The Science of Happiness
This month, I’m sharing an interview with Yale psychology professor Laurie Santos. Laurie teaches a wildly popular class on the science of well-being and also hosts a terrific podcast called The Happiness Lab. In her class and on her podcast, Laurie explores common misconceptions about happiness. She also shares research that can help us live more fulfilling lives. Goodness knows we could all use a dose of Laurie's wisdom right now!
But before I share my conversation with Laurie, I want to express how excited I am to be celebrating the one year anniversary of publishing How to Change (anniversary selfie below). And I want to thank you for your incredible support! You helped make How to Change a national bestseller, and you also helped me revel in some really exciting milestones like its inclusion in the New York Times’ list of the top eight books of 2021 for healthy living and its translation into over 20 languages. I’m so grateful to you and overwhelmed by the book’s reach! If you’re not sure what to get a book mamma for her kid’s first birthday, consider leaving a review on Amazon or recommending it to a friend :)
As always, here are a few of my favorite recent listens and reads.
Recommended Listens and Reads
The Pitfalls of Non-Proportional Thinking: A recent Choiceology episode explores fascinating research on mistakes we make when thinking about numbers in absolute rather than percentage terms.
Fresh Starts and Resilience at Work: Google has created a new podcast about how to navigate workplace stress and uncertainty in these crazy times, and I really enjoyed joining as a guest on one of the show's first episodes.
The Books On My Nightstand: I encourage you to pick up some fantastic new books out this season by leading social scientists and friends. New titles on my nightstand include: The No Club, Don’t Trust Your Gut, Big Feelings, Why We Fight, and America Goddam. Happy reading!
Q&A: Using Science to Boost Your Happiness
In this Q&A from Choiceology, Yale psychology professor Laurie Santos shares science-backed tips on how to live a happier life.
Me: I want to start with some super practical topics and talk a little bit about how people can make themselves feel better daily. Things like physical exercise, meditation, and getting good sleep matter, right?
Laurie: Exercise is a really, really critical one. There are studies suggesting that a half hour of cardio a day is as effective as a Zoloft prescription for improving your depression symptoms, and that the endorphin boost you get from a half hour of cardio on Monday can last until Tuesday at 2:00 PM. I think we need to find ways to prioritize it, and I’d suggest getting creative. For example, find ways to exercise with friends via technology if you can’t in person. I've done this a lot with different yoga classes. Do yoga with a friend over Zoom or book a class together and meet with a friend in a different time zone who can work out with you. That allows you both to get your workout in, but it also can let you have social connection time.
In terms of meditation, I want to give you a fast biology lesson: Anxiety triggers the fight or flight system. It's the system that says, "Oh my God, shut off everything else about the way the body works so that I can run away really quickly from this threat." The good news is that the body has a stop gap, which is the parasympathetic nervous system. For whatever reason, the body gives us an awesome way to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and that's through our breath. During a threat, you tend to breathe shallowly and through your chest. But deep belly breathing, where we take the air in through our stomach and then let it out really slowly, can give your parasympathetic nervous system a moment to jump in and react. This isn't even meditation per se, it's just kind of getting your breath right.
Finally, it’s important to just realize how critical sleep is for our mental health. The data on sleep and mental health are shocking—you can spike your mood and your emotions simply by getting three to four hours a night of sleep for a week or so. I've started to develop some rituals, which research suggests can be powerful. Engaging in different rituals, even if they're kooky ones that you make up, can allow you to gain more control over something. And so I've started doing some kind of goofy sleep rituals. I have some nice lotions that have been sitting in my nightstand for forever that I've never used. Now, I’ve been using the lotions. I put my phone away, I put the lotion on. I try to be mindful and do a little mini meditation breath work and then I go to bed.
Me: Is it as harmful to our happiness as I suspect to spend lots of time on social media? And if so, do you have any tips on what we can do about it?
Laurie: Many of us have a habit of going on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter and doing a quick check when we’re bored. One of the things I've been trying to do is be really mindful and pay attention to how it's feeling in my body. Did that help or did that make me feel worse? And inevitably, whenever I've done that check lately, it’s been a bad idea. It spikes my anxiety, often right before I go to bed. So, I've put a moratorium on any social media after 6:00 PM. I've made a little spot in my room where I put my phone and I keep it really far away. I've brought out physical books ahead of time so that even if I'm planning to just read on my Kindle, I don't have the urge to do the quick social media check. And that's been so helpful for my anxiety levels, particularly before I sleep.
I've been trying to harness that into a new behavior. As you know, to replace habits, it's helpful to have a new behavior to go to. I've been trying, instead of going on social media, to text a friend. So, it's still going to my phone and doing something when I have this cue I want to act on, but instead of acting on it in a way that's going to bump up my anxiety, it's acting in a way that will help with social connection.
Me: I love that habit substitution. Use that cue of a social media craving and instead text a friend to build social connection. That's really helpful.
Laurie: Exactly. Same with going to bed. I think if I didn't have the cue of a physical book that I was excited to read, even if I put my phone somewhere, I would just get up and go look at my phone, right? By having this other thing that I'm looking forward to, that's an alternative behavior that I can just slot in. It's been really powerful.
Me: What can we do to boost our mental health when we face a serious crisis?
Laurie: If you're facing problems yourself, you've personally lost a job or you've personally started to feel sick, I think the key there is to realize that this situation, as awful as it is, is likely temporary. We know that people who've gone through really awful life circumstances have come out the other side. You might not think this, but people think it's a good experience in the long run to have lost a job.
There's lots of research showing that something called “temporal distancing” – which is thinking about yourself from the future – can allow you to realize that the problems you're going through in the moment will go away, but also that they can actually be a gift. Some of the worst things that people could imagine are the kinds of things people are going through right now, but it's worth recognizing that people who've been on the other side of those awful things report that they're happy they went through them. They wouldn't change it. Which is shocking, but it's a useful thing to remember when you're going through it, that people are grateful for even the worst of times.
Me: This is all so helpful. Thank you, Laurie.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
To learn more about how research on happiness can help you, listen to the episode of Choiceology where we dig into the topic or check out Laurie’s terrific podcast, The Happiness Lab.
That’s all for this month’s newsletter. See you in June.
Katy Milkman, PhD
Professor at Wharton, Host of Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, and Bestselling Author of How to Change