0:15

Pushkin, No,

0:20

I'm not nervous. Okay, I'm

0:23

nervous. My heart's over here. One

0:27

fateful day every spring, high

0:29

school seniors who've applied to Yale University

0:32

are invited to log onto a special website

0:34

to find out if they made it in. I'm

0:36

doing it now. Okay,

0:39

okay. Only

0:42

about six percent of applicants will get

0:44

good news. But for that lucky

0:46

few, it's time to celebrate. Some

0:55

students even post their reactions on YouTube.

0:58

It's kind of a thing. Oh my god, my

1:01

god. When

1:04

students find out they've gotten too Yale, that

1:06

all their hard work has finally paid

1:08

off and their college dreams have come true,

1:11

they are understandably, really

1:13

really, really excited. But

1:24

one students start attending college, all

1:26

that joy, all that relief they felt at

1:28

getting in, it fades pretty

1:31

quickly. I've

1:33

seen this firsthand, both as a professor

1:35

of psychology at Yale and as head

1:38

of one of the residential colleges. In

1:40

the last five years, rates of college

1:43

mental health problems have skyrocketed.

1:45

Nationally. Over sixty percent

1:47

of college students report feeling overwhelmingly

1:50

anxious in the past year, and over

1:52

fifty percent say they felt completely overwhelmed

1:55

in the past week. Rates

1:57

of depression in twenty year olds have doubled

1:59

since two thousand and nine, which is

2:02

crazy. Our country now has more

2:04

than twice the number of young people in serious

2:06

psychological distress than we did

2:08

just ten years ago, more than

2:10

twice the number. I

2:13

was horrified when I first heard these statistics,

2:16

and I really wanted to do something to help.

2:19

So I did a little digging and looked

2:21

it more and more of the research, and

2:23

I started to realize it's not

2:25

just college students. Many

2:28

of us feel like happiness is increasingly

2:30

out of reach, like we're doing everything

2:33

right, but something just hasn't

2:35

clicked. I

2:37

know that feeling well because at the time

2:40

I was experiencing it myself. I

2:42

mean I wasn't clinically depressed, but

2:44

I felt like something important was missing, like

2:47

I was doing something wrong, like I

2:49

wasn't as happy as I could be or

2:51

should be. Oh

2:53

Yale University professor is teaching

2:56

students around the world how science

2:58

can help them lead a happier life. So

3:00

I decided to develop a new class on the

3:02

science of happiness, a class I called

3:04

Psychology and the Good Life Life lessons

3:07

that could help students and all of us

3:09

be happier. The course was my

3:11

attempt to pull together everything I could

3:14

about the latest science of happiness and how

3:16

to achieve it. I packed it all together

3:18

in one convenient set of lectures, taught

3:20

it to my Yale students, and even through it online

3:22

for free. Now our teachings are spreading

3:25

well beyond campus. More than one hundred and

3:27

thirty eight thousand people around the world have registered

3:29

for the online version of the class. But

3:33

the class also taught me an important lesson.

3:36

Happiness is something that all of us can

3:38

acquire, but we need to go about

3:40

it the right way. We need to go after

3:42

the right things. That's

3:44

where the science and this podcast

3:47

can help. If

3:49

you want to learn what researchers are discovering about

3:51

happiness and how these lessons can make

3:54

real improvements to your well being, then

3:56

I welcome you to join me doctor Laurie

3:58

Santos for the first episode of

4:00

the Happiness Lab. It

4:13

was a cold Saturday night. I had just

4:15

gone home after driving hundreds of miles

4:17

to record one of the interviews you'll hear later

4:20

the season. I was pretty exhausted

4:22

and really really psyched to be home. But

4:26

when I unlocked my door, I noticed a strange

4:28

piece of mail at my feet, an

4:30

envelope addressed to me. The

4:33

stamps and postmark were foreign, but the

4:35

letter inside was written in English.

4:37

Dear Miss Santos, my name is Clement

4:40

and I live in France. In

4:42

the letter, Clement explained that he was feeling

4:45

defeated by life. He didn't

4:47

have the career, relationship or family he'd

4:49

yearned for. He said he felt

4:51

trapped in a tunnel of desperation, a

4:54

tunnel with no light and no end.

4:57

Sadly, this is not the first time I've

4:59

received messages like this. Since

5:01

teaching my class online, I've gotten letters

5:03

and emails like this from people around the world,

5:06

people who weren't feeling all that happy and

5:09

wanted to make a change. Clement's

5:11

letter was especially frank, though. He

5:14

told me that he'd pretty much decided that his life

5:16

wasn't worth living, and that he'd even

5:18

tried to kill himself. It

5:21

was at this lowest of low points that he

5:23

stumbled across my class to

5:26

tell you the truth. He wrote, I was not

5:28

convinced of the effectiveness of this course, and

5:30

I thought this was hippie Californian

5:33

well being crap. I

5:36

get this sort of skepticism from lots of people,

5:38

but the things I'm going to talk about in this podcast

5:41

really aren't crap or a bunch of platitudes

5:44

or a load of hippie dip bbs. This

5:47

podcast will share the latest scientific

5:49

findings, work that's been carried out by

5:52

my friends and colleagues at top universities

5:54

around the world. And what all this

5:56

research shows is that happiness is

5:58

possible even for people like

6:00

Clement, people who are in serious

6:03

psychological distress. The

6:05

problem, as well here in this podcast is

6:07

that we go about achieving that happiness the

6:09

wrong way, waiting and hoping

6:12

that our circumstances will change, that

6:14

a promotion or a romance will bring us

6:16

lasting happiness. None of that

6:18

works, at least not in the way

6:20

we think. It's just a lie that

6:23

our minds tell us. That's

6:25

what Clement was able to learn. Despite

6:28

his initial skepticism. Clement decided

6:30

to complete my online course. He

6:32

learned all about the science of well being and

6:35

how to put it into practice. It

6:37

has worked, Clement said at the end of

6:39

his letter. It has truly worked. People

6:47

write all the time about how my books

6:50

have changed their life I'm talking with Sony Lubermerski,

6:53

a professor at UC Riverside. She

6:55

wrote two classic texts on the science

6:57

of wellbeing, The How of Happiness

6:59

and the Myths of Happiness. Her

7:02

work has helped a lot of people, which means

7:04

she gets tons of letters like the what I got

7:06

from Clement. I mean, lots of people say that

7:08

they want to to kill themselves and they've been

7:10

saved by using these strategies. Some

7:12

people say they got married or divorced because

7:14

they wrote its something I wrote and now they're happier.

7:17

So I don't know. It's just weird to

7:19

feel like you have an influence

7:21

on people's lives and people

7:23

you don't know who are total strangers. But

7:26

at bottom line is that it's wonderful. We're

7:28

going to talk a lot about happiness in this podcast,

7:31

so I thought I should start by giving you a definition.

7:34

Since Sonia is pretty much the world expert

7:36

on happiness, I thought you would be a great person

7:38

to help. Essentially, happiness

7:41

has two components. The first component

7:43

has to do with the experience of positive

7:45

emotions. Right, so, happy people tend

7:47

to experience more frequent positive

7:49

emotions tranquility, enthusiasm,

7:52

joy, pride, affection, but

7:54

that's not enough. So a happy person

7:57

also has a sense that their life is good, that they're

7:59

satisfied with the way that they're progressing

8:01

towards their life goals. So you really kind of

8:03

need both of these components to be happy, and

8:05

I like to think of them as being happy

8:08

in your life and being happy with

8:10

your life. I love this definition

8:13

because it fits really well with how we'll think

8:15

about improving your happiness in the episodes

8:17

to come. What you can do to be happy

8:19

in your life, to feel better a lot of

8:21

the time, and with your life,

8:24

how you can experience more meaning and more

8:26

satisfaction. I also wanted

8:28

Sonya to walk us through an even tougher problem,

8:31

how can we actually measure our happiness

8:33

levels. Happiness is something that's subjective.

8:36

I wish there was something like a happiness thermometer,

8:38

but there isn't because happiness is something that only

8:41

really the person inside knows, which

8:43

means that scientists like Sonja have had to

8:45

come up with creative ways to track people's well

8:47

being. In the end, they usually

8:49

opt for a rather simple approach. The

8:51

gold standard for measuring happiness is

8:53

to ask the person if they're happy

8:56

so we sarch A stend to rely on self report, and we have

8:58

measures where we ask people, you know, how

9:00

often do you experience various positive emotions in

9:02

your life? How satisfy you with your life?

9:05

How happy are you? I've used similar

9:07

measures of well being with my students. Here's

9:10

a pretty straightforward one. I can give it to you

9:12

now. Taking all things together, how

9:14

happy would you say you are? From zero

9:17

not at all happy to ten completely

9:19

happy? Are you a nine

9:21

out of ten or more like a six?

9:24

Researchers have checked the validity of these skills

9:26

in lots and lots of ways. It

9:29

turns out that self report score you just

9:31

gave will correlate with all kinds of

9:33

real world stuff. It predicts

9:35

detailed timetables of your hour by

9:38

our emotional experience, and

9:40

what your family members would say if I asked

9:42

them how happy you were. Your

9:44

score even correlates with how often

9:46

you smile in daily life. The

9:49

upshot is that these seemingly simple questions

9:51

are much more rigorous than a silly BuzzFeed

9:54

quiz. They really are scientific

9:56

instruments. Using metrics

9:58

like these, researchers have learned that

10:00

our happiness levels matter more than

10:02

we think looks like happiness might

10:05

not just be sort of associated with things like more

10:07

money and better longer

10:10

life, more creativity, better

10:12

relationships, but it looks like that happiness might

10:14

actually cause some of those things. We

10:17

think that the good things in life, being rich,

10:19

feeling healthy, having lots of friends lead

10:22

us to feel happier, and they do to

10:24

a certain extent. But it

10:26

turns out that the causal arrow goes

10:29

in the other direction too. Feeling

10:31

happy leads to good life

10:33

outcomes. Happy people are more likely

10:35

to get married. Happy people

10:38

live longer, they're more creative, they're more

10:40

likely to be called back for a job interview. Consider

10:43

the case of money. We assume that wealth

10:45

brings happiness, but the science shows

10:47

we might have it backwards. One

10:49

recent study tested whether a person's happiness

10:52

level as a teenager predicts how much

10:54

money they'll be making as an adult. The

10:57

scientists tracks seventh graders in the US

10:59

for decades. Teens who

11:01

report the highest level of life satisfaction

11:03

at age twelve wind up having

11:05

a salary that's ten percent above

11:08

the average when they're thirty years old, but

11:10

seventh graders who report being really unhappy

11:13

have incomes that are thirty percent lower

11:15

than the average. Those teens

11:17

are still affected by their sad moods

11:20

more than a decade later. But

11:22

happiness early in life doesn't just lead

11:24

to more money later on. It also

11:27

leads to stronger relationships. One

11:29

of my favorite studies is called the Yearbook Study.

11:31

Women who showed more

11:34

genuine what are called Dushan smiles and

11:36

their yearbook photos when they're about age

11:38

twenty one were more likely to get

11:40

married at age twenty seven and

11:43

had more fulfilling marriages at

11:45

age fifty two. So it's kind of amazing.

11:47

If you're sort of positive and happy when

11:50

you're in college, you're more likely to have a good marriage

11:52

thirty years later. Those aren't

11:54

just isolated findings. The positive

11:56

effects of happiness are everywhere. People

11:59

who report feeling lots of positive emotions

12:02

are less likely to show cold symptoms

12:04

when they're exposed to a virus, and

12:06

one famous study of nuns found that

12:08

twenty some things who express the most happy

12:10

feelings in their diaries are four

12:12

times as likely to live into their nineties

12:15

as those who didn't express as many positive

12:17

feelings. I believe that the research

12:19

is pretty strong that happiness does matter. All

12:22

these results make me incredibly worried about

12:24

the college students I work with. They seem

12:27

to be unhappy all the time. They

12:29

constantly make themselves miserable stressing

12:31

about grades. They become so anxious

12:33

about their job prospects and future salaries

12:36

that they have panic attacks. All

12:38

this stress over their future lives is more

12:40

than just unnecessary, The

12:42

science suggests it's deeply counterproductive.

12:46

The research shows that if my students were

12:48

able to work on being happier, on feeling

12:50

better now, those job prospects

12:52

and salary levels might fall into place

12:54

more naturally than they expect. So

12:58

if we really want our circumstances to improve,

13:01

we may need to start focusing on improving our

13:03

well being rather than all that other stuff,

13:06

which raises a critical question, can

13:08

we actually we improve our happiness? The

13:10

science suggests that there is a genetic component

13:13

to happiness, but we have to sort of understand what that

13:15

means. So identical twins are much

13:17

more alike in their happiness levels than

13:19

our fraternal twins, and that suggests that there is

13:21

a genetic influence on happiness,

13:23

just like there's a gendic influence on weight

13:25

or blood pressure or whether you're going to develop

13:28

depression or schizophrenia. Just

13:30

because something is heritable or has

13:32

a genetic influence doesn't mean that we can't change

13:34

it. The way I see it is that if

13:37

someone has a disposition that

13:40

leads them to be on the more unhappy

13:42

side, they can become happier, but

13:44

they have to work harder at it. There's

13:47

this myth out there that happiness is something

13:49

either you either have it or you don't, and

13:51

I just think that's wrong. And this suggests

13:54

something really important, a premise

13:56

that forms the basis of this entire podcast.

13:59

There is no real biological barrier

14:01

to being happier. We can change.

14:03

We can all feel more joy. The

14:06

problem, though, as well hear after the break,

14:08

is how we go about changing those happiness

14:10

levels, Because even though the science

14:13

shows we can improve our well being, it

14:15

doesn't work in the way we often think. Winning

14:18

the Nobel Prize doesn't make you happier,

14:20

Winning the lottery doesn't make you happier. It's

14:23

not the things we imagine. It's

14:25

not the shiny babbles that makes us

14:27

happy. The Happiness Lab

14:29

will be right back, okay,

14:39

sweet, So we're recording. So my

14:42

name is Bob Waldinger. I'm

14:45

a professor of psychiatry at

14:47

Harvard Medical School. I

14:49

met Bob at a workshop on the state of well Being

14:51

in America run by the Arthur Blank Foundation.

14:54

I nervously asked if I could grab a few minutes

14:56

with him in the gardens outside. I

14:58

felt like I was meeting a rock star. Not

15:01

because Bob has one of the top ten most

15:03

watched TED talks of all time, but

15:05

because Bob is the director of what is perhaps

15:08

the coolest study of human happiness

15:10

ever conducted. I direct

15:12

a study called the Harvard Study of Adult

15:14

Development. It is, we think,

15:17

the longest study of adult life

15:19

that's ever been done. It's

15:21

a study that began in nineteen thirty

15:24

eight, so eighty years ago.

15:26

The project started as an attempt to learn

15:28

about all the possible factors that lead

15:30

to high well being later in life.

15:33

The researchers started by recruiting a group

15:35

of subjects who enjoyed every privilege

15:37

imaginable, Harvard College

15:40

sophomores from the classes

15:42

of nineteen thirty nine to nineteen

15:44

forty two. Their deans

15:47

chose them as among the best and the brightest

15:49

young men and thought they

15:51

would be suitable subjects

15:53

to study how

15:56

people develop as healthy

15:58

young adults, but the researchers

16:00

also wanted to study not so healthy

16:02

development. They recruited four

16:05

hundred and fifty six boys

16:07

from the poorest naighborhoods

16:09

in Boston, and not just from

16:11

the poorest neighborhoods, but from the families

16:13

that had the most trouble familiar mental

16:16

illness and domestic violence and

16:19

lots of other social problems, and

16:22

so they wanted to follow these children

16:24

to see what happened to them. Overtime,

16:28

two groups of subjects from very

16:30

different backgrounds who'd be followed in

16:32

as much detail as was humanly possible.

16:35

The researchers collected health information

16:37

from the participants doctors. They surveyed

16:39

the subjects every two years, asking

16:42

them questions about their lives and their happiness.

16:45

In later years, they added blood tests,

16:47

chest X rays, echo cardiograms,

16:49

and even brain scans. The

16:52

men were followed through their entire lives,

16:55

which means scientists can now explore how the

16:57

men's physical and mental health changed

16:59

across different life stages. We

17:02

can see how subjects felt when they got married

17:04

and had kids, or got divorced or widowed,

17:06

or had their first grandkids. We can look at

17:08

how well being evolved as participants started

17:11

new jobs, when they reached different career

17:13

milestones, or even when they retired.

17:16

The study was also big enough that it included

17:18

some amazing individual subjects

17:20

too. We're not really supposed

17:22

to know their identities, but one of the studies

17:25

participants served in a presidential cabinet,

17:28

one was a longtime editor of the Washington

17:30

Post, and one became

17:32

President of the United States. Yep.

17:35

John F. Kennedy was one of the studies

17:37

participants. The

17:39

study has now even extended beyond

17:41

the original sample. Researchers have

17:44

begun following the men's children, which

17:46

means the research will now be able to capture

17:48

multiple generations of both men

17:51

and women. Bob was captivated

17:53

from the moment he heard about the study. As

17:55

a young med student. My

17:57

predecessor, George Valiant,

18:01

lectured to my first year medical

18:03

school class and he told

18:05

us about the study and it like, I'm basically

18:08

a voyeur, like hearing about

18:10

people's lives and what they do. So when

18:12

George started talking about this, I just thought,

18:14

oh my gosh, this is the

18:16

coolest thing ever. And then fast

18:19

forward about

18:21

twenty years, doctor

18:23

Valiant took me out to lunch one day

18:26

and said to me, how would you like to inherit

18:29

the study of adult development? And that's

18:31

how he started out. Bob

18:33

has now served as the studies director for more

18:35

than fifteen years. He's

18:37

watched the original generation of subjects transition

18:40

from their late adulthood into their elderly

18:42

years. Two hundred and sixty

18:44

eight Harvard undergraduates started,

18:47

only about twelve are still living, and they

18:50

are in their mid to late nineties. Four

18:52

hundred fifty six inner city

18:54

boys started, and about

18:57

sixty of them are left, and they are

18:59

around the age of ninety. Hundreds

19:01

upon hundreds of data points a

19:04

nearly complete picture of health and well

19:06

being across many different life

19:08

paths, and so you're probably

19:10

wondering what did the study find.

19:13

Some of what the study has found is absolutely

19:15

no surprise to anyone. We

19:18

know that smoking is bad for you,

19:20

and it turns out in our study it was really

19:23

bad for you. We know that alcoholism

19:25

is terrible. It takes a toll

19:27

on your health, you die earlier. It

19:29

takes a toll on your marriage, on your

19:32

job, on your relationships. Again,

19:34

no surprise. What was

19:36

the big surprise. It's all the things

19:38

we think make us happy, but don't.

19:41

Wealth does not make people happy.

19:44

Having your material needs matt does

19:46

make you happy once you get

19:48

there. Making more money doesn't

19:50

make you appreciably happier. But

19:53

that's not the only misconception we have about

19:56

what makes for a happier life. The other

19:58

thing is achieving more at work.

20:00

There's a reason why

20:02

we have this cliche. Nobody

20:05

on their deathbed wishes they spent more

20:07

time at the office. It's a shake

20:09

because it's true. Our men,

20:11

as they were looking back on their lives as

20:13

they were at the end of their lives, said

20:16

that the things they were proudest of were

20:19

building a family, raising healthy

20:22

children, having a strong relationship

20:24

with a partner, teaching their

20:26

grandchildren to sail. I mean, these

20:29

were the things that they talked about. They didn't

20:31

talk about what they'd achieved at work or how much

20:33

money they'd made. Bob studies showed

20:35

that the keys to happiness don't involve

20:37

what we often put time into to become happier,

20:40

financial achievements so we can buy cool stuff

20:43

or working harder to achieve more in our careers.

20:46

In fact, his results show that health

20:48

and happiness often comes from the things

20:50

we sacrifice, while spending more hours

20:52

at work. The surprise was

20:56

in our finding that one

20:58

of the strongest predictors of

21:01

staying healthy and happy in your life

21:04

was having good relationships

21:06

with other people. We

21:09

think of happiness, we often think of self

21:11

care, but Bob's study shows that focusing

21:14

only on yourself and turning too

21:16

far inwards is a recipe not only

21:18

for misery, but for physical health problems

21:20

as well. We didn't believe it

21:22

because initially we thought

21:25

that there couldn't be this

21:28

strong of a connection between mind

21:30

and body. How

21:32

could the quality

21:34

of your relationships determine

21:37

whether you got Type two diabetes,

21:39

or whether you got arthritis, or whether you got

21:42

coary artery disease. That seemed

21:44

unfathomable. The big

21:46

message of Bob's study is that we consider

21:48

many of the things that actually matter for happiness

21:51

to be well unfathomable, or

21:53

at least way lower on the priority list

21:55

than they really should be according to the science.

21:58

And if you'll listen to the rest of the episodes in

22:00

this season, you'll see the same pattern

22:03

time and time again. Our minds

22:05

just suck at predicting the kinds of things that

22:07

will really make us happier, and that

22:09

means we end up putting a lot of time and effort

22:11

into improving our happiness using strategies

22:14

that just aren't going to succeed. I

22:17

can't stress enough how amazing the Harvard study

22:20

is. It delved deeply into the lives

22:22

of some of America's most privileged and some

22:24

of its most vulnerable, and pretty

22:26

much proved that the rich and powerful have

22:28

no monopoly on well being. That

22:32

may go against your intuition, but it's true.

22:35

Though there is a caveat. When I ask Sonia

22:37

Lubramerski to weigh in on I

22:39

would add that everything that I say applies to

22:42

let's say, the average listener of this podcast.

22:44

That's you know, people who are already relatively

22:47

comfortable. You know they're not in dire

22:49

straits. If your situation is

22:51

very bad, if you live in poverty,

22:54

or if you're in an abusive relationship, or

22:56

if you live in a war zone and Yemen,

22:58

then of course changes your life. Circumstances

23:01

are going to make a huge difference to your happiness.

23:04

If you're a circumstances are truly awful,

23:06

then fixing them really will improve your well

23:08

being. But I'm guessing your circumstances

23:11

really aren't all that bad. You

23:13

average podcast listener probably

23:15

aren't in the kinds of awful situations Sonya

23:18

is talking about, and that means that changing

23:20

your circumstances won't help

23:22

in the way you think. Note that

23:24

this doesn't mean your circumstances are perfect.

23:27

All of us have situations we want to change,

23:29

ones we think will make us happier. I'm

23:31

not happy now, but I'll be happy when

23:34

I moved to that city I've always wanted to live

23:36

in, or when I get married, or

23:38

when I have a baby, or when I get that job I've

23:40

always wanted, or when I get a raise. The idea

23:43

that happiness lies in money or sort

23:45

of changing your life in some way, doing something

23:47

new in your life, I mean, I think that is a very strong

23:49

idea again, kind of rooted in this this concept

23:52

that we always want change in progress,

23:54

even if we really know that it's a myth. Overcoming

23:58

the strong but mistaken idea

24:00

is what this podcast is all about. But

24:03

the second step is harder. Happiness

24:05

doesn't evolve changing everything in your life around.

24:08

That's the good news, But as we'll

24:10

explore after the break, there is some

24:12

bad news too. It's not easy. It takes

24:14

work. It's kind of like if you want to lose weight

24:17

or would be healthier, right, you need to change your diet

24:19

or go to the gym, and same thing with happiness.

24:22

The happiness lab will be right back. Right

24:35

now, I'm out of breath because I'm on my daily

24:37

hike at a local state park. I always

24:39

love going on the hike. After the fact, it's usually

24:41

not what I'm thinking when my alarm goes off every

24:44

morning when I throw my sneakers on, my

24:47

brain tells me that I'd be happier staying

24:49

in bed or even sitting on the

24:51

couch or watching the news. But

24:54

I know the science, and the science shows that

24:56

I'll be healthier, more fit, and

24:58

probably even happier if I get a bit of

25:01

cardio and every morning. So I try

25:03

to get in a hike every day, or at least

25:05

as often as I can, even

25:07

though my mind often otherwise.

25:10

The science of happiness works

25:12

a lot like the science of exercise. It's

25:15

not enough to know what you need to do. You've

25:17

got to go and do it. You

25:19

need to put that science into practice, and

25:22

you need to practice it regularly.

25:27

I generally say that I'm about an eight

25:29

on a ten point scale. I think I'm

25:31

pretty happy. Even a happiness

25:33

expert like Sony Lubra Murski knows

25:35

firsthand that reaching an eight and staying

25:37

there takes conscious effort. I do

25:40

have to work at it. I mean, a classic example is

25:42

sometimes I get together with friends and it's so

25:44

great, it's so much fun, and

25:47

we think, why don't we do this more often? You know? But then

25:49

it takes like months for us to sort of get

25:51

together again and to plan it. And so

25:53

even when we know what will make us really

25:55

happy, we still kind of don't do it as often as

25:57

we should. I have to kind of put it in my to do list

26:00

to make sure that I create

26:02

times that I spend with those people. So it's

26:04

a very deliberate act. It'd be so

26:07

nice if happiness came easily, like

26:09

we hang out with a friend once and we're happy for good.

26:12

But that's just not how human wellbeing works.

26:15

Women's magazines will often call me and they'll

26:17

say, can you give me some five minute

26:19

happiness strategies? And I'm

26:21

like, there are no five minute happiness strategies.

26:24

It's true with any kind of goal in life, right, it's

26:26

not going to happen in five minutes on Thursday,

26:29

right, It's going to be you know, maybe

26:31

a lifelong effort and so yeah. So

26:33

like creating habits, I guess would be one

26:36

way to put it that it's important to create habits

26:38

that you maintain over the course of your life.

26:41

There's no quick fix for happiness, but

26:43

science shows there is a fix if

26:45

you put in consistent time and effort if

26:47

you want to become happier. There now

26:50

a number of sort of strategies are different

26:52

kind of daily activities that people can engage

26:54

in that they've been tested in research. We just

26:56

need to pick the strategy that works for us.

26:59

If you listen to the rest of the episodes in this

27:01

season, you'll learn a bunch about these

27:03

sorts of activities what my students and

27:05

I call rewirements, habits that

27:08

science has shown really can change your

27:10

well being over time. The ones that

27:12

I tend to focus on and actually quite a bitter

27:14

we start just focusing on our gratitude

27:16

and kindness or what's called pro social behavior.

27:19

Those are two activities or you

27:21

can call them strategies that have

27:23

been shown to make people happier. But

27:25

it's not just gratitude and kindness. Science

27:28

shows us lots of really simple habits

27:30

we can add to our lives to feel better. We

27:33

can take more time to connect with the people we care about,

27:35

or just chat with a stranger we meet on our commute.

27:37

We can try to reduce the exhausting choices

27:40

we make on a daily basis. We

27:42

can count our blessings. We can become

27:44

more accepting both of the bad emotions

27:46

we feel and the obstacles we face in

27:48

life. We can stop focusing on the

27:50

end goal and think more about the journey.

27:53

Now, if you're like me when I first

27:55

encountered these ideas, you might have

27:57

the same reaction that our friend Clement had in his

27:59

letter. You might think these strategies I

28:01

just mentioned sound like hippie dippy crap,

28:04

because to be fair, they do sound

28:07

like hippie dippy crap. You gradudate

28:09

seems really hokey. You know, counting your blessings, Oh,

28:11

I'm so grateful for XYZ. The

28:13

problem is, as hokey as these strategies

28:16

sound, they work. That's what

28:18

the science shows it used to be why

28:20

I started out. You know, there are all these selful books

28:22

that are'm based on nothing like they're just based on anecdotal

28:25

evidence and people's opinions. We

28:27

can't just look at anecdotal evidence, right, You know,

28:29

your cousin told you that they

28:31

tried it and it works. And they're now tons

28:34

and tons of experiments, randomized control trials

28:36

that are sort of trying to test whether you can

28:38

get people to kind of change their thinking or change

28:40

their behaviors in some smaller medium

28:42

ways in daily life that could impact

28:45

happiness. The

28:48

problem is most people on the street

28:50

don't know this stuff, and I wanted to change

28:53

that. I wanted people to hear what pure

28:55

reviewed scientific research shows about

28:57

becoming happier. Starting with

28:59

my Yale students. All right, let's

29:02

get started. In the spring of twenty eighteen,

29:05

I had a chance to see if teaching

29:07

my students about the science of happiness could

29:09

lead them to live happier life. Welcome everybody

29:12

to Psychology and the Good Life. I

29:14

expected about thirty people to take the class,

29:17

but I wound up with a lot more guinea pigs than I

29:19

expect it. I'm a little bit surprised

29:21

to see as many of you are here as our here, but

29:23

that's made almost twelve hundred students enrolled

29:26

in the class nearly one out of every

29:28

four students at Yale. The class was

29:30

so big we had to teach it in the university

29:32

concert hall. That tiny polite

29:34

ripple of applause you might get at the end of a lecture,

29:37

well it turned into this. It

29:46

was an amazing experience, but

29:48

it was also a logistical nightmare. I

29:50

had to find twenty eight graduate students

29:53

just to help me grade the student exams, and

29:55

we needed to book thirteen different classrooms

29:57

all over campus just to host a simple

29:59

midterm. I jogged over two

30:01

miles just to get to all the students

30:04

before the exam ended. And

30:06

that was the commotion that came before all

30:08

the us started. Each night, students

30:11

have happiness, homework, meditate

30:13

for ten minutes, sleep eight hours,

30:16

do something kind, and write

30:18

down five things that you're grateful for. But

30:20

don't think it's an easy egg. By

30:23

midterm, I had a major television

30:25

news crew filming each and every one of my

30:27

lectures. It was a lot of pressure, But

30:30

I bet I know what you're asking. Did it

30:32

work? Did the students get happier? Well?

30:35

The answer is I don't know. At

30:37

least I'm not sure from a scientific perspective.

30:41

Anecdotally, I have dozens of emails

30:43

from students telling me the class changed their

30:45

lives. But the honest truth is

30:47

that I was completely blindsided by the size

30:49

of the class, which means I didn't get

30:51

the logistics in place to do the rigorous

30:54

surveys that would really nail my students progress

30:56

down. In retrospect, I

30:58

can say that this oversight was really,

31:00

really freaking dumb. Life doesn't

31:02

usually give second chances for a scientific

31:04

opportunity like this, but Yale decided

31:07

there was a need for this class to be shared even

31:09

more broadly, so we put it online

31:11

completely for free. This time, we could

31:13

track people's progress a bit more rigorously,

31:16

but the question remained would it work.

31:19

My manager said, hey, we have this

31:21

new course with Lori Santo. She's working

31:23

on it. It's going to be about wellness. What do you think

31:25

about working on it? And of

31:27

course I felt like I had no choice in the matter, but

31:29

even if I did, I willingly and

31:32

gladly accepted. This is Belinda

31:34

Platt, my colleague at the Yale poor Vous Center

31:36

for Teaching and Learning. Belinda

31:38

has been my partner for the past two years as

31:40

I've tried to figure out the best way to teach people

31:43

around the world about the science of happiness.

31:45

Belinda's amazing. Her hard work

31:47

is a lot of what's made the online class so successful,

31:50

but neither of us expected the response we

31:52

got. I had no idea

31:54

how popular it would become at

31:57

all, just because none of the other courses

31:59

that we've worked on made

32:01

such a splash. The enrollment is

32:04

well above three hundred thousand, which

32:06

is super cool. Yeah, that's pretty

32:08

crazy, but like with my nerdy scientists

32:10

had, I really want numbers. And one of the

32:12

craziest things about the course is actually

32:15

like the data that we're getting.

32:17

When students enroll in our online class, they

32:19

take a standard well being survey. The specific

32:22

one we use is called Perma. It's a

32:24

twenty three question survey that measures

32:26

people's overall happiness, their mood levels,

32:28

their sense of accomplishment, and even their sense

32:31

of meaning. Students are asked

32:33

to take the Perma quiz before they start

32:35

the class, and at the end of the course ten weeks

32:37

later, excitingly, we just got our

32:39

first round of data in over a thousand

32:41

subjects. We finally have a

32:44

scientific measure of whether learning about

32:46

the science of happiness can change people's

32:48

well being? What did we find? We

32:51

just have the graphs here,

32:53

the papers moving around, and the data

32:56

are amazing, frankly,

32:58

so on every different measure,

33:00

from positivity to engagement to

33:02

meaning to just general happiness, people

33:05

get better. The gains are really huge.

33:07

Like on a ten point scaleple are going up an

33:10

entire whole point in terms of how much meaning they

33:12

feel like they have in their life. But on the happiness measure,

33:14

people are starting it about you

33:16

know, a six point five on the happiness

33:18

measure, which is you know, reasonable, and then after the

33:20

class people are saying, I'm about a seven point nine,

33:23

which is so cool. The awesome thing about these data

33:25

is it suggests people can change. Like this is

33:27

a ten week class and people are bumping

33:30

up a whole point on a happiness measure, which

33:32

is incredible. Yeah, but why is

33:34

the course changing people's lives. It's

33:36

not just that people learn about the science of well

33:38

being. Like when we first started teaching the

33:40

live version of the class at Yale, the

33:42

Yale students had this hashtag hardest class

33:44

at Yale, And that was not because the class was hard,

33:47

like in terms of degrading but it was really

33:49

hard in terms of actually doing the practices, because

33:51

like, it's one thing to know that you're supposed to do

33:53

this stuff, but it's another to actually put it into

33:55

practice. I think that's one of the ironies.

33:57

Well, what I want to know what you're working on. Yeah,

34:02

but Linda's question caused me to stammer a

34:04

bit. I've been so busy with this podcast.

34:07

I've been slipping in my own practices. Even

34:09

that daily hike had turned into a weekly

34:12

hike or bi weekly.

34:14

I mean, this is the challenge, is the thing we talked about in the course.

34:16

I know all the stuff that I'm supposed to do, but I'm definitely

34:19

not the like poster child for like

34:21

putting into practice all the time, which

34:23

is embarrassing as the person who's teaching

34:25

the course and like now running this new podcast. That's

34:28

right, that's the dirty secret. Even

34:30

yours truly has trouble sticking to these new

34:33

positive habits. Human nature and

34:35

our lying minds makes changing our behavior

34:37

super super hard. That's

34:39

also why Belinda and I spend so much

34:41

time chatting about all the reviews from

34:43

the class, to keep reminding ourselves

34:46

that this stuff works if

34:48

you stick with it. I love the ones where they're

34:50

like, I didn't really believe

34:52

this, but then it totally worked.

34:54

Those are the best. Don't you have a favorite

34:57

one that said, like I thought this was

34:59

like hippie dippy. Yeah, that's

35:01

actually one from a letter I got

35:03

from a learner named Clement. I think he said

35:05

it was like hippie dippy crap. But

35:08

you know, right, Clement. It

35:10

had been a few months since I'd received his letter,

35:13

and I put off contacting him because

35:15

I know how hard it's been for me to stick with these

35:17

habits. Given where Clement started

35:19

off, I was worried he might have fallen back into

35:22

some negative stuff, But in the end

35:24

I decided to phone him up. Hello,

35:29

Hello, is this Clement? Hello

35:32

Loie. The international connection was kind

35:34

of crappy. I had to shout a lot,

35:37

how are you? Can you hear me? I

35:39

can hear you better? Yeah, I'm good, very good,

35:41

very good. But despite

35:44

the connection, our chat was fantastic.

35:46

Clement had stuck to his new habits, mostly

35:49

because he got the important message

35:51

of this episode, happiness takes

35:53

work, good never

35:56

keep off. But you're

35:58

calls really helped me. Mercy,

36:02

Mercy, we

36:04

appreciate it. Thank you, talk to you

36:06

soon, Bye bye, bye bye.

36:10

I spoke with Clement for probably half an

36:12

hour, and we covered a lot of ground

36:14

in our conversation. But the thing he

36:16

said that stayed with me the most was that

36:19

he knew being happy wasn't going to be easy.

36:21

It was going to take a lot of effort to maintain,

36:24

but he didn't plan to give up trying, and

36:26

that, for me, at least, was pretty inspirational.

36:36

If you're now ready for the specifics, if

36:38

you want to learn more about what those happy people

36:41

really are doing to feel better, then I hope

36:43

you'll come along for a journey over this season.

36:45

In each of the episodes that follow, we'll

36:48

take a deep dive into a single mistake

36:50

that our minds make about how to really achieve

36:52

happiness. We'll explore lots

36:54

and lots of simple habits you can begin now

36:57

to improve your well being. We'll get to nerd

36:59

out together and learn more about all the

37:01

studies that show why these habits work. Plus

37:04

you'll meet lots of folks who put these tips

37:06

into practice, an Olympic medalist

37:09

who didn't fall prey to social comparison, an

37:11

advertising exect who got healthier by

37:13

ditching the silly choices she makes every day,

37:16

a Grammy winning musician who's fighting to

37:18

make our lives more social again, a

37:20

star golfer with the secret to avoiding

37:22

unwanted thoughts, and a Navy

37:24

seal who realized that her training and negative

37:26

thinking might be more powerful off

37:28

the battlefield. Simply put,

37:31

it's going to be awesome. So I hope I'll

37:33

see you back here for the second episode of

37:35

The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie

37:37

Santos.

37:45

If you enjoyed the show, I'd be super grateful

37:47

if you could spread the word by leaving a rating

37:49

and a review. It really does help

37:51

other listeners find us, and don't

37:53

forget to tell your friends. If

37:56

you want to learn more about the science you heard on the show,

37:58

then check out our website Happiness Lab

38:00

dot fm. You can also sign up for our newsletter

38:03

to get exclusive content. The

38:05

Happiness Lab is co written and produced by

38:07

Ryan Dilley. The show was mixed and mastered

38:10

by Evan Viola and edited by Julia

38:12

Barton, fact checking by Joseph

38:14

Friedman, and our original music

38:16

was composed by Zachary Silver. Special

38:19

thanks to Mia La Belle, Carly mcgliorre

38:22

Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor, Maya

38:24

Kanig, and Jacob Weisberg. The

38:27

Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries

38:29

and ME doctor Laurie Sanders