The Simple Life Lessons For Happiness | Laurie Santos

1. 0:00 – 1:09

   Two kinds of happiness: feeling good vs being satisfied with life

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

      I was thinking that, you know, happiness I guess must s- a, a set of experiences that we feel happy about may change during our life. So for example, in our 20s let's say we're out drinking and gambling. So whatever we might wanna do that gives us a short burst of happiness because people feel good when they're doing it, right? So in terms of that hedonistic measurement, it's like, "Yeah, I feel good," but there may not be happiness with their life. There may just be happiness in their life, and for me that's quite an interesting conflict. Um, I mean, how would you think about that?

   2. LSLaurie Santos0:39

      Yeah, I mean, my sense is that if, if possible you wanna maximize both. You know, the advice from Idina would be, you know, like, you know, yeah, you're feeling great and happy, you know, w- with your life right now, but it'd be good to feel happy in your life too. Like, you know, maybe we should work on, you know, getting a little bit of sleep or building back in those healthy habits or, you know, making some social connections so you're not feeling so lonely, right? You know, you kinda wanna maximize both, and I think that's especially true for people who are really working on the kinda hedonic parts of happiness. The people who are really happy in their life, but

2. 1:09 – 3:12

   Why wealth and luxury can still feel empty

   1. LSLaurie Santos1:09

      then when they look at their life and ask if they're satisfied with it, they're just simply not. And this is something we see in the literature all over the place. You know, some of the people with the most modern conveniences, you know, who can fly anywhere to any beautiful vacation location on a dime, you know, who can afford the best food and the best wine, sometimes they feel like their life is really empty. You know, if you ask them, are they, "Are you satisfied with your life?" They'll answer, "No," right? Um, you know, this is one of the reasons why wealth doesn't necessarily predict happiness in the way we think, especially at high wealth levels. You know, we assume that like, you know, multimillionaires, the 1%, they're gonna be pretty happy. But in fact, they're actually pretty miserable, in part because sometimes, you know, wealth and all the conveniences and all the good positive emotions that might come with, you know, the stuff you can buy in your life, that doesn't necessarily translate to being happy with your life ultimately. You kinda need more meaning and purpose and bigger things to get there.

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:00

      I'd love to understand more about the relationship between money and happiness. But just sort of to comment on what you've just said about the super-rich, it's really interesting. I wonder why that is that people in that salary bracket are so unhappy, and I'm sure a contributory factor, well, I would imagine is how we define success in society. The fact that we think it's about money and a better holiday and a better car and a bigger house. And a lot of the way we live, whether it's schools, universities, they keep driving you towards that. And then for those who actually do get there and get that money, often I guess there must be that realization, realization that, "Oh, well, is, is kind of that it?" Because actually if money is your, um, your aspiration, but I guess until you get to Jeff Bezos, there's always someone who's got more than you, right? So, you know, what is that relationship between money and happiness?

3. 3:12 – 5:30

   Social comparison: the “Jeff Bezos problem” and the trap of ‘more’

   1. LSLaurie Santos3:12

      Yeah. Well, I think you hit the nail on the head of why more money doesn't necessarily bring us more happiness, and it's because of Jeff Bezos basically [laughs] or Elon Musk or whoever happens to be. You know, they're like neck and neck, you know, right now for the richest person in the world. But what I mean by that is that it's so easy to compare your salary with somebody else's, right? And this is a feature of our mind that really impedes our happiness. Our mind doesn't think in terms of objectives p- pretty much at all, you know, whether that's salary or our looks or any feature of our life. We tend to think relative to some reference point, some social comparison, and our minds have a knack of picking social comparisons that make us look less rich, less attractive, less productive, less whatever than we're kinda going for. You know, if we're kind of looking at wealth, we look at, you know, Elon Musk or maybe Jeff Bezos. If you're looking at who's the most attractive, well, I don't think of Jeff Bezos anymore. Now I'm thinking of like, I don't know, Denzel Washington or like ... We tend to pick comparison points that make us feel the worst, and that means that we could objectively be doing great but feel bad about how we're doing. Um, and we see this, you know, on my, my podcast, The Happiness Lab. I actually interviewed this guy, Clay Cockerell, who's a wealth psychologist. He's a, he's a mental health professional who only deals with the .001%, and he has lots of clients, in part because they tend to be pretty miserable. You know, as soon as you make a million you're like, "Well, that's just a million. I gotta get to, you know, the 10 millions." And once you're in the 100 millions he finds clients are like, "If only I could get to a billion. If I could just have that B in front of my name like a billionaire instead of millionaire, that's where I'd get there. If only I could buy this $500,000 painting. I'm not there yet." Um, and I think it comes from this idea that, you know, we've been, we've been sold this line, again as you mentioned, like, you know, since college that like money and success and all these accolades are gonna make us happy. These rich folks get those, and they look at their life and they're like, "Well, how satisfied am I with my life?" And they're like, "I'm not." And rather than thinking, "Wait a minute. Maybe that was bunk. Maybe money and success [laughs] and all this stuff didn't bring happiness," instead they say, "Ah, I just must not be rich enough. If only I could get a little bit more, that's when I'll really kind of get that happiness payoff." And so what you find is that the rich, you know, tend to be relatively unhappy. They tend to find relatively less meaning in their life, in part because they're chasing after some comparison point that, that they're never gonna get to. And, um ...

4. 5:30 – 7:50

   When money does help: the salary threshold and wellbeing leveling off

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:30

      What does the research say about lower income levels? Because it's one thing when you've got all the money, uh, to buy shelter, food, you know, anything that you could possibly want, but there's obviously another end to that scale where money might be influential in terms of our happiness levels.

   2. LSLaurie Santos5:48

      Yeah. That's really important because in general o- overall the message from the work on happiness is that your circumstances don't matter as much as we often think, whether that's your wealth level, your job, or your relationship status and so on. But if those circumstances are pretty bad, then yes, improving your circumstances will really improve your happiness. Now so let's take the case of money, right? I'm saying, you know, being a multimillionaire doesn't necessarily make you happy, but what if we get to the other end? And researchers have tried to look at this. In fact, there's a famous paper by the economist Danny Kahneman and Angus Deaton who looked at this back in, in, I think in 2009. And what they did was they tried to look at a bunch of different measures of people's wellbeing and correlate that with people's salary. And what they find, if you look at the lowest levels of people's salary, is that, uh, happiness and wellbeing tend to go up for a while, and then all those wellbeing curves level off at a certain salary level. And when they did this back in 2009, that was a salary level in the US of $75,000, 75,000 US dollars. That means that if you're earning under $75,000, then yeah, getting more money is probably gonna improve your happiness. That might be the po- spot where you stop really worrying about bills or, you know, you can get that gym membership or you can get a little... You can buy yourself a little time, make sure you know there's food on the table and so on. But after $75,000, doubling, tripling, quadrupling your salary, it seems to have no effect on their s- on measures of wellbeing, things like positive emotion, um, you know, how many negative emotions you have, your sense of stress and so on. Now this is not what we think. I bet most people in the US right now who are earning $75,000 think if I tripled their salary, that would make them happier. But the data seem, when you really dig into it, suggests that's not the case. If you're earning under that, yeah, definitely improving your salary would help. And so, you know, there's this interesting kind of, uh, reaction that you could have to research like this which is like, well, maybe we should support a universal basic income, and maybe we figured out, like, a little bit where that basic income would be at, right? You know, if we gave everybody that, then giving them more wouldn't necessarily help happiness.

5. 7:50 – 10:19

   Why our happiness intuitions are often wrong (and what works instead)

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:50

      You mentioned that what we think often isn't played out by the research. And I've heard you speak a couple of times before, Laurie, and this is a theme which I've heard you speak about before, that our intuitions over what makes us happy are often wrong. I wonder if you'd mind expanding on a few examples.

   2. LSLaurie Santos8:13

      Yeah, I mean, this is the, I think, one of the dumbest features of the human mind, right? Like, it'd just be nice if our brain was, like, pointing us towards the things that were really gonna make us happy, if we went after the stuff that we were really gonna like. But the data suggests that that's just not the case. There are all these domains where we think, "If I could only get X, then I would be happy." But then we get that X and it just doesn't work. And so, you know, we just talked about money as an example. Material possessions are another one. You know, many of us think, "Oh, if I could just get that beach house or that new car," even just, you know, at a local level, "I'm just gonna buy these new shoes. It'll make me happy." The data suggests that, yeah, it makes you happy for, like, you know, a split second, but then it doesn't really... It's not really a happiness that seems to last. It doesn't kinda give you lasting happiness. It doesn't even give you happiness that lasts for as long as we think. Um, and so there's all these ways where we think that changing our circumstances is gonna boost happiness, but in fact it just doesn't work. The flip side though is there's all these different interventions we can do to boost our happiness. I imagine we'll talk more about them, but simple things like taking time for social connection, like experiencing more gratitude, like being present, you know, exercising, sleeping more. Like, those things have a huge impact on our happiness, but we just don't have motivations to seek them out, right? Like it's not... We, we tend not to realize, hey, that's the thing you need to go for. At least we don't realize it as much as we go for the money and the success and the accolades and those things. Um, and those should be the things that we're focused on. So this is a problem I, I sometimes joke with my students that our minds lie to us about happiness. And I think it's almost like the way our minds lie in these other contexts, like if you're looking at, you know, one of these visual illusions that go around on the internet, right? You see it one way and it's a really strong intuition you have, but actually the way that what will really matter for your happiness might look like the opposite. It might look like just something that doesn't fit with your intuitions. And that's bad 'cause it means we're systematically going after stuff to improve our happiness that's not gonna work. You know? It, it'd be one thing if we just weren't working at it, if we were just like, "Oh, I'll just see what happens. Maybe I'll get happy." The problem is, like, we're putting a ton of energy and effort into becoming happier. We're just doing it wrong.

6. 10:19 – 12:32

   From Yale students’ distress to a global course on wellbeing

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:19

      So, so fascinating and definitely we're gonna get into what are these interventions, what are the practical things we can do to increase that feeling of happiness inside all of us. Uh, before we do that though, I'm, I'm really interested on a, on a personal note that as you said, you, you study animals and, um, you came across this predicament of unhappy students that, you know, you felt that you wanted to help them. And so you turn your attention to this course. What was the, the name of the course again?

   2. LSLaurie Santos10:52

      Uh, on campus we called it Psychology and the Good Life, mostly 'cause I kinda wanted it to, like, pop from the course catalog like, oh, the good life. [laughs] You know, like our students

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:00

      Yeah

   4. LSLaurie Santos11:00

      ... who knows it.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:00

      And what's it called? 'Cause it's gone out on Coursera now, hasn't it, that anyone around the world can access it.

   6. LSLaurie Santos11:05

      Yeah, yeah. The one on Coursera is known as The Science of Wellbeing. I'm not totally sure why we switched the names, but I think we wanted to just get wellbeing in the title so people would kinda know more what it was about.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:14

      Yeah. And just, I mean, there's some incredible number of people who've done that course now I think from last, the last thing I read.

   8. LSLaurie Santos11:21

      Yeah. It's been a little surreal, to be honest. You know, when we first put the class online, hundreds of thousands of people signed up pretty quickly, which was sort of shocking. Um, but then when the pandemic rolled around, like right around, uh, March of 2020, we had this enormous increase in the number of people who signed up. So just a couple, the first couple of months of the pandemic, over three million people signed up to take the class. Um, which was incredible, but again, I think it shows... It kinda made me, you know, as a scientist sort of feel, feel really kind of excited about my fellow man, right? I mean, I think it was like people d- wanted to figure out how to really get through these tough times, and they didn't want platitudes. They wanted some evidence-based approaches, you know, approaches that come from science. And I think, you know, maybe that was sort of part and parcel of the pandemic. You know, as we are dealing with COVID-19, I think people wanted real solutions, right? Like what's really an evidence-based way I can protect myself-

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:12

      Yeah

   10. LSLaurie Santos12:12

       ... against this virus? Like wash my hands, wear masks and so on. I think people wanted to do the same thing, not just to protect their physical health during this time, but to protect their mental health. And I think people didn't have obvious strategies to do so, and I think they saw the class as providing those. And that's why so many people flocked to it, you know, once, once times got tough.

7. 12:32 – 14:26

   Practicing what she teaches: how the research changed her own life

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:32

      On a personal level, um, as someone who is sought after around the world now to speak about happiness, I'm interested in your own happiness levels and, and the sort of things that you learnt as you were teaching that maybe you weren't applying, but that through teaching, through accumulating the evidence, you've started to bring into your life.

   2. LSLaurie Santos12:55

      Yeah. Well, so, so many things. I mean, you know, I, I admit that, you know, I was very worried about my students when I just thought about designing the class. You know, I was seeing their depression and their anxiety and stuff. But one of the things was I was also seeing myself a little bit in them. You know, I was watching, you know, like, "How's, how's the week going?" Like, "Oh, I can't wait to get to Friday." Like, y- I could s- I could experience that that was a bad sentiment, that there was something deeply sad about that, but I also resonated with it. Like, "Yeah, me too. [laughs] If I can only get to Friday." You know? Or, or even just things like feeling anxious and depressed, right? You know, I, I wasn't necessarily clinically depressed or clinically anxious, but you know, I saw all that stuff in myself too. All the bad strategies I watched my students doing, every error I saw my students making when it came to their happiness, I could see seeds of that in myself too. And so one of the reasons I was excited to teach the class was to figure out those strategies for myself too. I also realized that if I was gonna be this happiness professor, I had to practice what I preached, right? [laughs] You know? It's like if you're a medical doctor, you can't go off and be unhealthy and eat cheeseburgers all the time and stuff like... You gotta kinda tow the line so that y- people know that that expertise is real, that you're kind of not selling snake oil. And so what it meant was that now I really needed to kind of follow the things I was telling my students. And again, the research shows if you engage in these practices, you get happier. Like, on, you know, I use the kind of standard empirical survey measures of happiness. On every single one, my happiness has gone up, you know, at least one to two points on a 10-point scale. And it's not like magic, it's just because I'm doing the stuff now that really does improve happiness.

8. 14:26 – 19:39

   The strongest universal lever: social connection (including weak ties)

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:26

      Well, let's go through what really matters when it comes to happiness. Are there some universal practices that really you can say, without knowing an individual's circumstances, you can say with a high degree of certainty that if you do this, you are likely to improve your wellbeing score and your happiness?

   2. LSLaurie Santos14:46

      Yeah. I mean, we know this now. We know lots of these practices i- for exactly that. For, with the idea that these are things that j- won't just help a few people, but that really pretty much universally are gonna help if you engage with them the right way. And it's worth noting kinda where we get the, this evidence from. I mean, the evidence starts because positive psychologists go out and they really study happy people. You know, you find them, like they're out there, you know, in the UK and London and New Haven. Like, you know, you, you, you find these folks. And then researchers try to ask, like, "What are these folks doing differently? Like, how do they behave differently? Do they spend their time differently?" And then you get some hints about behaviors that might be working for improving happiness. And then the next step is that you do an intervention. You bring in the not so happy folks, you make them do the behavior that the happy people are doing, and then you measure whether happiness goes up. And in lots of cases, we have examples of, you know, kinds of behaviors that we know really, really works. And so one of the biggest behaviors that works super well for improving wellbeing, uh, is social connection. Um, one of the most famous papers in positive psychology by the psychologist Marty Seligman and Ed Diener, um, say that, uh, social connection and feeling socially connected is a necessary condition for very high happiness. You just simply don't find highly happy people who don't also feel socially connected. Um, but we also know from the intervention work that improving your social connection, making new social connections, even talking to strangers, like on a train in sort of pre-COVID days, like talking to strangers on your commute, can actually boost up your wellbeing in ways we really, really don't expect. And these types of effects hold across personality variables, you know, so you get the same sorts of boosts of happiness for social connection for introverts and for extroverts. It seems to work in ways we don't expect. And I think this is one of the reasons we're all struggling so much during COVID, is that, you know, insidiously, one of the problems with COVID is that we have to sort of socially distance, and that means that some of us aren't engaging in social connection in the way we used to. You know, even in subtle ways, you know, many of us are working from home, so we don't get the kinda office cooler, you know, chat [laughs] that we get with our coworkers. But we also don't see people, like in simple ways. You know, many of us are, you know, doing a curbside pickup where we go to a restaurant, just grab something, you know, off the side of the curb or get our groceries dropped off at our door. Like the simple kinds of interactions we have with, you know, the grocery store teller or the, the person who works at the coffee shop. Like, we're reducing those kind of simple connections too, and even those weak ties, the research show, matter for happiness. I think one of the reasons we're all kind of feeling it right now is that we need to build in a lot of that social connection that we've lost, and we need to do it more intentionally, 'cause it's not happening as naturally as it used to.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:21

      Yeah. One of, one of the striking things that I've heard from patients and people who I interact with on social media is how many people regarded themselves as introverts, and they thought, "You know, I like being by myself." But a few weeks into these physical distancing measures, they realized that, "Oh, you know, I, I do like being by myself, but I sometimes like to sit in a coffee shop with my laptop and my headphones in, and I, I kinda know there's other humans around, or I might just pick up a coffee." And a lot of introverts or, or people who would regard themselves as introverts think, "I'm really, really missing that," you know, the background buzz of other humans, which I think really speaks to what you were just saying there, that, that all these little, you know, these small interactions that we possibly took for granted, either getting the train to work, saying hi to the, uh, ticket office attendants, uh, showing your ticket to the conductor on the train, and all these little things. As we get stuck in our homes, on our screens, that's a huge part of how we've evolved as humans for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, so this- ... frankly, just been removed from us, and the impact I think is pretty worrying.

   4. LSLaurie Santos18:44

      Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if you look at the statistics of things like depression, anxiety, loneliness during COVID, you know, many of these are skyrocketing. And I think, you know, one of the culprits is, is just that we're losing out on these simple, you know, weak tie social interactions, the chat with the barista at the coffee shop. Those things we forget really kind of build up our happiness. I think this is another big misconception we have about happiness, is we think of happiness as sort of a destination. You know, you get there and you're sort of happily ever after. But that's not the right metaphor for happiness. Happiness is more like a leaky tire, right? You know, it's gonna kinda go flat a little bit, but then, you know, you chat with the barista at the coffee shop and that, you know, kinda makes you feel a little good. And then you, you know, go about your day and, you know, chat with someone else or have another joyous moment. Um, you know, we kind of can use these moments of joy to sort of boost up our happiness over time, and a lot of those moments were social moments, and we're missing them now.

9. 19:39 – 24:16

   Talking to strangers: why solitude feels better in prediction than reality

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:39

      What does the research say about talking to strangers and talking to people we don't know? Because I think there's some quite nice research there, isn't there, showing us just how impactful those interactions are.

   2. LSLaurie Santos19:50

      Yeah, and just how wrong we, we get ... Well, just how wrong we are about those interactions. You know, this is another domain where at least my intuition is that, yeah, maybe it'll make me feel okay, but, like, you know, it's not a major force in our happiness. In fact, if you, you know, plop me on a train, you know, going to work in the morning, you know, maybe I'd talk to somebody. But usually I'd put my headphones on and listen to a podcast or, you know, get some work done or try to get through some email. Um, and it turns out that this is a mistake when it comes to maximizing your happiness. There's some lovely work by the, uh, University of Chicago psychologist Nick Epley, um, who, who did direct studies on this, where he ... This is, again, back pre-COVID times, where he, uh, found some subjects who were commu- about to do their daily commute on a train. He did this on the L trains in Chicago. Uh, and he said, "Okay, you know, do you wanna be in a study? You'll get a Starbucks gift card." And people all sign up 'cause Starbucks gift cards are the engine of all social science research. [laughs] Just like, "Oh my God, a Starbucks gift card." Um, and so what he tells subjects is either, "For the rest of the train ride, don't talk to s- anybody. Please try to enjoy your solitude," or, "For the rest of the train ride, just do what you normally do." It's kind of the control condition. Or, "For the rest of the train ride, I want you to try to make a meaningful social connection with somebody. Like, talk to someone and don't just talk about the weather. Like, really try to get to know them." Um, what do people predict? 'Cause he has one group of subjects predict ahead of time which is gonna make people feel happy. And people predict that the enjoy your solitude condition is gonna feel awesome, right? They, they predict that that's gonna maximize their happiness. And they don't just predict that the social connection condition is gonna feel neutral, they predict that it's gonna actively suck [laughs] or it's gonna take them down from baseline. And what Nick finds is just the opposite. It's that solitude g- condition that feels yucky. The social connection condition makes you feel great. And I think this is a problem, right? This is another domain where we have these bad intuitions about what makes us happy. And what's worse is it doesn't just affect our behavior, it, it changes the structures that we create. You know, I'm sure, you know, in the UK they have, you know, quiet cars on trains and things like that. You know, Nick's e- evidence suggests that that's not necessarily a way to maximize pa- passenger experience, right? We would maybe be better off with, like, a chatty car, where you go on the car and everyone's, like, talking and interacting and getting to know one another. But, you know, those are not the systems we build in because we have these incorrect theories about what's gonna make us feel good.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:08

      Yeah, I mean, it's incredible how much we're influenced by the people around us. Um, because as you were describing that on the L trains, I think in Chicago you said, um, it made me think about a few years ago. So I live in the north of England. I don't know how much time you've spent in the UK, but there are certain typical kind of sayings about people in the north compared to people in the south. They're not all completely accurate, but just gonna lay that out there straight at the-

   4. LSLaurie Santos22:37

      [laughs]

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:37

      ... at the top of this. But a few years ago I started to have ... I started going down to London quite regularly for work. And, you know, I'm, I'm sure you've been to London before. Um, I remember one of the first times when I went on the Tube, this is a few years back, and, you know, I'd get on the Underground and I'd ... [laughs] I, I can't remember it exactly, but the guy sitting next to me, I was just like, "Hey, mate, how you doing? Uh, how- how's things going?" And-

   6. LSLaurie Santos23:04

      [laughs]

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee23:04

      ... the guy looked at me as though, I, I don't know, like I was about to attack him-

   8. LSLaurie Santos23:09

      [laughs]

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee23:10

      ... or I was a freak. Like, really. And I s- I very quickly learnt that, oh, you don't do that on the Tube. On the Tube you get on, you mind your own business, you put your headphones on, you stay out of everyone's way. And within a few visits of going down to London, my behavior started to change to the point where I would just go on, put my headphones on. And I guess I'm naturally very extroverted, so I will always chat to people. Um, but it's quite interesting that, isn't it, how we're saying that that makes us happier, yet often things around us in society ... And I wonder how much technology plays in here, because now we can put our headphones on and we can have all these incredible podcasts and playlists in our pockets, which are probably more attractive to us in the short term than chatting to any other human being. So yeah, I just a few, few sort of thoughts there in terms of our environment. Uh, and that's something I guess you must see in the research as well, that our environment influences our happiness and how we behave.

10. 24:16 – 39:09

    Technology vs connection: attention theft, loneliness, and creating new norms

    1. LSLaurie Santos24:16

       And I think, you know, a lot of the things in our environment we assume are designed to make us happier. You know, we assume all these technologies are there, you know, to make us happy. And I mean, uh, we, we both have podcasts. We're happy podcast technology exists and people can listen to us. I hope my podcast is making people happy. But it's also worth recognizing that there's an opportunity cost, right? You know, if you're listening to your podcast instead of talking to your family at dinner, you know, that m- might not be even the necessarily the best way to boost your wellbeing. And this is the kinda thing I see all the time with technology with my students. One of the most striking things, uh, for me kind of taking this job, um, where I'm a head of college on campus, was sort of seeing how students interact with each other in their kind of natural environment. You know, the one I think about the most is, like, the dining hall, right? Like, when I went to college, I remember the dining hall as being, like, the loudest place on the planet, you know, 'cause everybody's eating and talking and it's just, like, you know, the like just tons and tons of voices and stories being shared, and laughter and things. What was striking when I took on this new role is if you go to a college dining hall right now, I mean, there's some talking and things, but it's much quieter than I remember it. And it's much quieter than I remember it because everyone's sitting around the dining hall with these, you know, headphones that you and I are wearing to talk to each other around with a screen out, either their phone and so on. And the students think they're being social. You know, they're probably scrolling through their Instagram feed or, like, you know, like, you know, using one of these weird new social media apps to kinda talk to one another. But they're not physically talking to one another in the way that primates are used to. And I think it's in part because, you know, the technology's easier. You know, I remember what it was like to be a new college student and to walk to the dining hall for the first time with your tray, and you have to, like, talk to somebody. There's, like, a awkward startup cost with that. And I think technology just gives us an easy way to kinda do something else, right? You know, not, you know, avoid that anxiety. But it means because we don't ever get over the startup costs, we never develop these, you know, kind of weak ties with people where we just chat and get that little enjoyment. It means my college students are less likely to make their clo- these close friendships. It's one of the reasons that nationally in the US right now, college stu- 60% of college students report being very lonely most of the time, you know? And I think it's in part because, you know, the easiest thing to do is to flop on your headphones and not talk to someone.

    2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:23

       Yeah.

    3. LSLaurie Santos26:23

       But that means you're missing out on all these good moments where you can experience joy through social connection.

    4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:31

       Technology worries me, if I'm honest. As a-

    5. LSLaurie Santos26:33

       Me too. [laughs] Me too, a lot.

    6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:35

       Uh, it's ... I, I think particularly as my kids now are 10 and 8, and I feel that my ability to influence particularly my son, um, is probably, starts to become less and less. And again, I'm not trying to control him or anything, you know. I'm just, I'm just conscious of what is normal now in society. I'm also aware of how these apps, how technology is designed, and I think there's an illusion of choice that we think. I talk to a lot of teachers say, "Oh, you know, we, we believe in giving kids choice." But I don't think it is choice. I don't think it's, it's this real ... I, I think it's the illusion of choice. I don't think many adults can resist. I certainly don't think kids can resist. And, and I really feel that we are sleepwalking into major, major problems. And i- it's really hard because you, you end up sounding a bit like a Luddite and not sort of moving on with the world. But I don't think it's like all technology is bad. I just feel that we don't intentionally use technology. We're, we're using it to do everything, rather than thinking, "Well, what's good about technology?" Like this conversation, brilliant. I can see you. It's not the same as being in the room, but it's a pretty close, you know, comparison. Um, but I just feel, I w- I, I worry. I mean, what, what, what do you think about technology, and is there any research to support what I guess we're both trying to say?

    7. LSLaurie Santos28:12

       Yeah. No, definitely. I mean, it's something I worry about a lot, both in my own life [laughs] and kind of watching my own behavior and reaction to technology and all the notifications and cues and the little dopamine reward hits that we get from technology. Also from watching my students, right, who, who I know are lonelier than they've ever been in college history, right? Um, and I think a lot of that has to do with, ironically, has to do with technology, right? Like, these devices that they're using to connect are actually leading them to not form connections in real life. And so I think this is something that we really need to understand better, right? And it's hard to do great science on this because all of us have technology, right?

    8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee28:48

       Yeah.

    9. LSLaurie Santos28:48

       It's hard to get a control condition with somebody who's never, like, had a smartphone or social media because they might not be neurotypical, [laughs] like, you know, in, in the way you would want a control group to be. Um, but I think it's important to recognize that part of the problem with technology isn't the thing we normally think, right? When we, we have these worries about technology, we instantly point to social media, like social media's the bad guy. But actually, it's just the technology and its excitement in and of itself that might be a problem. On my podcast, The Happiness Lab, I interview, uh, my colleague Liz Dunn, who's a professor at UBC and studies the impact that technology has on happiness. And, and she, she kinda has this wonderful metaphor. She says, "Imagine if instead of, like, you know, to a restaurant at dinner, instead of bringing my cellphone, I brought this big wheelbarrow, and in the wheelbarrow I had a printout of every email I've ever had since 1997. You know, like, like photo, photo albums on top of photo albums of me and my vacations, my husband, and, like, stuff I've eaten. You know, I had videos, like all these DVDs of, like, cats and porn and, like, and, and a printout of every tweet that every, you know, US president has sent in the last couple weeks. You know, pa- piles and piles of newspapers that go back many, many years, right? Like recipes. Like, if I brought a wheelbarrow filled with, like, DVDs and printouts and photos and all that stuff, it'd be really hard to sit at dinner and just have a normal conversation with my husband at that restaurant, 'cause I'd wanna be peeking through like, 'Oh, let's look at this cat video, honey.'" Or like, [laughs] you know, like, "Oh, porn. Like, that seems interesting," right? Like, it'd be really hard to ignore that. And the idea is that, like, your brain knows that on the other side of your phone is all that stuff. Like, your brain's not stupid. It recognizes where there's rewarding stuff, and it means that every kinda normal conversation we wanna have in real life- Is in some sense competing with those other stimuli. We have that wheelbarrow and it's in our pocket all the time. It's in our kids' pockets all the time as they go to school, as they try to have dinner with us and so on. And I think we haven't, even when we're not using our phones, we don't necessarily recognize the hit that they're taking on our attention and on our motivation. And that's the kind of thing that Liz Dunn studies. She looks not necessarily at how much you're not paying attention when you're using your phone, but also the mere act of having your phone around. What does that do to your attention and your social connection? She has this lovely study where she has people, uh, sitting in a waiting room, and they can either have their phones out with them or, or not, right? Their phones are away in another room. And what she finds is that people smile 30% less when they just have their phones present. Um, and I think, you know, this makes sense, right? Like, if you've got your phone there, you're just gonna be tempted to look at it. It's kind of drawing your attention. You're just naturally less inclined to look at the people around you. And if you multiply that 30% effect by, you know, say, walking around on the Tube in London or just, like, walking around any major city and everyone has these phones, you know, what is that doing to our social connection? I think we simply don't understand the magnitude that we're kind of getting our attention stolen by these devices.

    10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee31:44

        Yeah, it's insidious, and I think it's an experiment that I don't think any one of us has consciously signed up for. You know, I feel sometimes when I talk about these things that you're literally, you're going up in the face of, um, the direction that society is going, you know? And I think that makes it really challenging. I know you, you talk about when the phone's not there. Some of my happiest moments recently are when I've lost my phone or it's been in my car or I left it at my mom's house and I thought, "Ah, screw it. I'll get it tomorrow." I just, there's this lightness around because-

    11. LSLaurie Santos32:20

        Yeah, you're noticing. You're like, trees. Like, the sun, you know? [laughs] Like, or-

    12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee32:23

        Yeah

    13. LSLaurie Santos32:23

        ... just, like, people. I smile at people.

    14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee32:25

        Yeah.

    15. LSLaurie Santos32:25

        No, it's really profound. I think, you know, one of the ways to deal with it, because it's not going away, right?

    16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee32:30

        Yeah.

    17. LSLaurie Santos32:30

        You know, this stuff is gonna stick around. We just need better strategies to engage with our technology in more intentional ways. And o- one of my favorite piece of advice comes from the journalist Catherine Price. She has this lovely book called How to Break Up With Your Phone, um, where she doesn't really a- advise you to break up with your phone, but just h- to, to develop a more mindful relationship with it. And she has this acronym that she uses called WWW. Whenever you pick up your phone, think WWW, which stands for what for, why now, and what else, right? What did I pick this up for? Was I gonna do something with it? I was gonna check my email or I was gonna look at s- you know, look at the weather, or was I just, like, bored or anxious or, you know, like, something ki- Like, w- what was happening, right? And then why now, right? Like, what was the emotion that caused you to do it? Was it just, like, you know, a rote and you're just kind of anxiously picking it up? Or was it really, like, to do something at that moment, you know? Or is there something else you could be doing at that moment? And that gets to the sort of what else, which is, like, what's the opportunity cost? You know, even if you're bored and you're gonna pick up your phone to, like, you know, play a game or check your email, like, what's, what else could you be doing during that time that might make you happier? And the what else is often a social what else. You know, when I'm picking up my phone, it's often, like, I could, you know, go into the other room to talk to my husband and check in how he's doing, right? You know, I could look up at the sky. I could take a mindful breath, right? You know, what are you missing out on by using your phone? And that has kind of caused me, in using that sort of WWW strategy myself, it's made me realize a lot, like, why I pick up my phone, which is often out of, like, boredom and anxiety, but also sometimes when it's, like, useful. You know, there's times I need to check my email or to look at the weather or something. It's when it's kind of n- not mindful or not intentional and it's just kind of yanking my attention, and when there's a real opportunity cost on other sorts of social interactions. Um, even with the weather app, sometimes I've been like, I could just walk to the window and take a little walk [laughs] around the block and look at the clouds and get a sense of probably what's gonna happen, right?

    18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee34:25

        It, it's funny you say those little micro moments where you could look up at the sky or have a little conversation with one of your flatmates or one of your family. I bet that time adds up. I- in that, in that moment, we might think, oh, that's just a couple of minutes here, couple of minutes there. But if you look at your phone, and some of the stats on how many times we look at our phone is, are really quite worrying. But let's say you look at your phone 40 times in the day, and let's say each time that's, uh, two minutes that you could've been doing something else, well, that's 80 minutes potentially. That's nearly an hour and a half of your time. And again, I think the question, as you say, is intentionality. It's if it's there for a good reason that you've actually thought about, then fine. The, the worrying thing for me, I guess, and the, the, the sort of idea I've been playing with for about six or nine months now, I spoke to Arianna Huffington about it recently when she came on the podcast, and it, and it, I guess it's quite similar to what your friend Liz was saying, is that I don't think another human being can compete with our device. I think it is decimating so many of our relationships with our children, with our partners, and I don't think we've, we've realized just ... It ... You know, I know what it's like. If I've got my phone and my wife's got a phone in the evening, we could easily be satisfied ourselves in our own little customized world, and these algorithms know exactly what I want to see, how many times my eye has stared at it, how long I've stayed on for, and it will keep feeding me things. I'm like, "Oh, yeah, this looks interesting. This looks interesting." So, you know, one step is to, to try and make some rules around it. I think another nice approach which I'm playing around with is which apps do I really want on my phone, so when you take off the social media apps and actually just only use them on my laptop, my usage goes dramatically down. And, you know, have ... Do you have any more strategies around that, that you think or you've seen can help people with respect to their happiness?

    19. LSLaurie Santos36:27

        Yeah, I think, you know, you know, these, these kinds of strategies are like classic ones, right? I mean, what you described about taking your apps off is something behavioral scientists call situation modification, right? You change the situation so it's a little bit harder to access your apps or even access your phone. You know, I know our- Ariana has like talked about, you know, having a little phone bed that she uses that, you know-

    20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee36:47

        Yes

    21. LSLaurie Santos36:47

        ... actually go, I have actually into my bedroom, I have a Ariana phone bed. So I put my phone to bed before I go to bed, and then that means, you know, it's just on the other side of the room, right? It's not there to kind of pick up whenever I have this moment of like, "Oh, I'm bored," or, "I can't fall asleep," or something. Um, so kind of getting rid of the technology in your phone, like the apps that are definitely, like you don't have a great relationship with [laughs] like, those go off the phone, and just like use them on your laptop. Uh, get the physical structure of the phone away so it becomes a little bit harder. And then I think these rules that you develop with your family are really important. I think one of the crises that we have with this technology is it came, it came up around so fast we didn't have time to develop norms about it. You know, we have norms about, you know, like when you talk and when you don't talk, and like who you can interact with, and, and, and we have these kinds of social norms that help us navigate, you know, things that would be tempting to do but that would be, you know, kind of a little bit gauche, right? You know, like if dinner comes, you know, you wait for everybody to get theirs before you start. You might be tempted to eat it right then, but we kind of have this norm. I think we need the same thing with our phones. We just haven't had time as a society to develop those. You know, our norms around tempting things like food have come about over thousands of years of cultural evolution. You know, the phone in its, in its most tempting form, which I think of as a sort of, you know, iPhone smartphone, like that's new, right? Like, that's like, what? 2- 2007? 2009? Like, that's when everybody started getting these things. It's like, you know, barely a decade old, right? And so I think that we just kind of need new norms to kind of help us figure out how to navigate this stuff. And so I think you can... You know, it's hard to do that for a society, but you can definitely do that in your own families. You can do that in your own flats. You can do that with your friend group. You know, so make some explicit norms. Like, you know, at dinner, like who pulls their phone out. I've had friends who have a thing of like the first person to pull their phone out at a, a friend dinner at a restaurant, um, you know, you have to pick up the tab, right? [laughs] You know, like, you know, if you're the one who's like, "Oh, let me check on the, you know, Google," or something, like you have to pick up the tab. 'Cause you're kind of ruining the moment. As soon as you pull your phone out, everyone else wants to. So I think these kinds of strategies are really helpful. But an internal strategy you could use is just to kind of pay attention to how your phone makes you feel. You know, when you go on that social media binge or that like, you know, gaming binge where you're kind of playing that silly like, you know, app game or whatever, like how do you feel afterwards? You know? Even set yourself up a timer so it dings and ask, "Did that feel good? Are you feeling apathetic? Are you feeling connected?"

    22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee39:09

        Yeah.

11. 39:09 – 41:46

    Wanting vs liking: why cravings don’t match what actually feels good

    1. LSLaurie Santos39:09

       And often when you notice like, "Actually I kind of feel crappy, like what did I just do with that hour?" That noticing can really help you sort of update your own preferences. And this actually gets to another... You know, we talked about how your mind lies to you, and this is like one of the dumb features of the mind. Another dumb feature of the mind, and specifically a dumb feature of the brain, is that we have these systems that control what we want in life, what we go after, what we crave, what we're motivated to do, and you would like to think that those systems are hooked up to what we actually like, what we actually find rewarding and enjoy when we get it. But it turns out those systems aren't really hooked up right. In fact, if you look in the brain, they're actually separate circuits. And they're separate circuits, which means that you can like want all this stuff, you can kind of crave it and have a motivation for it and all this stuff, but then when you get it, you don't really like it very much. You know, the classic case of this is the case of addiction, right? You know, if you're a heroin addict, you know, you will have incredible craving for the drug. You know, you'll steal from your family. You'll do everything you can to get it, but then when you finally get a hit, your reward areas aren't firing as much as they would for a non-addict because you're habituated to the drug. You don't even like it very much, right? And I think that we see these little signs of that phenomena of addiction in so many of our behaviors. There's so many times when I'm tempted to go on Reddit and just scroll through, and my brain's like, "One more page. There'll be something cool on the next page." And a half hour goes by and if I ask myself, "Did I like that?" I was so motivated to do it, and it, it sucked. Like, I didn't like it at all. I feel kind of yucky and apathetic. And then there's the flip side of all these things I actually really do like. You know, when I get a great yoga session in, that feels awesome. When I put the time in to like, you know, set up a, a schedule to talk to a friend on the phone and we have this really great connection, that feels great. But I don't have the same like motivation and craving I do to like pick up my phone and check my email, right? And so this disconnect between wanting and liking I think is a huge problem. It means we're gonna naturally have these motivations to go after stuff with like incredible force and in- incredible automaticity, and when we get, when we do it, it's not gonna affect our liking. And it means we don't have brain systems that are telling us to go after the stuff that really will feel good.

    2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee41:16

       Yeah.

    3. LSLaurie Santos41:16

       We have to do that kind of for ourselves intentionally. It takes work.

    4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee41:21

       Yeah. It's motivation, but I guess in some ways it's also easier to pick up that phone, right? To talk to your friends and have that meaningful, raw, authentic interaction, you're gonna get more out of it, but you probably have to put a bit more in as well to get that reward. And it's just easier to pick that up and get this kind of pseudo connection online.

    5. LSLaurie Santos41:46

       Yeah.

12. 41:46 – 46:49

    Happiness affects health and longevity (and not only the other way around)

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee41:46

       And I, I think that's what often happens. I've been thinking a lot about, well, I've been thinking a lot about happiness for the last few years, 'cause I've really been thinking about as a medical doctor, I always think about what, why, why is this person come in? Yes, they've got a symptom, but what has really been going on? H- what has been going on in their life that's meant on this particular day they've ended up in front of me? And we think about health as doctors, but actually a lot of it's to do with happiness as well. So if people don't have that feeling of happiness or wellbeing in their life, whether it's a lack of social connection, um, whether it's that they haven't had any interaction with any other human beings, whether they haven't slept enough, whatever it is- Then they start to engage in other behaviors that start to affect their health, like their physical health.

    2. LSLaurie Santos42:45

       Yeah.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee42:45

       And it's quite obvious when we say it like this, but it was, it was like a penny dropping moment for me when I thought, actually, if society was happier, then there'd be less patients for me to see because they'd be engaging in different ways and they'd have less, uh, harmful physical habits that end up in front of me. Do you know what I mean? I mean, it's, uh-

    4. LSLaurie Santos43:07

       Yeah. And in fact, there's, there's lovely data on this, really. I mean, I think this is another spot where we get happiness wrong. We assume, you know, if, if all our psychologists go off, we're healthy, for example, you know, healthy in terms of our, like, diet and this stuff, then we'll be happier. But actually, the data suggests that the causal arrow might go the other way. If you look at people's cheerfulness levels, if you look at their positivity, if you look at their happiness, you actually see effects on people's health and on people's longevity. Um, so one famous study actually looked at whether or not people who are happier had, like, stronger immune function. Um, so the way the study worked is they bring subjects into the lab, and they either kind of do some intervention where they're kind of feeling happier or not. They can do these simple things by just, like, asking people, "Are, do you tend to be positive?" Or they could even kind of give people, like, a positivity kind of intervention where you watch some funny movie or something like that. Um, but in one study they just measured people's positivity in general, like, are you a positive person or not so much? And then they, uh, shot people's nostrils up with rhinoviruses. You know, these days we're all talking about coronaviruses. Rhinoviruses are the viruses that cause the common cold. And so everybody's exposed. Question is, who gets sick? And what they find is that three times the number of people get sick in the kind of not so positive mood category as in the positive mood category, which is kind of striking, right? That, like, just your general mood state is probably affecting your happiness. It's probably not mood directly. It's probably through all the behaviors you suggest, which is, like, if you're in a bad mood, you don't get out and get social, maybe you don't exercise. Like, you, you probably eat, you know, eat some, like, comfort food or whatever. Like-

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee44:35

       Right

    6. LSLaurie Santos44:35

       ... but it's really affecting it. There's also evidence suggesting that your happiness levels really affect longevity. This is another very famous study, um, that tried to figure out if they, if researchers could find a population that was sort of, like, had the same sort of health risks, basically, that kind of lived a sort of very similar lifestyle. And they, they converged on studying nuns, in part because nuns, you know, they're not off, like, bungee jumping or doing, you know, really, you know, risky things like driving motorcycles and stuff. They tend to eat the same sorts of things and so on. And so these researchers went back and looked at nuns' diaries when they're in their 20s. I guess in, in, in some nunneries when nuns kind of begin their profession for the church, they're asked to kind of journal a lot and sort of talk about their experiences and why they wanted to do it. And so researchers went back to these and just coded how many positive words were there, right? You know, do some machine analysis and how many positive words you see. Then they look at these nuns who are now quite old and look at how long each of the nuns are living. And what they find is that statistically more nuns who had more happy words live into their 70s, statistically more nuns that had the happy words live into their 80s, and statistically more nuns that had the happy words live into their 90s. And what's striking about this is this wasn't their happiness at the time. This was their happiness in their 20s, which is predicting their longevity in their 90s. And so I think this is another spot where we get happiness wrong. We can kind of think of happiness as like, "Oh, it's this ephemeral thing. Like, we'll worry about that once we sort out, you know, people's high blood pressure and people's, you know, whatever, like cancer risk." But it could be that we have the model backwards, right? That if you're just experiencing a lot of positive emotion in your life, if you're satisfied with your life, it might make it easier to make choices that allow you to protect your health in a way that can make you healthier and allow you to even live longer.

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee46:18

       Yeah. I mean, thanks for sharing that. That's definitely my feeling, that it's happiness comes first. [laughs] Um, but I'd, I'd be interested to see how that research plays out over a number of years. I mean, we've mentioned so far, Laurie, we mentioned, uh, social relationships and how important they are. We mentioned the problems that technology can give us, but also how we can navigate that. And I guess we should also touch when we're talking about technology, about how valuable it has been in this pandemic at keeping

13. 46:49 – 52:42

    Nutritious connection in a pandemic: Zoom, texts, and mindful ‘after-effects’

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee46:49

       those social connections alive. I don't necessarily mean scrolling on Instagram for three hours. I mean, you know, w- I, I don't know, how would you think about the sort of connection we can get over Zoom or FaceTime versus a phone call versus text messaging? You know, are these different qualities of connection, and how do those different qualities relate to our happiness?

    2. LSLaurie Santos47:15

       Yeah. Well, this is, you know, where I kind of go back to my, you know, work with animals. You know, I used to study monkeys, and I think it's worth remembering that, you know, ultimately we are social primates, right? You know, we were built for in real life social connection. You know, maybe grooming one another, but definitely as humans, like talking to one another in real life, right? That's gonna be the thing that gives us the biggest hit of happiness, right? The question is, like, how can we best approximate that when getting together physically is tricky? And I think the kind of thing that you and I are doing right now, you know, we're talking live in real time over Zoom. I can see your emotional expressions. You know, the timing is mostly good with Zoom, although the audio's a little off, right? Like, I can see you and see how you're reacting, hear the intonation in your voice. That's pretty good. Again, it's not as good as, like, you know, maybe giving you a hug or shaking your hand after this, but it, it's pretty good. Um, where it gets dicey is when we move out of in real time together. You know, if I text you, like, something, "Ha ha ha, emoji," and then you write back to me later. You know, if we were sending videos back and forth. If we kind of can't interact in real time, we're starting to lose some of the signals we've evolved to really pick up-

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee48:18

       Mm-hmm

    4. LSLaurie Santos48:19

       ... that, that really influence our happiness. I think it gets even worse when we get into the domain of things where our wanting system really likes it, where there's, like, a really low startup cost, but we're kind of not getting anything nutritious out of the social connection. I often use the Terms that like, you know, medical doctors use when I'm talking about things that matter for happiness. I talk about nutritious social connection, right? Um, and I think that, you know, in some ways, like, you know, the Instagram, like, you know, looking at people's feeds and stuff like that, like that's kind of the NutraSweet of social connection. It like feels like you're getting something out of it, but ultimately when you like shut the app off, you're like "Wait, I feel kinda gross. I didn't really get any- anything nutritious out of it." And I think that's a good, this idea of thinking about the nutrition, it's also a good way to think about what kind of social interaction you wanna build in, especially during COVID, because, you know, what we need is gonna change. You know? There are great things about interacting over screens, but, you know, it's also the, the, the idea of Zoom fatigue is a real thing, right? You know, the idea of being on screens too much is a real thing. And so one piece of advice I give my students is to mindfully pay attention to how you felt after something. You know, after, you know, this conversation I could think, you know, when I, you know, close the Zoom window, I can think, "How did that feel?" You know? "Oh, this is a fun conversation. We had a nice time." You know, if I had just been on eight other Zoom calls before this, I might feel a little exhausted. I might, you know, I might need to go talk to my husband. That's the form of social connection I need. Or I might need to pick up a call and call, pick up a phone and call a friend and go for a walk around town that's away from a screen, you know? And so I think the things we do on screens can be great, but it's important to pay attention to what you need. And, and this has been kind of, this idea has been a bit of a game changer for me. You know, when the pandemic hit, I was like, "I'm building in all these like spa nights with friends, and, you know, like Zoom dinners with my family," and it was like screen, screen, screen. You know, like I took all the-

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee50:05

       Yeah

    6. LSLaurie Santos50:05

       ... like meetings my lab had and put them online. And only after I was like, I thought I was following the happiness advice 'cause I was building in all that social connection, but I was like screen exhausted by then. And then I realized like, ah, it wasn't nutritious. You know, even if you're eating 1,000 salads, [laughs] like that's not nutritious. You're gonna feel gross afterwards if you kinda pound 1,000 salads. And I think the same can be true for, you know, Zoom and social connection online. So my advice is be mindful afterwards. Really take time to notice, did that feel good or not? And that can help you build in more s- of the stuff that feels good and maybe less of the stuff that doesn't. For me, I'm realizing it's, you know, Zoom windows with small numbers of people. It's cases where I'm socially interacting where I'm not necessarily like sitting in one spot in a Zoom screen with like a curated background. I'm like, you know, talking to my mom as I'm walking around the room and doing chores, and we're hearing each other. But it's not like I'm sitting there kind of watching it. And so I've tried to build in a lot more Zooms that feel more informal and less like a kinda work webinar call. Um, that sort of works for me too.

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee51:06

       Yeah. I think, as you say, these screen connections c- can be pretty good. Um, you know, one thing I've noticed as a podcast host, and just a shout-out to your podcast by the way, which is brilliant, so people who haven't heard it, I'd strongly recommend you check it out. It is, it's really well produced. Really, really interesting topics each week. Um, before the pandemic, I wouldn't do remote conversations. They were always face-to-face in my studio. And of course, I had to adapt like everyone else. And what I've noticed is that, yes, I could have some really great conversations over Zoom, but afterwards I don't have the same sense that I really know that person, that I could send them a text and meet up for coffee with them in the same way that when someone's been here and we've hung out for a little bit before the chat and after the chat, it's just different. And, and again, I'm not complaining. This is great, you know. I hope we do get to meet one day face-to-face.

    8. LSLaurie Santos52:10

       [laughs]

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee52:10

       Right? But this is still, it's better than not doing it. But, you know, there are these different levels of social connection, aren't there? And I guess we're trying to get the most nutritious one that we can in terms of what we're allowed to do or certainly what society's allowing at that moment in time. Um, in terms of other things that can influence our happiness, a lot of spiritual practices, a lot of religions talk about doing things for other people, and there's a lot of research on that, isn't there?

14. 52:42 – 56:30

    Treat other people: kindness, giving, and why it beats ‘treat yourself’

    1. LSLaurie Santos52:42

       Yeah. This is yet another spot where our minds lead us astray. I think especially right now in the tough time we're facing, it's easy to find all these articles that talk about like self-care or treat yourself. This is a big mantra in the US right now. People have T-shirts that are like, "Treat yourself." Um, but the data suggests that that might not be the most effective way to bump up your wellbeing. In fact, the data suggests you should be, we should have all these T-shirts that say, "Treat other people." [laughs] And we know this because, again, you know, first, first m- move in happiness research is to look at the happy people. Look at the happy people. What are they doing? Happy people are disproportionately other-oriented. They like matched for a salary level give more of their money to charities than people who are not so happy. They, um, give more of their time. They volunteer, right? They just tend to be more focused on helping other people than in kind of doing selfish pursuits. Um, and the research shows that then if you go and do an intervention where you force people to do nice stuff for others, um, that will actually improve people's wellbeing more than they think. This is actually a study by Liz Dunn, who we mentioned earlier. She goes up to people on the street and hands them some money and says, "Okay, you just got this money. Here's how you have to spend it." And one group is told, "You have to spend this on yourself. Do something nice. Treat yourself." Um, another group is told, "W- well, the way I want you to spend this money is to do something nice for someone else." Right? Um, then she has subjects agree that they can be called later in the day or later that week, and what she finds is that the subjects who tend to spend the money, uh, the subjects who spend the money on other people tend to be significantly happier than those, uh, who spend the money on themselves. Now, this is not, again, what we think, right? But it's what the data show. And again, you know, I teach this class, but I get this intuition wrong. If I'm having a crappy day, you know, pre-COVID if I was having a really crappy day, I'd be like, "I'm gonna go out and get myself a latte," or, "I'm gonna get a manicure," right? I don't think like, "I'm gonna go buy my coworker a latte right now," or, "I'm gonna like, you know, do a, get a little gift card for my friend to get a manicure." Like I think me, me, me, but the data suggests that like just sort of switching gears, spending our money and our time on other people is a way to bump up our happiness. Um, again, this violates the intuitions, but it's a powerful way to do that. And I think- This is something we can all embrace during COVID, right? Because many of us have these little new windfalls of money and time in different ways, right? You know, some of us are working remotely, which means we're not spending our time commuting. You know, like all the Londoners who are listening to this podcast maybe aren't on the Tube as much. You know, that could be 45 minutes during the day that you're saving. You know, what are you doing with those 45 minutes? Could you, you know, volunteer for a charity or make calls to an, for an organization that you care about? Or just like pick up the phone and call somebody who's struggling, right, and check in on how they're doing. Not to help yourself, but just to really check in with someone else, right? You know, some of us have these like mini windfalls of money. Not all of us, but you know, if you're, maybe you're saving, you know, that, you know, Tube fare that you're not spending every day, or maybe you're saving gas on your commute, right? Like, could you use that money for a good cause? You know, even if, even if you're just saving on that latte, you know, that latte that I'm not buying myself, you know, every morning when I head off to work, that four bucks, like I could actually spend on something better, right? You know, even if it's just four bucks that I donate to a charity that morning, the research suggests that that would really boost our wellbeing. And I think it ... So I think we can, you know, maybe take these little mini windfalls of time and money that we weren't even noticing and use them for a good cause w- if we're not using them in some other way already.

    2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee56:00

       It's a theme in what you're talking about, is noticing things. So notice the time that you're no longer spending on, on your commute. Notice the money that you used to spend on a haircut every four weeks or on a coffee every day from Starbucks. Um, notice how you feel after you've been on Zoom for a while, uh, or on Instagram for a while. And, and I guess the art of noticing really

15. 56:30 – 1:27:40

    Mindfulness, religion, gratitude, and reframing: simple practices that compound

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee56:30

       is what mindfulness is all about. And so I wonder, what does the research say about mindfulness and happiness? And then what does mindfulness really mean? Because again, that's a term that can mean so many different things to different people.

    2. LSLaurie Santos56:48

       Yeah. I mean, I think one thing we know from the research is, you know, just as being social and doing nice things for others improves our wellbeing, taking time to be mindful, taking time to sort of be in the present moment in, in a very particular way, which is with a particular kind of attitude, an attitude of sort of non-judgment. So you're not gonna judge- in the present moment noticing this sucks, and I'm judging it the whole time. But in the present moment, allowing it to be just as it is. The research suggests that that kind of practice can really improve our wellbeing, and it seems to improve our wellbeing for a particular reason, which is that the opposite of being present when we're kind of, you know, not in the present moment, when we're kind of mind-wandering and thinking about the future and worrying about things and ruminating, that has a really negative hit on our happiness, right? And so just the act of being present where you sort of shut off that kind of mind-wandering to yucky other things can really make us feel better. Now, it too is the kind of thing that requires some work. This is, being present is not the natural state of the human mind. Which I actually kind of find funny, because if you talk to, uh, folks who practice meditation, they often talk about the sort of mind-wandering, ruminative mind as the monkey mind, you know, the mind that's sort of going off all over the place. But having studied monkeys, you know, they're much more likely to be present. When they're sitting there, you know, just like sitting, they seem like they're just kind of not worrying about the future or what they're gonna eat later tonight, or they're just kind of present. You know, so I think the monkey mind is a bit of a, you know, humans sort of touting their own awesomeness when we're actually not as awesome as other animals.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee58:12

       [laughs]

    4. LSLaurie Santos58:13

       But, um, but yeah, but the research really suggests that practices that allow us to improve our mindfulness, to improve our presence, can really improve our wellbeing. Um, so practices like meditation, even s- more spiritual practices like prayer and so on. You know, even just the act of like taking three deep belly breaths where you're kind of noticing what it feels like. All of these kinds of things really can allow us to be a little bit more present. Um, and just the act of being present means we notice. You know, we were talking before about, you know, one reason that technology is messing with us is that, you know, we miss the like, you know, looking at the trees or looking at our partner smile or seeing the sunshine. Being present means we're there to notice the stuff that really matters, and so it really can allow us to have these little, you know, filling our leaky happiness tire moments of joy that we otherwise would've missed 'cause our minds were kind of going off in all these directions.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee59:03

       What about religion? Because I've seen quite a bit of research suggesting that belonging to a religion or engaging in certain practices can be really beneficial for our happiness. And I remember this case, this, this patient who came to see me a few years ago at a practice in Alden. And what was really interesting, this was a family who were part of the Islamic faith, and this couple had lost their baby boy. I can't remember how old, but their baby had just died. And, um, you know, I was a lot younger then, so I was probably a lot immature than I am now. It's not an easy thing to be talking about with the patients. But they were really, really accepting. They were, they were very religious, and they said something like, "It's Allah's will." Something to that effect. And I always remember that, 'cause I, I would reflect upon that. I think that's really interesting. By having this, um, faith where they felt they were just part of something much bigger and much greater than them, they were very accepting of their baby child dying. And for me, that was really quite striking. Um, so yeah. I don't know if you can unpick any of that for me in terms of the happiness research.

    6. LSLaurie Santos1:00:37

       Yeah, I mean, one of the, one of the things we know from studying happy people is that, uh, religious people, people who practice religion tend to be a lot happier than those that don't. Um, you know, I say this as a agnostic/atheist myself, right? Um, and when you dig into that, that could be for lots of reasons, right? That could be because, you know, having a, a belief in a higher power kinda makes you happier. Um, it could be all for, for all kinds of reasons. When you dig into what's really going on, what you often find is that people who are engaged in religious practices, they tend to be doing a lot of the stuff that the happiness research shows is important for achieving high happiness, right? And I think that's one of the, the important things. It's not just people who have strong religious beliefs. It's people who engage in religious practices. They go to services. They pray a lot, right? They're really doing these kinds of things. And if you dig in, you know, what, what are religious practices? Well, one is like, you know, going to a shared community experience together, right? You know, like [laughs] social connection. You know, back I gr- I grew up Catholic, and you know, when you go to church, afterwards you chat with everybody and you see all these people and so on. Um, re- religious practices often require doing acts of charity for other people, right? You know, thinking-

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:01:45

       Yeah

    8. LSLaurie Santos1:01:45

       ... of people who are not yourself. They often involve, you know, situations of prayer that are moments to be mindful and be at peace and not be, have your mind wandering, right? Um, and they involve a sense that there's something, you know, bigger than yourself, right? This sort of sense of meaning too, which also helps. And so it seems like the reason that religion promotes happiness are the things that religious people do tend to be the things that improve happiness over time. And so, uh, you know, so if you yourself are religious and you've strayed away from going, from practicing, you know, going to church or, or whatever that means, like, you know, going to services, like go back to that because those are the things that are really doing the work. And if you're not necessarily a religious person, if you don't necessarily believe in a higher power, that means it's all the more important to build those happiness practices back into your life in some other form, 'cause you won't naturally get them, you know, every Saturday when you go to services or every Sunday when you go to services.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:02:38

       Yeah. I love that. They, they've almost got happiness built into the framework no matter what-

    10. LSLaurie Santos1:02:43

        Mm-hmm

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:02:43

        ... that religion is, and if you don't subscribe to that religion, why not just take the framework and, and apply that into your life? [laughs]

    12. LSLaurie Santos1:02:51

        Exactly.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:02:51

        Uh, and I think there is something powerful about these congregations where people get together and interact, because you said, you know, that's one of the top things for our happiness is those social relationships. And so even, e- even whether you're being dragged to church by your parents or, or, or the temple or the mosque or whatever it is, when you get there, I guess you're gonna be mingling with other kids, other adults, other people and playing and just doing what humans have always done, right? [laughs] So I-

    14. LSLaurie Santos1:03:22

        And I think this is, it's worth remembering, you know, s- I think one thing we think is that, you know, and I think we can have a little bit of hubris about this as sort of modern, sometimes secular folks, right? Is that like, oh, you know, when I learn about these happiness studies, you know, we're coming up with these strategies that we've figured out for the first time, right? Like, not so. If you look at ancient practices, most of the ancient practices are building in lots of rituals that we know are great for wellbeing. They're like cultural forces that are designed to kinda make us happy, and this is true from religions. It's due to like longstanding cultural practices. You know, think, you know, taking, you know, taking a siesta, taking a Sabbath, right? Like taking time to rest, like these things are really g- you know, having dinner together, right? Where you sort of have like dinner over the table. Um, one thing we haven't talked about, you know, giving thanks, sh- sharing gratitude before you eat a meal, right? All these things are like the practices that positive psychologists are coming up with, and they have been around for thousands of years in many cases. So I think, you know, we can often turn to what the ancients have told us, like, "Hey, do these things and that will boost your happiness." And it turns out like they were right. [laughs] Maybe-

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:04:25

        That-

    16. LSLaurie Santos1:04:25

        ... not surprise, surprise, you know? [laughs] Like-

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:04:26

        I mean, that, that applies to so many things, even in health. There are so many things that, uh, physicians or, or, uh, proponents of traditional Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine have been talking about for years, and now modern science is starting to back up, and there is this kind of, I don't know if it's an arrogance within humans or, but we sort of feel that, you know, we're the most enlightened generation and actually we're coming up with all this cool stuff on how to live and you're like, oh, people have been doing this for a long time. You know, it's, it's really quite humbling actually, isn't it? And, uh-

    18. LSLaurie Santos1:05:03

        Mm-hmm

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:05:03

        ... I mean, you mentioned gratitude, which is frankly in most religions as a practice of some sort. What does the science tell us about gratitude and our happiness?

    20. LSLaurie Santos1:05:14

        Yeah. This is another spot, yet again, where we get it wrong, right? I mean, if I had my intuitions and you asked me gratitude, I'm like, that kinda sounds cheesy. I would go with griping, right? You know, you and I hop on a Zoom call, we say, "Oh, you know, 2021, it's been so crappy. How is all this stuff happening? Blah, blah, blah." My intuition is that is what would make me feel better, right? You know, kind of complaining about things. You know, having common ground over the bad stuff. You know, getting it off my chest, right? Data suggests just the opposite. T- happy people tend to be more grateful, and grateful people tend to be happier. Um, happy people tend to spontaneously count their blessings. They tend to spontaneously notice all the good things, not the bad things in life. And research shows that if you just engage in practices of gratitude, you know, just the simple act of at, at night scribbling down three to five things that you're grateful for, research shows that that can start significantly boosting your wellbeing in as little as two weeks. Um, just the simple act of sort of experiencing gratitude. And if you wanna supercharge it, you can kind of combine gratitude with some of the other things we've just been talking about, things like social connection and doing nice things for others. You know, one of the things, if I look at my own gratitude list, one of the things I'm often really grateful for is other people. You know, my husband. You know, the fact that my students did this nice thing for me. Or you know, the fact that someone at work, you know, stepped up and like, you know, helped out so that, you know, took something off my plate. Um- We often experience thankfulness for the things that other people do, including just existing, but we rarely tell the other people around us that, which is kind of sad because the act of saying, you know, "Hey," like, "honey, I really appreciate what you did," or, "I just appreciate you. You're just... It's, it's such a gift that you're in my life," like, you know, I feel that, but I rarely express that, say, to my husband. But if I were to express it to him, that is a way that I'm like, now I'm talking to my husband, right? I'm not like scrolling Instagram anymore. We're like having a conversation. But also it's, it's an way of being nice to my husband because knowing that someone thinks you're a gift and that you've done something great-

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:07:06

        Yeah

    22. LSLaurie Santos1:07:06

        ... like that feels really good. And so there's evidence suggesting that the act of expressing our gratitude to other people can be incredibly important for boosting our happiness. One study by Marty Seligman and his colleagues, uh, had people write a gratitude letter. So write a letter to somebody that you really should have thanked a long time ago, but you haven't had a chance to. And then, you know, uh, in, in pre-COVID times, you show up and like read that letter to the person, like meet with them in person and read it. And what he finds is not only that the act of doing this boosts up happiness for the person who writes the letter, he finds in his one study that you can see signatures of boosted wellbeing for over a month after people do this gratitude visit, right? Like even like a month later, you're on a survey, you're saying you're a happier person. Which to me feels crazy. You know, if I knew there was an intervention I could do to like boost my wellbeing that would keep me for over a month, you know, you and I are talking right now in January, you know, I'm clear past Valentine's Day, maybe when the light's getting better, you know, th- things are getting warmer, I'd be like, "Yeah, sign me up." That's the power of gratitude. Gratitude in this context of really expressing it and sort of doing something nice for other people.

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:08:14

        I mean, what strikes me, Laurie, is that a lot of the things you're talking about are very simple. Most of them, I think are free of charge from recollection, yet we're just not doing them. And there's all these kind of options that we're giving people throughout this conversation. I'm really interested, have some of the interventions risen to the top in your experience of delivering the course to millions around the world, or even that experience of delivering it to the Yale students? There's research on all of them, but are a couple of them rising to the top where people keep saying, "Hey, Professor Santos, when I do these things or when I do that one thing, I feel like a different person. I didn't realize how impactful that one thing could be." You know, and if so, what are those things?

    24. LSLaurie Santos1:09:07

        Yeah. I, I get this question a lot, in part because my, you know, very type A Yale students are like, "You gave me a big list of things,"

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:09:13

        [laughs]

    26. LSLaurie Santos1:09:13

        "... but give me the one thing," like, uh, the CliffsNotes version, right? Um, and my answer is always, it kind of depends. It sort of depends on what you're doing naturally, right? You know, you mentioned that you're naturally a very social person, like you talk to people. Maybe during COVID that's not happening as much, but if I came to you in kind of non-pandemic times and I told you like, "Hey, you know, g- you know, increase your social connection," that might not benefit your happiness very much 'cause you're probably like at ceiling. You're kind of doing it already. But maybe you're not as present. You know, maybe you need to experience a little bit more gratitude. I don't know, right? And so I tell students, you know, as you're, or I, you know, tell your listeners of this podcast, you know, as you're listening, you might think of certain things like, "Oh yeah, I do that. I do that." Then you're good. Don't, don't worry about that if you're feeling like, "Oh yeah, I already do that." But the one thing I said where you're like, "Oh, yeah, it's not really me," that might be the spot where you really try to put a little bit of work in to like take some baby steps to improve that, and that's probably gonna give you the kind of biggest happiness impact for the time you put in.

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:10:11

        Yeah. I think the biggest thing that's impacted my own happiness over the past few years is this real understanding that I get to choose how I frame any particular situation in life. And I feel that for a lot of my life, this broken record play, that it, it, it would all be framed the same way. A lot of it came down to how I saw my parents react to things, and so I learned that as that's the way you deal with things. But just that understanding that, oh, right, this situation can happen and there's three ways that I can actually report that story to myself, create the story. That's really quite empowering and, and I wonder what the research suggests when it comes to that, so how we frame our experiences. And I guess a lot of people say, well, there's no choice, but I think even really harsh and situations and experiences that we don't want, we still do have a choice how we frame that, and that absolutely, I'm sure, plays a huge impact on how we feel about ourselves, but also how we feel about our lives.

    28. LSLaurie Santos1:11:21

        Yeah, I think this is a really important feature, right? That, and, and one of the reasons that our circumstances don't affect our happiness as much as we think, right? You know, before we were talking about kind of positive circumstances, being rich and so on. We also have to deal with the negative circumstances, right? Like we're living through a pandemic. Like you might get sick. You know, you might spill the milk, right? [laughs] Like, you know, things come up that are kind of a pain in the butt. And in all those cases, we actually have a choice about how we frame that and how we react to things. Not like the immediate reaction, but we can kind of choose what happens after that. And this is another spot where I think the ancients had it right. In this case, there's a wonderful parable that comes from the Buddhist tradition, um, about Buddha's story of the second arrow. Um, and so the, the way the parable goes is, you know, Buddha's talking with his followers and he asks, uh, followers, "You know, if, if you're walking down the street and somebody shoots you with an arrow, you know, is that bad? You know, is that a problem?" You know, followers say, "Yeah, that kind of sucks to get shot with an arrow if you're walking down the street." And then Buddha says, "Okay, if you're walking down the street and you first get shot with one arrow, but then you get shot with a second arrow, would that be worse?" And everyone says like, "Yeah, much worse to get hit with the second arrow. You know, now you're hurt in two spots," and so on. So Buddha goes on to say, "The circumstances in life, the suffering in life, you know, that we can't control. That's the first arrow. That's gonna come or it's not gonna come." You know, that's whether you're happen to be living in a pandemic or you spill the milk or something bad happens. But Buddha says the second arrow is our reaction to that bad thing that happens, and that's a thing that we can always control. Like we are responsible for kind of stabbing ourselves with the second arrow. So- You know, if you spill the milk and you freak out and I'm like, "Oh my God, I spilled the milk. This sucks," and then I kick the dog and then I, you know, like, try to s- you know, like, clean it up and then it, you know, you know, it's, like, even worse, and then I'm mad at my husband later and I don't, you know, call my friend 'cause I'm in a pissy mood. Like, yeah, the milk, that wasn't my fault maybe, but everything else was mine. You know? The same thing with this pandemic, right? Like, it sucks to be living in a pandemic. Like, people are losing their jobs. We're afraid for our lives. All our routines are messed up. That's a first arrow, but we have a reaction to that pandemic. We can choose to frame it in a certain way, right? We can engage in practices that make ourselves feel better. We can try to find joy and gratitude even in the midst of this bad time. All those other things are up to us. You know, when we don't engage it, we're kind of stabbing ourselves with the second arrow. And so this parable and kind of thinking that I can reframe things myself and that I have some control over my reactions to things, this has also been a real game changer for me. And this is the problem when you, you know, you're the happiness person who talks about this stuff, you know, 'cause I, uh, you know, I'm, I'm prone to stab myself with the second arrow a lot and, uh, my wonderful producer who works on my podcast, my, my good friend Ryan, will be prone to, like, when I'm complaining about something or, like, you know, like, my assistant did something dumb and I was, like, so mad, and, you know, you know, half hour later I'm still complaining about it, he'll sometimes text me the emoji of two little arrow emojis together-

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:14:09

        [laughs]

    30. LSLaurie Santos1:14:09

        ... just to remind me, like, yeah, you know, that, you know, maybe this is on you. And so, uh, the frame-

Episode duration: 1:27:40