0:15

Pushkin. The

0:21

twenty twenty holiday season is the

0:23

strangest one I can remember. Thanks

0:26

to COVID nineteen, nearly all of the

0:28

festive traditions that I share with my family

0:30

and friends are canceled. The

0:32

parties, the shopping trips, the dinners, They're

0:34

all gone. It really sucks,

0:37

especially since I know these social interactions

0:39

are vital ingredients to my happiness.

0:42

And that's why I decided to throw a little holiday

0:45

zoom party Hello, Happy Holiday,

0:48

partly to let me catch up with good friends from the world

0:50

of psychology a holiday party, right, but

0:55

also to pick their brains for the latest scientific

0:57

insights on how to have a happier holiday

0:59

season. And here was

1:01

the guest list. Doctor Jamil Zaki

1:04

from Stanford University, Jamale, are you there?

1:06

Yes, I can hear you now, Doctor Liz Done from

1:08

the Universe Stay British Columbia, let's try

1:10

yelling at you guys a

1:13

little bit. And doctor Nick Epley from the University

1:16

of Chicago Booth School of Business. I start

1:18

listening to Christmas music and Labor Day,

1:20

so yeah, I'm that guy. And again, so

1:24

God rescue Mary. Podcast fans, get

1:26

ready to rule your Yule with the Happiness

1:28

Lab Expert Guide to the Holidays with

1:30

me, Doctor Laurie Santos

1:32

and friends.

1:40

In a regular year time famine,

1:42

that feeling of being overwhelmed, overcommitted,

1:45

and up against the clock, that would be a real

1:47

driver of my holiday stress and unhappiness.

1:50

But with the pandemic pretty much emptying my

1:52

schedule, I suddenly have minutes, hours,

1:55

even days opening up in my diary.

1:58

Liz helped me connect the dots on why this

2:00

might be an opportunity I should appreciate

2:02

more. I think interestingly,

2:04

COVID may be helpful in this way,

2:06

right because people just aren't going to have as many

2:09

commitments and stuff as they usually do,

2:12

and this could be pretty helpful

2:14

in terms of enabling people to

2:17

take a little bit more time to enjoy

2:19

things that they otherwise might just overlook.

2:22

So, you know, we did this study once where

2:25

we went to the Old North Church in Boston,

2:27

which is like a nice tourist attraction. It's

2:29

like pretty good, it's not the taj Mahal,

2:32

and we either made people feel like they had

2:35

traveled quite a lot in the past or like they'd

2:37

hardly ever gotten to do anything cool basically,

2:40

and then we measured how much time they spent

2:42

exploring this pleasant tourist attraction.

2:45

And what we found is that when people feel like they hardly

2:47

get to do anything cool at all, they spend

2:50

more time like savoring this small

2:52

tourist attraction. Right, And so you

2:54

know, I think that's potentially a cool thing about

2:56

COVID is that we may feel

2:58

like we have the time to sort of linger and

3:01

appreciate these sort of low key,

3:03

enjoyable experiences that otherwise we

3:05

might not. How can we get people to

3:08

like dig in and savor the moment? Right again,

3:10

normal holiday season? This is terrible, right, because I'm

3:12

running from thing to thing and I've got a million

3:14

things on my mind. Right, It's hard to be

3:16

there when I'm like making you know, gingerbread

3:19

houses with the kids, right, Like, like, how

3:21

do we have folks dig in and actually pay attention?

3:23

Well, I mean, mindfulness is one clear

3:26

way to increase savoring

3:28

of the moment, right, I mean it sort

3:30

of brings us out of because I think one thing with the holidays,

3:33

at least for me, you know, my parents

3:35

have split up, and so I've got multiple

3:37

extended families. I'm in the car

3:40

all day, bouncing from one town to

3:42

another in a typical holiday and

3:44

wherever I am, I'm just thinking about the next

3:46

place that I'm going to be in the last place

3:49

that I was. It sort of intensifies

3:51

this sense of existing outside

3:53

of the here and now, where we're anticipating

3:56

and remembering and not experiencing.

3:58

So, I mean, I think that anytime,

4:00

and this might be sort of a mundane

4:03

tip, but I mean I think anytime that you could just take

4:05

a couple of deep breaths, look around

4:07

you pay attention to the details of what

4:09

you're seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting,

4:11

smelling, Just to get yourself back

4:14

into your senses might be one way

4:16

to sort of turn down the volume

4:18

on how hectic everything feels. And the

4:20

key is, like you have to do that very explicitly,

4:22

I think in the modern age, right, you know, we all

4:24

want a multitask, but the act of monotasking

4:27

sometimes take some work, you know, like literally

4:29

like move your phone out of the room when you're doing

4:31

the gingerbread house with the kids so you're not tempted

4:34

to check your email and things like that. It sounds

4:36

so silly, but it can completely change the

4:38

experience that you're having. Oh and

4:40

don't worry about taking so many pictures.

4:42

Man, what people take just infinite

4:45

pictures. My wife's and you know, not

4:47

to throw under the bus here, but my wife's

4:49

camera role is like just a it's

4:51

like a trash heap. I mean, it's just ninety

4:54

pictures of every moment. It's like, I'm not ever

4:56

going to look through that. And in fact, you know, with

4:58

Diana Tamir, we ran a study

5:00

again, Liz, this is another study in a mundane

5:03

tourist attraction. But we had

5:05

people take a tour of the church

5:07

that's in the middle of Stamford, and

5:09

it was a self paced tour, and in some cases

5:11

we had students just leave their phone

5:14

with us and sort of be tech free

5:16

while they did the tour, and in other cases we

5:18

had them take pictures, and in a third case, we

5:21

forced them to log into their social media

5:23

accounts, take pictures, and then post

5:25

those pictures to their accounts. And

5:28

we found that people reliably remember

5:30

the event less if they documented

5:32

it, especially if they documented it in

5:35

order to share it later. And it feels like that's

5:37

just another super reliable way

5:39

to take ourselves out of the moment, is

5:41

to try to turn this moment into a future

5:44

memory by documenting it in

5:46

some way. And I think that's a huge

5:48

one. Right, It's not just our technology that's

5:50

distracting us, Like sometimes we are actively

5:52

and explicitly using our technology for things

5:55

that are going to make our memories and our experiences

5:57

worse. Yeah, all of these things make

5:59

them worse, and part because they divide our attention.

6:02

So happy experience as positive

6:05

experiences, need to be things that we are

6:07

focused on. The attentive too. That's what it

6:09

means to be mindful, as Jimmie was

6:11

saying, and divided attention pursuing

6:14

multiple goals at once just sucks,

6:17

just unpleasant. So behavioral scientists

6:19

like, help fix this, right, because I'm pretty sure everyone

6:21

who's listening is like, it's the holidays, it's

6:23

COVID, it's a pandemic. My attention is divided

6:26

naturally, right, Like, how do we get it back? So

6:28

I have one idea, which is give it

6:30

as a gift to somebody. Right, if your

6:32

spouse is always slightly annoyed by the fact

6:34

that you are like refreshing five thirty eight

6:36

or like checking the latest news, give

6:39

them three days where you put your phone away

6:41

and then you have to like it just and I think it

6:43

could also be really helpful in breaking the habit.

6:45

Right. So, I know, I, although I try to be

6:47

pretty good about not being on my phone all the time,

6:49

election season really got me in the habit of

6:51

just constantly checking it. And now I'm

6:54

having trouble stopping that habit. And so

6:56

I almost need, you know, an external force,

6:58

like having promised somebody as a gift that

7:00

I'm not going to look at it for three days. I need something like

7:03

that as like a phone cleanse, to like

7:05

break me out of this habit. Oh, I love

7:07

that idea is first of all, is the same

7:09

way I deleted Twitter from my

7:11

phone after hearing Lorie's episode

7:13

on that and then put it back for the election,

7:15

to my strong detriment. But I

7:18

mean, I think that in many cases we think of nudges,

7:20

you know, things that will change our behavior for the

7:22

better, and they're often focused on us,

7:24

so like put the salad closer than the chocolate

7:27

cake, for instance. But sometimes

7:29

some of the most powerful nudges are things that

7:31

actually are service to other people. So I think

7:34

there have been a couple of these studies where you

7:36

can have an app where like every mile you

7:38

run donate some amount of

7:40

money to charity, some very small amount of money

7:42

to charity, and that actually prompts people

7:44

to do the thing that's healthier for them by

7:47

leveraging their desire to help

7:49

other people. So I love the idea of

7:51

then wrapping that into the holidays as

7:53

well by saying, you know, everyone would benefit.

7:55

You know, my spouse, my kids, and I

7:57

would all benefit if I could just

7:59

get off my phone, So I might as well give

8:01

that as a hopefully not the only gift, but

8:04

it's it's a terrific idea. Often when

8:07

behavioral scientists thinking about how to change behave, we

8:09

try to think about situation management. How do

8:11

we change the environment we're in so that we

8:13

are more attentive to this moment.

8:16

So scheduling can be good

8:18

for this. Jamio was pointing out the challenge

8:21

of going from one family to another to another

8:23

and so on, and that's hard. But

8:26

COVID this holiday, you know, when we're

8:28

all in pandemic runs potentially

8:30

a different risk, which is we don't ever

8:33

commit to spending time

8:36

with some set of family members or friends

8:38

or people who would otherwise commit to And

8:40

I think that's critical to premit

8:43

get that on your schedule. So if normally

8:45

your family would come a day

8:47

or two before the holiday start

8:50

and stay with you, well, pre commit to

8:52

that, announced that and make sure that that has

8:54

set aside before and because if you don't do that,

8:57

it ain't going to happen. You just won't get

8:59

it done. And I think that's important to do also

9:01

for the subtle kinds of social connection

9:03

we get over the holidays that we forget right.

9:06

You know, every year I go with a

9:08

friend of grad school and we go to New York and we

9:10

go holiday shopping together and all the stores,

9:12

and it feels like during COVID we're not naturally

9:15

going to do that right now, But that's a kind

9:17

of social connection that I feel like if I don't put that

9:19

in, I'm going to miss out on it, right So think of like,

9:21

you know, the work parties and all the subtle

9:23

things that you're missing out on this year. How can you squeeze

9:25

that part into that seems really important? I

9:28

have a question for the group. So I totally

9:30

agree that it's critical

9:33

that we carve out time for

9:35

social connection in a time

9:37

that this holiday season we won't be

9:40

having it that much in person. But

9:42

I think there's something that is

9:44

unsatisfying about replacing synchronous

9:47

social connection with zoom. I mean, I

9:49

think if there's something that we don't need more

9:51

of in our life many of us, it's zoom

9:53

conversations. And they also are a

9:55

poor replica of meaningful

9:57

social connections in at least some ways,

9:59

right. I mean, when I go see my family

10:02

for the holidays, we don't just stand face

10:04

to face about eighteen inches apart, steering

10:06

at each other, having to sustain a

10:09

single conversation. Right. We just

10:11

sit around, watch a movie, have

10:13

some eggnog. It's much more low key.

10:16

And I wonder whether you all have thoughts

10:18

on how to replicate that

10:20

sort of not just connected feeling,

10:23

but a relaxed connection. We've got

10:25

these great electronic tools for connecting, but

10:27

they like they exert a type of pressure that

10:29

regular social interaction doesn't. Yeah, and

10:31

there're two pressures. One is the pressure of the

10:33

forcedness, right, like we're all facing each other, we're

10:35

all in a really specific spot, or are we, you

10:37

know? But the second is the setup

10:39

cost, right, which is high. Right, It's

10:42

not just like I'm going to run into you at work or

10:44

you know, if you're spending two days with the family. You're going to

10:46

run into them, right. You don't have to schedule like you're going

10:48

to walk downstairs and they're going to be there, right. And

10:51

so how do we get over those two kinds of costs?

10:53

So I think we can harness the pro social

10:55

idea here. So what has worked

10:58

for me is I have a group of friends.

11:00

We all live in Canada, but we're American,

11:02

and so we were getting together and doing volunteer

11:04

work leading up to the election, writing letters

11:07

to voters, and so that was a And

11:09

even though we were all crazy busy and we're saying no

11:11

to everything that anyone asked us to do, we

11:13

would get together on Sundays every Sunday and

11:15

do that together, sort of socially distanced out

11:17

on someone's deck, and that pulled us together

11:20

and it was really nice because we were there to do something

11:22

else like we would have had a hard time justifying

11:24

just all getting together to sit around and talk.

11:26

So that was really nice. And so we've just decided, you

11:29

know what, we're just going to keep doing it. And now that there's

11:31

a health order in place actually where I live, that

11:33

we can't even a few of us get together even

11:35

outside. We're going to do it over zoom,

11:38

which won't be nearly as good. But I

11:40

think it is nice that we're doing something else

11:42

and we're just there to kind of like support each other and

11:44

like, you know, run things by each other. And you

11:47

know, I think there is something really important

11:49

about being around other people without

11:52

having to be constantly maintaining a conversation.

11:54

So that's the brilliance of the

11:56

book club. Right. I'm not in

11:59

a book club, but my wife Jen is, and

12:01

you know, once a month or so, she gets together

12:03

with three of our friends. They're not even that close

12:05

friends, but they've gotten closer together through

12:08

this book club experience. They get

12:10

together once a month. Then they spend like a little

12:12

bit of time talking about the book, but mostly

12:14

they just spend time talking

12:16

about stuff, and it's wonderful

12:20

time for her. And one thing I'm

12:22

wondering is if something like that

12:24

wouldn't be possible during

12:26

this holiday season, so over

12:28

the month of December, say, if there couldn't

12:30

be short books like that with chapters,

12:33

advent stories or whatever, that

12:35

people might be able to get together with

12:38

their families and just read out loud to each

12:40

other. There will be some conversation

12:42

around it. It would be maybe

12:44

over zoom or over the phone, but you wouldn't

12:46

all be sitting there staring at it. It It would just be a speaker

12:48

in the room. The thing that's hard about zoom is

12:50

that we all have to be attentive to this thing. You

12:53

don't just have floating conversation. That's

12:55

one idea, But that's another thing I think we can

12:57

break nick, is this idea that we all have to be attentive.

13:00

I've been trying to do that in a forced

13:02

way by my family gets together every

13:04

Friday night and we do dinner together, and

13:07

like sometimes I'm busier, i haven't had a chance to

13:09

cooked inner yet and whatever, and I've just kind of done

13:11

this force thing of like I'm putting the Zoom on

13:13

while I talk to you, but I'm just walking around the

13:15

kitchen and I'm just cooking. Yeah. Right, At

13:17

first, when I started doing that, it was like out of

13:19

necessity because I hadn't potted anything yet, I'm

13:21

starving, I need to do something. But in

13:24

practice it worked really well for a couple reasons.

13:26

One is it allowed people to see the

13:28

informality of my life. Right, You're like, oh, we're in

13:30

the kitchen now, like, oh, you have this pot right, Like it's

13:32

not this sort of staged thing that we often set

13:34

up when we're zooming with people. But the other

13:36

is, like, you know, the conversations kind of go

13:39

the way they go when you're not trying to be really formal

13:41

about it, right. I think in the holiday season, where

13:43

we're so busy, that's a way to be social

13:45

while we're doing other stuff, while we're wrapping presents,

13:47

while we're making cookies or all the other stuff we need to

13:50

be doing. I feel like the moderate level of structure

13:52

that we're used to in like regular

13:54

conversations doesn't work well on zoom because we constantly

13:56

interrupt each other. And it's not us, by

13:58

the way, It's not just that we're like bad

14:01

at this one podcast.

14:03

Like I've talked to I've

14:06

talked to engineers that work in this world

14:08

basically on these issues, and

14:10

the problem is they just can't get the electrons to like

14:13

move fast enough so that there's constantly

14:15

this like teeny tiny microscopic

14:17

delay that's just enough to throw things off

14:19

such that it is very hard to have a fluid

14:21

social interaction with more than one other person. Therefore,

14:24

you can either go super casual like the kitchen thing,

14:26

where it doesn't really matter if you interrupt or you're not talking

14:28

all the time, or I've experienced you can

14:31

go higher levels of structure where you actually

14:33

have like, you know, an organized games.

14:35

So one of the few Zoom conversations I've really

14:37

enjoyed in the past six months was with

14:39

my friends where we took the questions from

14:42

that classic art Aaron's study where

14:45

people go deeper and deeper right asking

14:47

like if you could have dinner with one famous person, who would

14:49

it be? All you know, all of these questions and

14:51

I had my friends email

14:54

their answers to my husband, who made an Excel

14:56

spreadsheet for us of like everyone's

14:58

answers, but they were covered, and then

15:00

we had everybody's answers. We had everyone

15:03

on Zoom and each person had to guess who

15:05

had given which answer, and so there

15:07

was like structure to it, so nobody in disrupted,

15:09

but we also got to know each other better. So it was actually

15:11

an opportunity with my really good friends to go,

15:14

hey, there's probably some stuff we don't know about each other because

15:16

we've never answered these questions together. And

15:18

so in a way, if you induce a little

15:20

bit of structure, this like bizarre situation

15:22

can potentially give you an opportunity to get

15:24

to know your friends better than you would

15:27

in like the normal kind of world where we

15:29

just rely on our ability to have

15:31

a standard social conversation. And I think the structure

15:35

Just a quick aside and a note

15:37

on this, I've heard this as well from engineers

15:39

that in essence, as you put it, is really

15:42

beautifully the electrons just can't

15:44

go fast enough for us to really pick

15:46

up that millisecond level queue. To

15:48

me, though, that is such a credit to

15:51

mammals and our species in particular,

15:53

like we do this so quick. I mean, just

15:55

the fluidity of in prison interaction

15:58

is the thing, you know. I don't know about you all, but I

16:00

feel that when I do interact with someone in prison

16:03

after seven hours of zoom, it's like running

16:05

with a backpack on and then suddenly taking

16:07

it off, and you realize the facility that

16:10

we have for this. I hope that's something that we can keep

16:12

on savoring after we're all allowed to be

16:14

three dimensional again. You can also,

16:16

I think, improve the nature of these conversations

16:18

by kind of reducing the bandwidth requirements.

16:21

It's right that the electrons can't move fast

16:23

enough to move all of this video, but

16:26

audio works great. And in

16:29

a lot of experiments that we've run, the

16:31

sense of connection with another person doesn't

16:33

really come from seeing them, it

16:35

comes from hearing them. I mean, when you're connected

16:38

to somebody else, it's because you sort of know

16:40

them. And what does it mean to know somebody? Means

16:42

you know what's on their mind. And the closest

16:45

you get to somebody's mind through

16:47

their voice, through their words that they share with

16:49

you, that communicate what's on their

16:51

mind with you, it's not seeing their body or

16:53

their physical presence. So we can scale down

16:56

some of those bandwidth requirements and

16:58

go old school and use these old

17:00

phones for what they're actually good for, which is talking

17:02

to each other. Liz pointed out

17:04

that these zoom calls don't

17:06

work really well when you're with lots of other people,

17:09

but they can work really well in one on one

17:11

conversation. In lots

17:13

of experiments that we conduct, we have people

17:15

do like the art errand questions, we

17:18

have people discuss some of

17:20

the deep and meaningful intimate questions

17:22

that are there. We modify them a little bit and

17:25

We compare those against shallower conversations,

17:27

and it turns out that people really underestimate

17:30

how much they're going to enjoy deep and meaningful

17:33

conversation. Never

17:36

fear, the deep and meaningful talk is only

17:38

just getting started on the Happiness Lab Expert

17:40

Guide to the Holidays. When we return from

17:42

the break, Jamil, Nick, Liz and I will tackle

17:45

the thorny topic of what to do when

17:47

you're festive Holiday celebrations don't

17:49

go quite to plan. You guys can have

17:51

your compassion. I just like to yell out, Christmas

17:53

is ruined.

17:57

The Happiness

17:59

Lab Expert Guide to the Holidays will be

18:02

right back. When

18:08

we left the Zoom party, Nick Epley was explaining

18:11

how much we dread engaging in deep and meaningful

18:13

conversations with people, how

18:16

vital it can be for boosting our well being. Twenty

18:19

twenty has been an extraordinary year in so

18:22

many ways, but one of the aspects

18:24

I worry about most is how many of

18:26

us have come to dread engaging in just

18:28

the sort of open and honest dialogue. Nick

18:31

recommends. There are

18:33

so many heated, contentious and politicized

18:35

topics right now that even dinner

18:37

conversation with our families can feel like a

18:39

minefield. Luckily, Jamil

18:42

is a leading expert on how we can all do better

18:44

at navigating this during the holiday

18:46

season. For many of us, our families

18:49

are some of the only people that were really

18:51

close with who have very different

18:53

experiences, in very different backgrounds and beliefs

18:56

than we do, and bridging that is always difficult.

18:58

But I mean, right now, it just feels impossible.

19:01

And we've talked about this before,

19:03

Laurie, but I think we often underestimate

19:05

the utility of empathy in those conversations,

19:08

right. We often try to write people off

19:10

or think that there's no common ground, and

19:12

when we actually try to connect

19:15

and share stories and listen to people who

19:17

are different from us, it's not just that we

19:19

listen and feel happier we're actually we

19:21

end up often finding some common

19:23

ground that we didn't realize was there, and

19:25

maybe even being more persuasive.

19:27

In fact, my graduate student Louisa Santos

19:30

has this amazing work that she's just conducted

19:32

where she convinces

19:34

some group of people that actually, empathy

19:37

is a great tool for relating to people who are

19:39

different from you, and it actually can be effective

19:42

in helping you represent your own position

19:44

really well. She then tells a separate group

19:46

of people, you know, empathy is overrated in political

19:48

conversations. It doesn't really work. And then

19:51

she had those people who had read one of those

19:53

essays write a note to somebody who

19:55

they disagreed with about an issue. And then

19:57

we found people who actually disagreed with them

19:59

and had them read the notes, and we found that when

20:02

people were convinced that empathy was

20:04

useful, they wrote notes that were

20:06

perceived as more empathic by someone they disagreed

20:08

with. But it wasn't just that the person

20:10

they disagreed with was more persuaded

20:13

and came closer to the opinion

20:15

of the original note writer. In

20:17

essence, when we know that empathy is

20:19

useful, we use it and it

20:21

becomes useful. And I think that we

20:24

underestimate how useful it will be, and therefore

20:26

don't try to make connections, even

20:28

though there might be some to be made. One

20:31

critical component of empathy is

20:34

listening, rather than presuming

20:36

you know what's on the mind of another person. Jamil noted

20:39

that we often dread these kinds of conversations,

20:41

but it's important to recognize where that dread is

20:43

coming from. It's not coming from the actual

20:46

conversation we've just had with someone.

20:49

It's not coming from the actual connection

20:51

experience. It's coming from our expectation

20:55

of how this is going to go. We are playing

20:57

out this interaction, imagining

20:59

all of the stupid things that

21:01

they are going to say and all the hateful ideas

21:04

they're going to present to us. And usually

21:06

when you then end up talking to somebody like that, ask

21:09

them, Hey, I got to sing that's kind of

21:11

bugging me. Maybe we should talk

21:13

about or we got this kind of difficult conversation

21:15

that maybe we ought to have. You often

21:18

find well, I wasn't so bad

21:20

after all, At least we find that in our

21:22

research, because the mind that you imagine

21:24

in these difficult circumstances

21:26

or with these difficult relationships often isn't

21:29

quite as extremely bad as

21:31

you imagine, And you don't learn that if

21:33

you are just talking you have to be

21:36

listening to what the other person has to say.

21:38

Yeah. In fact, Mina Chakara

21:40

and others have found something that I

21:43

like to call phantom polarization. Right. I mean,

21:45

it's true that people are far apart on issues.

21:47

It's also true that there's a lot of animosity,

21:50

but even worse than that is what we imagine other

21:52

people to think about us. So if you ask

21:55

liberals, for instance, what do you think conservatives

21:57

believe about you? How do you think they feel about

22:00

you? They'll say, oh, my god, they hate my guts

22:02

entirely. They see nothing of value

22:04

in me. And if you ask conservatives, you

22:06

know, how do you feel about liberals? They don't love.

22:09

But it's they by no means feel

22:12

as much animosity as liberals

22:14

believe. That's and that goes in the other direction

22:16

as well. So to Nick's point, I mean, we're imagining

22:18

this conversation. We're making assumptions both

22:20

about this person's beliefs but also about

22:23

their beliefs about us, and we

22:25

might be wrong in both cases, but

22:27

we'll never know, and we'll never have a chance

22:29

to find any common ground unless we ask

22:31

them. And I think one of those spots this year in

22:33

particular, where we have a lot of kind of

22:35

negative expectations is around these conversations

22:38

that are specific to COVID right now. Right

22:40

like, one of the hard conversations I think a

22:42

lot of families are having right now is this,

22:45

should we get together? Maybe we're not going to get together.

22:47

Maybe different members of the family have different

22:49

expectations about whether it's a good idea to get together.

22:52

How do we navigate the sort of COVID

22:54

norms and COVID conflict during this time of

22:56

year. Here's my idea, which is that

23:00

this isn't for convincing a relative, it's just for sort

23:02

of managing this challenge. So where

23:04

I live, throughout most of COVID, we've

23:07

been able to get together, but only in small

23:09

group. So you've been allowed to have six people.

23:11

The challenge is that you're in this position

23:14

of like choosing your favorite people

23:16

in a way that has to be like super exclusive

23:19

and explicit, which is terrible,

23:21

right. So I proposed this idea to

23:23

my friends, which they did not go for, but I still think

23:26

it's a good idea, which is that we should

23:28

have like a pot luck where

23:31

basically everyone puts their name in a

23:33

hat and then you draw like five

23:35

people that are your safe six then

23:38

for that month. And what I think that does

23:40

is allows us to follow this rule

23:43

of like keeping our groups small, but

23:45

without implying that oh, because I

23:47

didn't choose you for my safe six, I

23:50

don't care about you, I don't like you because

23:52

we know that the sense of being socially excluded

23:55

is just devastating to people, even if

23:57

they know that, like, hey, there's a really good reason

23:59

for doing this right now, it feels awful.

24:02

And so I think acknowledging this upfront and creating

24:04

like a pool and then you know it, making

24:07

it explicitly random and like doing the

24:09

drawn zoom or something might

24:11

be a good way to go. Another avenue for convincing

24:14

relatives that might want to get together

24:16

and might not understand why it's not a great

24:18

idea to do so, is again to leverage

24:21

our desire to be kind to one another. There's

24:24

evidence now Juli and Jordan published some

24:26

work recently demonstrating that people

24:28

are more willing to engage in social

24:31

distancing if it's framed as a way to protect

24:33

other people as opposed to protecting

24:35

ourselves. So, for instance, you know,

24:37

my parents, they understand that we're

24:39

going to be having a distant holiday, but if they didn't,

24:42

it might not strike them that great as saying,

24:44

well, I don't want to be around you because I don't want

24:46

to get sick. Perhaps a more effective

24:49

message would be I don't want to be around you because I don't

24:51

want you to be sick, right, I want to protect you

24:53

from a potential risk here. Yeah,

24:55

I've heard this to you of like, you know, if something happened

24:58

to you, how could I ever think of Christmas the

25:00

same way? Again? You know, I really need to I

25:02

know this sucks right now, but kind of future us

25:04

is going to be so pleased that we did it this way kind

25:06

of thing. A different challenge of folks are facing

25:08

with COVID nineteen is that, you know, those

25:10

people who like the holidays and like Christmas.

25:13

That is not me, but that is some people. Nick Maybe

25:15

people are really grieving the fact that our holiday

25:17

traditions might be broken or really different

25:19

this year. Right, how do we kind of navigate

25:22

that? Do you mean our holiday traditions

25:24

of sort of togetherness or just all

25:26

kinds of stuff? Right? You know my family,

25:29

you know, often there's a Star Wars movie that comes

25:31

out around the holiday season, so typically

25:34

in December we get together and we watch the new Star

25:36

Wars or you go shopping at the mall with

25:38

your family members. Right, we have this

25:40

family tradition when I go visit my husband's

25:42

family in Iowa that we all go to Target together

25:44

because we've never sorted it out and gotten our shopping

25:46

done. So we always go on like Christmas Eve to Target,

25:49

but we each get a peppermint moocha at

25:51

the Target and it feels so nice and like it

25:53

sounds silly, but I'll actually miss the peppermint moocha.

25:55

It's like the best thing about Christmas season for me

25:58

personally, peppermutmocha. But yeah,

26:00

so how do we kind of navigate kind of just being sad

26:02

about those those moments and those traditions being

26:05

broken. So this is a good question.

26:07

Maybe for the group, we may have different opinions of at

26:09

this. I can see going one

26:11

of two ways here. One is to try

26:13

to recreate these right,

26:16

So you know, we can think of lots of different ways

26:18

where Laura, you could have your peppermint mocha.

26:21

You all set up a time and we're gonna go Wednesday

26:23

night at six o'clock and off we

26:25

go and get it. And you know that

26:27

there might be some experiences that we can recreate

26:30

like that that would be just as good as the original.

26:33

But there are a lot of experiences that we probably can

26:36

recreate, and for those, I think it's

26:38

probably best not to try. Like,

26:41

you know, a b plus version

26:43

of the holidays. It's you know, it's kind

26:45

of like what we used to do, but it's kind of

26:47

a sucky version of what we used to do. Like

26:50

that's not worth trying. Instead,

26:52

you'd be better off just doing something totally

26:54

different. We're going to come up with a totally

26:56

new thing that we're going to do just this

26:59

one weird holiday season.

27:02

I'm curious to hear what other folks think about about

27:04

this tension. Do we recreate and try to

27:06

come close or do we just scrap

27:08

it do something totally different. I'm on

27:10

the recreate side, I think, because

27:14

first off, if you have little kids, I

27:16

think they still want things to be

27:19

a certain way and to be familiar. And

27:21

so, you know, the most recent holiday that I experienced

27:24

was Halloween, and you

27:26

know, my eight year old had ideas about

27:29

exactly how everything should work because

27:31

that's how Halloween is, and it was freakishly

27:34

important to him that like things be that way,

27:37

and so you know, we actually not

27:40

to overindulge our child, but just with

27:42

these times being so weird, we really wanted

27:45

to try to recreate that for him. So we actually

27:47

managed to do most of the things

27:49

in the same way. You know, we still

27:51

went trick or treating, and there were things

27:54

we could do safely that I

27:56

think had enough of

27:58

the characteristics of the usual

28:00

experience. I said to my husband

28:02

at the end of the night, a trick or treating, Like, even though we

28:05

noticed so many differences tonight, it

28:07

had enough of those features. It will

28:09

feel like he had a Halloween this year. Yeah,

28:12

So that's part of it is trying to diagnose, like what are

28:14

the necessary features, right, And some

28:16

of it, you know, maybe we could recreate over zoom of

28:18

like, oh we're together in this other way, but some

28:21

of it's like, no, it's really about the candy, right,

28:23

Like if you don't have the candy, it just like doesn't count.

28:25

So I too would fall on

28:27

the recreate side. My dad and I also,

28:30

like we have a tradition of watching, you know, whatever

28:32

crappy blockbuster movie comes out right

28:34

around Christmas, and I think we'll probably contingent

28:37

on a seventy plus year old a man

28:39

being able to run this, try to do one of those

28:42

Netflix watch parties that you

28:44

can do. And likewise, my mom always cooks

28:46

proving food and so I'll try to recreate

28:48

some of it's like she's sending me recipes and

28:50

I'll try to make them, which you know will probably

28:53

cause some small explosion, but is still

28:55

worth it, and it's actually will be new for

28:58

me to do it instead of her and might be meaningful

29:00

in a different way. But if I could just add one

29:02

thing, I think we can try

29:04

to find fixes. We can try to either

29:06

recreate or we can do something totally new.

29:09

I'd like to also acknowledge that we

29:11

can also mourn the loss of this holiday

29:14

season, and that's okay. It's okay to focus

29:17

on the struggles that we're going through, acknowledge

29:19

them, and be mindful of them as well. I mean, that's

29:22

part of what self compassion entails, is

29:24

not just escaping suffering,

29:26

but paying attention to it and especially acknowledging

29:29

that it's a part of our common humanity. I mean,

29:31

I think in some of the self compassion exercises

29:33

that I do, for instance, you imagine something

29:36

that you're struggling with, something that's causing you pain,

29:39

and then you imagine a soccer stadium full

29:41

of other people who are suffering in the same

29:43

way right alongside you. And I mean,

29:45

there are enough people in the world that there's probably a

29:47

soccer stadium worth of us suffering in any

29:49

way at any given time. But I think this holiday

29:52

season, millions or

29:54

billions of us will be united in

29:56

the loss of things that we have celebrated

29:58

in our lives. And that's tough, but it's

30:00

also something that we share together,

30:02

and I think remembering that that's just a

30:04

common experience and focusing

30:07

on it in that way it can take a little

30:09

bit of the edge off of it. I also

30:11

think this is where the human capacity for

30:14

adaptation comes in really handy, because

30:16

I've been finding that experiences that normally

30:19

weren't that amazing to me, like going out

30:21

to dinner with a couple of friends, now I'm like, who

30:23

look at us out for dinner with two

30:26

friends. This is amazing, you

30:28

know. And so what might have been

30:30

a B plus Christmas in a normal

30:32

year might feel like an A because

30:35

we're grading it on the curve of

30:37

like our COVID level experiences.

30:39

And I would argue that we may have had a bit

30:42

of a happiness reset where it's easier

30:44

to derive joy from sort of

30:46

simpler, less impressive pleasures,

30:48

and we might be able to capitalize on that

30:51

in recreating some of these experiences. So

30:53

the last question before we kind of wrap up is,

30:55

you know, hopefully our listeners are putting into effect

30:57

all these holiday tips, but what if

30:59

it's an absolute disaster, you know, worst

31:01

holiday ever? Right? How do you pick yourself

31:04

up afterwords and recover? You know, I

31:06

come back to self compassion. I think

31:08

that this is just

31:10

unequivocally an unhappy time. If

31:12

you look at the Hedonometer, I

31:14

don't know if you if you all have seen. This is this sort

31:17

of device that computer scientists

31:19

and psychologists have put together that scrapes Twitter

31:21

and basically uses language processing

31:23

to estimate how happy the world

31:26

is. And they've had these estimates estimates

31:28

every day since two thousand and eight. And I mean,

31:30

we're just in far in a way, the least happy

31:32

year at least since since they've recorded

31:34

those data. And I think it's it's fine

31:37

to not feel okay right now.

31:39

It's it's a very common experience, and

31:41

it's common during the holidays in other

31:44

years. So you've got a compound. You're

31:46

getting this double whammy of the holiday season,

31:48

which can be stressful, plus twenty

31:50

twenty, which is stressful. And so I think if

31:53

if you're not feeling well, right now. Some acceptance

31:56

might be a good way to treat

31:59

yourself well, even even when you're not feeling

32:01

great. Can I shift gears on that

32:03

just a little bit? The self compassion part, I

32:05

think is a good point, but compassion

32:08

towards others is also a very critical

32:11

And if you've had a really bad

32:13

experience that you have been involved with, it's

32:16

possible that there's something that you've

32:18

done that you could apologize for, like,

32:20

look, I shouldn't have reacted that

32:22

way. We're all stressed.

32:24

I should have spent more time at this. I should. And

32:27

you can recover a lot by

32:30

saying I'm sorry.

32:33

And so if something has gone bad, you

32:35

know it's not likely that you're going to be the only

32:37

one who's responsible for it going

32:40

bad, but taking some ownership of

32:43

that and writing any wrongs

32:45

you may have contributed to by calling somebody

32:47

up and saying you're

32:49

sorry for what happened, and you hope this won't

32:51

happen again, and here's what we're gonna try to do to

32:53

make things better next time. I think that's how you

32:56

recover, and that's not just a bad holiday. That's

32:58

how you recover from anything you've screwed.

33:00

Up at is you accept

33:02

responsibility for what you did, and you grab

33:05

hold of your agency and you say I'm sorry for screwing

33:08

up. You guys can have your passion. I just like to

33:10

yell out Christmas is ruined, and that makes

33:12

me feel better. Remember

33:15

the Santo's family, because I feel like we might have

33:17

some Christmas is ruins.

33:24

Well. I think that gets to the last thing. Is this idea

33:27

that you know, one tendency this

33:29

holiday season is going to just be to

33:31

complain a lot, right, Like, there's

33:33

so much we're missing and our routines are messed up

33:35

and it's not the same as before. You

33:38

know, any strategies for either complaining

33:40

better or doing something that's a kind

33:42

of instead of complaining that might be good.

33:45

I would suggest complaining first and

33:48

then get it out of the way. All right, we've had that.

33:50

Now, let's get on with it and you acknowledge

33:52

it. As Jimill pointed out, it's good to acknowledge

33:55

when times are sucky, say that and

33:57

then get on with it. Onward,

33:59

Let's have holiday. Yeah. I mean, my wife

34:01

is a therapist, and you know she says that any

34:04

loss, not just the loss of people, but the

34:06

loss of experiences are things that you hope

34:08

for can be mourned, right,

34:10

And one interesting thing about

34:12

morning is that it's intense. You really

34:15

focus on it, and that makes it

34:17

easier to move on. So yeah, to

34:19

Nick's point, I mean, I think that complain

34:22

intentionally, right, Like, rather than have

34:24

this ambient thing that's floating around you

34:27

like pink pins, cloud of dust,

34:29

right, is just to do it intentionally,

34:31

really focus on what has been

34:33

lost, and then hopefully

34:36

that can help one cool. Yeah, And I think this is

34:38

where New Year's comes in handy. So, like, even

34:40

if the holidays don't go great, right, Like,

34:42

I mean, I think everyone's going to feel like, you know,

34:45

hey twenty twenty, don't let the door hit you on

34:47

the way day. And so I

34:49

think New Year's Eve, even though we're all probably just going

34:51

to be like home drinking champagne on our couches,

34:53

is going to be awesome because ce

34:56

in hell twenty twenty, right, and so

34:58

like it does, I think it's going to give

35:00

us this fresh start. So no matter how badly the holidays

35:03

go, we get to have that fresh start with like,

35:05

hey, twenty twenty one, it's already looking

35:07

better. Yeah, I don't want to say be worse, but

35:10

it is this. We know that things

35:12

like a new year arriving give us this opportunity

35:14

for a fresh start. So even if we've gotten into this like

35:17

complaining mode, like bitter modes,

35:19

it's unhappy mode, like okay, then

35:21

have at it throughout Christmas and everything,

35:24

but then when New Year's comes, like, use

35:26

that opportunity for that fresh start.

35:28

Thank you behavioral scientists for making one of my worst

35:30

holidays maybe a little bit better this year. I'll

35:33

text you on December twenty six and

35:35

I'll let you know how it went. It

35:38

was great fun, It was fantastic as always.

35:40

We got to do this every year or every major holiday.

35:44

Maybe we will make this a new tradition. I

35:46

really enjoyed hosting this virtual party.

35:49

But I'll let you in on a secret. It didn't

35:51

go as planned. The wine I sent my friends

35:54

is a thank you gift, never turned up, and

35:56

we had some technical hiccups that really ate into

35:58

the time we'd hope to use just for goofing

36:00

around. And yes, we talked

36:03

over each other by mistake a lot. Yeah,

36:05

like, oh

36:07

I love that idea. But on the whole,

36:10

I'm really really glad we made the effort, and

36:12

I hope you learned something that will make your holidays

36:14

a little happier despite all the challenges

36:17

of this really difficult year. The

36:20

Happiness Lab will return in twenty twenty

36:22

one. For that fresh start Liz was talking

36:24

about. Starting January fourth,

36:26

We'll bring you four special shows looking

36:28

at the things many of us get wrong when

36:30

we try to adopt that new year Knew you attitude.

36:34

I don't want to spoil any of the surprises, but

36:37

we've booked some amazing guests,

36:39

including some folks that I really

36:41

fangirl over. So thrilled that you

36:43

check time to join my podcast. Thank you so much,

36:45

It's very mutual the appreciation.

36:48

Oh thank you so

36:51

Until then, I wish you a happier

36:53

holiday season and here's

36:55

to a fantastic new year. The

37:02

Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan

37:04

Dilley. The show was mastered by Evan

37:06

Viola, and our original seasonal holiday

37:08

music was composed by Zachary Silver.

37:11

Special thanks to the entire Pushkin crew, including

37:14

Mia LaBelle, Carlie mcgliori, Heather

37:17

Faine, Sophie Crane, mckibbon, Eric

37:20

Sandler, Jacob Weisberg, and my

37:22

agent Ben Davis. The Happiness

37:24

Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries

37:26

and me Doctor Laurie Sanders