The Mel Robbins PodcastThe Science of Well-Being: Powerful Happiness Hacks That 5 Million People Are Using
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,064 words- 0:00 – 6:55
Introduction
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
What does the science really say, practically, that you can do to kind of feel better right now? You can actually become happier, somewhere between 5 to 15% happier. If I said, "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life?" You're like, "Five out of 10." Wherever you're feeling right now on how happy you are with your life, you can kind of pop up a little bit. You're not going to go from zero to 100. Everyone wants to go from zero to 100. I think one of the disappointing things about happiness is that it takes constant work, like all good things in life, right? These are lasting effects where you really go up a small but significant amount, and then I think things are getting worse.
- MRMel Robbins
Wha- what do you mean things are getting worse?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Like rates of loneliness have nearly doubled, right, since we've been measuring these things. Like rates of depression and anxiety in the adult population are going up.
- MRMel Robbins
Is happiness the anecdote? Hey, it's your friend Mel. Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're here. I'm so happy you hit play on the conversation today. First of all, it's always such an honor to be able to spend time with you and to be together. And if you're brand new, I want to welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family, and you have picked one amazing episode to hit play on, and it tells me something about you. It tells me that you're the type of person who not only values your time, but you're also interested in learning about ways that you can be happier. And I am really fired up for today's episode because I've brought in the best of the best, someone who's going to guide you toward a happier life using the exact steps and research that will boost your happiness day-to-day. Dr. Laurie Santos is in our Boston studios. She is a cognitive scientist and professor at Yale who teaches the single most popular course that has been taught at Yale in 300 years. It's a course she created called The Psychology of a Good Life. It's so popular that 1,200 students signed up within three days of it being announced. Now, Dr. Santos has spent her entire career researching what truly makes you happy, and she has one of the most popular podcasts on the topic. It's called The Happiness Lab. And I personally, I love her research. I have used it, I've cited it, I've written about it, I've even taught it in online courses that I teach and in the work that I do with some of the world's leading global brands. That's how powerful her work is, and you're going to feel that power today, and that's why you can hear your friend Mel just bubbling over. That's why I can't wait for you and for the people that you love and for me to learn absolutely everything that she has to share with us today. So please help me welcome Dr. Laurie Santos to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Oh, I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me on the show.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, I- I'm thrilled that we've got you here in our studios.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
And I'm, like, just looking around this studio being like, "This is Mel's studio? So cool."
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs) And you're in it.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
I'm here right now.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, you're so busy, so thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time to be with us, and we're going to cover a lot. And I just want to tell you as you're listening and you've invited Dr. Santos and I in the car with you or on your walk with you that there is so much that she's going to unpack for you about happiness, from the things that we get wrong about it to the ways our brains are working against us to, most importantly, I don't know how you're going to do this, woman, but you're going to condense the most popular course literally ever taught on happiness into this conversation with key takeaways, and I understand you also have homework for us?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah, sorry. You can't invite the professor on the show-
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs)
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
... and not have your listeners get homework. Sorry listeners, I didn't mean it.
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs) That's okay. All right, I would love for you to speak directly to the person that is with us right now and listening and share with them what they might experience that could be different about their life if they take everything that you're about to share to heart and they apply it.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Well, this is something we've seen in our students, which is that if you listen to what I'm about to say, if you follow the homework, you can actually become happier, somewhere between 5 to 15% happier, 5 to 15% more positive emotions, 5 to 15% more satisfied with your life. It's actually what the science tells you and in our short, short, short, short version of the course today, that's what you're going to get.
- MRMel Robbins
Wow, what does 5 to 15% feel like?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Well, I think it feels like, you know, if you were a, like, 6 out of 10 on positive emotion, you know, if I said, "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life?" You're like, "Five out of 10." You'd go up to, like, almost 7 out of 10, and- and that matters. Wherever you're feeling right now on how happy you are with your life, how much joy, how much laughter you have, you can kind of pop up a little bit. You're not going to go from zero to 100, but these are lasting effects where you really go up a small but significant amount in terms of how you feel.
- MRMel Robbins
Can I share something?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Please.
- MRMel Robbins
So when you said 5 to 15%, my brain was like, "Well, that's not enough," and I think that's probably relevant to our conversation about happiness. I mean, does that surprise you that I was like, "Five%? Meh"?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Not at all. I mean, I think when we talk about these strategies, especially to my very type A Yale students, right, everyone wants to go from zero to 100, right? Everyone wants to do the extreme thing, and I think one of the lessons we get from the happiness research is that, like, this works better in baby steps, and it's not the kind of thing that you're just going to do one thing and happiness lasts forever. I think one of the disappointing things about happiness is that it takes constant work, like all good things in life, right? If you want to learn to play the violin, if I want to learn French, you know, if I want to get really good at Guitar Hero, which is the last thing I've invested myself in
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
... is really try to-
- MRMel Robbins
Really?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
I'm trying to move from hard, medium to hard on Guitar Hero. I know it's a little 2005, but that's what I do. But, like, you can't just practice once and then that's it. Like, you got to kind of keep up with it, and one of the lessons that we get from the science about happiness is that happiness works the same way. It's kind of like a leaky tire. You do these different behaviors, you change your mindset, it fills i- things up for a little bit, but then you kind of got to do it again and again.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
It sort of takes constant work, but the good news is that you can change things around a lot.
- MRMel Robbins
So if you feel-... like your life is a leaky tire right now.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yes. And, and I think probably listeners out there, my guess is a lot of you are feeling that way.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah. I think so. Uh, I would love to have you share a little bit about this course that you teach at Yale University. It is the single most popular course taught in over 300 years. It's called The Psychology of a Good Life. Can you tell us a little bit about this course, why you created it, and why the heck is this so popular?
- 6:55 – 14:21
What Yale’s most popular course on happiness can teach you
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
member, I was living on campus with students. I was-
- MRMel Robbins
Really?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And, and you're married. So were you-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
I'm married, yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... there with your spouse?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
So me and my husband eating in the dining hall, hanging out in the coffee shop.
- MRMel Robbins
That's kind of fun.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
I became this, like, benevolent aunt to, like, 500-
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs)
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
... you know, 19-year-olds, right? Um, but I ... And I thought this was gonna be fun, right? I th- I thought college life right now was gonna look like what college life looked like back when I went there-
- MRMel Robbins
Right.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
... in the '90s, and it just didn't. I mean, I was really looking at this college student mental health crisis up close and personal. And th- this is true at Yale, but it's just true nationally. So right now, nationally, more than 40% of college students report being too depressed to function. Right now, nationally, more than 60% of college students report feeling very lonely and overwhelmingly anxious. More than one in 10 has seriously considered suicide in the last six months. Like ... And this was what I was seeing, like, in my community, right, where there were just students who were really struggling. And, and I just kind of went through this crisis of confidence. Like, as a professor, I'm like, "We're not teaching them computer science and Shakespeare and all this stuff if, like, 60% of students are experiencing overwhelming anxiety most days." And I was like, "We gotta do something about this." And, and being a psychologist, I mean, I'm a trained psychologist, I said, "Well, my field has strategies," right? Like, we know simple kinds of ways that you can change your behaviors and your mindset that, again, don't take you from zero to 100 but work pretty well, right? Can make you kind of patch up that leaky happiness tire and feel a little bit better. And so I said, "Well, why don't I make a class? I'll just make a whole new class, and I'll kind of teach students all these strategies." Um, I wanted it to sound cool. That's why I called it Psychology and the Good Life-
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs)
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
So it sort of popped out of the ... It sounded, like, kind of fun. Um, but, you know, it was a new class on campus. I thought, you know, 30 or so students would show up. And so th- the first indication that I got that something was amiss was we get these little kind of tickers as students are registering for our class. It's like this little web page where you can come see this graph going up and down, and most of the graphs had an axis that was from zero to 100, but mine started going from zero to 1,000. (laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
Wha- Were you like ... Like, where were you when that started happening?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
It was like, it was like back and forth in my office 'cause it was, like, happening over time gradually-
- MRMel Robbins
Uh-huh.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
... as students were coming in. And I think it was something different because students were sort of voting with their feet. I mean, if you're a 19-year-old right now, you don't like this culture of feeling overwhelmed and anxious and just kind of so many of your friends are just experiencing panic attacks. Like, that is not a fun way to be. And I think the course was really offering students a solution and even an evidence-based solution. I was saying, "Look, I'm gonna just comb through the science and tell you, what does the science really say practically that you can do to kind of feel better right now?"
- MRMel Robbins
And as you started to observe this about college students, did you see any, uh, correlation when you look around at your friends who are your age, my age, all ages as well, in terms of these statistics or just people generally being unhappy?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah. Well, this was the striking thing about the course, right, is that, you know, we ... The, the course became viral on campus, but what I really didn't expect was for the course to get viral off campus. About a week into teaching the class, I got a ... There was a New York Times article about the class that the point of which was basically, like, "All these 19-year-olds, an Ivy League school have their whole life ahead of them, are miserable. What about the rest of us?" It was kind of like, "Dr. Santos, share these strategies with the rest of us." And I just got emails from all around the world of just people feeling like, "You know, it's not so much that I'm depressed, I just feel like I'm kind of languishing or-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
... just kind of meh." Or like, you know, just, "There's so much going on in the world to feel stressed out about right now, like, everybody's kinda going through it right now."
- MRMel Robbins
I'm glad that you said that because I think that this conversation is going to be incredibly helpful for understanding not only what the teenagers and 20-somethings and early 30-somethings are facing right now, but also what we're all facing.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And so whether you're already starting to think about the person in your life who's in their 20s or in college or high school that you're gonna share this conversation with, or you're thinking about yourself, like, all of the takeaways from the research and the science and the studies that you've been doing are relevant to all of us.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
That's right. And, and I think things are getting worse and will continue to get worse unless we come up with good strategies to, to deal with this, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Wha- What do you mean things are getting worse?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Well, you look at pretty much any statistic on mental health, and I'm not talking in college students now, I'm talking about in adults, especially in the US, things are just getting worse over time. Like, rates of loneliness have nearly doubled, right, since we've been measuring these things. Like, rates of depression and anxiety in the adult population are going up. And I think even if you just look at rates of things like people reporting that they're overwhelmed, burned out, right, you get, you know, not just double digits, but very high double digits of folks saying like, "Yeah, that's me. I'm going through it." And honestly, if it's not you, you know, it's your sister-in-law, it's your colleague at work. It's like we're just in a community where so many people just feel like they're not experiencing the kind of joy and positive emotion that they'd really like to be experiencing.
- MRMel Robbins
I love what you just said about joy and positive emotion because th- I was about to ask you. Well, if you're dealing with anxiety or depression or a lack of purpose or you're feeling very lonely-... is happiness the anecdote? Is that why this matters so much for all of us?
- 14:21 – 18:29
What top scholars say you likely have wrong when it comes to happiness
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
But, but you don't need a scale. You could probably answer right now, all things considered, you know, how happy are you with your life.
- MRMel Robbins
And I take it if you were to just stop and ask yourself, which you really should, "Am I happy in my life? Yes or no?" And then ask yourself, "Am I happy with my life?" That we're about to learn there are kind of different strategies that you can use to bring those numbers up, in terms of that 5% to 15% satisfaction that's available to all of us.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Exactly. And one of the things that's striking is that a lot of the strategies move both at the same time.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
A lot of the strategies will give you a sense of positive emotion when you're practicing it, but also overall make you kind of just more satisfied in the long term too.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm. So your course, Psychology of a Good Life, has 26 lectures on happiness.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
What do you think the big takeaway-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
(laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
... for your students has been?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah. So one of the biggest ones is just how much we get happiness wrong, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Oh.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah. I mean, I think if you're listening right now, you probably care about happiness, right? You probably want to feel happier. You're probably pursuing happiness. But you might not be feeling like it's going so great, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
You're kind of off somehow. And I think this is something that so many of us seem to go through, right? It's not so much that we're not seeking happiness out. We, we are. We're probably putting some effort into the choices we're making and actions we're taking to feel happier. But we're kind of doing it wrong.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Right? And, and this is by and large what the science seems to be telling us. It's, it's not that we're not going for improved wellbeing. We are. We're putting a lot of work in. Some, uh, some of us are putting a lot of money in. But we tend to be picking the things that, that don't get us there. And this is a big insight into happiness, is that we have theories about those sorts of things that make us happy, but a lot of research suggests those theories are just wrong. So we have these intuitions that are leading us astray.
- MRMel Robbins
I am so excited to learn from you. And I think probably the best place to start, you've talked about happiness with your life and happiness in your life, but what is the definition of happiness?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah. Well, I think the, the definition of happiness is really boosting both of those, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Ah.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
It's kind of finding the way to become happier in your life and with your life. That's kind of what we're going for when we're talking about improving happiness.
- MRMel Robbins
I love that definition. I do, because I... Well, again, I'm gonna reveal why I make myself miserable. (laughs)
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
(laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
It's because I immediately went like, "Oh, okay, so this is something I can do." I can literally, like, figure out how to be happy with my life, and I can figure out how to be happy in my life, and I can get my little checklist out, and then I can go, go, go, go, go. (laughs) So it felt more like-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
It's doable.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
It's like a checklist-able thing.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah. Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Because it's a... I'm starting to really wonder, is it really more of a skill to learn how to be happy with and in your life?
- 18:29 – 24:00
Why you’re wired to survive, not to thrive—and how to fix it
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
we get it wrong is that we're kind of like set up not to be so happy, in fact. And I think this makes most sense if you think back to kind of evolution, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
You know, like, we are just these survivors and reproducers that have to get out there off on the savanna and not ge- get eaten by a tiger or something, right? What makes you do that better? Doesn't really matter if you're experiencing a lot of positive emotion, joy, and so on. But you definitely want to experience, like, fear, you definitely want to experience anger so you can get access to maybe resources that you didn't get access to before. You're going to be driven to pay attention to the negative stuff, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
'Cause that's kind of what matters for, you know, surviving and reproducing. And that means we have brains that are built with what's called this negativity bias. We kind of constantly notice the bad stuff out there. And that's 'cause our brains are wired for it. These were brains that had to, like, notice the tiger that was hiding in the bush. So when it's scrolling through an Instagram feed, it's gonna see the terrible stuff, and that's-
- MRMel Robbins
Right.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
... what's gonna get us going.
- MRMel Robbins
Or if you walk into a cafeteria at a college or at work, you're gonna notice that everybody already has a friend to sit with but you.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yup. We notice all the bad comparisons that make us feel terrible, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
And so that's just another feature of this. And, and it makes sense evolutionarily that that's what we're built for, right? Like, we don't necessarily survive and reproduce better if we notice all the things we're grateful for and the blessings and have contentment, right? It works better if we lead th- this really volatile life, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Well, it kind of makes sense, 'cause if we were to, like, time travel back several thousand years and we're sitting out there on the savanna or wherever, if you and I are sitting there playing cards all day long, having fun, like cracking jokes-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... we're not gonna eat.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Right. Or worse, you know, imagine the, like, contented Buddha, you know, the perfect zen happiness who's just meditating under a tree. Like, he's gonna starve and, you know, get-
- MRMel Robbins
Right.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
... perfectly fine-
- MRMel Robbins
Or get eaten-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Exactly.
- MRMel Robbins
... while he's, while he's meditating. So, it sounds like because our brains are wired to keep us alive, that mandate has kind of spiraled out of control in modern life. And especially when you think about things like social media or you think about just how much information is out there about what other people are doing, you're probably now defaulting to paying attention to that instead of just paying attention to what's right in front of your face in terms of how to be happy with and in your life.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah. I think the modern world has found many more things for us to feel negative about, and many more things to kind of activate our negativity bias.
- MRMel Robbins
So, if you were to speak directly to the person that's with us right now listening, what is it that they probably have wrong about happiness, or the misconceptions that they have that are leaving them feeling unhappy? It's almost like when you understand this thing, it's actually gonna help you, when you realize that there's this thing you have wrong about happiness.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
That's right. And I think it's worth being a little bit self-compassionate, right? You know, if you're listening to this feeling like, "Oh, I'm maybe not flourishing, I'm maybe not experiencing as much positive emotion as I could," first of all, you are in the majority, right? You are not alone when you're dealing with this. Second, you're just allowing your brain to play out in the way your brain was built to play out. It makes sense that you're going through this, right? You're not doing anything wrong in some sense. But with a little tweaking of the way you engage in different actions and different mindsets, you can feel a lot better. Uh, understanding where we go wrong I think is really the path to making things better.
- MRMel Robbins
Amazing. I mean, I'd rather stop doing things 'cause it feels easier-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
(laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
... than have to start doing a whole lot of things. You know what I'm saying?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah. Well, that is the bad news about happiness.
- MRMel Robbins
Uh-oh.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
You know? Is that-
- MRMel Robbins
'Cause now I'm unhappy. I don't want-
- 24:00 – 25:46
Why changing your circumstances won’t be what makes you happy
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
is gonna matter really a lot for your material happiness going up. But my guess is you're listening to this and you're not necessarily in a refugee camp, that maybe you're not having the perfect finances, but you got food on the table and a roof over your head. If you're in that situation, then drastically changing your circumstances probably isn't gonna affect your happiness in the way that you think. That's what study after study shows.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, and I think more...... empowering is to know that you don't have to change your circumstances-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
That's right.
- MRMel Robbins
... to boost your ability to feel happier.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
And that's huge, right? 'Cause changing your circumstances is a pain in the butt, right? Like, going from, you know, like, your current salary to, like, $300 million a year, that's a big change. It's gonna take a lot of work, right? You know, kind of finding a new relationship, getting a big promotion at work. These are hard things, and they're often things that most of us don't really have that much control over.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
But all the strategies we're gonna start talking about soon are ones that you have complete control over. They're just things that you can engage in yourself.
- MRMel Robbins
Let's talk about money, though, because you have some foundational and very interesting research about money, at least in the United States. And I would love for you to share a little bit about that.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah, so the, the most famous study on money and happiness was one that the late, uh, Nobel Prize winner Danny Kahneman ran back in, I think, 2009. And he asked this kinda interesting question: Does increases in your amount of money wind up corresponding with increases in happiness? Which he measured in a couple ways. The first, kind of positive emotion. Do you get more positive emotion? Do you get less negative emotion? And do you feel kinda less stressed? And so he had this huge dataset where he could plot this out across different incomes. And what he finds is that if you're, you know, in the
- 25:46 – 34:01
Money won’t solve your problems or make you feel happier.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
low, low end of the income spectrum, you know, if you're earning $10,000 a year or $30,000 a year, yeah, increasing your, um, your salary over time is gonna boost your positive emotion, you're gonna feel less stress, less negative emotions. But that kind of increasing curve where more money is more happiness, more money is more happiness, it levels off. And in 2009-ish dollars in the United States, it leveled off at around $75,000. What does that mean? That means that if in 2009 dollars you hit a salary of $75,000, you, even if you doubled your salary, tripled, quintupled your salary, you wouldn't get any corresponding increase in positive emotions, you wouldn't decrease your negative emotions, and you wouldn't feel less stressed. Now, that is not what you probably believe if you're listening right now. (laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs)
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Like if you're ... Like, Mel's got her mouth kinda hanging open-
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
It's like, yeah, no one thinks this, right? And you might be like, "Well, that's 2009 dollars." The equivalent right now would maybe be, like, $100,000, $110,000. Something like that, right? We just don't think that. We think if suddenly I could triple my salary, I would be way happier. But the, these, re- research like this just shows that we're kind of wrong. And so that raises a different question, which is like, well, why doesn't more money buy happiness? And I think it's for a few reasons. One is that as you get richer, you often tend to get busier.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Um, in fact, this is a change that we've seen in the US population. Used to be that rich people lived the lives of leisure, like they look like kind of Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story just sitting around, you know, drinking cognac out of, like, beautiful vases and things like that. But rich ... More, higher salary now usually means you're working harder.
- MRMel Robbins
Right.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Or you're putting in more hours at work. And we know that time really matters for happiness, and free time sort of matters for happiness. Um, the more you're working, the less you're interacting socially, so wealth doesn't seem to kind of give us the sort of social benefit we used to get before. And I think a bigger thing is that as you get more money, you kinda just get used to that over time, right? You know, so if you get a little bit more money, maybe you goes, you start going to see the trainer and you start flying first class, you start eating at the nice restaurants. But if you do that over and over every day, it just becomes your day-to-day experience. You don't get this kind of additional happiness boost from it. And so $75,000, I think, it's not, like, a kinda magic bullet number.
- MRMel Robbins
Right.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
But I think it's, like, kinda around the amount where, like, lot of your needs are taken care of. You got food, shelter, you know, maybe, like, a teeny vacation a year or something. Like, the stuff that you can additionally buy with more money is not gonna bring you more happiness.
- MRMel Robbins
I'm so glad that we're talking about this, because I do think this is one of the major mistakes I've made in my life.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Totally.
- MRMel Robbins
That I think that if I can buy something or if I make more money or if I just have this much in savings, that somehow it's gonna just automatically boost happiness. And it's true, it hasn't. And I will also say, though, that when I think about the times in my life where I have been struggling profoundly financially, like, really struggling to get groceries on the table, having my bank card bounce at the gas station-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... trying to fill up the card, right?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
We, we've all been there. We've all been there. (laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
That there is a certain kind of cruel and relentless stress that you feel when you can't take care of your basic needs that does interfere with your ability to be happy with where you are in your life, and I ... Because you're constant- I was constantly worried about it, which meant I had no time.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Which meant I didn't enjoy where I was at.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Which meant I was focused on survival. And so is that the reason why the monetary figure really ... If you can take care of things so that you can get through your day-to-day life and take care of yourself, it lowers stress, and that's why it makes happiness available to you?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah, I mean, I think when we ask this question, "Does money buy h- happiness?" part of our intuition is right. It's like, well, money can get me stuff that would lead me to be happy, right? Like, money can put me on a vacation that I can spend time with my family, it can allow me to decrease these negative emotions like fear of, like, you know, is the rent collector gonna come?
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Am I getting kicked out of my house? Or, or overwhelm, right? I have to take on more hours at work just to make ends meet, right? I think when you get to a certain wealth level, you shut off those basic need problems that come up that very much do affect our happiness. And so from that perspective, does money matter for happiness? Yes, for sure. But it only matters up to a certain level, and that's the spot that we get wrong. And I think it's not just, like, you know, all of, uh, you and I and the listener are getting this wrong. I think this is the kinda thing that, like, even people of extreme wealth get wrong. Um, one of my favorite guests that I've ever had on my podcast, The Happiness Lab, was this guy Clay Cockerell.And he is a mental health professional that works only with the .0001%.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
So, I think most of his clients are earning over $50 million. And the first thing that should be striking is that this dude has clients, right? These are people who have $50 million who apparently aren't happy enough that they need to see, like, some mental health professional to kind of help them get through. And a lot of their problems, amazingly, are financial. So, one of the stories Clay told was that there was a guy, you know, who, who he worked with who just, just bought this new yacht. His real- his wife really wanted the yacht and they couldn't figure out where to park it, and it was, like, causing all this marital strife, da, da, da. And like, you can look at that and you're probably thinking like, you know, "Poor," you know, expletive, "baby," like, kind of like, you know, can't park his yacht, wah-wah.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, I was gonna say, Dr. Santos, it's very petty of me to say this, but I'm like, "Good. I'm glad you're unhappy."
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
I'm glad. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Like, I literally, I don't... Like, I hate that I had that reaction, but I'm like, "I'm glad you're fricking unhappy if you have a yacht." Like, screw you. Like, and, and now I'm like, "I'm a terrible person, oh my God."
- 34:01 – 40:08
How you should spend your free time if you want to feel better
- MRMel Robbins
the thing that a vacation does with your family is it gives you time with them.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Correct, yep.
- MRMel Robbins
And so, I think maybe one of the mistakes that we're making is that we think money gives us the thing that actually makes us happy, which is more time-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yep.
- MRMel Robbins
... with people we care about, or more time to feel less stressed. And is that kind of where this is going?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah. There's really lovely work by the psychologist Ashley Whillans at Harvard Business School that talks about a concept that social scientists are getting really excited about lately called time affluence, which is not wealth affluence. It's not the amount of money you have, but it's the amount of free time you have. And if you're listening right now and you hear that term "time affluence" and you're like, "That is not me at all," um-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
... again, don't feel too bad, 'cause you are part of the general majority (laughs) of, like, humans on the planet right now, especially Americans right now. Most of us are experiencing the opposite of time affluence, which is time famine, where we literally almost feel like you're starving for time. And Ashley Whillans' research shows that if you experience time famine, that's a huge hit on your wellbeing. In fact, one of her studies show that if you self-report being time famished a lot, that's as big a hit on your wellbeing as if you self-report being unemployed. So-
- MRMel Robbins
Really?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
So, those of you listening right now who are lucky enough to have jobs, something else we can get hedonically adapted to, if you're lucky enough to have a job, imagine you lost that job in the next 10 minutes, how you'd feel. Just not having a lot of free time can make you feel that bad. And so, Mel, you're really onto something, which is that one of the th- one of the best ways we can spend our money to increase our happiness is to actually use money to buy back time.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Um, and Ashley Whillans does s- some really cool work on this. She finds no matter what your discretionary income is, 'cause you can say, okay, yeah, that guy with the $50 million and the yacht, he can spend money to, I don't know, hire somebody to clean his house or, you know, take these unwanted tasks off his desk, right? He can go to the restaurant instead of cooking meals for himself. But many of us have, like, a little bit of discretionary income, and Ashley finds that no matter, like, what level of discretionary income you have, if you spend that to get time back-
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
... and you commit to spending it to get time back, you can kind of be happier. Whether that's, like, hiring the neighbor's kid to mow your lawn or, you know-
- MRMel Robbins
Watch your kid.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Watch your kid.
- MRMel Robbins
Walk the dog.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Exactly. Or just, like, you know-
- MRMel Robbins
... dropping off some laundry at a local laundromat to wash and fold it for you. And I think if you can shop on Amazon-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... and you're hitting the shop now button on Instagram or social media, that's discretionary income.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Exactly, exactly. And the stuff arrives, and one, one of the extra hacks you can do to make this an even more effective strategy is whenever you do that, reframe the amount of time you saved, right? We're here in Boston. Like, you know, before I came to the studio, I stopped at this local coffee shop that was right near there, and I just got breakfast. I got this nice little egg sandwich with a little egg souffle. It was delicious.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, it is my favorite egg sandwich on the planet with that mustardy aioli-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yes, a little digital, oh, love, love.
- MRMel Robbins
... and arugula and that bacon. Girl, I'm with you on that. Let's go.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
But, but if I had to make that myself, I would have to, like, souffle the egg, which would take, I don't know, what's that, 20 minutes to get the nice pop of the egg. I'd have to have gone to the grocery store to get the stuff. I'd have to, like, chop up the tomato 'cause they need sliced tomato. I probably saved at least 45 minutes buying that egg sandwich at the shop. What did I do with that 45 minutes? Now, I have, you know, some of that 45 minutes to talk to you.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Maybe I take a nice walk. That framing technique matters. So every time you get takeout, go to a restaurant, every time you, you know, drop your clothes off at the laundromat, you know, if you're, again have enough discretionary income to maybe hire somebody to mow the lawn or clean or something like that, reframe it and say, "Oh my gosh, by spending that money, I saved X amount of time." And literally give it, it's an hour and a half, you know, hour 20, whatever. And then ask yourself, "Oh, what did I do with that time?" You're making the face that a lot of my students make when they experience this, Mel, which is kinda like (inhales deeply) you have this breath of, oh, (laughs) I have an hour.
- MRMel Robbins
Well-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
An extra hour.
- 40:08 – 44:06
The science of slowing down, and how it unlocks your capacity for kindness
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
were put under different time pressure. So some were told, "You got a couple hours. You know, you can cross town and go give this, but you got some time," or really high time pressure. Like, "Actually you gotta go right now. You just don't have time. You gotta get over there."
- MRMel Robbins
Right.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
And what the researchers did was they staged someone en route to this lecture that was in need. So it was kind of set up to look like an unhoused person who'd maybe been hurt, was kind of-
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
... like... And so the, the seminary student has to literally walk over this person to get to the lecture. And the question was just, do you stop to help?
- MRMel Robbins
Okay. And this is somebody who is studying to be a priest.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Correct, right.
- MRMel Robbins
So we would think you would be-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
And he's about to give a story about why Jesus values doing nice things for people in need, like that-
- MRMel Robbins
Okay, so you are primed-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
He's in his head thinking like-
- MRMel Robbins
... to do this.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
... "How do I think about how to tell people to do nice things for people in need?"
- MRMel Robbins
Let's just, let's just be honest. If you fail this, you should get kicked out of seminary school.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yes.
- MRMel Robbins
That's basically what I'm gonna say there.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
And basically, the people who are in a rush pretty much never stop to help someone, which is really sad, um-
- MRMel Robbins
Which explains the state of society today.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Which actually explains the state of society today, right? You know, we're rushing around. We all feel so busy, right? I think, you know, time famine has felt like it's going up around.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
We just don't have the bandwidth to help other people. We don't have the bandwidth to help the planet. There's lots of evidence that if you're feeling under more time pressure, you don't recycle. I mean, I, honestly, I feel like I'm guilty of this myself where it's like, "I gotta wash the thing, and ............................" You know?
- MRMel Robbins
I'm literally like, "Wait, I, I, I, I look, I'm so overwhelmed." I'm like, "Wait, landfill, recycle."
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
You just opted out. But imagine, like, it was like, you know, that Sunday morning feeling where you got nothing to do and you're like, "I think I could wash the glass a little extra to put it in the..." You know?
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Like, we're, we're hurting ourselves, each other, the planet just 'cause we don't have any time.
- MRMel Robbins
Okay, now I'm depressed.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
(laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
So there is good news, though.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
But, but the good news is, like-
- MRMel Robbins
The tire is flat.
- 44:06 – 49:01
The ultimate happiness hack for both introverts and extroverts
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
forces people to be a little bit more social than they normally would. So he walks up to people, uh, he- he's at the University of Chicago, so he does this on the L train.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, I know this study where he forces people-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... to talk to strangers-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... on the train-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... and to work.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah, and just for a five dollar Starbucks gift card, everybody's willing to do this.
- MRMel Robbins
People sign up for that, to talk to a stranger?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
S- people will do anything for a five dollar Starbucks gift card. It's really the engine of all social science research. (laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
Wow.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
People are like, "I don't wanna do that," it's like, "Five dollar Starbucks gift card," people are like, "Okay, (laughs) fine, I'll talk to someone." Um-
- MRMel Robbins
Because, because that, and now notice my reaction.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And as you're with Dr. Santos and I, you probably had the same reaction as you're listening to us, like, "I wouldn't, I wouldn't wanna, I wouldn't do that for a five dollar Starbucks gift card."
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Right, there's no way you would. Like, there's no way you would talk to, I mean, like, you just gotta talk to some rando person on your commute train.
- MRMel Robbins
Right, but I think the important thing here is that our reaction-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
That's right.
- MRMel Robbins
... is that this is not going to be fun-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Correct.
- MRMel Robbins
... and our reaction is, so much so, "I don't want a gift card to do that."
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah. Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And so we all would go into that situation and say, "Ooh."
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Right.
- MRMel Robbins
But what did the research find?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Well, Nick actually did that comparison. He asked people, "Hey, if you were in these two conditions, like, first of all, would you do it, and, you know, how would it feel?" And people said exactly what, what you're saying, Mel, and what I'm sure if you're list- y- the person listening right now is thinking, right, was like, "No, I don't wanna do that. It would feel terrible." Not just it would feel neutral, but it would feel actively awkward or yucky or whatever. And what he finds is that it's just the opposite. People who spend their train ride talking to a stranger experience positive emotion, they feel more energized, they feel less lonely, and in fact, enjoying your solitude on the train kinda makes you feel a little anxious, yucky. I mean, we can kinda simulate, you're like, oh yeah, if I tell you, "Yeah, just don't talk to anyone, enjoy your solitude," what happens? We start ruminating, we get in our head, right? And so just this simple act of talking to a stranger makes us feel good. But the reason I love Nick's research is he tested this extrovert-introvert question.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
And what he finds is that there's no difference in the happiness boost that extroverts and introverts get. Where there's a difference is on that prediction question. If I ask you, "Hey, how bad is it gonna be to talk to someone on the train?" Extroverts think, "Pretty bad," but introverts think like, "Bad!" (laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs) It's death.
- 49:01 – 54:37
What research says about how helping others will unlock more joy
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... I, I've given my time to my work, so now you're telling me I gotta be other-oriented?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Give me a break.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
Like, my gas is leaking here out of this tire, what do I do?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
So, one of the surprising things, again, spot where our intuitions are wrong, I'm gonna say this, and you're listening right now and you'll be like, "That's not true." But what the research shows is that the act of doing something nice for somebody else makes you feel like you have more time. It's one of these hacks that gives us more time affluence.... um, think about it. You know, you're at work and, and somebody's going through, you know, something tough. You say, "Well, what, what can I take off your plate? Can I, can I help you with something?" Just, like, out of the goodness of your heart. What does that tell you? You're kind of like, "Well, I must have, you know, more openness on my plate if I'm gonna help this other person do something," right?
- MRMel Robbins
That's true.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And if you're the one that holds open the door, it means-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
You, you got some more time on your hands.
- MRMel Robbins
... you have more time because you're not rushing through it.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Exactly.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, that's inter- that's sneaky.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
It's sneaky, but it's a, a funny hack to make yourself feel like you have more time, is to opt to do something voluntarily for others, and I think that's the key word though: voluntarily.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Too often, we feel overwhelmed when we feel the have tos in life, the shoulds of life, right? "I'm supposed to do this for other people." Um, if you're doing lots of stuff for other people and you don't have a choice, you know, maybe you're care-taking for, you know, like, uh, like, an adult in your life, or helping someone out, or kind of stuck in childcare. If you feel like you have no choice, then that doesn't count. But if you willingly are like, "Oh, yeah. Yeah. I got time to do that. I'm gonna choose to do that with my time or my money," now that's when the benefits start to kick in.
- MRMel Robbins
Wow. So the second thing that rewires your brain is this sort of real focus on other people. And, you know, when I think about some of the research that you mentioned earlier, especially around loneliness-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... and it doubling, and just how it's true. Everybody seems to feel very lonely right now.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Totally. I mean, the rates of loneliness are, like, at 60%, and in every demographic group, levels of loneliness are going up.
- MRMel Robbins
So, does your focus on sort of these small social interactions and these small ways to be more outwardly focused and kinder to other people, which is gonna boost your happiness. It's also gonna deceive you into thinking you have more time because-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yep, yep.
- MRMel Robbins
... you're really taking the time to do this. Does it also have an impact on your feelings of loneliness?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
For sure. I mean, that might be one of the hugest impacts it has, in part 'cause, like, when you reach out to other people, you know, chat with the barista at the coffee shop, talk to someone else, reach out to an old friend, another good one, like, those just kind of are actions that make you feel less lonely. One of the fastest hacks to reduce loneliness, if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, "I'm feeling a little lonely," is to ef- try to help the loneliness of somebody else.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Like, literally take out your phone, scroll through the contacts, pick the name that you think might be feeling the most lonely, having the toughest time, and just, you know, send them a text that says, "Hey, just thinking about you. Was listening to this cool Mel Robbins podcast. We were talking about friendships, and it just made me think about you. Be great to connect."
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah, and better yet, share them this episode-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yes, yes.
- MRMel Robbins
... and let's talk about it-
- 54:37 – 1:08:48
How to find happiness in even the toughest moments
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
that's, like, you know, built to be more exciting than what we assume is true for social connection, right? Um, Liz Dunn, when she was on my podcast, had this lovely analogy. She said, you know, "You go, you go to dinner with your husband, and I have my phone, you know, flipped over on the, the desk, right? But imagine instead of my phone, I had, like, a big wheelbarrow, and in the wheelbarrow were, like, printouts of every photo I've taken since 2015. Like, you know, big binders of my emails, you know, since I moved to Yale the first time. Um, newspapers from every country in the world, right? Like, videotapes of cat videos and porn. Just, like, a huge wheelbarrow of all this stuff on the internet." And she's like, "If that wheelbarrow was sitting there at dinner, you would not be able to pay attention to your husband 'cause you'd be like, 'Oh, I'm gonna look, oh, no, just watch that real cat video. I'll throw it in the VCR or something.'" She's like, "Your brain isn't stupid. Your brain knows that on the other side of that phone that's sitting flipped over on the table-... all that stuff is there. So even when you're not looking at it, even when you're not ignoring your husband and sort of phubbing him because you're staring at your Instagram feed, something in your brain has to hold back. Right? It just leashes like, "Nope, don't look at the cat videos. Don't look at the old photos." Right? We've kind of set up this distraction that's there with us all the time, and every study that's looked at it has found we do worse on memory tests when our phones are with us. We engage in-
- MRMel Robbins
Well, it has a direct connection to happiness.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah, because what's happening is when we're not on our phone, we're kind of missing out on something. And the question is, what are we usually missing out on? And it's usually other people, right? All the social connection that we're not experiencing, which we just heard is so important for happiness, which then kind of psychologically makes us feel lonely. It also ends up decreasing our presence, which is something we haven't talked about yet, but is really kind of matters for happiness, right?
- MRMel Robbins
What, you used the word "phubbing". What is that?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Ah. Phubbing is a term that my students use. It's P-H-U-B-B-I-N-G, so it's phone snubbing. So it's like, you're trying to talk to me and you notice, like, I'm like, "Uh-huh, uh-huh," but I'm really, like, looking at my phone.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, when somebody does that, and I, I'm, I'm hovering here not because I want to spend too much time talking about the phones, but I think it's extraordinarily important-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Totally.
- MRMel Robbins
... to highlight and to also embrace the truth.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
That if your life feels like you're a tire that is flat and you would like to be happier, then there is a direct connection between your unhappiness and your phone use. Because the phone and the way that you've allowed it to take over your life is interfering with your ability to do these five things-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... in your day-to-day life that actually, based on the research, will fill up the tire and make you happier in your life and with your life.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
And with your life, correct.
- MRMel Robbins
And that's why I want to be very clear that this is a massive problem, and you have an opportunity if you're serious about being happy. Like, you can spend the rest of your life mainlining social media and staring at other people's lives, and then get to your grave and go, "Oh, God."
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
"I actually didn't use my time while I was here to do what I needed to do to be happy and to live my life." And that's what's happening to the majority of people.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah. And for sure, that's what's happening to our students, right?
- MRMel Robbins
But you don't have to let it happen.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Totally, yeah. No, you, you have power over this, right? You can flip it over, you can leave it somewhere else. Um, or, you know, if you can't get it out of your hand-
- MRMel Robbins
Go to a doctor, because that's a problem.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
(laughs) Go to a doctor, yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
No, I'm saying, like, I, I, like, you're not going to, like, would you walk around life with an eight-ball in your hand?
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And, like, it would destroy it.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Well, it was-
- MRMel Robbins
And, and I do think if you're, if you look at the research, and this is again why I want to hammer this point, is that I think every one of us is at this really scary tipping point-
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... where there's a before and an after, and you could hear this episode and decide that you want to be the kind of person that actually happiness is important, and taking care of your mental health is important, and staying connected to people in a meaningful way and being present for your life is important.
- LSDr. Laurie Santos
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And if it is important, you have to be honest with yourself that it will take a decision on your part to go, "I'm not giving my life to this phone and to social media. I'm just not doing it."
Episode duration: 1:24:56
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