“Can You Train Your Mind to Be Happier?” (with Dr Tal Ben-Shahar)

24:14It's great at first, but over time, you kind of get used to it. You know, my Ivy League students, right, who work so hard to get into college, they find out they get into their dream school. The first time you announce to your parents, your grandparents that you got into your dream school, it feels great. You know, time number 300 where someone says, hey, where do you go to college? It's just not as exciting anymore. This, I think, is one of the worst features of the mind when it comes to happiness. The best, best moment in life that if it's repeated over time becomes just kind of boring. The example I often like to give is, you know, if you're partnered up the first time your partner said, I love you, that felt great.

24:51But, you know, this morning, you know, Monday morning when they said it, like, no, nobody cares, right? This is what, as you know, to all psychologists refer to is hedonic adaptation. We just adapt to the good hedonic stuff in life and we stop noticing it. And that means the best circumstances can stop having a really good impact over time. And so to truly feel the effect of the good stuff around us, we need to do stuff to fight hedonic adaptation. And one of the best ways, honestly, is gratitude, right? Taking time to remember and notice like, hey, hang on, like there's, you know, I'm at this, this cup of coffee tastes great.

25:24Like this is wonderful. There's delights in the world, right? We kind of have to forcibly train our attention to notice stuff so that we don't kind of fully adapt to them over time. Another great way to fight hedonic adaptation comes, I know the Happiness Studies Academy focuses a lot on history and philosophers. This is one that comes from the Stoics and one that the psychologists haven't focused on too much, but it's the practice of negative visualization, right? Imagine what life would be like without this thing, not in a terribly ruminative way that all the terrible things are going to happen.

25:56But just some wonderful thing that's happening in your life, just what would it be like if that wasn't there anymore? An example I often give in my podcast and when I'm giving talks is, if you're a parent, imagine that the last time you saw your kid, whenever that was, that was the last time. Never going to see them again. And if you're a parent, my guess is you just said, like your breath just caught in your throat. And my guess is the next time you see your kid, just with that short two-second example, you'll hug them a little bit more closely, right? Like that's the power. If we just take a moment to realize what it would feel like if we lost something, we can start to appreciate the stuff we have.

26:31But all of those are very intentional practices, right? Like all these habits we've been talking about, you have to do that to overcome hedonic adaptation. It doesn't happen naturally. Yeah. You know, Irving Yalom, who was professor at Stanford, psychiatrist, in one of his studies talks about how when he interacted with terminally ill patients, they just heard that they're about to die. say the following. They say, for the first time in my life, in a very long time, I truly feel that I'm alive. Or I truly appreciate, you know, my loved ones, or this meal, or the miracle that's all around me. And the question, I mean, that begs is, do we need to wait?

27:23Do we need to wait for something tragic, terrible to happen? And I think what the Stoics did is they simulated it with that question. You know, just imagine, again, you don't need to take it, you know, make it so radical. But even if something that you enjoy, you know, I had a, I had an amazing smoothie this morning. You know, by the way, Laurie, I'll tell you this in full confidence, my next career, I'm going to have a smoothie stall. You'd be very good at that. I feel like it'd be very fruity, very exciting. so you know i had my smoothie this morning and now if i imagine what if i couldn't have a smoothie anymore what a difference that would make in my again something small seemingly trivial but it can help us be more grateful for those seemingly trivial uh important things you know one of the quotes that i love which is attributed i don't think he actually said it but it's attributed to einstein is there are only two ways in which you can live your life one way to live your life is as if nothing is a miracle.

28:23The other is as if everything is a miracle. And that's about, you know, savoring, not taking for granted. And I think we all have experiences, you know, hopefully, most of the people listening right now aren't experiencing, you know, a terminal cancer diagnosis. I think we've all had experiences where good things have gone away. And we kind of recognize this, right? You know, like, you thought you lost your phone, you're like, oh, my gosh, my phone and then you find it like, ah, I appreciate your phone more. Or, you know, take a situation we all went through not that long ago, right? COVID, right?

28:54I remember in the depths of like spring of 2020 that I was like, oh my gosh, if I could just go to the movies again, I will love being at the, if I could just go to a restaurant again, I will love being in a restaurant so much. You know, sadly it doesn't stick around, right? But even just remembering that, you know, if I go to a restaurant later tonight, I'll think, oh my gosh, this, this isn't guaranteed. None of this stuff is guaranteed. In some ways, it is a miracle that we get to enjoy all these kind of cool things. So yeah, getting back in the attitude of noticing that and savoring it can be so powerful.

29:26Yeah, you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking about one of the main ideas that we talk about in the Happiness Studies Academy, whether it's in our you know short programs in our MA program is around the three R's of change and the three R's of change are the first R is reminders so we need to remind ourselves to express gratitude we need to remind ourselves to you know go out and you know and meet someone and these reminders can come in the form of you know our phone reminding us it can be a picture on the wall it can be a bracelet that we wear and reminds us of something like being mindful or present or kind.

30:08But we need those reminders. Second, after reminders, we need repetition. Because as you pointed out, not enough to one and done. We need to do it again and again. And then if we do the first two, then we get to sort of the promised land of change, which is rituals, the third R, or a habit. And, you know, I love the quote by John Dryden, a British philosopher, poet, who said, we first make our habits, and then our habits make us. And that's when it becomes second nature. And again, second nature, you know, whether it's brushing your teeth or saying hello and smiling to a person you see on the street.

30:53These are all habits we can cultivate and form. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's really worth remembering how important it is to kind of create those habits over time. I mean, the data just really showed that by engaging in these kinds of practices more and more often, you really can change your overall happiness, right? You know, so many of those statistics we talked about when we started, like, we don't, that doesn't need to be that way, right? There are things that we can do as individuals and rituals we can set up as societies to try to fix that. Yeah. You're listening to my conversation with Dr.

31:25Tal Ben Shahar of the Happiness Studies Academy. We'll be back after the break. Does anyone else feel like August is the Sunday of summer? Especially when the new school year looms, I start thinking about resetting my routine. And for me, that often begins with my closet. I've been trying to buy fewer, better pieces, the kind I know I'll wear again and again. And that's why I've become such a fan of Quince. The piece I keep reaching for is Quince's washable stretch silk tiered maxi dress. The silk feels incredibly soft. It has a little stretch to it so it's comfortable to wear all day long. And the fact that it's washable makes it so much more practical than you'd expect from a silk dress.

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34:51Okay, final question and then we'll open it up. I see there are many hands up. So in what way, if in any way at all, has your work in cognitive psychology informed your current work? Yeah. So cognitive psychology broadly, I think, has really helped me understand so many of the different studies in happiness science, right, in a very particular way, which is that I think cognitively speaking, we get happiness wrong, right? The way we think about what it means to be happy isn't really the way happiness works, right? You know, we assume we need to change our circumstances to be happier. No, not so much.

35:29Like we just really need to change our behaviors and our mindsets. Right. We assume that what we need to do is to get more and more money. But in practice, like we don't actually need that stuff. I think, you know, one path to happiness is really to overcome a lot of the misconceptions we have about how happiness works. You know, I often tell my students that our minds lie to us and we have to kind of fight those lies to do a little bit better. And, you know, a lot of those lies are the beliefs we have about happiness, how we think about happiness and so on. And so, yeah, I think cognition matters a lot for happiness.

36:01I'm curious how you've applied your organizational behavior training to the studies of happiness. What have you learned? If I get to ask a question. Yeah, of course. So, you know, on my wall as reminders of the important things and the values in my life of people I care about and who care about me. And one of those pictures is Richard Hackman, whom you remember. So he was on the 15th floor. He was, you know, my my mentor and supervisor. And Richard Hackman, who was an organizational behaviorist, said to us the following. He said, if you really want to understand the phenomenon and want to be able to change that phenomenon, you have to understand it at multiple levels.

36:47So even though he was an organizational behaviorist, he said, look at the neurons. Look at the individual. Look at the interaction, the diet, interpersonal. Look at the group and look at the organization. So in order to understand any phenomenon, and again, happiness being no exception, you need to look at all those levels. As a result of his teachings, I created the Happiness Studies Academy around the interdisciplinary approach. So, yes, our students learn cognitive psychology and neuroscience, and they learn about organizations as well as nations. So one of the first classes is about systems thinking.

37:33And systems thinking is about understanding the minute, the micro details, and the large, the macro information. That's so important because I think this is another spot where we can get happiness wrong. I sometimes get critiques from students about, you know, the fact that we often talk about, well, here's the behaviors and the mindsets that you can change as an individual, right? And I think that that can mistakenly get folks to think that that's the only path to happiness, right? You know, if you're in a dead-end job that's not paying you a lot of money, if you're in an awful situation, if you're in a system that's really not allowing you to flourish very well, it's like, well, just write in your gratitude journal and it'll be okay.

38:13I think we forget that we should be intervening on multiple levels of analysis, definitely the structural levels too. Because, of course, when you intervene on a whole organization, it makes it easier for all the individuals in that organization to flourish better too. Yeah. Yeah, there's a wonderful book that I know Malcolm Gladwell swears by, which is called The Person and the Situation, that talks about how, again, you have to look to understand something, you have to look at the different levels, the environment and the individual. All right. I have to curb my enthusiasm here and call on our wonderful community.

38:52So, Sandy, please, everyone, if you can make your questions sing short so that we can get through as many as possible. This is a question for both of you, Tal and Laurie. you know you were talking about systems and you were talking about the the environment and the conditions around the subjects that all be obviously influence in in happiness and you were also talking about the importance of connection and micro moments smiles technology kind of blocking this so my question is around that what do you think both of you about what we need to do, talking about systems, you know, social systems, to improve and to prevent what we already see going on, you know, since 2010 and the social media and the screens, that is setting our brains for unhappiness.

39:59It's creating habits that we know will make us unhappy. And I think that is a teamwork, as you say, it's not only it doesn't have to do only with individual discipline, but because it is so ingrained and even more with AI, it's going to become even more ingrained and have the fantasy of connecting or having someone that cares about us with, you know, the AI things. what can we do that I think is urgent? What would you think we could do as a society, as a team, to prevent this from going even worse? Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm interested to hear Tal's answer, but I'll mention kind of two things. I mean, there's many more that we could talk about, right?

40:48One is I think we need to find ways to perhaps regulate and curb the spaces where we're using our technologies, while at the same time building spaces where it's much easier to interact socially, right? So I think structurally on the second point, we need more spaces. The political scientist Robert Putnam, another person that Tal and I probably interacted with back when we were in school back in the day as grad students, talked about this idea of third spaces, right? These are places that are not home and not work, where you can get together and interact with people from all different walks of life.

41:23Ideally, you don't even have to buy something there, right? Putnam talked about how third spaces really flourished in the U.S. back in the 1950s where there were rotary clubs and churches and sports leagues and bowling alleys where everyone could get together and kind of hang out with one another. Not so much anymore. I really think we need to think and kind of energize our approach to building those kinds of spaces to make it easier to interact in real life. At the same time, I think we need to figure out ways to kind of avoid the temptation of interacting on our phones. And I think this is something I think about a lot in the school setting, right, where we know, of course, like having your phone out is probably impacting, say, my college students or even younger students' ability to learn.

42:05but I worry more about its impact on their ability to be social in the dining hall, hanging out with others in, you know, in the schoolyard and so on. And so I think that we really need to take seriously the idea of kind of getting phones out of schools, right? Or even having time limits on phones at schools. And I think this is the spot where doing it like system wide can be really helpful. It's so hard as a parent of a teenager to be like, you know, for your flourishing, I'm going to limit your phone use when all their friends have access to phones. But if a whole school says, hey, no phones until 15 or no phones until 16, it just makes it easier because there's not the fear of missing out that you have as the one individual trying to do this.

42:45And so I think as we think about kind of adjusting our spaces so that our temptation to use our screens and our technology is not as high, just going to make it easier to engage in more social connection in real life. Tal, curious. Yeah, thank you, Lori. So I'll second and third everything that you said. I had a bit of an aha moment around this a couple of years ago. And I know many in our community know Udi, who's a member of the HSA community. And I told him about all the limitations that I was putting on, you know, screen time. And I said, it's challenging, but you know, it's a fight worth, it's a battle worth you know fighting and and and after a few minutes after i told him about all the restrictions and limitations he said tal you know you've you're a positive psychologist but until now you just talked about all the no's you know what they don't do how about some yeses in other words finding positive alternatives to uh to the phone and you and you talked about uh you know putnam talks about those spaces that are pleasant that are enjoyed that people want to go to and I think one of the most important yeses today especially for well for all of us but certainly for kids it's the it's a sports athletics because you know when they're playing basketball with one another they're not on the phone nor are they complaining that they're not on the phone in something which is healthy not to mention all the other benefits associated you You know, so it's the social, it's the physical, it's resilience that they cultivate through sports.

44:35So I would put a lot more emphasis on sports in schools, in homes. I love that. I love that. All right. Thank you, Sandy. Christina. Ciao, Tal. Good morning. Buongiorno, Dr. Santos. And hi, everybody. I just came back from a Vipassana retreat where we stayed in silence completely, 10 hours meditation. And so you can imagine it was not so easy. And we completely, we were strangers. We didn't know each other, but we spent time close to each other. and at the end we had this wonderful teacher Carlos Fial very good, quite famous in Europe and at the end we made a heart meditation in which we just look at each other straight in the eyes with the hand on our heart and it was one of the most incredible experiences in my life So I just would like to ask you, in your experience during these years, how much importance do you put on cultivating this kind of practices, meditations, yoga?

46:11How important are they? Yeah. I mean, I think those kinds of practices from meditation to yoga do a bunch of things that are very relevant for cultivating a mindset that's relevant to happiness, right? Most of those practices engage in some form of mindfulness, right? Being present in the present moment, hopefully in a way that's kind of non-judgmental. So you're not in the present moment thinking, I hate this, I hate this. You're kind of non-judgmentally accepting the present moment. And there's tons of studies showing the importance of that, not just for kind of experiencing more positive emotions, feelings of contentment, and so on, but also for things like decreasing craving over time.

46:51One of the most interesting kind of remedies for substance use disorders is through these practices of radical acceptance of craving and so on. So I think these practices of mindfulness can be incredibly powerful. But a second thing that the particular form of mindfulness that you describe, the sort of heart meditation, can do is to allow us to experience another mindset that we know is really important for happiness, which is the mindset of compassion, right? Kind of having these positive feelings for other people, wishing them well, and so on. And there's studies from Tanya Singer's lab and others showing that practices like loving kindness meditation, really wishing to others, may you be happy, may you be safe, and so on, are incredible ways to feel good ourselves.

47:34And this comes from work that I know everyone in Happiness Studies Academy talks about a lot, which is that doing nice things for other people having positive wishes towards the nice things for other people, those are the kinds of things that wind up making us happier. And so, yeah, I think that these practices of meditation and mindfulness can be incredibly powerful, not even just in one way, but because they allow us to cultivate these mindsets that tap into so many different tinier practices that can be good for our flourishing. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you, Laurie. And, you know, I think about this, you know, the heartfelt experience a lot.

48:14I think for me, I've been doing the gratitude exercise since the 19th of September, 1999. My track record is not nearly as good. Yeah. Well, but I did it, you know, as you recall, you know, Emmons and McAuliffe did their research in 2003. But I learned about the gratitude journal from Oprah, of course. Yes, we talked about it then. And I was thinking, I was watching one of her shows and I was thinking, wow, what a nice idea. And I tried it. And of course, I haven't looked back. And then it really upgraded my experience of the very simple gratitude exercise is Barbara Fredrickson's work on heartfelt positivity.

48:54So it's not just going through the emotion and writing what I'm grateful for. Or it's, yes, it's writing it and then maybe closing my eyes and think, okay, so what does my daughter mean to me? Or, you know, what does the smile that I receive today mean to me? So really experiencing those things that I write down in the heart. And that can make all the difference because in many ways that is also an antidote to hedonic adaptation. You're really savoring it. You're experiencing it. And I think this is so critical. I see this in my students, right? We assign them these practices of engaging in gratitude journaling and so on.

49:32And like so many things in their lives, I feel like they're kind of dialing it in. It's like, you know, my parents, my grades, you know, food and water, whatever, you know, health, you know, just like you can kind of do your gratitude journal like that. Or you could do it in a way where you ask yourself, you know, how does it truly make me feel the love I feel for my parents? Like, what would it feel like to not have them? And so on that, that moment of savoring, that moment of noticing can be so powerful. I'll add one other practice that I think we should all squeeze into our gratitude practices to kind of, you know, like supersize them in terms of their impact.

50:02And that's to express gratitude to other people. Again, Tal, I don't know, your gratitude journal has been going on for a long time. I don't know what's in it. But for me, a lot of times what's in it is other people, right? I'm grateful for things, you know, smell of my morning coffee and so on. But I'm really grateful for, you know, the people who work on my podcast team, my students, like my husband, right? And I might even take time to kind of notice, oh, my gosh, I love my husband so much. You know, I'm so grateful for him. But rarely do I stop at the end of that moment and walk over to him and be like, you know, honey, I'm so grateful for you.

50:31Thank you so much that you emptied the dishwasher or helped me with this problem or whatever. We tend not to express gratitude to other people. And there's work by Nick Geppley at the University of Chicago showing that one of the reasons we don't do that is we just assume they know. Right. We assume they know they mean a lot to us and they're thankful for us. And that kind of cognitive distortion, assuming that they know when they don't actually know this sort of failure of perspective taking means we leave a moment on the table to do something nice to somebody else. When I express to my husband, oh, I'm so grateful for you.

51:00That feels good to him. It kind of boosts my gratitude because it's hard to be saying that and not feeling it. And it's usually a moment of social connection, sometimes with people who haven't talked to in a while. You know, I know sometimes moments in my gratitude journal, I'm just like thinking about an old friend or something that somebody did for me weeks ago, maybe even sometimes years ago. You know, reach out to that person and actually express gratitude to them. You know, the studies really show that they don't know that you appreciate them that much. And it can have a huge impact on their well-being and yours too.

51:30Yeah. Yeah. That's such an important, powerful amplifier of the gratitude exercise. And then you have the cognitive and the behavioral working in tandem. Itai. Thank you so much. So I'm going to make a quick question, especially as a college professor. We all know the political climate in colleges has been spoke about everything very charged, especially in the past 20 months. I wonder what are your thoughts on the positive implications and the negative implications it has on students' welfare and happiness. On one hand, there are social connections that are being made. Students become politically involved.

52:15When I was a student in a U.S. college 20 years ago, there was nothing like that. On the other hand, obviously, there are many people who are very stressed and anxious about it. And I'm especially curious to know because all the reports show that the well-being, the mental well-being of students, especially in the U.S., is declining. Yeah, yeah, this is a great question. I think it's what I think about a lot, especially on a U.S. college campus. I think part of the problem starts with the loneliness crisis that we are seeing and in some ways the crisis of these third spaces. One of Robert Putnam's original insights when he first started writing about third spaces was that there are often spots where we can meet someone who thinks differently across the political divide.

53:04He talked about growing up in a small town in Ohio where during his at his bowling league, there are people from many different races, many different political parties, many different wealth levels. Right. I think more and more in modern times, especially in the U.S., you just don't interact with someone that's a Republican if you're a Democrat. Right. You just don't interact with people who have a vastly different wealth level than you. Right. Especially on like even footing and even terms where you can have fun conversations about something else. And so one of Robert Putnam's points is that if we really want to fix this problem of the political divide generally, but also the kind of fraught nature of having tough political conversations, like it would be great to build spaces where we were talking like across the aisle generally, and then that would make it easier to have these conversations later.

53:52And so I actually see a lot of these problems as ones of social connection generally. Like we're just not interacting with people who, you know, share views that are different, that have views that are different than ours and so on. I also think that in general, when I watch my college students, it's not so much even that they're having a tough time with these hard political conversations. They're having a tough time with conversations generally, right? They have to call someone to, you know, update something on their financial aid or something. It's like, call someone. I'm, you know, fraught with social anxiety to be able to do that.

54:23One of the funny, you know, as a head of college, you often have these funny moments where you realize how different life is for Gen Z and Gen Alpha than it is for you. And one of the ones that I remember so well during my head of college days happened when one of my students was like, Hawk Santos, that's my title, head of college, Hawk Santos. Hawk Santos, there's this weird number on the wall in my room. Like, what's this number? And I was like, what is she talking about? So I go in a room and I'm like, oh, that's a phone jack. That number used to be a phone because you used to have a landline that people could call you in your room.

54:52And she was like, oh, that's so great. And she said, well, did each of my roommates have one? Like, is there one that would have been mine and like four other ones for my roommates? And I was like, no, like back in the day, there was just one number. And she literally asked, she's like, well, what would happen, you know, if I was roommates with Tal and someone called for Tal and Tal wasn't there, but I answered the phone. Like, what would happen? And I said, well, you would say, you know, Tal's not here. Can I take a message? And I realized like, wait, many college students, many 18 year olds today have never had that experience.

55:21You know, they don't have landlines in their own home. They never, you know, many college students have never had the experience of having to go to somebody's house, knock on the door, you know, say, hey, where's Tal? Can you come out to play and talk with a parent? And like these tiny social interactions that, you know, if you're of a certain age, like me and Tal, maybe you remember as being ubiquitous in society, just aren't the things that kids today grow up with. And so like, if they can't do that, you know, if they can't like be like, hey, Tal's not here, can I take a message? You know, how are they going to talk about, you know, like the bills that are coming out in the United States and fraught political politics and what's going on in the Middle East?

55:54Like, that's way harder than the simple things. And so I actually think if we could find ways to build in spaces where those simple conversations become easier and more practices to get kids to kind of engage in the habit of doing social connection generally, then we'll actually solve a lot of the tougher political conversation issues that our young people are facing today. You know, Laurie, I'm thinking as you're talking about one of the practices that we have at the Happiness Studies Academy is we have retreats. And the reason we have those retreats is so that we can have, you know, face-to-face, in-person interactions rather than just being online.

56:31And our last retreat was in Finland. And we had one of the professors from a Finnish university talk about why is Finland, you know, time and time again, the happiest country in the world. And he said, one of the reasons is the sauna. And we're all like saying, the sauna? And he said, yes, Finns are obsessed with saunas. And he said, if you think about it, what it does, and he didn't use that language, but now I'm, you know, using your and Putnam's language. It's a third space. He says, we get in there and it doesn't matter if you're, you know, a CEO of a large company or, you know, a bus driver, you know, a street sweeper, a stay-at-home parent or whatever.

57:17You're there together. He added often naked. So, you know, no guys. Yeah, very intimate third space. Very intimate. And, you know, you talk about life. and that's a third space. So maybe, you know, one of our recommendations should be more saunas across. More saunas, I'm in, yeah. We can put some saunas throughout Yale's campus. Although I think it's one of its own problems perhaps, but we'll work through it. I know, I know. Yeah, we'll think about that one. Yeah, so creating more of those, again, they don't need to be major. Even micro interactions can make all the difference on campuses and the workplace and beyond.

57:56Thank you. You're listening to me speaking with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar of the Happiness Studies Academy. We'll be back after this short break. Does anyone else feel like August is the Sunday of summer? Especially when the new school year looms, I start thinking about resetting my routine. And for me, that often begins with my closet. I've been trying to buy fewer, better pieces, the kind I know I'll wear again and again. And that's why I've become such a fan of quince. The piece I keep reaching for is Quince's washable stretch silk tiered maxi dress. The silk feels incredibly soft. It has a little stretch to it so it's comfortable to wear all day long.

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1:01:15Where to next?

1:01:20Sheree. Hello. So I have a question, Dr. Santos, about this is kind of following the same lines about students. So I have a college age student and he is completely mortified when I speak to anyone in public. If I pass someone on the sidewalk and say hello, if I talk to someone in line at the grocery store, he's like, why are you always talking to people? And then we had a conversation recently about this Gen Z stare. I don't know if you're familiar with this, but this idea that when you ask a Gen Z person a question and they just stare back at you with no response. And so we were having a long back and forth about this.

1:01:58And I was trying to express to him the importance or the value in just communicating with other people, recognizing someone else, just having these small conversations, a little chit chat. And he's like, if I'm working at a food counter and they get their food, I'm doing my job. Why does it have to be all this extra? So my question is, when you have students who have come to your class, I would imagine for a reason, they're choosing to take this class. And then you offer them these things that they can do. Do you find that they struggle to recognize the value in doing those things? And then what do you do with that?

1:02:37Yeah, no, it's a great question. And I resonate. Believe me, I get a lot of the Gen Z stare in my life as a professor. I mean, I think one of the strategies I've had for convincing people that this stuff is important is really showing people the data. Right. I mean, in my course, you literally get to see the graph of what happens if you engage in the conversation with the barista at the coffee shop versus if you don't. And then you see that graph and you're like, well, I actually want more of life satisfaction. I want more of positive emotion. Maybe I should try it out. And I think this is critical.

1:03:08You know, I mentioned before this idea that our minds lie to us about the kinds of things that make us happy. And I think our minds lie to us about so much of what the benefits of social connection could be. This is definitely true for Gen Z, but I think it's true for adults too. Some of the original studies on the benefits of these really micro interactions happened not with individuals who are Gen Z, but kind of like middle-aged adults in the workforce. Nick Epley did this study where he had people on a commute to work. He's, again, like kind of middle-aged people hopping on the L train to go to work because he did this study in Chicago in the U.S.

1:03:41And he either told people, hey, for the entire train ride, I want you to enjoy your solitude, be by yourself, or hey, for the entire train ride, I want you to talk to someone, right? He does the study and finds that when you talk to someone, you wind up feeling happier, enjoying more positive mood and so on. But the other thing he does is to have subjects predict, hey, if you were in one of these two conditions, the enjoy your solitude condition versus the talk to someone condition, which would make you feel better? And that was like, you know, one of the most striking effects in positive psychology.

1:04:09People think that talking to the stranger on the train is going to be awkward, crummy, anxiety provoking, et cetera, et cetera. Our predictions are wrong. And one of the things Nick argues is that our predictions are wrong because we don't often engage in these activities. In fact, he finds, for example, the introverts really strongly predict that this is going to be terrible. But the benefits that they accrue are the same as those that an extrovert might accrue. Kind of surprisingly, this is a finding I guess I'm pushed back on. And so I like often like to cite it like, no, no, no, here's a graph.

1:04:39You could look at it yourself. But his argument is that introverts tend to engage in these little micro interactions less. So they don't notice the benefits. And their misconception about what it's going to feel like gets bigger and bigger, right? Because you never get the data to show you, oh, it's not as bad as I thought. And I think that's actually what's going on with Gen Z a lot of the time, right? Is that they don't engage in these interactions. As we mentioned, they don't have this moment to like, you know, quickly answer the phone and talk to somebody or talk to folks on the street. They just have no practice.

1:05:04And so when they simulate what this is going to feel like, it feels really hard and it feels like it has a lot of friction. It feels like it's going to be really hard. And they never engage in these practices to get the data to say, not only it wasn't that bad, but like it actually kind of made me feel good. It made me feel a little bit more connected. It made me feel a little bit happier than I would have felt on that train ride. So I like showing the data and kind of convincing folks, hey, just experiment. Just try it once. Notice and see what it feels like. yeah thank you that's great advice you know laurie the idea of just experiment see what happens you know the worst that would happen okay you're a little bit embarrassed uh so what um and then also to recognize that for many of these interventions there is a startup cost yes it's easier to sit by yourself and you know be you know inside your you know your screen it's a little bit more challenging to you know smile at someone and strike up a conversation But once we do that, once, you know, the first step, it becomes an upward spiral.

1:06:05I think it's so important to recognize that, like, our intuitions about how bad it's going to be are wrong. You know, and they're wrong for so many things in the domain of social connection, right? We assume that other people don't want to talk to us. This is another finding from some of Nick Epley's work, right? That the person you're talking to is hating it the whole time, being like, who's this weirdo who's talking to me on the train? No, it turns out that the people who you're talking, who are talked to actually enjoy it as well. Um, we worry that it would be tough to ask someone for help to show that we're vulnerable, but social psychologists have long documented this so-called beautiful mess effect, where if you seem like you're a little needy, like, and then you seem like you're a little vulnerable, that actually enhances your likability to other folks.

1:06:46And so I actually think I honestly tell one of my roles is to tell college students about all these kinds of biases that like you think social connection is going to be bad. You think you're going to be bad at it. You think other people aren't going to like it. But not only is it going to be neutral, it's going to be good for your happiness, for your likability, for all these other things. Sometimes we need to overcome all these misconceptions. Yeah. Love it. Wonderful. Valentina. Thank you, Tal. I'm going to make a quick question, but I think it has a lot of deep meaning behind. In Spanish, we can relate two ideas to happiness.

1:07:24Estar feliz, which is joy or emotional state, and ser feliz, which is fulfillment, whole person well-being, etc. etc. So I started a project four years ago that promotes happiness as whole person well-being, as a personal responsibility. So I just want to listen to your insight on that, Laurie. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a couple of threads on that. One is that I love that you're bringing up the way different languages refer to happiness, because I think this is one of the problems we face, right, is that we have really limited tools to talk about incredibly complicated states, whether those are states of emotion, states of short-term happiness, state happiness, and so on.

1:08:08One of my favorite projects coming out of the work of Tyler Vanderbilt's lab at Harvard these days is a whole repository of words for happiness and words for emotions from around the world. And what you find is English, the language I speak from a terrible monolingual American, And it's just like so impoverished when it comes to other countries. And just like, you know, a concept that many folks know, even if they don't know German, you know this word schadenfreude, right? It's like, it's an American. I don't know German, but I'm like, I hear that word. I'm like, oh, I get schadenfreude, that kind of good feeling you get when something bad happens to somebody else.

1:08:42Know what it means. So many of the words in this kind of big corpus that they're putting together are concepts that you like when you hear it, you're like, oh my gosh, I totally kind of have that concept, even though I don't have a word for it. But one of my favorite ones, I'm going to forget the word, which is even more embarrassing, but it's a word in Norwegian that means on the first hot day of the year, the cold beverage that you have outside. And as someone who lives in the northeast of the United States, I get, I'm like, oh my gosh, there's that day and you have the beer and it's so good, right?

1:09:11But the point is that we have impoverished words when it comes to all these concepts. And so I think making distinctions, for example, between, well, what I mean by happiness when I mean the joy, the short-term stuff, and what I mean by happiness when I mean the long-term stuff, right? Those distinctions, you know, are really critical. And in terms of, like, which one should we prioritize, I think the science shows us something interesting, right, which is, like, prioritizing both is pretty good, right? As you kind of have more joy in your life, more of these short-term moments of feeling good, that can contribute to a life where you feel like you're overall flourishing.

1:09:44You're kind of overall promoting your happiness. And finally, I love this idea that you talked about it as a personal responsibility, right? I think sometimes we can kind of poo-poo happiness because we assume it's selfish, right? It's just like me, like, oh, you know, poor me. I'm not as happy as I could be. Like, you know, me, me, me. I want to feel better. But I think more and more data are coming out showing just how powerful people's mood can be for the kinds of ways that they interact in the world. and in particular the good things they do in the world. Konstantin Kuchlev, who's a professor at Georgetown, has been doing these studies asking the question, like, who's out there, like, fighting the good fight for the big problems, right?

1:10:24Like, who's out there trying to deal with the climate crisis that we're facing? In the U.S., when we face social justice problems, you know, who's going to, for example, a Black Lives Matter protest? Like, who's, like, really trying to put in the work to fix the problems that you perceive us facing? And what he finds is that a lot of it is predicted by your positive mood. You know, if you ask who are the people that are really worried about the climate crisis, it tends to be people who are a little high anxiety, a little high depression. But if you ask the question, who's getting solar panels, who's going to a protest, who's calling, you know, their congressman or a politician to try to help and fix things, it tends to be the people who are feeling happier.

1:11:01And his hypothesis is that, like, actually, if we want to fix the structural problems out there, we kind of need to put our own oxygen mask on first because that's how we're going to help others and that's how we're going to help the world. And so I love this notion that, like, you should see your own life satisfaction. You should see your own kind of flourishing as a personal responsibility. I actually think based on Kuchlev's work, it becomes kind of a moral responsibility to take care of yourself. that might be one of the best ways to make sure we have the bandwidth to be helping others and helping the world too.

1:11:36That's great. And Laurie, I just want to connect the two strands of your response. You talk about how language is important and we talk about how words create worlds and how concepts conceive. And one of the words that we use is rather than think about the pursuit of happiness as being selfish or selfless, we talk about it being self-full. And within the idea of self-fulness, that's when you take care of yourself and you take care of others. More than that, it's through taking care of yourself that you take care of others. And by taking care of others, you're also taking care of yourself. So you're potentially creating an upward spiral of goodness and happiness.

1:12:24I love this. I love this concept of self-ful. It's a good word.

1:12:31Thank you, Vale. Gadi. Thank you. First of all, thank you both for everything that you do to help other people. You were both my heroes. So thank you very much.

1:12:48I'm very much on board. Dal has also known me for many years, I'm very much on board with doing things proactively to become happier. I have two teenage daughters who are 17 years old, who will not listen to any of this and would love any advice that you have for how we can get these messages through to them. Well, I will say one of the things you can do sounds like something you're already doing, Gadi, which is that we know our behaviors are contagious, right? If you're at the dinner table talking not about the terrible things that happened at work, but your delights, that's the kind of thing that's going to make other people tend to do that too, and especially your kids.

1:13:33While it doesn't often feel like it, you know, there's lots of evidence from Sugal Baraset and others that the contagion that we experience both in our behaviors and our emotions happen for it to happen through the people who are in charge to the people who are a little bit less in charge. And even though it doesn't feel that way, especially with a 17-year-old, you as a parent are actually in charge. But what that means is that you actually have some agency over the emotions in your family and in some ways the behaviors in your family. You just kind of have to practice yourself. And I love this piece of advice because it gives parents, and even if you're not a parent, a leader at work and so on, a manager, permission to take care of yourself and to make sure you are doing the kinds of things that you need to do to promote your well-being because those kinds of behaviors and the emotions that emerge from those behaviors will transmit.

1:14:20The other thing I'll suggest, though, is that, you know, what I find works so much with our young people today in terms of getting this message out is really just sharing the data. One of the insights I had from, you know, the fact that my happiness class went viral and I think the fact that Tal's happiness class went viral and so on is that I think our young people aren't looking for platitudes about the kinds of things they're supposed to do, right? Like, I think they get a lot of that. I think they're really much more evidence-based than previous generations. I think they're like, show me the data, and then I'll do what I need to do.

1:14:53And I think that, you know, in the case of happiness studies, we just have tons of data on the simple kinds of behavior and mindset changes you can make to feel happier. And so I think rather than tell them what to do, show them what they can do. Like, you know, hey, did you know there's a study that you just talked to somebody, you know, in the grocery store, you'll wind up feeling happier. Huh, you know, it's kind of like pointing them to the water, but not trying to force them to drink, give them a sense of the kinds of things they can do. And I find that that can be much more powerful than you expect.

1:15:21Yeah. You know, my wife just recently shared a study with our kids that's part of the Harvard study that doing house chores contributes to self-esteem, well-being, and success. And I actually think it helped. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Another general thing we talk a lot about on the podcast is that sometimes when we want people to do something, the easiest way we think we can get them to do it is to tell them to do that. Right. But if we reflect on how we get motivated to do things, we instantly realize what a bad strategy that is. Right. Like the way to get the dishwasher never to get empty, it is for my husband to like nag me about it.

1:16:00Right. I could have been immediately about to go to the dishwasher. or be like, are you an empty dishwasher? I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm going, you know, like, those are the kinds of dynamics that we have. As parents, we often forget that with our kids. We're often in the mode of telling rather than showing, right? And I think if we can get back to a mode of showing either through our own behavior or just like, you know, revealing the consequences of different forms of action, you know, kind of like you were saying, Tal, like, hey, did you know that doing chores like actually increases self-esteem?

1:16:26Like, these folks are like smart agentive individuals, even if they're a little younger than us, and they're going to hear kind of what they should do and be more likely to engage in it when they kind of figure it out on their own and make a decision themselves that, hey, this might be a good thing to engage with rather than you just sort of telling them or worse trying to force them or give them rewards for it or so on. Letting them find their own intrinsic motivation is a really powerful strategy. Love that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Gadi. Danny. Thank you, Dan. Hi, Clarence.

1:17:02So good to see you again. I am wondering how I have a six-year-old who is here. And sometimes I wonder what can I do for him to remain happier and feel happy for the rest of his life. Because sometimes, although he's a lot of life and everything, at some points I see that he becomes in this state of hedonic adaptation. And so I wonder how can I explain him without that? to continue his happiness. So thank you. Yeah, well, I think I think that's a spot when you're dealing with younger kids where your actions matter a lot, right? Watching your behavior matters a lot. I think I think we kind of implicitly know this a little bit with the not so good behaviors, right?

1:17:50You know, what's one way to get kids really addicted to screens is if they see you on your screen all the time, right? They're going to cut they is, you know, Or, you know, another thing in my house is when you hear your parents swear and the kid instantly picks up on the bad word that they're not supposed to say, right? You know, they're soaking that stuff up. But they're also soaking the good stuff up, right? So I think that the more you can engage in these practices, the more they're kind of learning the right kinds of things to do. One I think matters a lot for parents is really talking through the emotions you're going through, especially if they're bad emotions, right?

1:18:23I think one of the things that we can do, a mindset shift we can engage in to feel a lot better is to give ourself some self-compassion when we're not having a good time, right? I think this is a talk through that really helps with kids, right? You know, mommy's feeling really frustrated today and she's having a bad day. I'm actually feeling really frustrated and maybe a little lonely. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to call, you know, call my sister tonight because that's what I need to do. But like, it's okay. Everybody goes through bad emotions. Like that kind of stream of consciousness said out loud teaches kids words for emotions.

1:18:54So they know it's not just a yucky feeling. You can be feeling frustrated or lonely or sad or angry or whatever. And it kind of lets you articulate what you're going to do, that it's okay that you're going through it. Everybody goes through it, but here's what I'm going to do to fix it. Those are powerful practices for little kids to hear. When we finished our project sort of sharing some of these happiness strategies with teenagers, we also did a project with Sesame Workshop, which is the group in the U.S. that built Sesame Street to try to think about like, well, what are ways we can fill this into little kids?

1:19:27And one of the most powerful ways we figured out is like, well, parents can articulate some of these things too, right? Parents' behavior matters. This is like a lot of the direct transmission we have. And so finding ways to just articulate what you're going through, let them hear it, they'll pick up on it. Not immediately, not perfectly, not 100 % of the time, but you're getting that information in there in a way that you'll be surprised will stick when you least expect it. Yeah. Thank you so much. And just to add to that, stories, whether it's stories of, you know, mom or stories of, you know, grandpa or a story of, you know, of Helen Keller, stories that the children that have a value base that communicate an important lesson.

1:20:18And this is one of the things I think you all do so well at the Happiness Studies Academy, right, is that not only are you not just focused on psychology, but you're also focused on the system and focused on neuroscience. You're also focused on the ways that we often share narrative about our values, right? You know, I love that there's novels and movies that you are all studying as part of the academy, because these can be fantastic ways to learn about our emotions, to learn what we value, to learn what are the kinds of paths to a flourishing life. So yeah, Yeah, the earlier we can get those good stories into our kids, the better.

1:20:47Yeah. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to see you both here together. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sandy. Yes. Hello. I wanted to circle back on the social connection piece and really, really unpack it at the micro level. I know Sandy had that excellent question at the macro level, and we've been sprinkling it throughout. but kind of the dynamic between still feeling loneliness, but not necessarily being alone, right? So you're in a crowd or you're with people, you're talking to people, and yet you still come away from the situation feeling lonely. I heard a podcast about this peripherally about, you know, small talk versus deeply connecting around things that bring you meaning, things that light you up.

1:21:36But I'm interested in how it plays out in like different human ecosystems. Like, are there studies around gender norms or even cultural norms about what gets talked about and how does that facilitate building the connection? or even like in microcosms of small communities that everyone knows each other. And so there's, you know, worry around gossip. I saw this on the small college campus I worked at. And so people struggle with being vulnerable because they're worried about gossip. And also, is the relationship transactional on nature or does it focus on connection first? So if you can unpack any of that, that would be great.

1:22:19Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's a great question. And I think it's worth thinking about how loneliness can emerge due to our kind of fears about being vulnerable in these populations, whether it's, you know, gossip on a college campus, you know, connecting with folks at work. Right. You know, this is something I think about a lot that, you know, work is not a third space. It's like, you know, homework is like the second space. But it's a spot where we spend a lot of time with other people, you know, where we really could be boosting our social connection and our vulnerability if we wanted to. Right.

1:22:45And so my read of the data is that pretty much what it says is that the path to feeling connected and feeling less lonely is in some ways like as about as universal as they come. Right. Which is that you need to share and get vulnerable with other people. And often a way to do that is through a little bit deeper conversation. Right. This is, again, some work by Nick Epley and his colleagues where he points out that we're often having shallow conversation. We're talking about the weather, you know, what sports game we're going to. But we're not talking about the things that reveal our values, right?

1:23:17We're not talking about the things that really matter. And I think that's the kind of conversation we need to get to, right, where we're really kind of sharing the kinds of things that matter. And, you know, there's some nuance there, of course, but that kind of strategy can work often in lots of different situations, right? You know, take, again, the kind of idea of friendship at work. I think this is when we're like, well, we definitely don't want to overshare at work. And there's things that, you know, there are different boundary conditions and so on. But all of us can share a little bit about what's going on.

1:23:46And all of us can ask questions. Often the path to reducing our loneliness isn't about getting other people to know us, but it's about asking questions that allow us to get to know other people, which is sort of always on the table. You know, so if your friend, you know, hey, what are, you know, you're at work. Like, what are you doing this weekend? Like, oh, you know, I'm like, you know, going to Rhode Island for the weekend or something. Like, oh, what's in Rhode Island? And how did you connect with that? Do you have family there? Right. Like that's not a kind of overshare that's going to get you into HR trouble.

1:24:13It's just trying to understand, oh, you're going fishing. Like, how did you decide to go fishing? Like, when did you start doing that as a kid? Right. Like, what's your favorite part about fishing? Right. Like those are just questions where you can kind of get to know people like one more step deep, more deeply. And that can resonate a lot with kind of feeling more connected. Because the next thing is they're going to ask you the same thing and you'll feel a little bit better. And so I think the instinct in whatever situation we're in is actually to go like half a step deeper than we would normally go in that situation.

1:24:43And when in doubt, ask other people questions, right? Like really try to follow up and get curious with them because that's really a quick path to getting to know someone else. And it might even be a quick path to kind of overcoming some of the political divides we were talking about before. One of my favorite strategies for having tough conversations and even seeing eye to eye across political differences is this lovely work on deep canvassing. This is a work of Josh Callow, who's a colleague of mine at Yale, where he asks a question like, you know, what are what are the ways that we might be able to see eye to eye on these tough issues?

1:25:19And he says, well, rather than kind of perspective giving of like, hey, here's, you know, what I think about the issue I care about, do some perspective getting. So, for example, he does a study on individuals who are kind of, you know, anti LGBTQ issues, right, maybe anti trans rights and so on. And what he'll do is go up to folks during a canvassing situation. And rather than say, hey, let me tell you about an experience, you know, I had as a queer person that was really tough. He'll say, hey, person I'm talking to, what was a situation where you felt like you didn't really belong or you felt really marginalized or you felt somebody didn't get you?

1:25:52And he does this work, you know, in situations where there are a lot of individuals who are, you know, not as familiar with queer individuals, right? So they'll say, you know, well, one time I was, you know, in the military and I had PTSD and no one really understood it and stuff. But the individual who's canvassing will sit and listen to that for a while, right? And you say, huh, you know, that situation which you felt like you didn't belong, like that's the kind of thing a lot of queer people go through in their situations, right? And like they're making a connection, right? But the key to decanvassing is you're asking the question first, you're listening.

1:26:23And Kala's work suggests that it doesn't necessarily, you know, completely change people's political opinions, but it gets everybody to listen to the lived experience of other folks. And it gets people to kind of, you know, not necessarily see eye to eye and maybe not change their situations, but to hear them and often to realize that there's more in common than you actually think. one of the examples that comes not from Josh's work, but this is from the work of Jamil Zaki, who is also doing this lovely work on having these tough political conversations where you ask questions is you often have these situations where people actually see eye to eye more than you realize.

1:26:58Jamil did ones on gun violence, right? Should we be able to own guns and so on? And he had someone who was kind of staunchly anti-gun talk to someone who was pro-gun. And the pro-gun person said, you know, I live in the South, I'm actually queer, and I'm afraid all the time. And so owning a gun makes me feel a little bit safer, right? And that might not be the stereotype you have about the person who's going to be super pro-gun. And it wasn't like the anti-gun person was like, oh, we should all have guns. But it was like, oh, I see eye to eye a little bit more. I get your lived experience. I don't feel as alienated from you.

1:27:31I feel like we can actually have the conversation and start that. But the point is, that all starts from listening. It starts with getting curious and asking questions, which I think is the key to, you know, maybe seeing a little bit better across political divides, but it's also the key to reducing our loneliness. Yeah. Yeah. I like that a lot, Laurie. You know, so on the one hand, you want to share and be vulnerable. And on the other hand, you want to ask questions and listen. So both input and outputs, and that's how you create. So it's sharing vulnerability and ask questions and listen. It's great.

1:28:06So I think we have time for one more. I'm going to take two more. The first one, Cristiana. Hello, Tau. Thank you. Hello, Laurie. I met you in Lago di Como. In Italy. I remember I said, Laudy Santos. You said you are the only one who can pronounce my last name correctly. Great seeing you here with Tau and having this inspiring conversation. I just graduated from the Master in the Science of Happiness. And we thought, yes, very happy. And I had two mimetic leaderships here inspire me. Today, I'm going to have an important lecture at a place near my parents' house in São Paulo. and I always get excited because intensity can be my strength and also my weakness to take everything that we know from the science of happiness and how can help people.

1:29:08And one thing that I'll always say is you teach you, trying to connect with that. But I would like to love to listen from both of you, very experienced teachers, All this path have created, both in Harvard and in Yale, a program that became the most popular one. If you need to take something out there to talk about happiness, what would be one or two key messages that you really think that help people that they need right at this moment? well i think that the way you know the way to do the talks best is to use as many stories as possible i mean i think what tal is talking about is you teach you is like find something that resonates with you a story a narrative you can share and that's going to be powerful but but on the one topic that i think i wish everyone knew about happiness you know it might be the theme of this overall webinar right which is that you can change you can train your happiness you know if you're not feeling good right now there are behaviors you can engage in mindset shifts you can engage in to just feel better.

1:30:14And I think that can be so empowering for people. Thank you, Laurie. Saul? Yeah, thank you for this, Laurie. And I'm going to, you know, quote someone whom you've heard me quote, Christiana, many times before, Carl Rogers, who wrote that what is most personal is most general. So, you know, I remember the Dalai Lama once said, I'm all for cross-cultural research, which is very important, and we need to do more of it. What we mustn't lose sight of is the fact that we're also at the same time, very similar, that there is a universal nature. So when you go deep into your own mind, soul, spirit, call it whatever, whatever you want you're also going into the universal spirit soul and mind and so um you know look inside again be prepared to be vulnerable and share look outside ask questions and listen thank you are both such an inspiration thank you thank you thank you so elissa can you make this very short i can't go for it i can't um thank you very much for both doing this for free um dr laurie i took your class in five years five years ago and it was fantastic thank you here's my question yeah i remember i have the notes in front of me i have two quick things to say and they'll be brief one was when we had this class you talked about random acts of kindness like you mentioned that to the barista and the second thing that i don't think was discussed but thought you could consider doing the two of you is about trying new fun things to add your happiness factor you had mentioned this in your prior i'm you know take a knitting take a crocheting try a new sport take classes and so i'm a current 70 year old california resident taking classes through long beach state highly influenced by you i'm in five classes and at my age i've actually formed a small group we're a band and we perform in southern california so lots to thank you so if you would would mind addressing the random acts of kindness thought and doing new things to help you become a happier person.

1:32:30Thanks. This is like, you know, why it's so tragic to, you know, only have such a short time to talk about this when you need a whole academy to talk about this. But yes, so much data showing the power of random acts of kindness. You know, I think Tal talked about this idea of self-full, right? They do not selfless or, you know, kind of selfish that doing for others, right, kind of being selfless is selfish in the fact that it winds up making you feel better. And there's just so much evidence suggesting that doing for others, thinking about others, reaching out to others, it winds up making us even happier than we think.

1:33:03A bias I think everyone should know about is this phenomenon of under-sociality, that we don't predict the positive effects of sociality nearly as much as they are there, right? We assume like, oh, it'll feel okay to do something nice for someone else. But it feels much better for us than we expect than others. So yes, random acts of kindness. Glad we got that in there. But fun was something we haven't talked about. And I think something that the research really shows can be really important. You know, I think of fun as having these three components. It's a moment where you tend to be really social, right?

1:33:32Which we've talked about a lot. It's a moment where you tend to be a little bit present, you know, which we talked about a little bit, these moments of mindfulness. But it's also a moment in which you're often engaged in play, right? Just something for the intrinsic joy of doing it. And there's less and less of that stuff out there these days, especially among my college students where they're always doing something to like boost their resume or it's a side hustle or something. Right. But the act of just doing stuff for fun, these socially connected moments of presence and play, you know, studies really show that they can make you feel better.

1:34:04One of my favorite studies show that play is one of the easiest ways to reduce stress, that college students who tend to say I play a lot actually report less stressed and seem to use play as a coping strategy. energy so um get that play in there you know join a joint try out a new hobby join a singing group or join a band as you've done and don't worry about being a beginner because as we've talked about your habits will allow you to get better at it over time yeah thank you thank you thank you thank you listen what a lovely way to end on uh on fun um because uh you know while happiness is not the same as fun.

1:34:42Fun is an important element of happiness. This has been a lot of fun, Laurie. It's been meaningful. And I can't thank you enough for all that you're doing and for taking time to spend with us today. Well, gratitude right back at you. I feel like I'm just like, you know, continuing the fine legacy of big Ivy League classes that you began yourself. So thanks so much for all the work that you do. And thanks for having me on today. Great. Thank you, Laurie. Lorraine, thank you all for being here. And again, take good care of yourselves and of others. Bye-bye, everyone. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Thanks.

1:35:19Thanks.

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