Episode 551: Dr. Laurie Santos: How Modern Life Hijacks Your Happiness And Why Going Analog Fixes It

Hustle. Press it. >> All right, you guys. Welcome to Habits and Hustle. We have a very good guest today. This is one that I really feel we all need badly right now. Her name is Dr. Lori Santos. She is an expert in the science of happiness. And what's extremely impressive is she has the most sought after most popular class of

all time at Yale University. And it's called psychology and the good life. Correct? >> That's right. Yeah. >> Wow. I can not. I've been like waiting for you to be on this show. So thank you for being here. >> Yeah, I'm glad to finally worked out. >> I mean, yes, me too. I don't even know where to begin. I know I was telling you earlier that I

have like a whole plethora of questions I write and then I never

end up asking the questions. But what I really love about you and I was saying this a little bit earlier is that everything that you actually talk about is not just, you know, just opinion or just you know randomness. Everything is very science backed. So for people who are listening and you're like, oh, whatever, it's her opinion. No, it's

not. Everything is very science backed. And there are strategies actually for being happy. It's not just something that's sometimes innate. >> Yeah. >> So would you say that being happy is a skill? >> Definitely. I think it's a skill and it's something that you have to practice, right? I mean, it makes sense, you know, as a fitness

“and floor, so you know this, right? It's like you can know what you need to”

do, but unless you actually get out the gym and do that stuff, nothing is going to change. >> Absolutely. >> And this is exactly the way our mental health works, right? Well, there are things that we know we need to do to feel a little bit better, but unless you actually get out and you practice that and you build your skills up, you're not going to end up

feeling any better. >> So do you think that, I mean, in your, you know, not think, but in your research and all the, all your fight findings, I've

always, I always thought that we all have a baseline for happiness, right?

And then we can like, maybe like, we can kind of like tweak it a little bit up and down. >> Yeah. >> But would it, what's your belief in that? >> Yeah. Well, what some of the studies show is that there is part of our happiness that seems to be kind of built in. This is what researchers call it being heritable, right? Some of the differences we see across people out there

in the world, in terms of how happy they are, they're just based on like something about their biology, right? And we know this because if you look at identical twins, their happiness levels tend to be a little bit more similar

“that are like regular siblings who aren't perfectly genetically related, right?”

>> Right. But if you look at how much happiness is heritable, it's kind of a small amount. So it's about the same amount of like genetic basis as you might see for like religiosity, like are you religious or not or risk taking, how much of a risk do you want? So there's like some basis to like the fact that it's built in, but not as much as you might think. It's much less than, for

example, like weight, right, which we know is something that you can change around with. >> Right. How much you're looking at and stuff like that, right? >> Well, wait a second because I mean, so for an example, okay, like, you know, Noah who are married to, he's naturally extremely happy, no matter what, like his

baseline is exceptionally high. He'd always say to me that he's trained

himself to be happy, very positive, right? And I'm always like, who put it for like many, many, many, many, many years. And then I realize that over time, the people I speak to who are that way, like actually do what you say, like they're practicing the skill of being happy. So can we talk about how do you practice being like in a real way? Like, yeah, I mean, and I'm trying to

please try to do me a favor and and stay away from like, you know, having gratitude. Like, that's like that word gratitude is overplayed in my mind. Yes, I understand having gratitude is the, you know, gateway drug to like a panacea of great things. With that being said, what could we do in real time, practical, actual things, strategies to train our brains and ourselves to be

happy? >> Yeah, well, one of the big behavioral changes we can make to fill happier is just to engage in a little bit of social connection. >> Okay. >> You look pretty much like every study of happy people is just the happy people are more social. And interestingly, that's true for introverts and for extroverts, right? If you look at the benefits of social connection for

introverts, they're just as high as for extroverts, which many people don't

“expect, but it's like the research really shows. And so I think that's just an”

easy one, right? Like, make time to call a friend, like connect with somebody, get off your, you know, scrolling on your screen and really connect in real time. That's a big one. Another big one that we know matters a lot is something that I bet you'll relate with, which is like just doing nice things for your body can make you feel happier. So moving your body just a little bit, not

like running three ultra marathons, but just like, getting moved right just like, no, no, there's one thing that shows like a half hour of pretty intense cardio can be as effective as taking a prescription of anti-depression medication for just like feeling better. And another study I love shows how

cardio, you say, 9 a.m. on Monday, how long does that little boost last? Yeah,

it actually lasts for over 20, almost 24 hours that you get that kind of hit. And so just remembering that our brain is connected to our body and that like our mental health, our physical health matters for mental health can be

“really important. By the way, I think I talk about that exact thing, probably at”

nausea, like 20 times a day, because I will not do anything until I do cardio, not string training actually cardio, because cardio sets like crimes my brain for my mood and my happiness. If I don't do it, I feel myself dipping with like depression or not like not hardcore clinical depression. Yeah, but I'm not as on point. I'm not my memories. Not as good. My product

activity is not as good. My general mood. Like I will not honestly, you don't want to be around me if I don't get my cardio, because my now I'm at the place

where I've now primed myself, like I said, to do it. So then it's kind of like

what you call it, like it's a habit stack, right? Before I do everything else I need to do, that's that's the non-negotiable. Right, because it's going to make you feel better. And this is something that I talk about with some of my students. Ed one student who said that she had a complicated relationship to like fitness and exercise really bound and like body stuff and whatever. And

she said, you know, hearing these studies about the connection with happiness was really important because it had like all these issues and it was all fraught. But when I realized, like, oh, I'm just going to feel better if I do this. This is like this gift to myself. Somehow that really unlocked for her ability to turn it into a habit and just sort of make it more of a daily

practice. Is there any science based around how long you actually have to do

“for how much cardio you need to do to boost your, I guess, your serotonin and”

your overall happiness muscle. Yeah. How long? What intensity? What is the research about that? Yeah, it probably varies a lot based on your body, right? Like what you're going to have to do is different. They're wise. I have to do to get things moving. Really what you need to do is you need to to feel like your heart's pumping. The standard studies often use like a half hour of cardio and

they don't define it, they call it kind of, you know, medium intensity, but 30 minutes. Yeah, 30 minutes. Okay. As I said, it's not sometimes we can get in our head, that's like it only counts if it's like an ultra marathon. It only counts if it's something really intense. But for the mood effects, it can be pretty sure. And it's true. I think it's 24 hours. It's exactly the amount of time.

You're like, yeah, when's this coming back? Yeah. 100% because by the next day, if I'm not doing that again, I'm like, oh, I'm in trouble. Yeah. That's why it's

become like, it has to be a daily habit. Yeah. So that's the first thing. So

exercise is number one. So in action, exercise, another big one that's kind of surprising is what researchers these days are calling time affluence, which is this idea that you feel wealthy in time. It's the opposite of what so many of us experience, which is what's called time famine, where we're literally starving for time. And there's a sense in which time famine works a lot like a bodily

famine where you're feeling yucky and kind of triaging and kind of very stressed, like just not having any time makes you feel like that, too. And so there's a lot of research suggesting that we should find ways to feel a little bit more wealthy in time, whether that's taking stuff off your actual plate, another strategy I love is use some money to get back time, you know, by the

product of veggies, you know, like spend a little extra to get back time, those things really matter. I think there's such misconceptions around what makes people happy, right? Like people think if I make more money, I'll be happy if I actually lose the weight, I'll be happy. And you're the expert and I'd like you to talk about it. What did you find or what do you think is the biggest

misconception about what people are chasing to be happy that actually doesn't doesn't turn the happiness dial it all? Yeah, money is a real big one. Yeah, for

“sure. And you have to be careful about this, right? If you're living below the”

poverty line, if you can't put food on the table, yes, getting more money is going to make you happier. But for I'm guessing maybe a lot of the people who are watching right now, more money isn't going to make you as happy as you think. What if very famous study that came out in about 2010 showed that the level of money that you need to get to, that if you get more money, you're not going to be

happier as around $75,000 in $20,000, right? Right now, that'd be around $100,000. Right. What does that mean? That means if you have $100,000 right now in your salary and your double or triple or salary, it's just not going to make that much impact in your happiness. And so many of us don't believe that. So many of us think, if I could just get that raise or just get that promotion at work,

I'll be happier. But just doesn't make you as happy as you think. Is it because like anything in life you get used to whatever you're doing? That's exactly right? Yeah. And this is, and this is one of the reasons that so many of these good circumstances, you know, changing, you know, losing the way if you want to lose the way. Get more money, getting a promotion, getting the perfect relationship.

Those things don't make us as happy as we think for as long as we think. And psychologists of this funny phrase for this idea of getting used to stuff that

hedonic adaptation is bad. It makes the bad. It makes the great things in life worse as time goes on. But it has this interesting good side, whereas hedonic adaptation also makes the bad things in life a little bit better as time goes on. So all these things that we think of my gosh, I couldn't deal with that. If that happened to me, I wouldn't be able to, you know, get through the day once they

really happen, you wind up being stronger than you think. And you just kind of get used to it. That's so interesting. I know I, like, read about I've read this before and I've heard you speak about this many times about the, like, the idea of someone who's a paraplegic and someone who wins a lottery. Yeah. I want you to kind of talk about that that whole scenario because I find that fascinating.

Yeah. And it really kind of like lands the plane on what we're talking about. Yeah. This is a very famous study that looked at our mis predictions about the things that make us happy. And so they asked regular people, hey, how have I

“happy would you be if you won a power ball and now you've $100 billion?”

People think, oh, my gosh, I would be way happier. Or they ask, how happy would you be? If suddenly, you're walking down the street, you get hit by a car, bad car accident. Now your paraplegic, you can't walk. How much, how would that affect your happiness? And people say, oh, my God, I'd be so miserable. But when you go out and you actually interview real people who've had these happen, real lottery

winners and real people who've had an accident, what you find is that it doesn't change their happiness as much as you think. And the data for lottery winners, six months out after winning the lottery, is their happiness is no different from baseline. And the data for paraplegics is like, they might get a subtle dip in happiness, but it's not nearly what people predict. And this is, that was a

very famous study that happened like, you know, over two decades ago. But now this type of thing has been replicated in all these different contexts, getting a terminal illness diagnosis, finding out you have HIV, getting the perfect job

“promotion, right? Getting tenure if you're like a nerdy, you know, academic like me.”

All these cases people predict, oh my God, that great circumstance would make me

feel amazing, or that terrible circumstance. I'd just be unhappy forever. But in

fact, we don't stay as happy for as long as we think our circumstances just don't affect us in the way we expect. Why is that? Like, what happens in our brain that I guess baselines everything or just kind of like, cut me out. I guess just puts everything at an equally equal to brim. Yeah, it's funny. Our brains are really only noticed changes. They don't notice like the steady state over time

and where we are. This is like a real treadmill effect. Sometimes it is often called the hedonic. Yeah. So when you're exercising on a treadmill, you know, for at first it's like, oh my gosh, this thing is moving. But then, you know, 10 minutes in 20 minutes in. It's like, that's just the movement, right? Our brains just kind of get used to it. And so the same thing is true for our emotions in these hedonic

states. At first, these things feel good. But then you stop sort of noticing it. Part of it's that we just like don't notice the good and bad parts anymore. You know, take, like, if you experience all the luxuries in life, like you fly first class. First time you were a fire first class, like, oh my god, the seats so big. This is great. I get the drink or whatever it is. But then that's just what you come

to associate with flying. You just like expect that if you fly first class all the time. Right. You go back to coach. Oh my god, that's terrible. But just the regular thing that you experienced in first class is no longer good. A few years ago, for my students, it's outdated now because they don't know this song anymore. I used to play the DJ Khaled song all I do is win. And I was a psychologically, if you all you did was win,

that's bad. Because you wouldn't notice the wins anymore. You would notice the losses.

They would feel terrible. Right. But you never get any more extra pleasure out of winning

all the time. Because that's just the status quo. It's true. And also, well, I wanted to finish that one question. But I was going to say, there's a whole thing. Would you rather like lose a hundred dollars or not better and win the money or whatever that thing is, right? Isn't that also a personality thing though, depending on who you are? And what I was going to say about that is, isn't it that what point in the average person? How long

does that take to find this balance? Is it six months? You said three months is six months the amount for all these things to kind of like level out. Those were the ones that they used in the study. But these things could level out pretty fast. You're saying six months, though, is mostly, but it can happen quicker. Sometimes it can happen really quickly. Right. You know, I'm out here in LA and I have the luxury of like flying first class out here, right? But the

second time I fly, you know, Jet Blument is really good, right? But the next time I'm in mint is like, oh, I get the little packet. I get that it's no longer as good. That wasn't six months.

That was like my second iteration of it. Right. It's not crazy how fast it can happen then.

“That's exactly right. And I think that's the problem for the good things in life.”

Because we want the good things to remain really good. It's a good thing for the bad things in life, right? Because we think, you know, the first time I experience a breakup, you know, totally. But the next time it's not as bad as you predict, you know? Did you ever see this episode? Do you know what? Have you ever watched Fraser? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Old school. Yeah. I love for it. It was like my favorite

episode or have you ever heard of the episode when Fraser and Niles get this invitation?

“Or they didn't even get the invitation to this new spa. And they had to steal the invitation”

from Fraser's neighbor. That was invited to this exclusive, elitist spa. And he was invited to go into the gold door, right? And so they, they were like, "Fanagled their way. They stole the invitation." They went to the spa and they pretended to be Fraser's neighbor to get into this gold, the gold door of the spa. So they go. They come out. It was like the best experience of their life. They had the best time. They were like going on and on. They were like, "Just in heaven."

And as they were walking out of the door, they saw that there was a platinum door. One time, right? And they were like, "Oh my God, how did we get stuck in this trap?" Like for the, for the, for the, for the, for the peons, the gold door. And they were miserable because they saw that they actually didn't get to the pinnacle. And it goes on and on because then what happens is they like, they finagled their way the next day to get into the platinum door.

And then they're like, "Oh, this is the panicity. This is where it's all about." And then as they leave, this is one better spot. They saw the diamond door. And they goes on and on and on. So I, I, I found that I, that whole episode really stuck with me because it's everything in life is so relative to where you're coming from and like the fact that like we, we are now in a place

“or I think we always work because phasers of what like a 25-year-old show, we never appreciate where”

we are or that's a mindset that like we need to change because then nothing's ever good enough. Yes. And there's just so many classics that he says, "My favorite is in the athletic domain.

You watch Olympian on the metal stand, right? Obviously the gold medalist person you got first place,

really happy." Yeah. But what about their silver medalist? Not only is he not happy, if you analyze facial expressions of the silver medalist, you'll see expressions like contempt or deep sadness, anger, right? Which is shocking, right? This is the person who's second best in the world. They're taking a metal for their country and they're miserable. Why? They're not looking at all the billions of people who didn't make it up there behind them. They're looking at the one person who beat

them. But the reason I love that study is that study also looked at the other person on the metal stand, the bronze medalist, the person who came in third, and it turns out that that individual isn't showing contempt or sadness or anger. They're showing true elation and some studies that are facial expressions are even happier than the gold medalist. Why? Well, their comparison point isn't the gold medalist. They're probably off by at a point two seconds or multiple people or whatever.

Their comparison is like, "Oh my gosh, if I was just a little bit slower, a little bit worse, I'd be going home empty handed." And so they're elated, right? And so this study, it just shows the power of comparison, right? We could be like, "Oh my God, I didn't get in the platinum door," or like, you know, everything's wrong. Or we could be like, "I could have not been invited to this bag. I could have not had the money to come to us by at all." And so it's worth remembering

that we have a tiny bit of control about which comparison points we use. But we need to remember that we need to execute that. You're right. The re, also a reframe on how we think of it.

“And I wanted to, that's what I wanted to really talk about. But I was going to just kind of add to”

what you just said. Like, think about Ryan Lockdown, Michael Phelps for a second. Okay? If Michael

Phelps never existed, Ryan Lockdown would have been probably the best swimmer of all time. Right?

He's won what? 12 gold medals. 12 or maybe even more, okay? But because there was a Michael Phelps right there, often on the stand with him, being on the stand with him, he's looked like enough thing. Like, oh, yeah, anybody can just win 12 medals, right? And so it's not just the person who's winning. It's also that the comparison is also from like the, the onlooker or the audience or the the other people on the side, right? And you can think about how much that affects

us right now, right? In a world of social media, right? It's so hard to achieve your fitness goals, your financial goals, whatever goals you have because you look on the internet and there's someone who's killing it much more than you. So it's really hard to feel satisfied

with wherever you get to because there's always a Michael Phelps out there who's going to be better

than you. 100% and that's, and that's really like the crux of all of this because we're living in a time when everything is digital now, social media, you know, I don't have to tell you this, like loneliness, depression, anxiety, we're at like an all-time high. And every year I feel like it's getting worse. Is it not? Yeah, I mean, some of the statistics, especially for young people. Yeah, it's pretty bad. Is it just young people? It's a little bit, everybody. The statistics

for young people are the scariest and the worst. The United States, for example, is the worst in the world happiness report, the lowest happiness rating than we've ever seen in the annual world happiness report. Right. We've dropped out of the top 20 happiest countries for the first

past year? Just in 2025, which is the last year that the survey was done. What numbers are US now?

I forget we're like 22 or 24, but like that's striking, right? This is a rich country with lots of resources, right? Wow. Yeah, so many people at all age levels are unhappy. And what would you, would you say it was mostly social media? What are the other reasons that are kind of making it such so drastic? Like that's, that's, that's, that's really bad. Yeah, one of the things that's to our world country. I know. Yeah, one of the things in the US is that the US is a very rich country,

especially relative to the countries, but we're also a very unequally wealthy country. Right. And that, it turns out, can affect the happiness of everybody, even the people who are on the top, like relatively higher, it's like bad to be in an unequally wealthy country. Right. I think that's

“one of the factors. I think at the US right now, things feel pretty fraut, politically, right?”

It just feels like everything's really tricky. But there is some evidence that the social media is

particularly bad. One of the curious findings in the last world happiness report was that all English-speaking countries have gone down. But if you look at non-English speaking, kind of parts of those same countries, or take Canada, you look at, like, "Quabacoa, right?" The country, all in the, they haven't dipped in happiness as much. So it's something about being English-speaking. But that really kind of points to social media, right? Because so many of

these platforms are more, there's more of this content-based in English. And so there's like, "Come, you know, the UK, Australia, the English-speaking parts of Canada and the US are all dipping in happiness." But if you don't speak English, it's a little bit better. And so... That's the, I'm Canadian, and that's, it's interesting because Quebec is a French-speaking part of Canada.

So you're saying that the Quebec, Quebec, part of Canada, actually, is happier than the

rest of Canada, because they haven't gone down as much. It haven't gone down as much as the English-speaking. Well, you know, it will be interesting. Now that Instagram has now turned on this whole translation piece, right? It might be that goes away. I wonder if that's going to go away. Interesting. Yeah. Because now it's available to, like, everybody. I mean, this is so, and yet, like, we're still, we're so addicted. We will, even though we know the numbers,

we feel the, like, unhappiness and the loneliness. We're, we're so addicted, we can't stop. It's so hard, right? Yeah. Because the algorithms are really built to draw us in in so many ways, right? You know, the content is fast. It's really vibrant. There's no friction. We get a sense

“that we're interacting with people. The dopamine hit. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And I think also,”

even the political stuff that algorithms are built to make us feel outrage and outrage is an emotion that really sucks us in. We want to read more. And so, even though these posts and the algorithms are making us feel terrible, we're drawn to it even more. And also, isn't it kind of a false sense of social community, right? Yeah. So, if we're doing this, like, we think, okay, where these are people, if we're watching some of these, or our friends, or because it gives you

just enough where you feel like, okay, I don't need to socialize, or I don't need to kind of go up there and do all these other really, like, valuable strategies to be happy because, you know, like, I can just do this for two seconds, even though it doesn't last. Yeah. Like, how long does the dopamine hit from social media last? It or a brain before we knew another one? Yeah. I mean, I like to sort of talk about it as the neutral sweet of, like, social connection. Yeah. Because it's,

like, it feels like it's sort of sweet in you're enjoying it, but we don't get any of the, like, psychological nutrition from it in the same way. Right. Empty calories. Yeah. Exactly. It's really

“the kind of empty calories of connection and community, right? Yeah. I think another way to think”

about it is just this idea that we're drawn to it. We really crave it, but we don't actually like it. This is, like, such an interesting feature of the human brain is that there's, what's called the dissociations. There's a difference between the circuits that are there for wanting, the, like, craving and going after stuff. That's the dopamine system and the liking, which is, like, whether you actually enjoy stuff. So they can be all these things in life that we really like,

but we don't have the craving for. I don't know, maybe this is different with you, but I have this for, like, hard exercise. Like, whenever I have a heart, you know, like, a really tough, Pilates class, I'm like, I adore it. I feel so good afterwards. But my brain doesn't say, like, "Ooh, I want that. Let's schedule it right away." Not in the same way that I would for, like, a nice, glass of wine or, like, a cup cake or something like that or social media, right? And social media is just

the opposite, right? We really crave, "Ooh, I want to get back on TikTok right now." So even just talking about if people are here watching this, then you're like, wanting their fingers are, like, going to their phone to go to it, but you don't actually like it that much. And this is a problem because it means we're often going after stuff, like, really wanting and craving these things, that we're not even going to like if we do it, if we achieve it. What don't we like,

do we not like the way we feel afterwards? Because I think that would be the number one reason. Yeah, I mean, many people feel gross. It's like, kind of, I have a lack of purpose. You feel like

you know, TikTok binge, you're like, "What did I even see, like, what just happened?" Yeah, you don't remember anything. Like, that's the thing. I would fall into that category, because I like hate myself afterwards. Like, when you do scroll, I'm like, "Okay, I just met 45 minutes literally wasting my time making myself feel bad about myself." Right now, I'm more anxious. Now, I feel kind of crummy. Yep. You feel more anxious. You feel like the, it's so hard not

to get caught up in the comparison trap. Yeah. It doesn't matter. And I mean, listen up, I'm, you could be the most confident, self-assured, successful, happy, ish person. Go on on social media for 45 minutes to doomsworld. I don't know anybody who feels,

you know, even like, okay afterwards. Everyone always feels a dip in their, in their

person out, in that way they feel, in their emotional state. Yeah, I think that's right. And it's hard, right? For really, really researchers who really want to get the good data, because everybody's on these platforms. Yeah. But when they're able to do really clear studies of, like, you know, I sign you to say, go on read a Facebook feed for, you know, two hours versus not. What you find is people feel worse afterwards. What's worse? Instagram or TikTok? Have I really done those studies?

“But I think, so, so a lot of what the studies show is, it depends on how you engage. Right?”

There are healthier ways to engage on social media. People talk about kind of active engagement. So, you're posting things, you're commenting on things, you're reacting as opposed to, what we normally do on social media, which is passive engagement, which is just,

exactly. And I think TikTok even more than other platforms really encourages this

passive forever, scrolling engagement. Why, though? I mean, it just, they're just better at content. Like, and I think it's better. It makes more money, right? Because you see more, well, no, no, no, they're better at, like, creating these algorithms that really kind of know you in fact. That's right. I mean, that's what I've noticed. I now, I noticed, and I'm like, I thought a few years ago, TikTok was more for the younger generation. It was more for

my generation. But I feel like everyone else just gravitating to TikTok, because it's faster, it's in gratification. I mean, how much more fast can it be at this point?

“That's right. I worry about, like, what would that even look like? So, like, what would it look like?”

Which is scary, right? Because there is going to be, you know, the five years from now, TikTok, and it's like, oh my gosh, what's that going to do to our attention? 100%. And what I can, I'm concerned about, is that, like, I'm already past the point. Like, I already had, you know, we, I should say, we had, like, the generation when we didn't have social media and we didn't have a self-ful. We were like, just played outside. And we had to, like, we let ourselves in the house and

we'd to figure it out on our own. And we had to be bored. And we had to kind of either, like, make friends or do nothing. You know what I mean? And also, like, depression and all the, all the mental health situations weren't at the place they are now. What I, I guess what I think is very concerning, type two kids, hey, how it's really affecting their brain. Like, if it is, that the anxiety depression, loneliness, if they're not on these phones, is that like what they're used to now?

Are they now used to a different level of depression, anxiety, loneliness, if they're not engaged? Because the, the addiction is so terrible, like, at least I know the difference, right? Like, I guess it's like kind of like this, the, having the ability to like know what it's like before versus after they don't know any difference. That's right. That's right. And I think there's a couple of things that are problematic with that. One is like being on technology all the time,

especially for young people. Because they hit on so many things of social connections, sleep, social connection in real life, sleep, attention, rights, fragmented. We know a lot about the fact that just, this mindset of presence, winds of making us feel happy. If you could just be in the present moment, it sounds cheesy. But when you're flicking through a million things in some, you're not there, but a different thing I worry about is that, I feel like young people

because they're on their phones all the time, they never have to deal with the friction of certain

emotions that we had when our kids write boredom. There's nothing to do. I have to just like entertain my mind somehow or just like really simple social connection, right? I think we didn't have the luxury of, you know, say, if you're sitting in your high school, like, you know, cafeteria, if I'm, if it's awkward to strike up conversation with somebody, you just pull out this device and now you're entertained and you're fine. But kids today really have this and I watch this,

fact that they have these devices that are so entertaining, prevent people from engaging in in real life social connection. You know, fun. I did a TED talk last year on being bored and, like, mental resilience for children and, you know, people just don't want to be bored anymore,

“which is to me, I mean, that's where creativity starts, opportunity happens. You think that's how”

you start thinking. Can I tell you one super funny stuff about this? You bring people into the lab and you say, you just have to sit here at no phones in this room. But there's an electric shocker, you know, if you need something to do, you can, like, shock yourself. And people rather than just sit there and be bored and be with their own thoughts, actually, like, shock themselves. Most of the

that we'd rather be in pain than just, like, sit there with our own thoughts. That's crazy to me. But you get it. Oh, I mean, by the way, I told again, like, think about when you go into an elevator,

the second that another person walks in, you're on your phone, you're looking down,

like, God forbid, you make eye contact with someone. You know what else? The kids are doing now. Even when they get together, this is what I, I have so many fights with my kid over this, but like, they'll get together or he doesn't want to have a friends at my house, like, because I'll be watching them and I will not let them be on that iPad and I will, like,

“you have to go outside and lab, not long. So the friends don't want to come over, right?”

They want to go to the other person's house where their parents don't care or they're not paying attention or they're not home or whatever. Because what happens is they, they'll, they'll socialize beside each other. They're parallel playing on phones. Yeah. So they sit together. They're not actually engaging. That's right. But they're just playing video games now, besides themselves instead of being in one house in the other house. Like, I feel like there's so many, like, this is what's happening

in our world. Like, it's, you have to be a guard dog these days to fight back. And then they don't see, you know, my experience with, like, that I don't have my own kids, but I spend a lot of time hanging out with my college kids. Right. And I remember when I first took on this role as a head of college on campus. I'm a faculty member who lives with students and I started eating in the dining hall with students. Right. And I remember the college dining hall is being, like, super loud at everyone's talking.

And now you go in and they have these big, you know, like, headphones on and they're all sitting there. Next to each side by side, like, scrolling on their phones or typing on a screen and I'm like, oh my gosh, this one spot where you have this opportunity for social connection of people who are your age like you and everyone's just parallel processing on their own devices. Yeah, they're just diving gate. So it's probably quite as a mouse in there. Yeah, it's like a, it's not a library,

but like pretty much closer. That's really, actually, I'm not surprised to be honest. Yeah,

I'm not surprised. There's always funny things that we miss out, like the current generation

misses out on. I had this other funny experience as a head of college with my Yale students where one of my students is like, I can say to us, like, there's this weird number on the wall in my room. Like, what is it? And like, what is she talking about? So I go on her dorm room and I'm like, oh, that's a phone jack. Like, it was like a phone jack. With a number, I'm like, that, you know, if you still had phones in your room, that would have been your phone number. This was like, oh my gosh,

and she was like, well, did my roommate? And I, like, did Lisa and I each have different numbers. And I was like, no, no, it was the same number. And, you know, you just shared one number for room.

“She actually asked the questions like, well, what would happen if somebody, like, called for my roommate?”

And like, they didn't know she wasn't there. And I'd be like, oh, you'd have to pick up the phone and be like, you know, Lisa's not here. Like, I'll take a message. And I realized, oh my gosh, young people today don't have this experience at home where these, like, subtle tiny interactions or like, you know, but if you're a son, like, goes to a friend's house to pick them up, they don't like go to the door and ring the doorbell and talk to the parent. They just like,

texts like, I'm outside, like, come out, like, these little tiny interactions that just made up our lives as kids. They don't have these anymore. I know, that's actually really sad to me. Like, that's 100% true. So I try to, like, you know, I don't, I don't give my kids a thought. I give them a very, my, my, I have a, one's going to be 13 in a couple of days. But he doesn't have a regular phone. He has a, he has a phone where he can text me or call me. There's no internet on that phone.

And that's it. There's no social media or all that stuff. And so, you know, it is what it is. So it just, he screams in yells at me all the time about it. But I'm trying to, like, keep him as alert to the world as possible. And all the best practices really suggest that that's the right thing to do. There's a fabulous new book out by the journalist Catherine Price and the researcher, Jonathan, I Jonathan Heights talked about. I know Jonathan Heights has been on the show, but I'm,

I'm very familiar with that. But they have this awesome. They have all Catherine Price. I know who she is. So she was going to come on here, too. In fact, I got a response to her. She's excellent. She's excellent. Yeah, they, they partnered up to do this new book for kids called the Jonathan Heights original book was called the anxious generation. But this book is called the awesome generation. It's like a graphic novel for kids that explain all the bad parts about phones. And it's so worth getting.

If you have a 13 year old in your life or if anyone watching who is like a young kid in your life, because it teaches kids at kids level. Like what these companies are doing. It's like, they're trying to steal your attention. They're making money off making you feel bad. And a lot of the kids who read this are like, wait, I don't want to watch that. Like, I want to be agentive.

“I want to do this. And so, yeah, I think teaching kids the problems with this and what,”

what's really at stake can be incredibly powerful. It's super powerful.

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Okay, so I'm going to go back and ask these questions because I'm going to start because you are so knowledgeable, I don't want to miss anything. Okay, so I have here at the beginning, but like the difference is let's go back into happiness for a minute overall. And the difference is between your feelings, your thoughts, your emotions, because let's get into, I want to get back into like how people can go from not being happy to being even a little bit more happy. We know

now, of course, you said about social, the social connection, super important exercise, 100%. You said that the other one was time after time. I mean, time, by the way, I think that's like

“a massive one, the time affluence. I had that written down here because I think that's what gives people,”

like if you're making all this money, we have no time to do anything who cares how much money

you're making, right? So you can, the $100,000 amount that you were saying, if you make a million

dollars, you're still miserable, or if you're doing nothing. And usually that tradeoff is that, right, if you want to make more money, you have to spend more time to make more money. Right, unless you're just like a trust fund kid or like, you know what I mean? But then also, there's a lot of, there are the trust fund kids when they don't have to work for something. They're usually miserable, also. Exactly, yep. So like there's so many elements, is it because you have to also be productive

to be happy as well? Well, I think we like this idea of pushing ourselves, right? Yeah, it's out, helps to think about the definition of happiness. So social scientists talk about happiness as having these two parts, kind of being happy in your life and being happy with your life. So being

“happy in your life is a sense that it feels good to be you. It's kind of the ratio of positive”

negative emotions that you have. People often call it the affective part of happiness or the emotional part of happiness. But then there's also being happy with your life. And that's your sense of meaning and purpose. How you think your life is going. People call this the cognitive part of happiness. And you want both of those to be good. You know, let's cut back to our trust fund kid. You know, maybe they have lots of pleasures in their life. You know, they're flying

first class and going to the fun parties and whatever. But in terms of meaning and what matters,

because it all comes so easy. Maybe you don't have those challenges as much. You know, I get we don't want to generalize to all, you know, trust fund kids, whatever. But it's true this. It's the majority of them. I mean, yeah, family and we all know these people who have every

“hedonic pleasure in their life, but feel like their life is kind of empty. Is it because then”

you just, like you said, it's because they don't have meaning in their life. So I love when you say that I've heard you say this. Happy with your life versus, um, oh, I'm happy with your life versus happy in your life. Yeah. And so with your life is just it's more of the overall. Yeah. How you think it's going, right? Like I've got a great life. And the in your life is like the day to day type of things like the going on the private jet or doing, you know, whatever. And the parties are doing

whatever you're doing. Or it's probably more just like you're the fact that you have lots of positive moments. Or have positive moments, joy and humor and you have a decent ratio of that to the sadness and anxiety and anger and the negative emotions. It kind of feels good in your life to be you. And so how do we, so what is like, so how do we change these besides that you said, like the thoughts into actual behavior? Like we know how the behavior is to start socializing more,

to exercise more, all those things. What else is there that we are not doing? Yeah. That is causing us such unhappiness. Yeah. Well, another set of changes we talked about some of these behavior changes. We can also think about mindset changes that we can make. I want to bring up gratitude over that as a mindset. We can talk about that. It's, it's, I just feel like everything whenever you ask a question now. About like, how do we feel better? You have like,

have a gratitude journal or like, be grateful for this. Okay. And also, I just feel like, like, how do you do it? Especially when it feels like the world is falling apart a little, yeah.

point is that platitudes just bother me after a while. And there's so much data on the fact that

they're, what's called the individual differences in this? Like, different people different this. So Sonia Lerumerski, who's an expert on happiness. Yeah. Who does most of the great studies on gratitude? She's kind of just not that into gratitude herself. She's like, I know it works, but like, I feel a little okay to me. Right. So there are differences. Can you introduce me to her? I like her.

“You'd like her. Yeah. No, she, but, but I think this is important. Right.”

Whenever we talk about these practices that work, they tend to be like averages, right? They're just like a study. And on average, you, and on average, you go up, but some people get more of a benefit from it than others. Although, I'll give you my version of a gratitude practice that maybe you'll resonate with. Okay. It's instead of gratitude, think about delights. Yeah. Delightful things in the world. I learned about this. I interviewed for my podcast, the poet Ross Gay, who is a book called

the Book of Delights. Every day, he just tried to find something that was delightful and wrote an essay about it. And there really stupid things like, you know, purple flowers, why are there flowers that are purple? It's so weird. He hit this one essay that I love called tomato on a plane. He did bring a friend like, you know, tomato plan. He took it on the plane and everyone was commenting like, oh my gosh, you got this plant on the plane. Or even he is like an essay about

elder bars that like, you know, crappy 80s. Oh my god. You know, the rhythm of the night or whatever

“to throw the thing. But it's like, those things are just like a thing that puts a quick smile on your face.”

And if you train your brain to find those, Ross Gay actually recommends sticking your finger in there and be like, you know, it's a kind of a delight in the world that all that's doing is it's a counteracting. All the negative stuff we see all the time. It's not like, oh, I'm so grateful. Because that's kind of weird. But like, oh, that's funny. That's cool. It's just delightful. It's just nice. Yeah, I like that word. I just feel like, I don't know if it's also because

I've been doing this podcast for a long time or I'm very curious and I have the million

questions. And like a couple of things just like, it's always the same. Like, how do we get

from A to B while meditation gratitude this? But like, like, you just said, and this is my point, not everybody's the same. And depending on where you are in your life or how you're feeling, like, it's not about just writing in a gratitude journal 24 hours a day or like 10 minutes a day. Like, people like me, I'll forget to write in the gratitude journal or like the idea, like, I can't think right. Like, I'm not good in that thing or meditation. My meditation is running on a treadmill.

That's where I have my best, you know, when I think the best and I'm super clear. So it's not like a one size fits all for everybody. I like to, I often tell my students, think of it like a tool kit. Yeah. And think of it like a scientist, right? These are, you're kind of doing experiments on yourself to see what works and what works might be, what makes you happier, what works might be, what you can actually stick with, right? That's a big one. Yeah. I mean, actually stick with is like 99% of the

game. In so many ways, it's actually like a fitness journey, right? It's a fitness journey. My life fitness is a microcosm for life. It's true. I promise you. The life skills you learn from fitness can help you with anything else in life. But even as a trainer, it's like, it's one thing. If like, oh, if you do this exercise, it's going to make you stronger. But if you like can't get yourself to do that exercise and you hate it

“and you're dreading going to do it every time you have to do it, like, pick a different thing.”

And I think these happiness skill sets are really similar. Is a hundred percent. So your friend, I, but I don't know how I was going to do it. So yeah, it was a last thing of Sonia, Luba, Marisky. Luba, okay. So Sonia, Luba, Marisky. It's a professor at UC Riverside. Great. Great. But she has a really cool new book about love coming out. Okay, quite fine. Thank you. Good plug for her. I'm a jerk. You're more than I want you invited to come on this podcast at any given

time. Sonia, I was going to say that. So we're talking, the gratitude expert is saying that she's not a big fan of gratitude anymore. So that to me is exceptionally compelling. And I want to know then. So she's probably done all this. I mean, I can have her and ask her. But did she believe in gratitude for many years and then switch? Oh, I think she still really believes in gratitude. But she's just going to, like, try and dig it. You know? It's like, like, I know the power of

squats. But like, I hate them. So I'm just going to like do some other, like, just something else. You know? Yeah. So okay. So the gratitude, why is everyone so on this kick that? Like, why is that becoming like, I mean, the data for most people, the data are pretty clear, right? It's that, you know, in his little as two weeks, scribbling down three to five things you're grateful for, can significantly boost your satisfaction with life and your well-being. Okay. Like for the people

that it works one or two in a week. That's different. So three to five every day. Oh, three to five every

day. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Expressing gratitude to others can be a powerful way to feel more connected

to them. So on average, the data work. But again, that's, you know, on average, the like, Pilates works for everyone, but some people hate it. And so try something else. A hundred. Well, this is what I was going to say. Maybe this is not considered. I don't know if this is gratitude necessarily, but like what I try to do and it's not, it's not forced or contrived.

Huge. Yep. Right. And like some people are very like, very like, with, they withhold their compliment. I don't care. Like, I don't care if you're a man, woman, you know, whatever. I'll say, oh, I love your smile. I love your shirt or your hair looks greater. Like, I really like the

way you do this. Like, I always find, I notice things that I like about everybody and tell them.

And that also changes the way in the dynamic and great data for folks like Nick Appley and others that compliments actually matter. Really. You, you, you feel like, hey, well, I maybe should say people already know or like, be, they'll like it, but they're not going to like it that much. We're constantly underestimating the benefits of them for the people who hear the compliment,

“but also for ourselves and giving the compliment. I think it's just like a thing so like for me,”

I don't have to be grateful in a sense. It's a different version. I'm giving you permission. You can drop grads. You try some delights. Try some compliments. I love that they're like, otherwise. Yeah. It's also like, I guess that you're saying also, it's not as cheesy as like, I'm so grateful for whatever. Like, I could just be like, you know, I had a great ice coffee. It was delightful. Yeah. Yeah. I loved it. You know, yeah. Like, you know, like, that works too.

Another great practice. If you do it with your family, if you have young kids, it's set up a delight practice with them. Or it's like, even just have like a text thread that's like delights and you just text each other delights. Like, you know, walking down the street and saw this funny looking dog, like, delight. Delight. Delight. You know, like, you know, right, so can also just this whole delight thing can also just be whatever. It's kind of like cute and quirky that you like

that that gave you a nice feeling. And often, my delights are like, you know, it's like, yeah, I had went in an LA where I was like, just walking down the street and like, somebody was going by in the car. And I couldn't hear what they were listening to, but they were, you know, jamming in their car. And they're like, that's a delight. That is like, they're having a little smile on my face, you know.

But, but what is that doing? Yeah. That's one second that I'm not thinking about what terrible

things happening in the world, right? That's one second that I'm not roominating on, you know, some conversation I had before that's making me feel bad. I'm training my brain to notice that there's positive stuff out there. That's very similar to what gratitude does in the mind too. So tell me other things too. So like in your class, well, there's a couple of days in your class. How many years have you been doing this now? It's a class.

The first time I taught that class was 2018, which is just like pre-COVID, you know, it's a lot

“of change. I wanted to ask you that. That's why I thought it was 2018. How has have you noticed”

a change in the students before COVID and when you started versus now? I mean, and there's not great data, but anecdotally. I think they, you know, they spent a whole amount of time not being social, right? Like in their typical social pattern, right? Where they'd be talking to students

in class and seeing them, right? Up until recently, the most recent class of students that we

just graduated at Yale spent all of their high school online for the most part, right? You know, imagine how different you'd be if you just like didn't have a high school in person with other humans, right? And so I think they're playing catch up, right? I think they're less practiced at certain kinds of social skills than other than other folks because of COVID. And I think that's not just true for though. I mean, I think we all have to, you know, recognize that this was a traumatic time for

lots of us. Right. And we got out of practice with lots of things we were used to. We haven't really given ourselves the grace to notice what that's done. So you did notice a very different, like a different trial, and COVID versus. And there's lots of other, you know, it's really interesting what's happening at the college level right now with AI tools and so on, right? You don't write. I come up with your own ideas in the same way anymore. You don't have to do the work. And I think

we, you know, there's lots of conversations about what does that mean for their learning and how do we give them a test if we can't have them write a essay or write a paper? Right. I think we're not thinking, what does that do to your happiness? You know, because so many of the things that I remember about college that I enjoyed were like, you're putting some effort into that hard paper and I figured it out or I studied it out, you know, the struggle. Yeah, and I worry we're getting

rid of the friction of learning, the struggle of learning. And that's not great. How are they allowed? Like, are there any kind of ways to figure out if they're using AI? Like, they're at Yale for God's sake. So I wouldn't imagine they were able to. There are tools, but they're not like full proof. They have a lot of false positives. So you can run, you know, a paper, for example, through one of these tools that tells you if it's AI or not, but sometimes it says it's AI and it isn't.

“And so it's wow. My mode is just like, you have to trust students to want to learn themselves.”

So I often present a lot of these data on, well, what does that mean? If you're using this tool, what are you losing for yourself? What are you teaching in the class? Like, if I was a student, what would I, like, what would be the class? What would be the syllabus? Yeah, well, we start by all the misconceptions that we have about happiness stuff that we talked about. Money for my students grades, for example, perfect look, saw these things and we go through all the data.

Yeah. And then we talk about, well, why do we get it wrong? And we talk about things like economic adaptation. One reason where money doesn't make us as happy or like, perfect look, don't make us as happy as we just get used to it. Talk about looks. I think that's a really important one for everybody. Older, younger. Yeah. People as they get older feel like they're losing

right, or comparisons in general. And what are the comparisons we make with our looks? One is to

how good everybody else looks. And especially in the age of TikTok and Instagram, you can constantly find somebody who's better than you, prettier than you, better hear than you, better eyelash. Whatever. All the things. Yeah. All the time. Another comparison we make is we compare against ourselves. And at least with the current beauty standards being the way they are, maybe particularly for women,

“but I think for men as well. Like, like, over time you're moving away from what is typically”

the ideal if you're, you know, in middle age, like, you know, you and I are. And so that means

you're constantly feeling like everybody else is better than you, and even like, old you was better than you. What's funny about the comparisons we make is we tend not to pick comparisons that make us feel great. Right. Our mind naturally goes to the person that makes us feel crappy. And that's not helped by the fact that these algorithms and these filters and all these things,

“like, people are curating the best images of them. Did I the real? Yeah. You're looking at people”

with face tunes and, like, just filters or whatever. And they're because of it, though, people, like, I don't know if you've noticed, well, you're quite on on social media, like, I am, but the, the, the amount of jargon around plastic surgery, like with Chris Jenner getting her

with her face lip, every third real or third clip is about like, how to like change your face.

And getting a face lip has become synonymous with like getting a smoothie down the street. Like,

“it's not any different. Like, a face lip is a massive surgery. They're like moving your face.”

Yeah. And I see this even not. I mean, that's like, you know, people in middle age and these kinds of things, I have to worry about it even in our tweens, right? You know, there's so much more emphasis on, you know, skin care and getting retinol and all these chemicals that we didn't necessarily even have, by the way, they're getting face lips in their 20s. They're getting me that's the LA thing. No, no, no, it's not easy. I mean, yeah, I think it's very prevalent in socioeconomically. I mean, of course, you kind of bored it. Yeah. But if people are like, or actually maybe I shouldn't even say that that's not true because I know a lot of people who I've, because a lot of young girls follow me. And they're not, they're not super rich. They're like, they're working people middle class. I would say, they're flying to Turkey and all these other Columbia to get their eyebrows done. They're gay and they're face to be like a point.

It tells Nash to get in their face. And these are girls are like 27, 28 years old. What I wanted to ask you, because I think that's unbelievable to me. Do you have you done any side, any research to show how people's happiness changes after they change their face and the looks thing? Because I bet you it's exactly the same as the law to reticate winner. Yeah. And the money and everything else, you're not any happier just because your heart or doesn't mean you're happier. Yeah. You find something to feel like you're not hot about exactly. Yeah.

You find more shit. The most detail in this one is in cases of weight loss and what you find is that it doesn't really improve your happiness in the same way you think. Right. I think what it does maybe is it gives you like, I think what I, what I noticed, I had a weight loss show many, many, many years ago. And it was like, it was basically people who are going to be married, like engaged and whoever like wins, they win like their dream wedding. Okay. I was a trainer on the show. Anyway, what I noticed actually was when they lost the weight, what I think what I really kind of, what I really noticed was that they were proud of the work they did and so that self-efficacy that I did it gave them the confidence to then change pieces of their lives.

Like the ripple effect of like, oh, I did I, I can't get the better job I want. I can't get the guy I want half of them. I think broke up with the, you know, they're whoever they're engaged to. But my point is, and that in all in my life with all this stuff is the fact that you are doing a hard thing that's over and over again that gives you that self-esteem is self-confidence, but it's not that the scale is saying, it's not the weight, it's not the actual number on the scale. I'm like, oh, now I'm a size two, so I'm happy. That's why people who take ozampic and all these weight loss things, they're not the, I guess you would say like the hedonic treadmill doesn't apply because they're not building the habits that they can prove to themselves like, you know what, I can do hard things.

I did this, I made this happen. I'm in charge. I consistently made this happen. So I don't, I actually feel like I don't think when you can just like lose weight, that doesn't make you any happier or change your face. By and large, all these changes to our circumstances and I put, you know, changing your looks and one of these things, they just don't impact our happiness as much as we think or for as long as we think. So it's not to say that if you, you know, achieve your fitness goals or something, you're not going to feel good. Well, it's like it's not going to feel as good as in your mind or predicting.

And it's not going to stay off, right? You know, instantly, you know, you might be, you know, a weight that you care about or a fitness level, you care about, but like there's still other problems, the world's still falling apart.

Research has called this arrival fallacy. If this, then happy forever. And like, just how happiness works. It's taking constant work to kind of keep going.

“Absolutely. Okay, go back to the class. So then you, that's what you guys have over.”

So we go through, you know, some, but why we get it wrong. And then we talk about the things and that really do make us happy as we talked about some of these behavior is maybe some of these mindsets. One that we go over a lot with my Yale students that we haven't talked about yet is this idea of thinking with a little bit of self compassion, which is something that I think we get wrong. Especially in the modern, like influencer age. We think we have to push ourselves and kill ourselves. And we sometimes are like really mean drill instructors inside our heads.

And we think that that works to motivate us. But what the science shows is it doesn't work in the way we think makes us procrastinate, cause us to have lots of resistance or actually better off if we can engage in what researchers call self compassion, which is kind of treating yourself like a friend or treating yourself like a good coach would treat you rather than like a mean drill instructor. Really. And so it has these different parts is the part of kind of noticing like this is really hard right now. I'm struggling right now. It's tricky. It's the kind of mindfulness noticing part.

Then it comes with a practice of what's called common humanity often, but it's basically like, and that's normal. Everyone's struggles. Everyone has a hard time. Everyone's screwing up in 2026. No one feels perfect, right? Right. And then the final step is what's called self kindness for you just kind of nice to yourself. I think the reason we get this wrong is we that it was soon that self compassion is kind of like self indulgence.

Yeah, for a nice to ourselves like we'll never get off the couch.

But if you think about like how you treat a good friend who was actively screwing up, I hope you wouldn't scream at them like a drill instructor. Yeah, it's wrong. But I hope you wouldn't let them off the hook either. I hope you'd like it curious. I want to fix this. Let's do the hard thing. Let's work through this. You'd like get problems all the and coachy. That's the self talk that you want to bring in your head for everything, whether that's trying to get happier, achieve your fitness goals. Whatever hustle you want to engage in, if you can engage in that hustle and a more self compassionate way, the studies show that you'll achieve your goals better.

Then what is toxic positivity? That's a big one. Yeah, I think this is a misconception about that piece of happiness that's about being happy in your life. We think it's only being happy in your life. You have any moments of feeling sad or anxious or angry or whatever it is, then something's wrong.

“Right. And this is bad because this is a messed up notion because I think one thing we know about negative emotions that's important signals.”

Right. Think about why we have emotions like anger or sadness from like evolutionary perspective. They're like the dashboard light on our car.

It's like when your engine light comes on like that's telling you something important. It's like, oh, right. Some things up. I already your tire light comes on like I get to put air in it. Sadness is your like psychological engine light coming on and saying like something's wrong. Some things missing loneliness is your psychological engine telling you like I need to get some social connection. A big one for me and my students overwhelm is your psychological energy like there's too much on my pulley right now. I got to take something off my plate.

These are alert signals that our bodies and our minds are telling us that if we just like no no toxic positivity pretend that's not happening. We're like losing out on this really important signal of what we might need and what we might need to do differently. Well, I think there's all this chat around like you know your piece and there's like these again. But it's these like these like tag words or the tag lines healing piece. Self-care is another one that this studies show is you know really if you look at happy people. The study show that happy people are other oriented.

They're more focused on other people's happiness than they're happening. That's right. And so yeah, I also think the self-care is problematic because when you look at what's being advertised with the self-care. It's often like a bubble bath or like a spa product and often true self-care is asking like it's asking for help. It's like doing the hard thing of like taking a really good thing in your life off your plate because you don't have the bandwidth for it.

Like it's often harder than like poor in a bubble bath. I also think it's very self-indulgent. I think we're living in a very self-indulgent society culture now where everything is about me healing and feeling safe and safe spaces and triggers and you're not giving me peace. And all these other things that are like really catchy. And the people who are talking like this are the most miserable people I've ever seen in my like they're so miserable.

They're the toxic ones. Yeah. They're the ones that are triggering me because I can't like it's that that feeling of constantly focusing on yourself yourself yourself yourself.

“So like that's I think it's actually a great thing to like I have these having kids, right?”

It's a great thing because then you can't you know you can't focus on yourself that much. Hopefully you don't because you have other people you have to like concern yourself with. It's really not just about you. If you want to talk to you.

talks this if you're miserable people is because they're focusing way too much and how they feel constantly.

And I mean if we could just take that part away. But how do you. Like if someone doesn't want to do these things like you can you can scream until you're blue in the face you know they're not going to they don't want to listen they're not going to do it right. Yeah. Yeah.

Like why find it helps just like for people to know the facts about yeah happiness right like if you see like oh if you do x y and z you'll be happier. I think sometimes people are like oh well I would definitely want to be happier so let me do x y and z.

“So that's what one of the reasons I love sharing the science with my students and beyond it's like.”

Yeah, now you know what now I've given you you saw the graph like now you know what to do like right I think another thing is that we you know we it's hard to do the uncomfortable things. Yeah, like it's hard to sit and allow your negative emotions it's hard to like focus on other people and get out of your self brain. And it winds up being better for happiness, but it takes some work and sometimes it's hard to put in the work. Do you think high achievers in general or more miserable than just regular people who are just living their life perfectionism is not great for our happiness right and there's lots of evidence that perfectionism has been going up over time.

And these one researcher current and as colleagues found these old data sets from like the 80s of people self reporting their perfectionist beliefs and ones that went up till today and they find that you just see this sharp increase in perfectionism from the 1980s until now. It's a particular kind of perfectionism because we can think about perfectionism is like I have these like hard standards for myself, but then there's another one of like other people are watching me and they have high standards that I have to live up to.

And that's the one that's been going up it's like seeing yourself through other people's eyes. That's where we feel like we need to be perfect and I feel like you can't help but see that statistic and not think like well that's got to be due to social media absolutely.

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Trust me, you'll be happy you did. So like type A people, because right at high performance. All these things that are being very much talk about, you know, very successful people. I think it's really how you do it. If that high performance is coming in with lots of perfectionism, lots of self-criticism.

You can only perform highly because you've this crazy drill instructor in your head. You're setting your expectations way too high for what's actually doable. Then that's going to lead to someone happiness. You can push yourself if you push yourself with a little bit of compassion and grace. And grace, yeah, just realistic standards about what's possible.

A lot, most often than not, though, that those two don't go hand in hand. Oh, for sure. Like, just ironic because we'd achieved more if we gave ourselves some grace. Actually, it was working with a group of former Navy SEALs who were like, some of the most type A, like, four people. And I was talking about this work in self-compassion, but I was bringing up the study showing that

people who engage in more self-compassion can get through trauma better. In fact, if Christian F has these studies where she shows that combat veterans who engage in more self-compassion have lower rates of PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. As if I did, like, if you really want to push yourself through some hard stuff,

“yeah, you need to do that in a way that's like being nice to yourself.”

And they have to resonate with it, but they were like, well, the marketing's all wrong. Like, I wish it wasn't called self-compassion, which has called, like, hustle and performance. It would just be called because that's a hustle. Yeah, we should brand it based on the podcast thing, or something. But yeah, but I think the problem isn't the pushing yourself.

The problem isn't wanting the hustle part.

The problem is the how you do it, part.

But unfortunately, I feel like very rarely.

And in my world that I, in my experiences, the two go hand in hand, very, I mean,

“I think we're trained wrong. Yeah, I think that maybe you get there after a lot of bad experiences”

or being very unhappy. That's what I think. Like, you hit this level of burnout, and it's not working anymore. One hundred people try new strategies. You try new strategies.

Wouldn't it be nice, though? Yeah. It would be fantastic. Or like, you know, another misconception would work. Life balance.

Right. Do you believe that there's such a thing of work like that? No. I hate that term. I, I really trying to push a different term, which is work life harmony. Because everything we know, it's like, yeah, work life harmony.

The reason for work life harmony is that there's tons of study showing that if you feel happier, if you have more of a positive mood, you perform better. One of my favorite examples of this comes from medical doctors. You bring medical doctors into the lab and give them a really tough problem. Like, like, those TV show methods.

Yeah. Like hard, but half the doctors are put in a good mood for us. They just like watch silly cat videos. They're laughing. What do you find the doctors who are in the good mood come up with the most innovative solution? Like, and that's just one example.

Like study after studies. Like, if you're feeling good mentally, you perform better. And in work life balance gets that wrong. It's like, well, if I want work to go up, you know, life, you know, my social connection. My sleep, all the stuff I care about has to go down.

And it's just wrong. Like, it scientifically doesn't work that way. So work life harmony is what it really like, if I invest in my positive mood, if I invest in my social connection, the work is going to go up too because I'm going to think more innovatively and be more creative. And then I'm going to have more juice for the like, get, you know, Yeah, I know what you're saying.

I'm just thinking realistically, right? Because then you have like life, right? We have so much to do. And, you know, the more successful you become. The business you're getting more and like you said, like, that does not, that does not equal happiness by any stretch.

So where is the happy medium, right? Because if you want to be, if you are a driven and vicious person that wants to be successful, you have to do the things to be successful.

And then more, it's always more, right?

Yeah. And then you get here. Well, if you want to get there, like, they got to do this and this. But I go to that extra speaking gig. You got to do this thing.

It's a very overwhelming.

“Right? And I think step one is the step of noticing where you are, right?”

I'm noticing what your bandwidth is. This is what in the self-compassion literature is called mindfulness. It's not we normally think of mindfulness like meditation. It's just like noticing like, I'm frantic right now. I don't feel good right now.

I'm snappy at my spouse right now. Like, I'm not in a great place. That's the mindfulness that matters. Because then you can be like, oh, well, the balance is off. Like, somehow the balance is off.

That this is looking, this is like responding to the alert light in your car, where it's like, overwhelmed is fashion. Yes. And then that means you really got to take something off your plate. And that's hard, right?

It's hard if you're successful. If you're like, I'm going to do one less speaking gig. I'm going to do less of my successful podcast because I need more time. But that's the healthy thing to do, right? Because you, is that time affluence exactly?

Yeah. And just like the burnout part, right? Burnout is usually due to over workload, right? Yeah. So if we do that to ourselves.

And again, this is, is we keep using these fitness analogies. This is something we need to know. Because of fitness is a microcosm for life. Like, in fitness, you have active rest. Right?

You have if you're training for a marathon, you train at 80%. Not 110%. No. I have my dream. My trainer will be very proud of me.

Please. But no, but we know that like bodies need rest. That bodies can't be at 110% all the time. Right? We forget that our working selves can't do the same thing either.

“So sometimes to get forward, you need to still scale back.”

So if you were, if you're going to do a happiness curriculum for adults, versus the college people that you deal with, obviously, what would you put on there? That's different. Yeah. And then what we're doing wrong?

Yeah. I think it's pretty similar. You're right now online. We have the original version of the class that I taught on YouTube. And then we made a teen version for middle school and high school students.

And then we made a version for parents.

And the dirty secret is like, it's basically the same class.

I use slightly different examples. Yeah. But the things that I'm teaching are all the same. I think, for example, social connection. There's data to back this up matters.

If you're 13 and if you're 93, right? Engaging in self compassion, treating yourself like a friend, giving yourself some grace. That helps. If you're in high school or if you're a Yale student or if you're, you know, in midlife, right? Right.

The things that we need are pretty consistent. So really, there's no difference between what a parent, a college student and adult should be doing to be happy. There's not like an added thing that, because everything you just said, it applies to everybody. Yeah. It's the same across the board.

But when I use the example of going to prom and the midlife people are like, oh, this is not for me. Yeah. But no, no, it was for you.

Exactly. But no.

So you just think you basically swap out an analogy or an example.

And there's less memes for the adults. Right. That. I mean, but the class is the most popular class of all time. Why do you think that is?

I think it's because our young people are struggling so much. Right. I mean, right now, nationally, more than 40% of college students report being too depressed to function. Most days, over 60% report being overwhelmingly anxious, more than one in 10 is seriously considered suicide in the last six months. Like, this is a national phenomenon of student struggling.

And I think students hate that. And I think they don't want who, right?

“I think they want this evidence based approach to tell me, hey, what does the science say?”

I can do better. That's insane.

Like, that to me is so insane that those numbers are like that.

And they're rising, right? That depression statistic doubled in just the last 10 years. So, um, yeah, what really increases. But, and that's frustrating because like, oh, my gosh, do we have tools? If we could just share these tools for how people could do better, I think everyone would benefit.

So if someone only has 10 minutes a day to work their happiness muscle, what would you tell them to do? I think one of the things I often suggest is you've heard lots of strategies, you know, today in our conversation for like social connection to time affluence to self compassion. Some of those, you like, padded yourself on the back, why you're like, oh, yes, I exercise. Oh, yes. And some, you like, felt a little called out.

I would do the ones that you felt a little called out on, right? It's like, you know, again, the fitness analogy. If you're only doing leg day and you haven't worked on your upper body at all, you're going to get more bang for your buck if you squeeze in a little bit more upper body. If you have that five minutes extra workout, and I think the same is true for the happiness stuff. You'll, you'll, if there's some strategy that you're not engaging in doing that will help.

But if you're like, I'm bad at all these things. I would say in your five minutes, like, text a friend and set up a time to like meet up in real life. Or, you know, call someone literally use the phone for what it was meant to be as a phone. Or you can call someone called the time when going out to the phone. And then I would say maybe just really sort of think about and notice what yourself talk is doing.

And if it's super self-critical, if it's always remodading about the past,

maybe engage in some mindset shifts to feel happier.

“Do you think therapy is making people happier or more depressed?”

Therapy, I think, can be really useful. And I think it's worth distinguishing between, like, what's going on, right? Again, use the physical analogy. If you go into your doctor's office and you're like, I have some high blood pressure. Dr. Might be like, well, you know, hit the gym and maybe, you know, cut out the salt or whatever.

If you go into your doctor's office and you're like, doctor, I'm having a cute cardiac arrest right now. Then I can be like, well, go to the gym next to the little bit more. They'll be like, oh, no, and bring the thing easy and, like, clear, you know, it's a different treatment, right? Right. And I think therapy is particularly helpful for when you're in a cute mental health situation. You know, if you're experiencing panic attacks, if you're clinically depressed, right?

Like, you need some, like, advanced help. You know, all the things I mentioned are really good preventative mental health therapy. Yeah. Sometimes you need to kind of jump in. Yeah. I think therapy, you know, there's lots of evidence suggesting that therapy is really useful.

Just as we were saying, different kinds of therapy resonate with people in different ways. Like, some people are more cognitive behavioral therapy where you really want to be changing your thought pattern. Some people, you know, really, you know, need to anti depression and medication to get through it.

“And that's why I think talking with a qualified professional can help you figure these things out can be so useful.”

I think what I'm talking about is that there's been a lot of research that I've read that that people who are going to therapy regularly for years on end. I'm not talking for an acute situation that happened, but more chronic. Yeah. Again, the self-indulgent part of talking about your problems,

roominating about what's wrong, has I've seen statistics that show people that has actually contributed to people's mental health decline and their depression and their anxiety. Yeah. I mean, I think one thing you need to do is you need to make sure that you're really moving forward and they're really making changes, right?

And sometimes that thought that talk therapy can be that, right? You get this insight, like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize that was speaking to myself like that. Or, oh my gosh, right? I get this insight. But often these insights come with work about what you need to do to change things.

Right. And if you're not doing that, then it's not really helping. So there should be some kind of like implementation. That's right. So like, it's not about just talking about it.

It's about what are you going to do to do something different. The talking gets you the insight. But then the talking gets you the insight. But then the talking gets you insight. Or sure.

Yeah. But then then what? Yeah. Because if you just sit there and rumenate and rumenate. So like, to me, like, I just had someone on here recently, we're talking about this.

And some of the research was staggering about how people's mental health is really decline because there's been so much more chatter about going to see a therapist. My therapist said this. My therapist doesn't have my therapist, and people go see these therapists for like 10, 20 years at a time. And it's that could be very, I think it's shown to be quite detrimental.

Yeah. I mean, I often worry about the therapy speak that I see less than like true clinical practice and more like online.

she's absolutely attached and like, you know, this is my trauma. And like, we hear a lot of these terms online. Like, I'm stored to say, was that sink that you're getting your information or the dime? Yeah. Yeah.

I agree with you. I think there are some great people out there who can really move the needle in real time.

“But you should be cognizant of where you're getting your information.”

Probably who you're talking so much. I mean, this is one of the reasons we've tried to put out all this evidence based stuff is there's so much bad stuff online. You know what? I found to be very trendy. And I actually unbelievable.

People are using chatGPT as their therapist now and like are like actually firing their therapist and just talking into chatGPT and they're getting like actually more profound results than with their therapist. So the data. I mean, these are the things we're like the research is coming out, you know, because obviously chatGPT is so new. And so my read on the research is like, it has some benefits and can be affected, right? If you're having a panic attack in three in the morning, it's hard to call your therapist.

But chatGPT is there. So it's kind of available all the time. Interestingly, it also seems to work better sometimes because people don't tell their therapist the same things they tell their chatGPT. So there's some things you're like holding back from your therapist. Whereas on online with LLM, you just kind of unload.

And so, you know, to really process things you got to be honest. If you're not being honest with the human therapist, but you're being honest with the LLM, then you're going to see a difference. So, yeah, so I think the jury is still out.

And the problem is that these tools don't necessarily always know the right thing to say, and there have been some awful cases that are being really bad information.

But yeah, I think that I think these things are going to wind up being used. The same thing with them, for example, on a chatBot friends. Yes, right, where people are using these tools to fill in when they're feeling lonely. And I think the short-term benefit of that might be high, but the long-term consequences might be more negative. I saw movies about this many years ago, about these artificial intelligence girlfriends.

I was an ex-mock, you know? Do you remember that? I was thinking about them. And that was actually real. It is unbelievable.

“That life is now imitating our so quickly.”

And I think these changes happen fast, and we need to understand the benefits and the drawbacks of them. Well, there are some of these AI things, not even chatGPT. That I think was Claude AI, okay, I think. And I remember asking Claude AI a question. And I asked it like a few times the same question.

And it's like Jennifer, you've already asked me this question many times. Do you really want me to tell you the same? Do I want to repeat myself? It's not going to be helpful or useful. Why don't you?

I was getting yelled at by Claude.

I was basically telling me to go fuck off basically.

I was like unbelievable. And I'm like, well, what do you mean? I'm just wanted to ask, and they're like, you've asked me an every direction possible. There's no other answer I wouldn't give you. And I'm like, is that a normal thing?

The reason why I'm bringing it up is that I think that there's certain AI. I think maybe chatGPT and I'm not an expert by any stretch. But what I was going to say is that their program, to basically just like, just kind of act like we, I'll just tell you whatever you want to hear.

Placate you is best as possible. First of all, in mental health things, for example, for something like schizophrenia, where you have these mistake and beliefs, it can be really dangerous. It is. And they're basically program, just how wonderful and great you are.

But there are other ones out there, I guess, like Claude. I don't know if that's just my experience.

But that was basically like brow beating me for asking the same question three times.

Interesting thing is we're finding out these data of what these tools are good at, what they're bad at at the same time, as the companies are changing them really quickly. Yeah. So if we hear data about like, oh, you know,

chatGPT is too nice to you, then, you know, the next version won't be any more perhaps. I was going to say, now I'm going to go on there. They're like, what do you want to get? Yeah. But I just find it very interesting.

And it's like a times, it's a time saver to money. I just think that like, it's funny how things are kind of evolving like that. Yeah. And I wanted to ask if you had any signs or any data on like, what how like how people's level of happiness have either declined or inclined by using these tools.

Yeah. On the on the like friendship one, my read is that the data suggests that short-term it's great, but long-term it's kind of making things worse. Yeah. Because you really do need in real life community and in real life action.

Absolutely.

“On the therapy, I think there are benefits and drawbacks too.”

But I mean, these tools are getting faster and more interesting. So I think the jury is still out. Oh, it's crazy. Okay, so anything else that they didn't ask you about that I should? Not really.

You covered a lot of ground. I wasn't expecting. This was fun. Yeah. Thank you.

I feel like with the I feel as though a couple of that I put here is what is one habit that looks productive or impressive on the outside.

I think a hustle culture, like, you know, perfectionism, I think.

You know, people perfectionism is a funny one because we're often a little bit proud of it.

“You know, in job interviews, that's a cliche of like, what's your worst habit?”

You're like, I'm a perfectionist. Yeah. But it's really, really like, I'm so proud of it. And I think that we work too much. I work.

We hold these, but I think in practice, they're really eroding my happiness. But I thought you were going to go to a different way. I thought you were going to ask what's the thing that people believe is positive, but it's positive. That was a nice question. Let me ask that.

What does one thing that people think is positive? Hmm. So this one's going to be controversial. We're going to get like, hate mail sent to you. That's what bring it on people. The bad thing.

The people think it's good, but it isn't good. Manifesting. I think what I liked you from. So here's it. So it's nuanced.

It's nuanced, right? Positive thinking isn't bad, right? Like, believing that you can do something is great. But the way people talk about what you're supposed to do for manifesting has a problem. So this is the usual manifesting, like, say,

I want to get fit, right? Like, I want to, like, you know, have better legs. I'm going to do leg day at the gym. And what happens is you start to fantasize about the positive outcomes of it. Like, oh my god, if I hit the gym and we did leg day every day, like, kind of stronger legs.

And my legs would look great and I'd be so proud of myself. You get all these rewarding thoughts in your head about how awesome it will be. So our brains are like kind of stupid. When they start elaborately fantasizing about their award, we're going to get. There's some part of us that things we already got that reward.

And so we don't have to put in any more work to go after it. So Gabrielle Oting and has these studies where she finds that the women who have most positive fantasies about losing weight are the ones who are less likely to put in the work to lose weight. And the college students who have the most positive fantasies about good grades, like, oh my gosh, like, I'm going to, you know, my mom's going to be so proud. I'm going to get into this program.

They're the ones who put the less work into studying. I see what I find so interesting, like, I know you don't know me from a hole in the wall.

But I'm a person that always, like, just kind of rails on this whole manifestation thing, because I'm a action oriented person.

And just like the idea of just thinking something never really kind of, it didn't feel good for me. But what I was going to say is, you're, so you're saying basically the same thing.

“But what if you manifest, like, think about it and then, like, what's the alternative?”

So we have to do it. So we have to do it. So, like, so a healthier way to do this. And this is from Gabrielle, which is where she is. This acronym uses W-O-O-P, which is, like, healthy manifesting. And that stands for wish outcome obstacle plan. So normally, the manifesting is just the wish outcome. Like, oh my god, I want to lose weight.

Oh, be so gray. I'd fit in my stuff, bad or whatever. And we stop. But you get to do the next steps obstacle plan. What are the obstacles to losing weight? Oh, I travel all the time. And I don't really have a healthy eating plan when I'm traveling. Oh, like, I don't have a gym membership.

Like, I feel like really like fatening food. Like, these are the obstacles. And I'm using my brain to go through and notice all of these. And then you get to the last step plan, or you say, okay, traveling a lot. How am I going to, oh, I should pack healthy food. So when I, you know, travel to LA, you know, for this talk,

I'm going to pack some healthy food. Or like, I need to plan for, like, I got to go to the gym every day, right? It's like an action plan. Exactly. So you're using your imagination to do. It's to plan out what you do like when the time gets like if the obstacle comes up,

how are you going to get through it? Because you feel like in your head if you're thinking, oh, when I'm, when I have a six pack, or whatever, or when I get an A plus on this test,

the idea of you thinking about it actually is just as good as what the reality is.

Exactly. There are all these funny studies on the effects of mental practice of, like, the consequence of imagining something vividly. One of my favorite studies is you have somebody either vividly imagine putting quarters like into, you know, maybe a phone booth over and over.

So one quarter of a time or imagine eating one M&M over and over slowly over time. And then you just have subjects do that. And then they come out and in the waiting room, there's just a big bowl of M&Ms. And you ask who eats them.

And what you find is the person who imagined eating all these M&Ms, the lasting one and two is eat more M&M. Because even though it was just in your head, you kind of, like, have this leftover award. Like, why are they all that M&Ms, right? And so the same thing happens with, like, finished,

like, I already got this six pack a lot off to go to the gym. Like, I already got the perfect grade of my mom's proud of me. Like, why do I have to study?

“So what you need to do is to, you know, have a little bit of that,”

but shut it off and say, okay, let me use my imagination for something good, which is to get to the action part. Like, that's so interesting. So are you not supposed to fantasize then? You can.

Because, like, a fantasy. Like, they just become fantasy. Follow it up with, okay, that would be great. I motivated to do that. Why am I not doing that right now?

Yeah. This is what they do to get to that point. Exactly. And this is what, like, effective people do. I had Michael Phelps's coach on my podcast.

was visualization. Yeah.

But because he was so good at it, he would often visualize.

Or what would if something bad happens?

“So he'd think, like, what if I dove into the pool and my goggles fell off?”

Or what if I like hit my foot, right? That's what this whoop strategy is. Wish outcome. But then obstacle. Oh, my goggles fell off.

Or like, oh, I don't have a gym membership. Oh, studying is going to be hard. Because I want to go to this party this weekend, right? And then you come up with an action plan and you imagine it in your head. Like, oh, what I'm going to do with my goggles fall off.

And this was what actually happened to Michael Phelps and Bayesian. Train like that. He was like, oh, well, what I would do is like, if I didn't couldn't see, then I'd just count my strokes. Yes.

Or whatever it is.

And in fact, that actually happened to him in a gold medal rate.

One of the races he won the gold medal in where he was like, goggles fell off and he was like, oh, I know it to do, right? So when you imagine the plan to overcome the obstacles that gets easier. So that's the secret weapon and manifesting. It's not the like, oh, good things have come to me.

“It's like, what are things preventing the good things from naturally coming to me?”

Oh, I may need a plan of action to get through that. I love that. And I could not agree with you more. Again, how many people have sat here talking about manifestation? And I either, well, I don't fully bite my tongue.

I usually say something because I, I'm not someone who can just sit there and not say word, but I will say that I'm so happy to hear that someone at your signature. Yeah, it's true nuance. It's not that the, it's not that the fantasy is bad. It's just what you'd follow.

Well, if you stop there and you're like, I'm not on or do you do the planning part. Right. But everything in life is nuance. Nothing is just like straight straight for like everything has like different variables and nuance.

Right.

Of course, I can, I can wish a million things.

I can wish that I can get like a, you know, whatever. I can go on a private plane to vermuta right now for a week. But is it going to happen? No. Unless I do this and this and this and make it happen.

Exactly. But I'm so happy you said that because there are such a thing. You won't be able to hate me. I'm sorry. I know.

Listen, that's okay. I mean, whatever. I'm fine with it. I'm, I, I've got to think of skin. So it's okay.

It's so funny even with my Yale students. You have a whole lecture on money. Doesn't make you happy in that. I heard some, but when I was like manifesting, does it work? They were just like, yeah.

Really? I don't know. What did it with people? Like, this is what people get so easily offended. Like, what did they make up the word manifestation?

What did they care? And like, this is just, we're not allowed to have discourse. We're not allowed to have different opinions. Like, the fact that that's even a situation that I can even get hate mail because I don't believe in the just the, the word manifestation on its own

is so ridiculous to me. And this is also a cause of why people are unhappy. People like to be, I think there are people who actually like to be unhappy or like to be miserable. Like to be confrontational.

They get off on it. Yeah.

“And I think, you know, the more outrageous rewarding, right?”

And I think especially in online spaces, we see this a lot. Exactly. It's attention. Right? Exactly.

Well, I love that you came on this podcast. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm so happy. Can you come back again?

Yeah. I love this. I mean, I don't know what we can cover next time. But we can do the same thing again. And I'm fine with that.

All right. So, Doctor. Okay. So, where do we go find you? You check me out at Dr. Laurie Santos.com, which is linked to everything else.

And you can get free copies of all the courses I teach on YouTube. And Dr. Laurie Santos. And very worthwhile. Very worthwhile. Thank you so much.

Thanks so much for having me. Bye.