What does the science really say practically that you can do to kinda feel better right now? You can actually become happier somewhere between 5 to 15% happier. If I said, all things considered, how satisfied are you with your life? You're, like, 5 out of 10. Wherever you're feeling right now on how happy you are with your life, you can kind of pop up a little bit.

You're not gonna go from 0 to a100. Everyone wants to go from 0 to a100. I think 1 of the disappointing things about happiness is that it takes constant work. Like all good things in life, right, these are lasting effects where you really go up a small but significant amount. And and I think things are getting worse.

What what do you mean things are getting worse?

Like, rates of loneliness have nearly doubled, right, since we've been measuring these things. Like, rates of depression and anxiety in the adult population are going up.

Is happiness the anecdote? Hey. It's your friend, Mel. Welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so excited that you're here.

I'm so happy you hit play on the conversation today. First of all, it's always such an honor to be able to spend time with you and to be together. And if you're brand new, I wanna welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family, and you have picked 1 amazing episode to hit play on. And it tells me something about you. It tells me that you're the type of person who not only values your time, but you're also interested in learning about ways that you can be happier.

And I am really fired up for today's episode because I've brought in the best of the best. Someone who's gonna guide you toward a happier life using the exact steps and research that will boost your happiness day to day. Doctor Lori Santos is in our Boston studios. She is a cognitive scientist and professor at Yale who teaches the single most popular course that has been taught at Yale in 300 years. It's a course she created called the psychology of a good life.

It's so popular that 1200 students signed up within 3 days of it being announced. Now doctor Santos has spent her entire career researching what truly makes you happy, and she has 1 of the most popular podcasts on the topic. It's called the happiness lab. And I personally, I love her research. I have used it.

I've cited it. I've written about it. I've even taught it in online courses that I teach and in the work that I do with some of the world's leading global brands. That's how powerful her work is, and you're gonna feel that power today. And that's why you can hear your friend, Mel, just bubbling over.

That's why I can't wait for you and for the people that you love and for me to learn absolutely everything that she has to share with us today. So please help me welcome doctor Lori Santos to the Mel Robbins podcast.

Oh, I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Oh, I'm thrilled that we've got you here in our studios.

And I'm, like, just looking around the studio being like, this is Mel's studio. So cool.

And you're it.

I'm in it right now.

Well, you're so busy. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to be with us, and we're gonna cover a lot. And I just wanna tell you as you're listening and you've invited doctor Santos and I in the car with you or on your walk with you, that there is so much that she's gonna unpack for you about happiness from the things that we get wrong about it to the ways our brains are working against us to most importantly.

I don't know how you're gonna do this woman, but you're gonna condense the most popular course literally ever taught on happiness into this conversation with key takeaways. And I understand you also have homework for us.

Yeah. Sorry. You can't invite the professor on the show or not. Have your listeners get homework. Sorry, listeners.

I didn't mean it.

That's okay. Alright. I would love for you to speak directly to the person that is with us right now and listening, and share with them what they might experience that could be different about their life if they take everything that you're about to share to heart and they apply

it. Well, this is something we've seen in our students, which is that if you listen to what I'm about to say, if you follow the homework, you can actually become happier somewhere between 5 to 15% happier. 5 to 15% more positive emotions, 5 to 15 percent more satisfied with your life. That's actually what the science tells you. And in our short, short, short, short version of the course today, that's what you're gonna get.

Wow. What does 5 to 15% feel like?

Well, I think it feels like, you know, if you were a, like, 6 out of 10 on positive emotion. You know, if I said, all things considered, how satisfied are you with your life? You're, like, 5 out of 10. You go up to, like, almost 7 out of 10. And and that matters.

Wherever you're feeling right now on how happy you are with your life, how much joy, how much laughter you have, you can kind of pop up a little bit. You're not gonna go from 0 to a 100, but these are lasting effects where you really go up a small but significant amount in terms of how you feel.

Can I share something? Please. So when you said 5 to 15%, my brain was like, well, that's not enough. And I think that's probably relevant to our conversation about happiness. I mean, does that surprise you that I was, like, 5%?

Not at all. I mean, I think when we talk about these strategies, especially to my very type a Yale students. Right? Everyone wants to go from 0 to a 100. Right?

Everyone wants to do the extreme thing. And I think 1 of the lessons we get from the happiness research is that, like, this works better in baby steps. And it's not the kind of thing that you're just gonna do 1 thing and happiness lasts forever. I think 1 of the disappointing things about happiness is that it takes constant work, like all good things in life. Right?

If you wanna learn to play the violin, if I wanna learn French, you know, if I wanna get really good at Guitar Hero, which is the last thing I've invested myself in. I'm just really trying to I'm just trying to move from medium to hard on Guitar Hero. I know it's a little 2,005, but that's what I do. But, like, you can't just practice once and then that's it. Like, you gotta kind of keep up with it.

And 1 of the lessons that we get from the science about happiness is that happiness works the same way. It's kinda like a leaky tire. You do these different behaviors. You change your mindset. It fills it things up for a little bit, but then you kinda gotta do it again and again.

It sort of takes constant work, but the good news is that you can change things around a lot.

So if you feel like your life is a leaky tire right now.

Yes. And and I think probably, listeners out there, my guess is a lot of you are feeling that way.

Yeah. I think so. I would love to have you share a little bit about this course that you teach at Yale University. It is the single most popular course taught in over 300 years. It's called the psychology of a good life.

Can you tell us a little bit about this course, why you created it, and why the heck is this so popular?

Yeah. So so the course kinda started when I took on a new role on Yale's campus. I've been teaching there for over 2 decades. But in just the last couple years, I took on a role of what's called the head of college on campus. And so Yale is 1 of these weird schools like like Hogwarts and Harry Potter where there's, like, Gryffindor or Slytherin.

There's, like, these, like, weird colleges within a college. They're basically, like, dorm communities. And so I became a head of college of 1 of these, which meant as a faculty member, I was living on campus with students.

Really? And and you're married. So were you there with your Me and

my husband, eat in the dining hall, hanging out in the coffee shop.

It's kinda fun.

I became this, like, benevolent aunt to, like, 500 19 year olds. Right? But I and I thought this was gonna be fun. Right? I I thought college life right now was gonna look like what college life looked like back when I went there

in the

nineties, and it just didn't. I mean, I was really looking at this college student mental health crisis up close and personal. And this is true at Yale, but it's just true nationally. So right now, nationally, more than 40% of college students report being too depressed to function. Right now, nationally, more than 60% of college students report feeling very lonely and overwhelmingly anxious.

More than 1 in 10 has seriously considered suicide in the last 6 months. Like and this was what I was seeing, like, in my community. Right? Where there were just students who are really struggling. And and I just kinda went through this crisis of confidence.

Like, as a professor, I'm like, we're not teaching them computer science and Shakespeare and all this stuff if, like, 60% of students are experiencing overwhelming anxiety most days. And I was like, we gotta do something about this. And being a psychologist, I mean, I'm a trained psychologist, I said, well, my field has strategies. Right? Like, we know simple kinds of ways that you can change your behaviors and your mindset that, again, don't take you from 0 to a100, but work pretty well.

Right? It can make you kind of patch up that leaky happiness tire and feel a little bit better. And so I said, well, why don't I make a class? I'll just make a whole new class and I'll kinda teach students all these strategies. I wanted it to sound cool.

That's why I called it psychology in the good life. So it sort of pop out of the quiz. Sounded like kind of fun. But, you know, it was a new class on campus. I thought, you know, 30 or so students would show up.

And so the the first indication that I got that something was amiss was we get these little kind of tickers as students are registering for our class. It's like this little web page where you can kind of see this graph going up and down. And most of the graphs had an access that was from 0 to a100, but mine started going from 0 to a1000.

What were you like? Like, where were you when that started happening?

It was like it was like back and forth in my office because it's like happening over time. Gradually, as students were coming in, and I think it was something different because students were sort of voting with their fee. I mean, if you're a 19 year old right now, you don't like this culture of feeling overwhelmed and anxious and just kind of so many of your friends are just experiencing panic attacks. Like, that's not a fun way to be. And I think the course was really offering students a solution and even an evidence based solution.

I was saying, look. I'm gonna just comb through the science and tell you what does the science really say practically that you can do to kinda feel better right now.

And as you started to observe this about college students, did you see any, correlation when you look around at your friends who are your age, my age, all ages as well in terms of these statistics or just people generally being unhappy?

Yeah. Well, this was the striking thing about the course. Right? Is it you know, we the the course became viral on campus, but what I really didn't expect was for the course to get viral off campus. About a week into teaching the class, I got a there was a New York Times article about the class.

The the point of which was basically, like, all these 19 year olds, an Ivy League school with their whole life ahead of them are miserable. What about the rest of us? It was kind of like, doctor Santos, share these strategies with the rest of us. And I just got emails from all around the world of just people feeling like, you know, it's not so much that I'm depressed. I just feel like I'm kinda languishing or just kinda meh or, like, you know, just there's so much going on in the world to feel stressed out about right now.

Like, everybody's kinda going through it right now.

I'm glad that you said that because I think that this conversation is going to be incredibly helpful for understanding not only what the teenagers and 20 somethings and early 30 somethings are facing right now, but also what we're all facing.

Yeah.

And so whether you're already starting to think about the person in your life who's in their twenties or in college or high school that you're gonna share this conversation with, or you're thinking about yourself, Like, all of the takeaways from the research and the science and the studies that you've been doing are relevant to all of us.

That's right. And and I think things are getting worse and will continue to get worse unless we come up with good strategies to to deal with this.

Right? What do you mean things are getting worse?

Well, you look at pretty much any statistic on mental health, and I'm not talking in college students now. I'm talking about in adults, especially in the US. Things are just getting worse over time. Like, rates of loneliness have nearly doubled, right, since we've been measuring these things. Like, rates of depression and anxiety in the adult population are going up.

And I think even if you just look at rates of things like people reporting that they're overwhelmed, burned out. Right? You get, you know, not just double digits, but very high double digits of folks saying, like, yeah, that's me. I'm going through it. And, honestly, if it's not you, you know, it's your sister-in-law, it's your colleague at work.

It's like, we're just in a community where so many people just feel like they're not experiencing the kind of joy and positive emotion that they really like to be experiencing.

I love what you just said about joy and positive emotion because I was about to ask you. Well, if you're dealing with anxiety or depression or a lack of purpose or you're feeling very lonely, is happiness the anecdote? Is that why this matters so much for all of us?

Yeah. I think so. I mean, I think it helps to to dig in a little bit to what we mean by happiness because we can mean so many things. And in fact, there was a funny study that showed that what lay people think about happiness is not what the scholars mean when they use the term happiness.

The scholar on the lay person.

Okay. Let me go

all the way down now.

Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what the scholars mean. So what what the scholars mean by happiness is happiness in 2 forms. Scholars think about happiness in your life and happiness with your life. So what do we mean here?

Oh, hold on. Hold on. So you just said you can be happy in your life, and you can also be happy with your life. Holy. I can think of a bazillion moments where I've been happy with what's going on, but not happy in it.

Yeah.

I mean, my you know, the classic case if you have kids, right, is that you, you know, have a new newborn baby. Right? And you're so happy with life. You've brought this new life, and you have so much meaning and purpose. But in your life, there's dirty diapers.

There's no sleep. There's, you know Oh my god. I'm exhausted. My nipples are, There's no sleep. There's, you know Oh,

my god. I'm exhausted. My nipples are leaking.

I'm not having sex anymore. I feel like I've

just, like, shot a cannonball through my legs. Like, what is happening? Miserable. And you've you've had enough important people on here to know the opposite. Right?

Which is

you can have a life in your life where there's all these hedonic pleasures. You know, you're flying for a class and eating at the best restaurants and, you know, the best wines. But with your life, you feel a little bit empty. Maybe you don't have a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning. And so, what scholars are trying to do is they're trying to find strategies that boost both of these in your life.

And specifically, we mean lots of positive emotions, lots of joy and laughter and contentment. Right? These kind of subtle positive emotions. Otherwise, I guess, we'll probably talk about we don't wanna get rid of negative emotions completely. Right?

We wanna have some negative emotions.

I just don't want them to run me over. Yeah.

You didn't I don't want

the negative emotions to feel like that's my whole life.

No steamroller from the frustration or the overwhelm and so on. Right? But and that's happy in your life. With your life, it's the answer to the question, all things considered, how satisfied do I feel? Do I feel like I have meaning?

Do I feel like I have purpose? Right? You know, as as nerdy professors, we use, like, scales to measure these kinds of things. But you don't need a scale. You could probably answer right now, all things considered.

You know, how happy are you with your life? And I take it

if you were to just stop and ask yourself, which you really should, am I happy in my life? Yes or no? And then ask yourself, am I happy with my life? That we're about to learn, there are kind of different strategies that you can use to bring those numbers up in terms of that 5 to 15% satisfaction that's available to all of us.

Exactly. And 1 of the things that's striking is that a lot of the strategies move both at the same time. A lot of the strategies will give you a sense of positive emotion when you're practicing it, but also overall make you kinda just more satisfied in the long term too.

So your course psychology of a good life has 26 lectures on happiness. Yeah. What do you think the big takeaway for your students has been?

Yeah. So 1 of the biggest ones is just how much we get happiness wrong.

Right?

Yeah. I mean, I think if you're listening right now, you probably care about happiness. Right? You probably want to feel happier. You're probably pursuing happiness, but you might not be feeling like it's going through.

Happier. You're probably pursuing happiness, but you might not be feeling like it's going so great. Right? You're kind of off somehow. And I think this is something that so many of us seem to go through.

Right? It's not so much that we're not seeking happiness out. We we are. We're probably putting some effort into the choices we're making and the actions we're taking to feel happier, but we're kinda doing it wrong. Right?

And and this is by and large what the science seems to be telling us. It's it's not that we're not going for improved well-being. We are. We're putting a lot of work in. Some some of us are putting a lot of money in, but we tend to be picking the things that that don't get us there.

And this is a big insight into happiness is that we have theories about those sorts of things that make us happy. But a lot of research suggests those theories are just wrong. So we have these intuitions that are leading us astray.

I am so excited to learn from you, and I think probably the best place to start you've talked about happiness with your life and happiness in your life, but what is the definition of happiness?

Yeah. Well, I think the the definition of happiness is really boosting both of those. Right? It's kind of finding the way to become happier in your life and with your life. That's kinda what we're going for when we're talking about improving happiness.

I love that definition. I do because I again, I'm gonna reveal why I make myself miserable. It's because I immediately went like, oh, okay. So this is something I can do. I can literally, like, figure out how

to be happy with my life, and

I can figure out how to

be happy in my life. And I can

get my little checklist out, and then I can go. Go. Go. Go. Go.

So it felt more like a It's doable.

It's like a checklistable thing.

Yeah. Because it's I'm starting to really wonder, is it really more of a skill to learn how to be happy with and in your life?

I think it really is. I mean, as we talked about before, this idea of happiness is something that you need to build over time. Right? It just kind of takes energy. It's like learning the violin or learning to play guitar here.

Right? You kinda just build it over time. I think 1 of the problems is that we don't spend a lot of time learning ourselves, teaching our kids, setting up educational institutions to build these skills. I think understanding the strategies that we need to engage in to improve our lives, to regulate our emotions, right, to kind of not get run over by that frustration and overwhelm and so on. These are such important skills.

I think a different misconception is we just assume some people are good at it and some people are bad

at it. That's not true?

It is true to a certain extent. Right? I think some people are naturally better at it than others.

And is it because they're doing the things naturally that you're about to teach us?

It's because they're doing the things naturally. And some of these things come to shove. I I will say I am not naturally a happy person. I've become happier, maybe even about, you know, 20 to 30% happier since I'm, like, really digging into some of these homeworks and doing these things. But those strategies absolutely don't come naturally to me.

It's just the kind of thing you can learn over time.

Well, 1 of the things that you teach in your course is that we're not wired for happiness.

Yeah.

What does that mean?

1 of the reasons we get it wrong is that we're kinda, like, set up not to be so happy, in fact. And I think this makes most sense if you think back to kind of evolution. Right? You know, like, we are just these survivors and reproducers that have to get out there off on the savannah, not get eaten by a tiger or something. Right?

What makes you do that better? It doesn't really matter if you're experiencing a lot of positive emotion, joy, and so on, but you definitely wanna experience, like, fear. You definitely wanna experience anger so you can get access to maybe resources that you didn't get access to before. You're gonna be driven to pay attention to the negative stuff. Right?

Because that's kinda what matters for, you know, surviving and reproducing. And that means we have brains that are built with what's called this negativity bias. We kind of constantly notice the bad stuff out there, and that's because our brains are wired for it. These were brains that had to, like, notice the tiger that was hiding in the bush. So when it's scrolling through an Instagram feed, it's gonna see the terrible stuff, and that's what's gonna get us there.

You walk into a cafeteria at a college or at work, you're gonna notice that everybody already has a friend to sit with but you.

Yep. We notice all the bad comparisons that make us feel terrible. Right? And so that's just another feature of this. And and it makes sense evolutionarily that that's what we're built for.

Right? Like, we don't necessarily survive and reproduce better if we notice all the things we're grateful for and the blessings and have contentment. Right? It works better if we live with this really volatile life.

Well, it kinda makes sense because if we were to, like, time travel back several 1000 years and we're sitting out there on the savannah or wherever, if you and I are sitting there playing cards all day long, having fun, like, cracking jokes, we're not gonna eat.

Right. Or worse, you know, imagine the, like, contented Buddha, you know, the perfect Zen happiness who's just meditating under a tree. Like, he's gonna starve and, you know, get Right.

Perfect get eaten while he's while he's meditating. So it sounds like because our brains are wired to keep us alive, that mandate has kinda spiraled out of control in modern life. And especially when you think about things like social media or you think about just how much information is out there about what other people are doing, you're probably now defaulting to paying attention to that instead of just paying attention to what's right in front of your face in terms of how to be happy with and in your life.

Yeah. I think the modern world has found many more things for us to feel negative about and many more things to kinda activate our negativity bias.

So if you were to speak directly to the person that's with us right now listening, what is it that they probably have wrong about happiness or the misconceptions that they have that are leaving them feeling unhappy? It's almost like when you understand this thing, it's actually gonna help you when you realize that there's this thing you have wrong about happiness.

That's right. And I think it's worth being a little bit self compassionate. Right? You know, if you're listening to this feeling like, I'm maybe not flourishing and maybe not experiencing as much positive emotion as I could. First of all, you are in the majority.

Right? You're not alone when you're dealing with this. 2nd, you're just allowing your brain to play out in the way your brain was built to play out. It makes sense that you're going through this. Right?

You're not doing anything wrong in some sense. But with a little tweaking of the way you engage in different actions and different mindsets, you can feel a lot better. Understanding where we go wrong, I think, is really the path to making things better.

Amazing. I mean, I'd rather stop doing things because it feels easier than have to start doing a whole lot of things. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Well, that is the bad news about happiness.

Oh. You know? Because now I'm unhappy. I don't wanna hear this. Okay.

Doctor Samson,

come on. The bat look. All good things in life take a little bit of work. And and happiness is like that too. But the good news is that if you put that work in, you can change.

And I think that's another thing that we get wrong about happiness. We assume not just that some people are good at it, some people are bad, but that it's built in. Right? If you're a kinda, you know, Debbie Downer sort of person or like a real optimist, you're just always gonna be that way. We assume that there's nothing you can change about it.

And study after study shows that you can change. Again, you don't necessarily go from 0 to a100, but with time, you can build habits and that allow you to make, like, important significant progress.

That's great. Because I was just sitting there when you're talking about Debbie Downer, and I was thinking about my husband, Chris. Now his name is Christie. Downer? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, his name's Christopher Robbins, like, from Winnie the Pooh. And so in a not so nice way, he's he's always kind of been the Eeyore of our family. You know?

Just kinda

but it's because he's quiet, and I'm the Tigger bouncing all over the place. But I think he has probably had a higher level of happiness within in his life. He's just not outwardly expressing it, whereas I'm all over the place. 1 of the

big things we get wrong when it comes to happiness is that we assume happiness is about our circumstances. Right? We look out at people's lives and think, oh, well, if I could just be rich, I would be happy. Or if I could just get that promotion at work, you know, from my college students, if I could just get the perfect grade or into the perfect internship.

Or the be in the different friend group.

Be in a different friend relationship. Relationship. Be in a relationship if you're not, get in a different relationship, different relationship, you know, but buy that new house. Even I think just, like, buy that new thing. Right?

Whether

that's the new dress or the new shoes at a local level, I think we're buying things often to make ourselves happier. We think it's gonna work, but really it doesn't work as well as we think. It seems like circumstances aren't the key to happiness that we expect. Now, that has a caveat. If you were listening to this right now and you're, like, in a refugee camp or you don't have enough money to put food on your table, yes, changing your circumstances is gonna matter really a lot for your material happiness going up.

But my guess is you're listening to this and you're not necessarily in a refugee camp that maybe you're not having the perfect finances, but you got food on the table and a roof over your head. If you're in that situation, then drastically changing your circumstances probably isn't gonna affect your happiness in the way that you think. That's what study after study shows.

Well and I think more empowering is to know that you don't have to change your circumstances

That's right.

To boost your ability to feel happier.

And that's huge. Right? Because changing your circumstances is a pain in the butt. Right? Like, going from, you know, like, your current salary to, like, $300,000,000 a year, that's a big change.

It's gonna take a lot of work. Right? You know, kind of finding a new relationship, getting a big promotion at work. These are hard things, and they're often things that most of us don't really have that much control over. Yeah.

But all the strategies we're gonna start talking about soon are ones that you have complete control over. They're just things that you can engage in yourself.

Let's talk about money though because you have some foundational and very interesting research about money, at least in the United States, and I would love for you to share a little bit about that.

Yeah. So the the most famous study on money and happiness was 1 that the late, Nobel Prize winner Danny Kahneman ran back in, I think, 2009. He asked this kind of interesting question, does increases in your amount of money wind up corresponding with increases in happiness, which he measured in a couple of ways. 1st, kind of positive emotion, do you get more positive emotion, do you get less negative emotion, and do you feel kind of less stressed? And so, we had this huge dataset where he could plot this out across different incomes.

And what he finds is that if you're, you know, in the low, low end of the income spectrum, you know, if you're earning $10,000 a year or $30,000 a year, yeah, increasing your, your salary over time is gonna boost your positive emotion. You're gonna feel less stress, less negative emotions. But that kind of increasing curve where more money is more happiness, more money is more happiness, it levels off. And in 2,009 ish dollars in the United States, it leveled off at around $75,000. What does that mean?

That means that if in 2,009 dollars you hit a salary of $75,000, even if you doubled your salary, tripled, quintupled your salary, you wouldn't get any corresponding increase in positive emotions. You wouldn't decrease your negative emotions and you wouldn't feel less stressed. Now, that is not what you probably believe if you're listening right now. Like, if you're like, Mel's got her mouth kinda hanging open. It's like, yeah.

No 1 thinks this. Right? And you might be like, well, that's $2,009. The equivalent right now would maybe be like a 100, $110,000, something like that. Right?

We just don't think that. We think if suddenly I could triple my salary, I would be way happier. But the these research like this just shows that we're kind of wrong. And so that raises a different question, which is like, well, why doesn't more money buy happiness? And I think it's for a few reasons.

1 is that as you get richer, you often tend to get busier. Mhmm. In fact, this is a change that we've seen in the US population. Used to be that rich people lived their lives of leisure. Like, they look like kind of Cary Grant in the Philadelphia story just sitting around, you know, drinking cognac out of, like, beautiful vases and things like that.

But rich more higher salary now usually means you're working harder. Right? You're putting in more hours at work. And we know that time really matters for happiness and free time sort of matters for happiness. The more you're working, the less you're interacting socially.

So, wealth doesn't seem to kind of give us the sort of social benefit we used to get before. And I think a bigger thing is that as you get more money, you kind of just get used to that over time. Right? You know, so if you get a little bit more money, maybe you go you start going to see the trainer and you start flying 1st class, you start eating in the nice restaurants. But if you do that over and over every day, it just becomes your day to day experience.

You don't get this kind of additional happiness boost from it. And so $75,000, I think it's not like a kind of magic bullet number. But I think it's like kinda around the amount where, like, a lot of your needs are taken care of. You got food, shelter, you know, maybe like a teeny vacation a year or something. Like, the stuff that you can additionally buy with more money is not gonna bring you more happiness.

I'm so glad that we're talking about this because I do think this is 1 of the major mistakes I've made in my life.

Totally.

That I think that if I can buy something or if I make more money or if I just have this much in savings, that somehow it's gonna just automatically boost happiness, and it's true. It hasn't. And I will also say, though, that when I think about the times in my life where I have been struggling profoundly financially, like, really struggling to get groceries on the table, having my bank card bounce at the gas station

trying

to fill up the card. Right?

We've all been there.

That there is a certain kind of cruel and relentless stress that you feel when you can't take care of your basic needs that does interfere with your ability to be happy with where you are in your life. And because you're constantly, I was constantly worried about it, which meant I had no time, which meant I didn't enjoy where I was at, which meant I was focused on survival. And And so is that the reason why the monetary figure really if you can take care of things so that you can get through your day to day life and take care of yourself, it lowers stress, and that's why it makes happiness available to you.

Yeah. I mean, I think when we ask this question, does money buy happiness? Part of our intuition is right. It was like, well, money can get me stuff that would lead me to be happy. Right?

Like, money can put me on a vacation that I can spend time with my family, can allow me to decrease these negative emotions, like fear of, like, you know, is the rent collector gonna come when I get kicked out of my house or or overwhelmed. Right? I have to take on more hours at work just to make ends meet. Right? I think when you get to a certain wealth level, you shut off those basic need problems that come up that very much do affect our happiness.

And so from that perspective, does money matter for happiness? Yes, for sure. But it only matters up to a certain level, and that's the spot that we get wrong. And I think it's not just like, you know, all of you and I and the listener are getting this wrong. I think this is the kind of thing that, like, even people of extreme wealth get wrong.

1 of my favorite guests that I've ever had on my podcast, The Happiness Lab, was this guy Clay Cockerell, and he is a mental health professional that works only with the 0.0001%. So I think most of his clients are earning over $50,000,000. And the first thing that should be striking is that this dude has clients. Right? These are people who have $50,000,000 who apparently aren't happy enough that they need to see, like, some mental health professional to kinda help them get through.

And a lot of their problems amazingly are financial. So 1 of the stories Clay told was that there was a guy, you know, who he worked with, who just bought this new yacht, his wife really wanted the yacht and they couldn't figure out where to park it. And it was like causing all this marital strife of dah, dah, dah. And like, you can look at that and you probably think you like, you know, poor, you know, expletive baby, like, is it kind of, like, you know, like, can't park his yacht while

I was gonna say, doctor Santos, it's very petty of me to say this. But I'm like, good. I'm glad you're unhappy. Good. Like, I like, I literally I don't like, I hate that I had that reaction, but I'm like, I'm glad you're freaking unhappy if you have a yacht.

Like, screw you. Like and and now that I'm like, I'm a terrible person. Oh, my god.

But the flip side is I think we've many of us, well, way less wealth levels than $50,000,000 have seen some of the problems that our material possessions come up with.

Of course, I'm mad that my husband is making me get up and move my 1987 Toyota Corolla to the other side of the street so that the sweet the street sweeper, you know, is coming through and we don't get towed.

Right. And to somebody who's gonna have an existence with that no. I was gonna say the opposite way, somebody who has an existence where they would kill for that 1987 Toyota because they can't get to work and they're taking the bus 2 hours a day. That feels like, how could you ever complain about that? Right.

And so this is the problem is that we don't, we don't these material goods come with some costs that we don't expect, and they just kind of don't continue to give us the happiness. Like, if you were that person who is taking the bus today every day, they would worship your 1987, your car. I like my balance all day. I know. I've I've, like, a really crappy Nissan too, so I get it.

It's, like, very beat up. But it's, like, there's somebody out there who would worship that. And this is the problem is that, like, you've had it so long. You know, since 19 days 7, you kinda stop worshiping. You stop you stop getting that kind of utility out of it.

But I mean, tomorrow, if you walked home and the car was gone, and you're like, wait, where did I park it? Did somebody steal my car? What's going on? And like, it took you out and you're like, oh, no. My husband moved there or something.

For that 5 minutes where you didn't know where it was, where it had gone, now you'd see the value in it. Like, oh my gosh. I I don't know. I left my CDs in there. Like, you know, like, oh my gosh.

Like, I didn't have to get a new car. When when you get it back, you're like, oh, thank goodness. That little break is breaking up what you are used to. It's kind of a break in what psychologists call your hedonic adaptation. You kinda just got That's a big word.

I don't know what language. It's the fast definition is you just got used to something. Hedonic adaptation is you get adapted to your hedonic value. I feel like we do that

in our marriages and our relationships too.

Oh my god. Actually, there are curves of hedonic adaptation in marriages, and they're quite funny. Waistline. No. They're like you know, the the moment you get married, like, basically, like, 5 months in, you're already getting used to your partner, and it kind of goes down over

You know, you said something earlier, though, that gave me this epiphany because you were talking about how when you're really struggling and you think, okay. Money's gonna make me happier because money is gonna help me pay my bills. So, yes, that's true because we're lowering stress. But then you said something interesting. You said, and maybe I'll be able to take a little vacation with my family.

And what occurred to me is that the thing that a vacation does with your family is it gives you time with them.

Correct. Yep.

And so I think maybe 1 of the mistakes that we're making is that we think money gives us the thing that actually makes us happy, which is more time Yep. With people we care about or more time to feel less stressed. And is that kinda where this is going?

Yeah. There's really lovely work by the psychologist Ashley Willens at Harvard Business School that talks about a concept that social scientists are getting really excited about lately called time affluence, which is not wealth affluence. It's not the amount of money you have, but it's the amount of free time you have. And if you're listening right now and you hear that term time affluence and you're like, that is not me at all. Mhmm.

Again, don't feel too bad because you are part of the general majority of, like, humans on the planet right now, especially Americans right now. Most of us are experiencing the opposite of time affluence, which is time famine, where we literally almost feel like you're starving for time. And Ashley Whelan's research shows that if you experience time famine, that's a huge hit on your well-being. In fact, 1 of her studies show that if you self report being time famished a lot, that's as big a hit on your well-being as if you self report being unemployed.

So Really?

So those of you listening right now who are lucky enough to have jobs, something else we can get hedonically adapt to. If you're lucky enough to have a job, imagine you lost that job in the next 10 minutes, how you'd feel. Just not having a lot of free time can make you feel that bad. And so, Mel, you're really onto something, which is that 1 of the 1 of the best ways we can spend our money to increase our happiness is to actually use money to buy back time. And Ashley Williams does some really cool work on this.

She finds no matter what your discretionary income is, because you can say, okay. Yeah. That guy with the $50,000,000 in the yacht, he can spend money to, I don't know, hire somebody to clean his house or, you know, take these unwanted tasks off his desk. Right? He cannot go to the restaurant instead of cooking meals for himself.

But many of us have, like, a little bit of discretionary income, and Ashley finds that no matter, like, what level of discretionary income you have, if you spend that to get time back and you commit to spending it to get time back, you can kinda be happier. Whether that's, like, hiring the neighbor's kid to mow your lawn or

Watch your kid.

Watch your kid.

Walk the dog.

Exactly. Or just like, you know

Dropping off some laundry at a local laundromat to wash and fold it for you. And I think if you can shop on Amazon and you're hitting the shop now button on Instagram or social media, that's discretionary income.

Exactly. Exactly. And the stuff arrives. And 1 1 of the extra hacks you can do to make this an even more effective strategy is whenever you do that, reframe the amount of time you saved. Right?

We're here in Boston. Like, you know, before I came to the studio, I stopped at this local coffee shop that was right near there, and I just got breakfast. I got this nice little egg sandwich. It's a little egg souffle. It was delicious.

Oh, it is my favorite egg sandwich on the planet with that mustardy aioli and their ruella. Love that. Bacon, girl, I'm with you on that. Let's go.

But if I had to make that myself, I would have to, like, souffle the egg, which would I don't know. What's that? 20 minutes to get the nice pop of the egg. I'd have to have gone to the grocery store to get this stuff. I'd have to, like, chop up the tomato because then they sliced tomato.

I probably saved at least 45 minutes buying that egg sandwich at the shop. What did I do with that 45 minutes? Now, I have that, you know, some of that 45 minutes to talk to you. Yeah. Maybe I take a nice walk.

That framing technique matters. So every time you get takeout, go to a restaurant, every time you, you know, drop your clothes off at the laundromat, you know, if you're, again, have enough discretionary income to maybe hire somebody to mow the lawn or clean or something like that, reframe it and say, oh my gosh, by spending that money, I saved x amount of time. And literally give it it's an hour and a half, you know, hour 20, whatever. And then ask yourself, oh, what did I do at that time? You're making the face that a lot of my students make when they experience this smell, which is kinda like, you have this breath of,

oh, I have an hour,

an extra hour. You know what

else I also love about this? Is that you just did something really important, which is you put value on your time.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

And what we've been doing wrong is we've been putting all the value on the thing.

Or the money that we can use the time for. Right? We're used to kind of kind of switching our time into money of like, well, if I work an extra hour, if I take overtime or we don't realize that what that money is supposed to be for is to make our lives better. And often what makes our lives better is free time. Individuals who self report being more time affluent, so they feel wealthy in time, they're more social.

There's these funny studies where you just kind of convince people they're a little wealthier in time. You do have people do, like, a little How

do you convince me that I'm wealthier in time?

Well, psychologists have these very funny hacks. So 1 funny hack is I give you a little word scramble to do. So there's scrambled up words and you have to unscramble them. But then I make those words be affluent in time. Things like vacation or time off, like holidays.

Like I kind of have you have moments words where you're like, Oh yeah, I'm sort of wealthy in time, you know? And then all of a sudden, I give you the opportunity. They they have subjects in a coffee shop, and you can have the opportunity to just chat with somebody. And I just, like, sit back and watch. Do you chat with people more when you have that moment of feeling a little bit more wealthy in time?

And you do.

And then you also feel happier because you've just connected with somebody.

Exactly. There's also studies showing that people who are wealthy in time do nice stuff for other people. Actually, the most terrible 1 was a study that was done kind of back in the day. And this is like back in the day when the like ethics of studies maybe weren't so great. It was like in the seventies.

But this, there was a group of researchers who were studying, Princeton Seminary students. So these are people who are studying to be a priest. K. And the study is that you have to, go and give a surprise lecture about the story of the good Samaritan, which for if you don't know is, you know, Jesus was walking around and, like, saw somebody doing nice stuff. It's, like, about doing nice things for people in need.

Right? But these different seminary students were put under different time pressures. So some were told, you got a couple hours, you know, you get across town and go give this, but you got some time or really high time pressure. Like, actually, you gotta go right now. You just don't have time.

You gotta get over there.

Right.

And what the researchers did was they staged to someone on route to this lecture that was in need. So it was kind of set up to look like an unhoused person who'd maybe been hurt. It's kind of like and so the the seminary student has to literally walk over this person to get to the lecture. And the question was just, do you stop to help?

K. And this is somebody who is studying to be a priest.

Correct. Right. So

we would think you would

And he's about to give a story about why Jesus values doing nice things for people in need. Okay. So you are He's in his head thinking, like, how do I think about how to tell people to do nice things for people

in need? Let's just be honest. If you fail this, you should get kicked out of seminary school.

Yes.

That's basically what I'm gonna say there.

And, basically, the people who are in a rush pretty much never stop to help someone, which is really sad.

Which explains the state of society today.

Which actually explains the state of society today. Right? You know, we're rushing around. We all feel so busy. Right?

I think, you know, time famine has felt like it's going up around. We just don't have the bandwidth to help other people. We don't have the bandwidth to help the planet. There's lots of evidence that if you're feeling under more time pressure, you know what, recycle? I mean, honestly, I feel like I'm guilty of this myself where it's like, I gotta wash the thing and I'm literally like I I I look I'm so overwhelmed.

I'm like, wait. Landfill, recycled. You just opt out. But imagine, like, it was, like, you know, that Sunday morning feeling where you had nothing to do, and you're like, I think I could wash the glass a little extra to put it in the you know? Yeah.

Like, we're we're hurting our ourselves, each other, the planet, just because we don't have any time.

Okay. Now I'm depressed. So there is good news.

So But the good news is

The tire is flat. Now I'm leaky. Doctor Santos, how

do I be happy? But the beauty is that you can you first of all, you can prioritize your free time. You can spend money to get back more. But these little hacks of just remembering what free time you do have. Right?

You know, I bought my egg sandwich and that saved me 45 minutes. That alone can kind of put me in the headspace to have a bit more free time. Another 1 of my favorite hacks is to find ways to use the free time you do have. The journalist, Bridgette Schulte, coined this term that I absolutely adore, which is called time confetti, by which she means the little 5 minutes you have here and there. We don't think it's that much, so we usually just blow it.

You know, if you're

pick up our phone.

Yeah. You pick up your phone, you scroll Instagram, check your email. But those 5 minutes add up. In fact, Ashley Willans and her colleagues estimate that we actually have more free time now than we did 10, 20 years ago. What?

I know. It feels

shock way that's true.

But the difference is it's broken up in stupid ways. It's these little 5 we don't have these big chunks anymore. We got 5 minutes of time confetti, 10 minutes of time confetti here and there. So it doesn't feel like a lot, so we just blow it. But those are perfect moments to engage in all these strategies to fill up our leaky tire.

And I think we'll start talking about some of those.

Do that. Okay. So let's fill up the leaky tire. We're gonna take our time, confetti, 5:5 minutes at a time, and we are going to start rewiring our brain for happiness. In the course, you teach 5 ways to rewire yourself for happiness and fill up this tire.

So what's the first way that you can rewire your mind for happiness?

The first step is to engage in more social connection. Pretty much every available study of happy people suggest happy people are more social. People who self report being happier physically spend more time around other people, less time alone, and they also spend more time with their friends and family members. So they prioritize time, not just with any old human bodies floating around there. They pick time with people they care about.

And this seems to be true both for introverts and extroverts. Really? Yeah. So the key that that other people matter for introverts and extroverts is some work by Nick Eppley and his colleagues. He does these studies where he just like basically forces people to be a little bit more social than they normally would.

So he walks up to people, he he's at the University of Chicago, so he does this on the L train.

Well, I know this study where he forces people to talk to strangers on the train Yeah. And to work.

Yeah. And just for a $5 Starbucks gift card, everybody's willing to

do this. Sign up for that to talk to a stranger?

People will do anything for a $5 Starbucks gift card. It's really the engine of all social science research. Wow. People are like, I don't wanna do this. It's like, $5 Starbucks gift card.

You're like, okay. Fine. I'll talk to someone.

Because because that and now notice my reaction.

Mhmm.

And as you're with doctor Santos and I, you probably had the same reaction as you're listening to us. Like, I wouldn't I wouldn't wanna I would just do that for a $5 Starbucks gift card.

There's no way you would talk to I mean, like, you just gotta talk to some random person

on your YouTube. Important thing here is that our reaction

That's right.

Is that this is not going to be fun. Correct. And our reaction is so much so, I don't want a gift card to do that.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so we all would go into that situation and say, oh. Right. But what did the research find?

Well, Nick actually did that comparison. He asked people, hey, if you were in these 2 conditions, like, first of all, would you do it? And, you know, how would it feel? And people said exactly what what you're saying, Mel, and what I'm sure if you're listening you the person listening right now is thinking right was like, no. I don't wanna do that.

It would feel terrible. Not just it would feel neutral, but it would feel actively awkward or yucky or whatever. And what he finds is that it's just the opposite. People who spend their train ride talking to a stranger experience positive emotion. They feel more energized.

They feel less lonely. And in fact, enjoying your solitude on the train kind of makes you feel a little anxious, yucky. I mean, we can kind of simulate you're like, Oh yeah, if I tell you, Yeah, just don't talk to anyone, enjoy your solitude. What happens? We start ruminating, we get in our head, right?

And so just this simple act of talking to a stranger makes us feel good. But the reason I love Nick's research is he tested this extrovert introvert question. And what he finds is that there's no difference in the happiness boost that extroverts and introverts get. Where there's a difference is on that prediction question. If I ask you, hey, how bad is it gonna be to talk to someone on the train?

Extroverts think pretty bad. But introverts think like, bad. It's bad. Yeah. Like the most horrible thing.

But what's striking is they're wrong.

You know, I, do think it's a skill to just learn how to talk to people, and the fastest way that I've taught myself how to do it and, again, I've been doing this now for decades because I get very anxious when

I feel like You're good at you do this for a living. Right?

You know? Well yeah. And I also do this to make my life better. So saying hello, like, Hey, good morning. You know, to the person who I am like, let's say we're ordering an egg sandwich as a person's ringing me.

I'm like, Hey, how are you doing? And most people kind of look at you like, oh, hi. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I love your nails. And, oh, well, thank you. And a compliment Yes.

Huge. And a smile

Mhmm.

Like, what I find is it's almost like popcorn. If I walk in and I'm a pop colonel and I'm warm, there's something about complimenting somebody's socks or complimenting their nails or being like, even if they serve you the cup of coffee, you're like, oh my gosh. That's so beautiful. Thank you. Oh, I really needed this.

There's something about your warmth that always gets returned, and then I feel lifted by that interaction.

Mhmm.

And it helps me.

Yeah. And this was something that Nick Eppley said on my podcast. He said, Look, Laurie, nobody waves, but everybody waves back. Like, if somebody waves at you, you're going to wave back. Right?

And then that just kind of gets the social connection off the ground. And for both individuals, it winds up feeling better. And I bet same thing, you know, true of you at the coffee shop when you say, oh my gosh. This latte looks so pretty or nice meals. That person might not have predicted that they wanted to talk to you, but afterwards, their happiness leaky tires a little bit more

for them. So the first takeaway, I absolutely love. And the tool for me, nobody waves, but everybody waves back.

Mhmm.

So always be the person who waves. Yeah. I I love that. What is the second way we can rewire our brains for happiness?

Well, it's related to the first. It's another way to exploit social connection, but it's becoming a little bit more other oriented.

What does that mean?

It means, like, instead of doing stuff for yourself, like self oriented, you get a little other oriented. Like, you spend your money and your time on other people. And this is a spot where I think our intuitions are, like, in overdrive in the wrong direction, and our culture takes us in the wrong direction.

Well, I I had a little bit of a moment when you said spend your money and time on other people. I'm like, but doctor Santos, I don't have any time for myself. Yeah.

So why

the hell am I gonna give my money and my time to somebody else? My kids are draining me dry. My, like Mhmm. I I've given my time to my work, so now you're telling me I gotta be other oriented?

Yeah. Give me

a break. Like, my gas is leaking here out of this tire. What do I do?

So 1 of the surprising things again, spot where our intuitions are wrong. I'm gonna say this, and you're listening right now, and you'll be like, that's not true. But what the research shows is that the act of doing something nice for somebody else makes you feel like you have more time. It's 1 of these hacks that gives us more time affluence. Think about it.

You know, you're at work and somebody is going through, you know, something tough. You say, well, what, what can I take off your plate? Can I can I help you with something? Just like out of the goodness of your heart. What does that tell you?

You're kind of like, well, I must have, you know, more openness on my plate if I'm gonna help this other person do something.

That's true. And if you're the 1 that holds open the door, you need

to get some more time on

your because you're not rushing through

it. Exactly. Oh, that's intro that's sneaky. It's sneaky, but it's a a funny hack to make yourself feel like you have more time is to opt to do something voluntarily for others. And I think that's the keyword though, voluntarily.

Too often we feel overwhelmed when we feel the have tos in life, the shoulds of life. Right? I'm supposed to do this for other people. If you're doing lots of stuff for other people and you don't have a choice, you know, maybe you're caretaking for, you know, like, like an adult in your life or helping someone out or kind of stuck in childcare, if you feel like you have no choice, then that doesn't count. But if you willingly are like, oh, yeah.

Yeah. I got time to do that. I'm gonna choose to do that with my time or my money. Now that's when the benefits start to kick in. Wow.

So the second thing that rewires your brain is this sort of real focus on other people. And, you know, when I think about some of the research that you mentioned earlier, especially around loneliness

Mhmm.

And it doubling and just how it's true. Everybody seems to feel very lonely right now.

Totally. I mean, the rates of loneliness are, like, at 60%. In every demographic group, levels of loneliness are going up.

So does your focus on sort of these small social interactions and these small ways to be more outwardly focused and kinder to other people, which is gonna boost your happiness, it's also gonna deceive you into thinking you have more time because you're really taking the time to do this. Does it also have an impact on your feelings of loneliness?

For sure. I mean, that might be 1 of the hugest impacts it has. In part because, like, when you reach out to other people and you'll chat with the barista at the coffee shop, talk to someone else, reach out to an old friend, another good 1. Like, those just kind of actions that make you feel less lonely. 1 of the fastest hacks to reduce loneliness, if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, I'm feeling a little lonely, is to try to help the loneliness of somebody else.

Like, literally take out your phone, scroll through the contacts, pick the name that you think might be feeling the most lonely, having the toughest time, and just, you know, send them a text that says, hey. Just thinking about you. We'll listen to this cool Mel Robbins podcast. We're talking about friendships, and it just made me think about you. Be great to connect.

Yeah. And better yet, share them this episode, and let's talk about it. Like, it's something that you can talk about. Well, I think a lot about this because, you know, I think about the rise in loneliness, and I look what's happening in the world. And there's absolutely 0 doubt that every single human being that has a smartphone is addicted to it.

Mhmm. And everybody has way more time than they think, but they're pouring it into social media, and they're pouring it into just being online and doom scrolling. I get really scared because what I see happening down on the street in our day to day lives and in my life and in my family is we are now living life connected to our phone. And then I see society trying to address what is clearly the problem. Like, I just saw some country name some minister of loneliness.

Yeah. And I see, you know, courses filling up about happiness and but we're all in it and addicted to it that you don't even see that you're in it and how much it's killing your joy and your ability to connect. And I think you can reclaim your life and your happiness 1 of these micro interactions at a time Yep. That have you look up and smile at somebody or hold the door or compliment someone or, you know, if you're on the phone, send the text instead of staring at an influencer that's trying to sell you something. I mean, it's just scary to me.

Like, in theory, social media was supposed to be social. Right? In theory, we could use our phones to socially connect. Right? I just told you

They weren't wired to keep you on it so that people could make more money advertising because the algorithms didn't optimize to literally take advantage of your brain wiring to keep you on it

Yeah.

And to manipulate you, then yeah.

And and that's the irony. Right? That that they they should be helping us be more social, but they just aren't. And, like, you know, the study when you look at the actual data of how much our phones are stealing our attention, it's just so terrible. Liz Dunn, who's a professor at the

university stealing. They're actually designed to.

Yes, exactly. Designed to steal, like, designed Yes. And and to do it kind of undercurrent so we don't notice. Liz Liz Dunn, who's a professor at the University of British Columbia, has this study of, people just in a waiting room. Right?

You know, you go to the doctor's office or something. You're sitting in the waiting room. She either lets people have their phones there or not. And what she finds is that there's 30% less smiling in the room of people when people have their phones out, even if they're not on their phone, just having like it's in your purse. Right.

I mean, it's incredible, but you get it right. Because like the sad thing is what folks have done with phones is they've engineered content. That's like, you know, built to be more exciting than what we assume is true for social connection. Right? Liz Dunn, when she was on my podcast, had this lovely analogy.

She said, you know, you go, you go to dinner with your husband and I have my phone, you know, flipped over on the desk. Right? But imagine instead of my phone, I had, like, a big wheelbarrow. And in the wheelbarrow were, like, printouts of every photo I've taken since 2015. Like, you know, big binders of my emails, you know, since I moved to Yale the first time.

Newspapers from every country in the world. Right? Like, videotapes of cat videos and porn, just like huge wheelbarrow of all the stuff on the Internet. And she's like, if that wheelbarrow was sitting there at dinner, you would not be able to pay attention to your husband because you'd be like, oh, I wanna look Oh, no. Just watch that real cat video, throw it in the VCR or something.

She's like, your brain isn't stupid. Your brain knows that on the other side of that phone that's sitting flipped over on the table, all that stuff is there. So even when you're not looking at it, even when you're not ignoring your husband and sort of phubbing him because you're staring at your Instagram feed, something in your brain has to hold back. Right? This leash is being like, Nope, don't look at the cat videos.

Don't look at the old photos. Right? We've kind of set up this distraction that's there with us all the time. And every study that's looked at it has found we do worse on memory tests when our phones are with us. We engage in

Well, that's a direct connection to happiness.

Yeah. Because what's happening is when we're not on our phone, we're kind of missing out on something. And the question is, what are we usually missing out on? And it's usually other people, right? All this social connection that we're not experiencing, which we just heard is so important for happiness, which then kind of psychologically makes us feel lonely.

It also ends up decreasing our presence, which is something we haven't talked about yet, but it really kind of matters for happiness. Right?

What you use the word fubbing. What is that?

Fubbing is a term that my students use. It's a p h u b b I n g. So it's phone snubbing. So it's like you're trying to talk to me and you notice like, I'm like, uh-huh, uh-huh, but I'm really like looking at

Well, when somebody does that and I I'm I'm hovering here not because I wanna spend too much time talking about the phones, but I think it's extraordinarily important

Totally.

To highlight and to also embrace the truth.

Yeah.

That if your life feels like you are a tire that is flat and you would like to be happier, then there is a direct connection between your unhappiness and your phone use. Because the phone and the way that you've allowed it to take over your life is interfering with your ability to do these 5 things

Mhmm.

In your day to day life that actually, based on the research, will fill up the tire and make you happier in your life and with your life.

With your life.

Correct. That's why I wanna be very clear that this is a massive problem, and you have an opportunity if you're serious about being happy. Like, you can spend the rest of your life mainlining social media and staring at other people's lives and then get to your grave and go, oh, God. Mhmm. I actually didn't use my time while I was here to do what I needed to do to be happy and to live my life.

And that's what's happening to the majority of people.

Yeah. And for sure, that's what's happening to our students. Right?

Don't have to let it happen.

Totally. Yeah. No. You you have power over this. Right?

You can flip it over. You can leave it somewhere else. Or, you know, if you can't get out of your hand

Go to a doctor because that's a problem.

No. I'm saying like, I

I like, you're not gonna like, would you walk around life with an 8 ball in your hand? And, like, it would destroy it. And and I do think if you're if you look at the research, and this is again why I wanna hammer this point, is that I think every 1 of us is at this really scary tipping point where there's a before and an after, and you could hear this episode and decide that you want to be the kind of person that actually happiness is important and taking care of your mental health is important and staying connected to people in a meaningful way and being present for your life is important. And if it is important, you have to be honest with yourself that it will take a decision on your part to go, I'm not giving my life to this phone and to social media. I'm just not doing it.

Yeah. And I'm gonna follow this advice. Go ahead.

I was gonna say 1 of the 1 of my favorite strategies for dealing with this comes from the journalist, Catherine Price, who has this lovely book called How to Break Up With Your Phone, which she doesn't exactly argue that you need to break up with your phone, but it's more you need to take it to like couples counseling sort of idea. And she has this lovely acronym, she uses. In fact, you could go on her website and get these little, you know, those little plastic bracelets that you can slide around your phone. The acronym is www, which kind of fits like World Wide Web. But hers is what for, why now, and what else?

And her argument is every time you find your phone in your hand ask www, what for? Was there some purpose? Maybe you needed to, like, look up directions. You know, on my way here to the studio, I had to pull my phone out because I didn't know where the studio is looking. But I also when I was walking, it was just, like, also scrolling through other stuff.

It's boredom usually for me.

So is there a reason? Reason, you know, reasons are good. Why now? Why now? This is a really important 1 because it's about what was the emotional trigger that caused you to go there?

Because my sense is if you're listening right now and you you heard Mel's advice, you're like, I'm gonna put it away. There are gonna be some moments where that's easier or harder. And the why now question forces you to ask a question like, well, why now? Why is it harder now? Oh, I was bored or I was a little bit anxious or, you know, or whatever it is.

Right? Kind of notice mindfully, non judgmentally, like, what drives you to go there. But the most important 1, Mel, the thing I think the thing you're getting as the last 1. What else? What is the opportunity cost?

Whether that's talking to your husband at dinner, just having that moment of time confetti that you could use for something more positive. Maybe even most important, just being present. Right? You know, I was saying when I was walking over here, I pulled the phone out for a good what for reason. I was looking for the directions.

But then once it's in my hand, like, it's in my hand. I had this moment where I kind of looked up for a second. It was like, oh my gosh. We're in this beautiful neighborhood in Seaport where there's, like, the water and the red bricks. If I was deep in my email, I would have missed that.

Right? And that little moment of noticing and being present with the sights and the sounds, that's a really important thing to boost your leaky happiness time. So many of those moments are just lost and

so brings us to the third way that you're going to build the skill of being happier and boosting happiness in your day to day life, and it it has to do with what you're just talking about, kind of being present and grateful.

Yeah. This is 1 that is in the cultural zeitgeist. Right? We talk a lot about mindfulness, but we don't spend a lot of time doing it. I feel like this is sort of grandmotherly wisdom, but it is not common practice.

Right? Most of us spend a lot of our time mind wandering, where your brain is flooding to like, oh, what, you know, what should I have for dinner tonight? Or that weird conversation you had with your spouse. You're just like, brain is anywhere but in the present moment. There's a very funny study, by the Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert, that tried to estimate, well, how often do we spend mind wandering?

And what he finds is that people self report, I am absolutely not paying attention to what I'm doing just under 50% of the time. I think it was like 48.9 percent of the time you're like, yeah, wasn't paying attention. And he finds that there's a kind of equal not paying attentionness in, like, all the different activities, whether you're at work, at leisure, watching TV. He found a slight dip for 1 activity, which is when people self reported that they were having sex, But I actually don't believe this data point. I was like, I don't know.

But in any case, basically, all the good things in life we're not paying attention to. But the the most important part of Dan's study for happiness research is that last question. How are you feeling right now? And what he finds is that whenever you self report mind wandering, like, whatever to its tune, even if it's like a good thing, like, oh, I was thinking about my upcoming vacation, you're less happy than if you just, like, weren't mind wandering. Like like, when you report like, oh, I was deep in that, you know, dumb Excel spreadsheet that I was, like, working on at work.

When you're in flow and doing that, you feel better than if your kind of mind is off thinking about something else. And so the implication is that the way we become happier as we get in the present moment, we kind of notice what's going on. You know, for me walking over to the studio, I put my phone away and just notice, you know, the nice kind of chill in the air and the sights and all these things.

How does that boost happiness to practice and grab these moments and come into the present moment?

Yeah. I think partly it's just being in the present moment. I mean, that's what's striking about some of this research. Right? Is that when you're just there, even if they're there, isn't awesome?

Even if it comes with you know, this morning was a little chilly. Right? You know, be honest and, like, it was 1 of those days in Boston where, like, you know, it was beautiful water, but it was a little smell a little on the smelly side, you know, just even though it didn't seem good, just the fact that I was there with it made me a little bit more grounded, a little bit more pleasant in my life. That's 1 of the striking things is that presence works not just when everything is unicorns and rainbows. Being present also seems to work well when things don't feel so good.

And you asked before what are the biggest misconceptions that students have from the class or the biggest moments. And I think this is a real big 1, which is that sometimes we need to commit to being present even when we don't feel so hot.

You know, what's interesting is that we always walk to the studio in the morning.

Mhmm.

And I'm almost always with Tracy, who's the executive producer, and Christine, who's our COO. She's in town, and we're never on her phones

Mhmm.

Because her phones are in her bags, and it takes us about 15 minutes to walk over here, and I always feel better.

Yeah.

I always feel happier. I feel energized. And so it is something that I think we all know works. We wish it were something we could buy because that would feel instant and easier versus what you've been telling us all along, that happiness is something that you need to practice. It's a skill.

It's something that can start leaking from the tire Mhmm. If you're not paying attention to it. But the really good news I'm realizing is that at any moment, you can use any of the 5 things that you're teaching us to rewire our brains and help us boost our happiness.

That's right.

Now can you share the 3rd way that we rewire our minds for happiness?

Well, it's something that you just mentioned getting on your drive in. It's the practice of experiencing gratitude. And gratitude, I think, is a special form of presence that we really need to dig into. Right? It's this idea of not just the noticing, which is regular presence, but noticing the things that are really good.

Right? On my walk to your studio, it could be, I'm walking right now. Right? You know, a few months ago, I had a knee injury, like, you know, I couldn't I would have had to take that Uber, but, like, I'm out I'm out walking. Right?

I recently had COVID and lost my sense of smell. Completely lost my sense of smell, which was awful. Right? But even, you know, as you're making fun of the Lake Boston Harbor smell a little stinky, like, I can have a moment of gratitude for that. Like, I can I can tell it's stinky?

Right? Which, oh, my gosh. What a miracle that was and how easily it could have gone away. And so that's what gratitude does in presence. Like, you're being present, but you're noticing that, like, the things don't have to be this way.

Right? I could miss out on these kind of gifts. And if you kind of have your attitude like that, if you can kind of bust out of that negativity bias to notice some of these things, there's so much stuff out there that's a gift from like our basic senses to the fact that we're above ground today. Right? You know, 1 of my favorite hacks for, noticing the blessings that you might not have noticed is actually an ancient hack.

It comes from the ancient stoics who had this idea of what they called negative visualization. And so their idea was just, you know, something that you love in life, your husband, your kid, your car, whatever. Just imagine it's not there anymore. It's gone. The last time you saw it was the last time you will ever see it.

You can

Oh, I don't wanna I don't wanna think about that.

Right? Then you'll do that with the email, like your husband, with Chris. Right? The last time you saw him was the last time you're ever gonna see him. My guess is when you get home tonight and you give him a hug, just that 2 seconds that we spent on that, you'll hug him a little bit more.

You know? So if you're listening right now and you've got a kid, the kid 1 is powerful. Last time you saw your kid was the last time you're ever gonna see them. They're gone. Or your parents.

Or your parents. Right? That's 1 hack that I like for gratitude. But another 1 is just kind of committing to scribbling it down. Is the writing important?

So it's more spending time thinking about it that's important, but the writing kind of forces you to do that. So, you know, if you can commit to like another practice I've heard 1 of my students use is like just when they're brushing their teeth, just go through, I'm really grateful for my family. I'm grateful for my job. I'm grateful that, you know, my legs work today. All of those things are things that might not be true.

And so just like find a time when you do something anyway, like brushing your teeth and think about it. But if writing it down helps, that can kind of force you to pay attention to it. And the nice thing is sometimes you can go back to it. I don't have like a fancy some people talk about gratitude journal. I don't have a fancy gratitude journal, but even sometimes in my notes app, if I'm being consistent with it, I'll scribble down things.

And that's the thing that you can go back to. Right? We, you know, talked about our phones being bad, but sometimes we can use our phones for positive things. And for me, on a bad morning, looking back at that notes app and just seeing, like, all the things, you know, and they're often stupid things like, oh, latte just tasted really

That's actually not that stupid because it's almost like a supersize

Mhmm.

Of gratitude.

Well, let's start there because that's the 4th way that we can unlock happiness and it's through the practice of savoring, and really just like diving into it. Right? You know, you can drink your coffee or you can really be present thinking, how does this taste? How does this smell? How so lucky am I that I have this miracle of a sensation that can allow me to taste and smell this coffee?

Which again, just because I lost like, it's it's more fragile than we think and we forget. And just that act of kind of being in it. And it's useful to know that we can do that kind of for anything. Right? And so I've tried to remind myself to do that whenever I'm doing the dishes.

I have a dishwasher since I do dishes religiously, but you know, sometimes there's like 1 or 2 you gotta do. Right? But just like the water on my hands and the suds and a little bit of the smell of the dawn, which I'm like, Oh, I like that kind of fun. You know, like feeling the porcelain and like, it's so silly, but it turns that task that was this onerous stupid thing that I had to get done into a moment to be present and to notice, like, some of these things feel really nice.

My favorite way to do this is the weather.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

I always step outside and either remark to myself what a beautiful day it is. Or even if it's disgusting and gross and it's raining, I'll remark how wild the clouds look.

Yeah.

And so it's I didn't I I I didn't realize that that's what that was, but it hyperfocuses me

Mhmm.

On this thing that's happening that I just take a minute and take in, and I do feel this little, like

Yeah. I think it's 1 of the reasons that folks often talk about how being in nature can bring us happiness because I think it winds up being a little bit easier to savor in nature, right? Because the clouds are moving and they're so beautiful. Or you're out in the trees and you hear the crunching. In, in places like Japan, they talk about this concept of forest bathing, where you're just kind of out bathing in the forest.

And I love that term because it sort of shows you the savoring where you're like, I'm just bathing and all these sensory experiences.

Doctor. Santos, what's a 5th way that we can rewire our minds for happiness?

Oh, man. There's so many. And, and you know, my 26 week switched into only 5 tips. We talked about time already. So maybe for my 5th 1, I'll talk about a strategy that I have a lot of trouble with, which is that we should bring a mindset of self compassion.

I think 1 of the ways we make ourselves really miserable is that we beat ourselves up a lot. We have incredibly high standards and rather than kind of achieving those high standards by talking to ourselves like a kind coach who's always motivating and knows we can fail, We talk to ourselves like this evil drill instructor that has like, why could you be so stupid? You can't do it. And this like for some people, maybe even if you're listening, you might recognize this can just become a constant refrain in our head of beating ourselves up. And I think we do this not because we're masochists.

I think we do this because we think it works. We think that's the way to get off our couches and get into the world and do stuff. But researchers like Kristin Neff has studied like, hey, does berating yourself on a constant mental loop basis really work? It turns out like surprise, surprise, no. It makes us procrastinate.

It makes us feel drained and it is a hugely negative effect on our happiness. And so, NEF and others have come up with a much better healthier mindset for self talk, which is what they call self compassion. I think, you know, self compassion can sound huge, so I think it's helpful to break it up into steps. Step 1 is something we've just been talking about a lot, which is sort of mindfulness and not even mindfulness of the exterior, but mindfulness of the interior. It's, I'm having some trouble with this.

This is hard. I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm off my game. Right? It's being mindful that you're not in a perfect space.

But then the second step is what people like Chris Neff call common humanity. It's following that I'm in a bad space up with and that's normal. It is a common human experience to feel overwhelmed. Like, like, it is completely fine that I'm going through this. It makes sense.

It is a common human experience. But then the third step, which is a hard step is what Neff calls self kindness. You say, how can I treat myself with some kindness? How can I treat myself like a friend? What can I take off my plate?

What do I need right now? You kind of coach yourself like you would coach someone you really care about. I

mean, it makes perfect sense. I mean, how could you possibly think you're gonna be happy while you're hating on yourself? Exactly. And so I think it's important for all of us to also be reminded that you should just assume that everybody that you meet is busy trashing themselves. Yet trashing themselves.

No. 1 of my favorite, quotes that, like, my students really love in the course is you're you shouldn't be comparing your insides to other people's outsides. Right? Like, I see my inside of, like, oh, I'm ruminative and kinda messing up, and I was thinking that thing that I didn't say. And but I'm just comparing them to, you know, say your outside is like, oh, you just put together podcast.

She's doing a great job, but, like, we don't see what's going on internally. So it's a compare we shouldn't be comparing ourselves anyway, but that's a really unfair comparison because people are actively good at hiding when their insides are self critical or filled with doubt and so on.

How does comparison play into happiness and unhappiness?

Oh, it's huge. I mean, 1 another stupid feature of our mind is that our minds don't ever think about something objectively. Right? So it takes something like salary. Right?

Like, what you know, what's your salary? Right? Think about your salary right now. Is that a good salary? Probably not thinking about it objectively in terms of how much purchasing power you've had.

You probably said, well, it's not a good salary because, you know, so and so makes more or I could be making more. Right? You're just comparing it to something else, you know. You know, it's are you pretty? Right?

You instantly think of people that you think of as pretty and you kind of compare yourself often in a downward way. And this is just true of how our minds work. And the problem is that usually when we pick a kind of reference point as it's called, that's like the comparison point, we pick a comparison point that's particularly awesome. That's like really, really good. And even if you're at the top of your game, you do that too.

Oh, of course. Like, I I feel like that never changes. Yeah. It just who you're looking at changes.

Yeah.

But we tend to be obsessed with what is it called? Upward comparison, which is somebody that we perceive to be, like, either of higher social status or that has something that we've been trashing ourselves over, and then we obsess over that. Well, how the hell that's clearly draining the tire. Yeah. So how do you stop doing that?

Well

I know all 5 things kind of honestly stop

you out of it. A little bit. I think 1 thing with comparison though, and this might be true for some of these hacks already, is, like, it's gonna be hard to fully shut it off because we just don't our brains just work that way. They can't think objectively. But we have a little bit of control at what counts as the comparison point.

Right? Yeah, and I was just walking over the studio has become the sort of metaphor we're using for this, but walking over the studio, like, I could compare myself to, like, you know, all the runners that were passing by really quickly. But my thought pattern went to like, well, remember when your knee was, you know, toy messed up and you couldn't even walk and you'd be crutching over here, right? It's like you finding a comparison that makes you feel good can actually make you feel, but our brains naturally go to the ones that make us feel crappy, but we can find sometimes find 1 that make us feel good.

I'm starting to realize, like, you have the ability to inflate your tire.

Yeah. And You're constantly at the auto body shop with the little thingy pin in and it's ready to go. We just miss opportunities to fill it up.

And you could even ask yourself at any moment, is this gonna let the air out, or is this actually gonna fill me up a little bit? Even if it's just a little boost.

And those boosts last. Right? You know, we talked before about kind of this idea of being happy in your life, which is a sort of positive emotion and being happy with your life. The more you just commit to those little boosts, it's not just in your life boost that just makes you feel like your life has purpose. It makes you feel like your life is meaning.

It makes you feel satisfied with your life too. So for the person that's listening, that satisfied with your life too.

So for the person that's listening, that may

just feel a little bit of conflict about why this matters, and

we do have listeners that are in refugee camps. Yeah. And we do have listeners that are facing extraordinarily difficult situations in the countries that they're living in right now, or they're going through just devastating grief or some kind of health scare, or they're just overwhelmed

Yeah.

By the state of the world and how depressing things seem. Why does working on your own happiness matter when it feels like the world around you has such bigger problems?

I love that you asked this because, honestly, if I had to have if I had to say the question I get from students the most, it's this 1. And I think the form for college students is a little bit similar. It's kind of like, how dare I? Like, how dare I with all the problems of the world focus on my own happiness. Right?

And I get it. Right? You know, there are real problems out there in the world. But I think this comes to that that question sort of shows a different incorrect theory we have about happiness, which is like, if we're feeling happy, we're just gonna let the rest of the world burn. Like, I don't know if you're, if you're listening right now and you know, the meme with the dog with the flames going up and the dog's like, this is fine.

I think we think if we're just focusing on our own happiness, we'll be like that. Right? But that's an empirical question, right? Are happy people doing stuff to fix the world? Are they letting it burn?

And the answer is really clear. It comes from folks like Konstantin Khushleff at Georgetown and others who study who are the people that are out there making a difference. And what he finds is if you survey people's level of positive emotion, if you survey how satisfied they are with their lives, the people who are taking the action are the ones who are happiest. There's this lovely effect in the field called the feel good, do good effect, which is that if you put people in a positive mood, they wind up doing better stuff. You know, studies, for example, like pipe really happy music at the gym versus kind of sadder music at the gym.

And you have people when they're leaving the gym volunteer to do a survey or volunteer to help someone or donate blood. And what you find is that people, when they listen to the good music or are in a better mood, just wind up doing the nice thing that takes them some time and energy, but it's for a good cause. I think this is the answer to like why we should all be focused on our happiness. It's that I think 1 of the reasons the world is burning so badly is that like, we're all not feeling so good. And if we could intervene on the feeling good, we'd probably get a long way towards the doing good part 2.

Now, does that mean we just focus on our own individual happiness and ignore all the structural problems? For sure. No. I think we could work on those together. I think we're all gonna have a lot more emotional bandwidth to fix stuff if we are focused on filling up our happy tires.

I I have another reason that I would add to it, and it comes back to your metaphor of the tire, which is so helpful. If you're going through a period in your life where the tire is flat or deflated, it's very hard to move forward.

Exactly.

It's very hard to meet the challenges of your life right now. And if that's you, the reason why happiness matters is because absolutely every single thing that doctor Santos just shared with us is a small way to fill the tire up, which means you can be better equipped to roll forward in your own life. And I also understand, like a great professor, that you give your students happiness homework.

So it's not as bad as it sounds. It's not like happiness essays or multiple choice questions.

Well, why is it so important to give them happiness homework, and what have you found over the years as students have tried to complete this happiness homework?

Yeah. So the analogy I use with my students is imagine if instead of being worried about my students' happiness, I was really worried about my students' level of fitness. Right? Like, I wanted them to, like, get fit and make better bottles and get healthy. I could teach a whole class about, you know, leg day and how to do squats appropriately, and this is a dead lift, and here's how muscles work.

But if students closed their books at the end of that lecture and went home and didn't hit the gym, nothing would change. Right? They know, but they wouldn't necessarily put it into practice. And this is kind of the problem with a lot of the happiness research. The the biggest bug in the whole class equation is like, you gotta have to do this stuff.

And if you're listening right now, it's not just my students. You just heard all this great stuff. But if you don't put it into practice and get your social connection and think about what you're grateful for and find ways to savor and put your phone away, if you don't do that stuff, nothing's gonna change.

What is 1 assignment that you can give to the person listening

Mhmm.

To take something that we talked about today and go do?

Well, I'm gonna pick 1 that you're good at. I'm gonna say that all of your listeners, sometime this week, the next 7 days, you have to give at least 3 compliments to people in your life. They can be strangers. They can be someone else, but really kind of try to present the compliment in a way that really matters to the person you're talking to. And that's nice because it's boom.

It's other oriented. You're doing something nice for somebody else. Boom. It's social connection. You gotta talk to somebody.

And 3, it's kind of savoring because, you know, when you noticed my necklace this morning, it meant that you noticed it. You were present with it. You kind of liked it, noticed the color, and things like that. So you're gonna get, like, a 3 for with this compliment practice and extra bonus points if you tell us you did it. You know?

Find me on social media, find Mel, and tell us what you did and tell us how it went.

Yeah. Because I bet you're gonna notice exactly what the research said. The tire inflates a little.

And, again, the the tire inflating, especially, it's not gonna pop. Right? It's not gonna be so happy that you burst. A single compliment's not gonna do that. But over time, a few of these in the week and, you know, you can be overachiever like my Yale students.

You don't have to stop at 3. You can just, you know, do 1 every day. Right? The more you pump it up, the more you're happy your tire will be.

Doctor. Santos, what are your parting words?

We can all be a little bit happier if we put in a little bit of time and energy.

Well, I just wanna thank you for being with us today and sharing everything that you just poured into us. I'm so excited to try it. I'm excited for the person who's listening to us to try it in their life and share it with their friends. I just really appreciate your generosity, and you just have this unbelievable way. I feel smarter as I listen to you because you're weaving in so much science, but you do it in a way that makes me see the study and to understand the research and to feel very convinced that this is gonna work, and I just truly appreciate that gift in you.

Thank you so much. You're welcome.

And it's such a pleasure to always be able to spend this time with you. And I wanna thank you for listening all the way to the end and for taking time. We talked a lot about time when we were learning from professor Santos for taking time and spending it on yourself. You deserve to be happier. And so do the people that you love in your life.

And there is 0 doubt in my mind that if you follow the homework and if you really absorb everything that doctor Santos taught us today and you do it, you will be happier and you deserve it. And 1 more thing, in case no 1 else tells you today, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you, and I believe in your power to create a better life. And learning how to just fill up the tires a little bit to keep you rolling forward no matter what's going on, that will absolutely make your life a lot better. Alrighty. I'll see you in the very next episode, and I'll be waiting for you the moment you hit play.

And because you're here on YouTube, I also just wanna acknowledge you for watching all the way to the end. I mean, wasn't that extraordinary? I feel like I was back in college, but in the best way. And so thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for watching all the way to the end. Thank you for hitting subscribe. It's my personal goal to have 50% of you that watch this channel become subscribers, and I'll tell you why. It's free. It supports this show.

It tells my team that you love the content that we're putting out. It also helps us bring world class experts like professor Santos to our studios here so that we can bring you these videos and this life changing information for free. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for supporting me, and thank you for hitting subscribe.

It really does matter, and it's a tiny thing that you can do to say thanks. Alright. Speaking of new videos, I'm sure you're thinking, my gosh, Mel. That was awesome. That really, really was something I'm gonna use.

What should I watch next? Well, you should definitely check out this 1 because you're gonna absolutely love it. It's the perfect thing to watch after this 1, and I'm gonna be waiting for you as soon as you hit play. I'll see you there.