Science-Based Tools for Increasing Happiness

1. 0:00 – 6:27

   Happiness

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      (mellow music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are discussing happiness. We are going to discuss the science of happiness, because indeed, there are excellent laboratories that have worked for many decades to try and understand, what is this thing that we call happiness? And what brings us happiness in the short and long term? In fact, we could probably point to happiness as one of the most sought after states or commodities or emotions. Whatever you wanna call it, happiness is what many people are seeking in work, in relationships, and in general. And yet most of us can't really define exactly what happiness is or means for us. We can point to certain experiences. We can try and describe our states of mind and body, but most people recognize the feeling when we have it, and we certainly recognize the feeling of not being happy, whether or not that means simply not being happy, as the absence of happiness, or all-out depression. Now, one of the key problems in trying to understand happiness and indeed the science and psychology of happiness is that it does indeed involve other similar things, things like joy and gratitude and meaning. And indeed, many scientists and psychologists have argued for many, many decades about what happiness really is. Now, we can come up with so-called operational definitions of happiness. Operational definitions are basically agreed-upon terms or agreed-upon definitions and conditions that will define something such as happiness, much in the same way that we can all probably come up with an operational definition of milk. But of course, milk can be cow's milk, it can be oat milk, it can be soy milk, et cetera, et cetera. So too, something like happiness can be micro-divided and sliced and diced into as many things as we decide. Today, we are really going to focus on three main things. First, we are going to define happiness as a brain state and as a state of mind and body. We're gonna take a look at what the science says about all of that. Second, we are going to talk about tools and practices for placing ourselves into states of happiness. And while for most of us, we think of happiness as something that only arrives through the acquisition of some goal or some thing external to us, and of course that is true, there is also something called synthetic happiness or synthesized happiness, which turns out to be at least as powerful and perhaps even more powerful. And I'll just say right off the bat that I'm not going to tell you that all you have to do is sit in a chair and imagine being happy in order to feel happy. Synthesized happiness actually involves some very concrete steps that have been defined by excellent labs in psychology. So we're going to talk about synthesized happiness as it relates to what you can do to obtain happy states more readily or more frequently. And then third, we're going to talk about some of the misconceptions or what I would call the contradictions of happiness research. And what I mean by that is most of you have probably heard about the general conditions for obtaining happiness, and they always seem to circle back to some of the same basic features of get great sleep, have great social connection, pursue meaning, don't focus to any overextend on things like pursuing money, because there are indeed these studies that show that the amount of money that people makes does not necessarily scale directly with happiness. We'll talk about those studies in some detail a little bit later. And while all of that literature is very powerful and informative, there is what I see as a contradiction, which is, for instance, that for many of us, including myself, especially in the years when I was in graduate school and a postdoc, there were times in which pursuing and being involved in work and pursuing degrees and finding meaning in my vocation actually separated me from the opportunity to have quite as many social connections or quite as much sleep or quite as much exercise or even quite as much sunshine for that matter. So all of the things that we're told that we need in order to access happiness on a regular basis oftentimes contradict with the pressures and the requirements of not just daily life, but in building a life that allows us to have the kind of resources that we need in order to have things like quality social connection and the time and opportunity to get regular exercise and great nutrition, et cetera, et cetera. So again, while this isn't necessarily a complaint with any of the research out of the fields of psychology on happiness, it is important that we acknowledge these contradictions that exist in the discussion around happiness, in particular, the popular discussions around the science of happiness. So today what we are going to arrive at, what you will finish this episode with is a set of tools and a framework for understanding the pursuit of happiness in the short and long term as it relates to the research from psychology but also the neuroscience. And my goal today is really to try and place that all into a structured framework so that you can know where you are in your journey or the landscape around happiness and your pursuit of happiness. And what I won't tell you is that you need to abandon all goals in terms of pursuing money, career, et cetera, and simply focus on relationships. But we will talk about what constitutes an excellent social bond or even an excellent conversation. There's excellent research that points to the fact that even rather shallow connections, that is connections between people that you happen to just see in the hallway on a regular basis, not even requiring close bonds of any kind, can be built into close bonds that can deliver a tremendous amount of feeling and genuine social connection provided certain conditions are met.So today, again, is really about understanding the science of happiness, understanding the mechanisms underlying what we call happiness, and providing you a framework by which you can pursue and achieve happiness, not just as a long-term goal and not just as a day-to-day goal of little micro exercises of gratitude, et cetera, but rather as a way to think about happiness as a state that you have control over, at least in terms of your ability to access what I would call the algorithms that enable us, or open the opportunity to experience

2. 6:27 – 14:14

   Tool: Light Exposure Timing & Brightness Timing

   1. AHAndrew Huberman6:27

      happiness. Now before we begin today's episode, I'd like to talk about a very specific tool that applies, yes, to our pursuit of happiness, but actually to our pursuit of everything, including quality sleep and ongoing motivation, et cetera. I've talked many, many times before on this podcast and on other podcasts and on social media about the critical value of getting regular bright light, ideally sunlight, in your eyes within the first hour of waking. Or if the sun isn't out when you wake up in the morning, to turn on a lot of bright artificial lights and then get sunlight in your eyes for anywhere from five to 20 minutes depending on how cloudy it is in the early part of the day. Absolutely outsized effects on mood and focus during the day and quality of sleep at night. Now there's another sort of central tenet of getting great sleep and improving mood and focus throughout the day, and that's to avoid bright artificial light exposure to your eyes between the hours of about 10:00 PM to 4:00 AM. Now leaving shift workers aside, and we have an entire episode devoted to shift work, most people are asleep at night and awake during the day, and you would be wise to avoid exposure of your eyes to bright artificial light between the hours of 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM. If you're going to use screens or artificial lights, dim them down as far as you can. Now there are several studies that point to the fact that one of the major issues with getting bright light in your eyes between the hours of 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM is that it has a negative impact on the so-called dopaminergic or dopamine circuits of the brain and body, which can enhance depression, that is lead to ongoing lower mood and affect. So that's a reason to dim the lights or avoid bright lights between 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM. However, I and many others need to use artificial light and screens sometimes even between the hours of 10:00 PM and midnight or even midnight to 3:00 AM depending on what's going on in my life or your life, that may include you as well. Now it turns out that there are powerful ways to offset some, not all, but some of the negative effects of viewing artificial lights between the hours of 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM. And one of the most powerful ways to do that is to simply adjust the overall brightness of your artificial lighting throughout the day and in the evening. So one of the issues nowadays that we're really facing is that people are simply not getting enough bright light in their eyes from sunlight or from other sources during the daytime, and they're getting far too much bright light in their eyes, largely from artificial sources of course, in the evening and at night. Not just from 10:00 PM to 4:00 AM, but also in the evening hours from 6:00 to 10:00 PM and so on and so forth. So a very simple yet powerful solution that's supported by peer-reviewed research in humans is to try and make your indoor working and/or home environment during the day as bright as possible. Now if you can achieve that through direct sunlight, terrific. If you can get outside a lot during the daytime, terrific. But many people simply cannot. But most people do have some windows in their environment. I realize some don't, but most people do. And as a consequence, most people are using rather dim artificial lighting indoors during the day and then very bright artificial lighting indoors in the evening and at night. That's a problem, and if you think about it logically you want to do the exact reverse. So it's been shown that if you simply increase the amount of bright artificial light that you are exposed to during the day, and remember this is not an excuse to not get your morning sunlight viewing, but in addition to that, to make your indoor artificial lights very bright, bright, bright, bright, bright throughout the day and then much dimmer from the hours of 6:00 PM until bedtime, or if you can't do that then maybe as soon as you get home from about 8:00 PM until bedtime, and then dim them way, way down between 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM or off entirely, that's going to be a far better pattern for your sleep/wake cycles, focus, mood, et cetera, than what most people do which is to have a few windows in their indoor working environment during the day and keep the indoor lights, rather, dim at a time when they need more photons, more light energy, and then in the evening when they get home because it's dark outside, they tend to turn the lights much brighter. You actually want to do the reverse. Now there's an even simpler solution which is to get some bright sunlight in your eyes right around the time of sunset. It doesn't have to be exactly at sunset, it could be in the late afternoon and evening, but it's been shown now in studies on humans, and I'll provide a link to at least one of those studies, that by getting some bright light in your eyes, ideally from sunlight in the late afternoon and evening, and of course the timing will vary depending on time of year and where you are located on the planet, but facing the sun around sunset, you don't actually have to see the sun cross down below the horizon, but facing the sun around that time for anywhere from five to 10 minutes or even less, even two to five minutes, can adjust the sensitivity of neurons in your retina that communicate light information to the brain and make it such that in the evening when you use artificial lights, they aren't going to have as much of a detrimental effect on your dopamine system and for impairing your sleep. Okay? So the idea is as much bright light, ideally from sunlight but also from artificial sources, from the time you wake up in the morning until the evening, maybe around 6:00 or 7:00, maybe in the summer months a little bit later, and then really try and get as little bright light in your eyes as you can in the evening and nighttime hours. And ideally you would also get some sunlight exposure right around the time of sunset or in the late afternoon. Go outside, take your sunglasses off, don't try and do this through a windshield or through a window. It will not work. You have to get outside. If you're under an overhang, at least try and get some direct sunlight in your eyes at that time, and that will adjust the sensitivity of your retina such that bright artificial lights or...... artificial lights of any kind that you're exposed to in the evening and in the late hours of the night won't have as much of a detrimental effect. That said, if you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, try and keep the lights dim. Many people have asked whether or not, for instance, a night light or a flashlight is going to have a, as much of a negative effect. This is very straightforward. If you think about it, if you shine a light at something, you can see into your environment. If you've ever been camping or you've walked with a flashlight, you can see things around you that you wouldn't otherwise, of course. But if you were to shine that light in your eyes, it would be far brighter. So yes, of course, if you get up in the middle of the night and you can use your phone flashlight to illuminate the environment that you're in so that you can safely go to where you need to go and then back to bed, that's going to be far b- better than turning on the lights or, of course, f- shining light in your eyes. All right? So the idea is bright, bright, bright in the morning and throughout the day, and as dim and dark as possible at night, and that afternoon light viewing provides sort of what I call a Netflix inoculation, uh, that will allow you to adjust to your retinal sensitivity and give you a little bit more flexibility in terms of allowing some nighttime light exposure without the detrimental effects. Now, I realize today's episode is about happiness. It's not about sunlight or dopamine, and yet, as we'll talk about more in just a moment, if you're not optimizing your sleep and if you are using or being exposed to light, rather, at the wrong times of the day/night cycle, that is going to make it very hard for the other sorts of practices that relate to happiness to have their full impact. So the backdrop, or I would say the kind of landscape of your chemicals and your hormones, is powerfully controlled by not just the brightness of light but the timing of light, and your exposure to light. In particular, your exposure to light to your eyes is something that you have a lot of control over. You don't have absolute control, but you have a lot of control over. And it's been proven that even these small steps, which are completely cost-free, they require just a few minutes of time but no purchase of product or anything else, can allow you to greatly adjust your neurochemistry and your hormones in the direction of better mood, better sleep, and happiness.

3. 14:14 – 17:51

   Thesis, InsideTracker, Helix Sleep

   1. AHAndrew Huberman14:14

      Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools for the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Thesis. Thesis makes custom nootropics, and as I've said many times before on this podcast, I am not a fan of the word "nootropics" because it means smart drugs, and frankly, there are no specific neural circuits in the brain or body for being, quote-unquote, "smart." Thesis understands this, and they've developed custom nootropics that are designed to bring your brain and body into the state that's ideal for what you need to accomplish. They use the highest-quality ingredients, things like phosphatidylserine, alpha-GPC, many ingredients that I've talked about before on this podcast and that I happen to use myself. I've been using Thesis for over a year now and I can confidently say that their nootropics have been a game changer. For me, I like their nootropic for clarity, I use that before cognitive work often, and I like their nootropic for energy, and I often use that before workouts, in particular, workouts that are especially intense. To get your own personalized nootropic starter kit, go online to takethesis.com/huberman, take their three-minute quiz, and Thesis will send you four different formulas to try in your first month. Again, that's takethesis.com/huberman and use the code Huberman at checkout to get 10% off your first box. Today's episode is also brought to us by InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you meet your health goals. I have long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term health can only be analyzed with a quality blood test. One of the problems with a lot of blood tests and DNA tests out there, however, is that you get information back about lipids and levels of hormones and levels of metabolic factors and so on, but you don't know what to do with that information. InsideTracker has a very easy to use online site where you can monitor your levels and you can click on any specific marker, any specific hormone or metabolic factor, and it will tell you the behavioral tools, for instance, exercise, the nutrition tools, and the supplementation-based tools that you can use in order to bring those numbers into the appropriate ranges for your immediate and long-term health goals. If you'd like to try InsideTracker, you can visit insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plan. Again, that's insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix makes mattresses and pillows that are of the absolute highest quality. I started sleeping on a Helix mattress well over a year ago and it's been the best sleep that I've ever had. One of the things that makes Helix mattresses so unique is that they match the design of the mattress to your unique sleep needs. So for instance, if you go onto their website, you can take a brief quiz, it only takes about two or three minutes, and you'll answer questions like, do you tend to run hot or cold throughout the night? Or whether or not you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach, or maybe you don't know. Regardless, they will match you to the custom mattress that's ideal for your sleep needs. For me, that was the Dusk, D-U-S-K, mattress, which for me was not too firm, not too soft, and was ideal for my sleep patterns. You take the quiz and you'll find out what mattress is ideal for your sleep patterns. So if you're interested in upgrading your mattress, go to helixsleep.com/huberman, take their brief sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress and you'll get up to $200 off any mattress order and two free pillows. They have a 10-year warranty and you get to try out the mattress for 100 nights risk-free. Again, if you're interested, you can go to helixsleep.com/huberman for up to $200 off

4. 17:51 – 20:26

   Imprecise Language for Happiness

   1. AHAndrew Huberman17:51

      and two free pillows. Let's talk about happiness, this thing that everybody seems to want and yet not everybody can agree upon what exactly it is or how to get it. Now, I want to start by quoting a previous guest on the Huberman Lab Podcast, and that is a colleague of mine at Stanford School of Medicine, Dr. Karl Deisseroth, who's both a bioengineer and...... a clinician. That is, he's a psychiatrist who spends a lot of his time both running a laboratory and seeing patients. Human patients, of course. And I once was at a meeting where I heard Karl say something to the extent of, "We don't know what other people feel. In fact, most of the time, we don't even really know how we feel." And while that statement was meant to report several different things about the way that the brain works and emotions, et cetera, one of the things that he was emphasizing, and I know he was emphasizing it 'cause he confirmed this for me, was the fact that language, things like the word happiness or joy or meaning or pleasure or delight, are actually not very precise when it comes to describing our brain and body states. So for instance, if I tell you, "I'm feeling pretty happy," I know what that means for me, at least in this moment. But you don't really know whether or not it means the same thing as what pretty happy means for you. If I say I'm extremely happy and I have a big grin, I have a grin on my face that I can't seem to wipe off my face, well then you might get a sense of how much happier I am than pretty happy. But it's still hard to calibrate my level of internal state or happiness. And the same is true for you and for everybody else. And it's important for us to acknowledge this because at this point in human history, 2022, we don't really have a measurement like body temperature or heart rate or heart rate variability or even a way to measure neurochemicals in the brain and body that give us anything better than a crude correlate or an estimate at best of what happiness is. So that's really important to understand and to keep in mind throughout this episode. It doesn't mean that we cannot have a strong data-driven conversation about happiness and what brings us to a state of happiness, but it's very important to understand that language is not an ideal and may be even a deficient tool in terms of describing our emotions and our states of mind and body. Now equally important is to understand that while we do

5. 20:26 – 26:32

   Happiness: Neuromodulators & Neurotransmitters

   1. AHAndrew Huberman20:26

      have neurotransmitters, that is the chemicals that are released between neurons, nerve cells that allow neurons to communicate, things like glutamate and GABA for instance, and we have what are called neuromodulators, these are chemicals also released by neurons that impact the electrical firing and chemical release of other neurons, things like serotonin and dopamine and acetylcholine and epinephrine, neuromodulators and neurotransmitters are always present in a cocktail in our brain and body. That is, they are present in different ratios and at different levels. So we need to completely discard with the idea that any one neurotransmitter or any one neuromodulator is solely responsible for a state of happiness, or for a lack of state of happiness for that matter. That said, it is true that for people that tend to have lower baseline levels of, for instance, dopamine, their levels of happiness, or we should say their self-reported levels of happiness, tend to be lower than for those that have greatly elevated baseline levels of dopamine. Now this can be best appreciated at the extremes where, for instance, in conditions like Parkinson's disease or other conditions where people's levels of dopamine in their brain is severely depleted, mind you we also see this in drug-addicted individuals that are in a withdrawal state because they're trying to quit or they don't have access to the drug that normally stimulates release of dopamine, think the cocaine addict who can't get cocaine or the methamphetamine addict that can't or is trying to avoid taking methamphetamine, or the Parkinson's patient who has fewer dopamine neurons because they've degenerated, those individuals do tend to be more depressed. They tend to have lower affect. They are less happy. At least that's how they report themselves to be emotionally, and that's what we observe when we look at them behaviorally in terms of the amount of smiling, the amount of energy they seem to have. At the opposite extreme, and while still focusing on the kind of pathology of neurotransmitter and neuromodulator systems, an individual who is in a manic phase of bipolar will tend to have very elevated levels of dopamine and those people will talk a mile a minute and they won't require sleep and, at least to them, every idea is an exciting idea and one that they want to pursue. We did an entire episode about bipolar depression, A.K.A. bipolar disorder, so if you'd like to learn more about that, please check out that episode. That and all other episodes of the podcast, of course, you can find at hubermanlab.com in all formats. But the point here is that very low levels or very high levels of dopamine are correlated with certain states of, for instance, low happiness or the absence of happiness, we could even call it depression in some cases, or extreme happiness or even euphoria, sometimes even inappropriate euphoria as is the case with bipolar depression or as it's some kind, sometimes called bipolar mania or bipolar disorder. Now of course there's a range in between depressed and manic, and most people fortunately reside somewhere in that range. And it is indeed a continuum, and i- I think it's safe to say that levels of dopamine probably do correlate with levels of happiness. But there is no one single chemical nor chemical signature, that is no specific recipe of, you know, two parts dopamine to one part serotonin to one part acetylcholine that we can say equates to happiness. Indeed, there's now tremendous controversy as to whether or not, for instance, having lower levels of serotonin is actually the cause of depression or merely correlates with depression or maybe doesn't even correlate with depression at all. This became especially controversial because in the last year...... so-called serotonin hypothesis of depression has been called into question, and indeed it does seem to be the case that for individuals that are depressed, their levels of serotonin can sometimes be normal. However, and this is an important however, that does not mean that administering drugs that increase levels of serotonin in depressed people does not sometimes, and indeed often, help ameliorate some of their symptoms. And I should mention that many of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, so-called SSRIs such as Prozac and Zoloft et s- et cetera, are still considered excellent treatments for conditions like OCD and so on and so forth. But what I'm trying to do is make two important points. First of all, that language is not a great indicator of internal state, especially when trying to understand other people's internal state, and that is especially true for things like happiness, and that there is no one chemical signature of happiness. There's no one neuromodulator or combinations of neuromodulators that we can say is the cocktail for happiness. But, and it's a very important but, when levels of dopamine and serotonin tend to be chronically low for an individual, below their typical baseline, they will, yes, tend to be lower in affect and have lower mood and less episodes of happiness per day, per week, per month, per year, et cetera. Conversely, when an individual has elevations in dopamine and serotonin levels, in particular dopamine levels, and the other so-called catecholamines, which include epinephrine and norepinephrine. So the catecholamines are dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. They're all v- very similar biochemically. They all lead to states of elevated motivation, energy, and so on. When those chemicals are elevated above baseline, people do tend to have elevated sense of mood and well-being, and in particular sense of possibility about what they can do in the world and what the world can offer them. So we need to acknowledge those two features of language and neurochemistry as we wade into the discussion about the psychology of happiness, and in particular about the controlled experiments that have been done in excellent laboratories focused on the psychology of happiness and what brings happiness

6. 26:32 – 29:22

   Harvard Happiness Project

   1. AHAndrew Huberman26:32

      and what does not. There have been some excellent studies on happiness, and these come in two forms generally. One form of these studies is individuals come into a laboratory, they participate in an experiment over the course of a day or months, and then data are collected, analyzed, and the papers are submitted and published and discussed. The other form is so-called longitudinal study where individuals come into the laboratory and they are studied over a very long period of time ranging from months to years and sometimes even decades, and then the variables of age, life circumstances, and other factors can be incorporated into the data. And typically, there are multiple papers, there's data published throughout the longitudinal study, or sometimes it's just one paper at the end of the longitudinal study. Let's talk about one of the more famous and perhaps the longest running longitudinal study on happiness. This is a study that was initiated or conceived in 1938 at Harvard University, the so-called Harvard Happiness Project. Some of you have probably heard about this. It involved Harvard College sophomores and other individuals were incorporated into this study as well. It's a study that initially had more than a couple of hundred subjects, but because some have either dropped out and not been able to be contacted and monitored over time or died or for whatever reason are no longer participating in the study, there are very few of these individuals left, and yet there's tremendous power to a study like this. It's such an impressive study and we're all so grateful that, uh, laboratories at Harvard decided to initiate and continue this study, because it is one of the few studies, perhaps the study that has allowed us to understand happiness in our species over a very long period of time. Now like any study, it's not perfect. It didn't include a lot of, um, matching by sex or matching by vocation or matching by income and background, and back then there was also a lot less discussion about trauma and histories around trauma as well as positive episodes in people's lives. Nonetheless, there's a lot of power in a study like this. And there are some very basic takeaways, some of which you may have heard before but some of which may be surprising those of you who haven't. So one of the key things about this study is, people in the study, at least those who still have intact memory, and which many of them do, are able to think back on not just their previous year or week but 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, and compare what makes them happy at one age versus another age. A number of things have emerged from that conversation, so I just want to discuss some of the highlight points, then we'll get into a little bit

7. 29:22 – 37:20

   Income & Happiness; Social Interactions & Peer Group

   1. AHAndrew Huberman29:22

      more of the nitty-gritty of the data. First of all, it's been discussed many, many times that the total amount of income that an individual makes or has, and again this could be income from work or it could be money that they inherited, does not seem to directly relate to their level of happiness. Now a lot of people take that point and think, "Ah, money doesn't matter." Other people hear that point and think to themselves, "Yeah, right, easy to say if you have a lot of money." We'll talk about the interpretation of those data in just a few minutes, but I do want to earmark that finding, because I agree that while money or total resources itself does not predict happiness in any kind of direct way, that is not the same thing as saying having very few resources will make you happier, of course. I don't think anyone would imagine that.But it also tends to overlook an important point, which is something that I certainly have learned to appreciate in my life and something that I especially appreciated when I was a student and post-doc, which is the following. People will say, "Money can't buy happiness." And we'll talk about the buy aspect of that in a moment. And indeed that's true. If you look at this longitudinal study or you look at other studies that are done on a more short-term basis, once people get past a certain level of income relative to their cost of living, the amount of happiness does not scale with that income. That is, for every additional $1,000 or $10,000 that they earn, they don't report being that much happier on a daily basis. Now that said, I venture the argument that while money truly cannot buy happiness, it absolutely can buffer stress. And in particular, it can buffer stress in the form of the ability to purchase or pay for goods and services, and in particular services. Uh, you're not going to tell me that having children doesn't involve some increase in the demands on your life, less sleep and more demands. And it certainly is the case that if you can hire help to clean, you can hire nannies if that's your, your thing, you can hire help to assist with babysitting or even night nurses if you're having trouble sleeping that will all- literally allow you to sleep while they take care of your child in the middle of the night. Often give excellent care, one hopes excellent care, but that won't offset some of the stress associated with lack of sleep. So there are a million different examples you c- one could give of this, but I certainly experienced this during graduate school. In fact, I experienced both sides of the equation here. I made very little money as a graduate student. I had essentially no savings when I started graduate school and I made very little money. The amount doesn't matter at this point, but I could just barely afford rent and my food. I actually opted to live in the laboratory a lot of the time, and by doing that, I had more money to spend on other things that were important to me. Now, I did not have a family at the time, and so I was able to do that, something that not everyone can do. But I made very little money, but at the same time, I was in laboratory all the time and, and that's where I wanted to be. And so my level of stress was actually pretty low because I was investing all my time and energy into the very thing that I knew would eventually help bring me more resources. When I moved from being a graduate student to a post-doc, for instance, a post-doc is a generally a three to five year period, so like residency in med- medicine where you're no longer taking courses but you continue to do research. In fact, entire new lines of research and prior to getting a professorship. My income went up slightly, went up by about 30 to 40%, but because of where I moved and because of the times, my cost of living went way, way up and I was extremely stressed. So it wasn't my absolute income. It was my absolute income relative to my cost of living. The other thing that one needs to consider when considering income versus cost of living is there's also this notion of peer group, and we're going to talk more about social bonds and connections later. But one thing I noticed when I moved from being a graduate student to a post-doc was, I was a graduate student in a small town where I had access, if I chose, to participate in most if not all of the social gatherings, because they were all very low cost. People tended to aggregate at the farmer's market on Saturday. Most people wouldn't even purchase anything, at least not the, the graduate students wouldn't purchase anything. It was just a place to aggregate. People would sometimes play pick up games of soccer or just hang out, have a cup of coffee. There was a volleyball game on Fridays. Sometimes people would go out to eat that evening, which of course cost money, et cetera. But it was relatively low cost of living and social connections and peer g- group interactions were all generated around the same fairly low-cost activities. When I transitioned to being a post-doc, I made more money, b- cost of living went up, but in addition to that, my peer group tended to want to engage in the same kinds of activities that people in that larger city were engaged in. So peer group has a tremendously powerful influence on whether or not we gauge the amount of money that we have as bringing us happiness or not, and that really speaks to the critical importance of social interactions and certain kinds of social interactions in particular. Now, if any of that was unclear, what I'm basically saying is it's not just about being able to pay your rent. It's also about being able to access the kinds of social interactions that you deem are, quote-unquote, "correct" for you at that stage of life and in the place where you happen to be living. Because if you can meet all the demands of costs of, of rent and paying your power bill and food, et cetera, but you are socially isolated because your peer group or those around you that you want to engage with are engaging in activities that you either don't have time for, literally because you're doing other things, or that you don't have the financial resources for, then that can actually severely impact this rating of what we call happiness. Y- why am I parsing this so finely? Well, I'm parsing it finely because I think that most of us have heard the outcome of this study from Harvard or the more short-term studies, also many of which are from Harvard. We'll talk about the just phenomenal work from Dan Gilbert's laboratory and other laboratories who have focused on issues like these, and I certainly don't want to take anything away from those results. They're very powerful and important results that really point over and over to the fact that people's happiness does not necessarily scale with income. In fact, it tends not to past a certain level. And yet I think we'd be remiss, I think actually it would be inappropriate for me to say that the amount of income that one makes is not important, because if the amount of money that you happen to have or are making does not allow you to meet your basic needs of shelter, healthcare, et cetera.... and/or doesn't allow you to access the kind of social interactions that can renew and reset, or I would say, directly enhance the kind of neurotransmitter systems and hormones that lead us to feel that we are happy in our life and we're having quality social connections, well, then that's very stressful. And this brings me back to the statement I made earlier which is, indeed, money cannot buy happiness, but it certainly can buffer stress. And one of the ways that it buffers stress is by allowing options of different kinds of social interactions, options of different types of recreation that one can engage in to access new forms of social interaction, and so on and so on. So we need to be a little bit careful or at least nuanced about this statement that money can't buy happiness and that the data support the fact that wealth doesn't determine happiness. I think there is a truth to that, but there's another side to that that I think is less often acknowledged and that, um, certainly I've experienced and that I think many of you out there probably experience

8. 37:20 – 40:13

   Work, Sense of Meaning & Happiness

   1. AHAndrew Huberman37:20

      as well. One other major finding of the Harvard Longitudinal Study on Happiness as well as shorter term studies on happiness is that, much as you've heard perhaps, that no one on their deathbed says they wished they had worked more. Well, indeed, the total amount of time that one spends working does not seem to determine one's happiness. And yet, I also want to earmark that result as one that we need to parse a bit more carefully, because work, last time I checked and certainly for me, is the way typically that people earn an income. And, as we just talked about a moment ago, income is often a way that people have access to or provide access for their family to things like recreation that opens up the opportunity for more social connection, right? So, the, we have to be careful with how we interpret these blanket statements that have become very popular that, you know, money doesn't determine happiness and that the amount that you work isn't going to determine happiness. It certainly is the case that if you earn more money from working more and that money is devoted to things that bring more opportunities for social connection or for buffering stress in other areas of your life, including healthcare, uh, care for your children, care for yourself, recreation, other things that you enjoy, well then I think it's a little bit naïve to assume that work itself is somehow counter to happiness, which, of course, it isn't. And it especially isn't if we combine that feature of work with another important feature of the human psyche, which is this notion of meaning. Now, in the not too distant future, we will do an episode of this podcast on meaning and what constitutes meaning in a given endeavor, work or otherwise. But much of the psychology of the last century, and still today, focuses on this feature of meaning as a critical one in terms of what makes us happy and what doesn't make us happy, certainly in the long-term. And I can certainly say for myself that learning and teaching and doing research in my laboratory brings me tremendous feeling of meaning and happiness. Some people consider their work simply a way to gain a pay- paycheck, and other people find that they would do the very work they do regardless of whether or not they were paid. In fact, many people will do volunteer work and other forms of work for zero money. So this idea that money isn't important or that work is not as important as we deem it to be, that also needs to be considered from a number of different perspectives. And again, by no means am I trying to undermine the data of these impressive studies, both the longitudinal and short-term studies, but I think we do have to be cautious in our discussion of results like these, because the internet is replete with conversations about the big factors that

9. 40:13 – 43:06

   Toolkit for General Wellbeing

   1. AHAndrew Huberman40:13

      determine happiness. It's going to be social connection, not income. It's going to be, uh, the amount of time that you are able to have open thinking and creativity, which I think is an essential feature of happiness, by the way. Physical health, in particular one's ability to stay mobile and to be able to access the kind of daily activities that one needs to accomplish unassisted is a strong correlative happiness, and so on and so on. And of course, there are the basic physiology factors, the things that feed back onto our overall feelings of well-being. And, eh, I've talked about these before and we'll just put these quickly into a bin. Uh, you can think of this as a, as a toolkit of things that you and everyone really should be constantly trying to access, if not optimize, on a regular basis, because they raise the tide, or what I would call the buoyancy of your overall system, meaning your brain and body. And that would be getting sufficient deep sleep at least 80% of the nights of your life, and ideally the remaining 20% you're not getting deep sleep, uh, or as much of it because of positive events. Quality nutrition, quality social interactions, and we will define that a little bit better. Um, in fact, we will define that in a lot of detail later in this episode and actually how to get better at creating quality social interactions, even very brief social interactions. So we have sleep, we have nutrition, we have social interactions, we have purposeful work, whether or not it's paid work or non-paid work, and of course, there are things like exercise and maybe relationships to pets and things of that sort. And there are a few others as well. All of those are known to increase your overall state of well-being that puts you in a position to access more meaning and happiness, et cetera. But for most people, I think it's fair to say that earning a living and earning a living by working is the typical way in which we spend most of our time. So I think we need to put a special bracket around those activities, and it's something we will return to a little bit later in terms of trying to understand how periods of life in which there...... are big or extensive work demands or extensive family demands on us are indeed compatible with states of happiness or frequent states of happiness and how better to access those. Rather than simply say, "Money isn't important." Or, "The amount of time at work really, uh, isn't important." That's not what people are going to pay attention to. In fact, I don't know how I will feel in my deathbed. How could I? Um, human beings are pretty good about understanding how they feel in the present. If not describing it, they're pretty good at feeling it if they have any sense of internal state, that is interoception. You can some idea of how you feel in a moment. We're pretty good about describing our past feelings, at least in broad contour. But we are not very good at projecting how we will feel in the future, and in fact, that's a theme that's going to come up again and again today.

10. 43:06 – 47:33

    Happiness Across the Lifespan, Does Having Children Make Us Happier?

    1. AHAndrew Huberman43:06

       Nonetheless, what we do know on the basis of really solid data are that certain aspects of our wellbeing tend to change across our lifespan. Now, lifespan is something that we need to consider from also a bit of nuance because humans are indeed living longer and longer. And if we look at the data on happiness across the lifespan dated maybe 30 or 40 years back or even 20 years ago, it is consistently described in that literature as a so-called U-shaped function where people in their 20s report being very, very happy but as time goes on and they acquire more responsibility, so typically getting married and having children in their mid to late 20s and 30s and into their 40s having more work demands, et cetera, happiness is tends to be rated lower and lower, at least in those previous studies. And then happiness tended to increase as people approached their 50s and 60s and they tended to retire and their work demands were shed from them and they were able to enjoy the small things of life despite the fact that in general I would say almost always people's health is not as vigorous when they're 70 as it is when they're, when they're 20. There are exceptions to that, of course, but, and of course you can adjust the rate of, uh, cognitive and physical decline. But in general, people in their 20s feel more physically and mentally vigorous than they do in their 60s and 70s, in general. That U-shaped function that I just described still holds true today, but of course, there have been some major shifts to the general life stages and when people undergo those life stages. For instance, many people are getting married much later. Many people are opting to not have children. In fact, if you look at the data on whether or not people have children or not and how that relates to happiness, everyone will tell you that their kids are their greatest source of joy, at least most people will tell you that, and are a tremendous source of happiness. It's obvious, kids are delightful and raising kids, while hard, is a wonderful experience. If you look at the r- ratings of happiness among people that s- elected, elected to not have children versus those that had, most people who have children report their overall levels of happiness as lower than that of people who opt not to have children. Now, there are a lot of ways to interpret those findings, and by no means am I encouraging people to not have children. Uh, that's a issue that you have to resolve, uh, for yourself, of course. But we could imagine, for instance, that people who opt not to have children have more income to devote to things more focused on themselves or their partner or other aspects of their life. We don't know if that's the underlying reason. We could perhaps conclude that people who opt not to have children are getting more sleep on a regular basis, um, or have more time for exercise or the other sorts of things that elevate states of mood and wellbeing. Again, we do not know what the underlying reasons are for this finding, but it does seem that despite most every parent reporting that their kids are their greatest source of joy and quote/unquote happiness in life, that people who opt not to have children are at least as happy or report being at least as happy or even happier than those that opt to have children. And of course, I'm, I want to be very clear that I'm not trying to, um, settle any arguments about whether or not people should have children or not. I happen to find children and animals delightful, um, and I'm always happy when people opt to have children provided they are taking good care of their children or, or doing their very best to take good care of their children. So, that's my stance. But of course, you're all entitled to your own stance on this. There are also the general arguments that people like to have about whether or not the population of the Earth will be sustained or not sustained based on current birth rates, et cetera. Indeed, many areas of the world birth rates are going down. It's actually something that, um, just as a perhaps point of interest has been, uh, studied from the, uh, somewhat unusual but, um, uh, logical perspective of whether or not child diapers are selling at the same rate as they were some years ago and whether or not adult diapers for the, uh, elderly are being sold at the same rate or, or greater. That, uh, if you think about it, is one, uh, indirect measure of whether or not people are living longer and/or, um, opting to have children. Definitely a discussion for another time, probably for another podcast,

11. 47:33 – 50:20

    AG1 (Athletic Greens)

    1. AHAndrew Huberman47:33

       eh, entirely. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens, now called AG1, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens once or usually twice a day is that it gets me the probiotics that I need for gut health. Our gut is very important, it's populated by, uh, gut microbiota that communicate with the brain, the immune system, and basically all the biological systems of our body to strongly impact our immediate and long-term health. And those probiotics in Athletic Greens are optimal and vital for microbiotic health.In addition, Athletic Greens contains a number of adaptogens, vitamins, and minerals that make sure that all of my foundational nutritional needs are met and it tastes great. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman and they'll give you five free travel packs that make it really easy to mix up Athletic Greens while you're on the road, in the car, on the plane, et cetera. And they'll give you a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman to get the five free travel packs and the year's supply of vitamin D3K2. So this U-shaped function of people being happier earlier in life and then reporting feeling far less happy and then happiness returning to them, that is the rising of the U again in their later years, is something that I do believe should be repeated in modern times, and repeated in a way that takes into account that that U might be shifted to the right. That is, I am certainly aware that people are tending to get married later, many are opting to not have children, so for instance, the- the question arises whether or not that U-shaped curve should have a bump down at the bottom of the U among those that opt not to have children. Because the argument was made in the discussion of those papers that the reason why happiness is lower when people are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s is because they're devoting more time to raising their children and devoting more time to work. Uh, I would hope people would enjoy their work, but not everybody really enjoys their work and many people, even if they do enjoy their work and they find meaning in it, still find it stressful, which certainly can run counter to happiness. Nowadays, y- you could imagine that because a number of people are opting perhaps to work less or to not have children or both, where they find tremendous meaning from their work, that there would be a bump at the bottom of that U among those that decided to simply not take on these additional responsibilities. That would be an interesting test, I think, of whether or not the total load of responsibility is really what's correlating with reported happiness or not.

12. 50:20 – 52:45

    Birthdays & Evaluated Happiness

    1. AHAndrew Huberman50:20

       Now one very consistent finding that has absolutely stood the test of time, it's kind of an interesting one, it's a little bit of a pop psychology finding but I think it points to something interesting that we'll return to again and again, is that people tend to report feeling lower levels of happiness, believe it or not, on their birthday. Um, and the argument for why this is, is the following: that typically we go through our year not comparing ourselves to our peers terribly much. We might do that a little bit more when we're in elementary school, high school, et cetera. We're sort of age matched, maybe even college as well. But an evaluation of ourselves to our age-matched peers is not typically something that we do on a daily basis. Whereas on our birthday, we get a snapshot of where we are in the arc of time, or at least in our life, and many people report feeling rather low on their birthday because they use that as a benchmark or a window into the things that they have not accomplished, the things that despite being age blank, they still haven't accomplished. And so that's interesting because what it really points to is two things. One, the extent to which much of our feelings of happiness are relative, in particular relative to our peers. So there's that social aspect again. And the fact that most of the time we are not very good at orienting ourselves in the longer arc of time. We're pretty good at knowing where we are in the arc of a day or the arc of a week or the arc of a month or even a year, but that most of us are not very good at reflecting on where we are in our life arc, and of course most of us don't know how long we will live anyway, but we do have some general sense. I mean, very few people li- live past the age of 100. Many people live to be 70 or 80, and again, lifespan is extending as far as we know from year to year. But in general, people report that on their birthdays, and I should say these are for birthdays aged 25 or later, at least in the studies I was able to access, right? I don't think that a lot of three-year-olds sit around comparing themselves to other three-year-olds and how well they're doing, or 12 year olds. You can imagine some people might do that at 18, et cetera, but it's really by the mid-20s that people start evaluating themselves to their peers in terms of life progression and so-called milestones. It's been argued that that's one of the reasons why people report lower affect, lower levels of happiness on their birthday, something that's a little bit, um, counterintuitive.

13. 52:45 – 54:23

    Smoking, Alcohol & Happiness

    1. AHAndrew Huberman52:45

       And of course there are things that are anti-correlated with happiness. You know, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a few of these. That longitudinal study, the Harvard Happiness Project, has reported, for instance, that people that are chronic smokers of nicotine and chronic consumers of alcohol, in particular alcoholics, that is people who suffer from alcoholism or what's sometimes called alcohol use disorder, that is strongly anti-correlated with happiness. And I should also mention that the family members and in particular the romantic partners of people who are chronic smokers and the partners of people who are chronic alcohol users often will report lower levels of happiness, especially if they themselves are not chronic smokers or regular consumers of alcohol. So we've done episodes on nicotine in particular, and that touched on smoking of course, and we've done an episode on alcohol and the effects of alcohol on health. Again, you can find those at hubermanlab.com. This study, uh, from the Harvard Happiness Project really has strong data supporting the fact that avoiding being a nicotine smoker, right? There are positive health effects of nicotine that are discussed in the episode on nicotine, but being a, but smoking nicotine in particular is counterproductive for people's at least self-reported happiness and certainly overall health. I think there's zero question that smoking increases cancers of different kinds. And that alcohol consumption, in particular alcohol consumption beyond two drinks per week, two drinks being the typical volume of, you know, a beer, glass of wine, or- or cocktail, et cetera, is detrimental for various aspects of health.And

14. 54:23 – 1:05:05

    Trauma & Happiness, Lottery Winner vs. Paraplegic Accident

    1. AHAndrew Huberman54:23

       of course, there are other things that you could imagine would relate to a lack of happiness. For instance, a major trauma, physical or emotional trauma. Uh, that could include the loss of a major relationship, a death of a close one, um, being the victim of a violent crime and things of that sort. And yet it's been argued, in fact strongly argued, that when you look at people's levels of happiness after a trauma, that if you wait about a year or so, sometimes as- even as short as three months after a trauma, that people's self-reported levels of happiness are not significantly lower than they were prior to the trauma. Now I very much want to highlight, underline, and bold and asterisk that statement as one that we really need to explore carefully, because there are other data that strongly point to the fact that major life traumas can severely disrupt one's sense of happiness and well-being. And I think as long as we're going to have this discussion, we should point to a useful definition of trauma, and the definition that I'll paraphrase is one that was, uh, supplied by a former guest on the Huberman Lab podcast, Dr. Paul Conti, who's a psychiatrist who's written a book called Trauma. I- I personally think it's the best book on trauma and tools for alleviating trauma. It's incredibly thorough, easy to read, and well-informed. And here, again I'm paraphrasing, but Dr. Conti describes trauma as something that fundamentally changes the way that our brain and body function in a way that makes other aspects of living more challenging. Again, an event, either emotional or physical or both, that fundamentally changes the way that our brain and/or body, that is our- our nervous system and other organs, function in a way that prevents us from en- enjoying dain- daily activities, and that could even be ongoing distraction, right? Traumas can, uh, create rumination or they can create obsessive thought or they can create dissociation. Any number of different things. Again, check out that episode with Dr.- uh, Paul Conti if you'd like to learn more about trauma and how it manifests. But the idea that's been put forth by a number of researchers in the- in the field of happiness that three months after a major trauma, people aren't reporting that they are feeling any less happy than before the trauma, that was surprising to me. So I- I went into this literature a bit more deeply. One of the basis of that general line of thinking is a, what I consider now classic and- and very important and frankly excellent talk that was given by Professor Dan Gilbert on the science of happiness. You can find this, uh, on YouTube. Uh, I say a classic one because it was- it was done some years ago. It's received, uh, you know, millions of views. And one of the points that he makes in that talk, which is grounded in research carried out by his laboratory and other laboratories, is that, you know, he poses a question. He says, "You know, let's do a quiz. Would you rather be someone who wins the lottery," and he shows a picture of somebody who just won I think it was several hundreds of millions of dollars in the lottery, "or was recently made paraplegic, l- uh, lost use of their legs?" And then goes on to state that one year after people have won the lottery, this major, you know, mona- monetary windfall, versus have become paraplegic, is that their self-reported levels of happiness are the same, which I think is incredibly surprising. Now I heard this and I immediately thought of an experience that I've had where I teach a course at Stanford School of Medicine on neural regeneration, and it's actually a course that I attended some years ago when I was a postdoc at Stanford, so well over a decade ago, and we ha- excuse me, we had an individual come into the course. This was a- an older gentleman, so older meaning, uh, he was in his early 70s, and he had become paraplegic fairly late in life from a cycling accident, and he was and is an expert in what it is to become a paraplegic, of course because he had that experience, but also because he spends a lot of his time doing volunteer work with people who have become paraplegic and have become paraplegic at different ages. And what he described to me was that the overall outcomes for people that are rendered paraplegic in terms of their mental health and their physical well-being, their sort of management of general life skills scales with how early they had that injury and how long they had the use of their limb. So it's not straightforward. When I heard this result described by Dr. Dan Gilbert that winning the lottery and becoming paraplegic basically don't impact your levels of happiness to any, uh, different degree when, you know, people look back a year later, I was pretty surprised given my experience of hearing this- this lecture at Stanford, so I thought, "Wow, I- from what I understand, indeed there are people who are rendered paraplegic and manage that transition very easily, it doesn't seem to, um, disrupt their feelings of well-being, et cetera, but for other people, it can be, um, severely disrupting to their sense of well-being and so on and so forth." I went back and examined these data, and in fact a subsequent talk, it's actually a podcast that was given by Dr. Dan Gilbert some years later, so this would be just a few years ago, I think in 2019 is the- is the specific date in which it was recorded, but just a few years ago, and indeed he corrects himself in that podcast. What he says is that he misspoke in that earlier talk, that the difference in self-reported levels of happiness for those that have been rendered paraplegic for- versus those who've won the lottery is not as great as one would expect. You know, I think most people would expect that being rendered paraplegic would make people far less happy. That's the expectation I think anyway, and that people who win the lottery at least for some period of time would be far happier than they were prior to, uh, winning the lottery, espe- especially given the tremendous amount of- of money, and again, the fact that...... money can't buy happiness, but that money does indeed enable the ability to buffer stress, provided people were responsible with that money and just didn't blow it or spend it all right away. That they could start to afford things that they couldn't afford, not just in terms of luxury items, but also the ability to hire help that would free up time, that would allow them to do anything from, uh, travel that they couldn't access before, to meditate if that was something that they didn't have time to do before, and so on and so forth. So th- the result, quote unquote, that winners of the lottery and recent paraplegics have the same levels of happiness is actually not true, at least according to the author of the original study. Now, what he did not point to is the degree to which that is not true, but he did point to the direction of the result and the fact that people who are rendered paraplegic in fact are reporting themselves as less happy than they were prior to their injury, and certainly that their levels of happiness are lower than those o- of that simply won the lottery, hundreds of millions of dollars, which I think is the more, uh, intuitive result. And so I think it's important to be aware of, of that discrepancy because it's something that was lost in the communication, um, a- around those results the first time around. And indeed, um, Dan Gilbert, uh, is an excellent scientist and, and was, uh, quite good about trying to correct the narrative. Uh, I myself as a, a podcaster who puts information on the internet know that the challenges of correcting narratives, especially of things that, that came out, um, some time ago, we always attempt to do this as best we can, but not everyone that saw that first video will necessarily hear the discussion that hap- happened subsequently. So my hope is, um, that Dr. Gilbert w- will interpret me communicating this now not as an attempt to criticize him, but rather as an attempt to, uh, praise his willingness to try and correct the narrative to be more accurate. So to be very clear about what this study did and didn't show, and here I'm going to combine these results with other studies that I was able to find that explored similar phenomena, so, uh, major trauma, for instance, not necessarily becoming paraplegic, but, uh, traumas of a different sort. Uh, emotional traumas. When you look at the whole of those data, at least my read is that when people win the lottery or acquire wealth through inheritance, some form of wealth acquisition that is sudden and that wasn't preceded by a specific effort to gain that wealth, right? Buying a lottery ticket is a pretty quick thing. Um, inheritance is something that you simply get by virtue of who you are, not necessarily by effort. Well, that led to increases in self-reported happiness compared to prior to the inheritance or the lottery win, but it wasn't as substantial as you might imagine if you're approaching the notion of happiness simply from, well, more money equals more happiness. And while it is true that people who are rendered paraplegic or, or who undergo psychological traumas or physical traumas of any various kind are, and frankly are remarkably resilient in many cases, they can still manage to go about life and, uh, and work and engage in relationships, et cetera, there is a visible decrease in overall levels of happiness and well-being. In particular, if the psychological and physical trauma renders their nervous system different in a way that impacts other major areas of life and enjoyment for them. And that's certainly true one year out from the trauma. So the point is that we do need to reframe this idea that whether or not you win the lottery or become paraplegic or suffer some major trauma, your levels of happiness are going to be the same three months or a year later. I don't think that's accurate, and in fact, Dr. Dan Gilbert emphasized that that's not accurate, um, even in that initial study. And I think it's an important thing to frame because th- that's such a popular notion or that that idea combined with the idea that increased earnings don't make us happy, combined with the idea that, you know, we are happy earlier in life, um, but then as more demands arise in life, we become less happy and then we become happy again, and, and that idea, as we already explored, is not necessarily true. Frankly, I knew a lot of teenagers and people in their, their early 20s are pretty unhappy who then become happier later as they acquire more resources. Sometimes distance, let's be honest, sometimes distance from our family of origin makes us more happy, sometimes less so. It's highly individual. So I think those general themes that we've heard over and over, while they have merit and they certainly stand up in some of the more powerful longitudinal and short-term studies, there is nuance, and in some cases, there are now additional data that are causing us to revise those understandings.

15. 1:05:05 – 1:09:18

    Synthesizing Happiness

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:05

       Now, there is an important point, or I should say the important point, that we can really credit Dan Gilbert and others in the field of psychology with and that we owe them a great debt of gratitude for, is that we do have far more control over our levels of happiness than we might think, and many of the things that reside at that level of control, that is, the things that we can do and think and say and access, don't come from external things. Right? They don't come necessarily from the acquisition of material goods, but rather there are things that we can do that can allow us to so-called synthesize happiness, and I think this is one of the great gifts of modern psychology, is that Dan Gilbert and others, the Harvard Happiness Project, work at Yale and elsewhere, right? There are excellent labs working on happiness all over the US and, uh, and all over the world, frankly. One of the great gifts that they've supplied us in the form of data is that there really are things that we can all do and think and access to allow ourselves to so-called synthesize happiness. Now, this notion of synth- synthesizing happiness or synthetic happiness as it's sometimes called can sometimes ruffle people's feathers a bit because...... people immediately f- flip to the idea that, "Oh, you're just going to tell me to be grateful for what I have, or to just navel gaze or just to imagine that I'm happy." That's really not what synthetic happiness is about at all. Synthetic happiness actually has to do with some really important larger principles about the way that our emotional system and the way that the reward systems of our n- brain really function. And they point to important concepts that we're going to now discuss, things like the hedonic setpoint for instance, or the dopamine system of anticipation of rewards versus receiving rewards. Just as a brief, um, insight into that, our anticipation of something positive oftentimes leads to greater increases in the sorts of neurochemicals that support a state of happiness and well-being than the actual acquisition of the thing that we're trying to obtain. And this goes back to a theme I've discussed a few times before on this podcast, um, in particular with, uh, my colleague at Stanford School of Medicine, Dr. Anna Lembke who wrote the fabulous book, Dopamine Nation. If you're interested in dopamine and addiction in particular, that's a wonderful, clear, and extremely informative read. And if you're interested in dopamine more generally, just- not just in the states of addiction, but in everyday life and in pursuit and motivation, uh, The Molecule of More is an excellent book r- related to that. And as I mentioned earlier, we have this episode on dopamine motivation and drive. The notion of synthetic happiness is not simply about imagining happiness or thinking about happiness or anticipating happiness. I- to some extent it is, but it relates to a number of other important themes. But it is grounded very thoroughly in the neurobiology of dopamine rewards, and I'll talk about some of that neurobiology in a few moments. But I want to take a couple of minutes and talk about what synthetic happiness is, and what some of the conditions are for allowing us to access this state of so-called synthetic happiness, and I want to point out at the outset that synthetic happiness, while it might sound synthetic, AKA false, it's anything but. It actually turns out to be among the more, and perhaps the more potent form of happiness that we can all access. And this is where themes in- related to our control over our own internal state really become not only valid but very powerful. So for instance, Dr. Dan Gilbert and others have explored how opportunity and choice, that is freedom, can and can't lead to states of happiness, and the results of those studies are very solid and frankly very surprising until you understand the results. And once you do, I think y- you will immediately see areas of your own life that you can start to access more happiness, again, genuine happiness, simply by framing certain choices in a particular way and maybe even by eliminating

16. 1:09:18 – 1:13:45

    Natural Happiness & Synthetic Happiness; Music

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:18

       choices. Now I'd like to focus on the research and understanding what increases our levels of happiness, and I'd like to frame this under the umbrella of two major themes. The first theme is so-called natural happiness. Natural happiness is the sort of happiness that most of us are familiar with, so the kind of happiness that we expect to have if we, for instance, complete a degree, hopefully a degree in a topic meaningful and interesting to us, but a degree nonetheless, or we find a mate, hopefully a mate that we enjoy spending time with, or for instance making a certain income or finding work that we enjoy on a regular basis. All of those are forms of happiness that from a very early time in development we are taught exist. For instance, even when we are very young, we are told that our birthday is coming and that we are going to get presents, and those presents are going to be focused on knowledge of things that we already enjoy. So if you're a little kid and you like trucks or you're a little kid and you like dolls, you can sort of expect that those gifts will bring you some level of joy or happiness. And while that's a small child example, that general notion of natural happiness is, of course, one that persists into adolescence, into young adulthood, and into adulthood. And we quite understandably come to associate this feeling of joy or happiness with the receiving of things or the acquisition of things whether by effort, by gift, by inheritance, or some other form. Okay? So that's natural happiness. And yet, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, there's also this notion of synthetic happiness, and some of the more interesting and exciting research in the fields of psychology and in fact neuroscience point to this idea of synthetic happiness as at least as powerful a source of happiness as natural happiness, again, at least as powerful and perhaps even more powerful. And of course one has to take a slightly different view of what happiness is in order to accept this idea that we can create happiness for ourselves, but that doesn't mean that the whole notion of synthetic happiness is merely a passive one where all we do is sit back and imagine being happy and then we are happy. Uh, for better or for worse, our nervous systems and our neurochemistry simply don't work that way. In fact, synthetic happiness has almost always been understood as something that we have to put some effort toward achieving, but, and this is an important thing to point out, synthetic happiness also requires that certain situational or environmental conditions be met. A good example of this is some of the work by Gillian Mandich, or I should say Dr. Gillian Mandich, who's done some interesting work on the conditions for creating happiness within our mind and in our overall state of being, and she's been involved in a number of different studies. But one of the ones that I found, um, particularly interesting is one in which they explored different types of music and other aspects of environmental settings, so you bring subjects to the laboratory, b-... play them different types of music. There are in fact certain aspects of music that can create different states of mind, sadness, happiness, anticipation. Uh, in fact, there are certain patterns of music that can reliably induce anticipation of the fear and anxiety-based type. So for instance, think the movie Jaws. Um, if you recall, uh, for those of you who have seen Jaws, there's this, uh, ongoing theme music anytime the shark might be, uh, present in the water or in a given scene, that essentially goes (singing) . Now for the musicians out there, this has basis in things like tritones and things that are understood from the mathematics and the- and the musical side, and from the neuroscience side are known to create a neural state of anticipation. Yeah, a neural state of anticipation and not necessarily a positive one. And indeed there are other patterns of music that involve uptones. Um, think some of the, uh, music that's, uh, typically been used in cartoons of various sorts. There's a long history of this. Indeed, there's a whole literature of psychological, and now even a smaller but still interesting literature on the neuroscience of how certain patterns of music can induce a state of joy and joyful anticipation in particular. A lot of those patterns of music are incorporated into so-called happy cartoons and Disney movies and things of that sort. In any case, Dr. Mandich and others have explored

17. 1:13:45 – 1:24:50

    Tool: Synthesizing Happiness: Effort, Environment & Gratitude

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:45

       how music in particular, but other features of the environment, can or cannot induce states of happiness, and the basic takeaway from those studies is that while having a certain environmental sound, musical tone, or visual feature to a given s- space, a room, is necessary for a state of happiness, it is not alone sufficient. What is required is that individuals not only be placed into an environment that contains music or visual items or a combination of music and visual items that can induce states of joy or happiness or positive anticipation, but that they also are given some sort of instruction or instruction manual as to how to synthesize happiness inside of that environment. This is important because what this says is that our ability to create states of happiness is dependent on our environment but also requires effort from us. That also makes sense as to why when we are under conditions of deprivation, so it could be social deprivation or financial deprivation, or even for people that are very sensitive to weather, you know, there are a certain number of individuals, about 30% of people who report feeling very, very low under conditions where the sky is overcast, uh, especially if it's been overcast for a number of days, the so-called seasonal affective depression. Those individuals, by the way, can often receive tremendous benefits in terms of elevating their mood if they make an effort to get sunlight, and if they can't get sunlight, artificial light of the sort that we talked about earlier. But in any case, there are a number of people that are profoundly negatively influenced by the lack of positive visual and auditory cues in their environment, but for most people, we are in a- what I would call a dynamic relationship with our environment. Our environment has an effect on our mood, but the research indicates that we also need to make some sort of effort toward being happy. Now, effort toward being happy is a very vague term, so let's better define what that is. In the case of Dr. Mandich's work, this took the form of doing so-called happiness inventories, right? Uh, that can be focusing on things that one is grateful for, um, things that they particularly enjoy. This is somewhat of a gratitude type practice, but includes some other features as well that are more focused on the things that bring you meaning and actually engaging in the things that bring you meaning. So, if you're trying to think about how to improve your levels of happiness, what this research essentially says is that you would be smart to try and adjust your home environment, adjust your work environment, so that it is cheerful to you. Maybe that means a plant. For me, in my laboratory, uh, one of the things that was really critical that I had as a postdoc and, uh, in my own laboratory when I first started my lab was, I love aquaria, so I had multiple fish tanks. In fact, people in my laboratory were always rolling their eyes. "Why do we have to have all these fish tanks with all these..." I like freshwater tanks, not tr- uh, saltwater tanks, uh, for reasons that aren't interesting for this discussion, but freshwater tanks with discus fish, for instance, to me, are just beautiful. They make me happy. I just enjoy them. Um, music is a complicated thing in laboratories because it's a shared space, so headphones are- are the general requirement. But having either silence, if you love silence, and I happen to like working in silence or listening to certain forms of music. I do also use the 40 hertz, uh, binaural beats, or, uh, I particularly like listening to, uh, Glenn Gould while I work, or listening to whale song, believe it or not, while I work because it doesn't have any structure that I can follow. I don't speak Whale, and so I can't follow, but I- it sort of fills the space in a way that I find pleasant, and I've put substantial amounts of effort into making my laboratory spaces and my office spaces, my work spaces nice places to be. Now, I had no knowledge of this work from Dr. Mandich and others at the time when I did that, but what I found was that over the years I- I was, um, challenged in maintaining a kind of elevated mood while working in a laboratory, not because I didn't thoroughly enjoy the work. I love doing experiments with my hands, and I loved being in lab, but at least the labs that I was in as a graduate student and postdoc, there were no windows, so I wasn't getting adequate sunshine. The windows that we didn't have didn't open, so I wasn't getting a lot of fresh air, and so on and so forth. And so I've personally found it very valuable to create an environment both at work and at home that I find aesthetically pleasant, at least in some way or another, and I realize people have varying levels of control.... um, over the aesthetic environment. Certainly, the auditory environment can be controlled nowadays through the use of headphones if you're allowed to use those. So f- for instance, using music or using background sound that you find very pleasant combined with a concerted effort on your part to create states of happiness by hopefully doing work that's meaningful to you, or at least is leading to meaningful outcomes, we'll talk a little bit more about that. But these happiness inventories also turn out to be interesting and important sources of creating so-called synthetic happiness, and we will also talk about other ways that one can create elevated levels of synthetic happiness, and I realize the word synthetic probably draws up connotations of false happiness or contrived happiness. I wish instead of calling it synthetic happiness, they had called it, uh, self-created or self-directed happiness or something of that sort 'cause then it wouldn't sound as false because it- it's simply not false. It leads to the same, as far as we know, identical neurochemical and psychological states of happiness as natural happiness and might even be more persistent than natural happiness. It certainly is more under our control. But the key point is that environment and self-directed work at being happy are both important and they interact with one another. So if you're somebody who has a hard time synthesizing happiness through any of the methods that we talk about today, don't consider yourself deficient. It could very well be that the environment that you're in, social environment or physical environment or auditory environment, is simply not conducive to synthesizing happiness and for that reason, I think the work of Gillian Mandich and colleagues, um, and others in the field is tremendously important because it removes us from this, um, pressure to just synthesize happiness from within despite our circumstances. I think, you know, many of us have heard of the incredible, uh, stories of people like Viktor Frankl or, uh, Nelson Mandela who were stripped of their freedom and yet managed to maintain some sense of positive anticipation or at least some sense of identity that allowed them to still access forms of happiness. Uh, those are highly unique situations, of course, and they speak to the- the power of the- of the human psyche for synthesizing happiness and certainly for synthesizing a sense that there might be a future and to live into that future in, in their cases, incredibly impressive ways, but I think for most everybody, the environment that we're in has a powerful impact on our mood and some people more than others. You know, I know people that are perfectly happy with blank walls, no pictures on the walls. Other people benefit tremendously from having photos or plants in their environment and so on. You really have to d- determine what's needed for you and do your best to try and place those things into your environment, or rather place yourself into an environment that is conducive to you synthesizing your happiness. In fact, the powerful interaction between our environment and our own ability to generate certain kinds of emotions is well-established, not just for happiness, but for things like gratitude. So for instance, there's a classic study from Ames, A-M-E-S, in 2004 that was focused on gratitude, and we've had an episode on gratitude before. Um, the basic takeaway of that episode is that it turns out receiving gratitude is a more powerful stimulus for the release of neurochemicals and activation of brain areas associated with so-called pro-social behaviors and feelings of well-being, including happiness,

Episode duration: 2:23:43