'd go out

01:56:33.800 | and you'd give the dingoes their food,

01:56:35.000 | which are these big kind of chickens.

01:56:36.920 | And they would just, I mean,

01:56:38.560 | they'd just kind of raw chickens, not live chickens,

01:56:41.120 | but they'd just like chomp it in one gulp,

01:56:42.880 | just like bones and all.

01:56:44.160 | And you're like, whoa.

01:56:45.240 | And then right after that,

01:56:46.120 | they'd want to be kind of, oh, come on, nudge me, be nice.

01:56:49.080 | It was like a cat in its best mood.

01:56:50.880 | But then at a certain point, they were just like, no,

01:56:53.160 | like I'll stop.

01:56:54.000 | They just had like such their own will

01:56:56.360 | in this really amazing way.

01:56:57.960 | And it just felt incredibly cat-like.

01:56:59.880 | I'm like, you look like a dog,

01:57:01.480 | but your behavior is so much more cat-like.

01:57:04.240 | So I don't know, no great studies on this.

01:57:05.880 | It'd be great to kind of figure it out.

01:57:07.240 | But my sense is distinction between dog people

01:57:09.880 | and cat people might be the unconditional love,

01:57:12.460 | no push me ratio of what people like.

01:57:15.240 | - So interesting.

01:57:16.240 | And I like to think did not take us too far off course

01:57:18.880 | in our discussion about happiness,

01:57:20.200 | because we clearly delight in this.

01:57:21.960 | And hopefully people do too,

01:57:23.040 | is that we think about the different brain architectures

01:57:26.840 | and the different capabilities

01:57:28.680 | that different brain architectures have across species.

01:57:31.800 | And the fact that we live in such close proximity

01:57:34.080 | to some of these species is wild.

01:57:35.360 | When I was growing up, not everyone had a dog

01:57:37.200 | unless they had the space for it.

01:57:38.720 | Now I feel like dogs are everywhere.

01:57:40.760 | - Yeah, I mean, it's like such an enormous

01:57:42.780 | billion dollar industry to have dogs.

01:57:44.400 | And it raises a question that kind of gets us back

01:57:46.500 | to some of the happiness work, which is,

01:57:48.180 | is that a good idea, right?

01:57:49.220 | All these people are investing their time, their energy,

01:57:51.740 | their spaces in dogs.

01:57:53.300 | You could ask the question, do they make us happier?

01:57:55.860 | And I know they do.

01:57:56.980 | Yeah, don't, I'm not gonna break everybody's heart.

01:57:58.780 | We've killed the cat people and the toy dog people.

01:58:01.420 | No, pet dogs in particular, but pets in general

01:58:05.140 | wind up making us happier.

01:58:06.340 | Pet owners are statistically happier.

01:58:08.820 | And I think it's for a couple of reasons

01:58:11.080 | based on the stuff we just talked about.

01:58:12.760 | Take the behavioral pattern that matters, social connection.

01:58:15.300 | For sure, dogs provide that social connection themselves.

01:58:18.600 | We just talked about they tap into your caregiving system

01:58:20.840 | and so on, but as you talked about in your interactions

01:58:23.960 | with like bulldog pleading, like bulldog,

01:58:27.040 | what was the phrase you used?

01:58:28.800 | When you see a bulldog and you say bulldog something.

01:58:31.520 | - Oh, when I see somebody with a bulldog,

01:58:33.880 | I just say, excuse me, there's a bulldog tax.

01:58:35.960 | - Oh yeah, bulldog tax, sorry.

01:58:36.800 | - And then I pet their bulldog.

01:58:38.120 | - Yeah, good, let me go back.

01:58:38.960 | - And if you're gonna meet a bulldog,

01:58:39.780 | just understand they're shaped like a beer keg

01:58:41.700 | so they can't scratch themselves on their hindquarters.

01:58:45.180 | So if you give them a scratch there,

01:58:46.540 | they're like, thank you, because it's gotta be just awful.

01:58:49.580 | It's like having that scratch in the middle of your back

01:58:51.220 | and you can't reach it.

01:58:52.300 | - So you do the bulldog tax

01:58:54.180 | and you have this nice social connection with the bulldog,

01:58:56.460 | but my guess is, and 'cause you're using verbal language,

01:58:59.300 | you also connected with the person.

01:59:00.940 | You probably say, oh my gosh, what's his name?

01:59:02.940 | Oh, when did you get him?

01:59:03.780 | Blah, blah, blah.

01:59:04.620 | That's chatting with the barista at the coffee shop, right?

01:59:06.780 | That's doing the Nick Epley experiments

01:59:08.840 | we just talked about before.

01:59:10.460 | Pets wind up bringing us social connection.

01:59:13.420 | And one of the pieces of advice if you're feeling lonely

01:59:15.620 | is get an animal, not just so that the animal

01:59:17.820 | will give you some comfort, but particularly with a dog,

01:59:20.180 | you get to walk that animal and then people talk to you.

01:59:22.660 | It's much easier to connect with people when you have dogs.

01:59:24.940 | So social connection is huge.

01:59:27.540 | Second thing is, particularly again for dogs,

01:59:30.780 | what are people doing?

01:59:31.620 | They're getting out and walking, right?

01:59:33.700 | So we're getting some people who never had

01:59:35.780 | a lot of physical exercise before

01:59:37.260 | are at least getting the kind of walks

01:59:38.660 | they need to do in for the dog.

01:59:40.220 | And even if they won't choose to do it for themselves,

01:59:42.220 | they often choose to do it for their dog.

01:59:44.020 | So you get exercise in, which is good for physical health

01:59:46.940 | and we haven't talked about,

01:59:47.780 | but is enormously good for happiness.

01:59:49.160 | Meta-analysis showing a half hour of cardio exercise a day

01:59:52.620 | is as good as a anti-depression medication

01:59:54.680 | for reducing symptoms of depression.

01:59:56.180 | So just that walk with your dog is great.

01:59:58.700 | But beyond that, I think they help our thought patterns,

02:00:01.040 | right?

02:00:01.880 | And this is true for dogs, I think, and cats, right?

02:00:03.340 | Where, you know, as you were saying,

02:00:04.420 | we're wondering what they're doing.

02:00:06.320 | Sometimes if they're sitting there

02:00:07.400 | and we're just petting them,

02:00:08.260 | what we're doing is we're sitting there

02:00:09.460 | and we're petting them.

02:00:10.300 | So they give us these wonderful sensory experiences.

02:00:12.780 | And I think they cause us to be a little bit more present,

02:00:15.740 | especially when we're kind of interacting with them.

02:00:17.580 | You know, when we're interacting with our dogs,

02:00:18.660 | unless you're taking the Instagram pictures of the dog,

02:00:20.260 | but usually when you're playing with the dog or whatever,

02:00:23.000 | you're just there, you're not on your phone.

02:00:24.580 | You're just kind of mindfully experiencing

02:00:27.220 | life with your dog.

02:00:28.100 | Kind of like when you talked about your road trip,

02:00:29.700 | you know, part of what probably brought you

02:00:31.460 | into the present moment,

02:00:32.340 | especially if your girlfriend was working,

02:00:34.100 | was like that the dog was interacting with you.

02:00:35.800 | So the dogs help us,

02:00:37.860 | not 'cause they're inherently kind of happiness inducing,

02:00:40.060 | they help us tick these boxes

02:00:41.340 | of better behaviors for happiness,

02:00:43.260 | better thought patterns for happiness,

02:00:44.620 | and they're kind of a delight.

02:00:46.140 | So they kind of give us some positive emotion too.

02:00:48.580 | - I love all of that.

02:00:50.820 | I just want to double click,

02:00:53.600 | if it were on this idea that they can be a bridge

02:00:57.380 | for social connection.

02:00:58.900 | That's really powerful.

02:00:59.980 | A friend of mine who used to smoke cigarettes,

02:01:02.140 | who doesn't any longer.

02:01:04.100 | In fact, I remember when I was a postdoc at Stanford

02:01:06.500 | that like the, mostly the foreign postdocs,

02:01:08.580 | but they used to gather outside

02:01:09.980 | and have cigarette breaks all the time.

02:01:11.520 | Now you're not allowed to smoke

02:01:12.980 | on the medical school campus.

02:01:14.600 | And I think probably on the main campus too.

02:01:16.480 | Most places you're not allowed to smoke outdoors.

02:01:18.500 | Right, because of secondhand smoke, in any case.

02:01:21.620 | But he said to me, you know,

02:01:23.700 | it used to be that before people either knew

02:01:28.380 | or fully internalized how bad smoking was, is,

02:01:32.460 | that asking for a cigarette

02:01:34.620 | or sharing a cigarette side-by-side with somebody

02:01:36.420 | was a way that people engaged in casual interaction.

02:01:39.000 | Not just outside of bars,

02:01:40.140 | not just to meet potential mates, et cetera,

02:01:41.980 | but it was just, it was a bridge.

02:01:43.900 | You know, you could walk up to somebody and say,

02:01:45.180 | you know, like we used to call it like bumming a smoke.

02:01:47.220 | Like you ask for a cigarette or if someone was smoking,

02:01:50.420 | you could go stand by them and you also smoke.

02:01:52.940 | And so it was this terribly health-diminishing habit,

02:01:55.680 | but it served as a lot of social lubricant.

02:01:57.700 | - Yeah, it also gives you another behavior

02:02:00.220 | that we know is really important for happiness,

02:02:02.220 | which is time.

02:02:04.180 | There's a lot of social science research on this phenomena

02:02:06.500 | that's called time affluence,

02:02:07.740 | which is a sort of subjective sense

02:02:09.320 | that you feel wealthy in time.

02:02:10.780 | You kind of just have a break, right?

02:02:12.980 | You get a, like a smoking break is one of these, right?

02:02:14.980 | You get a break and often people, you know,

02:02:17.180 | back in the day when smoking was allowed,

02:02:18.780 | one of the ways that you got your breaks,

02:02:20.340 | often in not so great workplaces,

02:02:21.820 | was like you could ask for a smoke break.

02:02:23.800 | My mom talks about this.

02:02:24.700 | She was a teacher, educator for a super long time

02:02:27.060 | where you don't get a lot of breaks,

02:02:28.600 | but, you know, back in the '70s, if you were a smoker,

02:02:30.740 | they'd let you go outside for 10 minutes

02:02:32.260 | and that was a sort of break, right?

02:02:33.700 | So I think this other unhealthy habit

02:02:35.220 | kind of gave us the opportunity to take breaks,

02:02:37.780 | which we know are great for happiness

02:02:39.300 | and so great for happiness that if you don't have any

02:02:41.820 | of this so-called time affluence sense

02:02:43.620 | that you have some free time,

02:02:45.180 | if you experience what researchers call time famine,

02:02:47.380 | where you feel like almost starving for time,

02:02:49.540 | it's a huge hit on your wellbeing.

02:02:51.140 | If you self-report in these surveys being time famish,

02:02:53.340 | so I don't have time to meet up with my friends,

02:02:55.280 | I never have time for the stuff I wanna do,

02:02:57.220 | that's as big a hit on your wellbeing

02:02:59.180 | as if you self-report being unemployed.

02:03:01.320 | You know, listeners, if you have a job

02:03:03.820 | and you lost it tomorrow,

02:03:04.860 | you'd probably think that that is a big hit

02:03:06.500 | on your happiness.

02:03:07.480 | Just not having any time for the little breaks in life

02:03:10.340 | is as bad.

02:03:11.660 | - Wow.

02:03:12.500 | - And this gets back to our earlier discussion

02:03:14.460 | about money and happiness,

02:03:15.700 | which is researcher Ashley Willans

02:03:17.740 | at Harvard Business School has kind of pushed the idea

02:03:20.020 | that what's going on with these low-income folks

02:03:22.500 | who have a real hit on happiness, right?

02:03:24.500 | Not having a high income hurts your happiness.

02:03:27.140 | Her theory is a lot of that actually has to do with time.

02:03:29.900 | 'Cause if you have a really low income,

02:03:31.740 | you don't have a car to get to work,

02:03:32.860 | so you're taking the bus and it's taking you forever,

02:03:34.740 | you're working multiple jobs, right?

02:03:36.580 | That a lot of the reason that money affects happiness

02:03:38.820 | and not having money affects happiness

02:03:40.200 | is that it co-varies with not having time.

02:03:42.100 | And the real hit on our happiness is just the time part

02:03:44.720 | more so than the money part.

02:03:46.400 | - So we need to be in pursuit of things,

02:03:49.020 | we need to work,

02:03:50.160 | but we also need some free time.

02:03:54.420 | We can't have too much free time or too much work basically.

02:03:57.140 | And the sweet spot is often hard to maintain

02:03:59.700 | or even know what that sweet spot is.

02:04:01.460 | - Yeah, I think that this term kind of time affluence

02:04:03.740 | and what researchers mean by it is helpful here, right?

02:04:05.700 | It's the subjective sense that you have some free time.

02:04:07.940 | It's not I objectively go into your calendar

02:04:10.080 | and you show me how many open blocks there are.

02:04:12.260 | It's your sense that you have a break.

02:04:14.900 | And this provides an interesting hack

02:04:16.620 | that we can use to get more of it, right?

02:04:18.540 | Which is that we can kind of just frame things

02:04:21.740 | as having more time.

02:04:23.620 | You know, 'cause sometimes when you get a break

02:04:25.060 | that you don't expect, it can feel like a lot.

02:04:27.620 | I teach this class about happiness on Yale's campus

02:04:30.820 | and I talk about time affluence.

02:04:32.020 | It's one of the topics in my class.

02:04:33.340 | And I always felt that was really ironic

02:04:35.320 | 'cause our young people today,

02:04:36.360 | especially at elite college institutions

02:04:39.140 | are so time famished.

02:04:40.300 | They're running from thing to thing

02:04:41.500 | and have a million extracurriculars and so on.

02:04:43.180 | So I feel like I'm gonna lecture them for an hour

02:04:45.340 | on time affluence and tell them all these studies.

02:04:47.500 | And so what I did was,

02:04:50.180 | in the syllabus is that there's a lecture on time affluence

02:04:52.420 | and they come to class.

02:04:53.500 | And I have my teaching assistants

02:04:54.900 | that are handing out little flyers that say,

02:04:57.380 | today's lecture is about time affluence

02:04:59.940 | and to teach you what that is, I'm gonna give you some.

02:05:01.820 | No class today.

02:05:02.780 | So you didn't know, you walked to class,

02:05:04.660 | now you got a free hour and a half.

02:05:06.260 | And it just happened to be one of these unusually warm,

02:05:09.700 | like California-esque days in New Haven

02:05:11.860 | where it's like sunny out.

02:05:12.820 | So kids got a bubble tea with their friend

02:05:15.240 | or some of them went on a hike

02:05:16.340 | near the local state park.

02:05:18.380 | And one of the students I remember burst into tears

02:05:21.300 | when she got this form.

02:05:23.180 | And she said, this is the first free hour and a half

02:05:26.260 | I've had for like the last three months.

02:05:28.820 | - Wow, they're that stressed.

02:05:30.620 | - They're that stressed.

02:05:31.460 | But what I find interesting about this is like,

02:05:33.420 | I didn't give them a month off vacation, right?

02:05:35.740 | I gave them an hour back unexpectedly

02:05:38.220 | and it felt like it was huge.

02:05:40.260 | And Andrew, I don't know your schedule,

02:05:41.580 | but sometimes my schedule can be so overwhelmed

02:05:43.500 | and so packed that there's a half hour meeting

02:05:45.100 | that gets canceled.

02:05:45.940 | I'm just like, oh, and like the relief.

02:05:48.020 | I feel like I could learn a new language.

02:05:50.220 | You just feel like, but it's a half hour, right?

02:05:52.340 | And I think this is a hack we can use for ourselves, right?

02:05:55.340 | Listeners right now, go on your calendar

02:05:57.420 | a few months from now and just like,

02:05:59.740 | take like months, months away,

02:06:01.340 | pick an hour period and just write in like

02:06:03.060 | a Huberman lab time affluence

02:06:05.540 | and just don't put anything in that.

02:06:07.100 | And my guess is when you get to that hour

02:06:09.340 | that you've scheduled months later,

02:06:10.540 | you'll just be like, oh my gosh, this feels great.

02:06:12.620 | We can kind of gift ourselves these little windows of time.

02:06:15.820 | Another hack we can do is to make good use

02:06:18.820 | of the free time we do have.

02:06:20.700 | And this is kind of a puzzle,

02:06:21.860 | something that I found unexpected

02:06:23.140 | when I saw the data on this,

02:06:24.180 | which is that turns out we actually have more free time now

02:06:27.580 | than we did like 10, 15 years ago, if you add it up.

02:06:30.620 | Not just kind of post COVID,

02:06:31.740 | but in general, we've been getting more free time.

02:06:34.260 | However, the free time we have is cut up differently.

02:06:37.540 | It's in smaller chunks.

02:06:38.780 | It's like five minutes when that Zoom meeting

02:06:40.620 | ends a little earlier,

02:06:41.660 | 10 minutes if your kid falls asleep earlier,

02:06:43.460 | whatever it is.

02:06:44.620 | And we don't think it's that much,

02:06:45.820 | so we just kind of blow it.

02:06:46.940 | But if you add it up,

02:06:47.780 | it winds up more than people in past decades have had,

02:06:51.660 | and probably good time that we could use for stuff.

02:06:54.820 | And so these little chunks of time

02:06:56.820 | are what the journalist Bridget Schult calls time confetti,

02:06:59.860 | which I think is such a great image of it.

02:07:01.220 | It's this little five minutes here and there,

02:07:03.360 | but you can do a lot with those minutes if you add them up.

02:07:06.900 | We just have to use them

02:07:07.740 | a little bit more intentionally, right?

02:07:09.020 | And that could be, for some of the stuff you talk about

02:07:11.340 | on this podcast a lot,

02:07:12.420 | like use that, do the seven minute New York Times workout,

02:07:15.340 | do the kinds of things we're talking about.

02:07:17.580 | That's the time you text your friend and have a delight,

02:07:19.820 | or-- - Get some sunlight.

02:07:20.940 | - Get some sunlight, walk outside, right?

02:07:23.140 | - Walk in sunlight, huge--

02:07:24.580 | - Problem is what do we do when we get the time confetti?

02:07:27.260 | Or I mean, what do I do when I'm in a bad moment?

02:07:29.540 | Blow out our phone, check our email, scroll through.

02:07:31.780 | It's like, again, the sort of NutraSweet dopamine hit

02:07:34.220 | that's not being effective.

02:07:35.920 | So if you feel really overwhelmed

02:07:38.140 | and you objectively don't have a lot of time,

02:07:40.340 | remember that the time confetti that you already have,

02:07:42.620 | it's already sitting there,

02:07:43.460 | it can be really valuable if you use it well.

02:07:46.300 | - Super important because I think the filling

02:07:50.380 | of those spaces with what I love the analogy

02:07:54.580 | to NutraSweet or artificial sweeteners

02:07:56.900 | is it's gonna taste like it's providing

02:07:58.740 | some sort of nourishment,

02:07:59.780 | but it's probably just creating a more sense of craving

02:08:03.780 | and want at some level.

02:08:05.140 | Would really like to talk about reward circuitry,

02:08:08.400 | just thematically, listeners of this podcast,

02:08:11.500 | and even if they've never heard one of these podcasts before

02:08:15.100 | probably familiar with the word dopamine,

02:08:16.820 | we've talked about it a bit.

02:08:18.420 | And as we were talking about earlier,

02:08:20.100 | everything about the dopamine reward circuitry,

02:08:22.900 | which of course includes other chemicals too,

02:08:25.260 | is based on prior experience relative to current experience

02:08:29.700 | relative to anticipated outcome.

02:08:32.740 | What's sometimes referred to as reward prediction error.

02:08:34.940 | Think something great's gonna happen,

02:08:36.780 | something great happens, great.

02:08:39.300 | Think something great's gonna happen,

02:08:40.580 | something less than great happens, sucks way more

02:08:44.260 | than you would anticipate.

02:08:46.260 | Think that something not so great's gonna happen,

02:08:48.060 | something so, so great happens, huge reward.

02:08:51.300 | Novelty, surprise brings the break.

02:08:53.300 | Positive novelty and surprise brings the biggest rewards.

02:08:56.860 | And this is what I would like to kind of paint

02:09:00.540 | as the backdrop, think about it

02:09:02.020 | as a conceptual mural behind us.

02:09:04.660 | As I asked the question, maybe, just maybe,

02:09:09.260 | we're not supposed to be happy all the time,

02:09:13.620 | or maybe even all that often.

02:09:16.140 | And when we're feeling not so great or even lousy,

02:09:21.220 | provided it's not dangerous levels of depression,

02:09:25.100 | maybe we should frame that as the backdrop

02:09:27.700 | for the greater happiness that will come

02:09:30.740 | when we start to emerge from that lousy state.

02:09:33.540 | Now, some people would say,

02:09:34.380 | well, now you're just kind of using neurobiology

02:09:36.460 | to twist around what would otherwise be a lousy experience

02:09:40.020 | and tell me that it's good for me.

02:09:41.860 | No, what I'm trying to say is people want to be happy.

02:09:46.180 | I think we'd all love to be happy all the time,

02:09:47.980 | but we're not wired to be happy all the time.

02:09:50.180 | And maybe the feelings of happiness can't exist

02:09:53.540 | unless they have contrast with these neutral

02:09:57.380 | or negative emotion states that we call, I don't know,

02:10:01.020 | feeling lousy, feeling anxious, et cetera.

02:10:02.900 | And just, I realize I can pose long questions,

02:10:06.460 | but I just wanna provide a little bit more context

02:10:09.060 | for the moment, which is that every circuit in the brain,

02:10:11.620 | our ability to see light, literally,

02:10:14.580 | depends on the contrast with the so-called off-circuitry,

02:10:18.020 | which is the circuitry in our visual system

02:10:20.300 | that perceives darkness.

02:10:21.540 | We need contrast to be able to see light.

02:10:23.880 | Everything's push-pull, hunger satiety,

02:10:27.980 | cold, heat perception, go, no-go.

02:10:32.580 | It's all push-pull circuitry in there.

02:10:34.820 | Why wouldn't happiness have a push-pull relationship

02:10:38.420 | with unhappiness or at least neutral affect?

02:10:41.540 | - Yeah, well, I think it does.

02:10:42.900 | I mean, you're giving a neurobiological explanation

02:10:45.260 | for what psychologists in this field of positive psychology

02:10:48.660 | have referred to as what's called hedonic adaptation,

02:10:51.340 | which is a fancy way of saying we get used to stuff.

02:10:55.080 | You grab the delicious ice cream cone,

02:10:59.700 | or I don't know, we do a delicious salad, really healthy,

02:11:02.420 | but it's a tasty, healthy, tasty salad, right?

02:11:04.460 | Start eating it, first bite is like, this is awesome.

02:11:07.240 | I'm so into it, it's great.

02:11:08.700 | Bite number two, a little bit less awesome,

02:11:10.980 | a little bit less awesome.

02:11:11.820 | By the 10th bite, it's not 'cause you're full

02:11:13.340 | or you're feeling disgusted,

02:11:14.740 | it's just like that sensory experience,

02:11:16.820 | you've gotten used to it, right?

02:11:18.220 | It's just no longer as interesting.

02:11:19.900 | - Walk into a bakery.

02:11:21.300 | - Yeah, exactly. - Mm, smells amazing.

02:11:23.220 | Spend five minutes in the bakery, 10 minutes in the bakery,

02:11:25.720 | you attenuate, you habituate.

02:11:27.420 | - Which is great.

02:11:28.260 | I mean, you wouldn't maybe wanna be firing your neurons

02:11:30.500 | when you get all exhausted and stuff,

02:11:31.580 | but it's in one way, terrible for happiness,

02:11:34.620 | in another way, very good for happiness,

02:11:35.740 | but in a major way, terrible for happiness,

02:11:37.520 | which is the following.

02:11:39.040 | Every good thing in life, if it sticks around,

02:11:41.820 | becomes kinda boring over time.

02:11:44.400 | You're just kind of used to it.

02:11:46.600 | I use the example sometimes of, you know,

02:11:49.000 | the last time, the first time your partner said I love you,

02:11:51.640 | or if you had a kid, the first time your kid said mommy

02:11:54.540 | or daddy, that feels amazing, right?

02:11:58.880 | But like, you know, last week, my husband said I love you,

02:12:01.440 | it's like, whatever, I'm just used to it, right?

02:12:02.800 | You know, last week when your kid was like,

02:12:03.920 | I love you, mommy, like, you don't care, right?

02:12:06.820 | The most amazing thing in life, if it gets repeated,

02:12:10.040 | just becomes boring.

02:12:11.700 | And that sucks because, you know,

02:12:13.980 | you like the most amazing things in life

02:12:15.720 | to kind of keep being awesome,

02:12:17.980 | it's pretty sad that we don't have it, right?

02:12:20.580 | This has a flip side, though,

02:12:22.020 | which is very good for happiness, hedonic adaptation,

02:12:24.780 | which is the most terrible thing in life can happen,

02:12:28.940 | and over time, you get used to that, too.

02:12:30.820 | You know, so your partner breaks up with you,

02:12:33.300 | you find out you have a chronic disease, right?

02:12:35.120 | Just something like really bad happens.

02:12:36.960 | Day one, when you find out that piece of information,

02:12:39.480 | it is awful, but day two, yeah, it's still awful,

02:12:42.840 | but that's just your life,

02:12:43.800 | and then over time, it kind of gets better.

02:12:46.680 | There's a very famous study in the field

02:12:48.320 | of happiness science that tried to look at this

02:12:50.220 | with people who experienced a really great event,

02:12:52.760 | in theory, winning the lottery,

02:12:54.800 | and people who experienced really bad events,

02:12:56.760 | real events in life, becoming paraplegic.

02:12:58.760 | So you used to be able to walk,

02:13:00.360 | and now you've lost the use of your legs.

02:13:02.240 | You survey happiness in people

02:13:04.580 | who haven't had these experiences,

02:13:05.940 | and you ask, predict how bad it would be to have this,

02:13:08.300 | and people say, you know,

02:13:09.500 | day one of winning the lottery would be really great,

02:13:11.660 | and, you know, a year from now,

02:13:13.460 | a year from that point, winning the lottery

02:13:15.140 | would still be just as great, it'd be awesome.

02:13:17.300 | Same thing with paraplegic.

02:13:18.500 | You know, moment you become paraplegic,

02:13:20.780 | that day is a really crappy Thursday,

02:13:22.780 | but a year from then is still just as crappy,

02:13:25.140 | and what you find is people, you know,

02:13:27.180 | on the day you become paraplegic,

02:13:28.460 | or the day you win your lottery,

02:13:29.660 | like, that is a big shift in your contrast, right?

02:13:32.480 | You know, the day you win the lottery

02:13:33.400 | is an awesome Thursday.

02:13:34.800 | Day you become paraplegic is terrible.

02:13:37.000 | But a year from then, it turns out your happiness

02:13:39.320 | is no different from baseline,

02:13:40.680 | from the day before that event happened, right, statistically.

02:13:44.280 | And that is shocking, right?

02:13:45.760 | Like, I know these results, I can quote the paper,

02:13:47.940 | but like, if you told me today,

02:13:49.600 | Laura, you know, you walk out of the studio,

02:13:51.840 | you get by a car, you're paraplegic,

02:13:53.360 | how would you feel in 2026?

02:13:54.860 | I'd be like, my life is still really crummy,

02:13:57.840 | but statistically that's just not gonna happen.

02:14:00.260 | What does that mean?

02:14:01.580 | That's kind of good news

02:14:03.060 | about hedonic adaptation for happiness.

02:14:04.620 | That means the worst thing possible could happen to you,

02:14:07.820 | and you have all these processes

02:14:09.220 | that are just gonna get used to it over time,

02:14:10.860 | and it's gonna be okay.

02:14:12.440 | And I think this is an important aspect

02:14:13.780 | of our psychology that we forget.

02:14:15.380 | I think sometimes we have opportunities

02:14:17.000 | to do things in life that are a little risky,

02:14:19.700 | something we might try out that we might screw up,

02:14:21.700 | or fail at, or that we'll be bad at at first,

02:14:24.500 | and we don't do it because we're scared,

02:14:25.980 | we're making a prediction, like,

02:14:26.860 | oh, well, if I failed, or if I screwed that up,

02:14:29.520 | you know, I'd just be unhappy.

02:14:31.060 | But actually, all these mechanisms

02:14:32.820 | that we have of hedonic adaptation

02:14:34.300 | means those things aren't gonna affect you

02:14:36.300 | for as long as you think.

02:14:37.280 | So I think the contrast hypothesis about happiness is real.

02:14:42.280 | Good things don't stay good things over time,

02:14:45.660 | but the bad things don't either, and so.

02:14:47.920 | But we still want the good things to stay good over time,

02:14:50.100 | and so that raises a question of how we can do that.

02:14:52.340 | And Liz Dunn, whose work I've mentioned before,

02:14:54.340 | she likes to use this phrase that scarcity

02:14:56.580 | engineers happiness, right?

02:14:58.960 | One thing we can do is space out the good things in life.

02:15:01.980 | You know, so if I was having that really delicious,

02:15:04.140 | healthy salad with the avocado, whatever,

02:15:06.620 | if I had that every day, it would stop being good.

02:15:09.540 | But if I had it very, very infrequently,

02:15:12.580 | it would still be good every time I come back to it.

02:15:14.700 | And so sometimes, oddly, the way we make ourselves happier

02:15:18.140 | is to kind of remove positive experiences,

02:15:20.980 | especially extreme positive experiences,

02:15:23.520 | kind of space them out so we can kind of come back

02:15:25.580 | to them over time.

02:15:26.660 | - I definitely agree with that.

02:15:29.280 | I also, and forgive me, folks,

02:15:31.260 | but I think I understand why dogs are so awesome.

02:15:35.220 | They don't attenuate to reward.

02:15:36.980 | You tell them they're gonna get this little piece

02:15:40.260 | of amazing whatever, beef jerky or something,

02:15:42.840 | and they're like, "Yes!"

02:15:44.220 | Then second trial, "Yes!"

02:15:46.260 | Third trial, "Yes!"

02:15:47.420 | I mean, presumably at some point,

02:15:49.980 | they reach satiety or fatigue,

02:15:51.820 | but there's something about their reward pathways

02:15:54.880 | that they don't seem to attenuate much.

02:15:56.740 | And if there's feedback to us on that, it's like,

02:15:59.460 | "Okay, okay, it's great."

02:16:01.500 | They'll keep delighting in the simple little things.

02:16:06.500 | It seems like almost as much as the first time.

02:16:10.100 | We are not like that.

02:16:11.180 | - It's interesting.

02:16:12.020 | To my knowledge, people haven't studied

02:16:13.320 | eudemic adaptation in dogs, but it's a really good question.

02:16:15.580 | But we are not like that for most things.

02:16:19.060 | And this sucks, right?

02:16:21.140 | I mean, it's also the case that in addition

02:16:23.620 | to kind of getting used to stuff over time,

02:16:26.660 | it's also showing a different feature,

02:16:27.900 | which is a sort of more particular contrast feature

02:16:29.900 | you're talking about.

02:16:30.740 | So over time, we kind of habituate.

02:16:33.500 | That's one sort of neural mechanism.

02:16:35.620 | But another is the one that you mentioned,

02:16:36.860 | which is about the contrast, right?

02:16:38.460 | And that's what you see kind of,

02:16:39.660 | you see both of them, say, in the light perception, right?

02:16:41.740 | If I show you the same light over time,

02:16:43.620 | you're gonna habituate.

02:16:44.540 | That's eudemic adaptation.

02:16:46.020 | - For folks listening, it literally disappears.

02:16:49.460 | If I set up the right experiment,

02:16:51.460 | Russ and Karen Devaloy at Berkeley years ago

02:16:53.540 | did these beautiful experiments.

02:16:55.260 | You look at like a grating of light projected onto a wall,

02:16:58.460 | and if you can stabilize the eyes

02:16:59.980 | so that they're not moving around,

02:17:02.180 | it literally will disappear.

02:17:04.420 | Same thing with an odor, same thing with touch, right?

02:17:07.040 | Like I wasn't thinking about my contact with the chair.

02:17:08.500 | - Same thing with happiness, my deliciousness, so solid.

02:17:10.860 | - Habituation, attenuation, these are technical terms

02:17:13.340 | when you really get down into it.

02:17:14.740 | And the push-pull antagonism between light and dark.

02:17:19.260 | The smell, yes, no, on, off, push, all of it, go, no, go.

02:17:23.660 | Every single aspect of the nervous system

02:17:25.620 | functions this way.

02:17:26.460 | It's a flexor extensor in the musculoskeletal system.

02:17:29.540 | - But that gets to maybe what I would think of as different.

02:17:31.140 | So eudemic adaptation is the same stimulus over time,

02:17:34.300 | like almost like habituation.

02:17:35.960 | There's a different thing that happens

02:17:37.300 | when you get what you might call a contrast.

02:17:39.340 | And there's all kinds of visual illusions

02:17:41.900 | that sort of function on this.

02:17:43.060 | If you've ever seen the one where it's like,

02:17:44.540 | you know, is it the same color over here, over here?

02:17:46.540 | It could be throw this on your show page to show people.

02:17:48.940 | And it's like, oh, it looks different.

02:17:50.260 | It's like, no, no, no, that's because of the kind of contrast

02:17:53.220 | between the two things.

02:17:54.340 | You see something that's really bright over here,

02:17:56.160 | it makes something else look a little darker, right?

02:17:59.420 | That's a different negative effect on our happiness

02:18:01.640 | a lot of the time.

02:18:02.480 | This is the comparison effect, right?

02:18:03.940 | This is like, you know, my $50 million seems kind of crappy

02:18:07.180 | 'cause I hang out with people who have $100 million.

02:18:10.540 | Objectively, I have a tremendous amount of money,

02:18:12.820 | but I feel bad 'cause I'm kind of comparing

02:18:14.940 | against something else.

02:18:16.220 | And so oftentimes when we're evaluating different rewards,

02:18:19.820 | we're kind of comparing them against what other people had

02:18:22.580 | or what we've had in the past.

02:18:24.500 | And that means that being in an objectively good situation

02:18:27.740 | might feel really crappy if you just have somebody else

02:18:30.820 | that has a slightly better objectively good situation.

02:18:33.340 | My favorite example of this actually comes

02:18:34.700 | from the sports world.

02:18:36.380 | So researchers asked this interesting question,

02:18:38.340 | like how happy are you when you win an Olympic medal, right?

02:18:41.500 | You're on the stand, you won an Olympic medal.

02:18:43.420 | And also who's happiest?

02:18:44.580 | So gold medalists is up there best in the world.

02:18:47.360 | You might assume they're the happiest, right?

02:18:49.140 | And they are, they're smiling.

02:18:50.100 | The researchers analyze this by looking at facial expressions

02:18:52.820 | and kind of code the muscles and so on.

02:18:55.100 | But it turns out they're not the happiest, right?

02:18:57.180 | Who's the happiest?

02:18:58.020 | Well, let's look at the silver medalist.

02:18:59.660 | Are they happiest?

02:19:00.620 | No, in fact, actually, if you code their facial muscles,

02:19:03.260 | they're showing expressions like contempt, deep sadness.

02:19:06.380 | This is the same expression you'd make

02:19:07.780 | like if your parent died

02:19:09.180 | or like, you know, a real terrible grief moment.

02:19:11.220 | This is the, I don't wanna adhere to this,

02:19:13.120 | but this is the quote unquote second place is first loser.

02:19:15.780 | - Yeah.

02:19:16.620 | - Kind of mindset.

02:19:17.440 | - 'Cause the idea is like, you know,

02:19:18.280 | who's your major comparison point if you're in silver,

02:19:20.780 | you know, 0.2 seconds or something,

02:19:22.460 | you would have gotten gold.

02:19:23.660 | And you're not feeling objectively

02:19:25.140 | like you're the second best on the planet.

02:19:26.820 | You beat all but one of billions of people on the planet.

02:19:30.060 | No, you just feel terrible.

02:19:31.620 | So that's silver medalist.

02:19:33.260 | What's going on with the bronze medalist, right?

02:19:35.120 | There's another person on the stand.

02:19:36.420 | What's their comparison point?

02:19:38.300 | It's not gold.

02:19:39.120 | They were multiple people, multiple seconds away.

02:19:41.540 | Their salient comparison is like,

02:19:43.680 | by the grace of God, like I'm up here at all.

02:19:46.160 | I almost like, you know, two seconds the other direction,

02:19:48.840 | I would have never gotten up here.

02:19:50.320 | And when you analyze the bronze medalist facial expressions,

02:19:52.520 | they're sometimes even happier than the gold medalist.

02:19:54.680 | Definitely happier than the silver,

02:19:56.000 | who's objectively better,

02:19:57.180 | but sometimes even happier than the gold medalist.

02:19:59.160 | 'Cause they're like, relative to my comparison point,

02:20:02.240 | I'm doing amazing.

02:20:03.320 | - And the gold medalist is expected to get gold

02:20:05.680 | the next year or else it's pure reward prediction error.

02:20:09.240 | Especially if they internalize the expectations

02:20:11.580 | of the audience, the spectators, excuse me,

02:20:14.700 | because if they come back the next year

02:20:17.660 | and they're second or third on the podium

02:20:19.660 | or not on the podium,

02:20:20.580 | it's seen as falling from a higher place.

02:20:22.500 | - Exactly.

02:20:23.340 | This is a point that I make with my Ivy League students

02:20:25.780 | who've been perfect in their grades

02:20:27.140 | and perfect at everything to get into a place like Yale,

02:20:29.920 | which is like, turns out that's a terrible recipe

02:20:32.140 | for happiness.

02:20:32.980 | - The only way forward is stay there down

02:20:36.020 | or create a new opportunity.

02:20:36.860 | - Stay there you don't notice, right?

02:20:37.740 | 'Cause you're habituated to it,

02:20:38.780 | just like the pattern down feels really bad.

02:20:41.440 | Like that's a terrible comparison.

02:20:43.740 | I often play my students that DJ Khaled song,

02:20:46.280 | all I do is win, all I do is win, win, win.

02:20:48.400 | And I was like, all you do is win, win, win

02:20:50.040 | would be a terrible way to experience success in life

02:20:53.440 | 'cause you just stop noticing it over time if you won.

02:20:56.760 | And that's messed up because it means when you get,

02:20:59.800 | when you finally hit the success that you were striving for,

02:21:03.600 | if you just stay at that level,

02:21:05.760 | just stops being good, which sucks.

02:21:08.120 | And so that raises a different question,

02:21:09.440 | which is like, what is a hack that we can do

02:21:11.320 | to get away from that?

02:21:13.180 | One is to not look for the silver lining,

02:21:16.040 | but to look for the bronze lining,

02:21:18.160 | which is, you kind of think of reference points

02:21:20.640 | that are lower than you.

02:21:21.480 | - I love a good conceptual pun,

02:21:23.120 | especially when it's framed in an experiment.

02:21:24.760 | So thank you for that.

02:21:25.680 | - Yeah, it's like a science experiment is good, yes, yes.

02:21:28.200 | So look for the bronze lining,

02:21:29.340 | which means find a reference point that's not as good.

02:21:32.700 | And for most of the things you're comparing,

02:21:34.340 | whether that's your looks, your fitness level,

02:21:36.220 | your finances, you can look and find somebody

02:21:38.860 | that's doing worse than you.

02:21:40.280 | Another great hack for this,

02:21:42.440 | and this is more one that's a kind of a hack

02:21:43.960 | for hedonic adaptation, getting used to stuff,

02:21:46.840 | actually comes from the ancient traditions.

02:21:48.340 | I know you talk a lot about smart folks back in the day

02:21:51.360 | who came up with this stuff, right?

02:21:52.920 | This is one from the Stoic tradition,

02:21:54.500 | a practice called negative visualization.

02:21:56.360 | So Stoics like Marcus Aurelius thought,

02:21:58.560 | when you wake up in the morning,

02:21:59.700 | you should have the following thought pattern.

02:22:01.360 | You should think today, I will lose my success.

02:22:04.040 | I will be exiled.

02:22:05.520 | I'll lose my partner.

02:22:06.440 | I will lose my health.

02:22:07.320 | I won't be able to walk.

02:22:08.640 | It doesn't say ruminate on that for forever,

02:22:10.400 | but just like a little, and then stop and say,

02:22:12.760 | huh, I'm not exiled.

02:22:14.440 | I still have my success.

02:22:15.480 | I still have my partner and so on.

02:22:17.200 | This is a technique called negative visualization,

02:22:20.040 | where you just imagine,

02:22:21.340 | you don't have to live it in real life.

02:22:22.560 | You just imagine you lose something.

02:22:25.360 | If you've ever lost something you're hedonically adapted to,

02:22:28.240 | you know how quickly you recognize the value of it.

02:22:31.640 | This happens to me with my phone all the time.

02:22:33.000 | I'm a chronic phone loser.

02:22:34.280 | And I'm like, you know, and I'm like, oh my God,

02:22:36.000 | my phone is gone.

02:22:36.840 | I left it in the airport.

02:22:37.720 | All my contacts are there.

02:22:39.120 | And then I'm like, oh, it's in the car.

02:22:40.880 | You have this, I love my phone.

02:22:42.760 | Like, it's so valuable to me.

02:22:43.600 | - There's that line in Pulp Fiction where he says like,

02:22:45.840 | what is it?

02:22:46.680 | It's like, it's finding, at some point,

02:22:49.720 | I think it was Travolta says something,

02:22:51.560 | someone will know it, where, you know,

02:22:53.720 | finding it almost made losing it worth it.

02:22:57.480 | - Exactly.

02:22:58.320 | - Like, because you appreciate it in a way

02:22:59.660 | that you didn't before, because it was taken away from you.

02:23:01.880 | - And that sucks to really lose your phone.

02:23:03.440 | Sometimes in my case, you really lost the phone, right?

02:23:06.160 | But negative visualization, you don't have to do that.

02:23:07.640 | You just use your imagination, right?

02:23:09.960 | And so if you're listening right now and you have a kid,

02:23:14.200 | let's do this negative visualization.

02:23:15.480 | The last time you saw your kid

02:23:16.560 | was the last time you ever saw them.

02:23:18.280 | Never gonna see them again.

02:23:19.720 | Nope, didn't happen.

02:23:20.600 | You don't have to ruminate about it.

02:23:21.840 | But my guess is the next time you hug your kid,

02:23:25.080 | you'll hug, just that two seconds of rethinking

02:23:28.520 | about what things would be like without it

02:23:29.920 | can break through hedonic adaptation.

02:23:31.440 | So one of my favorite hacks for hedonic adaptation,

02:23:34.280 | you can use scarcity, really space things out,

02:23:37.000 | but for the things you can't space out,

02:23:38.240 | you can't like have a kid and get rid of a kid for two weeks

02:23:40.360 | and come back to your kid, right?

02:23:41.800 | You can use your imagination.

02:23:43.320 | It doesn't take much to start to realize what you have

02:23:47.140 | and appreciate it more, so.

02:23:49.080 | - I love this one mostly because I think most people,

02:23:52.400 | including myself, really,

02:23:54.040 | we want to avoid thinking negative stuff,

02:23:57.040 | especially on purpose, but what you're telling us

02:23:59.440 | is that it provides a wonderful contrast point

02:24:02.160 | to kind of trampoline off into the reality

02:24:04.400 | that is our current reality,

02:24:05.840 | which is far better than these horrible scenarios.

02:24:08.560 | - And I think this gets to another domain

02:24:10.640 | in which I see kind of toxic positivity playing out a lot,

02:24:13.320 | which is kind of in this sort of domain of like,

02:24:15.640 | how do we do this stuff better, right?

02:24:17.480 | Like how do we kind of get good things in life?

02:24:20.360 | And there's a lot of talk in some circles

02:24:22.800 | about this idea of like manifesting, right?

02:24:24.800 | I'll just think about, I'm feeling like,

02:24:26.720 | I'll just think about what it's like to have friends

02:24:28.360 | or I'm not fit right now.

02:24:29.240 | I'll just imagine my fit future

02:24:31.440 | and fantasize about what it's like to run marathons

02:24:33.960 | and things like that.

02:24:35.000 | Turns out this can be a case

02:24:39.120 | where you're using imagination in a bad way,

02:24:41.360 | because what happens when you really deeply imagine,

02:24:44.100 | say, the rewards of being super fit,

02:24:46.480 | you start to get, your brain's firing the reward cylinders

02:24:49.720 | for what it feels like to be super fit.

02:24:51.920 | And there's evidence from Gabrielle Oettingen's lab at NYU

02:24:54.520 | that you actually get less motivated to do stuff.

02:24:57.440 | She does this in the context of fitness.

02:24:58.840 | She has people who wanna run a 5K

02:25:00.960 | or wanna lose some weight.

02:25:01.960 | For example, they talk about like,

02:25:03.840 | imagine how great it would be to do this.

02:25:05.640 | And they're less motivated

02:25:06.840 | to put on their running shoes in practice

02:25:08.560 | because they've already imagined the fantasy future.

02:25:11.400 | Turns out instead of manifesting a better technique,

02:25:13.760 | if you have some habit that you wanna engage in,

02:25:15.880 | is to imagine the obstacles,

02:25:18.080 | the bad stuff that's coming up, right?

02:25:20.000 | So, oh, I wanna get out and run this 5K.

02:25:22.720 | Well, what's the obstacle to that?

02:25:24.000 | I'm gonna be in bed, alarm's gonna go off.

02:25:25.760 | What's gonna happen?

02:25:26.680 | Oh, I'm gonna be too warm.

02:25:28.760 | Like, maybe I put my running clothes on

02:25:30.320 | or, oh, like, I'm not gonna wanna,

02:25:32.000 | it's gonna be cold out.

02:25:32.840 | Like, oh, I should get a nice fuzzy hat

02:25:34.560 | to be able to do this.

02:25:35.800 | This Oettingen's work shows

02:25:37.280 | that if you actually imagine the negative things,

02:25:39.880 | again, not ruminating about it and freaking out,

02:25:41.560 | but imagine particularly the obstacles

02:25:43.360 | for a habit you wanna engage in,

02:25:44.960 | you kind of naturally come up with solutions

02:25:48.120 | to those obstacles, which makes it easier.

02:25:49.760 | So sometimes thinking about the bad stuff can be helpful.

02:25:52.600 | We just have to regulate when we do it.

02:25:55.160 | - I have a friend who's a cardiologist from UCSF

02:25:58.200 | and he says, you know, the danger of telling people

02:26:00.480 | that you're going to write a book

02:26:01.640 | or that you're going to start a podcast

02:26:03.640 | or that you're gonna start a company

02:26:04.920 | is that if you have very supportive friends

02:26:07.280 | and if you tend to be a pretty high agency person,

02:26:09.720 | you'll get a lot of praise and a lot of reward

02:26:11.760 | and there's a lower probability

02:26:13.640 | that you'll actually do the thing

02:26:14.760 | because you've derived some of the reward.

02:26:16.320 | Whereas if people tell you, you know,

02:26:18.920 | yeah, that seems kind of unlikely

02:26:20.440 | given that this and that, you know,

02:26:22.040 | it doesn't feel so good.

02:26:24.200 | And obviously we wanna encourage each other.

02:26:26.560 | This is the complicated thing.

02:26:27.680 | It's a, you know, it's a very narrow beam to walk on.

02:26:31.400 | You wanna encourage people,

02:26:32.480 | but you don't wanna give them so much reward

02:26:34.040 | that then it undercuts their motivation.

02:26:36.960 | And you certainly don't wanna discourage them

02:26:38.800 | to the point where they give up on themselves

02:26:40.640 | prior to even trying.

02:26:41.960 | - That's right.

02:26:42.800 | - But, you know, at least in the United States,

02:26:45.420 | probably in other countries too,

02:26:47.320 | goodness, do we love a story about somebody

02:26:49.240 | who was told like they couldn't do it and they did it.

02:26:53.000 | You know, I think about the enormous popularity

02:26:55.200 | of David Goggins, who was, you know,

02:26:57.400 | had a truly difficult childhood

02:26:58.920 | and internalized all these messages

02:27:00.680 | of how terrible he was and then used those voices,

02:27:05.360 | other people's and his own in his head

02:27:07.880 | to push himself to do tremendously difficult things.

02:27:11.000 | And then to continue to do tremendously difficult things

02:27:13.480 | and to self-publish one of the most, you know,

02:27:16.120 | popular self-published books of all time.

02:27:18.880 | And then to go off and become a medic

02:27:21.640 | and now he's effectively doing the training

02:27:23.520 | of somebody going to medical school for his new training.

02:27:25.840 | Like he just refuses to stop.

02:27:28.520 | And it's, according to him, sat in that very chair and said,

02:27:31.860 | it's fueled by an internal voice of you can't do it.

02:27:35.160 | And then he fights back against that voice,

02:27:37.520 | which is oh so different than manifesting

02:27:40.600 | this image of success.

02:27:42.120 | - Exactly.

02:27:42.960 | And there's, again, this is a case where there's nuance.

02:27:45.100 | You have to believe it's possible, right?

02:27:46.680 | Those negative voices can't tell you it's impossible

02:27:48.720 | because something else we know about motivation

02:27:50.720 | is that believing something is possible,

02:27:54.280 | which requires lots of effort, but it is possible,

02:27:57.160 | is quite helpful for you.

02:27:59.120 | The best example of this comes from another

02:28:00.800 | sort of sporting case.

02:28:02.560 | I don't know if you know the case of Roger Bannister,

02:28:04.280 | who's the first guy to run the four minute mile.

02:28:07.620 | - Break the four minute.

02:28:08.460 | - Break the four minute mile.

02:28:10.200 | And before he did that, people thought it was

02:28:13.220 | like physiologically impossible.

02:28:14.760 | Like the human body cannot do this.

02:28:16.280 | And he was like, no, if the human body can do this,

02:28:17.600 | and everyone was like, Roger, you're crazy, whatever.

02:28:19.560 | But then he trained and trained

02:28:21.040 | and probably had to overcome his obstacles.

02:28:23.000 | He ran it.

02:28:24.300 | And then within like two months,

02:28:25.640 | somebody else broke the four minute mile.

02:28:26.920 | Like it had not been broken in all of human history,

02:28:28.860 | but as soon as people had evidence of like,

02:28:30.360 | oh, people can do that, like now everybody does it.

02:28:32.760 | Now, I don't know.

02:28:33.600 | I mean, as you can see, I'm not a fit person,

02:28:35.160 | but like lots of people run four minute miles.

02:28:36.720 | It's not like the hugest thing.

02:28:37.560 | - High schoolers run it.

02:28:38.560 | - Yeah.

02:28:39.380 | - Which is crazy, I mean.

02:28:40.440 | - But the point is that they're falling,

02:28:41.840 | they're probably helped out by this thing

02:28:43.400 | called the Bannister effect.

02:28:44.600 | Like they know it's possible, right?

02:28:46.480 | So like if you train, if you run into obstacles,

02:28:48.840 | if you don't get that time, you're not like,

02:28:50.400 | well, I guess it's, you know, physiologically,

02:28:52.400 | I just can't do it.

02:28:53.600 | You can kind of do it.

02:28:54.440 | And so there's this idea with the Bannister effect,

02:28:56.960 | you kind of have to be optimistic enough

02:28:58.680 | to think that it's doable.

02:29:00.360 | But when you think that it's doable,

02:29:01.560 | it's really helpful to ask the question,

02:29:03.760 | okay, what are the things that are gonna come in the way

02:29:05.720 | of my doing it?

02:29:06.560 | And we imagine them really kind of vividly

02:29:08.720 | so you get a sense.

02:29:10.480 | It can super help it.

02:29:11.720 | - One of the things that contrasts a country like Denmark,

02:29:14.920 | for instance, compared to the United States,

02:29:17.760 | and I know this from discussions with my stepmother

02:29:20.000 | is that, you know, in this country,

02:29:22.200 | we have this notion because we have a lot of examples

02:29:24.960 | of people that went from absolutely nothing

02:29:28.720 | to these tremendously, quote, unquote, high places,

02:29:31.440 | financially, reputationally, et cetera,

02:29:33.400 | performance in whatever domain, sometimes overnight.

02:29:36.540 | You know, this last year, I would say two events

02:29:41.360 | stick out in my mind as like, whoa, like, wow.

02:29:45.480 | The first was seeing the SpaceX rocket

02:29:49.960 | get captured by the quote, unquote, chopsticks.

02:29:52.640 | That was just a rocket landing of all things.

02:29:54.440 | - So cool. - So cool.

02:29:55.880 | Everybody, regardless of what else was going on

02:29:58.520 | with people's opinions of SpaceX or Elon or whatever,

02:30:02.640 | we're just like, whoa,

02:30:04.120 | that was just an awesome feat of engineering,

02:30:06.880 | just undeniably awesome feat of engineering.

02:30:10.120 | So it sets a bigger upper ceiling

02:30:13.560 | on what we thought was possible.

02:30:15.160 | We're seeing something that we hadn't seen before,

02:30:18.280 | at least not like that, not at that scale and resolution.

02:30:21.640 | So that changes what one conceptualize

02:30:24.040 | about what's possible in different aspects of life.

02:30:27.000 | And I think that's important, it lifts the ceiling.

02:30:30.240 | The other was very different example

02:30:33.100 | was the overnight, the Haktua girl, right?

02:30:37.240 | Who nobody knew of, right?

02:30:38.560 | Made a comment in a passing, you know, video on the street,

02:30:42.480 | you know, one of these like,

02:30:43.700 | whatever spontaneous interview things.

02:30:45.560 | And then now has a quite successful podcast.

02:30:47.680 | It was ranked one of the highest new podcasts of the year.

02:30:51.200 | As far as I understand,

02:30:53.720 | has a staff and a thriving business now.

02:30:55.840 | And like, you know, took, you know,

02:30:57.400 | this is a very American thing, right?

02:30:59.680 | To go from an unknown to one or two quick comments

02:31:03.940 | to all of a sudden being a famous

02:31:08.180 | and presumably famous and somewhat wealthy person as well.

02:31:11.840 | And, you know, wish her nothing but luck

02:31:13.780 | in evolving that show. - Good luck, Haktua girl.

02:31:16.060 | - Yeah, good luck, yeah, sure.

02:31:17.620 | Like, I love to see people win, you know, like, okay.

02:31:20.540 | It was an unusual trajectory,

02:31:22.060 | but not so unusual for the United States in some sense.

02:31:25.980 | Because we also have the people who, you know,

02:31:27.580 | climb the staircase or the people that climb the staircase

02:31:29.620 | fell then came back, you know.

02:31:31.220 | We love and we cherish these stories in this country.

02:31:36.220 | And I think it frames the young mind in an interesting way.

02:31:41.780 | It sets this anything is possible.

02:31:44.480 | Oftentimes it takes clearly a ton of hard work.

02:31:47.160 | Oftentimes at the expense of other aspects

02:31:49.040 | of one's mental or physical health or life, you know,

02:31:52.740 | life enrichment, family, et cetera.

02:31:55.340 | But it's a very American thing

02:31:59.140 | for people to be like, anything's possible.

02:32:02.320 | What do you think that does to our level of happiness?

02:32:04.820 | If we're somebody that, you know, is looking for happiness,

02:32:08.860 | wants a good life, wants resources,

02:32:11.540 | but doesn't, like, maybe they feel a little guilty

02:32:16.540 | that they're not as quote unquote ambitious

02:32:18.460 | as everybody else.

02:32:19.300 | But then you contrast that with a country like Denmark,

02:32:21.420 | where people are very happy.

02:32:22.900 | They're certainly ambitious Danes,

02:32:25.220 | but they're actually, I was told that the word ambition

02:32:27.180 | has a little bit of a pejorative, little bit,

02:32:30.340 | because you're not supposed to, you know, it's a very,

02:32:33.020 | you're not supposed to get that far ahead of anybody

02:32:35.100 | without acknowledging that you're still part of the pack.

02:32:37.940 | Forgive me Danes, but they're nice people.

02:32:39.780 | So they'll likely go easy on me.

02:32:40.900 | - No, no, no.

02:32:41.740 | - And I have Danish relatives.

02:32:42.560 | So, like, how do we take what's out and around us,

02:32:46.460 | address who we are, and reconcile those things

02:32:49.200 | so that we're good with what we've got

02:32:51.780 | and know that we are good with what we've got?

02:32:53.460 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:32:54.300 | I mean, I think this is a spot where, you know,

02:32:56.340 | culture plays a big role.

02:32:57.540 | I think you're exactly right about Denmark.

02:32:59.220 | In fact, the Danes have this idea of Jante's law,

02:33:02.340 | I'm probably pronouncing this poorly, but J-N-T-E's law,

02:33:05.260 | which is like, you're not really supposed to be better

02:33:07.660 | than anybody else, or like kind of showing off

02:33:09.980 | or like pushing yourself or thinking you're better,

02:33:11.820 | even the kind of maybe striving specific,

02:33:14.060 | not to be, you can strive to be better,

02:33:15.900 | but to strive to be better than other people

02:33:17.540 | is kind of, it's like a no-no.

02:33:19.420 | It's sort of culturally frowned upon

02:33:21.580 | in this way that I think is completely the opposite

02:33:23.420 | in the US right now, where like,

02:33:24.540 | that's seen as an awesome thing.

02:33:26.820 | I think the problem is that these kind of

02:33:28.220 | rags to riches stories, you know,

02:33:30.780 | you've given cases of like ones that there's like a moment,

02:33:33.860 | right, in SpaceX, they do this wonderful thing.

02:33:35.420 | You're like, yeah, they kind of got there.

02:33:37.620 | And, you know, Hawk 2 is still doing her thing,

02:33:39.380 | but there was this moment of like,

02:33:40.220 | "Oh my gosh, she kind of achieved this success."

02:33:42.580 | There's this idea that we kind of think

02:33:44.060 | that there's an end destination for something.

02:33:47.380 | You know, I'm gonna, you know, get $50 million,

02:33:49.740 | or I'm gonna get Marriott,

02:33:50.660 | or I'm gonna get that promotion at work, right?

02:33:52.620 | For my students, I'm gonna get into like

02:33:54.140 | a really elite college or something like that.

02:33:57.180 | We don't put our emphasis on the journey part.

02:33:59.580 | We put our emphasis on the destination part.

02:34:02.340 | And we assume that the destination is gonna come

02:34:04.460 | with a lot of happiness.

02:34:06.300 | This is a bias that researchers have called

02:34:08.060 | the arrival fallacy, I'll be happy when.

02:34:10.420 | You know, it's almost like the happily ever after.

02:34:11.980 | I'll be happily ever after if I get that promotion,

02:34:13.980 | or happily ever after when I meet that person.

02:34:16.420 | And what we know from hedonic adaptation

02:34:18.940 | is that thing that's awesome in the moment

02:34:20.780 | when you arrive there quickly becomes the other thing.

02:34:23.700 | You mentioned briefly the gold medalists

02:34:25.260 | who have this moment where it's like,

02:34:26.300 | they won the gold medal, and that's awesome.

02:34:27.940 | But now everything else is downhill,

02:34:30.460 | or I just gotta do it again, right?

02:34:31.900 | We arrive at the best possible place

02:34:33.780 | we could have fantasized, and instantly it's like,

02:34:35.980 | I just have to start chasing the next carrot.

02:34:37.820 | So sometimes when we find ourselves,

02:34:39.780 | I think as Americans, you know, chasing after the thing,

02:34:43.620 | I think it's important to remember that first of all,

02:34:45.340 | that chase is gonna involve lots of ups and downs.

02:34:48.340 | It's not gonna be a linear path.

02:34:49.540 | It's probably not gonna be overnight.

02:34:50.700 | Even the ones you mentioned, maybe except,

02:34:52.580 | with the exception of October, it was a really extreme case,

02:34:55.580 | required some kind of work and ups and downs

02:34:57.660 | and these kinds of things, right?

02:34:59.820 | We don't see those.

02:35:01.380 | But more, the happiness that we're gonna get,

02:35:04.020 | it's better off if we're going not for the end result,

02:35:06.940 | that arrival and falling prey to the arrival fallacy,

02:35:09.460 | it's better if we can see some happiness in the journey.

02:35:13.620 | This has often been called this idea

02:35:15.180 | of sort of finding a journey mindset,

02:35:16.820 | which is sort of what can you take

02:35:18.500 | from the process of getting there, right?

02:35:19.980 | So you wanna run your 5K, but like,

02:35:21.940 | what can you do to try to enjoy the process of,

02:35:25.460 | you know, those runs that go along the way

02:35:27.100 | and noticing the kind of ups and downs

02:35:28.900 | and sort of paying attention to the journey.

02:35:30.380 | It's one way to kind of break out

02:35:31.740 | of falling prey to this arrival fallacy.

02:35:34.100 | - Requires a serious frame shift.

02:35:35.860 | - Totally, and I think one that, you know,

02:35:37.580 | is not culturally accepted in the US.

02:35:41.020 | And I think this causes a lot of, you know,

02:35:43.020 | it causes a happiness hit, not just 'cause like,

02:35:45.140 | sometimes we don't get there, sometimes there's a reason,

02:35:46.820 | you know, if you set your height super high, you know,

02:35:49.860 | you wanna be Roger Bannister or whatever,

02:35:51.780 | like not all of us are gonna get there,

02:35:53.220 | whether that's a four minute mile or success at work

02:35:55.340 | or $50 million or whatever it is.

02:35:57.660 | So sometimes if you set your sights too high,

02:35:59.860 | you just don't get there and so that's a happiness hit.

02:36:02.860 | But a bigger happiness, and sometimes when you do get there,

02:36:05.020 | it's a happiness hit 'cause you get there

02:36:06.300 | and there's a happiness for a moment,

02:36:07.460 | but then, you know, that hit doesn't keep coming.

02:36:10.500 | I think we also just lose out on something

02:36:12.580 | when we're not in that journey mindset

02:36:14.500 | 'cause there's a lot of cool stuff along the way

02:36:16.820 | if we can kind of pay attention.

02:36:18.100 | But yeah, I think it's a big cultural shift

02:36:20.180 | from the way Americans usually think,

02:36:22.100 | but if it's one that if we can achieve that,

02:36:24.020 | we'll start feeling a lot better.

02:36:26.700 | And it means even the failures in life are kind of good

02:36:28.820 | 'cause you are enjoying yourself along the way.

02:36:31.140 | For my podcast, I did an episode

02:36:32.540 | about these sort of Olympic medals

02:36:34.060 | where I talked about that, you know,

02:36:36.260 | the bronze lining effect and things.

02:36:38.780 | And I had Michelle Kwan, who, you know,

02:36:41.420 | Olympic medalist, we all remember her,

02:36:42.820 | but mostly just won silver.

02:36:44.700 | And I talked to her about, you know, what that felt like.

02:36:46.900 | And she said, "It didn't matter to me.

02:36:47.980 | The things I love about being Olympics

02:36:49.300 | wasn't the medal stand.

02:36:50.180 | It was when she first, she talked about

02:36:51.860 | putting her skates on and seeing the rings in the ice

02:36:55.100 | and recognizing as soon as I tie these laces,

02:36:57.900 | I'm gonna get to skate over those and I fantasize."

02:37:00.460 | That's the journey mindset, right?

02:37:02.060 | You're not looking at the thing at the end.

02:37:03.900 | You're paying enough attention to the stuff along the way,

02:37:06.100 | even some of the stuff that's a pain in the butt

02:37:08.100 | that you kind of get some joy on the ride.

02:37:10.740 | - I certainly have learned to relish in the failures

02:37:14.740 | as well as the successes.

02:37:16.820 | And, you know, I think some of that also

02:37:19.340 | just comes with age.

02:37:20.700 | I've always wanted to say that.

02:37:21.860 | (both laughing)

02:37:23.340 | It's true though, it kind of comes with age.

02:37:24.180 | - You're old enough now, Andrew.

02:37:25.460 | You can jump into it.

02:37:26.740 | - Yeah, you accrue enough experiences,

02:37:28.660 | good and bad and neutral, and you kind of go like...

02:37:31.220 | The other day I was kind of like

02:37:32.220 | in this kind of weird state of mind.

02:37:33.660 | I was like, "Well, yeah, I've been here before.

02:37:35.740 | Like this shifts."

02:37:37.100 | Like, "No worries, like this shifts."

02:37:39.660 | And then sure enough, it shifted, you know?

02:37:42.340 | I think the first time we find ourself in a place

02:37:44.260 | or we find ourself back in a place

02:37:46.140 | and we forget we've been there before for whatever reason,

02:37:50.260 | or we try and pretend we haven't been there before,

02:37:51.820 | it's like, and then you go through enough of those cycles.

02:37:55.180 | It's like, okay, this is part of a larger trajectory.

02:37:57.700 | This is the amazing thing about the brain

02:37:59.060 | I never understood, I still don't,

02:38:00.700 | which is that when we're feeling happy,

02:38:02.500 | we don't tend to think,

02:38:03.780 | gosh, this feeling is gonna go away.

02:38:05.420 | Sometimes a little bit of that,

02:38:06.700 | but when we're feeling lousy,

02:38:08.540 | it does seem to do something to our sense of time,

02:38:10.940 | our time perception that makes it seem,

02:38:13.940 | especially in the real lows and the real trenches,

02:38:16.460 | that it's gonna go on forever.

02:38:17.780 | We can't imagine feeling differently.

02:38:19.380 | The "this too shall pass" is very hard to internalize

02:38:22.820 | when we're in those states.

02:38:23.900 | - Totally, but it can make you feel a lot.

02:38:25.740 | If you can get that distance from your current state,

02:38:28.660 | and this is a kind of, you know,

02:38:29.500 | you had Ethan Cross on the show that he talks a lot a lot.

02:38:31.900 | If you can kind of get that distance of,

02:38:33.300 | well, how's this gonna feel in five years?

02:38:35.540 | How's this gonna feel in 10 years?

02:38:36.860 | You can sometimes feel a lot better.

02:38:38.740 | Interestingly, even when the happy stuff,

02:38:40.900 | if we can get some sense

02:38:42.220 | that like this isn't going to last forever,

02:38:44.460 | that can sometimes boost the happiness.

02:38:46.900 | 'Cause we're kind of almost doing

02:38:48.100 | like a negative visualization

02:38:49.580 | in the forward direction, right?

02:38:51.780 | So a scarce experience, if you're having it,

02:38:53.700 | it's useful to remember like, you know,

02:38:55.700 | this is limited, right?

02:38:56.780 | This is temporary.

02:38:57.900 | I should enjoy this now while it's happening.

02:39:00.700 | The most extreme version of this, of course,

02:39:02.460 | is with our own lives, right?

02:39:04.340 | Contemplating our mortality.

02:39:06.380 | There's this idea of memento mori,

02:39:08.940 | which is a common phrase.

02:39:09.940 | I actually have my ring has memento mori on it,

02:39:13.220 | which is morbid, right?

02:39:14.460 | I'm gonna die.

02:39:15.300 | I'm not gonna be here.

02:39:16.140 | But when you recognize that, you know,

02:39:18.140 | the old school folks thought, and I think it's true.

02:39:20.580 | Like you realize like,

02:39:21.780 | I can't take any of this stuff for granted.

02:39:23.820 | I have to pay attention now.

02:39:25.180 | This is not, you know,

02:39:26.300 | the kind of thing that's gonna last forever.

02:39:27.820 | And so I think moments like that for positive experiences

02:39:30.940 | can feel like that.

02:39:31.780 | You know, if you're tasting a delicious glass

02:39:34.220 | of Pinot Noir sitting, yesterday I was,

02:39:36.420 | and you know, while I'm here, you know,

02:39:38.420 | took a walk on Santa Monica Beach and was like,

02:39:40.220 | you know, my brain was like, oh, I have to,

02:39:42.300 | Andrew coming out.

02:39:43.140 | I was like, no, no, no.

02:39:44.220 | I'm gonna like fly back to cold, you know,

02:39:46.460 | East Coast tomorrow.

02:39:47.380 | I need to pay attention, right?

02:39:49.300 | So thinking that this is finite can actually help you.

02:39:52.420 | There's a very funny study on this with college students

02:39:55.340 | where they did this sort of funny framing technique

02:39:57.580 | where they brought senior college students into lab,

02:40:00.860 | you know, kind of halfway through, you know,

02:40:02.460 | the spring semester and told them, you know,

02:40:04.500 | you either have this many hours less of your time,

02:40:06.980 | which maybe is a big number, you know,

02:40:08.340 | it makes it seem like thousands of hours,

02:40:09.940 | or you have only this many days left before you graduate.

02:40:12.820 | Just like, just a reminder.

02:40:14.460 | What they found was the one that got the days manipulation

02:40:16.700 | where it felt kind of short,

02:40:18.180 | they wound up doing more things,

02:40:20.300 | like kind of getting in those things that they thought,

02:40:21.940 | oh, I'll get around to it eventually

02:40:23.580 | and wound up kind of feeling happier.

02:40:25.220 | So recognizing that things are short sometimes

02:40:28.260 | has a benefit, maybe both for negative emotions,

02:40:30.700 | like this too shall pass,

02:40:32.620 | but also the positive stuff, like this too shall pass.

02:40:35.060 | So I got to enjoy it while it's around.

02:40:37.420 | - It's so interesting because it's kind of counterintuitive

02:40:40.900 | that realizing that something positive is also fleeting

02:40:44.460 | allows us to savor it more.

02:40:46.860 | Because from an uninformed perspective,

02:40:50.300 | one could imagine, okay,

02:40:51.140 | so you're at a great meal with people you love,

02:40:53.780 | and it's been, let's even say it's been a rough month before

02:40:57.180 | and you're like really in it.

02:40:58.380 | And someone says, well, you know,

02:41:00.460 | like this too is going to pass.

02:41:01.980 | And you're like, that sounds like kind of a downer, right?

02:41:04.460 | But then if it allows you to savor it more, that's key.

02:41:07.940 | So yeah, there does seem to be this inverse relationship

02:41:10.340 | between sad states and happy states,

02:41:13.460 | where when we are in sad states,

02:41:15.400 | we feel like it will go on forever

02:41:17.540 | and we'll do almost anything to get out of those

02:41:19.480 | unless they've completely collapsed us.

02:41:22.900 | In our happy states,

02:41:24.420 | we don't want to be reminded that it will pass.

02:41:27.340 | And this is why I think in part,

02:41:28.900 | not the only reason why people will take

02:41:31.260 | mood altering drugs.

02:41:33.220 | I'm talking about this in the recreational sense,

02:41:34.820 | like to sort of forget everything else

02:41:37.140 | and forget that whatever they're experiencing

02:41:39.620 | is gonna wear off.

02:41:40.700 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:41:41.540 | And I think, you know,

02:41:43.140 | it's not nice to think that these good states

02:41:45.900 | are gonna pass,

02:41:47.060 | but I think it is helpful

02:41:48.020 | 'cause it forces us to pay attention to them.

02:41:49.660 | I'm having this a little bit now where, you know,

02:41:51.220 | we're coming up on the holidays

02:41:52.460 | that I'm, you and I are having this conversation

02:41:54.220 | and, you know, I'm getting ready to do the holidays

02:41:57.180 | with the in-laws, you know,

02:41:58.580 | which there's lots of positive.

02:41:59.820 | So it's like, oh God, I don't wanna.

02:42:01.980 | But because my in-laws, my mom is getting up there,

02:42:06.020 | I'm kind of like,

02:42:06.860 | oh, recognizing that there's not infinite holidays left

02:42:10.240 | with these people that I care about,

02:42:11.620 | that it's kind of more finite

02:42:12.900 | and maybe more finite than it's been.

02:42:15.420 | It's causing me to be more excited about it

02:42:17.280 | than I would have been.

02:42:18.120 | And so, and that's a morbid thought, right?

02:42:20.300 | Memento mori was meant to be

02:42:21.540 | a really bittersweet emotion, right?

02:42:23.100 | That we are finite, right?

02:42:25.340 | But it can kind of give you this appreciation.

02:42:28.020 | It can cause you to savor in a special way.

02:42:29.740 | So sometimes the morbid is good.

02:42:31.700 | A little bit, a little bit morbid.

02:42:32.940 | - It's the contrast again.

02:42:34.220 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:42:35.180 | - It's the contrast.

02:42:36.060 | And maybe it's why people watch horror movies.

02:42:37.740 | I'm not into horror movies,

02:42:38.740 | but so that, you know, maybe you feel safer.

02:42:40.940 | I don't know, that stuff always made me feel terrified

02:42:42.660 | if I was, you know, watch some of that late at night.

02:42:44.620 | - High amygdala reaction, me too, me too.

02:42:46.100 | I hate horror movies,

02:42:46.940 | but it's worth noting that like, you know,

02:42:49.460 | a lot of people like them, you know, huge industry.

02:42:52.340 | And even if you don't like horror movies,

02:42:53.680 | you might like, you know,

02:42:54.740 | maybe a spicy food that feels not even good.

02:42:57.740 | It feels awful in the moment,

02:42:58.860 | or super hot bath, or, you know,

02:43:00.460 | cold, like a really cold plunge, right?

02:43:02.620 | - I like getting out of the cold plunge

02:43:03.820 | for exactly the reason we're talking about.

02:43:05.580 | - Yeah, or even, you know, honestly, for me,

02:43:07.260 | like I'm not a super fan of exercise,

02:43:09.040 | but like a really, really hard workout that feels miserable.

02:43:12.220 | When you finally stop, it feels,

02:43:14.040 | I do a lot of yoga and my favorite thing is at the end

02:43:16.860 | when they're like, and now you can do shavasana.

02:43:18.700 | Shavasana is always good if you've worked the worst,

02:43:20.820 | like you're just really like, ha.

02:43:22.580 | You know, it's helpful to kind of have these moments,

02:43:25.380 | to like have this contrast.

02:43:26.940 | And so building the contrast in

02:43:28.900 | where you kind of give yourself some negative emotion,

02:43:31.660 | you know, whether it's a kind of imagine negative emotion,

02:43:33.740 | like negative visualization, or a fictional one.

02:43:36.180 | A lot of our favorite fictional experiences

02:43:38.700 | are pretty terrible.

02:43:39.700 | Like a novel's really boring if the protagonist's like,

02:43:42.140 | there's nothing bad happened,

02:43:43.220 | they're just gonna coast along

02:43:44.380 | and things are just mildly positive.

02:43:46.020 | No, we want them to go through some terrible stuff,

02:43:48.100 | even when we really associate with them

02:43:50.580 | and sort of see them as ourselves.

02:43:52.060 | And so, yeah, these like fictional worlds

02:43:54.580 | where we can play with negative emotions a little bit

02:43:57.740 | are super interesting psychologically,

02:43:59.280 | 'cause like, why would we do that?

02:44:00.540 | But, you know, as you're saying,

02:44:01.460 | even when you get, you know, these like neural stimulation,

02:44:04.280 | we kind of want some of the negative stuff.

02:44:06.020 | So there's an interesting paper

02:44:09.060 | about what's the right ratio of positive

02:44:11.020 | to negative emotions.

02:44:12.940 | And it's not 100% positives for hedonic adaptation

02:44:15.780 | and so on, but I think really the recipe

02:44:17.980 | for a rich life is varied

02:44:20.180 | for these contrast reasons we've been talking about.

02:44:22.340 | - So what's the ideal ratio?

02:44:23.580 | - They don't know.

02:44:24.420 | - Oh, they don't know, okay.

02:44:25.260 | - They didn't figure it out.

02:44:26.080 | It was like, boom, it's like exactly.

02:44:27.140 | - 60/40, positive/negative.

02:44:29.020 | (laughing)

02:44:30.620 | You're obviously anticipating a number.

02:44:33.340 | - And I think it's also worth remembering

02:44:35.060 | that, you know, we're talking as though

02:44:36.940 | there are negative emotions and positive emotions.

02:44:38.900 | You know, a lot of the most interesting emotions

02:44:40.860 | are more complex than that.

02:44:42.460 | You talked about this, you know,

02:44:43.540 | SpaceX kind of chopsticks moment.

02:44:46.280 | My guess is the emotion you're experiencing there

02:44:48.620 | is one that researchers like Dacher Keltner

02:44:50.620 | and colleagues would call awe, right?

02:44:52.100 | This sense of, oh my gosh, that is amazing.

02:44:54.940 | There's something bigger than me

02:44:56.420 | that like is able to do this thing.

02:44:58.540 | And one of the reasons awe is such an interesting emotion

02:45:00.740 | is it's usually destabilizing, right?

02:45:02.820 | They're like things that are better than I ever expected.

02:45:05.500 | You know, humankind is so masterful,

02:45:07.220 | space is so big, nature is so vast, right?

02:45:10.300 | It kind of feels a little destabilizing

02:45:12.700 | when you experience awe, but we also see it as positive.

02:45:15.900 | And so I think kind of if you're feeling a little bored

02:45:19.340 | in your emotional life, trying to find moments

02:45:21.500 | where you can get these emotions

02:45:23.500 | that are not so obviously positive or negative,

02:45:26.100 | but are a little bit of both can be really inspiring.

02:45:29.220 | It's one of the reasons, you know,

02:45:30.060 | we talk a lot about sort of psychedelics

02:45:32.000 | and these sort of altered experiences.

02:45:33.960 | Those experiences tend to be thought of

02:45:36.460 | as being really consistent with moments of awe,

02:45:38.940 | but they again are not universally positive,

02:45:41.020 | but they kind of expand you and take you a little further.

02:45:43.540 | - I can attest that they're not universally positive.

02:45:45.860 | (both laughing)

02:45:47.020 | Sometimes they're terrifying,

02:45:49.100 | even in their clinical application.

02:45:50.900 | The thing I appreciated about the rocket landing

02:45:54.300 | was that indeed I feel awe looking up at the stars at night

02:45:57.380 | or just thinking about how we're having this conversation

02:45:59.940 | in a room and all, and then expanding out

02:46:01.940 | to like we're a little object floating in the universe.

02:46:04.780 | And that can be a bit overwhelming.

02:46:06.220 | What's I think incredible is that

02:46:07.740 | through the harnessing of engineering and physics,

02:46:10.580 | SpaceX was able to create something

02:46:12.220 | that was so well controlled at a scale

02:46:16.420 | that I'm normally accustomed to thinking about things.

02:46:19.440 | Sure, I've seen planes and we landed on the moon, et cetera.

02:46:22.300 | Some people will debate that, but we were on the moon.

02:46:24.780 | I wasn't, but somebody was.

02:46:26.180 | To see control and harnessing of physics and engineering

02:46:32.100 | at a scale that is certainly not at the scale

02:46:34.820 | of the entire galaxies,

02:46:35.780 | but it's starting to approach outer space

02:46:37.740 | and back again, clearly.

02:46:39.460 | And in such a, I think it was the slowing

02:46:41.820 | of that enormously large object

02:46:44.540 | and the capture that felt so gratifying.

02:46:47.260 | I also think, and this can explain a fair amount

02:46:50.780 | of human technological evolution

02:46:52.620 | is that the human brain either delights in

02:46:55.340 | or at least marvels in creating action at a distance.

02:47:00.340 | I mean, think about what went into creating

02:47:02.100 | that amount of action in an object

02:47:05.100 | with that much mass at a distance, right?

02:47:07.780 | And then you can layer through all the things

02:47:10.140 | where we're looking at it on our phones, on our screens.

02:47:11.780 | I mean, all that technology is relatively recent.

02:47:14.420 | And to think that us human beings,

02:47:17.460 | as opposed to macaque monkeys could do that.

02:47:20.460 | Like we are the primate species that is so far ahead

02:47:23.780 | in terms of technological development

02:47:26.260 | compared to every other species on the planet.

02:47:28.740 | The only other species of life that might be besting us

02:47:32.980 | and we don't know is I've heard this theory.

02:47:35.180 | It's rather entertaining,

02:47:37.340 | which is that all these trillions of microorganisms

02:47:39.180 | that live in our gut microbiome,

02:47:40.980 | what if we're just vehicles for them to get around

02:47:42.780 | and pass to one another?

02:47:44.140 | And they're just, they have a sort of a consciousness

02:47:48.620 | that is all about just propagating.

02:47:50.460 | And that we think that we're doing all this stuff

02:47:52.260 | for some evolution, but it's just to keep the microbiota.

02:47:54.540 | I don't really believe that by the way.

02:47:55.380 | - Finally, we could get to space

02:47:56.900 | where we could really evolve the microbiota.

02:47:58.700 | - And they just want more microbiota.

02:48:00.660 | So, that we're being hijacked.

02:48:02.420 | I chuckle at that theory.

02:48:04.820 | I don't actually think that's the way it is.

02:48:05.660 | - Yeah, there's, we talked about too few studies

02:48:08.060 | of dog and primate cognition,

02:48:09.620 | way too few studies of microbiota cognition,

02:48:12.020 | unfortunately.

02:48:12.860 | - This is probably the right time to say

02:48:18.860 | that we are a storytelling species.

02:48:21.620 | This is what we're doing right now.

02:48:22.700 | We're creating story around these things

02:48:24.900 | that we can't quite explain.

02:48:26.060 | And during the course of today's conversation,

02:48:28.780 | I realized that this thing that we call happiness

02:48:32.700 | has at least three levels or layers

02:48:35.340 | that we filter it through.

02:48:36.460 | When we ask ourselves, are we happy?

02:48:38.460 | How do I be happier?

02:48:40.780 | This element of contrast with negative experiences

02:48:43.060 | seems to be a repeating theme.

02:48:44.900 | Memento mori being negative sort of dark cloud

02:48:48.580 | from which we're supposed to see the light

02:48:50.540 | and act in the light.

02:48:52.980 | This exists in religious narratives,

02:48:54.860 | philosophical narratives and scientific reality.

02:48:58.940 | I could imagine three layers.

02:49:02.180 | The first is sensory experience.

02:49:04.580 | The reason to take a cold shower, folks,

02:49:06.220 | in addition to the fact

02:49:07.060 | that it'll save you on your heating bill

02:49:08.980 | is that the warm shower that follows,

02:49:11.580 | in fact, that's how I do it, feels so good.

02:49:13.780 | 10 times better than it would

02:49:15.220 | if you had just gotten into the warm shower, I promise.

02:49:17.460 | Same thing about getting out of the cold plunge.

02:49:19.420 | You know, there's a lot of debate about these things,

02:49:20.940 | but this is just pure sensory experience

02:49:23.500 | and contrast of the sort that we're talking about today.

02:49:26.100 | Hunger and then eating a delicious piece of food

02:49:28.540 | or eating a not so delicious piece of food,

02:49:30.220 | but you're hungry and so it's that much more delicious.

02:49:32.860 | Okay.

02:49:33.820 | Million examples we could spiral towards.

02:49:35.300 | So there's sensory experience.

02:49:36.500 | There's raw sensory perception and experience

02:49:39.380 | from which the contrast creates this thing

02:49:41.420 | that we like feel better, aka happiness, sort of.

02:49:46.220 | Then there's story.

02:49:47.740 | Like, God, last year was a tough year.

02:49:50.140 | This year was better.

02:49:51.740 | There's also, and I've seen this before,

02:49:53.260 | like we were killing it for two years

02:49:55.540 | and then this year was kind of a meh year.

02:49:57.420 | This is not the case, by the way,

02:49:59.020 | but I'm very fortunate the podcast has continued

02:50:01.540 | to grow and expand.

02:50:02.500 | But for some people, they're not as happy

02:50:04.900 | with their whatever salary this year,

02:50:06.580 | because even though it's spectacular

02:50:08.220 | by somebody else's standards, by their standard,

02:50:10.500 | it's down from previous years.

02:50:12.260 | So there's the story that we create

02:50:14.420 | that it's not sensory experience.

02:50:16.360 | It's perception based on dopamine

02:50:18.980 | and it's perception based on reward

02:50:20.500 | and punishment, et cetera.

02:50:22.420 | And then there's this third layer, which is meaning.

02:50:25.500 | Like you said, yeah, you know,

02:50:27.180 | spending time with in-laws, like, okay,

02:50:29.620 | every moment of it might not be as awesome

02:50:31.540 | as you might like, but there's meaning

02:50:33.540 | in spending time with people that are extended family,

02:50:35.820 | especially when elders and younger are in the same room.

02:50:40.060 | There's something really, it layers on story

02:50:43.940 | to create this sort of other level that we call meaning.

02:50:48.020 | And so what I'm realizing is that

02:50:49.220 | these are three timescales.

02:50:51.100 | So we have the immediate timescale of happiness.

02:50:52.880 | We have the kind of intermediate one

02:50:54.060 | where we introduce a story.

02:50:55.460 | And then we have meaning,

02:50:56.300 | which is kind of like this whole picture.

02:50:59.500 | So it seems to me that we need to approach happiness

02:51:02.580 | from all three levels,

02:51:04.340 | that it's not enough to just be like a dog,

02:51:08.500 | which are in the sensory experience,

02:51:10.420 | presumably of happiness.

02:51:13.060 | If they tell stories, they don't tell them to us.

02:51:15.820 | And if they have meaning, I don't know,

02:51:17.500 | but they seem to like nailed the first level.

02:51:20.540 | And they're probably five more.

02:51:22.700 | - And they probably don't have the capacity

02:51:23.820 | to do the other two.

02:51:24.660 | - It's not like they're not doing it

02:51:25.740 | and kind of missing out.

02:51:26.700 | They kind of have brains

02:51:27.740 | that don't let them notice they're missing out.

02:51:29.380 | But we unfortunately have brains

02:51:30.580 | that would feel like we were really missing out.

02:51:32.660 | If we just had the sensory experiences

02:51:35.300 | without the good stories,

02:51:36.380 | I think you're sort of pointing to this idea

02:51:37.860 | that sort of being happy in your life

02:51:39.260 | and being happy with your life,

02:51:40.380 | the with your life part has the kind of

02:51:42.340 | medium timescale stories,

02:51:44.660 | but also the really big ones, right?

02:51:46.380 | You know, is my life,

02:51:47.380 | am I doing anything really meaningful with my life?

02:51:49.300 | Am I finding purpose and so on?

02:51:51.140 | The funny thing though,

02:51:52.880 | is when you get to that big timescale

02:51:54.940 | to find a sense of purpose and stuff like that,

02:51:57.180 | sometimes it pays to do stuff at the local level,

02:51:59.660 | at the medium and shorter term timescale.

02:52:02.580 | And one of the things researchers have found

02:52:04.420 | is that if you're engaging in activities

02:52:06.680 | at the short term timescales

02:52:08.340 | that kind of fit with your value,

02:52:10.180 | so what these positive psychologists

02:52:11.620 | have often called your strengths,

02:52:13.900 | that can be a way to sort of achieve purpose.

02:52:16.020 | So what are strengths?

02:52:16.840 | So researchers do this thing where they wanna look at like

02:52:18.980 | all the valuable things people can do out in the world,

02:52:21.380 | right? And so what are the things that you value?

02:52:23.500 | And folks like Chris Peterson and colleagues

02:52:25.500 | have come up with this list of what they call

02:52:27.500 | different character strengths.

02:52:28.780 | And there are things that like, you know,

02:52:29.980 | you can actually, if you Google online character strengths,

02:52:32.180 | you'll get the big list.

02:52:33.300 | Often people talk about there being 24,

02:52:35.580 | but they're just universally good things like being brave,

02:52:38.100 | be, you know, citizenship, humor,

02:52:40.020 | like, you know, social intelligence,

02:52:41.540 | love of learning, right?

02:52:42.740 | You know, kind of empathy, fairness, right?

02:52:44.760 | These kinds of sets of values that we have.

02:52:47.720 | People differ in how much they value one or the other,

02:52:50.860 | you know, so I could ask you, Andrew, like, what's better,

02:52:52.700 | like bravery or humor?

02:52:54.220 | Probably both pretty high for you, I would imagine.

02:52:56.060 | But like about prudence versus love of learning,

02:52:59.440 | I have a guess.

02:53:00.280 | - Yeah, I mean, if I had to pick between bravery and humor,

02:53:03.420 | I think bravery is probably more important to me.

02:53:05.860 | - More humor, yeah.

02:53:06.700 | - I mean, I love humor, but if I had to pick,

02:53:09.140 | it's sort of like, you know, steak and coffee,

02:53:11.140 | I'm going steak.

02:53:11.980 | - Yeah, okay, well, the point is we,

02:53:13.860 | there are individual differences in this

02:53:15.660 | and there are formal tests you can do online.

02:53:17.580 | If you Google the VIA character strengths test,

02:53:19.940 | you'll see these 24 and you can do one of these

02:53:21.780 | very systematic, you know, kind of tests to do it.

02:53:24.860 | But really just trying to think about like,

02:53:26.020 | what are the values that you value?

02:53:28.660 | And the ones that come to mind as being

02:53:30.180 | particularly about you, the ones that you resonate with

02:53:32.540 | are what somebody like Chris Peterson

02:53:34.180 | would call your signature strengths.

02:53:35.600 | They're the ones that when you execute them,

02:53:37.700 | you kind of feel like things are meaningful

02:53:39.420 | and purposeful and so on.

02:53:41.180 | And so the idea is that one recipe for a purposeful life

02:53:46.020 | at the local level is trying to engage in behaviors

02:53:49.880 | that allow you to use more of these values or strengths.

02:53:52.740 | And one of my favorite pieces of research

02:53:56.340 | that looks at both the power of this

02:53:57.820 | and how, even though if it seems like

02:53:59.500 | that those are hard things to bring in,

02:54:01.540 | like you should bring them in more,

02:54:03.420 | is some work by this woman, Amy Resnensky,

02:54:05.340 | who's a professor at the University of Pennsylvania

02:54:07.340 | and she does these studies on what she calls job crafting,

02:54:10.820 | which is a practice where you take

02:54:12.780 | your normal job description as whatever your job is

02:54:15.380 | and figure out ways that you can infuse

02:54:17.260 | your signature strengths into them.

02:54:18.780 | You know, so if you're a podcaster,

02:54:20.200 | if your signature strength was bravery,

02:54:22.140 | you could bring in guests that made me

02:54:23.880 | feel a little bit intimidating to you,

02:54:25.480 | probably like me, I imagine.

02:54:27.400 | Or like you could take on topics

02:54:28.920 | that are a little bit harder, right,

02:54:30.200 | that kind of push you a little bit, right?

02:54:31.880 | If your signature strength was humor,

02:54:33.320 | you'd add more company or make more jokes.

02:54:35.520 | If it was love of learning, you'd pick topics

02:54:37.180 | that like you didn't know anything about,

02:54:38.380 | but you kind of dive in, right?

02:54:39.880 | You take whatever your normal job description

02:54:41.720 | is and you find a way to build in your strengths.

02:54:44.160 | And the reason I love Amy's work so much

02:54:46.160 | is that she studies signature strengths

02:54:48.240 | not in academics like us who have very flexible jobs

02:54:51.140 | or podcasters, she studies signature strengths

02:54:53.720 | in hospital janitorial staff workers

02:54:56.620 | who are, you know, these are people

02:54:57.640 | that are cleaning the linen in a hospital room

02:54:59.680 | or mopping the floors and stuff.

02:55:00.880 | Not a job where you think there's lots of flexibility

02:55:03.780 | or you could build in things like, you know,

02:55:05.740 | humor and love of learning and the stuff.

02:55:07.980 | But she finds interestingly that like around

02:55:10.180 | a quarter to a third of these janitorial staff workers

02:55:13.420 | say that their job is a calling, they love it,

02:55:16.460 | they get a lot of purpose from it.

02:55:18.300 | And they're the ones that are naturally building in

02:55:20.760 | their signature strengths.

02:55:22.020 | And she tells in her work, she tells these lovely stories.

02:55:24.440 | There's a story of a janitorial staff worker

02:55:26.360 | who worked in a chemotherapy ward.

02:55:28.760 | And if you've been unlucky enough to have cancer

02:55:31.140 | and had to have chemotherapy or know someone who did,

02:55:33.240 | you know that people tend to get really sick

02:55:34.960 | 'cause the medicine makes people really nauseous.

02:55:36.640 | So a big part of this guy's job

02:55:38.660 | was like cleaning up vomit basically.

02:55:40.920 | But he said, you know, my job isn't to clean up vomit,

02:55:42.920 | my strengths are like humor and social intelligence.

02:55:45.560 | And what I do is I make a joke.

02:55:47.340 | This is somebody who's having a really crappy day

02:55:49.460 | and I'm gonna do something that's gonna make them laugh.

02:55:51.180 | And if I do that, then I won, it's not my paycheck.

02:55:53.500 | And I guess he had a standard joke, which was like,

02:55:55.000 | oh my God, let's clear a big pile of vomit over time,

02:55:57.300 | like for me.

02:55:58.140 | And like, you know, you're laughing,

02:55:59.460 | listeners probably laughing.

02:56:00.820 | He's like, that's my job.

02:56:02.840 | I talked to another worker who worked in a coma ward.

02:56:05.300 | So this individual couldn't talk to the patients

02:56:08.180 | because they're in comas, but her strength was creativity.

02:56:11.420 | And so every day she like moved the artwork

02:56:13.460 | and the plants around, you know,

02:56:14.720 | just kind of created some changes.

02:56:16.640 | And she thought maybe that would pop people

02:56:18.720 | out of their coma.

02:56:19.560 | I don't know if that's medically plausible, probably not,

02:56:21.240 | but it doesn't matter to her.

02:56:23.000 | She felt like she was executing her creativity.

02:56:25.120 | And so the moral of this job crafting work is,

02:56:28.840 | no matter what your job is,

02:56:30.280 | there's probably some room to building some more purpose.

02:56:33.760 | If you take some time to think about like,

02:56:35.720 | what are the strengths?

02:56:36.560 | What are the things that get you going?

02:56:37.800 | If you need a tip, you can kind of Google these things.

02:56:40.240 | But then how could I infuse that

02:56:41.920 | into my normal job description?

02:56:43.740 | And there's probably a lot more flexibility

02:56:46.360 | than you think.

02:56:47.200 | You don't need to quit your job and become a podcaster

02:56:48.900 | to like get this flexibility.

02:56:50.620 | Probably whatever you do,

02:56:51.660 | there's some window where you can build that in.

02:56:54.660 | - That's awesome.

02:56:55.900 | Those are awesome stories.

02:56:58.140 | I also was just thinking about the janitor

02:56:59.740 | cleaning up the vomit,

02:57:00.580 | like to like restore some dignity to these people

02:57:03.780 | that clearly know they're making a mess

02:57:05.860 | and like, you know, humor being the ultimate bridge.

02:57:08.740 | And darn it, why'd you make me have to choose

02:57:12.400 | between humor and the other thing?

02:57:13.640 | But humor is so awesome.

02:57:14.480 | - Sorry, now you're like, humor's pretty good.

02:57:15.840 | - Now I'm rethinking my answer.

02:57:16.680 | - It's very brave to clean up vomit as well, I think, right?

02:57:19.120 | - Yeah, and to bring humor to a place where, you know,

02:57:23.360 | some people might presume humor is not allowed.

02:57:26.720 | Goodness.

02:57:28.120 | The signature strengths in the list of,

02:57:30.160 | you said 24 of them,

02:57:32.120 | where can people learn more about these signature strengths?

02:57:34.320 | I think this would be a really powerful exercise.

02:57:36.200 | And we can always find the link

02:57:37.720 | and put it in the show note captions.

02:57:39.420 | But is there like a place that people can find this stuff?

02:57:42.020 | - The values in action is viacharacterstrengths.org.

02:57:46.460 | So I can share the link

02:57:47.500 | and you can stick it in your show notes.

02:57:48.780 | But yeah, people can go on there for free

02:57:50.380 | and do one of these kind of, you know,

02:57:52.060 | formal psychometric tests where you measure your strengths,

02:57:54.260 | see what they are.

02:57:55.340 | And it's a fun website too,

02:57:56.460 | because you get to kind of,

02:57:58.020 | they give you some suggestions.

02:57:59.260 | 'Cause some of these, you know,

02:58:00.420 | values are like prudence is one of them.

02:58:02.220 | It's like, how do I exercise prudence?

02:58:03.780 | And they'll have, you know, these are different things.

02:58:06.020 | They also make the suggestion,

02:58:07.220 | this is a homework assignment I give in my happiness class

02:58:10.260 | of suggesting you do this with a good friend

02:58:12.580 | or a romantic partner.

02:58:13.580 | Have each of you do this

02:58:15.180 | and find strengths that you share together.

02:58:17.800 | And then you can go on

02:58:19.100 | what researchers call a strength state,

02:58:21.140 | where, you know, if you both have bravery,

02:58:22.700 | then that means you guys should do the,

02:58:24.140 | I don't know, the obstacle course

02:58:25.200 | or do some really scary hike.

02:58:26.340 | If you both have humor, now you go to a comedy show.

02:58:29.140 | If you both love learning,

02:58:30.260 | now you go to a museum or something.

02:58:31.460 | So you find the thing that's like your convergent strengths

02:58:34.580 | and you do something that exercises them.

02:58:36.540 | So that means you can use your strengths to get purpose,

02:58:38.420 | not just in your work, but in your leisure too.

02:58:40.760 | And I think this is another spot where we get stuff wrong.

02:58:43.000 | I think a lot of us have work

02:58:44.640 | that tends to use our strengths.

02:58:46.260 | We tend to gravitate towards careers.

02:58:47.760 | Many of us where we can use our strengths,

02:58:49.340 | a lot of folks aren't that lucky.

02:58:51.220 | But in our leisure time,

02:58:53.020 | we don't often do that so much, right?

02:58:54.960 | Often our leisure time is like plop down,

02:58:57.260 | you know, watch Netflix for a lot of folks.

02:58:59.040 | Like if you think about how you can build your strengths

02:59:01.460 | into your leisure time, it gets even more exciting.

02:59:03.620 | So, you know, you're talking about working with your hands

02:59:05.340 | and doing all this stuff like, you know,

02:59:07.020 | build the bravery and the humor into that somehow.

02:59:09.380 | Now you get your leisure time doing double duty

02:59:11.600 | for giving you a sense of purpose and meaning too.

02:59:13.860 | - I love doing stuff with my hands

02:59:15.060 | and I also love doing things

02:59:16.100 | that are useful to other people.

02:59:18.220 | And years ago, I used to go set up fish tanks

02:59:20.100 | for people at their homes.

02:59:21.300 | And I don't know why,

02:59:22.540 | but I just kept setting up all these fish tanks

02:59:24.260 | for all these people and I delighted in it.

02:59:25.860 | And it makes me realize that I think for everybody,

02:59:30.020 | certainly not just me,

02:59:31.300 | that we get tremendous pleasure from being useful to others

02:59:35.460 | in ways that really resonate with kind of who we feel we are

02:59:39.100 | and that these strengths,

02:59:40.420 | I think that's kind of the ultimate situation really.

02:59:42.900 | And if we're getting paid for it also great,

02:59:44.540 | but you're saying work it into

02:59:46.940 | your recreational time as well.

02:59:48.620 | - Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up this idea

02:59:50.300 | of doing for others because we haven't talked about that,

02:59:52.480 | but this is another behavioral hack

02:59:54.100 | that's huge for happiness.

02:59:55.780 | And I think one that we get wrong as a culture in the US,

02:59:58.340 | but kind of broadly,

02:59:59.220 | there's all this talk about self-care or treat yourself.

03:00:02.380 | If you look at any kind of article about happiness,

03:00:04.660 | maybe not so evidence-based,

03:00:05.820 | talk about self, self, self, self.

03:00:07.420 | If you look at happy people though,

03:00:08.460 | happy people don't spend a lot of time on themselves.

03:00:11.100 | They tend to be very other oriented.

03:00:12.660 | So controlled for income,

03:00:14.140 | happier people donate more money to charity

03:00:16.100 | than not so happy people.

03:00:17.820 | Controlled for the amount of free time people have,

03:00:20.060 | happy people tend to volunteer for others.

03:00:22.460 | Broadly construed, whether it's helping formally

03:00:24.860 | or kind of donating time,

03:00:26.740 | they tend to help more than not so happy people.

03:00:29.780 | That again, correlation, it could be happy.

03:00:32.180 | Doing nice stuff for others helps you become happy.

03:00:34.060 | It could be that if you're happy,

03:00:34.880 | you do nice stuff for others.

03:00:35.720 | And for sure that link is true.

03:00:36.860 | There is this thing called the feel good, do good effect.

03:00:39.980 | But lots of experiments have sort of forced people

03:00:41.760 | to do nice stuff for others

03:00:43.000 | and found that it winds up making them happier.

03:00:45.080 | One study by Lara Ackman and colleagues did this study

03:00:47.660 | where they walk up to people on the street

03:00:49.300 | and hand them 20 bucks.

03:00:50.220 | It's an awesome study to be in

03:00:51.220 | if you're some undergrad walking around campus like,

03:00:52.780 | "Oh, cool, 20 bucks."

03:00:54.140 | But then you'll be told how to spend it.

03:00:56.220 | You either have to spend the 20 bucks to treat yourself,

03:00:58.260 | do something nice for yourself,

03:00:59.360 | or spend the 20 bucks on someone else,

03:01:01.300 | do something nice for other people.

03:01:03.180 | And people at the end of the day,

03:01:04.620 | even kind of at later timescales,

03:01:06.140 | report being happier when they spend

03:01:08.260 | the exact same amount of money

03:01:09.680 | on someone else versus themselves.

03:01:11.700 | And I think this has a big message

03:01:13.140 | 'cause sometimes, I don't know if you're in a,

03:01:14.900 | I don't know if you, like you,

03:01:16.020 | but if you're having a bad day,

03:01:16.860 | it's like, "I'm gonna treat myself for something.

03:01:18.100 | "I might buy something or spend some money on myself,

03:01:20.460 | "buy myself a kind of cool experience."

03:01:22.660 | But if you gifted that experience to your brother

03:01:25.580 | or your good friend, your co-worker, your spouse,

03:01:27.580 | it might actually make you happier

03:01:29.140 | than having that experience yourself,

03:01:30.640 | which is really counterintuitive,

03:01:32.060 | but it's what the data show.

03:01:33.980 | - I've discovered this in recent years.

03:01:35.260 | I love, love, love giving gifts.

03:01:36.940 | It just, it's the best feeling.

03:01:39.940 | - Yeah. - It's the best feeling.

03:01:41.420 | - Here's another hack you can do to help,

03:01:43.380 | to kind of help others, oddly, is to ask for help,

03:01:47.540 | which is something we forget is quite powerful.

03:01:50.700 | Think about the last time somebody asked you for advice,

03:01:52.820 | advice that you could give.

03:01:54.320 | Probably felt pretty good.

03:01:55.420 | Probably made you feel a little competent or whatever.

03:01:58.220 | Probably liked helping that person.

03:01:59.580 | You get the happiness boost from helping that person.

03:02:01.780 | We forget that asking other people for help,

03:02:04.160 | especially when we know they can kind of do it,

03:02:06.740 | can be a way to sort of give them a little bit gift

03:02:09.060 | and make them happy.

03:02:10.880 | This is one that can be hard for me

03:02:12.300 | 'cause I like to think about my competence all the time.

03:02:14.780 | I don't wanna be a burden on people.

03:02:15.940 | I don't wanna be vulnerable. - Self-sufficient.

03:02:17.020 | - Yes. - Self-sufficient.

03:02:18.640 | - But it turns out,

03:02:19.480 | especially if you're a particularly self-sufficient person,

03:02:21.300 | when you ask people for help, it can be really useful.

03:02:23.900 | So that's another one,

03:02:26.460 | 'cause I know some folks listening right now

03:02:28.260 | might not have the financial means to be donating money

03:02:30.380 | or the time, affluence, and wherewithal

03:02:32.580 | to be doing gifts and these things,

03:02:33.860 | but remember that asking for help

03:02:36.500 | can be a gift to someone else,

03:02:37.800 | and it's a little social connection too.

03:02:40.380 | - That's awesome.

03:02:41.260 | I will also say your suggestion

03:02:43.780 | that people fill out the Signature Strengths site

03:02:48.160 | and then use that as a first date incentive.

03:02:50.120 | I look forward to the day

03:02:51.020 | when a comment comes through on YouTube

03:02:52.540 | that people were married as a consequence of a first date.

03:02:55.440 | - Yeah, Tinder's going out of business

03:02:56.820 | if we start doing these strength dates like that, so yeah.

03:02:59.640 | - Every once in a while,

03:03:00.480 | someone will contact me and say

03:03:02.380 | that they watched the fertility episode

03:03:05.500 | and did a male and female fertility episode,

03:03:07.780 | and that they now have a child on the way.

03:03:12.780 | I don't ask questions about when the child was conceived

03:03:15.860 | or what the relationship to the fertility episode was.

03:03:18.580 | I'm assuming it was the information

03:03:19.820 | in the fertility episode,

03:03:21.140 | but I always, I'm like, "Whoa, that's wild."

03:03:24.300 | So I bet you that at some point in the future,

03:03:26.340 | I'm creating a little bit of a time capsule here.

03:03:29.260 | You'll get contacted or something

03:03:30.620 | will legitimately fall into the comments

03:03:32.900 | about people deciding to spend their life together

03:03:34.940 | as a consequence of having done the Signature Strength

03:03:37.000 | first date, you heard it here first, Dr. Laurie Santos.

03:03:40.680 | And in all seriousness, Laurie, Dr. Santos,

03:03:46.860 | I just wanna say thank you so much for doing the work you do.

03:03:50.060 | It's awesome, awesome work.

03:03:51.740 | I mean, what's more important than our emotional state

03:03:54.900 | and to strive to be happy, but to understand happiness

03:03:59.060 | so that we're not pursuing something

03:04:00.420 | that either doesn't exist

03:04:02.780 | or that is an illusion that's been created for us.

03:04:07.740 | Like really, I think one of the amazing things

03:04:10.700 | about what you do is you realistically frame happiness

03:04:14.180 | as attainable, but you frame it in the science

03:04:16.620 | of how to actually get it and what it means.

03:04:20.380 | And as people could probably detect,

03:04:23.220 | I love, love, love that you've studied this thing

03:04:25.380 | that we call happiness and other aspects of emotion

03:04:28.460 | and social cognition in the context of not just humans,

03:04:30.740 | but our non-human friends, cats and dogs.

03:04:35.660 | And use that knowledge, like building up

03:04:38.500 | from basic understanding of how neural circuits

03:04:41.060 | and psychology work to a place

03:04:42.400 | that humans can really act on.

03:04:44.620 | And you've given us a tremendous number

03:04:46.140 | of actionable tools today.

03:04:47.300 | I mean, too many to list off here all at once.

03:04:49.260 | We'll put them in the timestamps as tools

03:04:51.580 | so that people can get right to them and review them.

03:04:54.060 | But the social connection piece, obviously,

03:04:56.060 | the understanding of the contrast with difficult things

03:04:58.220 | to arrive at better states and different timescales

03:05:01.780 | and doing for others and just so much.

03:05:04.380 | There's too much here for me to list off

03:05:06.160 | without adding another 30 minutes to this podcast.

03:05:09.140 | And no one wants to hear me speak anymore.

03:05:11.740 | So I'm just gonna say thank you for the research

03:05:13.980 | that you have done and continue to do.

03:05:16.740 | Thank you for doing your podcast.

03:05:18.020 | I'm gonna start listening to your podcast.

03:05:19.660 | I love these issues and I think they're super,

03:05:21.940 | super timely and important for everybody.

03:05:25.580 | And thanks for taking time out of your schedule

03:05:27.540 | to come here and educate us today.

03:05:29.860 | - Thanks so much, it was a blast.

03:05:31.100 | - Let's do it again.

03:05:32.060 | - Definitely.

03:05:32.900 | - Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

03:05:34.880 | with Dr. Lori Santos.

03:05:36.500 | To learn more about her laboratory's work,

03:05:38.380 | her teachings and to find a link to her excellent podcast,

03:05:41.740 | please see the show note captions.

03:05:43.700 | If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast,

03:05:46.020 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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03:05:55.340 | you can leave us up to a five-star review.

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03:06:01.540 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

03:06:03.980 | If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast

03:06:06.680 | or topics or guests that you'd like me to consider

03:06:08.540 | for the Huberman Lab podcast,

03:06:10.100 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

03:06:12.580 | I do read all the comments.

03:06:14.440 | And if you're not already following me on social media,

03:06:16.860 | I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

03:06:19.700 | So that's InstagramX, formerly known as Twitter,

03:06:22.580 | Facebook, Threads, and LinkedIn.

03:06:24.740 | And on all those platforms,

03:06:26.100 | I discuss science and science-related tools,

03:06:28.280 | some of which overlaps with the content

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03:06:31.180 | but much of which is distinct from the content

03:06:33.180 | on the Huberman Lab podcast.

03:06:34.640 | Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

03:06:38.100 | For those of you that haven't heard,

03:06:39.240 | I have a new book coming out.

03:06:40.440 | It's my very first book.

03:06:42.060 | It's entitled "Protocols,

03:06:43.460 | an Operating Manual for the Human Body."

03:06:45.600 | This is a book that I've been working on

03:06:46.780 | for more than five years,

03:06:47.940 | and that's based on more than 30 years

03:06:50.260 | of research and experience.

03:06:51.820 | And it covers protocols for everything from sleep,

03:06:54.860 | to exercise, to stress control,

03:06:57.360 | protocols related to focus and motivation.

03:06:59.820 | And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation

03:07:03.180 | for the protocols that are included.

03:07:05.260 | The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com.

03:07:09.160 | There you can find links to various vendors.

03:07:11.540 | You can pick the one that you like best.

03:07:13.300 | Again, the book is called "Protocols,

03:07:15.060 | an Operating Manual for the Human Body."

03:07:17.580 | And if you haven't already subscribed

03:07:19.060 | to our Neural Network Newsletter,

03:07:20.860 | the Neural Network Newsletter

03:07:22.060 | is a zero cost monthly newsletter

03:07:24.020 | that includes everything from podcast summaries

03:07:26.220 | to what we call protocols

03:07:27.380 | in the form of brief one to three page PDFs

03:07:30.060 | that cover things like how to optimize your sleep,

03:07:32.780 | how to regulate your dopamine.

03:07:34.420 | We also have protocols related to deliberate cold exposure,

03:07:37.540 | get a lot of questions about that,

03:07:39.360 | deliberate heat exposure, and on and on.

03:07:41.340 | Again, all available at completely zero cost.

03:07:43.460 | You simply go to hubermanlab.com,

03:07:45.380 | go to the menu tab in the top right corner,

03:07:47.500 | scroll down to newsletter and enter your email.

03:07:49.580 | And I should mention that we do not share your email

03:07:52.300 | with anybody.

03:07:53.260 | Thank you once again for joining me

03:07:54.540 | for today's discussion with Dr. Laurie Santos.

03:07:57.060 | And last, but certainly not least,

03:07:59.220 | thank you for your interest in science.

03:08:01.280 | (upbeat music)

03:08:03.860 | (upbeat music)

Dr. Laurie Santos: How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols

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