0:15

Pushkin. Most

0:20

of the time. I like to think I'm a relatively

0:22

nice person, but if I'm

0:25

being completely honest, there is one

0:27

person out there that I do tend to screw

0:29

over constantly. Now

0:32

mind you, I don't intend to be a jerk to this person.

0:34

I mean, I actually care about her a lot, so

0:37

I'm not purposefully out to get her, but

0:39

I do inadvertently wind up making

0:41

her life a lot more difficult. I've

0:45

wroped her into doing all kinds of things she

0:47

didn't want to deal with. I've cheated

0:49

her out of money, I've made her pick up

0:51

the pieces whenever I miss a work deadline,

0:54

and I've even forced her to eat healthier while

0:56

I get to pick out. This poor girl

0:58

winds up being the collateral damage in nearly

1:01

every bad decision I've ever made.

1:03

So who is this easy mark that

1:05

person I'm constantly sabotaging. She

1:08

is future Laurie. She's

1:11

me just in the future tomorrow

1:14

Laurie or next month Laurie.

1:16

And let me tell you from her perspective,

1:18

right now, Laurie is a real bitch.

1:22

To be happier in twenty twenty, I need to

1:25

stop screwing over future Laurie, that's

1:27

the only way I'm going to form better habits

1:30

and meet my new decade goals. But

1:34

how do I stop sabotaging my future self?

1:37

What can we all do to avoid instant gratification

1:40

and take better care of our tomorrow selves?

1:43

Our lying minds give us a quick answer to this

1:45

question. We need willpower. Even

1:48

if you listen to our last episode, I

1:50

bet you still have the intuition that gritting

1:52

your teeth is the way forward. But

1:54

that just force yourself kind of willpower

1:57

tends to disappear as soon as times get

1:59

rough, deserting us in the very moment

2:01

we need it most. But what if

2:03

I told you that science teaches us an easier

2:06

way to kick ourselves into goal mode, one

2:08

that makes delay gratification to protect

2:10

our future selves a total breeze. Sound

2:13

too good to be true, Well, it gets even

2:15

more shocking because my favorite thing

2:17

about this willpower supercharge strategy

2:20

is that it doesn't just help you achieve your future

2:22

goals, it can also make you happier

2:24

in the process. So

2:27

if you're ready to harness some self control and

2:29

feel better, then join me doctor

2:31

Laurie Santo's for the next installment. Of the

2:33

Happiness Lab twenty twenty. I

2:40

wanted to learn more about this strategy that helps

2:42

you achieve your future goals and feel good.

2:45

So I dropped a line to my friend David Desteno.

2:47

Are we rolling? Here you

2:49

go? I'm David

2:52

Desteno, Professor of psychology at Northeastern

2:54

University and author of

2:56

Emotional Success, The Power of

2:59

Gratitude, Compassion and Pride. So,

3:01

Dave, one of the things I love about your book is that it

3:04

really discusses in a lot of detail the

3:06

limits of willpower. I think in the book you actually

3:08

call it a handle in the wind. So why

3:10

is willpower so fragile? Well,

3:13

let me give you some examples of why I

3:15

say that. So, we tend to use willpower

3:17

when we're trying to pursue a long term goal,

3:19

you know, something that has a big reward in the

3:21

future, but might be difficult in the moment

3:24

or require some effort on our part to persevere

3:26

toward. You know, whether you're trying to study

3:28

to do well in school or on an

3:30

exam, exercising and eating

3:32

right, saving money rather than buying the

3:35

new iPhone. And we tend to try and use

3:37

willpower to overcome our desires

3:39

for more immediate gratification, and

3:41

if it's something that we consider even more

3:43

important. You know, this time of the year, we can think about

3:45

New Year's resolutions. Right, eight

3:47

percent of New Year's resolutions are kept

3:50

till the year's end. Twenty five percent are

3:52

gone in the first week or two of

3:54

January. And so we're

3:57

doing something really wrong, right

3:59

If pursuing our long term goals we

4:01

all know leads to success, yet our failure

4:03

rate is that high. And there's a lot of reasons

4:06

why willpower is weak. For most

4:08

of our history here on Earth as a human species,

4:10

the future was very uncertain. I

4:13

didn't know if the food I was looking at was going

4:15

to be here tomorrow. I didn't know if I was going to be here in

4:17

two months. But now the world is

4:19

a lot more certain, and it's just that our

4:21

mental calibration hasn't caught

4:23

up to that certainty. If you're always

4:26

using willpower to kind of tamp down

4:28

desires for what you want in

4:30

the moment, then your body isn't

4:32

kind of a perpetual state of stress.

4:34

You're always trying to tamp down one

4:37

desire to persevere towards something

4:39

in the long term. To not eat something

4:41

you want, but to exercise that

4:44

is a problem. Work by Greg

4:46

Miller, who's the psychologist at Northwestern University

4:48

was looking at this in terms of students

4:51

in high school and college who were studying for exams.

4:53

What you found is when you train kids in these cognitive

4:56

strategies to build willpower,

4:58

to build grit, to kind of suppress

5:00

their desires, yeah they performed

5:03

better, but there was actually

5:06

premature aging to their DNA because

5:08

of the stress, which, if you extrapolate out,

5:10

means yeah, I'm doing better,

5:13

but I'm not going to be around as long to enjoy

5:15

the fruits of that success.

5:17

But the other problem is, oftentimes

5:19

we choose not to invoke willpower in

5:21

the first place because we're really good as

5:24

humans at engaging in rationalization.

5:27

Right, I deserve the extra scoop

5:29

of Ben and Jerry's I've been good this week. I deserve

5:31

to spend money on myself or whatever it might

5:33

be. And if we go that route, we're

5:36

not going to engage in willpower in the first place.

5:38

We're going to give ourselves the easy way out. This

5:40

looks pretty bad for New Year's resolutions, right, Like

5:42

this one thing we usually rely on willpower

5:45

is not going to save us. So if not willpower,

5:47

if not pushing ourselves, you know, what can we do?

5:49

You know, economists talk about this problem

5:52

as they's a fancy term which is called

5:54

intertemporal choice, which basically means

5:57

do I want an immediate gratification

5:59

now or am I willing to forego

6:02

that so that I can have a better gain in the future.

6:04

And if you think about why we as a human

6:06

species have the ability for self con

6:09

self control didn't evolve so that I could save

6:12

from my four oh onek, None of it existed

6:14

for most of our evolutionary history. What

6:17

mattered for our success was

6:19

the ability to be

6:22

a little bit selfless as opposed

6:24

to selfish, That is, to cooperate

6:27

with others, to be fair, to be honest, to be generous.

6:30

Those are the traits

6:32

that allowed us to be good partners and valuable

6:34

partners to other people. And what

6:37

underlie those abilities are

6:39

what I call moral emotions, things

6:41

like gratitude, things like compassion,

6:44

things like authentic pride, not arrogance

6:46

and hubrists. They tend to make us more

6:49

willing to be selfless,

6:51

to cooperate with others, to engage

6:54

in self sacrifice, to be willing

6:56

to tap down our desires for immediate

6:58

gratification. And people often ask

7:01

me, Laurie, you know, Dave, if I want to be a success, should

7:03

I be a nice guy or

7:06

a nice woman, or should I be kind of a selfish

7:08

jerk? That I mean, should I cooperate

7:10

and work fairly with others or should

7:13

I basically exploit others

7:15

and be very self interested? And the answer,

7:17

what science shows is, you know, I say, well,

7:19

what's your time frame? Right? If

7:22

you want to be a success in the short term, yeah,

7:24

you can be a jerk, you can be selfish, you can exploit

7:27

others. Individuals who are self

7:29

interested to exploit other people's rise

7:31

very quickly, but over time they

7:34

begin to fail because no one wants

7:36

to cooperate with them, no one wants to work

7:38

with them. And individuals who are selfless,

7:41

who have the ability to control their

7:43

desires for immediate gratification selfish

7:46

behaviors do well in the long run. And

7:48

so a lot of what I argue in this

7:50

book and in my work is that we

7:52

are not using the emotional tools

7:55

that we have in our arsenal

7:57

to help us succeed in the long

7:59

run. We're relying on these weaker

8:02

tools of kind of tamping down

8:04

emotional responses via willpower

8:07

that researchers shown are pretty

8:09

fragile. So let's zoom in on one of these tools

8:11

in particular. You mentioned gratitude, Like, what

8:13

is gratitude? Yeah, so,

8:15

gratitude is the emotion that we feel when

8:18

someone gives us something of

8:21

value at some cost to themselves,

8:24

a present or financial assistance.

8:26

It can be you know, a shoulder to cry

8:28

on. It can be someone who's going to help us and

8:30

mentor us. The important thing about

8:33

it is that we feel that the

8:35

benefit that this person is giving us we

8:37

couldn't achieve very easily on our own,

8:40

and they're doing it not

8:42

to help themselves, but at some cost.

8:45

And it's not a feeling of indebtedness

8:47

in the negative sense, but a feeling of this

8:49

person really helped me, and I value that and I want

8:52

to go above and beyond and pay them

8:54

back. That feeling is gratitude.

8:56

I mean, gratitude sounds awesome and it increases

8:58

happiness. But you know, at first, blush, it doesn't

9:01

seem obvious that this emotion has anything

9:03

to do with willpower. You know that feeling grateful

9:05

isn't going to help me eat healthier or get to the

9:07

gym in the morning. But what's the connection

9:09

there. Well, the beautiful thing about

9:11

gratitude is, and any emotion really

9:14

is, while we feel it, it kind of sets our expectation

9:16

for what we should value and what we should do

9:18

next. Why would you have an emotion that's only

9:21

focused on the past? Right If

9:23

you're feeling an emotion that can't

9:25

change anything you do in the future,

9:28

it's a waste even metabolically, Why would

9:30

the brain want you to waste its time feeling something?

9:33

And so I tell people gratitude is really about

9:35

the future. It makes us value

9:38

long term goals more than immediate

9:40

gratification. You may

9:42

still doubt the idea that gratitude is more powerful

9:45

for protecting our future selves than good

9:47

old fashioned willpower, but there's some

9:49

super cool scientific results to back it up,

9:51

ones that we'll hear about right after this break.

9:54

That Happiness lab will be right back. What's

10:02

the biggest obstacle to being kinder to our future

10:04

selves, to getting more exercise

10:06

and stopping procrastination and saving more money.

10:09

Turns out it's our lying minds. We

10:11

tell ourselves that all we need is a bit more

10:13

willpower that our self control will

10:15

save us. But as we've seen,

10:18

when push comes to shove, our rationalizing

10:20

minds will just say it's okay to screw of our future

10:22

selves just this once. But

10:25

what if we tried a different strategy, What

10:27

if we harnessed an emotion like gratitude, one

10:30

that naturally primes us to protect our future

10:32

selves. This was exactly what researcher

10:34

David Desteno set out to test. He

10:37

defies an experiment to see whether people could

10:39

be nice to their future selves in the face of attempting

10:41

reward. So in our lab we

10:44

bring people in. We have them

10:46

answer a bunch of questions of the form

10:48

would you rather have ten dollars

10:51

now or thirty dollars in three

10:53

weeks? Right? And to make it real, we tell them

10:55

we're going to pick one of your answers and honor it. So

10:57

if you said I'd rather have ten dollars now than thirty

10:59

dollars in three weeks, we gave you ten dollars.

11:01

If you said it rather thirty dollars in three weeks,

11:04

we'd send you a check in three weeks. And what

11:06

we found, right, is that most people tend

11:08

to be pretty impatient. That is, they discount

11:11

the value of future rewards a lot. So for

11:13

example, our average subject said they

11:16

would take seventeen dollars now

11:18

rather than one hundred dollars

11:20

in a year. Another way of saying that is,

11:22

they viewed a hundred dollars in a year is worth seventeen

11:25

dollars now. And I don't know about you or your listeners,

11:27

but if you don't need that seventeen dollars to survive

11:30

right now, then passing up

11:32

an opportunity to quintuple your money given with

11:34

the banks or paying is not the greatest

11:36

decision. When we made people

11:38

feel grateful right suddenly,

11:42

how much they discounted the future, how

11:44

impatient they were to get that money in their

11:46

hands changed. These folks suddenly

11:49

viewed a hundred dollars in a year not as worth

11:52

seventeen dollars now, but as we're thirty

11:54

dollars, so we'd have to give them at least thirty dollars

11:56

before they passed up the opportunity

11:59

for one hundred dollars in a year. And what that means is

12:01

they're discounting the value of a future

12:03

reward less. And if you take this and

12:06

you extrapolate it out to the real world

12:08

to decisions that at or you know, other

12:10

people have found that people who experience

12:12

gratitude are more willing to exercise

12:16

for better health, They're more willing

12:18

to save their money rather than

12:20

spend it on impulse buys. They're

12:23

more willing to work

12:25

harder for long term goals. And

12:28

so what we see here is just by changing

12:30

the emotional state you're in, how

12:33

much you value the future changes.

12:36

And so that raises the question of, you know, how did

12:38

you, as this clever experimentalist, get

12:40

people to experience gratitude? You know,

12:42

how do you make people more grateful in the lab? One

12:44

way we do this is we have them

12:46

doing this task on the computer that's designed

12:49

to be god awful boring. Psychologists

12:52

are good at that, yea boring,

12:55

And right as they think they're about

12:57

to be done, the computer is rigged

13:00

crashed or to look like it crashes on

13:02

them. And then the experimenter comes

13:04

in and says, oh, I'm sorry,

13:06

you're going to have to do this all over again. Let

13:09

me go get the tech. And of course people

13:11

are not happy. We have somebody else

13:13

in the lab who are our subjects believe is

13:15

another subject taking the study, but

13:17

it's actually an actor who works for us.

13:20

And this person will get up and walk over to them and say,

13:22

oh, this is terrible. I'm pretty

13:24

good with computers. Let me see if

13:26

I can help you. And so you

13:28

know, she starts fussing with the wires and surrepetitiously

13:31

hits a key that starts a timer and lo

13:33

and behole bang the computer comes

13:36

back on. And ninety five percent

13:38

of our subjects are incredibly grateful for this. Five

13:40

percent of them think somehow they fix it themselves,

13:42

but the most part they

13:45

get excluded. But for the most part, if

13:47

people are very grateful because they don't want

13:49

to do this got awful task over

13:51

again, and then that way, what we can

13:54

find is that the people who are actually experiencing

13:56

gratitude in the moment compared

13:58

to people who are feeling neutral or people who are feeling

14:00

happy. And that was important because we wanted to show

14:02

it wasn't just that you were feeling

14:05

positive, but that was something really particular

14:07

about gratitude. What gratitude makes

14:10

you do is engage in self

14:12

control. And as I said, evolutionarily

14:14

speaking, that's so you're willing to

14:16

be less selfish. But if you think about it,

14:19

when you feel gratitude,

14:22

there's one person besides strangers

14:24

or people you meet on the street or friends who you can

14:27

help that's important to your own future

14:29

goals, and that is your own future self.

14:32

And what we find is when you're feeling grateful,

14:34

yes you're willing to sacrifice for other

14:36

people, but you're also willing to sacrifice

14:39

for your own future self. And that's how you can

14:41

pivot the power of gratitude

14:43

from just being this emotion that has kind of a moral

14:45

cast to do the right thing, to repay

14:48

debts or to behave morally, to

14:50

actually help your own future self

14:52

achieve her or his own goals. I

14:54

wanted to talk a little bit about some of the specific domains

14:56

in which gratitude helps because I just find these datas

14:59

totally fascinating. So in your book,

15:01

you show that gratitude doesn't just help you on

15:03

financial decision making, it and also help you get

15:05

your job. Yeah, it just depends

15:08

what your job is. So Adam Grant has this great

15:10

data where he shows that people who are

15:12

working in a call center and talk

15:14

about a thankless job, you're calling

15:16

people up for fundraising asking

15:18

people to donate money. When gratitude

15:21

is expressed in those offices, people's

15:24

productivity goes up fifty

15:26

percent, and not only do they work

15:29

harder, but they're actually happy

15:31

about it. They feel good about

15:33

it, and so there's no stress there. When

15:36

you're a doctor, right, if you're feeling gratitude,

15:38

it makes you more willing to invest

15:40

the effort to do the right thing, and you're

15:43

more willing, the data show to

15:45

engage in greater thought in

15:47

terms of your diagnoses. And so

15:49

gratitude and whatever the realm is that we're

15:52

talking about. By giving you more patients,

15:54

by giving you and nudging you,

15:56

is going to improve the outcome.

15:59

And while it's doing it, it's going to solve

16:01

two other problems for United And this is something else

16:03

that I really want to talk about, is

16:05

that it does it

16:07

in a way that's better for your mom mind and

16:10

your body in terms of your physical

16:12

health and your mental well being. And so

16:14

talk about the mental well being part, because one of the things

16:16

we're trying to do in this mini series is to help

16:19

people find strategies that can allow them

16:21

to achieve their goals, but in doing so,

16:23

can make them happy in the moment too.

16:25

And that's really the amazing thing about gratitude

16:27

is it doesn't just help you exercise

16:29

more and save more. It feels good, unlike willpower.

16:32

That's right. So David Brooks

16:35

likes to talk about that. There are two types of virtues

16:37

people have. Resume virtues,

16:39

which are the virtues like being

16:42

dogged, working hard, having grit,

16:44

trying to get ahead, and eulogy

16:46

virtues things like being fair, being

16:48

generous, being kind. And the

16:51

eulogy virtues are the ones that ultimately we

16:53

want to be remembered for. They're

16:55

the ones that draw other people to

16:57

us, that give us the relationships

17:00

that help our lives. And so

17:02

if we're pursuing our own success and

17:04

whatever realm it might be,

17:07

you know, as I said, for millennium, the

17:09

way to do that was to have good character,

17:11

to be fair, be generous. It

17:14

used to be that eulogy virtues and

17:16

resume virtues were the same, there was no difference

17:18

between them. But because of the way we structure

17:21

our lives now we can pursue

17:23

success in a very atimistic manner.

17:25

That is, you know, we can just be dogged and if we

17:27

earn enough money we can

17:30

meet all of our needs, we don't have to have other

17:32

people around us as much. But

17:35

that leads to a not very fulfilling life,

17:37

and it's a very stressful existence.

17:40

When you choose to pursue success

17:43

by cultivating emotions like gratitude,

17:46

by virtue of what you're doing, yes, it's going to

17:48

give you the self control

17:51

to pursue your goals, to have

17:53

patience, to persevere in the face of

17:55

difficulty, but it's also going to change

17:58

your relationships. Right when we feel gratitude,

18:00

not only do we work harder, but we show

18:02

more appreciation to others around

18:05

us. It makes us behave more loyally,

18:08

It makes us behave more compassionately

18:10

toward other people, and so we

18:12

build that social safety net

18:14

that are there to buttress us. And so

18:16

you know, when you look at gratitude, people who feel

18:18

more gratitude, yes they exercise more, Yes they

18:21

save more, Yes, they get ahead in life

18:23

more, but they also sleep

18:25

better at night. They also

18:28

have better blood pressure, they show

18:30

less stress reactivity than do

18:32

people who don't experience gratitude

18:34

more often. They even have better

18:36

cholesterol. How and why

18:39

these things are intertwined is an interesting

18:41

story having to do with the stress and do

18:43

they exercise more because of that gratitude, etc.

18:45

But gratitude really is a buffer. It

18:48

helps us pursue our resume virtues

18:50

and our eulogy virtues at the same

18:52

time. And what's so striking about this,

18:54

though, is that I think if you asked people, people

18:56

often think those resume virtues and eulogy

18:58

virtues are in conflict, right, Like you

19:01

to boost up your resume, you got us,

19:03

you know, stop your fellow man, And that's

19:05

right, but it's just the opposite. So so much

19:07

of this podcast is about the idea that our minds are

19:09

leading us astray. Right, we have this bad

19:11

intuition about what gratitude is going to do, Like it

19:14

makes us weak, you know, it's going to make us help others

19:16

rather than getting out of life. Yeah. And part of

19:18

that, right is, you know, I think our resume

19:20

and our eulogy virtus we think of them as

19:23

distinct, but for most of our evolutionary

19:26

history they weren't. And we're kind of told

19:28

that, you know, the way to succeed is to be

19:30

self interested, but if you actually

19:32

look at the data, it's not true.

19:35

You know, I think we're being sold a

19:37

bill of goods you know, it is in the short

19:40

term, right, the faster way is to kind of be self

19:42

interested. But in the long run, it

19:44

is people who experience

19:47

gratitude, who experience compassion

19:49

and empathy that do really,

19:51

really well. You know, my friend Bob Franks an economist

19:54

at Cornell, and he wrote this great book called

19:56

Success and Luck, and he talks about the

19:59

illusion that people have that the way

20:02

that any of us succeeded us through our own self

20:04

determination. And I'm not saying that doesn't matter,

20:06

of course it does. But there's a lot of luck

20:09

along the way. And if you think about what a lot of luck

20:11

is, it's not really luck. It's

20:14

people open indoors for us. It's people supporting

20:16

us in our hours of need and

20:19

helping us out and us doing the same for

20:21

them. Right, that's what a lot

20:23

of luck is, not all. When people

20:26

do that for us, we feel gratitude. And when

20:28

we feel gratitude, it makes us not only

20:30

want to pay those people back, but

20:33

to pay it forward to other people. So, for example,

20:35

in our studies that we were talking about, when

20:37

we make people feel gratitude in the lab and

20:40

then they leave the lab thinking the experiment

20:42

is over, and we have a stranger approach

20:45

them who asks for help, they'll

20:47

help the stranger too. And the

20:49

reason why is when you feel gratitude, it makes

20:51

you want to help someone else.

20:53

Right, the brain is nudging

20:56

you that way because in the long term, that's a successful

20:58

strategy. And so the beautiful

21:00

thing about gratitude is it makes us pay it

21:02

forward and it creates kind of an ongoing

21:04

cycle. And so I think people often feel

21:07

that gratitude can be a sign of weakness, but

21:09

really gratitude is an

21:11

emotion of power. And

21:13

so hopefully listeners are sold on this idea

21:15

that becoming more grateful is a good thing.

21:18

But then that raises the question how do you do

21:20

that? What can listeners do to improve

21:22

their sense of gratitude. One strategy

21:25

is simply doing daily

21:27

reflections, thinking for

21:29

a few minutes about what it is that you're

21:32

grateful for in life. Lots of people do gratitude

21:34

diaries. The trick there, right

21:36

is we all have the two or three things

21:38

that were incredibly grateful for in our lives.

21:41

But if you think about the same things over

21:43

and over again, they're going to lose their power.

21:45

You're going to habituate to it. It's going to become boring.

21:48

And so think about little things.

21:50

Think about the person who gave

21:52

you their seat on the bus or

21:54

the subway. Think about the person who gave you directions,

21:57

you let you get on the highway, someone who

21:59

held the door for you. And you might say, Dave, really

22:01

is that going to work? It does. So

22:03

you know I told you earlier about the way we

22:05

induce gratitude in our lab where we have these

22:08

big shenani agains we go through where

22:10

computers crash on people. But when

22:12

we simply ask people reflect on something

22:14

in your life that you're grateful for, whether it's

22:16

something somebody did for you, your parents, a friend,

22:19

the universe, if you believe in God, God, whatever

22:21

it might be. Those simple reflections

22:24

produce the same exact effects.

22:27

And so it may sound trite, but

22:29

it's not cultivating gratitude daily in your

22:31

life. We'll do this through reflections. Another

22:33

way is to engage in something called the

22:35

reciprocity ring. This is great

22:38

if you have an office and you're trying to create

22:40

a culture of gratitude, or a classroom, or even for

22:42

families at home, have everybody

22:44

take a post it note and write

22:46

on the post it note something they need help with.

22:49

Then on a board or on the refrigerator or

22:51

wherever it might be, stick up

22:53

those post it notes in kind of a circle.

22:56

Now, everybody, take a different color post note

22:59

and write your name on it, and go up

23:01

and stick it next to a post it note that's up there

23:04

already where a person's requesting helps

23:06

that you're saying, Ah, John says he needs

23:08

help with this, I dave, I'm going to help

23:10

him with this, right. And then what you do

23:12

is draw lines or tie strings

23:14

or tape, whatever you might be, and what you'll see

23:17

is connections in this

23:19

circle. And then most importantly, go give

23:21

that assistance that you said. And what

23:23

this does is a few things. One,

23:26

it shows that asking

23:28

for help is okay and offering

23:31

to help is okay. And

23:33

by you actually helping the person who you

23:35

said you were going to help, that person feels gratitude.

23:38

And what our research shows when that person feels

23:40

gratitude, it increases the probability

23:42

very dramatically that they're just going to go and offer

23:44

help to someone else. And it's

23:46

a way of creating kind of a norm

23:48

and a culture for gratitude in your family or your

23:50

classroom, or your workplace. Have

23:53

you used this in your lab or in your own family?

23:55

Yeah? I you know, before I started doing this research,

23:57

I wouldn't say I wasn't ungrateful

24:00

person, but I don't think I thought a lot about

24:03

gratitude in my life. But

24:05

what I realized through doing this

24:07

work is that you can curate

24:10

your own emotional life. Right. Emotions don't

24:12

just happen to us. We can

24:15

curate what we feel by taking

24:18

time to think about what we want to feel,

24:20

by paying attention to the people that help us

24:22

as opposed to the people that annoy us.

24:24

And so what I've begun to do in my own daily

24:27

life now is to do that is to

24:29

focus on when somebody does something

24:31

for me or someone helps me, to not

24:33

say thank you and quickly move by that, but

24:35

to focus on it for a few minutes, to curate

24:38

the emotions that I feel are important and valuable

24:40

in my daily experience as opposed to

24:42

the ones that aren't. And what happens when

24:45

you do that is it begins to change the lens through

24:47

which you automatically view your life, so

24:49

that suddenly gratitude isn't something

24:51

that you're trying to curate, but it becomes

24:53

a lens that you pick out things

24:55

with daily in life, and I think

24:57

it, you know, it becomes a habit in

25:00

some ways. And the beautiful thing about gratitude

25:03

is as opposed to habits is you know, if I

25:05

have a habit to save money that works for saving

25:07

money, if I have a habit study that works

25:10

for studying. But if I have a habit

25:12

to experience gratitude, that's going

25:14

to bleed over into making me better able

25:16

to pursue my long term goals in

25:18

any realm. And I would

25:21

encourage your listener to try

25:24

and create gratitude as a habit. After

25:28

talking to Dave and hearing about his work, I've

25:30

decided on a personal goal for this new decade.

25:33

I'm going to stop sabotaging future, Larie.

25:36

I'm going to stop assuming that willpower will

25:38

save me. Instead, I'm

25:40

going to harness the power of my moral emotions.

25:43

I'm going to work harder to become a bit more grateful

25:46

starting now. So here goes. I'm

25:49

so grateful that Dave and so many other scientists

25:51

took time out of their busy schedules to share

25:53

these insights with us. I'm so

25:55

so thankful that we all have a fresh start

25:58

with this new decade to make a bunch of positive

26:00

changes that we want to see in twenty twenty.

26:02

And I'm so so grateful for you.

26:05

Thanks so much for listening to this podcast, and

26:08

thank you for being a part of this journey to

26:10

use science to live a little bit better. And

26:13

finally, I'd be super grateful if you

26:15

joined Future Laurie for our third bonus

26:18

episode of The Happiness Lab twenty

26:20

twenty.

26:35

The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by

26:37

Ryan Dilley. The show was mastered

26:39

by Evan Viola and our original music

26:41

was composed by Zachary Silver. Special

26:44

thanks to Ben Davis, Mia Lavelle, Julia

26:47

Barton, Carl mcgliori, Heather Fame,

26:49

Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanig, and

26:52

Jacob Weisberg. The Happiness

26:54

Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries