Science-Based Tools for Increasing Happiness | Huberman Lab Podcast #98

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast,

where we discuss science and science-based tools

for everyday life.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor

of neurobiology and ophthalmology

at Stanford School of Medicine.

Today we are discussing happiness.

We're going to discuss the science of happiness,

because indeed, there are excellent laboratories that

have worked for many decades to try and understand

what is this thing that we call happiness

and what brings us happiness in the short and long term.

In fact, we could probably point to happiness

as one of the most sought-after states or commodities,

or emotions.

Whatever you want to call it, happiness

is what many people are seeking in work, in relationships,

and in general.

And yet most of us can't really define exactly what

happiness is or means for us.

We can point to certain experiences,

we can try and describe our states of mind and body,

but most people recognize the feeling when we have it,

and we certainly recognize the feeling of not being happy.

Whether or not that means simply not being happy

as the absence of happiness or all-out depression.

Now one of the key problems in trying to understand happiness

and, indeed, the science and psychology of happiness

is that it does indeed involve other similar things.

Things like joy, and gratitude, and meaning.

And indeed, many scientists and psychologists

have argued for many, many decades

about what happiness really is.

Now we can come up with so-called operational

definitions of happiness.

Operational definitions are basically agreed-upon terms

or agreed-upon definitions and conditions

that will define something such as happiness.

Much in the same way that we can all probably

come up with an operational definition of milk.

But of course, milk can be cow's milk, it can be oat milk,

it can be soy milk, et cetera, et cetera.

So too, something like happiness can

be micro-divided and sliced and diced into as many things

as we decide.

Today we are really going to focus on three main things.

First, we are going to define happiness as a brain state

and as a state of mind and body.

We're going to take a look at what the science says about all

of that.

Second, we are going to talk about tools and practices

for placing ourselves into states of happiness.

And while for most of us, we think of happiness

as something that only arrives through the acquisition

of some goal or some thing external to us, and of course,

that is true.

There is also something called synthetic happiness

or synthesized happiness which turns out

to be at least as powerful and perhaps even more powerful.

Now I'll just say right off the bat

that I'm not going to tell you that all you have to do

is sit in a chair and imagine being happy

in order to feel happy.

Synthesize happiness actually involves some very concrete

steps that have been defined by excellent labs in psychology,

so we're going to talk about synthesize happiness

as it relates to what you can do to obtain happy states more

readily or more frequently.

And then, third, we're going to talk about some

of the misconceptions or what I would call the contradictions

of happiness research.

And what I mean by that is most of you

have probably heard about the general conditions

for obtaining happiness.

And they always seem to circle back

to some of the same basic features of get great sleep,

have great social connection, pursue meaning, don't focus

to any overextend on things like pursuing money

because there are indeed these studies that

show that the amount of money that people make

does not necessarily scale directly with happiness.

We'll talk about those studies in some detail a little bit

later.

And while all of that literature is

very powerful and informative, there

is what I see as a contradiction.

Which is for instance, that for many of us, including myself,

especially in the years when I was

in graduate school and a postdoc,

there were times in which pursuing and being involved

in work and pursuing degrees and finding

meaning in my vocation actually separated me

from the opportunity to have quite

as many social connections, or quite as much sleep,

or quite as much exercise, or even quite as much sunshine,

for that matter.

So all of the things that we're told that we need in order

to access happiness on a regular basis

oftentimes contradict with the pressures

and the requirements of not just daily life

but in building a life that allows

us to have the kind of resources that we need in order

to have things like quality social connection, and the time

and opportunity to get regular exercise and great nutrition,

et cetera, et cetera.

So, again, while this isn't necessarily

a complaint with any of the research out

of the fields of psychology on happiness,

it is important that we acknowledge

these contradictions that exist in the discussion

around happiness.

In particular, the popular discussions

around the science of happiness.

So today, what we are going to arrive at,

what you will finish this episode,

with is a set of tools and a framework for understanding

the pursuit of happiness in the short and long-term

as it relates to the research from psychology

but also the neuroscience.

And my goal today is really to try and place that all

into a structured framework so that you

can know where you are in your journey or the landscape

around happiness in your pursuit of happiness.

And what I won't tell you is that you

need to abandon all goals in terms

of pursuing money, career, et cetera,

and simply focus on relationships.

But we will talk about what constitutes

an excellent social bond or even in excellent conversation.

There's excellent research that points to the fact

that even rather shallow connections, that

is, connections between people that you happen to just see

in the hallway on a regular basis,

not even requiring close bonds of any kind,

can be built into close bonds that can deliver

a tremendous amount of feeling and genuine social connection

provided certain conditions are met.

So today, again, it's really about understanding

the science of happiness, understanding the mechanisms

underlying what we call happiness.

And providing you a framework by which

you can pursue and achieve happiness not just

as a long-term goal and not just as a day-to-day goal

of little micro exercises of gratitude, et cetera,

but rather as a way to think about happiness

as a state that you have control over, at least

in terms of your ability to access

what I would call the algorithms that

enable us or open the opportunity to experience

happiness.

Now before we begin today's episode,

I'd like to talk about a very specific tool that applies yes

to our pursuit of happiness but actually

to our pursuit of everything, including quality sleep

and ongoing motivation, et cetera.

I've talked many, many times before on this podcast

and on other podcasts, and on social media

about the critical value of getting

regular bright light, ideally sunlight, in your eyes

within the first hour of waking.

Or if the sun isn't out when you wake up in the morning,

to turn on a lot of bright artificial lights

and then get sunlight in your eyes

for anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes,

depending on how cloudy it is in the early part of the day.

Absolutely outsized effects mood and focus

during the day and quality of sleep at night.

Now there's another sort of central tenet

of getting great sleep and improving mood

and focus throughout the day.

And that's to avoid bright artificial light

exposure to your eyes between the hours of about 10 PM

to 4:00 AM.

Now leaving shift workers aside, and we have an entire episode

devoted to shift work, most people are asleep at night

and awake during the day.

And you would be wise to avoid exposure of your eyes

to bright artificial light between the hours of 10:00

PM and 4:00 AM.

If you're going to use screens or artificial lights,

dim them down as far as you can.

Now there are several studies that point to the fact

that one of the major issues with getting

bright light in your eyes between the hours of 10:00

PM and 4:00 AM is that it has a negative impact

on the so-called dopaminergic or dopamine circuits of the brain

and body, which can enhance depression.

That is lead to ongoing lower mood and affect.

So that's a reason to dim the lights

or avoid bright lights between 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM.

However, I and many others need to use artificial light

and screens sometimes, even between the hours of 10:00

PM and midnight or even midnight to 3:00 AM,

depending on what's going on in my life or your life.

That may include you as well.

Now it turns out that there are powerful ways

to offset some, not all, but some of the negative effects

of viewing artificial lights between the hours of 10:00

PM and 4:00 AM.

And one of the most powerful ways to do that

is to simply adjust the overall brightness

of your artificial lighting throughout the day

and in the evening.

So one of the issues nowadays that we're really facing

is that people are simply not getting enough bright light

in their eyes from sunlight or from other sources

during the daytime, and they're getting

far too much bright light in their eyes

largely from artificial sources, of course, in the evening

and at night.

Not just from 10 PM to 4:00 AM, but also

in the evening hours from 6 to 10 PM and so on and so forth.

So a very simple yet powerful solution

that supported by peer-reviewed research in humans

is to try and make your indoor working and/or home

environment during the day as bright as possible.

Now, if you can achieve that through direct sunlight,

terrific.

If you can get outside a lot during the daytime, terrific.

But many people simply cannot.

But most people do have some windows in their environment.

I realize some don't but, most people do.

And as a consequence, most people

are using rather dim artificial lighting indoors during the day

and then very bright artificial lighting

indoors in the evening, and at night, that's a problem.

And if you think about it, logically, you

want to do the exact reverse.

So it's been shown that if you simply

increase the amount of bright artificial light

that you were exposed to during the day, and remember

this is not an excuse to not get your morning sunlight viewing,

but in addition to that, to make your indoor artificial lights

very bright, bright, bright, bright, bright

throughout the day.

And then much dimmer from the hours of 6:00 PM until bedtime.

Or if you can't do that, then maybe as soon

as you get home from about 8:00 PM until bedtime.

And then dim them way, way down between 10:00

PM and 4:00 AM or off entirely.

That's going to be a far better pattern

for your sleep-wake cycles, focus, mood, et

cetera than what most people do, which

is to have a few windows in their indoor working

environment during the day and keep the indoor lights rather

dim at a time when they need more photons, more

light energy.

And then in the evening, when they get home

because it's dark outside, they tend

to turn the lights much brighter.

You actually want to do the reverse.

Now there's an even simpler solution,

which is to get some bright sunlight in your eyes

right around the time of sunset.

It doesn't have to be exactly at sunset,

it could be in the late afternoon and evening.

But it's been shown now in studies on humans,

and I'll provide a link to at least one

of those studies, that by getting

some bright light in your eyes, ideally from sunlight,

in the late afternoon and evening.

And, of course, the timing will vary depending on time of year

and where you are located on the planet.

But facing the sun around sunset,

you don't actually have to see the sun cross down

below the horizon, but facing the sun

around that time for anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes or even

less, even two to five minutes, can

adjust the sensitivity of neurons

in your retina that communicate light information to the brain

and make it such that in the evening when you use

artificial lights, they aren't going to have as much

of a detrimental effect on your dopamine system

and for impairing your sleep.

So the idea is as much bright light, ideally from sunlight

but also from artificial sources, from the time

you wake up in the morning until the evening.

Maybe around 6:00 or 7:00.

Maybe in the summer months, a little bit later.

And then really try and get as little bright light

in your eyes as you can in the evening and nighttime hours.

And ideally, you would also get some sunlight exposure right

around the time of sunset or in the late afternoon.

Go outside, take your sunglasses off.

Don't try and do this through a windshield or through a window.

It will not work.

You have to get outside.

If you're under an overhang, at least

try and get some direct sunlight in your eyes at that time.

And that will adjust the sensitivity

of your retina such that bright artificial lights

or artificial lights of any kind that you're

exposed to in the evening and in the late hours of the night

won't have as much of a detrimental effect.

That said, if you go to the bathroom

in the middle of the night, try and keep the lights dim.

Many people have asked whether or not, for instance,

a nightlight or a flashlight is going to have as much

of a negative effect.

This is very straightforward.

If you think about it, if you shine a light at something,

you can see into your environment.

If you've ever been camping or you've

walked with a flashlight, you can see things around you

that you wouldn't otherwise, of course.

But if you were to shine that light in your eyes,

it would be far brighter.

So yes, of course, if you get up in the middle of the night

and you can use your phone flashlight to illuminate

the environment that you're in so that you can safely

go to where you need to go and then back to bed,

that's going to be far better than turning on the lights

or, of course, shining light in your eyes, right.

So the idea is bright, bright, bright in the morning

and throughout the day.

And as dim and dark as possible at night.

And that afternoon light viewing provides, sort of,

what I call a Netflix inoculation that

will allow you to adjust your retinal sensitivity

and give you a little bit more flexibility in terms

of allowing some nighttime light exposure

without the detrimental effects.

Now I realize today's episode is about happiness,

it's not about sunlight or dopamine.

And yet, as we'll talk about more

in just a moment, if you're not optimizing your sleep

and if you are using or being exposed to light rather

at the wrong times of the day/night cycle,

that is going to make it very hard for the other sorts

of practices that relate to happiness

to have their full impact.

So the backdrop, where I would say the kind of landscape

of your chemicals and your hormones,

is powerfully controlled by not just the brightness of light

but the timing of light and your exposure to light.

In particular, your exposure to light to your eyes

is something that you have a lot of control over.

You don't have absolute control, but you have a lot of control

over.

And it's been proven that even these small steps, which

are completely cost-free.

They require just a few minutes of time,

but no purchase a product or anything else

can allow you to greatly adjust your neurochemistry

and your hormones in the direction of better mood,

better sleep, and happiness.

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize

that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research

roles at Stanford.

It is, however, part of my desire and effort

to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

and science-related tools for the general public.

In keeping with that theme, I'd like

to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

Our first sponsor is Thesis.

Thesis makes custom nootropics.

And as I've said many times before on this podcast,

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because it means smart drugs.

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For me, I like their nootropic for clarity.

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InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform

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One of the problems with a lot of blood tests and DNA

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pillows.

Let's talk about happiness.

This thing that everybody seems to want, and yet not everybody

can agree on what exactly it is or how to get it.

Now I want to start by quoting a previous guest on the Huberman

Lab podcast.

And that is a colleague of mine at Stanford School of Medicine,

Dr. Karl Deisseroth, who's both a bioengineer and a clinician.

That is, he's a psychiatrist who spends a lot of his time

both running a laboratory and seeing patients,

human patients, of course.

And I once was at a meeting where

I heard Karl say something to the extent of we

don't know what other people feel.

In fact, most of the time, we don't even

really know how we feel.

And while that statement was meant

to report several different things about the way

that the brain works and emotions,

et cetera, one of the things that he was emphasizing,

and I know he was emphasizing it because he confirmed

this for me, was the fact that language.

Things like the word happiness, or joy, or meaning,

or pleasure, or delight, are actually not

very precise when it comes to describing our brain and body

states.

So, for instance, if I tell you I'm feeling pretty happy.

I know what that means for me, at least in this moment,

but you don't really know whether or not

it means the same thing as what pretty happy means for you.

If I say I'm extremely happy and I have a big grin.

I have a grin on my face that I can't seem to wipe off my face.

Well, then, you might get a sense of how much happier I

am than pretty happy.

But it's still hard to calibrate my level of internal state

or happiness, and the same is true for you

and for everybody else.

And it's important for us to acknowledge this

because at this point in human history, 2022,

we don't really have a measurement

like body temperature or heart rate or heart rate

variability or even a way to measure neurochemicals

in the brain and body that give us anything

better than a crude correlate or an estimate, at best,

of what happiness is.

So that's really important to understand and to keep in mind

throughout this episode.

It doesn't mean that we cannot have a strong data-driven

conversation about happiness and what brings us to a state

of happiness.

But it's very important to understand that language is not

an ideal and maybe even a deficient tool in terms

of describing our emotions and our states of mind and body.

Now equally important is to understand

that while we do have neurotransmitters,

that is, the chemicals that are released between

neurons, nerve cells that allow neurons

to communicate, things like glutamate and gaba,

for instance.

And we have what are called modulators.

These are chemicals also released

by neurons that impact the electrical firing and chemical

release of other neurons.

Things like serotonin, and dopamine, and acetylcholine,

and epinephrine.

Neuromodulators and neurotransmitters

are always present in a cocktail in our brain and body.

That is, they are present in different ratios

and at different levels.

So we need to completely discard with the idea

that any one neurotransmitter or any one neuromodulator

is solely responsible for a state of happiness

or for a lack of state of happiness, for that matter.

That said, it is true that for people that

tend to have lower baseline levels of, for instance,

dopamine, their levels of happiness,

or we should say their self-reported levels

of happiness, tend to be lower than for those

that have greatly elevated baseline levels of dopamine.

Now, this can be best appreciated

at the extremes where, for instance,

in conditions like Parkinson's disease

or other conditions where people's levels of dopamine

in their brain is severely depleted.

Mind you, we also see this in drug-addicted individuals

that are in a withdrawal state because they're trying to quit

or they don't have access to the drug that normally stimulates

release of dopamine.

Think the cocaine addict who can't get cocaine.

Or the methamphetamine addict that

can't or is trying to avoid taking methamphetamine.

Or the Parkinson's patient who has fewer dopamine

neurons because they degenerated.

Those individuals do tend to be more depressed.

They tend to have lower affect.

They are less happy.

At least, that's how they report themselves to be emotionally.

And that's what we observe when we look at them behaviorally

in terms of the amount of smiling, the amount of energy

they seem to have.

At the opposite extreme.

And while still focusing on the kind of pathology

of neurotransmitter and neuromodulator systems,

an individual who is in a manic phase of bipolar

will tend to have very elevated levels of dopamine.

And those people will talk a mile a minute,

and they won't require sleep.

And at least to them, every idea is an exciting idea and one

that they want to pursue.

We did an entire episode about bipolar depression, A.K.A.

Bipolar disorder.

So if you'd like to learn more about that, please

check out that episode.

That and all other episodes of the podcast,

of course, you can find it hubermanlab.com in all formats.

But the point here is that very low levels

are very high levels of dopamine are correlated

with certain states of, for instance, low happiness

or the absence of happiness.

We could even call it depression in some cases.

Or extreme happiness or even euphoria.

Sometimes even inappropriate euphoria,

as is the case with bipolar depression

or sometimes called bipolar mania or bipolar disorder.

Now, of course, there's a range in between depressed and manic.

And most people, fortunately reside somewhere in that range.

And it is indeed a continuum.

And I think it's safe to say that levels of dopamine

probably do correlate with levels of happiness.

But there is no one single chemical

nor chemical signature, that is, no specific recipe of two parts

dopamine, to one part serotonin, to one part

acetylcholine that we can say equates to happiness.

Indeed there's now tremendous controversy

as to whether or not, for instance, having

lower levels of serotonin is actually

the cause of depression or merely correlates

with depression or maybe doesn't even correlate

with depression, at all.

This became especially controversial

because, in the last year, the so-called serotonin

hypothesis of depression has been called into question.

And indeed, it does seem to be the case that for individuals

that are depressed, their levels of serotonin

can sometimes be normal.

However, and this is an important however,

that does not mean that administering drugs

that increase levels of serotonin in depressed people

does not sometimes and indeed often help

ameliorate some of their symptoms.

And I should mention that many of the selective serotonin

reuptake inhibitors.

So-called SSRIs such as Prozac and Zoloft,

et cetera, are still considered excellent treatments

for conditions like OCD and so on and so forth.

But what I'm trying to do is make two important points.

First of all, that language is not a great indicator

of internal state.

Especially when trying to understand other people's

internal state.

And that is especially true for things like happiness.

And that there is no one chemical

signature of happiness.

There's no one neural modulator or combinations

of neuromodulators that we can say

is the cocktail for happiness.

But, and it's a very important, but when

levels of dopamine and serotonin tend

to be chronically low for an individual

below their typical baseline, they

will, yes, tend to be lower in affect

and have lower mood and less episodes of happiness per day,

per week, per month, per year, et cetera.

Conversely, when an individual has elevations

in dopamine and serotonin levels,

in particular dopamine levels and the other so-called

catecholamines, which include epinephrine and norepinephrine.

So the catecholamines are dopamine, epinephrine,

and norepinephrine.

They're all very similar biochemically.

They all lead to states of elevated motivation, energy,

and so on.

When those chemicals are elevated above baseline,

people do tend to have elevated sense of mood and well-being,

and in particular sense of possibility

about what they can do in the world

and what the world can offer them.

So we need to acknowledge those two features of language

and neurochemistry as we wade into the discussion

about the psychology of happiness.

And, in particular, about the controlled experiments

that have been done in excellent laboratories focused

on the psychology of happiness and what brings happiness

and what does not.

There have been some excellent studies on happiness.

And these come in two forms generally.

One form of these studies is individuals

come into a laboratory.

They participate in an experiment over the course

of a day or months.

And then, data are collected analyzed,

and the papers are submitted, and published, and discussed.

The other form is so-called longitudinal study.

Where individuals come into the laboratory,

and they are studied over a very long period of time.

Ranging from months to years and sometimes even decades.

And then, the variables of age, life circumstances,

and other factors can be incorporated into the data.

And typically, there are multiple papers,

there's data published throughout the longitudinal

study, or sometimes it's just one paper

at the end of the longitudinal study.

Let's talk about one of the more famous and perhaps

the longest-running longitudinal study on happiness.

This is a study that was initiated or conceived

in 1938 at Harvard University.

The so-called Harvard Happiness Project.

Some of you probably heard about this.

It involved Harvard College sophomores

and other individuals who were incorporated into this study

as well.

It's a study that initially had more than a couple

of hundred subjects.

But because some have either dropped out and not

been able to be contacted and monitored over time or died,

or for whatever reason, are no longer participating

in the study, they're very few of these individuals left.

And yet there's tremendous power to a study like this.

It's such an impressive study, and we're all so grateful

that laboratories at Harvard decided

to initiate and continue this study because it

is one of the few studies, perhaps the study that

has allowed us to understand happiness in our species

over a very long period of time.

Like any study, it's not perfect.

It didn't include a lot of matching by sex

or matching by vocation, or matching

by income and background.

And back then, there was also a lot less discussion

about trauma and histories around trauma,

as well as positive episodes in people's lives.

Nonetheless, there's a lot of power in a study like this.

And there are some very basic takeaways,

some of which you may have heard before but some of which may be

surprising those of you who haven't.

So one of the key things about the study

is people in the study, at least those

who still have intact memory, which many of them do,

are able to think back on not just

their previous year or week but 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50

years ago and compare what makes them happy

at one age versus another age.

A number of things have emerged from that conversation.

So I just want to discuss some of the highlight points

then we'll get into a little bit more

of the nitty-gritty of the data.

First of all, it's been discussed many, many times

that the total amount of income that an individual makes

or has, and again, this could be income from work,

or it could be money that they inherited,

does not seem to directly relate to their level of happiness.

Now a lot of people take that point and think,

oh, money doesn't matter.

Other people hear that point and think to themselves,

yeah, right, easy to say if you have a lot of money.

We'll talk about the interpretation of those data

in just a few minutes.

But I do want to earmark that finding.

Because I agree that while money or total resources itself

does not predict happiness in any kind of direct way,

that is not the same thing as saying

having very few resources will make you happier, of course.

I don't think anyone would imagine that.

But it also tends to overlook an important point, which

is something that I certainly have learned to appreciate

in my life and something that I especially appreciated

when I was a student and post-doc, which

is the following.

People will say money can't buy happiness.

And we'll talk about the buy aspect of that in a moment.

And indeed, that's true.

If you look at this longitudinal study or you

look at other studies that are done

on a more short-term basis.

Once people get past a certain level of income

relative to their cost of living, the amount of happiness

does not scale with that income.

That is, for every additional $1,000 or $10,000

that they earn, they don't report

being that much happier on a daily basis.

Now that said, I venture the argument that while money truly

cannot buy happiness, it absolutely can buffer stress.

And in particular, it can buffer stress

in the form of the ability to purchase or pay

for goods and services, and in particular services.

You're not going to tell me that having children

doesn't involve some increase in the demands

on your life, less sleep, and more demands.

And it certainly is the case that if you

can hire help to clean.

You can hire nannies if that's your thing.

You can hire help to assist with babysitting or even night

nurses if you're having trouble sleeping that will literally

allow you to sleep while they take care of your child

in the middle of the night.

Often give excellent care.

One hopes excellent care.

That that won't offset some of the stress

associated with lack of sleep.

So there are a million different examples

one could give of this, but I certainly experienced this

during graduate school.

In fact, I experience both sides of the equation here.

I made very little money as a graduate student.

I had essentially no savings when I started graduate school,

and I made very little money.

The amount doesn't matter at this point,

but I could just barely afford rent and my food.

I actually opted to live in the laboratory a lot of the time.

And by doing that, I had more money

to spend on other things that were important to me.

Now I did not have a family at the time,

and so I was able to do that.

Something that not everyone can do.

But I made very little money, but at the same time,

I was in laboratory all the time,

and that's where I wanted to be.

And so my level of stress was actually

pretty low because I was investing

all my time and energy into the very thing

that I knew would eventually help bring me more resources.

When I moved from being a graduate student to a postdoc,

for instance.

A postdoc is generally a three to five-year period.

It's sort of like residency in medicine,

where you're no longer taking courses,

but you continue to do research.

In fact, entire new lines of research

and prior to getting a professorship.

My income went up slightly, went up by about 30% to 40%.

But because of where I moved and because of the times,

my cost of living went way, way up and I was extremely

stressed.

So it wasn't my absolute income, it

was my absolute income relative to my cost of living.

The other thing that one needs to consider

when considering income versus cost of living is there's

also this notion of peer group.

And we're going to talk more about social bonds

and connections later.

But one thing that I noticed when

I moved from being a graduate student to a postdoc

was I was a graduate student in a small town where I had access

if I chose to participate in most, if not all,

of the social gatherings because they were all very low cost.

People tended to aggregate at the farmer's market

on Saturday.

Most people wouldn't even purchase anything, at least not

the graduate students wouldn't purchase anything.

It was just a place to aggregate.

People sometimes play pickup games of soccer

or just hang out have a cup of coffee.

There was a volleyball game on Fridays.

Sometimes people would go out to eat that evening,

which of course, costs money, et cetera,

but it was relatively low cost of living.

And social connections and peer group interactions

were all generated around the same fairly low-cost

activities.

When I transitioned to being a postdoc, I made more money,

but cost of living went up.

But in addition to that, my peer group

tended to want to engage in the same kinds of activities

that people in that larger city were engaged in.

So peer group has a tremendously powerful influence on

whether or not we gauge the amount of money

that we have as bringing us happiness or not.

And that really speaks to the critical importance

of social interactions and certain kinds

of social interactions, in particular.

Now, if any of that was unclear, what I'm basically saying is

it's not just about being able to pay your rent.

It's also about being able to access

the kinds of social interactions that you deem are quote-unquote

correct for you at that stage of life

and in the place where you happen to be living.

Because if you can meet all the demands of costs of rent

and paying your power bill and food, et cetera,

but you are socially isolated because your peer

group, or those around you that you want to engage with,

are engaging in activities that you either don't have time for,

literally, because you're doing other things

or that you don't have the financial resources for,

then that can actually severely impact this rating

of what we call happiness.

Why am I parsing this so finally?

Well, I'm parsing and finally because I think that most of us

have heard the outcome of this study from Harvard

or the more short-term studies, also many of which

are from Harvard.

We'll talk about the just phenomenal work

from Dan Gilbert's laboratory and other laboratories who have

focused on issues like these.

And I certainly don't want to take anything away

from those results.

They're very powerful and important results

that really point over and over to the fact

that people's happiness does not necessarily scale with income.

In fact, it tends not to past a certain level,

and yet I think we'd be remiss, I

think actually it would be inappropriate

for me to say that the amount of income that one makes

is not important.

Because if the amount of money that you happen to have

or are making does not allow you to meet

your basic needs of shelter, health care, et cetera.

And/or doesn't allow you to access

the kind of social interactions that can renew and reset

or, I would say, directly enhance

the kind of neurotransmitter systems and hormones

that lead us to feel that we are happy in our life

and we're having quality social connections, well then

that's very stressful.

And this brings me back to the statement I made earlier,

which is, indeed, money cannot buy happiness,

but it certainly can buffer stress.

And one of the ways that it buffers stress

is by allowing options of different kinds

of social interactions.

Options of different types of recreation

that one can engage in to access new forms of social interaction

and so on and so on.

So we need to be a little bit careful or at least nuanced

about this statement that money can't buy happiness

and that the data support the fact that wealth

doesn't determine happiness.

I think there is a truth to that but there's

another side to that, I think is less often acknowledged

and that certainly I've experienced

and that I think many of you out there have probably

experienced as well.

One other major finding of the Harvard longitudinal

study on happiness, as well as shorter-term studies

on happiness, is that much as you've

heard, perhaps that no one on their deathbed

says they wish they had worked more, well indeed,

the total amount of time that one spends working

does not seem to determine one's happiness.

And yet I also want to earmark that result as one that we need

to parse a bit more carefully.

Because work, last time I checked

and certainly for me, is the way typically

that people earn an income.

And as we just talked about a moment ago,

income is often a way that people have access

to or provide access for their family

to things like recreation that opens up

the opportunity for more social connection, right.

So we have to be careful with how we interpret these blanket

statements that have become very popular that money doesn't

determine happiness and that the amount that you work

isn't going to determine happiness.

It certainly is the case that if you earn more money

from working more and that money is devoted

to things that bring more opportunities

for social connection or for buffering stress

in other areas of your life, including health care,

care for your children, care for yourself,

recreation, other things that you enjoy, well then

I think it's a little bit naive to assume that work itself is

somehow counter to happiness.

Which, of course, it isn't.

And it especially isn't if we combine that feature of work

with another important feature of the human psyche, which

is this notion of meaning.

Now in the not-too-distant future,

we will do an episode of this podcast on meaning

and what constitutes meaning in a given endeavor, work

or otherwise.

But much of the psychology of the last century, and still

today, focuses on this feature of meaning

as a critical one in terms of what makes us happy

and what doesn't make us happy, certainly in the long term.

And I can certainly say for myself

that learning and teaching, and doing research in my laboratory

brings me tremendous feeling of meaning and happiness.

Some people consider their work simply

a way to gain a paycheck, and other people

find that they would do the very work they do regardless of

whether or not they were paid.

In fact, many people will do volunteer work and other forms

of work for zero money.

So this idea that money isn't important

or that work is not as important as we deem it to be,

that also needs to be considered from a number

of different perspectives.

And again, by no means am I trying

to undermine the data of these impressive studies, both

the longitudinal and short-term studies,

but I think we do have to be cautious in our discussion

of results like these because the internet is

replete with conversations about the big factors that

determine happiness.

It's going to be social connection, not income.

It's going to be the amount of time

that you are able to have open thinking and creativity, which

I think is an essential feature of happiness, by the way.

Physical health.

In particular, one's ability to stay mobile

and to be able to access the kind of daily activities

that one needs to accomplish unassisted

is a strong correlate of happiness and so on and so on.

And, of course, there are the basic physiology factors.

The things that feed back onto our overall feelings

of well-being.

And I've talked about these before,

and we'll just put these quickly into a bin.

You can think of this as a toolkit of things

that you and everyone really should be constantly trying

to access, if not optimize, on a regular basis because they

raise the tide or what I would call

the buoyancy of your overall system,

meaning your brain and body.

And that would be getting sufficient deep sleep at least

80% of the nights of your life.

And ideally, the remaining 20% you're not getting deep

sleep or as much of it because of positive events.

Quality nutrition.

Quality social interactions.

And we will define that a little bit better.

In fact, we will define that in a lot of detail later

in this episode and actually how to get better

at creating quality social interactions,

even very brief social interactions.

So we have sleep, we have nutrition,

we have social interactions.

We have purposeful work, whether or not

it's paid work or non-paid work.

And, of course, there are things like exercise

and maybe relationships to pets and things of that sort.

And there are a few others as well.

All of those are known to increase your overall state

of well-being, that puts you in a position

to access more meaning and happiness, et cetera.

But for most people, I think it's

fair to say that earning a living.

And earning a living by working is the typical way in which

we spend most of our time.

So I think we need to put a special bracket

around those activities.

And it's something we will return to a little bit

later in terms of trying to understand how periods of life

in which there are big or extensive work demands

or extensive family demands on us

are indeed compatible with states of happiness

or frequent states of happiness and how better to access those.

Rather than simply say money isn't important

or the amount of time at work really isn't important.

That's not what people are going to pay attention to.

In fact, I don't know how I will feel on my deathbed.

How could I?

Human beings are pretty good about understanding

how they feel in the present.

If not describing it, they are pretty good at feeling it

if they have any sense of internal state.

That is interception.

And you could have some idea of how you feel in a moment.

We're pretty good about describing our past feelings,

at least in broad contour, but we are not

very good at projecting how we will feel in the future.

And in fact, that's a theme that's

going to come up again and again today.

Nonetheless, what we do know on the basis of really solid data

are that certain aspects of our well-being

tend to change across our lifespan.

Now lifespan is something that we

need to consider from also a bit of nuance

because humans are indeed living longer and longer.

And if we look at the data on happiness

across the lifespan dated maybe 30 or 40 years back or even

20 years ago, it is consistently described

in that literature as a so-called u-shaped function.

Where people in their 20s report being very, very happy,

but as time goes on and they acquire more responsibility.

So typically, getting married and having

children in their mid to late 20s and 30s and into their 40s.

Having more work demands, et cetera,

happiness tends to be rated lower and lower,

at least in those previous studies.

And then happiness tended to increase as people

approach their 50s and 60s.

And they tended to retire, and their work demands

were shed from them, and they were

able to enjoy the small things of life despite the fact

that, in general, I would say almost always

people's health is not as vigorous when they're 70

as it is when they're 20.

There are exceptions to that, of course.

Of course, you can adjust the rate of cognitive and physical

decline.

But in general, people in their 20s

feel more physically and mentally vigorous

than they do in their 60s and 70s, in general.

That u-shaped function that I just described still

holds true today, but of course, there

have been some major shifts to the general life stages

and when people undergo those life stages.

For instance, many people are getting married much later.

Many people are opting to not have children.

In fact, if you look at the data on whether or not people have

children or not and how that relates to happiness,

everyone will tell you that their kids are their greatest

source of joy, at least most people will tell you that

and are a tremendous source of happiness.

It's obvious.

Kids are delightful, and raising kids while hard

is a wonderful experience.

If you look at the ratings of happiness

among people that elected to not have children versus those that

had, most people who have children

report their overall levels of happiness

as lower than that of people who opt not to have children.

Now there are a lot of ways to interpret those findings.

And by no means am I encouraging people to not have children.

That's a issue that you have to resolve for yourself,

of course.

But we could imagine, for instance,

that people who opt not to have children

have more income to devote to things more focused

on themselves or their partner or other aspects of their life.

We don't know if that's the underlying reason.

We could perhaps conclude that people

who opt not to have children are getting more sleep

on a regular basis or have more time for exercise

or the other sorts of things that elevate

states of mood and well-being.

Again we do not know what the underlying

reasons are for this finding.

But it does seem that despite most every parent

reporting that their kids are their greatest source of joy

and quote-unquote happiness in life

that people who opt not to have children are at least as happy

or report being at least as happy or even happier

than those that opt to have children.

And, of course, I want to be very clear

that I'm not trying to settle any arguments about

whether or not people should have children or not.

I happen to find children and animals delightful.

And I'm always happy when people opt to have children

provided they are taking good care of their children

or doing their very best to take good care of their children.

So that's my stance.

But of course, you're all entitled

to your own stance on this.

There are also the general arguments

that people like to have about whether or not

the population of the Earth will be sustained or not sustained

based on current birth rates, et cetera.

Indeed many areas of the world, birth rates are going down.

It is actually something that just

as a perhaps point of interest has

been studied from the somewhat unusual but logical perspective

of whether or not child diapers are selling at the same rate

as they were some years ago and whether or not adult diapers

for the elderly are being sold at the same rate or greater.

If you think about it is one indirect measure of whether

or not people are living longer and/or opting to have children.

Definitely in discussion for another time,

probably for another podcast entirely.

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So this u-shaped function of people being happier

earlier in life and then reporting

feeling far less happy and then happiness

returning to them, that is, the rising of the u again

in their later years, is something that I do believe

should be repeated in modern times.

And repeated in a way that takes into account that you

might be shifted to the right.

That is, I am certainly aware that people are

tending to get married later.

Many are opting to not have children.

So, for instance, the question arises whether or not

that u-shaped curve should have a bump down

at the bottom of the u among those

that opt not to have children.

Because the argument was made in the discussion of those papers

that the reason why happiness is lower

when people are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s

is because they're devoting more time to raising their children

and devoting more time to work.

I would hope people would enjoy their work,

but not everybody really enjoys their work.

And many people, even if they do enjoy their work

and they find meaning in it, still

find it stressful, which certainly

can run counter to happiness.

Nowadays, you could imagine that because a number of people

are opting perhaps to work less or to not have children

or both, where they find tremendous meaning

from their work that there would be

a bump at the bottom of that u among those that decided to

simply not take on these additional responsibilities.

That would be an interesting test,

I think, of whether or not the total load of responsibility

is really what's correlating with reported happiness or not.

Now one very consistent finding that has absolutely

stood the test of time, and it's kind of an interesting one.

It's a little bit of a pop psychology finding,

but I think it points to something interesting that we

will return to again and again is

that people tend to report feeling

lower levels of happiness, believe it or not,

on their birthday.

And the argument for why this is the following.

That typically, we go through our year

not comparing ourselves to our peers terribly much.

We might do that a little bit more

when we're in elementary school, high school, et cetera.

We're sort of age match, maybe even college as well.

But an evaluation of ourselves to our age-match peers

is not typically something that we do on a daily basis.

Whereas on our birthday, we get a snapshot

of where we are in the arc of time, or at least in our life.

And many people report feeling rather low on their birthday

because they use that as a benchmark or a window

into the things that they have not accomplished.

The things that, despite being age blank,

they still haven't accomplished.

And so that's interesting because what it really

points to is two things.

One the extent to which much of our feelings of happiness

are relative, in particular, relative to our peers.

So there's that social aspect again.

And the fact that most of the time, we

are not very good at orienting ourselves

in the longer arc of time.

We're pretty good at knowing where

we are in the arc of a day, or the arc of a week,

or the arc of a month, or even a year, but that most of us

are not very good at reflecting on where

we are in our life arc.

And, of course, most of us don't know

how long we will live anyway, but we

do have some general sense.

I mean, very few people live past the age of 100.

Many people live to be 70 or 80.

And again, life span is extending as far

as we know from year to year.

But, in general, people report that on their birthdays.

And I should say these are for birthdays

aged 25 or later, at least in the studies

I was able to access.

I don't think that a lot of three-year-olds

sit around comparing themselves to other three-year-olds

and how well they're doing or 12-year-olds.

You can imagine some people might do that at 18, et cetera.

But it's really by the mid-20s that people

start evaluating themselves to their peers

in terms of life progression and so-called milestones.

It's been argued that that's one of the reasons why people

report lower affect, lower levels of happiness

on their birthday.

Something that's a little bit counterintuitive.

And, of course, there are things that are

anti-correlated with happiness.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a few of these.

That's longitudinal study, the Harvard happiness project

has reported, for instance, that people that

are chronic smokers of nicotine and chronic

consumers of alcohol, in particular alcoholics.

That is, people who suffer from alcoholism

or what sometimes is called alcohol use disorder that

is strongly anti-correlated with happiness.

And I should also mention that the family members,

and in particular, the romantic partners

of people who are chronic smokers and the partners

of people who are chronic alcohol users, often

will report lower levels of happiness.

Especially if they themselves are not

chronic smokers or regular consumers of alcohol.

So we've done episodes on nicotine in particular,

and that touched on smoking, of course.

And we've done an episode on alcohol

and the effects of alcohol on health.

Again, you can find those at hubermanlab.com.

This study from the Harvard happiness project

really has strong data supporting

the fact that avoiding being a nicotine smoker.

There are positive health effects of nicotine

that are discussed in the episode nicotine.

But being a-- but smoking nicotine, in particular,

is counterproductive for people's at least self-reported

happiness and certainly overall health.

I think there's zero question that smoking increases

cancers of different kinds.

And that alcohol consumption.

And in particular, alcohol consumption beyond two

drinks per week.

Two drinks being the typical volume of a beer,

a glass of wine or cocktail, et cetera,

is detrimental for various aspects of health.

And, of course, there are other things

that you could imagine would relate to a lack of happiness.

For instance, a major trauma.

Physical or emotional trauma.

That could include the loss of a major relationship,

a death of a close one.

Being the victim of a violent crime and things of that sort.

And yet it's been argued, in fact, strongly argued that when

you look at people's levels of happiness after a trauma,

that if you wait about a year or so,

sometimes is even as short as three months

after a trauma, that people self-reported levels

of happiness are not significantly lower than they

were prior to the trauma.

Now I very much want to highlight, underline, and bold

and asterisks that statement as one

that we really need to explore carefully.

Because there are other data that strongly point to the fact

that major life traumas can severely

disrupt one sense of happiness and well-being.

And I think as long as we're going to have this discussion,

we should point to a useful definition of trauma.

And the definition that I'll paraphrase

is one that was supplied by a former guest on the Huberman

Lab podcast, Dr. Paul Conti, who's a psychiatrist who's

written a book called Trauma.

I personally think it's the best book on trauma and tools

for alleviating trauma.

It's incredibly thorough, easy to read, and well-informed.

And here again, I'm paraphrasing,

but Dr. Conti describes trauma as something that fundamentally

changes the way that our brain and body function

in a way that makes other aspects of living

more challenging.

Again, an event, either emotional or physical,

or both, that fundamentally changes the way

that our brain and/or body, our nervous system,

and other organs function in a way that prevents us

from enjoying daily activities.

And that could even be ongoing distraction.

Traumas can create rumination, or they

can create obsessive thought, or they can create dissociation.

Any number of different things.

Again check out that episode with Dr. Paul Conti

if you'd like to learn more about trauma

and how it manifests.

But the idea that's been put forth

by a number of researchers in the field of happiness

that three months after a major trauma, people

aren't reported that they are feeling any less happy

than before the trauma, that was surprising to me.

So I went into this literature a bit more deeply.

One of the basis of that general line of thinking

is a-- what I consider a now classic and very important

and frankly excellent talk that was

given by Professor Dan Gilbert on the science of happiness.

You can find this on YouTube.

I say a classic one because it was done some years ago.

It's received millions of views.

And one of the points that he makes in that talk which

is grounded in research carried out

by his laboratory and other laboratories is that--

he poses a question.

He says you know, let's do a quiz.

Would you rather be someone who wins the lottery

and he shows a picture of somebody who just won,

I think it was several hundreds of millions of dollars

in the lottery, or was recently made paraplegic lost

use of their legs?

And then goes on to state that one year

after people have won the lottery,

this major monetary windfall versus have become paraplegic

is that their self-reported levels of happiness

are the same.

Which I think is incredibly surprising.

I heard this, and I immediately thought of an experience

that I've had where I teach a course at Stanford

School of Medicine on neural regeneration.

And it's actually a course that I attended some years

ago when I was a post-doc at Stanford,

so well over a decade ago.

And we had-- excuse me.

We had an individual come into the course.

This was an older gentleman.

So older meaning he was in his early 70s.

And he had become paraplegic fairly late in life

from a cycling accident.

And he was and is an expert in what

it is to become a paraplegic, of course,

because he had that experience, but also because he spends

a lot of his time doing volunteer work with people who

have become paraplegic and have become paraplegic

at different ages.

And what he described to me was that the overall outcomes

for people that are rendered paraplegic

in terms of their mental health and their physical well-being

and their management of general life skills

scales with how early they had that injury

and how long they had the use of their limbs.

So it's not straightforward.

When I heard this result described by Dr. Dan Gilbert,

that winning the lottery and becoming paraplegic

basically don't impact your levels of happiness

to any different degree when people look back a year later,

I was pretty surprised given my experience

of hearing this lecture at Stanford.

So I thought, wow, from what I understand.

Indeed, there are people who are rendered paraplegic

and manage that transition very easily.

It doesn't seem to disrupt their feelings of well-being,

et cetera, but for other people, it

can be severely disrupting to their sense of well-being

and so on and so forth.

I went back and examined these data.

And in fact, a subsequent talk, it's

actually a podcast that was given by Dr. Dan

Gilbert some years later.

So this would be just a few years ago.

I think in 2019-- there is a specific date

in which it was recorded but just a few years ago.

And indeed, he corrects himself in that podcast.

What he says is that he misspoke in that earlier talk.

That the difference in self-reported levels

of happiness for those that have been rendered paraplegic

for versus those who've won the lottery is not as great as one

would expect.

I think most people would expect that being rendered paraplegic

would make people far less happy.

That's the expectation, I think, anyway.

And that people would win the lottery,

at least for some period of time,

would be far happier than they were

prior to winning the lottery.

And especially given the tremendous amount of money.

And again, the fact that money can't buy happiness,

but that money does indeed enable the ability

to buffer stress provided people were

responsible with that money and just

didn't blow it or spend it all right away.

That they could start to afford things

that they couldn't afford, not just in terms of luxury items

but also the ability to hire help

that would free up time that would allow them to do anything

from travel that they couldn't access before to meditate

if that was something that they didn't have time to do before.

And so on and so forth.

So the result quote unquote that winners

of the lottery and recent paraplegics

have the same levels of happiness is actually not true.

At least according to the author of the original study.

Now what he did not point to is the degree to which that is not

true, but he did point to the direction of the result.

And the fact that people who are rendered paraplegic, in fact,

are reporting themselves as less happy

than they were prior to their injury.

And certainly that their levels of happiness

are lower than those that simply won the lottery

hundreds of millions of dollars, which I think

is the more intuitive result.

And so I think it's important to be aware of that discrepancy

because it's something that was lost

in the communication around those results

the first time around.

And indeed, Dan Gilbert is an excellent scientist

and was quite good about trying to correct the narrative.

I myself, as a podcaster who puts information

on the internet, know that the challenges of correcting

narratives, especially of things that came out some time ago,

we always attempt to do this as best we

can, but not everyone that saw that first video will

necessarily hear the discussion that has happened subsequently.

So my hope is that Dr. Gilbert will interpret me communicating

this now not as an attempt to criticize him

but rather as an attempt to praise his willingness

to try and correct the narrative to be more accurate.

So to be very clear about what this study did and didn't show.

And here, I'm going to combine these results

with other studies that I was able to find

that explored similar phenomenon.

So major trauma, for instance.

Not necessarily becoming paraplegic but traumas

of a different sort, emotional traumas.

When you look at the whole of those data, at least,

my read is that when people win the lottery or acquire wealth

through inheritance, some form of wealth acquisition

that is sudden and that wasn't preceded by a specific effort

to gain that wealth, right.

Buying a lottery ticket is a pretty quick thing.

Inheritance is something that you simply

get by virtue of who you are, not necessarily by effort.

Well, that led to increases in self-reported happiness

compared to prior to the inheritance of the lottery win,

but it wasn't as substantial as you

might imagine if you are approaching

the notion of happiness simply from,

well, more money equals more happiness.

And while it is true that people who are rendered paraplegic

or who undergo psychological traumas or physical traumas

of any various kind are, and frankly,

are remarkably resilient in many cases.

They can still manage to go about life and work

and engage in relationships, et cetera.

There is a visible decrease in overall levels of happiness

and well-being, in particular, if

the psychological and physical trauma

renders their nervous system different in a way that

impacts other major areas of life and enjoyment for them.

And that's certainly true one year out from the trauma.

So the point is that we do need to reframe

this idea that whether or not you win the lottery

or become paraplegic or suffer some major trauma,

your levels of happiness are going

to be the same three months or a year later.

I don't think that's accurate.

And in fact, Dr. Dan Gilbert emphasized

that that's not accurate even in that initial study.

And I think it's an important thing

to frame because that's such a popular notion.

Or that that idea combined with the idea

that increased earnings don't make us happy

combined with the idea that we are happy early in life

but then as more demands arise in life, we become less happy,

and then we become happy again.

And that idea is we already explored

is not necessarily true.

Frankly, I knew a lot of teenagers and people

in their early 20s that are pretty unhappy who

then become happier later as they acquire more resources.

Sometimes distance, let's be honest,

sometimes distance from our family of origin

makes us more happy, sometimes less so.

It's highly individual.

So I think those general themes that we've heard over and over,

while they have merit and they certainly stand up

in some of the more powerful longitudinal

and short-term studies, there is nuance, and in some cases,

there are now additional data that are causing us

to revise those understandings.

Now there is an important point, or I

should say the important point, that we can really

credit Dan Gilbert and others in the field of psychology with

and that we owe them a great debt of gratitude

for is that we do have far more control

over our levels of happiness than we might think.

And many of the things that reside

at that level of control.

That is, the things that we can do and think and say and access

don't come from external things.

They don't come necessarily from the acquisition of material

goods, but rather there are things

that we can do that can allow us to so-called synthesize

happiness.

And I think this is one of the great gifts

of modern psychology is that--

Dan Gilbert and others, the Harvard happiness project,

work at Yale and elsewhere.

There are excellent labs working on happiness all over the US

and all over the world, frankly.

One of the great gifts that they've supplied us

in the form of data is that there really

are things that we can all do and think and access

to allow ourselves to so-called synthesize happiness.

Now, this notion of synthesizing happiness,

or synthetic happiness as it's sometimes called,

can sometimes ruffle people's feathers a bit.

Because people immediately flip to the idea

that, oh, you're just going to tell

me to be grateful for what I have or to just navel

gaze or just to imagine that I'm happy.

But that's really not what synthetic happiness

is about at all.

Synthetic happiness actually has to do

with some really important larger principles about the way

that our emotional system and the way

that the reward systems of our brain really function.

And they point to important concepts

that we're going to now discuss.

Things like the hedonic set point, for instance.

Or the dopamine system of anticipation

of rewards versus receiving words just as a brief insight

into that.

Our anticipation of something positive

oftentimes leads to greater increases

in the sorts of neurochemicals that

support a state of happiness and well-being

then the actual acquisition of the thing

that we're trying to obtain.

And this goes back to a theme I've

discussed a few times before in this podcast,

in particular with my colleague at Stanford School of Medicine,

Dr. Anna Lembke, who wrote the fabulous book Dopamine Nation.

If you're interested in dopamine and addiction,

in particular, that's a wonderful clear,

and extremely informative read.

And if you're interested in dopamine more

generally, not just in the states of addiction

but in everyday life and in pursuit and motivation,

The Molecule of More is an excellent book related to that.

And as I mentioned earlier, we have

this episode on dopamine motivation and drive.

The notion of synthetic happiness

is not simply about imagining happiness,

or thinking about happiness or anticipating happiness.

To some extent, it is, but it relates to a number

of other important themes.

But it is grounded very thoroughly

in the neurobiology of dopamine rewards.

And I'll talk about some of that neurobiology in a few moments.

But I want to take a couple of minutes

and talk about what synthetic happiness is

and what some of the conditions are

for allowing us to access the state

of so-called synthetic happiness.

And I want to point out at the outset

that synthetic happiness, while it might sound synthetic A.K.A.

false, it's anything but.

It actually turns out to be among the more and perhaps

the more potent form of happiness

that we can all access.

And this is where themes related to our control

over our own internal state really

become not only valid but very powerful.

So, for instance, Dr. Dan Gilbert and others

have explored how opportunity and choice, that is, freedom

can and can't lead to states of happiness.

And the results of those studies are very solid and, frankly,

very surprising.

Until you understand the results, and once you do,

I think you will immediately see areas of your own life

that you can start to access more happiness, again

genuine happiness, simply by framing

certain choices in a particular way

and maybe even by eliminating choices.

Now I'd like to focus on the research aimed

at understanding what increases our levels of happiness.

And I'd like to frame this under the umbrella of two

major themes.

The first theme is so-called natural happiness.

Natural happiness is the sort of happiness that most of us

are familiar with.

So the kind of happiness that we expect

to have if we, for instance, complete a degree.

Hopefully, a degree in a topic meaningful and interesting

to us but a degree nonetheless.

Or we find a mate.

Hopefully, a mate that we enjoy spending time with.

Or, for instance, making a certain income or finding

work that we enjoy on a regular basis.

All of those are forms of happiness

that, from a very early time in development,

we are taught exist.

For instance, even when we are very young,

we are told that our birthday is coming

and that we are going to get presents,

and those presents are going to be

focused on knowledge of things that we already enjoy.

So if you're a little kid, and you like trucks,

or you're a little kid and you like dolls,

you can sort of expect that those gifts will bring you

some level of joy or happiness.

And while that's a small child example,

that general notion of natural happiness

is, of course, one that persists into adolescence,

into young adulthood, and into adulthood.

And we quite understandably come to associate

this feeling of joy or happiness with the receiving of things

or the acquisition of things, whether by effort,

by gift, by inheritance, or some other form.

So that's natural happiness.

And yet, as I mentioned a little bit earlier,

there's also this notion of synthetic happiness.

And some of the more interesting and exciting research

in the fields of psychology and, in fact, neuroscience

point to this idea of synthetic happiness

as at least as powerful a source of happiness

as natural happiness.

Again, at least as powerful and perhaps even more powerful.

And of course, one has to take a slightly different view of what

happiness is in order to accept this idea that we can create

happiness for ourselves, but that doesn't mean

that the whole notion of synthetic happiness

is merely a passive one where all we

do is sit back and imagine being happy and then we are happy.

For better or for worse, our nervous systems

and our neurochemistry simply don't work that way.

In fact, synthetic happiness has almost always

been understood as something that we

have to put some effort toward achieving.

But, and this is an important thing to point out,

synthetic happiness also requires

that certain situational or environmental conditions

be met.

A good example of this is some of the work by Gillian Mandich,

or I should say Dr. Gillian Mandich, who's

done some interesting work on the conditions for creating

happiness within our mind and in our overall state of being.

And she's been involved in a number of different studies.

But one of the ones that I found particularly interesting

is one in which they explored different types of music

and other aspects of environmental settings.

So you bring subjects to the laboratory

play them different types of music.

There are, in fact, certain aspects of music

that can create different states of mind sadness,

happiness, anticipation.

In fact, there are certain patterns of music

that can reliably induce anticipation of the fear

and anxiety base type.

So, for instance, think the movie Jaws.

If you recall, for those of you who have seen Jaws,

there's this ongoing theme music any time

the shark might be present in the water or in a given scene.

That essentially goes [HUMMING]

Now for the musicians out there, this

has basis in things like tritones and things

that are understood from the mathematics

and the musical side.

And from the neuroscience side, are

known to create a neural state of anticipation.

Yeah, a neural state of anticipation

and not necessarily a positive one.

And indeed, there are other patterns of music

that involve up tones.

Think some of the music that's typically been used

in cartoons of various sorts.

There's a long history of this.

Indeed there's a whole literature

of psychological and now even a smaller but still interesting

literature on the neuroscience of how

certain patterns of music can induce

a state of joy and joyful anticipation, in particular.

A lot of those patterns of music are incorporated

into so-called happy cartoons and Disney movies

and things of that sort.

In any case, Dr. Mandich and others have explored how music,

in particular, but other features of the environment can

or cannot induce states of happiness.

And the basic takeaway from those studies

is that while having a certain environmental sound,

musical tone, or visual feature to a given space, a room,

is necessary for a state of happiness,

it is not alone sufficient.

What is required is that individuals not only

be placed into an environment that

contains music or visual items or a combination of music

and visual items that can induce states

of joy or happiness or positive anticipation,

but that they also are given some sort of instruction

or instruction manual as how to synthesize happiness

inside of that environment.

This is important because what this

says is that our ability to create states of happiness

is dependent on our environment but also requires effort

from us.

That also makes sense as to why when we are under conditions

of deprivation.

So it could be social deprivation

or financial deprivation.

Or even for people that are very sensitive to whether.

There are a certain number of individuals, about 30%

of people, who report feeling very, very low under conditions

where the sky is overcast.

Especially if it's been overcast for a number of days.

The so-called seasonal affective depression.

Those individuals, by the way, can often

receive tremendous benefits in terms

of elevating their mood if they make an effort to get sunlight.

And if they can't get sunlight, artificial light of the sort

that we talked about earlier.

But in any case, there are a number

of people that are profoundly negatively influenced

by the lack of positive visual and auditory cues

in their environment.

But for most people, we are in what

I would call a dynamic relationship

with our environment.

Our environment has an effect on our mood.

But the research indicates that we also

need to make some sort of effort toward being happy.

Now effort toward being happy is a very vague term.

So let's better define what that is.

In the case of Dr. Mandich's work,

this took the form of doing so-called happiness

inventories, right.

That can be focusing on things that one is grateful for,

things that they particularly enjoy.

This is somewhat of a gratitude-type practice

but includes some other features as well

that are more focused on the things that

bring you meaning and actually engaging in the things

that bring you meaning.

So if you're trying to think about how

to improve your levels of happiness, what

this research essentially says is that you would

be smart to try and adjust your home environment,

adjust your work environment so that it is cheerful to you.

Maybe that means a plant.

For me, in my laboratory, one of the things

that was really critical that I had as a postdoc

and in my own laboratory when I first started my lab was I

love aquaria.

So I had multiple fish tanks.

In fact, people in my laboratory were always rolling their eyes.

Why do we have to have all these fish tanks with all these--

I like freshwater tanks, not saltwater tanks,

for reasons that aren't interesting

for this discussion.

But freshwater tanks with discus fish, for instance, to me,

are just beautiful.

They make me happy.

I just enjoy them.

Music is a complicated thing in laboratories

because it's a shared space.

So headphones are the general requirement.

But having either silence if you love silence.

And I happen to like working in silence

or listening to certain forms of music.

I do also use the 40 Hertz binaural beats.

Or I particularly like listening to Glenn Gould while I work

or listening to whale song, believe it or not,

while I work because it doesn't have any structure that I

can follow.

I don't speak whale, and so I can't follow.

But it sort of fills the space in a way that I find pleasant.

And I've put substantial amounts of effort

into making my laboratory spaces and my office

spaces, my workspaces, nice places to be.

Now I had no knowledge of this work

from Dr. Mandich and others at the time when I did that.

But what I found was that over the years,

I was challenged in maintaining a kind of elevated mood

while working in a laboratory, not because I didn't thoroughly

enjoy the work, I love doing experiments with my hands,

and I loved being in lab, but at least the labs that I was

in as a graduate student and post-doc there

were no windows so I wasn't getting adequate sunshine.

The windows that we didn't open, so I

wasn't getting a lot of fresh air, and so on and so forth.

So I've personally found it very valuable

to create an environment both at work and at home

that I find aesthetically pleasant, at least in some way

or another.

And I realize people have varying levels

of control over their aesthetic environment.

Certainly, the auditory environment

can be controlled nowadays through the use of headphones

if you're allowed to use those.

So, for instance, using music or using background sound

that you find very pleasant combined

with a concerted effort on your part

to create states of happiness by hopefully doing work that's

meaningful to you or at least is leading to meaningful outcomes.

We'll talk a little bit more about that.

But these happiness inventories also

turn out to be interesting and important sources of creating

so-called synthetic happiness.

And we'll also talk about other ways

that one can create elevated levels of synthetic happiness.

And I realize the word synthetic probably

draws up connotations of false happiness

or contrived happiness.

I wish instead of calling it synthetic happiness.

They had called it self-created or self-directed

happiness or something of that sort because then it

wouldn't sound as false.

Because it's simply not false.

It leads to the same, as far as we

know, identical neurochemical and psychological states

of happiness as natural happiness.

And might even be more persistent

than natural happiness.

It certainly, is more under our control.

But the key point is that environment

and self-directed work at being happy are both important,

and they interact with one another.

So if you're somebody who has a hard time synthesizing

happiness through any of the methods

that we talk about today, don't consider yourself deficient.

It could very well be that the environment that you're in,

social environment or physical environment,

or auditory environment, is simply not

conducive to synthesizing happiness.

And for that reason, I think the work

of Gillian Mandich and colleagues and others

in the field is tremendously important because it removes us

from this pressure to just synthesize happiness

from within despite our circumstances.

I think many of us have heard of the incredible stories

of people like Viktor Frankl or Nelson Mandela who

were stripped of their freedom and yet

managed to maintain some sense of positive anticipation

or at least some sense of identity

that allowed them to still access forms of happiness.

Those are highly unique situations, of course.

And they speak to the power of the human psyche

for synthesizing happiness and certainly for synthesizing

a sense that there might be a future and to live

into that future.

In their cases, incredibly impressive ways.

But I think for most everybody, the environment that we're in

has a powerful impact on our mood.

And some people more than others.

I know people that are perfectly happy with blank walls.

No pictures on the walls.

Other people benefit tremendously

from having photos or plants in their environment and so on.

You really have to determine what's needed for you

and do your best to try and place

those things into your environment,

or rather, place yourself into an environment that

is conducive to you synthesizing your happiness.

In fact, the powerful interaction

between our environment and our own ability

to generate certain kinds of emotions

is well established not just for happiness

but for things like gratitude.

So, for instance, there's a classic study from AMES A-M-E-S

in 2004 that was focused on gratitude.

And we've had an episode on gratitude before.

The basic takeaway of that episode

is that it turns out receiving gratitude

is a more powerful stimulus for the release

of neurochemicals and activation of brain areas associated

with so-called prosocial behaviors

and feelings of well-being, including happiness.

But also observing stories in the form of movies or books

or other narratives of other people receiving help

is also a very powerful stimulus for gratitude.

Also, giving gratitude is very powerful but not

as powerful as receiving gratitude, at least

that's what the research says, or observing

powerful exchanges of gratitude between other individuals.

What the study from AMES showed is

that gratitude as a state of mind and as an emotion

does not exist in a vacuum.

It's not independent of our surroundings.

So, for instance, just writing down

all the things you're grateful for while it

has some positive impact, the impact of that

or receiving gratitude or observing gratitude

is far more potent, right.

Bigger increases in happiness and feelings

of well-being and indeed neurochemicals and activation

of brain areas associated with happiness and well-being

when there's a reciprocity.

When the person receiving understands something

about the person that's giving to them

and understands that the person is giving genuinely,

for instance.

So there's an environmental interaction.

It's not just about receiving, it's

receiving from somebody that you know genuinely wants to give.

And likewise, for the giver in that equation,

the feelings of well-being are far greater

when the person receiving whatever

it is money, food, assistance in some form or another.

Could be physical assistance, et cetera.

When the giver has knowledge that the person receiving it

genuinely needed the thing that they are receiving.

So the important finding within the research, again and again,

is that happiness doesn't exist in a vacuum.

It's partially our own responsibility

to synthesize happiness.

You know, I was told that many times you're like happiness

is in your head.

Well, yes, indeed, it's in your head,

but it's also dependent on interactions

with your environment.

Physical environment and social environment, and so on.

Likewise, gratitude is something that we can create inside of us

right through gratitude lists and appreciation,

or we can give both powerful sources

of evoking neurochemical changes associated with gratitude

and happiness and well-being.

But it, too, doesn't exist in a vacuum.

There's a much greater positive effect

when we have knowledge about why the giver is giving us

something or that the person receiving

something is going to benefit tremendously from receiving it.

So I'm highlighting this because I

think that when we hear about synthetic happiness,

there's a kind of automatic erasing of context

that tends to occur.

And in fact, if you were to peruse the various videos

online or papers that exist on PubMed around happiness

and synthetic happiness, in particular,

you would come away with the impression

that synthetic happiness is just something

that we're supposed to snap our fingers in access

or perhaps do very specific things in access.

But while that is true, context really matters.

And I think that's an important point.

Much in the same way that the point needs

to be made that while money doesn't buy happiness,

money can buffer stress and certainly offer

opportunities that can provide opportunities

for more happiness.

So I think we are starting to arrive at a general theme here,

which is that nothing related to our mood exists in isolation.

And in fact, that leads me to a discussion

of one of the major scientific findings

in the realm of what sorts of mindsets and behaviors

can, in fact, lead to happiness.

And this is a paper that was published in 2008.

Even though that might seem like a while ago,

it forms the basis for a large amount of literature

that followed.

It's a very interesting literature.

This is work from Elizabeth Dunn and colleagues

and was published in the Journal Science.

Which, again, is one of the sort of three apex journals, Nature,

Science, Cell, I always say is sort of the Super Bowl, NBA

championships, and Stanley Cup of scientific publishing--

very, very stringent in terms of the number of papers

they let in.

Very few, that is.

And the title of this paper makes fairly obvious

what the paper is about.

The title of the paper is "spending money

on others promotes happiness".

And I know a number of you probably hear that title

and think, oh boy, here we go.

He's going to tell us that giving away all our money

is going to make us happier than receiving money.

And I promise you, that is not what I'm going to tell you.

But nonetheless, this is a very interesting study,

and it's one that I think that we really

ought to pay attention to.

Because what the study is based on

is the fact that income, provided one's income

meets a certain level of basic needs,

indeed has been shown to have only a weak effect

on overall happiness.

OK?

So quoting from the paper in the first paragraph,

quote "income has a reliable but surprisingly weak

effect on happiness within nations".

Within nations just mean they looked

at this in not just the United States,

but a number of other places, as well.

"Particularly once basic needs are met."

OK, so if that's the case, then what aspects

of money and having money are related to happiness?

Certainly, there are people who have a lot of money who

are very happy.

Certainly, there are people who have very little money

who are very happy.

And of course, the reverse is also true.

There are plenty of people who don't have very much money

who are unhappy, and in fact, there

are people who have a lot of money who are very unhappy.

A point that whenever it's made often

leads those with less money to kind of roll their eyes,

because the assumption is more money does increase happiness.

And in fact, it doesn't.

And later, we'll get back to this idea of whether or how one

acquired their money has any impact on whether

or not that money increases their happiness or not.

Let's kind of earmark that for later.

In the meantime, let's talk a little bit more

about the findings in this paper.

This paper is interesting, because what

it did is it explored something called prosocial spending.

Prosocial spending is a phenomenon

where people are taking a certain portion

of their income, and they are giving it to others.

Often for causes or for things that they think

are important to see happen in the world

or change in the world.

That could be a hungry individual having access

to food or medical care.

It could be for environmental causes.

It could be for animal wellness.

It could be for any number of different things.

It could even be giving somebody money

so that they can buy themselves a gift or giving somebody money

and not having any understanding or expectation of what they're

going to do with the money.

Again, one of the central themes around gratitude

is that while receiving is great,

giving is also great in terms of increasing sense of well-being.

And one of the more important features to that

is when we give, either in the form of words

or in the form of resources, knowledge

that the person receiving benefits

from that in some real way, greatly

increases the chance that there's

an increase in happiness for the giver, as well as the receiver.

Again, that's a note about gratitude,

but not an insignificant one as it relates to the study.

So what the study found was that higher prosocial spending

was associated with significantly

greater happiness.

This was a very statistically significant effect.

And they found that the effects of income and prosocial

spending were independent and similar in magnitude.

Independent and similar in magnitude.

I'll explain what that means for those

of you that might be confused by that statement in just

a moment.

Whereas, quote, "personal spending remained

unrelated to happiness".

So what this study basically found

was if people are allotted a certain amount of money

to give away, and one adjusts for overall income,

and this is important, because you

could imagine that for some individual giving away $2,000

might represent a significant portion

of their yearly or monthly income.

And for another individual it might represent a tiny fraction

of their income.

But when you adjust for income level, what you find

is that people who gave away money

benefited tremendously in terms of their own increase

in happiness.

In fact, quote, "employees who devoted more of their bonuses

to prosocial spending, that is giving way

more money, experience greater happiness after receiving

the bonus, and the manner in which they spent that bonus was

a more important predictor of their happiness

than the size of the bonus itself".

This was an actual experiment they ran

with real income, real money.

I'm going to read that again just

to make sure it hits home, because I found

this to be really impactful.

"Employees who devoted a greater fraction of their bonus

to prosocial spending, that is giving away money to others,

experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus.

And the manner in which they spent

that bonus was a more important predictor of their happiness

than the size of the bonus itself."

So the actual bonus, the receiving of the money,

led to greater increases in happiness if they gave it away.

And the act of giving it away itself,

led to greater increases in happiness

than receiving the bonus.

So it's a twofer, as you might say.

So the takeaway from this study and studies like it,

I think is pretty obvious that to the extent that we can.

And again, when I say to the extent that we can,

this means whatever percentage of our own income

that we can afford to give away, or if we don't have income,

the percentage of our effort.

I mean this is about money, but it's also about effort.

We can help others, right?

You can serve in food kitchens, you can do community gardening,

you can pick up trash, you can do any number of things.

You can assist a neighbor with child care

or you can assist a neighbor who is physically less

able to retrieve their paper, et cetera, et cetera.

The point is that giving resources,

certainly in the form of money, but also in the form of effort

and time, is immensely beneficial for synthesizing

our own happiness.

That is for the giver, us, to increase

our levels of happiness.

But the degree of increase in our own happiness

is proportional in some way to the extent

to which the person receiving actually needed that help

and registers that help.

Excellent research also points to the fact

that another potent way to synthesize

happiness, that is to create genuine states of happiness

in ourselves, is to leverage the so-called focus system.

Or rather, I should say to de-emphasize the tendency

of our minds to wander.

There's an excellent paper on this, also published

in the Journal Science.

This is now a classic paper.

I talked a little bit about it in the episode on meditation,

but for those of you that did or perhaps

didn't hear that episode, I just want to briefly touch

on a few aspects of the paper.

And in particular, a few aspects of the paper that I didn't talk

about previously.

And the title of this paper, again,

is a very straightforward in terms

of telling you what it's about.

And that is, "A wandering mind is an unhappy mind"

by Killingsworth and Gilbert.

This paper was published in Science in 2010,

and we will provide a link to the paper.

This is frankly, a very interesting paper.

This paper involved several subjects,

or I should say, 2,250 adult subjects.

And what they were able to do was

to contact these subjects while they

were going about living their daily lives

and ask them both what they were doing

and what they were feeling.

Some additional questions that they asked them,

but they were able to establish whether or not

people were watching television or doing housework or working

on a home computer or resting or listening to music, et cetera,

in their natural environment.

So this is outside the laboratory.

And they were able to assess to what extent

those people were happy or unhappy or neutral,

or had some other emotional state at the time

when they were engaging in any number of different activities.

And they assessed whether or not those individuals were also

focused on or focused away from whatever activity they

were engaging in.

And the takeaways from this study are many,

but for sake of today's discussion, what

I think is especially interesting

is that regardless of whether or not

people were engaging in activities that they enjoyed

or not, the tendency for their mind to wander from an activity

predicted lower levels of happiness

than if they tended to be focused on the activity

they were engaged in.

Now that itself should be surprising.

I mean, what that says is that even if somebody

was engaged in activity like cleaning their house

or doing homework or reading something that they weren't

enjoying, if they were focused on what they were doing,

they tended to report as happier than if their mind was drifting

elsewhere.

Now this also points to the idea that perhaps our minds

drift to unpleasant thoughts more than pleasant thoughts.

But they also addressed that in the study.

Point I'd like to make here is quote

"although people's minds were more

likely to wander to pleasant topics

than to unpleasant topics" and there the difference

is pretty significant.

People's minds tended to wander to pleasant topics

about 43% of the time as opposed to unpleasant topics

about 27% of the time.

Or to neutral topics and the remaining 31% of samples.

"People were no happier when thinking

about pleasant topics than about their current activity".

Think about that.

"People were no happier than when

thinking about pleasant things then their current activity".

In fact, the mere focus on what they were doing

was more powerful than anything else,

even if they didn't enjoy what they were doing.

So they go on here to say, quote "although negative moods are

known to cause mind wandering, I now

see strongly suggested that mind wandering was generally

the cause, the cause, and not merely

the consequence of unhappiness."

So there are a lot of aspects of this study that

are worth going into.

But the major takeaway, or the one that perhaps we should all

be most concerned with, is that when we are not

focused on what we are doing, we tend

to be far less happy than when we are

focused on what we are doing.

Even if what we are doing is something

that we don't deem very pleasant.

And certainly, if we are engaged in something

that we consider very pleasant and we are very focused on,

well then our levels of happiness are the highest.

That's sort of obvious.

But what this really speaks to is the tremendous power

of building our ability to focus on what we're doing.

And to stay present to what we are doing.

Now this whole notion of staying present

is one that itself is a little bit complicated.

And in the episode on meditation I talked a little bit about

whether or not it's beneficial to be

present to our internal state, or that

is our inter receptive state.

Our feelings of our heart rate and how full or empty

our gut feels or our state of being from our skin inward,

or whether or not we should focus

on being present to things in our immediate surroundings.

Both our versions of being quote,

unquote "present" as you can imagine.

But in the one case, we're focused internally,

in the other we're focused externally,

and of course, most of the time it's

some combination of the two.

But what this study really says is

that any practice that can powerfully impact our ability

to remain present in the activity we are engaged in,

could even be a phone call, could

be texting for that matter, could be social media

for that matter, right?

We're not placing judgment on the activity here.

In fact, what we're really talking about

is the enormous happiness increasing value

of being present to what we're doing regardless

of what we are doing.

And a practice that's known to be beneficial for increasing

our ability to focus is, among other things,

a short meditation practice.

In fact, work from Wendy Suzuki's lab at NYU,

again, Wendy's been a guest on this podcast.

Her laboratory has shown that even

a very brief meditation of about 13 minutes,

and this would be the sort of quote unquote

"classic" type of meditation of eyes

closed, focusing on one's breathing.

Even a very brief meditation of just 13 minutes

or so done consistently, so ideally, every day.

But I have to imagine that even if you skip a day,

there are still benefits.

That sort of meditation can greatly

enhance one's ability to focus.

In her studies, that was also shown

that sort of brief meditation could also greatly enhance

mood and sleep and various aspects

of cognitive performance.

And work from my laboratory, in collaboration with Dr. David

Spiegel at Stanford, department of psychiatry

has shown that even briefer meditations of even just five

minutes per day can have fairly outsized positive effects

on a number of different parameters, as well.

Those very brief types of meditations,

because they really are focusing and more accurately,

I should say, refocusing exercises.

When you do that sort of activity of closing your eyes

and forcing yourself to focus and refocus

on your breath and internal state,

that is directing your perception inward.

Or if you choose, you could deliberately

focus your perception on some external object

or sound, for that matter.

When one does that, the circuits of the brain involved in focus

dramatically improve.

That is they rewire and increase their ability for you

to achieve focus.

Many of us have heard about meditation, many of us

think about meditation as a "mindfulness" exercise.

Mindfulness in quotes, because that itself needs definition.

But I prefer to view meditations of the sort

that I just described as perceptual or focus

based training, which is really what the data point to.

Notions around consciousness and states of mind

are very hard to define, but it's very clear that even

a 5 minute a day or ideally, an up to a 13 minute a day

meditation can greatly increase our ability to focus.

And based on the findings in this paper,

"A wandering mind is an unhappy mind" also make it very clear

that the ability to refocus again and again

and again on what we're doing throughout our day,

regardless of what we're doing, can

have a very dramatic, in fact, a statistically significant

increase on our levels of overall happiness.

So what else does the research tell us

we can do to increase our levels of genuine happiness?

Well, it's very clear based on the longitudinal study

from Harvard, as well as the Yale happiness

project and the work of numerous laboratories in the US

and elsewhere, that quality social connection

is extremely powerful in terms of its ability

to increase our levels of happiness.

What is quality social connection?

Quality social connection falls into a number

of different bins.

This can be romantic connection, this can be friendship,

this can even be coworker or just

daily superficial interaction type connections.

That's surprising to a lot of people,

because I think a lot of people hear quality social connection

and they think deep conversation.

But it's very clear from the research

that oftentimes our conversations with people

that we are closest to are actually quite shallow.

If you think about it, if you've been in a romantic relationship

or a friendship for a long period of time,

or maybe even a sibling relationship or other family

relationship, much of what you talk about

is fairly superficial or fairly trivial.

In fact, it's often a sharing of the trivial day

to day things between two people or through groups

of people that leads to the feeling

that people are really connected to one another.

In particular, if it's involving shared experiences of any kind,

good or bad.

So there's an extensive literature on social connection

and how to build social connection.

This certainly should be the topic

of a full episode of this podcast

in the not too distant future.

But because social connection can have such a powerful impact

on our states of happiness and overall well-being,

I want to emphasize a few features of social connection

that I think most people might not appreciate.

Once again, when we hear quality social connection,

I think most of us tend to think about deep, meaningful

conversation or long walks on the beach or camping trips

together or travel together.

And while all of those certainly qualify

as wonderful opportunities for social connection,

opportunities for quality social connection

are certainly not limited to those kinds of interactions.

In fact, I can recall times in my graduate career,

so this would be times when I was living in the laboratory.

Because that was a significant portion of my graduate years.

And one of the more important social connections for me

was the staff that worked there in the wee hours of the night

and that came in very early in the morning.

So one of the more regular social connections I had is I

would brush my teeth in the hallway bathroom.

And there was no one else really around at that time,

except for the janitors that tended

to leave early in the morning.

They had worked a good portion of the night.

Or that were arriving very early in the day.

And the fact that I would see them on a regular basis

and maybe exchange a few words about their work

or their families or the holidays, actually for me,

became very meaningful.

In part, because my social connections at the time

were really limited to only social connections

that I had in the context of work.

Now some people might look at my schedule at that time

and look at my life at that time and say, well,

that was very unhealthy.

You were lacking in certain number of ways.

But frankly, looking back, and at the time,

and I know this because I journaled at the time,

I was exceedingly happy, at least

for that stage of my life.

At that stage of my life, I wanted

to be focused primarily on doing experiments and immersing

myself in my scientific training.

And for me, the even seemingly insignificant interactions

of talking to the janitor in the morning

or some of the other regular staff was not insignificant.

In fact, for me it was very significant.

And over the holidays when their hours were reduced,

I actually missed them quite a lot.

And even as I talk about this, I can

recall the feelings of well-being

of just seeing familiar faces.

And that brings up an important point, which

is there's quite extensive literature pointing to the fact

that when we see faces, especially faces in the morning

and in the late afternoon, there is a positive impact

on the emotional circuitry.

Or I should say, the circuitry of the brain that

underlies emotional well-being.

And that shouldn't come as surprising.

We as old world primates, much like other primates,

are very dependent on faces and facial expressions

in terms of registering our own place in life

and our emotional state.

Now the origins of this are many.

In particular, we have a brain area,

it's actually called the fusiform face gyrus.

This is an area of the brain that

was largely discovered by a woman

by Nancy Kanwisher at MIT.

And the Kanwisher lab has done extensive work

showing that this brain area that's

dedicated to the processing of faces, and not just faces

in real life, but faces on computer screens

and elsewhere, are intimately tied

to areas of the brain that are associated with emotionality.

That's actually a work from another laboratory,

Dorsal's laboratory at Caltech, now at Uc Berkeley,

has shown that this face processing

area in the brain in both non-human primates and primates

is directly linked to the areas of our brain

that associate with anxiety and fear.

But also, areas of the brain that

are associated with well-being.

So it comes as no surprise that when

we see faces, in particular, friendly faces,

even if we have just brief interactions with those faces,

and even if no words are exchanged,

that creates the sense of social bond.

And it creates a sense of predictability.

And I raise this again because I think a lot of people

think that social connection always

has to come in the form of close friendships, which

of course are wonderful.

Or close romantic relationships, which of course, are wonderful.

Or close family relationships, which of course, are wonderful.

But as we'll soon discuss in our model of happiness,

or how to achieve happiness based

on the scientific literature in a few minutes,

social connection can and should come in various forms.

And when I say various forms, I mean

forms of brief interaction, more superficial interaction,

and forms of deeper interaction.

All of those are relevant to our states of happiness.

And there's research to support that daily interactions

with somebody at a cafe or just a brief hello or a smile.

Provided that we are both present,

or we make the effort to be present to those interactions,

however brief they are, can have a positive effect

on people's overall well-being.

And not just in that moment, but consistently.

Evidenced by the fact, I think, that

when I look back on those years of working

long hours in the laboratory and essentially restricting myself

either to exercising, sleeping, eating or working.

Again, that's what I wanted at that stage of my life.

Certainly, not the way I live my life now.

But that's what I wanted that stage of my life.

That even those seemingly insignificant

social interactions were important to me

and had a potent impact on increasing

my level of happiness.

And frankly, still do.

And I feel that right now.

That said, I think all of us can appreciate the immense value

of social connection that is of the more long lasting, and for

lack of a better word, richer type,

whether or not that is with siblings or with parents

or with friends or with romantic partners.

For that reason, I want to emphasize a little bit

about what constitutes connection

and what constitutes social connection.

There are basically two forms of social connection

that have been studied and I'll review both,

as it relates to increasing our levels of happiness.

And the first one is presence and eye contact,

and the second is physical contact.

So in terms of presence and eye contact

there's been a lot of studies about

whether or not people exchange direct eye contact

during conversation or not, dictating whether or not

each individual in that interaction

feels as if they had a connection.

Now again, keep in mind that while we think of connection

as relating to some deep or meaningful conversation,

and oftentimes that can be the case.

Think for instance, an excellent therapist patient relationship.

Or an excellent romantic relationship.

Or an excellent friendship where you really feel

heard and understood, or at least to the extent

that people are willing to explore

certain topics with you.

You're willing to hear them and listen really

carefully for what they're saying,

and they're willing to hear and listen to what you're saying

in an attempt to understand.

That certainly can enhance the sense of social connection

leading to what people would call social bonds leading

to increased happiness.

But eye contact is also known to be an important feature.

The thing about eye contact is that most people

assume that a lot of eye contact,

and in fact, ongoing eye contact,

is critical to a sense of connection.

And in fact, that's not the case.

There's a recent paper that I find really interesting that

was published in Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences in 2021.

The title of this paper is "Eye contact

marks the rise and fall of shared attention

in conversation".

I find this paper interesting for a number of reasons.

First of all, my laboratory works on internal states

and vision, so it relates directly

to the work that my laboratory does.

But also, that it violates what I thought

was a general rule of social connection, which

is this idea that two people needed to be focused on one

another, that is looking at one another

directly and fairly consistently throughout a conversation

in order for the feeling of connection to emerge.

But it turns out that's not the case.

And in fact, just to give you the takeaway and then

I'll flesh it out a little bit with some data, eye contact,

or I should say mutual eye contact, so two people

registering the presence of the other person looking at them.

You're looking at me and I'm looking at you.

If you're watching this on YouTube,

then perhaps we are actually doing this at that moment.

And if you're listening, just know

that I'm looking directly into the camera

as I'm saying this at this moment.

If we were to be looking directly at one another,

that, it turns out, signals the next step,

which is that it's very likely that we will each both look

away.

And that turns out to be a way in which we set

and reset attention continually during conversation.

So again, I really like this study

because of the high fidelity.

The high temporal precision.

That is, the precision over time at which they

looked at eye contact and engagement of attention

between individuals.

And they did this by looking at things like pupil size

and of course where the eyes were

looking and so on and so forth.

The basic takeaway of this study was the following.

And here I'm quoting from the study.

Quote "Rather than maximizing shared attention,

good conversation may require shifts

in and out of shared states accompanied by eye contact".

So what this basically says is that when

two people are involved in a very,

let's call it an intimate conversation,

but the word intimate should not be misconstrued

to mean something about intimacy or sexual intimacy

or physical intimacy.

Just a conversation in which both people

feel present to the conversation and focused

on that conversation and that conversation and its contents

only.

The tendency is for people to take turns talking,

although sometimes, depending on the individuals

they might interrupt more or less.

Again, interrupting can be a sign of interest,

it doesn't always have to be rude, by the way.

But they're sharing information.

Hopefully, about a common topic or set of topics.

They will at some moment look at one another.

That's what the study shows.

And that after briefly gazing directly at one

another, attention peaks, and then they will look away,

and attention will get reduced.

And then the conversation consists

of a series of focusing back on one another with their eyes,

and then focusing off, focusing on and focusing off.

And those mutual eye contact moments

actually predict the breaking of attention.

So it's this ramping up of attention and braking

of attention.

Ramping of attention and braking of attention.

I think these are important results because they violate

this stereotype or assumption that deep social connection

of the sort leading to happiness always

involves ongoing eye contact or ongoing focus.

Just as with meditation, just as with any activity, frankly,

we undergo shifts in attention and focus.

That is focus ramps up and then it breaks, and then

it re-engages.

It ramps up it breaks, and then it re-engages.

And that, it turns out, is the basis

of in-depth connected conversation.

So for those of you that are interested in creating

social connection in any context,

and in particular for sake of increasing happiness,

because it's very clear that social connections,

even if they are fairly superficial social connections,

can increase our sense of happiness.

Seeing faces is important.

Ideally, faces in person, although I suppose these days,

over Zoom or over other screen type medium

would be a close second.

But the point is that if you want to increase happiness

you need to have quality social connections.

And if you want to have quality social connections

you need to be present and engage

in those social connections.

And that requires a viewing of each other's faces,

ideally, which is not to say that a phone call or text

exchange can't be meaningful.

But that faces are really the most powerful way

to engage in social contact.

And that eye contact, not consistent eye contact,

but eye contact of the sort that builds up and then breaks

and builds up and breaks across the interaction

is going to be the best way that we are aware of to feel

that one had a real connection.

This should also remove any pressure

that you might feel to constantly look at somebody

or to be completely eyes open staring at them

without blinking or diverting your attention at any point

during a conversation.

This also frankly, is an opportunity

where if somebody says, hey, you're not paying attention

because you look away, that you may actually

be engaging in what is the more typical form

of healthy connection.

I talked about this long ago on an episode about focus.

It turns out when we are listening

very intently to somebody and trying

to remember the information they're telling us,

we will often close our eyes.

And that's not a form of lack of attention, that's actually

a form of attending in.

Because we have so much of our brain devoted to vision.

When 40% of our brain is devoted to vision

in some way or another, when we close our eyes,

we can actually devote more attentional resources

to remembering the specifics of what people are telling us.

But again, please don't go through conversations

with your eyes closed the entire time.

I think that would certainly not be conducive to building

social connection.

So we know that faces are important for social connection