This Yale Professor REVEALS THE SCIENCE On How To Be HAPPY EVERYDAY| Dr. Laurie Santos & Lewis Howes

We constantly have these theories about what we should be doing with our time. But if we actually pay attention to how our bodies feel and be present during it, we can see whether we're going in the right direction, the wrong direction.

Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got Dr. Laurie Santos in the house. I'm super excited that you're here. Thank you for taking the time with me today. And you are one of the most popular professors in the world right now. You've got a class at Yale about happiness and you have an incredible podcast, the Happiness Lab, which I've been a fan of since it came out. I really love the one about the lottery winner because I think a lot of people think that if you just get all this money that just drops in their bank account, they're going to be happy. And I actually met a lottery winner who won the biggest jackpot in Florida. I think it was like 400 million something in a long time. And, I think it maybe it was a couple of years ago and it's since been surpassed, I think, but he was 19 when he won. And, a friend of mine messaged me and said, Hey, did you see this guy won this lottery? I was like, no, I wasn't paying attention. And he said, well, I looked on his Twitter and a few tweets ago, he posted a link to your podcast. I think he's a fan. And so I just sent him a DM and I said, Hey, listen, I can only imagine the amount of joy and excitement and unbelievable feelings you're having right now as a 19 year old. But as you know, most lottery winners go broke, go bankrupt, you know, commit suicide, have a lot of bad times afterwards. So if you ever need anything, I'm here to support just as a friend to help out. And we got on a bunch of FaceTimes. and talked and I was coaching him and just trying to keep him grounded during that time because it was very challenging. So I appreciate that episode and so many interviews you've done and episodes about happiness and the science of happiness. I'm curious, what made you fascinated in learning about happiness in the first place? Were you just not a happy person? Were you the happy person that no one else around you was? What was the reason?

Yeah, yeah. No, it's a great question. I think the interest in the happiness was twofold. Part of it started in my role at Yale. So I live on campus this with students. I'm ahead of college. So Yale is one of these strange schools like Hogwarts where there's like Gryffindor and Slytherin and these like weird colleges within a college, right? So I'm head of Silliman College, no relation to Slytherin despite the kind of similar sounding-ness. But that means I like hang out with students on a regular basis. Wow. You're like a big sister almost. Kinda, yeah. Like an aunt. I call myself an aunt. Like an aunt, okay. I'm too old to be the sister, sadly. But yeah, so living with them, I got really up close and personal with the so-called mental health crisis that we're seeing among our young people. I mean, the stats nationally are just staggering. So over 40% of current day college students report being too depressed to function most days. Over 65% say that they're lonely or overwhelmingly anxious. Over 80% say that they spend most days feeling overwhelmed by all they have to do. It's just like, it's just really tough right now. And so the happiness, the interest in the happiness science came out of that, which is, you know, I'm part of this community where I'm like, you know, again, they're a benevolent aunt and I'm seeing them, you know, not be able to function because they're too stressed out about their midterm or just like having panic attacks about their summer internship applications.

And I'm like, somebody needs to do something about this to help. Like we're teaching them how to be overwhelmed with science and math and all these psychology, but they're too overwhelmed to actually take it in and if they're stressed and mentally unwell, what's the point of it all?

It sounds like. Exactly. We act like we're being educators and we're teaching them computer science and Chaucer and Shakespeare and all this stuff. And it's like, none of that's going in. They're not happy. Or that they're that mentally distressed. Maybe if you're having a not perfect day, great. But if 60% of the two-thirds of the kids in my class are overwhelmingly anxious during that class, it's just, We're not educating our students in the way we thought.

And it's hard to receive information and remember and assimilate the information when you're under extreme mental stress and emotional trauma or even if it's not real and it's made up trauma, it's still hard to remember things and test well and write great essays. It's really challenging under that type of mental Stress, right?

Yeah, I mean, you know, like simulate, if your listeners could simulate the last time they were feeling overwhelmingly anxious, like, was that an awesome productivity day? Like, did you learn a bunch that day?

Were you on your best? Like, no, right?

I'm eating donuts and cookies and just watching Netflix, right? Exactly, exactly. So, I wanted to do something about it, but on your question about, am I a naturally happy person? I feel like if I'm being honest, the other part of that story was, you know, I wasn't feeling like I was flourishing at that time. You know, I'm looking at these students feeling anxious and I could say, you know, I'm stressed about work, I'm worried about publications, I'm not doing the stuff that I need to do to be happy either. And so part of me was excited to teach my students this class because I figured, you know, I get to practice what I preach, right? Like once I learned this stuff, I was supposed to be an example to them about doing this stuff, right? And so, so it was kind of.

A little, you know, selfish too. And so, So basically I just-- When did this start when you were like, okay, I want to learn about this and retrain myself?

Yeah, so this was like early in-- I started as head of college in 2016, and I'd say like basically through 2017 or so, I started reading more about this stuff. And in January of 2018, I hit go on this new class. I basically threw together all this material and created a new class for the students at Yale, where you learn about kind of the science of what makes you happy, misconceptions we have about happiness, like money and the stuff we were just talking about, but also how to put those things into practice because it's one thing to know what you're supposed to do, but it's another to like actually do it as you probably know. And we're sure you talk about a lot in the podcast quite well. So yeah, so at the time I didn't know it was going to happen, you know, it was a new class at Ivy League schools. So I thought, you know, 30 or 40 kids will take it. You could imagine my surprise when we get this wonderful little tool on Yale where we can see how many students are looking at our class. They don't register ahead of time. So they're kind of only show up that first day of class. And most of the classes had a scale from 0 to 100 students, but mine had this weird scale that was different than all the other classes where it went from 0 to 1000 students.

Oh my goodness.

That's weird. And what wound up happening is we.

Got around 1200 students who-- Taking over the basketball arena.

Well, we actually joked about taking over the football stadium. In the end, we taught the class in a concert hall on the big, this is where Yo-Yo Ma plays when he comes to Yale's campus. Wow.

How many people showed up?

Just under 1200, which is just for reference is like about one out of every four students at Yale took the class. Wow.

And now is this underclass, is this upperclassman? Is this- yeah, it was mostly- it was- Teachers are coming out of retirement and saying, I need to take this class.

Well, that was so interesting. I mean, it was an undergrad class, but because it was in this big concert hall, it's hard to, it's not like we have somebody at the door keeping track. I'd hear from the women's basketball coach that she was sitting in on it because she thought it'd be so helpful. Faculty colleagues of mine would be like, you know, I snuck in yesterday, great lecture, and I'm like, you know, who am I lecturing to? But it kind of became this weird.

Phenomenon on campus, right, with so many people taking this class. Crazy. Now, so you did this as an experiment, and then you've been continually doing it, and then you decided to launch a podcast and a course for people, which they can take, I think, for.

Free right now, is that right? Yeah, so kind of what happened was the class went totally viral on campus, but which I didn't expect. But what I super didn't expect was for the class to go viral off campus, right? Like here I am just, you know, professor doing my thing and now the New York Times shows up and is like, oh my God, you're teaching this class to so many kids, you know, a quarter of you all students are learning about happiness, what's going on? And so talked to the New York Times, but then it's, you know, today's show and NBC News, CBS News, and then international media, you know, people, you know, writing about the class in like Croatian and Thai, it was just kind of crazy. But what that press made me realize was, This isn't just Yale students. I was framing this like, this is a mental health crisis among college students. Let me teach them. But what the press convinced me was like, lots of us are feeling like we're not flourishing right now. Right. And I think people were looking at these Yale kids of like, these kids are at Yale. They're 19. Like their whole life is made.

What do they need a class on happiness for? Like give it to me. It's so simple. Yeah, they're simple. They just gotta show up to class and they are daddy's money or whatever.

Paying them to go and all this stuff, right?

Yeah, and it's not real responsibility, it's.

Fake, false responsibility at the moment. And I think that, you know, that was what a lot of the coverage was like. And so it made us realize like this could really help a lot of people. And so we put it online totally for free on coursera.org, it's called the Science of Well-being, you could take it now. But then we still got some emails and news articles that was like, I'm overwhelmed, my life is falling apart, I need a class on happiness, but I don't have time to take a class on happiness. Give me the Cliff Notes version. I need it fast. And that's where the Happiness Lab podcast came in. We realized that, as you know so well with this podcast, there's so many folks who are looking for insights, looking for good stories, looking for ways to learn about what to do better. And so we decided to just kind of give all the insights that we've given in the class in kind of short podcast, fun form.

That's amazing. Yeah, entertainment, so you can be entertained and learn and be educated. Now, I'm curious, People have been talking about happiness for in the last decade, I feel like I've seen lots of books out there. Gretchen Rubin's got an amazing book on happiness. There have been other, I guess, happiness educators, teachers, experts, whatever you want to call it, for over a decade. Why is this picking up with so much steam when happiness has been talked about for a decade, it seems like for me, in lots of different platforms?

Yes, it's not entirely clear. I mean, one answer is like, nothing's new about this, right? I mean Harvard had a class on the science of happiness taught by this guy, Tal Ben-Shahar, over a decade ago. Also Sean Achor, another famous happiness researcher, was part of that class. And so in some ways, like every time somebody does this, it kind of goes a little viral. You know, we've been worried about happiness since, and I think since we've been human, right? Like basically, you know, chimpanzees aren't out there worried about happiness, but probably we are, right? You know, it's in the Declaration of Independence. Like Aristotle was talking about eudaimonia back in the day, like It's in some ways, it's a super not new. I think what is new is that like a lot of us are focused on this right now because I think, you know, things are pretty good, you know, like on the internet, there's this idea of like first world problems, right? And that's the problems that a lot of us face, right? We feel like, you know, we have food on our table, we have a roof over our head, we have good jobs and good families, you know, great internet and Netflix, but something's missing and like, And that when you're feeling those first world problems, I think it's even more profound because you're like, everything's supposed to be fine, right? Everything's supposed to be perfect. Like, why do I not feel like everything's right? Why do I feel like I'm not flourishing? Why do we feel that way? Well, I think the problem is that our mind kind of sucks. We have these really bad intuitions about what makes us happy. I mean, people who are in that state are also thinking, oh, if only I could be like that 19 year old lottery winner, everything would be perfect, right? So people are doubling down. They're playing the lottery. They're spending more time at work. They're They're investing in all this stuff thinking reasonably based on their intuitions thinking it's going to improve happiness, but we're just going about it the wrong way. And that's why I think the class can be so powerful. It's not like we don't know what to do to be happier. We have these strong theories. It's just the science suggests they're wrong. Like, it's not like you're not putting the work in.

We're putting the work in in the wrong stuff. So imagine, I mean, it sounds like you've had this experience with a thousand different students you've worked with. Imagine A student right now is feeling so overwhelmed and so insecure about everything they do in their life. They're mentally struggling. They don't feel like they fit in with friends. They don't feel like they've got so much classwork and they're just struggling. And every day is a battle of how to find joy in the smallest things, but they can't find any joy. where does a kid like that start of actually being happy? What is the even starting process when you're in that situation?

Yeah, well, I feel like step one is to just realize how not alone you are if you're in that situation. That's why I start this class with the stats, right? Like, oh, you feeling overwhelmed? Great, 87% of your college peers are feeling that way too. Feeling really depressed? Actually, probably a quarter of you are admitting that you're feeling that way, right? Feeling overwhelmed? Well, that's three quarters of you. So I think seeing the stats.

So awareness.

Powerful. Yeah. Awareness. I think this is another spot where our mind lies to us. There's this wonderful study I share with the students in my class that has you predict how other people are feeling, right? Because we're constantly doing that. Like we're in our own heads feeling depressed and anxious or feeling inadequate. And then we project onto other people. And whenever we look at other people, we think they're doing fine. And so there's this one study that has college students predict how many good and bad events other people are going through. Like how many other people out there like got their dream job or got a perfect grade or got invited to a cool party versus bad things, like how many people out there got dissed for a date or feeling really homesick or something like that. And what you find is people consistently overestimate how many good things other people are getting. In other words, other people aren't doing as well as you think. But what's worse is people really, really, really seriously underestimate the number of people that are going through bad things. Almost by double digits. And so the problem is like we're all kind of suffering in silence and it's stigma, right? Because we don't want to admit we're feeling like we're not flourishing, but everybody else seems great. But the fact of the matter is the data suggests that's just not the case.

So that's kind of step one is.

Like you are not alone. Okay, step two. Step two, I think, you know, not take the online class, right? You know, like come, you know. No, but seriously, I think that what science suggests is that there's ways to intervene in small ways, in baby steps that can matter a lot. And one of those first steps the research suggests is to kind of reach out to other people is I think this There's this kind of mistaken notion that happiness is all about self-care and self-self-self, like treat yourself kind of Parks and Recs style. But what the science suggests is that happy people are really other-oriented. You know, they're reaching out, they're making social connections, they're worrying about how they can help other people and other people's welfare. That's what seems to lead to a happy life, which is problematic because as we get stressed, especially as we get lonely, We end up turning inward. We become more like me, me, me focused.

And it's kind of this-- the world is against me. No one understands me. All the bad things are happening to me. But when I'm hearing you say, and what I've been learning through my own experiences, when we actually get out of ourselves and say, How can I help someone else? How can I be a listening ear to someone else? How can I show up to someone's event and show that I'm supporting them? When we take it away from us to others, that's when we get our greater joy.

That's exactly right. Yeah. Again, it goes against our intuitions, but doing nice for others is better than maybe focusing on ourself. One awesome study did this where they basically forced people to give money to others. So you walk up to somebody on the street and you're like, Do you want some money? People are like, yeah, give me some money. So you hand somebody $20 and you say, By the end of the day, either spend this on yourself, so that's the kind of treat yourself sort of condition. or by the end of the day, spend this on somebody else. And we could predict like what's going to feel better. Most people think treating yourself is going to feel better, but it turns out that at the end of that day, the people who spent the money on someone else feel better.

I think, I mean, it's always fun, I guess, to get gifts, but I think it's way better to give the gift for a birthday or Christmas or whatever you want to celebrate. Just giving a gift to give it to watch someone else light up is for me the greatest gift. It's more selfish to give because what you gain from it, as opposed to just, okay, give me things all day long. Am I right? Or is that, is that awesome?

You're totally right. But it's not, I mean, that's why you're such a happy guy. But I think it's not most people's intuition, right? I mean, yeah, like for me personally, I mean, I know all the data, but my, as I said, I'm not generally a happy person, which I think translates to My intuitions aren't normally great. Like if I'm having a really crappy day, I'm not like, I'm like, I want to get a nice manicure for myself and treat myself. I'm not like, let me give a co-worker a nice manicure gift card right now. But you're right. The data suggests I'm totally wrong. I'd be so much happier and I'd get so much more bang for my.

Money book in terms of happiness by spending it on other people rather than myself. My entire, I would say, teens until now. The earlier my life, I was very insecure and obsessed about what I wasn't getting. Once I started to shift into my teenage years and start to challenge myself by allowing myself to be rejected, the potential of being rejected by saying hi to people or, you know, just being nice in the line of getting a coffee or whatever it may be, putting myself out there. It was always a fear of rejection and insecurity. Once I said, I'm just going to do this to give to people and I'm going to be kind and I'm going to walk down the street and I'm going to smile and say hello and I'm going to ask people questions. It was like everything started to shift and change because I was became outgoing towards other people. And I try to look for in every situation I can, how can I give to someone else? If I'm at Starbucks, how can I pay for someone for five bucks? If I'm on a grocery line and someone's struggling, how can I just help them and get something, something small, it doesn't have to be money, but just how can I show that people, show people that I am thinking about them, that I see them, that I acknowledge them. And I think when we come from that mindset of giving, we feel more fulfilled and happier because we realize we contributed to someone else's life. Again, with your example of money, it doesn't have to be money, but how can you contribute and bring joy to someone else and that contagion of positivity will reflect back and make you feel that spark of joy as well. At least that's the way I feel.

Well, that's exactly what the science suggests. I mean, it doesn't have to be money. It can be time or it can be a small amount of money. One thing about that study, they did different dollar amounts. It wasn't always $20. Sometimes it was $5. And what they find is the amount of money doesn't matter. Like it can be an incredibly small amount of money and an incredibly small amount of time.

It's the fact that you're doing something nice for somebody else and you react to that. Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being you're happy 100% of the time, where was your happiness level five years ago or three, four years ago before you got into this? Were you an 8, 5, or was it most of the time?

Yeah, well, I actually have legit data on this. It is a 1 to 10 scale. Basically, I was probably at a six maybe, and now I'm pretty consistently at like a seven or eight, which kind of makes sense. I think doing these practices, all the stuff we teach about in the class, you know, from being other oriented to experiencing gratitude to mindfulness and all the stuff we talk about, it's not gonna like, it doesn't like immediately change your life. So you go from like zero happiness to like a million happiness. It takes time. It doesn't happen overnight.

Is that what you're telling me?

There's some stuff that happens overnight. I mean, if you like have a really great exercise class, you feel immediately better. I bet even if you do the like, like, nice Starbucks thing, you know, for, like, that day. That's what the research suggests for that.

Whole day, you're feeling a higher.

That day.

But it's the consistency every day you've.

Got to show up in order to rewire your brain, I'm hearing. And this is the bad news about happiness, is that, like all good things, you have to continue to put the work in. It's like, you know, it's like working out at the gym, right?

You can't just, like, go do your leg day one day and be like, I'm done. Good. Like, legs are gonna be great, you know? Based on all the science and research that seen, what would you say are the five things that if people did these five things every single day on a consistent basis, their happiness level would go up a point or two consistently over time. And it doesn't cost any money and it doesn't take a ton of time. But if you did these five things, your life would start to be a lot happier. Yeah.

Well, I think we just talked about one. I think this act of becoming other oriented, however that works for you, whether that's you know, donating an hour of your time or just like holding the door open for somebody, you know, giving some money, like we all can probably, you know, have enough disposable income to spare a teensy-weensy bit. And so what can you do to spend that money on or that time or whatever on other people? So that would be topic. That'd be number one. I think number two would be another thing you just echoed in terms of how you were talking about changing your life, which is to show up for other people. So all the research suggests that happy people are really social. They tend to talk to random strangers, they tend to be around other people, and they really make time for the people that they care about in their life. And so I think this would be kind of big change number two is like, how can you just be reaching out to people more often? And I think, you know, this is one of these things where like we kind of know it, but we don't often put it into practice, right? You know, if you found out you were on your deathbed, you know, this week and you knew you had a week to live, you might not like go to work, like you'd probably like want to focus on those people you care about in your life, like whoever they are, you would see your friends, you would hang out with your family that you care about, you know, you put time into your romantic relationship, whatever, that's what you do. But if you look at how we tend to spend our time, it's, you know, we're caught up in work. Sometimes we're not even present with our family members when we're around them, you know, because we're like, you know, let me put the phone down kind of thing. And so, but happy people don't do that. They're prioritizing right now. And so whatever you can do to shift to being a little more social and a little more kind of social and connected with the people you care about.

That's like, so it doesn't have to be strangers socially or fake friends, but being social with people you care about on a consistent basis.

It can actually be the strangers. In fact, there's one study by a researcher, Nick Epley and his colleagues where he just like, I mean, psychologists are always forcing people to do stuff with money, but so he forces people with money to talk to strangers on the train. He does this on the L train in Chicago. So he says, for the next half hour, you have to talk to somebody and make a connection. People predict this is going to be.

Actively miserable and weird and cheesy and all this stuff.

That's amazing. You did an episode on this too. Exactly, yeah. So that's one of our famous episodes. I actually got hate mail after that episode because people were like, you,'re crazy telling people to talk to people on the train. You're going to get people killed and all this stuff. But I think that's how we're drawing our intuitions are, is that we really think oh my God, talking to some random person in the coffee shop. I'd rather just pull out my phone and check my Instagram feed. But again, our minds are leading us in the wrong direction here.

Okay. All right. So the first two are others oriented and showing up for others.

Yeah, I think the third one would be to kind of focus on the power of gratitude. Again, it always sounds so cheesy when you mention these things, but you know, sometimes science is cheesy, but you know, I think our instinct when things are good and when things are bad is that it's funny to kind of gripe about stuff, right? You know, like it's funny to kind of complain. You probably even have people in your life that whenever you see them, you just start like the complaining fest like happens. But that's not what happy people do. Happy people are spontaneously counting their blessings. And this is a spot where I think popular culture has gotten on to something with things like gratitude lists or gratitude journals. Just taking time to count your blessings, even if it's 30 seconds at night. You can see statistical boost in happiness within about two weeks of that practice.

I do this with my girlfriend every night before we go to bed. We both say three things we're grateful for and it puts our mind at peace. It gives us a moment of reflection of even if there's a lot of stress in the world with the virus and the pandemic and everything, even with all that, it's still good things to be, things to be grateful for. So it's just reminding ourselves to calm our mind down before we go to bed. And then when we sleep, we have a grateful heart. You wake up with a grateful heart as opposed to an angry heart. And I think the more you go to sleep frustrated, angry and ruminating over things you don't have or you don't like about what's happening in your life, the sleep isn't as quality. And you wake up more tired. and you become more reactive the next day. And that's why I think you're right, the power of gratitude. This is something that I swear by. And without it, I'd be unhappy.

Yeah, no, I think, I mean, again, it's all about also, like, kind of just being mindful of these things, right? I mean, sometimes I'll leave a, like, gripe fest with a friend and just notice and be like, I feel really crappy now. You know, like, I thought, like, getting all that off my chest and, like, complaining about whatever. But no, no, I think, yeah, and there's lots of evidence suggesting that gratitude can have a specifically powerful effect on sleep, even things like immune function, like it makes our immune systems work better, which is something else we need right now in the context of this virus.

How much does griping or talking about the things you don't like, how much does that actually affect your happiness? I mean, I'm all for creating a container where I'm saying, Hey, listen, for the next 10 minutes, I just want to share things I'm frustrated about. Here's all the things I'm grateful for to kind of get both of them out. Yeah, but is there science or research that says like if you talk about negative things or you complain with your friends or you talk about what you don't like gossip, it's going to bring your happiness level down or is this just a theory?

Yeah, I mean it's more it's less that so I think part of it is how you're graping, right? And so you can gripe about like everything's terrible, everything's terrible and therefore I'm going to problem solve by doing X, Y, and Z. If you do that where you're kind of griping to problem solve then that can be really powerful because it can be kind of identifying problems and then fixing them. But if you're griping just to like gripe, gripe, gripe, gripe, gripe, and there's no like forward motion on it. There's no solutions. Exactly. That's not really helpful. And it comes at an opportunity cost. You could be spending that time talking about what you're grateful for. Yeah. And so so what I try to do with friends now is, you know, because I definitely still have friends where, you know, they're in they're in gripe head space, you know, you know, that's that's what they're going to do. But like whenever we're in that space, either move it more towards problem solving, like, oh yeah, okay, that co-worker is a pain in the butt, but like, what can we do to make the situation better? What can we, you know, so try to move it towards problem solving or try to do exactly what you said, which is like, you know, you can fill up your frustration bucket, but kind of match it with a bucket that's equally filled with. Yeah.

Okay, so that's number three, power of gratitude.

Yeah. Number four is kind of a smushed one, but it's basically- Smush it up, Lori. Yeah, it's like, I'll throw together a bunch of things under the context of like healthy habits. And by that, what I mean is like things we know are good for our physical health, but we often forget that our physical health and our mental health are intertwined. So, you know, getting some regular exercise and movement in, making sure you're prioritizing sleep and having good sleep habits. So it's not just like, you plop down for a certain number of hours a night, but you're really trying to do things before you go to bed and during your day to make sleep better. Even healthy eating, we forget the connection between our gut and our brain, between our bodies and our brain, between our stress levels in our brain. And so we really have to make sure we're protecting our physical health because that has a huge implication on our mental health.

Yeah, I just had a doctor on today actually on my show, Dr. Stephen Gundry who talks about essentially how to boost the immune system, how to reverse disease, how to de-age all these things about the body. And, he was a heart surgeon for 40 years and stopped doing heart surgeries because he realized that wasn't solving the root problem. Nutrition and other things solved the root problem of disease. And, he was saying all disease is stemmed from a leaky gut. and the foods we eat create holes in the gut where things seep through and then it causes eczema and it causes different disease because the immune system is broken down which attracts disease. And so it's all about the things we eat to make sure we boost our immune system and we feel better, we have greater energy and it also connects to the brain, everything, the heart, the brain and the gut. So just like you said, I think that's a great a great point. So you're pushing.

But I mean, the exercise and sleep connection is even, you know, I mean, there's evidence suggesting that like a half hour of cardio every day is as effective as a prescription of Zoloft for reducing depression symptoms, right? So these psychiatrists, you know, might not make as much money if they're prescribing hey hop on the treadmill or your Peloton, you know, for a half hour. But that's what the data suggests. And then same thing with sleep.

I feel like we could solve most of the mental health crisis on college campuses Just got these kids to sleep. That's it. If they just weren't exhausted. Overwhelmed and exhausted is a combination for unhappiness.

Exactly. And not making good decisions and not learning and doing all the stuff we need them to do on college.

Yeah. And then just needing, needing the sugar fix to like stay awake and needing some adrenaline. So checking social media or whatever it is, doing the wrong choice to get the fix, to keep them awake or have some attention because they're so distracted. okay, so the fourth was a smush of movement, healthy habits, healthy habits, sleep, all those things. And then what would you say? The fifth one.

And I think the fifth one. I mean, again, I'm, you know, cutting off here, but I think the fifth one would be finding ways to practice being more mindful and being more present. And I mean that in a couple ways. You know, one is like, you know, the standard Buddha meditation. E way to be present where you're like, paying attention to the present moment, but it's also just like paying attention to your body and where you are with things. I mean, we mentioned this a little bit when you're thinking about the griping of like, afterwards, after that gripe fest session, I'm like, I feel kind of yucky, you know, maybe after you like do something nice and give somebody something at Starbucks, you have a presence and notice like, I feel kind of good, like my heart feels warm, I'm breathing in a different way and so on. And so I think, you know, we constantly have these theories about what we should be doing with our time. But if we actually pay attention to how our bodies feel and be present during it, we can see whether we're going in the right direction or the wrong direction. For me, this is so true on social media in general, but particularly right now during the virus, right? It's like I have this intuition of like, oh, I'm like bored or feeling a little anxious. Like, I'm gonna just do a quick Twitter check. I'm just gonna hop on Facebook just for a second. And if you notice, if I notice how I feel afterwards, I'm like, I feel either apathetic or bored or my anxiety has spiked or I feel kind of inadequate and sort of yucky about myself. Like I want to buy something, like none of those are good feelings that I wanted. But if you're not present and you don't notice them, then you just act on those urges. You know, I'm kind of buying something.

Because I feel inadequate or I know. What do you, I mean, in your opinion, what's the worst thing we could be doing during quarantine, being isolation, you know, obviously watching news or overeating or excessive alcohol, sugar, social media, will all that hurt our well-being and what's the worst thing we could be doing? Yeah, I mean, all that hurts our.

Well-Being, you know, what's worse probably depends a little bit on what's hurting you the most. I mean, for me, I feel like my anxiety skyrockets when I'm like panic scrolling right now, you know, so I.

Have to like- I mean, looking at all the negative news and be like-.

Yeah, just like going through my Twitter feed and scrolling deeper and, you know, doing more and more clicks of like, let me check the latest statistics. Like, I can watch my chest get tight, I can watch my breathing is really shallow and basically what you're doing when you're doing that is that you're spiking your sympathetic nervous system. So, you know, quick bio, you know, back to AP biology class, right? Like you're you have two parts of your autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is like the fight or flight, right? Like that's what's in your evolutionary arsenal so that you can run away from a tiger who's about to attack you. And it has those features. It shuts off everything that's not essential. It shuts off digestion and sexual and immune function and all this stuff. And it turns on your muscles and your breath to breathe as quickly as possible. And you basically start breathing like you're.

About to run a marathon.

That's a sympathetic nervous system. Yeah. And so, and so it's what we're activating a lot during this crisis because it's not a tiger. It's like a doorknob that somebody touched or, you know, like the latest, you know, bad statistic about what the death rate is. And we have to know about that stuff, but we can be intentional about how we curate it.

I think that's the good news.

The good news is there's this other half of our nervous system, which is the parasympathetic nervous system. That's the flip side, the rest and digest. The best analogy I've heard about these, which only works if you're a child of the 80s like me, but I don't know if you know this movie Airplane, this really bad movie from the 80s. I grew up in 80s.

I was born in 83.

Anyway, it was this cheesy comedy movie. For your listeners who know this reference, There's a scene in the plane where this woman starts freaking out and she's like, I gotta get out of here. And there's this funny scene where there's like a big line of people who are basically gonna smack her and be like, Shut up, like, you're like, get over it and whatever. And so the parasympathetic is that big line of people being like, Shut the heck up, right? Like, it's ready to like just calm the heck out of the sympathetic nervous system and be like, There's no tiger, dude. Just like chill the heck out. And the problem is that the only way we can activate the parasympathetic nervous system is to convince our bodies that there's no tiger. which we do by like getting rid of the threat, which is hard during the virus. But there's one way we can take action on our parasympathetic nervous system, and that's through our breath. So we can force our breath.

Awareness. Yeah, breath and awareness.

Breathe super slow and also breathe into your belly. Because like if you've ever, you know, been on the treadmill, you're like, you're feeling it in your chest, but deep belly breath, like you're not going to do that if a tiger is about to jump out, right? It's actually activating the vagus nerve. It's really working through the pieces of our body. But what it does is it turns back on that rest and digest. That's the one thing I'm trying to watch when my chest is tight. That's the action of the sympathetic. Be like, oh, I need to remind my parasympathetic that it needs to kick in now. And that's super helpful.

Yeah, I can't remember if someone, it might have been Jay Shetty who said something like this, He was like, you know, imagine standing in front of a train track and seeing a crash happen every minute of your day in person, people getting killed and crashes and different things like you would constantly be in reaction mode. And that's essentially what we're doing by checking these updates and news and stats and seeing the worst of humanity during this time as opposed to, you know, sep, you know, being aware of the facts, being aware and updated on what's happening, being conscious and mindful, being safe. but also focusing on the good side of things is where my mind tries to focus on. And my girlfriend is more focused on checking all the bad and telling me of what's happening. And I'm just like, yeah, it's bad and it's gonna get worse and it's really sad and it really sucks. But where's the good? Where's the value? Where can we find meaning in this? And how can we make sure that we are safe, our loved ones are safe? and we put out information that serves people at a high level to overcome these challenges. So that's where my head goes and she's finally starting to shift more into that. And I can see her anxiety go down because she's not consuming as much. So consuming is what I'm hearing is one of the worst things we can do, especially if you're an anxious person.

Yeah. And again, I think it kind of matters the kind of person you are. Like, I have a very nerdy husband who's a philosopher, and he can look at the stats and just not get.

And bloated up in it, you know?

And so, so for him, it's okay. But, you know, we've had to work on kind of exactly what you're saying is that he'll tell me and I'm like, my chest is pounding, like I'm not be able to sleep. And it's like, you kind of have to, this is a, I think, an important thing for friendships and relationships is like, different people are at different points with this and you got to kind of regulate depending on who you're talking to and what they need. Yeah, there's probably some friends that you want the opposite. You know, I have other friends who are like, not taking this seriously and not sheltering in place. And for them, I'm like, Let's bring the latest horoscope statistics.

Yeah, they're in Cancun with all their friends at the bars or whatever and saying, who cares if I get it? That's not the way you want to be either.

And that's a good way to think about emotions in general, is that they're functional. Emotions have a purpose, right? There's a purpose to why my chest freaks out when I see these statistics is like, I'm supposed to take action. supposed to wash my hands, I'm supposed to social distance. But once you're already taking action, the anxiety is not really helping. And the good news is we have tools to not get rid of it. Because let's be fair, this is an awful, grieving, sad, yucky time. We're going to feel that stuff, but we can have some control over how much we feel it, when we feel it, when it's appropriate to feel it, and so on. Yeah.

And if we're seeking joy and happiness. You know, there's definitely times for our life where we may not feel that because of grief, because of loss, because of deaths, because of, you know, losing a career, losing a person close to you, breaking up in a relationship. There are grieving periods for sure. And this is one of them. And I think what I'm hearing you say is you can still find joy and not be exhausted all day long and useless as a human being. You can still find joy through just following through on a few of these things, which is getting out of self and what you're angry about and say, well, how can I be a solution? By calling a friend, FaceTiming someone, showing up and doing something nice for someone. How can I, you know, work out? How can I get, try to get some little bit extra sleep? How can I eat a little bit, but just make a better decision the next decision? And it's not easy, but it's worth it if you want to be happy. It's the only things you can do to be happy really. So exactly.

All of it reminds me of this wonderful parable. It comes from Buddhist tradition of the second arrow. And the way this parable works is so Buddha's talking to students and he's asking his students and he says, you know, if you get shot with an arrow on the street, is that really bad? And people say, yeah, that's super bad getting shot with an arrow. And Buddha asks, okay, would it be worse if you were shot with like a second arrow too? People are like, yeah, second arrow would be worse, you know, two times as bad as the first arrow. and so then Buddha goes on to explain, he's like, look, the bad stuff that happens in life is the first arrow. You know, we're living through a pandemic. That is a big arrow that we're getting hit with. But our reactions to it is the second arrow, right? You know, it is, you know, we might lose loved ones. We might be trapped in the house. We might, you know, my Yale students, for example, the seniors aren't going to have graduation. They've lost all their weeks of party with their friends. They're in mourning. But to like, not eat healthy or not exercise or fight with your spouse or, you know, cry in your covers all the time. Like, in some ways, that second part is on you. You know, you might not be able to control covid-19, but you can control, you know, how much sleep you get tonight or what you, you know, again, the, the best choices you make. And, you know, sometimes we're going to stab ourselves with those second arrows, but the idea is to reduce them as much as possible. A lot of those are in our control.

Yeah. I mean, disaster. is inevitable. You know, pain is inevitable. Bad things are going to happen, but it's a greater disaster to respond in a negative way to fall down and pity yourself and hurt yourself more. That's the greater disaster, is what I'm hearing you say.

That's right. That's right. And again, you know, within reason, because I always like to put in, you know, like with a little self-compassion right. Because there are going to be the, there are going to be nice There are the ice cream Netflix days, you know, like that's gonna be the second arrow, right?

No, I get it, yeah, but it's the consistency of it every day after day. You're in control of—here's the question. Because I want to make sure that I'm very careful when I talk about control and mental health and mental illness and mental challenges, depression, anxiety, you know, There's different doctors and research that'll say like you can cure depression, mental health, like you have tools that you can apply. And then there's other people that will say, no, this is a chemical imbalance that this is who I am. I can't be fixed. I need medication for the rest of my life. Where are you at with this in terms of mental health and depression, anxiety, the spectrum of it? You know, I feel like I went through more depression type thoughts and anxiety and suicidal thoughts when I was a lot younger. And now over time with practice, with improving myself every single day and going through challenges, I feel like I don't have those thoughts anymore. But I always thought something was wrong with me. Where, what's your opinion on this? On is there a spectrum for mental illness and mental health? can you improve your ability to be less mentally ill or depressed? Or is this something we are born with and it's chemically unable to change?

Yeah, I think, I mean, it's worth remembering that there is a spectrum of this stuff and the kinds of interventions you want to take at different points in that spectrum might look different. And so the analogy I always uses with health stuff. So imagine you come in, you know, I'm a doctor and you come into my office and you say, hey, doctor, high blood pressure, you know, a little overweight, I'd be like, you need to hit the treadmill, hit the treadmill every day for half hour. But if you walk into my office and you're like clutching your heart and you're like, I'm in acute cardiac arrest, doctor, what do I do? I'm not going to say, hey, get on the treadmill because like you need to hop on the treadmill today, right? Like you need something different. And I think, you know, if your listeners are feeling like acutely suicidal, you know, like you're in the midst of a panic attack, I'm not going to say, hey, you know, write a little gratitude, you know, list right now. Like you're going to need a different kind of care. You're going to need something that deals with something much more acute. And I think like medications in those cases, professional therapy, those are tools we know empirically tend to work. And there's lots of individual differences of who it works better for and so on, but those are tools that are there for acute cases. I think if you're just kind of feeling like, I'm a little depressed and I'm not flourishing right now, or I'm feeling really anxious in the current situation, that's when you're in the kind of crisis where a lot of these long-term tools can really help. These tools that build on themselves over time, So they kind of just like in the exact way you were sharing with your story where it's like you start with baby steps and then these things become habits that you're doing all the time that are protecting your mental health.

Yeah. What's the difference between mental health and happiness?

I think it kind of depends on your definition. I mean, I think, you know, mental health is all the things that kind of go into whether we're feeling happy, whether we're feeling flourishing, whether we're experiencing positive emotion and so on. I think there's a lot of fight about these different definitions, but we kind of know it. You know, like you both want to be mentally healthy and happy and there's some overlap, there might be some nuance around the edges, but, you know, mostly they're good things to shoot for.

Yeah. And you talk about this in your class about rewirings. Is it possible for us to actually change who we are and rewire our minds, our thoughts, and our level of happiness or is this, yeah, I mean.

I think the answer to that is like, yes, but not maybe in the way you think, right? It's possible to rewire our habits just like it's possible to like become healthier in terms of our physical fitness or lose a bunch of weight or something like that, right? You can do it, but it's not like you do, you go to the gym once and then you're good and then you, you know, pack up your gym bag and that's it. Like you actually have to put in constant effort. And so the research suggests that it's for sure possible to change your levels of happiness. Every single one of your listeners could achieve higher levels of statistical well-being. It's not going to be perfect all the time. It's not going to change, but everybody can get better. But to do that, it takes work. It takes sleep and exercise every day. It takes being social even when you don't feel like it. It takes being other oriented when you're kind of in selfish mode. You have to do those habits over time. The good news is as you do them more and more, and I think as you see the benefits, Kind of like as you said in your own story, it becomes a little easier to do it both because it's kind of like a habit that you're used to, but also you've seen the rewards. So when you're kind of not feeling it, you're like, okay, I'm really craving this ice cream right now, but like, you know, maybe it's better for me to just like, you know, hit my yoga mat instead, right?

Yeah. To kind of know a little bit what's going to work better. I'm curious as a professor and with someone who's got all this spotlight on them right now and all these people who are taking your classes. at school and around the world, podcast is blowing up, all these things. I'm sure the book deals are in the works and all this stuff are happening. Do you ever feel like an imposter? And I don't want to say this to like in a negative way, but I've felt this way over my career different times of like, man, I'm saying these things, but am I living up to them at the highest level for myself? Is there ever a moment where you feel like, gosh, I'm teaching this, but I'm just, I'm not happy with myself. and what I'm teaching because I know I'm not living up to it fully, like sometimes, but is there anything like that for you?

I mean, are there ever moments where I'm not? I think that's the real question. I mean, no, I think one of the challenging things about this work is that just knowing the science doesn't change my intuitions, right? Like, I know all the things I'm supposed to be doing, but that doesn't instantly mean that I'm doing them. In class, we talk about this other fallacy that kind of gets back to the 80s culture. It's called the GI Joe fallacy. I don't know if you know GI Joe. GI Joe is this 80s cartoon army dudes had this famous saying at the end that like knowing is half the battle. Go GI Joe and stuff if you remember. But it turns out that this idea that knowing is half the battle is a fallacy. Like we think once I know what I'm supposed to do, you know, I read this management book, I read the self-help book, now I know what I'm supposed to do. That is not, it's not half the battle. It's probably like not even 10% of the battle. It's most of the battle is putting it into effect in your own life. And so, There are lots of times when I slack off and I'm not putting it into effect in my own life. I'm acutely aware of what I'm supposed to do. I acutely know what I'm supposed to do, but I'm aware that I'm not doing it. And I think honestly that's one of the reasons people like the class and the podcast is that they see that I'm kind of a screw up too. Like, I'm an honest indication that like this stuff takes work and we're not going to be perfect and it takes baby steps.

And that's what you need to kind of feel better. I mean, it seems pretty common knowledge that most of the world knows that you shouldn't be eating bad food if you want to lose weight. And yet we know, it's like you said, we know the knowledge, like eat less and you'll probably lose weight and feel a little better. Don't eat the sugar all day long and you're probably gonna feel better. It's most people know this information, but we don't put it into action. Is it just because it's hard? Is it because we don't care enough about the desired result? Is it because there's a disconnect?

Why is yeah, I think part of it's hard. Part of it actually is an accident of neuroscience that I'm totally fascinated with, this accident of how our brains are hooked up. So it turns out that there are different circuits in the brain for wanting something, like the craving that you get and like the amount that you want to go after something and really actually liking something, like how much you enjoy it when you actually do it. Super weird that the brain doesn't line those up, but they don't. The biggest case where you see that is in the case of addiction. So people who are heroin addicts, for example, incredibly crave the drug. You know, they're gonna steal from their family or do whatever, but then when they actually get it, they're really habituated to the drug, so they don't actually even enjoy it that much when they get it. Like these circuits have totally dissociated. And I think this is what happens with all this stuff. You know, I will, you know, crave a sugary meal or crave sitting on my butt watching Netflix or, you know, crave money or something like that, but those cravings don't map onto the liking. And then there's the flip side. There's stuff that I'll really like. like, you know, doing nice things for others or, like, really pushing myself at the gym or getting to bed really early and putting down the social media. Like, those are not things that I crave at all, but they're things that my body and my mind are really gonna like. And it's so stupid that the brain is wired up in this dumb way that they don't align up. But that's. That's the problem.

Well, I mean, how do we change the craving then?

So one part is just awareness. Right. And so. And you kind of talked about this just even in your own life. Right. It's to. kind of force the noticing and be present with the liking, right? So when I panic scroll on social media, I notice like, huh, didn't did not like that so much. Hey brain, let's remember, didn't like that so much. You know, when you do something nice for someone else, you're like, actually this felt super good. You know, with exercise, I get this a lot. I feel like I'm slowly rewiring my craving for things like yoga and hard exercise where it's like, I really try, I had this wonderful yoga teacher for a while who at the end of a really hard practice would say, take a moment to notice what your body feels like after you just did that. Do you like that feeling? And again, it's sort of starting to rewind. Like, actually, I do like that feeling.

Yeah.

Try to go after that.

Yeah. Again, it's coming back to mindfulness. Coming back to presence. Coming back to awareness of how you feel, awareness of your thoughts, if they were serving you or not, or supporting you, and just trying to do more of those things that support you. I got a couple questions left for you. This one is something that I'm concerned with because I don't know the stats, but someone told me the other day that because of isolation and coronavirus, domestic violence is going through the roof and abused kids are becoming more abused. You know, relationships that have a lot of tension are exploding. Now, I don't know if you are aware of the stats or if you can shed light on any of that. What can people do during this time of isolation where they can't leave, where they feel like they're being abused, screamed at, violence, physical violence, emotional violence? How can people manage it when they literally can't leave?

Yeah, well, I think that is a real worry. In fact, we're doing an episode of the podcast with Eli Finkel, who's a relationships expert. He has a whole book on how to have happier marriages. And this is something that we talked about directly, that he's really worried that, you know, individuals are stressed. You get two people who are stressed out together. You put them in an incredibly stressful situation and not great behaviors emerge. And so I think if you're in a period of abuse, you know, those hotlines, those places that will help you, they are still there. Like if you are in like real physical or mental abuse situation, get out and you'll go somewhere else where you can socially distance, right? You don't want to put yourself in another physically dangerous situation because of the virus. But I think there's a lot of folks who are, you know, a few steps down from that but still really struggling right now. You know, marriages, a lot of the data suggests that during crises like, you know, Hurricane Sandy or, you know, after 9/11, their divorce rates do go up. But the good news is that marriage rates sometimes go up as do kind of birth rates, which means, you know, the baby making thing is happening, right? And so, so the research really suggests we could go either way. And so then the question is like, what are the tools that we can use to kind of, you know, protect our relationships from this stress? And I think, you know, one of those tools is one we talked about a little bit before, which is just a little bit of self-compassion, right? Like we have a way to frame, you know, it gets back to this sort of idea of the second arrow we talked about, right? You know, my husband makes a snippy comment at me, you know, during the day, and I could either react to that and, like, freak out and be pissed off at him and spike my cortisol and spike my stress hormones. Or I could be like, you know, he's under a lot of stress. He probably didn't mean it. Let me give him the benefit of the doubt. And I think a lot of our family lives are going to be a lot happier if we can just kind of remember that our first reaction should be give people a little bit more of a benefit of the doubt right now. And then, you know, sometimes that can lead up, right? You know, if you're doing that with your spouse, that means you're going to be less snippy with them. Yeah. Normal spiral of emotion that we sometimes get, you can kind of nip that in the bud to help out right now.

Yeah. I think you said, remember what you said a few years ago before you started this process of figuring out your own happiness, you're at a six, is that right? You're roughly right.

Yeah, probably six. Now I'm more like seven or eight.

Yeah. Now you're more of a seven or eight in three years. Is the goal to continue to increase to seven, eight, nine, 10? and so what's missing from you in order to get to that 10 level?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think, you know, the goal for me is just to, to do my best. Right. And to remember what I can control, what I can control. You know, I think I'm at a pretty good level. You know, maybe a nine or ten is there. It's worth remembering, too, that, you know, a lot of happiness is under your control, but there are some, like, genetic limits. You know, this gets back to the, like, are we wired to be depressed and anxious? Some of us just not, did not hit the genetic lottery when it came to that stuff. But even that, even if you're a person for whom that's true, there's still movement. And so take the movement you can get. So, you know, will I be devastated if I don't hit a nine or a 10? Probably not. I'm pretty happy to like be as bumped up as I am. And if these practices continue to pay more and more dividends over time, that's great too.

Yeah, that's awesome. This is a question I asked everyone at the end called the Three Truths. So imagine that it's many, many years from now. It's as long as you want to live, 100, 200 years or whatever, but it's your last day on earth. And you've accomplished every dream you could imagine, every podcast, book, class you want to create, you've done it all, you've done everything. You've seen all the people in your life have happy lives, you've increased the consciousness of the world to happier people, all those things happen. But for whatever reason, all the work that you put out there, it's got to go with you to the next place, the next world, wherever you believe you're going next. So no one has access to your information anymore about how to be happier or anything that you've shared. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true about the lessons you've learned in your life, the lessons that have supported you the most that you would want to leave behind. And this is all you would have to leave behind. are these three lessons or these three truths? What would you say are your three truths?

Oh, that's a tough one. You like wait till the last minute of the podcast to do that. I think one of the truths would be that there's a lot that we can control and we need to recognize the things we can control and the things we can't because those can be really powerful. Kind of like similar to the second arrow. The second two would be related. It would be lots of self-compassion. Beating ourselves up doesn't really help and a lot of these tips are about paying attention to what you're doing to yourself and how you're feeling yourself. And the related tip would be compassion for other people, that we forget the power of that approach of being connected to other people. If the final truth is just to make sure you're being other-oriented and connect with others as much as possible. If I had a life where I did that, But I'd be really happy to go knowing that I connected with others and did as much for other people as possible.

I love that, Dr. Laurie. Now, is there anything that we can do to support you in this moment? Your podcast is a must for me. I love it because I love hearing the research and the stories. So I think everyone needs to go download the Happiness Lab, go check it out. Is there the free course is online right now. Where can we get the course?

Yeah, so the class is on coursera.org, it's called the Science of well-being and Happiness Lab.

You can grab wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, cool. And do you have a book coming out or anything?

I'll just threw that out there. I'm not sure. Down the line, yeah.

You know, you know how those things go. But yeah, I'll come back on when it's out. Okay, perfect.

And where can we connect with you on social? Are you on Instagram? Are you on...

I try to limit my social media given my own panic scrolling, but you.

Can find me on Twitter @LaurieSantos.

Okay. On Twitter, @LaurieSantos, not Instagram. No, you can find the Happiness Lab on Instagram. Okay, perfect. I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Laurie, for taking on your own life and allowing yourself to be a guinea pig on how to improve your happiness and have a more positive mind and have healthier habits in your life. And through doing this, you're teaching so many kids and so many adults who need this information. So I acknowledge you for the gift you are in the world and for diving in on this scary and fun project at the same time. And what's your definition of greatness?

What's my definition of greatness? I think having a great life, having a good life. The definition of greatness is the good life.

There you go, Dr. Laurie. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Thanks so much. It was super fun.

Thanks for watching this episode with Dr. Laurie Sanchez. If you enjoyed it, click the subscribe button and like below. And if you more content like this, check out this interview with Glennon Doyle.

It means doing what Walt Whitman suggested, which is re-examining everything you've been taught in a book, in church, in school, in the world, and dismissing.