You are one of the leading researchers on happiness.
You've been studying happiness for decades now.
So for the majority of this podcast, what I'd actually like
to do is play a game. The game's called Overrated,
Underrated, and I what I have is a stack of cards here and on
each card is something in life and you're going to tell me, is
it overrated as it relates to happiness, or is it underrated
and it's overrated in the sense of a random person on the street
likely thinks it's too important or not important enough.
I like this game. Yeah, already.
I thought you would. I thought you would.
The podcast that's saving the world won fewer Fuck at a time.
It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your
host, Mark Manson. Before we start, I think it
might be useful to to get a definition of happiness.
And is your definition of happiness different than a
random person on the street would define it?
So I define happiness the way that happiness scientists define
happiness. Which is that happiness has two
components. The first component is basically
the experience of positive emotions.
So people are happy frequently or fairly frequently experience
joy, tranquility, pride, affection, curiosity.
Of course, happy people experience negative emotions
because they're also adaptive. When you see injustice in the
world, you you need to be angry so you can do something about
it. And anxiety is adaptive, and so
is sadness. But when negative emotions are
chronic or intense, then they become dysfunctional, and
they're then they're just suffering.
So one important part of happiness is the fairly frequent
experience of positive emotions, less frequent experience of
negative emotions. And then the second component is
basically having a sense that your life is good, that you're
satisfied with your life, that you're progressing towards your
life goals in a reasonable and reasonable pace.
So I like to think about these two components of happiness as
being happy in your life and being happy with your life.
So both are important. OK cool.
So first one is a classic which is money overrated or underrated
as it relates to happiness. OK, it's it could be it's a
complicated one. I.
Know. See the thing about scientists
that say, well, it. Depends.
It depends, yeah. The obvious answer is it's
overrated. But I want to qualify that by
saying that absolutely, money matters to happiness.
People who have more money are happier, and that is true at
every level. It's certainly not surprising
that that when money keeps you from being poor, then it really
matters. But it even matters at the
highest levels, although we don't have as much data at the
very highest levels. And why is that?
You know, some obvious reasons. If you have money, you're able
to spend time with people that you like, doing things you like
it. It buffers you from adversity
and, you know, gives you luxuries and conveniences.
There's lots of caveats. Another really important caveat
is that money is related to happiness, but the pursuit of
money is related to unhappiness. So having money is great, but
being materialistic, being someone who's really cares about
money, not great. And that's true for a lot of
things. It's like wealth, power, beauty,
fame. Those are those those goals that
that are called extrinsic goals. And then we kind of know, at
least hopefully we know our grandparents tell us that they
don't make us, they don't make us happy.
It turns out people who are beautiful and have power and
money are happier. But if you pursue beauty, you
pursue you really care so much about beauty, power, money, then
you're probably less happy than the average.
Person Why do you think that is? So the kind of person who cares
about money, like the materialistic person.
Or you might think like a narcissist.
They tend to be less happy. But if you have it, the other
kind of cliche and research supports this is that money
makes you happy when you spend it on the right things.
So if you spend money on philanthropy, on your family, on
sort of pursuing your passion, great, right?
But if you're spending money on again, like buying brands.
Impressing people. Impressing.
People, right? I'm sure you or many of your
listeners know about. Research on possessions versus
experiences, right? That makes us happier if you
spend our money on experiences like dinner with friends or
travel than possessions like something that you put in your
closet on your shelf. But even that could, you know,
could make you happy, right? So if you have you, if you're an
art collector and you love art or you love wine, you could
really enjoy those things, you know?
And you could share it with your friends and family.
So it's nuanced. Interesting.
So coming back to this idea of like being the type of person,
as I understand it, the recent research on money and happiness
finds that money increases happiness for most people, but
the people it levels off for are the people who are already
unhappy. And you've read the very, very
latest research which which showed that.
Well, it's ironic because it's like if you're happy without
money then you're going to be happier with money.
But if you're not happy without money then it's not going to
help Eddie and that's. Probably true for everything,
right? But actually, it reminds me of
this Dear Abbey column from a long time ago where someone
wrote in and this woman says, you know, I hate my job and my
boss is terrible, and then I hated my previous job and all
the jobs that she's ever had. Yet.
And Abby says I think the problem is not the job, the
problem is you. So the only thing all of your
jobs having. Exactly the common denominator
or your relationships. Totally, Totally.
All right. Next one.
Marriage. Marriage.
OK, wow. Marriage.
Overrated or under? Oh, that's a hard one.
I feel like people are pretty, like, pretty accurate.
You could say properly. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Like, pretty accurate, because I
would I'd rather than use not, say, marriage, but
relationships. OK, let's say.
Relationships. Yeah, romantic.
Relationships. Yeah, romantic relationships are
really important to happiness. But I against so many caveats.
You don't have to have a romantic relationship.
It's really relationships. So there are people who are very
happy who don't have romantic relationships, but they have
really wonderful friends and maybe they have kids or they
have family members that are very close to.
So I don't want to say like, oh, it has to be romantic.
But on the other hand, I think 9 out of 10 people or more in the
world have romantic relationships and they matter to
them very much. So romantic relationships, yeah. 00:05:56,440 If anything, I would say are
even underrated because they are so important to have.
Is there any research as far as you know that looks at the
quality of the romantic relationship?
Because I imagine a bad relationship makes you.
Absolutely. Right.
So when we say relationships are the source of our greatest joys
and the greatest suffering, right.
So we're like, you know that sart quote.
Hell is other people. Yeah, I.
Loan. Exactly.
Loan. Fer Selizontra.
Right. Hell is other people.
So yeah. So other people are both the
source of our greatest choice and and our greatest sorrows.
And so yes, of course. And so there's, yeah, tons of
research. It's it's good quality, high
quality romantic relationships, committed relationships that
that matter. But I guess, how do I say this
sort of all things being equal, they're going to be more
positives, yeah, than negatives, I hope for most people.
Well, and I I think one of the thing you talk about in your
books is that the actual events of marriage and divorce slash,
breakup are maybe overrated. Like they they're very
temporary. Like there's a high, a temporary
high or a temporary low. But we adapt pretty quickly back
to baseline. Exactly.
So hedonic adaptation is very powerful, this idea that.
Right. Human beings adapt or get
accustomed to almost any change in in our lives, especially
positive changes. And so, yeah, so whenever you
talk about specific events, people are like, oh, I want to
have that wedding that I want to get married or win the lottery
or or even or negative events too.
It's, yeah, we adapt to the that one point in time event, but
events have consequences, right. So, for example, diagnosis of
illness is an event. People do adapt to the
diagnosis, but then that can have many consequences, right?
That can affect your life in many ways.
So marriage, it's like a diagnosis.
You're diagnosed with marriage. You're diagnosed with marriage.
I've never thought of it that way.
You're married. Getting married has so many
consequences. I remember when I, you know,
fell in love with my husband and and I was talking to a friend
who had just gotten married and he said this is the beginning of
so many wonderful things, right? So it's like it's not just
getting married, it's all those things that it leads to.
Yeah, Next one. Occupation.
Maybe even underrated. Underrated.
Interesting. I mean, I calculated once how
many hours of of the average person's life and let's just say
in the US we spend working and it's incredible number if you
don't like your work. Right.
It seems consequential, and it's you.
Also, occasionally you see those surveys of, like most miserable
professions, you know, and it's always lawyers, police officers,
doctors. There has to be some sort of
correlation I imagine. Yeah, no.
You spend so many hours working, and if it's and if it's
something you know, that's not your passion.
It's something that you don't. If you think it doesn't matter
to the world, 'cause that that even even if you don't love
doing it, if you think it, you're helping people, You're
making the world a better place. That's really important.
It's interesting to think about that.
In the past I had a couple friends who were cops and I
remember talking to them about it and they said the problem
with being a police officer is like it does feel meaningful and
impactful. But he said that you are
literally just being exposed to the worst aspects of humanity
day after day after day, and I could see how that could drain
somebody. Absolutely.
And what we pay our attention to really matters.
So one of my favorite quotes of all time is from William James
and he said experience is what I agree to attend to.
So basically if I'm attending to it, yeah, it matters it it's
affecting my happiness sure. And if I'm not attending to it,
it's like as though it's almost not happening.
And I like the word agree because there's like this subtle
acknowledgement of you are choosing what to attend to or
what to pay attention to in each moment.
I'm a big William James fan. I like you.
This is a good one. Age.
Age, OK. Overrated, underrated.
Cuz there's the famous U curve. Right.
With how. Yeah.
Don't get me started on that.
OK Yeah. Yeah.
Not a fan of that. OK Well, because most of that
work is controlling for everything.
And they're trying to figure out, it kind of has started to
figure out what is the pure effect, like a pure age.
I don't even know what pure age means because age comes with
things. Sure.
OK. So let's get back to overrated.
Underrated. So I would say overrated.
OK, but there's some caveats. So for example, most of us,
well, most of the media, social media especially, Sure, kind of
like adore youth. Turns out the least happy people
are age 14 to 28. You think, Oh what?
Great, I want to be 28 again. No, you don't want to be 28
again or 20 again for lots of obvious reasons, right?
Like so when you're young, you don't have your identity set
yet. Maybe you haven't found your
passion. You haven't found your person
yet. And so people get happier as
they age. And the happiest?
If you look at raw data, a lot of surveys show the happiest are
pretty old. There was one study that 67 was
kind of the 71. And then for again, lots of
obvious reasons, the happiness drops off.
Yeah, when you're, you know, getting much older than that.
Which would make sense, 'cause that's when you Yeah, health,
physical health starts. Physical And then you know
people are people die. You know your friends and
family. So yeah, so we we sort of think
that younger is better and we and really even I like, I'm
like, oh, I'd like to be 39 again.
I remember. So when I turned 30, I posted
basically a survey to to my blog followers.
At the time, this was 2014. So you're 39.
I'm. I am 39.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a I'm a fan.
I'm a fan of 39. So I asked all my blog
followers, you know, if you're over 40, what, what advice would
you give to a 30 year old or what advice would you give to
somebody entering their 30s? I got hundreds and hundreds of
responses and one of the things that struck me was that
everybody from 40 into fifties, 6070, every single person said
don't be afraid of aging. It gets better.
Like don't listen to anybody who claims about midlife crisis or
anything like that. Every single person was like 40,
was better than 3050 was better than 40.
And I can see why. Like, it's you.
Like you said, you really establish your life, you
establish your identity. You understand what sort of
people you want to be around, how to relate to those people
you're confident in yourself. It does make sense.
I totally agree. And so Laura Carson, who's a
professor at Stanford. I was one of my professors when
I was there in the PhD program a long time ago, has a theory
called Socio Emotional Selectivity Theory.
Life Socio. Emotional.
Selectivity. Very catchy, yeah.
Right. But basically, I guess the way I
would summarize it is that people become emotionally wiser
as they get older. So when you're older, you kind
of know what people in your life make you happy and you want to
spend time with people in. Your life.
Intuitively that makes so much sense because when I look back
at my 20 year old self, my 20 year old self was still really
smart intellectually. Like emotionally was a complete
idiot. I had no idea what he was doing. 00:12:57,920 And now, now.
And she talks. Yeah.
And she talks about how, you know, it makes sense.
You take out more risks when you're younger.
And so because you never know, that person you might meet could
be your new partner or your business partner.
But yeah, I would agree. So so yeah, the older you are.
Yeah. Kind of the wiser you are.
It just would be nice to, I don't know, still like, look
like you're. I mean, there's just certain
things that would be nice to have.
Yeah. Like, still look like you're 39. 00:13:24,000 Or have the the energy and the
the recovery. Yeah, the physical health of a
2022 run as. Fast.
All that like that. But apparently, what is it?
Reaction times peaks at age 19. So is downhill.
From there, I'm a big fan of that, saying that youth is
wasted on the young, which. Youth and psychedelics are
wasted, right? That's the famous Michael
Pollan's quirk. That's awesome.
All right, next one. We we already mentioned this
briefly, but friendships? This is something, I guess,
anecdotally from my audience. I think people overestimate
romantic relationships a little bit, particularly if they don't
have one. And they underestimate
friendships. Yeah, So it's funny, 'cause I
just today I have these two really good female friends and
we send each other WhatsApp messages.
And I had said friendship is what makes life worth living
more than even romantic, right? And I said, kids too, You know,
it's hard to compare. Or, I mean, we can't leave that
out. Yeah, exactly.
We. Can't leave that out.
And they and I just got a message from one of them and she
said, oh you're so right. I said friendship is what makes
life worth living. And again I mean to me, I guess
I would just say connection, feeling loved.
You know my co-author Harry Reese and I are about are
writing a book called How to Feel Loved.
And so this is very much on our minds and sort of feeling loved
and in it. But by friends, I don't know,
friends is who you can really, I guess, count on in some ways,
maybe even more than your kids or your family members or
romantic partners. And also, they're your chosen
family. I would even say within a long
term romantic relationship, because as you pointed out, the
romance, it eventually fizzles and then for the rest of the
relationship it comes and goes and in waves.
But if there's a solid bedrock of friendship there, like I
actually feel like that's where most of the long term value
probably is, is is having that companionship and that that
closeness with a with a person who's with you every day.
Exactly. And then and then but because
they're romantic partner right they they really are with you
every day and you can count on them which is we had we didn't
really touch on this. But even your closest friends,
you know, you don't want to kind of like quote bother them with
everything you know, you, you know, but it's it's great to
have like one person in your life who you can call for
everything. And the way I see it is like
when the when the really good thing happens to you and a bad
thing happens to you, like who who do you call?
So there's, you know, theory about love that there's two
kinds of love, passionate love and companion at love.
And the idea that for most couples the passionate love
turns into companion at love and companion at love is what you're
talking about with that that sense of warmth and trust.
And like I, you know, this is a person that I admire and I want
to be with and they're my role model and they support me and I
support them. Romance.
We just talked about.
Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah. Overrated.
Yeah, we'll go overrated on romance, underrated on
friendship, I think. And both, Both within the
committed relationship, but also.
You know romantic love, right? Falling in love is this
dopamine? It really isn't.
You know, I think scientists have really basically showed
it's basically cocaine. Yeah.
Or heroin or whatever.
Yeah. It's you're on drugs.
You're it's the same kind of feeling.
Sure. And so that is, yeah, a rush.
And it's, it's beautiful. But that, yeah, that doesn't
last. It just can't.
Last, and I think also similar to maybe cocaine or or an opiate
it it it can cover and mask damaging or painful dynamics.
So you can romantically fall in love with somebody who's
actually really terrible for you and subtly hurting you, or
you're hurting them in various social and emotional ways, but
you're so in love you don't realize it and you're just
jumping in head first. Absolutely.
And I I think we've all made that mistake at some point.
Actually, I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday
who was saying he's like, you know, I think my problem is, is
when I fall in love, I want to accommodate myself to the other
person. So if they say like I wanna move
to this other city, even if they never want to live there,
they're like and I said, you know, I think most people do
that, like they you're willing to make sacrifices that you
later on, like I can't believe I.
Was. I can't, Yeah.
Why did I do that? Yeah.
So yeah, it's not. Yeah, I don't want to say it's
it sounds like it's not healthy. Sure.
But again, like this idea that it, it stems from, you know,
sort of romanticism, you know, and it's actually a pretty new
quote, new concept, this idea that it's this wonderful thing
and that that we all have a there's a soulmate out there for
us. Yeah, there's an amazing book by
Stephanie Koontz called Marriage a History.
And that was mind blowing because she shows that basically
through most of human history romance was diagnosable to bring
back the old joke. But basically romance was seen,
was looked at with skepticism, it was seen as a sickness.
It was seen as something to be avoided at all costs.
Parents used to be very preoccupied and anxious that
their 15 year old was gonna romantically fall in love with
the the neighbor next door and do something really stupid and
run off somewhere. And so it was romance was
actually something that was socially guarded against by the
community. And it wasn't until the 1800s
with a lot of romantic literature and everything that
it started to be celebrated. Like most people, I think I read
Romeo and Juliet when I was like 8th or 9th grade.
And when you're young and naive, you read it as this like
incredible love story and like, Oh my God, they're so in love.
And you know, there's movies made about it that kind of have
to take the same angle. And in that book she talked
about like, no Romeo and Juliet, it's a cautionary tale.
It's a tragedy it. And it's tragedy in a literal
sense of look what happens when you let two teenagers get away
from their parents and act on their own devices.
They make stupid, horrible decisions 'cause they fell in
love and we can't let them do that, right?
Fascinating. So fascinating.
Kindness or acts of kindness? I guess I would say underrated
for happiness because we think of we're kind to others, you
know, because it's the right thing to do.
It's sort of a moral duty, you know, if you're religious
especially. And then we benefit the other
person and of course we do benefit the other person, but it
turns out that we benefit ourselves as much or even more.
So I my lab has done quite a few studies where we ran, you know,
randomized controlled experiments where we randomly
assign some people to do acts of kindness on a regular basis,
maybe three acts of kindness once a week for a month.
And then we follow them across time and then compare them to
control groups that don't do that or do other kinds or do
acts of kindness for themselves, which is kind of a nice
comparison. And we find that people who do
acts of kindness for others, they feel happier, they feel
more connected and we even find genomic effects.
So basically effects in the body.
So here's an example of a study we've done.
So we ask people to do acts of kindness either for others or
for themselves or control groups over the course of a month.
And we take their blood before and after and then we send it to
the lab. And what we have found is that
only the group that does acts of kindness for others shows
changes in their RNA gene expression that are that are
associated with. Basically a stronger immune
profile. Really a healthier immune
profile. Wow, that is really cool.
And we actually, we were shocked when we got that at first.
We were hoping that would. Happen.
That's nuts. That's how great kindness is.
Not only does it make you happier, more connected, but
also changes something in the body as well.
What's interesting about that, hearing you talk about those
experiments? There's a very large movement on
social media these days, like hashtag self-care.
Like it's self self-care is celebrated and I think to a
certain extent rightly so. But it's interesting that acts
of kindness towards others would outperform acts of kindness
towards. Yes, absolutely.
And we designed this, this self kindness condition, you know,
sort of for a reason, 'cause we thought like, well, that's also
important. It's also positive and it should
make you feel good. And so, like, so like, you know,
whatever, to take a walk or get a massage or have a piece of
chocolate. So these are really just things. 00:21:09,720 They're not all self-care.
Some of them are kind of like self indulgent acts, just
something that makes you feel good.
Well, the line between those two things is very blurred.
Right, right. Exactly, exactly.
But we're not talking about doing something like really
dysfunctional. And so the idea is that it makes
you feel good at the moment and that's actually very important.
So research shows that even like a fleeting positive motion can
neutralize negative motions can make it like so I could and it
can lead to what are called upward spirals.
So if I feel good, I have a piece of chocolate, right?
I'm not saying we should eat chocolate all the time, but, you
know, once in a while. Chocolate solves everything.
Exactly. I'm a huge believer that we
should do everything in moderation.
Yes, including moderation. Including moderation, Yes,
sometimes. We should do things to excess,
right? So I have a piece of chocolate
and it makes you feel good in the moment.
What happens when you have a positive motion?
I might smile and you know you react more positively to me.
Or I make a new friend, someone approaches me.
I'm kind I people are more creative when they're positive.
So even a short term, fleeting positive emotion can lead you to
have a new idea. And so, so those are all things
that have consequences. So, so I don't want to like
denigrate a positive, you know, fleeting positive emotion.
So it's important too. So, so and then of course
self-care is really important. When you're like depressed when
you're not doing so well, that's really, really critical.
But I think what's happening in our studies is that those that
self kindness is just, it's just fleet, it's too fleeting.
And so like a week later, a month later, we don't see, we
don't see an effect. Yeah.
So maybe in the moment you're you're feeling good, but a month
later we don't see the fact. But but kindness to others is
not as fleeting. First of all, can the pursuit of
happiness turn toxic at some point and start backfiring?
And if so, where is that point exactly?
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And again, this is really
interesting because we were talking about how like money and
beauty are associated with happiness, but the pursuit of
those things are associated with unhappiness.
So it's a little bit similar with happiness, right.
So if you pursue happiness to to kind of deliberately and and
obsessively, especially again, everything in moderation that's
associated with unhappiness. So there's research showing that
people who who kind of like agree with statements like, you
know how happy a person is says a lot about that person or sort
of sort of happiness really tells them sort of how
worthwhile they are and they really are really kind of
obsessed with happiness. Like that's not good.
So that's associated with unhappiness.
And so that's not surprising and this is kind of a cliche, right,
that you should enjoy the journey to get there and so, but
if you're too focused on like I want to be happy, I want to be
happy, you measure, you're kind of assessing it all the time,
just like you don't want to weigh yourself or look at the
stock market every minute, right?
You don't want to be asking yourself, am I happy yet?
Am I happy yet? Am I happy yet?
That kind of focus on how happy you are can definitely detract
from. That, yeah, the act of
questioning itself removes you from it, which is kind of kind
of gets into like a very Buddhist type of attachment
thing. But it's interesting because it,
you know, at the beginning of the conversation you mentioned
how every negative emotion is ultimately adaptive.
And I think what gets missed a lot is that happiness is also
adaptive. It's not adaptive to be happy at
a funeral. It's not, you know, you you
don't want to be happy if a school burns down like it is.
Of course. And it's like it's a time you
can think about a sort of like the time place context dosage.
I'm I'm a big believer in sort of looking at dosage, like
what's the optimal dosage of happiness can you be too happy.
And it turns out in some it shows that in relationships.
Well at least one study showed you can't be too happy in
relationships. We all like to be with happy
partners but at work you can be definitely too happy.
So we don't want people who are too happy at work, partly maybe
because you're maybe distracted and you can't be as productive.
Also, we don't like people who are too happy because, you know,
we think hey, right if. They're inappropriately happy,
yeah. We yeah, we don't like people
who are too happy. We like people who are kind of
like happy but not too happy. So there's sort of an optimal
point. Yes.
There's just so many nuances there.
And just like, as you said with negative emotions, there's a,
there's a dosage of negative emotions if you're angry all the
time, right. If you're too sad, you know,
everyone agrees that is not functional.
But sometimes people who study happiness are interpreted as
like, oh, we want people to be happy all the time.
We don't believe in negative. And of course it's ridiculous
negative and and there's the contrast, right?
How can you be happy if you've never known anything else?
Yeah, I think you run into that more in my space with the self
help industry. You sometimes see promises of
that and even some people kind of pushing that message a little
bit, which I've just, I mean, I've made my bones just telling
people how unrealistic that is and ridiculous it is.
But I wonder, like so, does anyone really believe that you
should be sort of positive all the time?
I've run into some, you know, in this space, and yeah, and I do
think it is. I think maladaptive is the
proper word for it, because life will inevitably throw you
curveballs. Something's gonna get fucked up
at some point. And if you are in a mindset of
having to always maintain a positive effect no matter what,
you essentially have to become delusional and detached from
reality to maintain that when things go wrong.
And that's just maladaptive. It's not helpful.
It's funny cuz sometimes it just seems so obvious to me that
maybe it's not obvious to everyone.
I mean, positive thinking is very important.
Optimism is very important. It's very powerful.
But there's a time and place and dosage and time timing matters,
right? So when something bad happens,
that's why when you give advice to people right after a negative
event, we want to sort of make them feel better and we want to
give them kind of a reappraisal, right?
Like, oh, but you know that you will grow from this experience
or and and but if it's too soon it's it's really offensive
actually because they want to be validated in their negative
emotion and the suffering. You're supposed to be sad at a
funeral. You know, you're supposed to be
upset when an injustice happens. I've been surprised over the
years how many readers and emails I've gotten where my
responses essentially simply been It's OK to be angry.
It's OK to be sad. It's OK to be anxious.
Like, this is an anxious moment in your life.
That's fine. I think there's a weird, at
least in in in our culture, there's a weird tendency to
judge certain emotions and to judge them as appropriate or
inappropriate or as reflections of our character, which I think
is just incredibly unhealthy. So interesting.
But what's so hard is that balance?
Is that so? At what point or how long?
Yeah. Do you stay sad or angry when
you have kids and they're, say, very anxious about something?
They're anxious, anxious and you wanna validate them.
Yeah. But then at some point you're
like, OK, yeah. You wanna also try to help them
reframe? Sure.
It's very difficult. And I guess maybe that's what
therapists are for, to try to figure out that balance.
We haven't really talked about the baseline happiness or like
the set point of happiness, but there's people probably have
different set points for other emotions.
You know, some people are just naturally more anxious than
others. Some people are naturally more
angry than others. And I think the same way we we
tend to return to the same happiness level naturally.
We probably have similar dynamics with other emotions as
well. Next one meditation.
Meditation. Well, depending who you talk to,
I would say underrated. But you know, like the people I
know are all, like, really into meditation.
Yeah, well, yeah, out out here in Santa Monica, CA might be
overrated. Exactly.
It's so funny because I feel like I just can't meditate.
I've tried inside and actually I saw talk somewhere that showed
actually meditation has effects that are like bimodal, so that
for some people it really doesn't do anything, and for
others it does a lot. But it also depends how you
define meditation, right? It's just about a way of like
learning how to kind of focus your mind and redirect your
attention. Back to that William James
quote, experience is what I agree to attend to.
So if you teach yourself how to kind of redirect attention, you
know, and that's that's really important.
So I would say it's it's underrated and tons and tons of
research shows that meditation has benefits and all kinds of
domains. So I'm not an expert, but
whether in research or or personally.
I think the important point there is it can help a lot of
people, but it doesn't necessarily help everybody.
I think it it definitely got overhyped maybe 10 years ago and
there was this sense of of like everybody needs to be meditating
and and and if and if it's not helping, you're not doing it
right. I think now the the research
seems to have gotten a little bit more nuanced and they found
that even in a small percentage of people it it, it actually
seems to make things worse for them.
I've kind of downgraded it in my toolbox to kind of like try it
and if it helps keep doing it and if it doesn't try something. 00:30:03,000 Else, Yeah, I totally agree.
Yeah, So. And it makes me feel better
because all these years I'm like, I don't.
Know what am I doing wrong? Working and like is there
something wrong with me? But I would also generalize,
kind of broaden what you just said to like almost everything,
right? So, and actually my first book,
The Health Happiness, talked about 12 different strategies,
12 different strategies that people can use to be happier.
And that's fairly arbitrary that it's 12 and there's really like
100. And it's really what there was
research on at the time. And now actually I'm I'm trying
to update the book, 'cause it's it's all the same, the advice,
it's just this more research. But one of the themes of that
book was the theme of fit is that you have to choose or find
what fits your personality, what fits your lifestyle, what fits
your values, what fits your strength and weaknesses.
And it was in response to and back then there weren't as many
really hap. There's really, there were
really no science based happiness books before that
book. But the books kind of all said
like do this, like do this, like like count your blessings.
And my advice based on research is that, well, it depends,
right. So some of you counting your
blessings would be like the perfect practice for you.
And then for other people like I.
Then another example like I find counting blessings just kind of
trite and hokey. Yeah, it doesn't work for me.
I mean, gratitude, I think, is a very powerful practice, but we
might choose to practice it in a way that works for us.
So anyway, the point being meditation.
Whether it's meditation or gratitude or exercise, even
positive thinking that some of these fit some of us better than
others and we sort of choose what to focus on, yeah.
Excellent drugs and alcohol. Again it depends on who your
audience is cause the cause the right answer is like well it's
sort of you know overrated right.
We shouldn't use drugs and alcohol to be happy.
But I have a a more nuanced response to that.
And by the way, addiction. Terrible.
Terrible, right? Leads to so much suffering.
But if you don't have an addictive personality, I think
drugs and alcohol can can sort of amplify, can kind of be a
supplement, can be like a bonus to your life.
Yeah, just like anything, just like chocolate, right?
Just like having a massage or going to Paris.
Yeah, you know. Wait, let me write this.
So chocolate and drugs. Yeah, right.
Well, again, everything in moderation, yeah, That when you
think about what makes you happy and also does not lead to
unhealthy behavior, is not dysfunctional in moderation.
I think that could be on the menu if you don't have an
addictive personality and you're not a child.
Yeah, but I'm a little unusual in arguing that cuz most people
would say, well, of course, no, that's terrible.
Carl Hart, who's a neuroscientist at Columbia.
He wrote a book called Drug Use for Grownups and he.
Makes a sense. It's a.
Great book. He makes a pretty strong
argument that we could do heroin if we do it responsibly and we
don't have addictive personality and we make sure it's not
tainted. I mean, he kind of takes that
strong argument, you know, and for a reason.
I don't need or want to argue that.
I'm just saying that almost anything positive in life can be
in that toolbox. Yeah, to sort of amplify your
life. You know, there's that
fascinating story. I don't know if you've heard
about heroin use in the Vietnam War.
So apparently in the Vietnam War, heroin was abundantly
available to all the soldiers over there, and heroin use was
just sky high for understandable reasons.
It was something like, I forget the amount, but it was like
2535% of the US soldiers were using heroin in Vietnam.
And so among the military, there was a lot of discussion and
talks with the US government of like, hey, when all these guys
come home, we're going to have a public health crisis.
And when all the soldiers did come home, it's like 99% of them
stopped using and they all went back and had normal lives.
And and it's so it's this, it's a really fascinating anecdote of
how so much of addiction and and substance abuse is driven by
context and and environment. If you're stuck in a in a
quagmire of a war, heroin use might actually be the rational
thing to do. Absolutely.
Yeah, it's such an interesting story.
One of my friends, George Bonanno, wrote a book called The
End of Trauma, and he argues that the best kind of coping he
calls flexible coping. And so it depends, right?
It really depends on the situation.
It's not like, again, kind of like the half happiness, right?
It's not the one thing you need to do.
But there's a concept that he discusses that I've never heard
before, which he calls ugly coping.
And ugly coping is that sometimes the only thing you can
do maybe to survive that moment, is to do something that might be
considered really unhealthy and dysfunctional.
It could be getting really angry.
Yeah. It could be getting really
drunk. It could be like, driving very,
you know, unsafely. And he's like, sometimes, like,
you need to do that. Like people do that.
And maybe if you didn't do that, you would sort of, yeah, yeah,
you'd go really downhill. So ugly coping sometimes is
necessary. Yeah, what about psychedelics?
It's becoming very trendy right now, especially out here in
California. And my personal observation or
or my trepidation with it, and I've said this a few times to my
audience, is that the research that's happening in psychedelics
right now is that it, it can be incredibly transformative.
You know, take somebody with PTSD or chronic depression and
it can be absolutely life changing.
But if you go to a party out in Venice, you know all the people
microdosing and taking mushrooms and MDMA all the time.
You know, it's it's like startup founders and tech nerds and Jim
Bros. So what are your thoughts on
that? I can talk for hours about this. 00:35:47,720 So a couple of things.
One is so before COVID, I kind of got obsessed with research on
MDMA. And the reason was that I was
studying happiness. And I realized that all the
interventions that that my lab and I have ever done that work
to make people happy work because they make people feel
more connected. Like you write a red letter of
gratitude. It makes you feel more connected
to your mom or whoever you do acts of kindness.
It makes you feel more connected.
And then MDMA, of course, by the way, it's not a psychedelic, but
I can. I'll just.
I'm just gonna include it in sort of a that that space makes
people feel really connected really warm really loving
understood and and there's research on this And so I got
into this area and so I actually am doing research now on MDMA
and I do believe that it can really help people who have
social challenges and who don't really feel connected maybe who
are lonely. It could really help people feel
like, wow, like maybe for some people, for the first time in
their life, they feel like really, really close to someone. 00:36:46,600 And it can really and it can
improve relationships. And so, you know, back in the
60s, seventies, you know, there's sort of these
underground therapists that used MDMA for like couples
counseling. And now, you know, hopefully,
you know, it's going to be a schedule 3 by the end of 2024
for PTSD, but probably then it'll be used for other reasons
too. So like, couples counseling
could really be transformative. And again, this is kind of, this
is what you're saying for people who kind of need it for sure.
I had a next door neighbor in Santa Monica who told me that he
used MDMA with his ex-wife to work on their divorce settlement
under the divorce. Agreement.
With a with a therapist. And I thought that is just
brilliant, right? That's incredible, right?
Because it makes you feel not defensive, right.
So I can imagine like a really amazing uses for it.
So I can talk about that forever.
And then, of course, there's research on on the other other
drugs and how helpful they could be for depression, for substance
use disorder, for, you know, for death anxiety, lots and lots and
lots of things, as you say. And there's clinical trials on
all of these going on right now. So it's really beautiful, the,
the resurgence of psychedelic science and psychedelic medicine
that I'm lucky to be a part of. OK.
So I started doing this before COVID, and then a lot has
changed. I remember giving a talk in my
department in 2020 on Zoom because that was like the first
time we suddenly went to Zoom and being really, you know,
really nervous about it. Like I was going to talk about
this drug, you know, in this academic setting and now, like,
no one cares, right? Well, at least in in those
settings, like a lot has changed in 3-4 years.
But now I see so many people doing these journeys, but they
do them so often. So like is is, if something is
so transformative, right, it's going to change your life.
Why do you? Why would you do it like?
Why do you need another one? Yeah, a month later.
Yeah, and at some way I can understand why, because you have
these epiphanies and you want to kind of build on them.
I mean I had the life coach actually who said all these
epiphanies are completely useless unless you act on them
right. I guess I guess true for
anything, right. And so unless these individuals
are really acting on it and by the way I'm I've never done one
of these journeys but I actually am really interested.
I'd like to not once a month but maybe you know maybe only once
or maybe once a year. So I do think that then in this
research on neuroscience that is showing how the brain can change
and and sort of creating kind of more connections and kind of
more entropy. So there's really something
there. You know, it's not just in
people's minds, but I I do agree that it's kind of becoming like
a little too trendy. It makes me uneasy.
And as somebody who did a lot of psychedelics when he was younger
and benefited a lot from it and had a fucking great time but
also had some epiphanies, some realizations that were were
pretty profound. One thing I've noticed out here
in California and that's very interesting to me is that most
of the people who are really into it, it's actually a very
it's subtly a very social thing for them.
So I'll get invited to a party out in Malibu and in the
invitation it will say by the way if you want to join us with
Shaman Guru, so and so for a journey pre party come at 3:00.
Otherwise the party starts at 7 and a lot of people show up
early and they do the whole journey and then they're on the
psychedelic during the party and it made me realize.
To kind of come back to your point that ultimately so much of
happiness is driven by a sense of connection, maybe a lot of
the journey is really just almost like an excuse to get
that connection, You know, it's like, well, it gets me in a room
with a bunch of other people who are experiencing the same thing
at the same time and it's a very intense experience and we feel
very together. The drug removes a lot of your
inhibitions. If you're a socially anxious
person or self-conscious, you know it gets rid of a lot of
that and so it opens you up to all these other people and then
that is very powerful and the people are just mistaking the
power of that for the drug itself.
Absolutely. And and and of course, like
alcohol has always been that drug.
Booze does the same thing, yeah. And and and by the way, there's
research on how alcohol makes people more social and of course
it does. You know and alcohol is also
fairly toxic. You know in terms if you look at
the that harms it's it's underestimated sort of how toxic
it. Is so Are psychedelics the new
the new booze? But it is more powerful of
course the. Psychedelic much?
More powerful, but yeah, I will once again say yeah, connection
is the key to happiness. Taking kind of the big picture
perspective, there's this toolbox that has lots of things
in it, right? Including psychedelics,
including booze in moderation in the right time and place dosage
that can really enhance your life.
Yeah, All right. Moving on, goals.
Super important. Yeah.
I guess I would say underrated. I want.
I have a line in the health. Happiness is something like a
happy person has always something to look forward to.
Yeah, and a goal is something that you pursue that could
matter. Mattering is really important.
I mean, we already touched on goals, but I guess to say it
again, that pursuit of significant life goals hugely
correlated with happiness. I think most people assume that
the value of goals is achieving the goal itself.
And I've always kind of felt like most of the value of having
goals is, like we talked about earlier, that experience of
progress and incremental improvement.
And being able to, like, legibly measure yourself against
something like knowing that I am slightly better today than I was
a week ago and I'm gonna be better next week than I am
today. Like that just seems to have so
much psychological significance for.
Us. Absolutely.
And again, it sounds like cliche.
We need to enjoy the journey. We're just talking about
journeys. Another kind of journey, another
journey, Journey We get there. As opposed to the end goal,
because because human beings, because of hedonic adaptation,
once we achieve the goal, we don't stop for very long.
And now we have a new goal, which is probably, which is a
good thing. It's fine, yeah.
Cuz otherwise we'd all kind of stagnate and just be passive.
But goals are. Pursuit of goals are, yeah,
really important. OK.
Next one's a big one and as far as I know, a little bit
controversial in your field, parenting or children.
My students and I have a paper that I think kind of addresses
the controversy. It started with a lot of media
articles saying kids make parents unhappy.
Yes, Classic example of how journalists like just ruin
science. But also it it gets attention,
right? People are like, oh, yeah,
parents are miserable. And so we have all these
headlines. And so one of my students, Katie
Nelson and I were like, that just can't be, does that really
true? Like, so we wrote a paper
published in Sex Science, one of the top journals where we had
three different studies that basically showed that's not true
in different ways. Like if you just look at parents
overall, if you look at parents, if you just look at people with
and without children, if you look at people who are spending
time with kids versus spending time doing other things.
So then we thought, well they really the answer is it depends
like anything. And so we have this paper on the
effects of parenthood on happiness.
And the the answer is it depends.
It depends on the age of the child.
Do you have a baby or do you have a 25 year old?
It depends on your age. It depends on whether your your
kids have problems. It depends how much money you
have. So it depends on lots of things. 00:44:02,920 So, but it's not the case that
parents are less happy than not parents.
Now the problem is you can't ever do the experiment.
But we we did find that the least happy people were men
without children. Really.
Yes. Just in general.
In general, yeah. Just like if you do the
representative sample, sort of men, women with children without
children, the least happy were men without children now and
then. Women with children were a
little less happy than women without children.
And you could kind of argue about why that.
Yeah. And men with children were the
happiest. My recollection of those old
studies that were publicized a bunch, I think it was about 10
years ago, was that they showed a pretty significant dip after
the birth of the child, and then it slowly recovered as the child
got older. And my thought was that of
course they're less happy, they're not sleeping.
So sleep. Overrated, Underrated.
Well, first of all, yeah, yeah. When you look at, it's actually
kind of funny. When you look at happiness,
birth of a child, it it it's you're you're the happiest when
you're pregnant and you're like yay and.
Then if this is going to be amazing.
And often like you're newly married so you're also your
relationship is happy and then the biggest dip comes at year
two and why do you think that. Is terrible twos.
That's what most people think. I don't think that's what it is. 00:45:21,920 I think you have child #2 on
average two years later and that's really bad.
And as someone who's been through that twice, yeah, that's
the. Hardest you can attest first
child. Is.
Yeah. Hard.
But anyway, so sleep. Yeah, absolutely.
Incredibly important, I would say.
Yeah. Underrated.
Even those of us who think like, yeah, it's so, so important.
And then the Danny Kahneman is a Nobel Prize winner and his
colleagues have done studies where they're looking at kind of
daily happiness and it might have even been the number one
sort of factor and. Sort of how happy you.
Are today is how much sleep you had last night.
Sleep is the number one. Factor Well, just like out of
the like right now, this momentary.
Yeah, I believe that. I mean, if I don't sleep at
least six hours, I am a horrible person.
Genetics. Yeah, huge.
Overrated. Underrated.
Now it's almost like politically
incorrect to talk about the power of genetics, but they're
very powerful and so all of us are, you know, are influenced by
our genes. I would say like our happiness
range is sort of influenced. Doesn't mean that we're faded to
be a certain level of happiness. It's just, it's just it's an
influence. There's like a center of
gravity. Just like, yeah, exactly.
Just like with weight, right? Some people just have a hard
time keeping their weight down. But but any human trait is
influenced by genetics, your blood pressure, your
susceptibility to depression, your you know everything,
including happiness. It's not surprising.
So we've been talking about the hedonic adaptation and how
humans tend to always return to this kind of set level of of
baseline happiness. As I recall you talked, I think
you said roughly 40% of that baseline level is so genetically
determined. So I I've stopped using those
numbers. OK.
Because they're just so commonly they're so much misinterpreted.
Sure. I just, I just say forget,
forget those numbers and I have a paper that that talks about
like what the, the numbers really mean.
Yeah. I kind of regret ever using the
numbers. Just think of it as like there
are three buckets that determine your happiness level or your
happiness kind of baseline. You know one is genetics and
that's important. One is your life circumstances.
Generally, they're not as important as we think they are
unless they're very bad, right. So if you're if you live in a
war zone or if you're poor, or if you're in an abusive
relationship, absolutely, there's gonna be a huge
difference in your happiness. And then the other bucket is
sort of what we do and how we think like our actual behavior
that we have that we choose to enact, OK, is the third bucket.
Yep, that's the next one. Mindset.
Attitude. So that's.
Huge, I imagine. Exactly.
Part of that, what we choose to, how we choose to think and how
we choose to behave in our daily lives, profoundly effects our
happiness. By the way, part of that is
positive thinking. Part of that is having sense of
control or being grateful. I could define that it.
Divide that into how we think and then how we behave.
So that's mindset. Attitude is how we think. 3
buckets. I like that.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, 3 buckets.
All right, last one. Sex.
The exciting one good question I
can answer for you For men under 30, Overrated, because the men
under 30 make it the most important thing in the world.
That's so funny because again, as a scientist, I'm just like,
what do you mean by underrated? Oh my God.
Because in some ways I'm like, one of the greatest things in
life, of course, is sex. But we also adapt.
Having sex with a single partner we know passion decreases in
almost all relationships. Yep.
This is not scientific, but I can speak from personal
experience. Sex with multiple partners or
many partners in succession. That also gets old there.
There's a hedonic adaptation of that.
It's like, #8 is exciting. When you get to like 28, you're
like, oh, it's Saturday, you know.
Exactly. So we adapt to so we can adapt.
Sex with love can be, incredibly, the greatest thing
in the. World amazing.
Right. Especially when you're falling
in love, yes. So yes, it's really hard to
answer that question, because in some ways, like at the right
time, with the right person, one of the greatest experiences in
in life, yes. But can you sustain that?
Very difficult to sustain either, whether it's with one
person or with several. It's kind of like parties.
Like we were talking about parties before we turned.
We started recording. You know, 90% of the parties you
go to in your life are kind of meh, like they're OK, maybe a
little disappointing. And then there's maybe 10% that
are just incredible. Some of the best nights of your
life, yeah, but you never know when that nights going to be.
I feel like the same as with sex, too.
Like, it's most sex is just like, OK, that was fun, but
every once in a while you get. Right.
Transcended, right? Yes, Incredible.
So. But that's also true with like
conversations, right? Yes.
Once in a while, you have a conversation that's incredible.
Right. Or vacations?
Or vacations. Or seeing a work of art or
music. Yeah, I wanted to include that
in there because I'm followed by a lot of young men and one of
the consistent themes that I see when I talk to my young male
followers is, is and I I get it. I was the same when I was a 18
year old guy. So it's a it's like, calm down
boys, It's you're going to be fine.
But getting back, though, to that study by Danny Kahneman
where they asked people to kind of write down what they did
yesterday and what kind of determined their happiness
today. And so sleep, you know, bad
sleep was one of the worst things.
And then also like, commuting was bad, but sex was like one of
the most if not the most positive.
We're not talking about, like transcendent experience.
We're just talking about kind of like your mood right now has
depended on, like, if you had pretty good sex yesterday, so it
didn't have to be transcendent. So it it does.
Of course it is important for happiness, and it's correlated
with good things like a happy relationship often.
Or Or maybe you're a socially skilled, charismatic, attractive
person who has lots of friends and partners or or
possibilities. Yeah, so that person is often
happier than someone. So, like, if you have
opportunities to have sex, you're probably better off in
other ways, too. So maybe a sneaky underrated.
In a way. Like it's a signal.
Yeah. Like it's a signal of other
things. True that also are good in your
life. So maybe not be the sex, but
what it comes, what's correlated with, right.
Like having a happy relationship.
Yes. Or as I said, like someone who
has opportunities. Yeah, it's probably someone who. 00:51:41,920 Attracting, yeah, attractive
partners. Yeah, right.
And and. And which is enjoyable and
happy. People attract, right?
If you're an unhappy person, people don't don't wanna have
sex with you, right? Yeah, like if you're really
unhappy, this is very true, right?
Right. So there you go.
That's the conclusion of this. All right, Sonia, it's been a
pleasure. Let me show off your books to
the to the audience both. Hello.
Yes, both Yellow, The Howl of Happiness, The myths of
happiness, and you're currently working on a new one.
Yes, called How to Feel Loved. And really feeling loved.
Connection is the key to happiness.
So it's a perfect third book. Yeah, with with a collaborator,
Harry Reese. Cool.
So we'll we'll have to have you back when that comes out.
So would love to. Thank you.
Thanks for coming on.