Holiday Survival Guide I: Ending Family Arguments (with Rainn Wilson)

12:10Dr. Laurie Santos:Yeah. And you said the word that I think we all need to pay attention to, which is balance. Right. It's fine to like care about your house looking nice. But when that gets out of balance and now you're in judgy, snarky, pissy, sad mode, like that's when something's gone too far. So vigilance, again, watch for that moment of kind of imbalance and then try to rectify it.

12:36Dr. Laurie Santos:The 10 % Happier podcast is self-help for smart people. Hosted by veteran journalist and bestselling author Dan Harris, happiness is a skill you can learn. So why not try to master it? Each week, Dan chats with top scientists, meditation experts, and the occasional celebrity in wide-ranging conversations that explore topics like productivity, anxiety, enlightenment, psychedelics, and relationships. He's interviewed everyone from the Dalai Lama to Brene Brown to Mike D. from the Beastie Boys. Join Dan every week for a dose of ancient wisdom, modern science, and a little humor to help you feel better, do better, and be better.

13:14Dr. Laurie Santos:The 10 % Happier Podcast. Listen now, wherever you get your shows.

13:24Dr. Laurie Santos:All right, now we have a longer holiday woe that we got from Beth. And I think longer holiday woes we got a lot of because people have a lot of emotions when it comes to the holiday season. But this is about how we can manage holiday expectations about hospitality during the holiday season. And so here's my summary of Beth's email. So Beth's family hosts this big holiday event every year. And when Beth was home, she ran into a high school friend who she found out had had some losses in the year. High school friends didn't have anybody to go to the holidays with. So Beth emails her mom and says, hey, you know, my friend, she doesn't have everywhere to go.

14:02Dr. Laurie Santos:Would it be cool if I bring her? I'm going to assume it's cool. Let me know if it's not. But it would be so nice to have somewhere, you know, let this person have a happier holiday when she was going to be so lonely. But then radio silence. Beth hears nothing. And so she's like, oh, doesn't sound good. So a week before the event, Beth emails back and says like, hey, you didn't write back about my friend coming. I hope it's still cool. Still radio silence. But Beth's like, you know, it's the holidays, you know, Christmas hospitality, whatever it is. So Beth invites the friend and the mom is stone cold silent, very mean to Beth.

14:35Dr. Laurie Santos:And in fact, so mean that she puts Beth at the friend at a separate table, like the kids table in the other room from the holiday dinner where everybody's eating, which Beth lovingly referred to as the punishment table. It makes me feel like, you know, whatever problems my family didn't, they didn't shun me to a punishment table, at least in recent memory. So that's good. But I think it shows off what we often kind of go through, which is like, this is supposed to be a season of hosting and the holiday spirit, but we can get so tied to what we think the meal is going to be and who's going to be at the meal that we sometimes wind up not being as kind as we should be.

15:11Dr. Laurie Santos:So any ideas about how we can put some checks on that, like fight back against this idea of we can be so rigid that the holiday has to be this way that we wind up hurting the people we care about?

15:21Rainn Wilson:Well, I got to do a little Dear Abby on the letter. We got to Dear Abby this.

15:26Dr. Laurie Santos:Please. Yeah.

15:26Rainn Wilson:All right. Well, first of all, I always say to folks and my own son, my wife, people I deal with, when I was had this company, Soul Pancake, Like so many crossed wires by texting and emailing where it's like pick up the phone, pick up the phone, pick up the phone. Hear someone's voice. Run it by them voice to voice. It's really hard, especially on a chain, and then people don't want to respond because they – it's not a great way to communicate. Also, some people have very different opinions about Christmas. They're like, I want Christmas with the family. This is my chance to just see. I don't want Bobby bringing his girlfriend and Eddie bringing his high school friend and Dominic bringing his sick friend.

16:15Rainn Wilson:Like, I just want the family together. Some people feel very strongly about that. I know my friend Kevin once brought a girlfriend that he had only been dating for like six months and his family was like outraged. Like if it's a real girlfriend, it's like if it's this is headed towards engagement or something great. but don't just bring who you're currently seeing over. That just doesn't seem right. But I'm guessing the family's from the Midwest, and there's a lot of passive-aggressive stuff going on here. And the idea that the mom would be stewing on this for weeks or months and then just treat someone like that in person is incredibly dysfunctional and shows like there's conflict avoidance going on and passive aggression going on.

17:00Rainn Wilson:So I feel on all sides. But I think some of this could have been avoided with better communication.

17:06Dr. Laurie Santos:And one of the things we need to communicate about is exactly what you're saying, right? Which is like our values, right? It might be that for Beth, like the Christmas season is all about, you know, being kind to people in need or kind of, you know, Christmas hospitality. Who cares? But it might be that for Beth's mom, it's really about exactly what you're saying. It's family, like family, family. That is the value that we want to engage with in the season. And if you bring some rando, it's going to interrupt our family time. And that matters. But you can't know what other people's values are unless you first communicate.

17:35Dr. Laurie Santos:But then second, you know, are really honest and ask questions and say, you know, how do you feel about this? What does this mean to you? And so on. We often just don't do that second step of trying to see how it would feel to someone. And that matters a lot.

17:47Rainn Wilson:And increasing sensitivity and compassion to everyone during the holidays to understand that, you know, Uncle Ronnie may just want to watch the football game, you know. And Aunt Sally really wants to connect with this side of the family. And, you know, someone else, it's really about Jesus and church and going to church first thing in the morning. And it's much more of a religious thing. Some people expect a lot of presents. Like, it doesn't mean you have to kowtow to their every need, but get in reality with your family about what is the holidays for us. And maybe that's a great source of conversation is kind of like on Boxing Day, sit around like, hey, everyone, let's get together.

18:27Rainn Wilson:Let's talk about what the holidays mean for us. And like next year, like, what is it that we want to do? I mean, what do we love about it? What do we think we could change? What if we didn't exchange gifts? Because it's a lot of pressure and we just all put in money towards this charitable event that we feel strongly about or cause that we feel strongly about, you know, but to encourage that kind of group conversation to kind of move it forward.

18:52Dr. Laurie Santos:Well, this is a nice transition because the next set of holiday woes that we're going to tackle are navigating family dynamics. We've already started off, had the conversation, but we have some specific ones that I think might need the dear rain advice. And so here's one from Cal. Quote,

19:38Dr. Laurie Santos:how do we navigate that?

19:39Rainn Wilson:I don't know. You're going to have to take this one. But I hear about this a lot. Someone that's like, so you're still single? Like, you know, the expectation that you're going to be in a relationship or did you get that raise you were supposed to get last year? You're still at the same dead end job? Like there's can be some implications there. And one thing I will say is that I think this is the grumpy old man in me, but I feel like people are less good at conversation than they used to be. And maybe it's because we spend so much time looking at our phones.

20:16Dr. Laurie Santos:We're so out of practice. We're so out of practice.

20:19Rainn Wilson:Yeah. Because I think that a lot of times people are like, they just ask the same old questions. So how have you been? Good. How's the health? Nice weather we're having. Take any vacations? How's your job? How's your kid? How's your mom doing? How about those bears? how was O 'Hare airport? And then you're done. And then they're kind of like, that's it. And if you try and go deeper, people are not very good at listening.

20:49Dr. Laurie Santos:Yeah. Yeah.

20:49Rainn Wilson:I don't, this doesn't answer the question at all, but I think it's something that all of us can just be working on is getting, cause to me, great conversation comes out of curiosity. Like if I meet someone to interact with them, I'm deeply curious, like who are they? What makes them tick? What do they think about things? How did they get to where they are? And maybe that helps make me a podcast host for you as well.

21:13Dr. Laurie Santos:But I think that's the key. We all need to become podcast hosts around the family dinner table, right? We all need to bring in a little more curiosity. And this is a spot where I think the research helps us a lot. My colleague, Nick Epley, who's a professor at the University of Chicago, studies what he calls under-sociality, this idea that we're not as social as we could be, and we don't understand the benefits of sociality in the way that we should. And he has this technique that he calls deep conversation, which is avoid the shallow stuff. No, how was the weather? How was O 'Hare? You ask, what's one thing that you're really grateful for this year?

21:46Rainn Wilson:Oh, wow. That's great.

21:47Dr. Laurie Santos:You know, what's one thing about, you know, your work that really surprises you? You know, what's the last time you cried, right? Which is actually one of the items on his survey. And what people predict is like, awful, this is going to be way too overshare. But what happens is people really enjoy it. Even when they're talking about stuff that might be tough to talk about, they wind up feeling closer afterwards. So I think if your family conversations are veering into the stuff that's either activating all this old school, I'm not good enough, or you feel like you're veering into that career conversation you've had 40 times and you don't want to go through it again, just switch gears and get curious and get a little deeper.

22:23Dr. Laurie Santos:I think it can help a lot.

22:24Rainn Wilson:What about this? What about heading it off at the pass? Like gather everyone together. You arrive. Hey, everyone gather. I've got a couple announcements. Yes, I'm still working at blah, blah, blah. And no, I didn't get the raise. And yeah, my car sucks. I'm going to I'm looking to get a new one next year. And I've only had a couple of dates with this Susie, but I'm still single. And there you have it.

22:50Dr. Laurie Santos:You can make like a button, and so you don't have to get into it, like a little button that says, still at the dead-end job, still with Susie. Yes, she's still up.

22:57Rainn Wilson:Or conversation cards, hand out the cards. Here's some other questions to ask me on the flip it over, and then it's like, when's the last time you cried?

23:06Dr. Laurie Santos:Look, it sounds stupid, but I think props can be incredibly helpful. And in fact, Nick will share some of these with the episode, but Nick has a set of things you can download. So literally print them out and stick them on the table so that when the conversation dies down, if it's just on the table, someone will pick it up. And now you're talking about when the last time you cried was and you'll feel better.

23:24Rainn Wilson:I would love to get those resources.

23:28Dr. Laurie Santos:I don't think you need them, Rain. I feel like you're pretty good at conversation being a natural podcast host.

23:32Rainn Wilson:No, but I love like even that idea of like when's the last time you cried because that's going to be a portal to so many stories, you know, and to get to know someone. It's such a simple question, but it's tugging on the thread that unravels the sweater, you know?

23:48Dr. Laurie Santos:Yeah. And I think if nothing else, our time with the people we love should be there to get their stories. Again, not to get morbid, but many of us have family members that are getting up there. You know, we might not have time to extract those stories. It feels like we have forever. But in practice, you know, unless we ask these deeper questions, these curious questions, we might never get there. So we'll give you some tools to help out with that. You can find a version of these conversation tips from Nick Epley on my website at drlarisantos.com slash deep questions. That's drlarisantos.com slash deep questions.

24:24Dr. Laurie Santos:Why not give them a try and boost your social connection this holiday season? It's time for a quick break, but Rain and I will be back soon with more holiday tips when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment. The 10 % Happier podcast is self-help for smart people. Hosted by veteran journalist and best-selling author Dan Harris, happiness is a skill you can learn, so why not try to master it? Each week, Dan chats with top scientists, meditation experts, and the occasional celebrity in wide-ranging conversations that explore topics like productivity, anxiety, enlightenment, psychedelics, and relationships.

25:01Dr. Laurie Santos:He's interviewed everyone from the Dalai Lama to Brene Brown to Mike D. from the Beastie Boys. Join Dan every week for a dose of ancient wisdom, modern science, and a little humor to help you feel better, do better, and be better. The 10 % Happier Podcast. Listen now, wherever you get your shows.

25:24Dr. Laurie Santos:Okay, not just family drama people are worried about, it's also the drama that we experience in the world. politics. This is getting so deep. I'm going to take the Santa hat off, both because it's hot and also to signal we're going to the hard stuff right now. Lots of families are worried about the fact that their holidays are spent with people who have political beliefs that might not align with their own political beliefs. And we heard from many, many listeners who wanted some help with this. So here's just one, Kim. Kim notes on Instagram, I'm married to a wonderful husband of 23 years. He was raised in a conservative family, and I was raised in a liberal one.

26:01Dr. Laurie Santos:It is a nightmare hearing both sides argue about politics, especially because both of us were raised in families so focused on politics that we hate politics. It is a problem every year. Please give us some advice. Dear Rain, you want to take this one?

26:16Rainn Wilson:Yeah, I mean, it's really simple. I mean, you don't have to engage, number one. Number two, you can say, hey, I choose not to engage as a proactive response. And number three, you can kind of, whether it's by email beforehand or gathering everyone around at the get-go and just say, listen, guys, we live in such politically divisive times. Can we make an agreement about what we're going to do about this? I mean, half of us voted for Trump. Half of us didn't. Half of us feel like this about immigration. Half of us don't. Like, we all know that. We're not going to solve anything by getting into it.

26:55Rainn Wilson:We may actually increase division. Can we focus on what unites us? What are those precious points of unity that we can focus our conversation on? Because I think that that's always the way to go.

27:09Dr. Laurie Santos:Yeah. And studies show that when you find stuff that you're united on, it can overcome, you know, some of the yucky political differences. There's some work, for example, that realizing like, hey, we both love the same sports team. Like we are huge Patriots fans. That can overcome a little bit of the divisiveness when it comes to politics. You know, so if I'm if I'm a liberal and I know somebody else is a Patriots fan just like me, then it's OK that they voted for Trump because we still have this one thing that unites us. And so think about the uniting things and talk about those in detail. But if you want to get into politics, I think this is a spot where the research shows a path forward, which is don't talk about the facts of the matter.

27:51Dr. Laurie Santos:Talk about the lived experience and the feelings. There's some of this lovely work that's looking at the phenomena of perspective getting, asking for people's lived experiences. It's kind of similar to these deep questions. But you ask, you know, when was the time that you felt like, you know, you were really struggling? You know, oh, I see. Like that's from your perspective. You know, when I think of, I don't know, people who are going through a tough time because of finances, you know, that's what they're going through and so on. But it's another way that you can talk about lived experiences and values and see those things.

28:24Dr. Laurie Santos:And you don't have to talk about who you voted for, but you can get into the thick of it, which can kind of give you some insight into where somebody might be coming from if they think a little bit differently than you. You don't have to agree with them, but by asking questions and trying to learn more, you can often get a little bit of compassion sometimes.

28:40Rainn Wilson:Yeah, I think. And there's that curiosity podcaster thing again, asking questions. No one likes to be lectured to. No one likes to have facts that they're unsure of kind of spouted at them. And I love that idea about talking about lived experience. And, you know, like climate change is something that's very important to me. And, you know, renewable resources, regenerative agriculture, you know, climate solutions, climate communications. But I wouldn't go to a family gathering and start talking about CO2.

29:16Dr. Laurie Santos:Bring a PowerPoint and walk through, you know, point by point. Yeah.

29:20Rainn Wilson:And lecture about, oh, you're driving that Hummer and here's the output. And if you drove a Kia, you know, you could do like I'm not going to do any of that. But I might talk about how hard it was to have had evacuated four different wildfires in the last six years in three different houses, which I did undergo and undertook. I can talk about how I'm afraid that the Pacific Northwest woods that I loved growing up in won't be there for my son or his kids. And how can we preserve nature? Talk about a shared love of nature. You know, what was it like growing up on that pond or when you would go fishing each summer?

30:07Rainn Wilson:What was that like? Because both left and right do want to preserve nature, conserve nature, cherish nature. And that's a point of commonality. Yeah.

30:20Dr. Laurie Santos:And I think we forget that we wind up having way more of these points of commonality than we think. This is another bias of the mind that I think just gets even more extreme during the holiday season, which is that if you ask, most people agree on most things. Like most people care about the environment and don't want it, don't want the earth to go away. Most people care about, you know, free and fair elections. Most people care that people are being respected no matter what their identity is. Like if you look at broad strokes, most of us agree on most of the issues. The nuance is like, you know, in the little things about how we want to execute those things.

30:56Dr. Laurie Santos:But if you find ways to stick to people's broader values and you do that with curiosity and asking questions, getting perspective rather than giving your own perspective, you usually wind up in safer territory.

31:07Rainn Wilson:Well said. Well done. All right.

31:11Dr. Laurie Santos:Here's another one. This is one I can totally relate to. It's from an email from Rachel. She says, my mom and my partner's mom feel very attached to the holidays and have never been okay with, quote, sharing the holiday from year to year. This causes us to split time and run around like crazy, seeing everyone, limiting the actual fun that can be had. I hear this from so many families who have young kids. Where are the kids going to go, you know, for the big holiday moments? Like if you celebrate Christmas, Christmas morning, are the kids going to be at my in-laws or are they going to be at my partner's in-laws?

31:48Dr. Laurie Santos:And families feel like they get left out if they don't get chosen.

31:52Rainn Wilson:Yeah, there's also a lot more split families. divorced families. I know people, I know one guy every year, a friend of mine, you know, his ex-wife hosts the Thanksgiving dinner and he does the day after Thanksgiving barbecue. And he's always a little surly about it. It's like, why do I have to do that?

32:16Dr. Laurie Santos:The day after, yeah.

32:17Rainn Wilson:Why can't we alternate, you know? But that's just how it is. And And again, this is adjusting to the holidays. And, you know, one way to maybe approach this, Lori, and I'm wondering your thoughts on this, is in Soul Boom, we talk a lot about spiritual paths and solutions towards mental health and making the world a better place. And time and time again, this concept of service comes up. And when we are in a service mode, we actually increase our own happiness. We think that what's going to make us happier is getting what we want and setting things up so that we get what we want. But oftentimes by turning that around where we can walk into a circumstance and say, how can I be of service here?

33:07Rainn Wilson:How can I be of service to my in-laws and to my mom to give her the Christmas that she wants? And you don't want to, of course, just sacrifice your needs and suffer. That's not what I'm talking about and not speak up for what's important to you. And, you know, you have to honor your voice. But like for my friend with the barbecue, it's shifting his mentality where it's like. This is about the kids. What do the kids want? This is what they like. Let me be of service to my family. I'm going to sacrifice a Thanksgiving dinner for the well-being of my kids from this divorce and then also provide them with this barbecue and have.

33:50Rainn Wilson:And so it's shifting into a service mindset. What do you think?

33:56Dr. Laurie Santos:I love it. I mean, the research shows that this is exactly the way to feel better. You mentioned like, well, you don't want to sacrifice too much. But I think what you see from the studies is like it's not a sacrifice at all. If you can get into that service mindset, then you get something out of the act of doing something kind for others. And I think this might be the path out of it. you know, if you're feeling a little rigid about your family coming at a certain time, and you really thought like, what would be a gift, you know, to your young kids who are traveling with a toddler, maybe through O 'Hare Airport and have to frantically go from one house to another, you might say, hey, let's think about if we could do this a different time.

34:31Dr. Laurie Santos:We'll do it a week out. We'll do it the week after, you know, the holidays when everything's on sale and get the decorations for cheaper and all, you know, the cheap hot chocolate and so on. Like just that act, I could imagine that Rachel, who was going through this, would say, oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Right. But it's this act of remembering that the gifts we can give don't have to be gifts. They can really be our kindness and our care during these tough times. They can also be asking other people for help. So oddly, some of the studies show that another way we can be of service is to ask for the things we need, especially if it's relatively easy for the person we're asking to give it.

35:08Rainn Wilson:Do you have like an example of that? How does that work?

35:10Dr. Laurie Santos:Well, we do. In fact, from a happier story from Maria, do you see how good I am at the podcast transitions? Oh, wow. The transitions are so good.

35:18Rainn Wilson:So much better than my podcast.

35:19Dr. Laurie Santos:All right. Well, here's for Maria, which I like ending this section on dealing with family dynamics with this particular example because it's kind of a positive. Well, it starts out bad, but it winds up being positive. So Maria tells us a story about her worst Christmas where she has a fight with her husband a few days before Christmas, doesn't remember what the fight is about. But during the fight, she asked the husband, do you love me anymore? And he starts crying and he says he doesn't know. Basically, fast forward, you know, 24 hours or so, it's the end of their entire relationship, the end of their marriage.

35:50Dr. Laurie Santos:But Maria is about to go home to visit her mom over Christmas. Mom loves Christmas. And she's a little bit worried that she's going to ruin her mom's Christmas by being like, my marriage just ended. And is tempted to pretend this isn't happening, to hold it in. But here's the part that I think the story gets happier. But she notes, Then I realized my mom, who's over 60 years old, she's had many wonderful Christmases in her life. One bad Christmas is not going to ruin that for her. And in fact, she would appreciate it much more if I reached out to her and asked for help. She would be angry if she heard later on that I'd suffered alone.

36:22Dr. Laurie Santos:So she goes home. She tells her mom. She calls her. And, of course, the mom is super happy because when does a mom get to give that kind of present to her daughter over Christmas of supporting her through something that's really terrible? Well, other members of the family find out Maria is worried what they're going to say. But of course, most people are incredibly compassionate, incredibly interested in helping. And it winds up being like a warmer, closer feeling Christmas than Maria had had before, despite, I mean, obviously the sadness of what she went through. She ends the story with, I hope this inspires others to reach out for help, too, and not to suffer alone.

36:57Dr. Laurie Santos:The helper will feel needed, and I'm sure it will increase their happiness and sense of purpose, too.

37:01Rainn Wilson:Wow. And fun fact, you know, that's how Maria and I met. And she's right here. Maria, come in here. Say hi to Lori. Say she took your letter. Come here. Come here.

37:13Dr. Laurie Santos:No, but it makes exactly your point, right? This idea of service. We forget that if we can shift into a service mindset, we feel better. But also, if we can make it easy for others to shift into a service mindset, if we can give them the gift of helping us, I think that's huge. And this gets back to some of the perfectionism we were talking about before. I think a lot of the people that go into like perfectionist holiday mode are often bad at asking for and receiving help with things. You know, we've all had the family, the family martyr who does the turkey and does all the stuff. And you're like, oh, can I set the table?

37:44Dr. Laurie Santos:I'm like, no, no, no, I'm going to do it myself. Like, think back and realize that you can help others by letting them help you a little bit, too.

37:51Rainn Wilson:You know, a lot of this, too, goes back to what we were saying at the very beginning. And I think it's kind of preparedness and vigilance. and it's proactive communication. I don't know what the circumstances were, but I imagine her sharing with her family, hey, I'm going through this really hard time. It's a holiday. I could use your support. I could use a safe space. I could use a space to grieve and to love and to just be surrounded by people that love me. That would be really important to me. And if you hear that, you're like, yeah, F yeah, I'm in. I'm all in. Of course, how can I be a part of that?

38:29Rainn Wilson:But part of that is on the Marias to communicate it well. And this is oftentimes what I find with folks is just living in a little bit more passive victim state as opposed to like being a protagonist of their life, whether it's showing up to be of service or showing up to ask for your needs to be met. Yeah.

38:52Dr. Laurie Santos:And I think we can apply this to so many of the things we talked about. You know, let's get back to politics, that really tricky one for so many individuals. I think you can just start with, you know, I've been feeling really burned out at work. I'd have a tough year. What I would really love is just for all of us to just, you know, put that to the side this year. Right. That feels really different than I disagree with your politics, dad. And so we're not going to talk about it. But like, what I really want is just some closeness. Can we just talk about old times? And, you know, it just there's ways to ask for help that make it easy for folks to grant you what you need.

39:22Dr. Laurie Santos:And then everybody's happy.

39:24Rainn Wilson:Nice. I love it. All right.

39:26Dr. Laurie Santos:Now we're jumping to the third holiday woe that we heard about a lot. Kind of maybe built up a little bit from Maria's story. A lot of us are going through some times of grief and loss and loneliness during the holidays. Here's an email from Mindy. One thing I struggle with at the holidays is anticipating the loss I feel. Both of my maternal grandparents died in early December. My father died a month before Christmas, and my mother is currently dying from ALS and will be gone before the holidays. What are the holidays without our grandparents and parents? This is something I know you talk a lot about on Soul Boom, right?

40:02Dr. Laurie Santos:Thinking about spirituality. And one of the things we use our spiritual experiences for is to navigate grief and loss, especially during these emotionally fraught times. So any ideas about how to get through this?

40:16Rainn Wilson:Well, that's a great question and a really great topic. And I love that you're covering this because I don't think that this is covered a lot in podcasts or conversations about happiness. Yes. It's like, how do we navigate happiness and well-being when we're really dealing with grief, loss, and death? And you're absolutely right. Like the holidays can bring up people that we lost during the year. It can be people that we lost, that we miss, that used to be there and are no longer there or are sick or what have you. And, you know, contemporary American culture, we don't talk a lot about this stuff.

40:54Rainn Wilson:You know, we tend to kind of like, oh, I don't want to bum everyone out. So we're not going to talk about what we're grieving or what have you. I'm a little bit of an overshare kind of person. maybe it's also being from California, but chronic oversharing. But, you know, perhaps it's carving out some time to honor the grief. It's almost like the Oscars in memoriam, like, okay, we're going to take four minutes now to show the slideshow of the people that died this last year, just to kind of like have a somber note and honor that. And I think that's great, but maybe maybe on a family level, and this would, I think, be hard for a lot of people to initiate.

41:38Rainn Wilson:It's kind of like, can we come together and say a prayer for Aunt Judy, who's sick, or Uncle Bob, who passed away last year? Can everyone, can we go around the circle and say, you know, who we miss or what, how we might be grieving or, or going through? Because when you give it the space and honor it, then you can celebrate and it's not weighing on you like a wet blanket. You know, you can just take 5, 10, 15 minutes to do that. And then you can have days of joy because you've taken the time to, you know, to recognize what's real.

42:14Dr. Laurie Santos:I think this is so critical. I mean, one of the things we know about negative emotions is that like negative emotions, when you have to feel them, they don't last as long as we think, right? I mean, obviously the grief of losing a loved one lasts a lot, but those moments when it comes up, It's not going to last forever. The problem is that we kind of suppress those emotions down. We say, nope, it's the holiday season. We can't, you know, think about grandpa. We have to pretend that everybody is perfect. But when we allow time to just sit there and like radically accept our emotions, the studies show that those emotions wind up passing a little bit better.

42:48Dr. Laurie Santos:Like when you sit down to feel the grief, you're going to feel it. And if you allow yourself to do that, you'll give yourself some space. But then just as you said, it's like, okay, now I can make space for the joy because I'm not using part of my frontal lobe to hold down the grief that I'm feeling about grandpa for the whole Christmas season. I gave myself some space to experience that. And I think that's so important. You know, happy holidays doesn't have to mean that we're happy all the time at every moment. It's like, you know, a 10 out of 10 on joy for every second. Like, there's a lot of nostalgia there.

43:19Dr. Laurie Santos:There's a lot of past coming up. There's a lot of dealing with tough things. We need to make space for all the emotions that come through it. And that lets those emotions kind of take their course and go on their merry way.

43:30Rainn Wilson:That's so well said. I met this old 12-step guy once and he said, the only way out is through. meaning like the only way to be relieved of what the burden of whatever grief you're feeling is to go through it and like you say it can be really scary but it's oftentimes briefer and easier than

43:51Dr. Laurie Santos:we think it's going to be and more socially shared right you bring it up and it's like even if someone's not grieving the exact person you're grieving and if their loss is not the same i bet that pretty much everyone you interact with during the holiday season is going through something that's making them sad, some loss, something that feels different than they'd like it to be. And so opening up space for other people to share that stuff can be really important for our happiness too.

44:15Rainn Wilson:That's great.

44:15Dr. Laurie Santos:But that connection leads me to the next thing that people go through, which is loneliness during the holiday season. All our social media feeds are filled with people caroling and hanging out and having dinner together. But there's a lot of folks who are feeling lonely, either because they've had a recent loss or just because they're alone. We had one anonymous commentator on YouTube saying that his holiday woe is, quote, being lonely and just not having somebody to spend the holiday moments with. Sort of this feeling of watching others have and experience happy moments and feeling like that might never happen to me.

44:47Dr. Laurie Santos:I think during the holidays, it can feel like everybody is happy and being social and you're not. Sometimes even if you're in a big group of family or a big group of people, we can experience the deepest loneliness there. So what are some strategies for feeling a little bit more connected during the holiday season, especially if you're kind of feeling a little lonely?

45:05Rainn Wilson:Well, my first experience of this had to do in an episode of Happy Days, where Arthur Fonzarelli, who's so cool, you know, and beloved by everyone and can get any girl he wants. And he's got his motorcycle and his pinball machine in his garage and stuff like that. And Richie Cunningham realizes he's spending Christmas alone.

45:28Dr. Laurie Santos:Dun, dun, dun.

45:29Rainn Wilson:And he's cooking a can of soup. And so they invite the Fonz over to the Cunninghams and all is saved. But in all seriousness, you know, I'm sure you've spoken about this a ton. We're in this loneliness epidemic.

45:46Dr. Laurie Santos:Yes.

45:47Rainn Wilson:And especially with young people, a lot of times people are feeling more and more, not just isolated lonely, but lonely while in groups of other people, lonely while at work, lonely while at school.

46:01Dr. Laurie Santos:And I think this happens in families a lot, especially if you're feeling disconnected, you're sitting around the dinner table feeling like, I don't belong. I don't connect to these people.

46:10Rainn Wilson:Yeah. So, you know, I just want to honor that this is a very real thing. You know, I think the work on loneliness has to be done way before it's Christmas time, So I think that's a good time for some therapy. It's going on meetup. It's little by little, bit by bit, exerting yourself into areas where you might feel a little bit of discomfort. join a bowling league or a kickball league or a Dungeons and Dragons game, join a park cleanup. There's this nonprofit in our area called Food Forward where they get and they pick stuff from the orchards around to give out at food kitchens. And the camaraderie is amazing.

46:59Rainn Wilson:They come over and they pick your extra avocados and lemons and stuff like that. And you know it's going to good and they're having such a good time doing it, you know, finding places to volunteer and maybe volunteering around the holidays is always a good idea to a soup kitchen or something like that. These all sound kind of obvious.

47:17Dr. Laurie Santos:I don't know, but I think really have. I think you are offering something important, right? You're getting back to what you talked about before, which is this idea of service. And just one thing we know about the psychology of loneliness is that a really good cure for loneliness is reaching out to other people. It's like thinking of your own service as trying to make other people less lonely or make other people happy in other ways. And so I think you're getting at it. If you're feeling lonely in the holiday season, reach out to a person that you think might be in need or that you think might be lonely and just check in.

47:46Dr. Laurie Santos:Not for the goal of trying to feel less lonely yourself, but just to say, I'm solving the loneliest crisis around me. And, you know, studies show that it'll make you feel a little boost of belonging, a little boost of social connection. And then you create these ripple effects that wind up making everybody feel a little bit happier.

48:04Rainn Wilson:But isn't part of the problem texting? Because I make a lot of calls. And I have a couple buddies I just talk to several times a week. And we just catch up on movies. How's it going? What's going on? And it's really old-fashioned. It's boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Brrring, brrring. Hey, how's it going? And they used to say, oh, phone is so disconnecting. It's being in person and obviously being in person. But, you know, can we get a coffee? I just called to say I love you. I'm just calling to check in on you because we can feel connected. It's a fake kind of connection when we text someone and say, how's it going?

48:47Rainn Wilson:Hey, how are you? Good. All right. You cool? All right. Later. it's not soul satisfying right and social media is the same way like you can post a picture of your cat and get 37 hearts on it and feel like you have 37 friends but it's not a real connection

49:05Dr. Laurie Santos:around your cat yeah the science shows best connection most nutritious psychologically nutritious connection is at least in real time you know so the phone you're picking up and you say hey how's it going you say oh hi it's not like a text like whoop how's it going and then And boop, back. But all that said, you know, if all you got is time to text, do that rather than nothing, right? But yeah, calling on the phone. Or if you want to get a big technological advancement, you can use these other video tools we have. Skype, FaceTime. If you don't have a landline like rain, feel free to use your iPhone to reach out to someone else.

49:39Dr. Laurie Santos:The video, like the little camera feature. I send faxes.

49:42Rainn Wilson:I still send faxes.

49:44Dr. Laurie Santos:One of the best forms of social connection during the holiday season. Did you get my holiday fax? You got my fax?

49:50Rainn Wilson:You didn't get my fax?

49:51Dr. Laurie Santos:I had such a blast hanging out with Rainn Wilson. Thanks so much to every listener who sent in a holiday woe for us to chew on. Unfortunately, there were lots of your tough questions that we didn't have time to fit into a single show. But I asked Rainn to come back next week to offer even more sage seasonal advice. So be sure to join me and Rainn next time for more holiday insights on The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

50:23Dr. Laurie Santos:The 10 % Happier podcast is self-help for smart people. Hosted by veteran journalist and best-selling author Dan Harris, happiness is a skill you can learn, so why not try to master it? Each week, Dan chats with top scientists, meditation experts, and the occasional celebrity in wide-ranging conversations that explore topics like productivity, anxiety, enlightenment, psychedelics, and relationships. he's interviewed everyone from the Dalai Lama to Brene Brown to Mike D from the Beastie Boys join Dan every week for a dose of ancient wisdom modern science and a little humor to help you feel better do better and be better the 10 % Happier podcast listen now wherever you get your shows this is an iHeart podcast guaranteed human