Small Steps to Happiness: The Science of Mindful Living with Laurie Santos | From The One You Feed

23:14I think if you can allow yourself a little bit of the goofiness, that can kind of snap you out of it a little bit, too. It doesn't have to be, you know, the most meaningful thing in your life. You could just be like, yeah, it's pretty good. It's a good thing. It's like slightly above baseline and just get your brain to notice that stuff. Yeah. Another person who does that well is a guy, Neil Pasricha. It's called The Book of Awesome. And then he's got other books of awesome. But it's basically that thing. He's been a guest a couple of times. And it's just fun. He approaches it in a fun, small way.

23:44But again, the thing that I notice about his stuff is it's so specific. And I think that's an important thing. Let's change directions because I have to ask you about an episode of the Happiness Lab, which is your podcast. And it's about something you worked on with Dallas Taylor to create the handbook for sonic happiness. Basically, the idea is sound has an enormous impact on happiness and well-being. I am an extraordinarily sound-sensitive person. So I'm wondering if you can give us a few tips from the handbook for sonic happiness. Yeah, it's funny that you're such a sound-sensitive person. I feel like in general that might not be a good thing for a podcaster.

24:23That's fantastic. You can hear all the tiny things. Yeah, I mean, one of the great things about talking with Dallas was realizing that we're not often intervening on sound to promote our happiness and our mental health. What do I mean by that? You know, we're constantly intervening on our other senses to feel better. You know, if I'm having a bad day, I want to take a warm bubble bath or maybe put on a candle. Like I want to watch something on TV. I want to buy flowers, right? We're hacking vision and touch and like taste, right? You know, when I'm having a bad day, I want some ice cream, right?

24:57We do that quite naturally. And many of us have like straightforward go-tos of things in those domains that feel good. But we don't often do that as much with sound, maybe a little bit with music, right? You know, if I'm having a sad day, maybe I want to enhance the sadness and listen to a sad song or listen to something peppy to get me out of it. But that's pretty limited in the scope of all the sounds we could be engaging with. You know, what Dallas really recommends is making sure that you are, as much as you can, limiting some of the bad sounds and kind of noticing them. You know, he talks about even ambient sounds in the room, like, you know, the hum of a refrigerator that's really annoying or, you know, like just other sounds around you.

25:37Sometimes I notice this too, like I'm feeling just grated and I'm like, what's going on? It's like, oh, there's some stupid hum like happening in the building next door that's like really bugging me, right? So kind of finding ways to limit the bad sounds, but really trying to find ways to mindfully notice some of the good sounds, you know, and trying to get beyond music for something that feels nice. You know, for me, it's often very natural sounds kind of sound amazing, right? Like take a little hike or go somewhere natural, even if it's like a park in your neighborhood and just be quiet and notice.

26:08And, you know, you and I are having this conversation, you know, I'm in New England when it's right around the beginning of autumn and the leaves are kind of rustling and sometimes you can hear the acorns fall and things like that. You know, those are true delights for me. You know, those are delights in the sound domain, but I'm often not giving myself permission to engage with them in the same way I would totally give myself permission to engage with the taste of an ice cream cone, you know, or the warmth of a warm bath, right? Give yourself permission to engage in positive sounds. Yeah, I think the benefit of being a sound sensitive person and a person focused on positivity to some degree is I've really learned to seek those out.

26:44I had been a on again, off again meditator for a long time. And then someone said something to me that I had never heard of before. I don't think it's uncommon now, but this is 10 years ago. they said, go outside, sit outside and just meditate on what you hear. Just follow what you hear. And when your mind gets lost in thought, just ask again, what can I hear? And all of a sudden I was like, this is what I have been trying to get for 20 years from meditation. You know, it just really worked. And then that actually allowed me to settle enough that the other types of meditation became a lot more profound for me.

27:23So it really unlocked something for me. So I love to go outside and listen to sounds. But the downside of a sound sensitive person is sort of like you mentioned, if there's a rattle or a hum or a something, I mean, I am so aware of it. And what I don't know, and I can't decide, and I'd be curious to see, you know, kind of what your thoughts are and from what you've learned about it is I sometimes worry that I'm making myself more neurotic around it. Just it's a rattle, let it go, Eric. But I don't very well. You know, the other one is and I think there's an actual name for this, but I don't know what the name is.

28:00But it's where the sound of other people eating drives you nuts. And I don't know whether you guys discussed that part at all. A couple of things there. One is I think probably a lot of us are getting rattled by the rattle psychologically, but we're not mindful or aware enough to realize it. I know I'm just like, I'm in a bad mood. I'm going to strike out again. I'm going to say something to my husband. But I'm like, oh, wait, it was the refrigerator hunt. Like it was like there's a causal arrow from this nasty sound. So part of being, you know, sound sensitive, you might even say sound mindful, right?

28:29I mean, sound sensitive is you're really affected by it, but sound mindful is you're noticing which things are out there. It can just give you some awareness, right? You might be able to do something to shut the rattle off. And even if you can't, you now at least have some awareness, okay, this is going on, right? You know, I know you talk a lot on the show about addiction and things like that. You know, it's the same as craving, right? You know, being mindful of the craving, now it's there. It's really present, but now you're aware of it. You can choose to do what you want to do with it. Maybe you're going to allow it.

28:56Maybe you're going to non-judgmentally really pay attention to it. And this was one of the things that I've seen in sounds that are annoying is sometimes if you can get to recognizing them just as sounds, just in the same way that you can recognize a craving as it's just a feeling and get really curious about it. Like that rattle, what's the frequency? The bump, bump, bump, oh, it makes my chest vibrate and things like that. Like now you're just digging into it and investigating it. in a way that kind of causes it to lose its power, right? Like you notice it's not just this valence that's like sucky, negative, stop, stop, stop.

29:28Like you can sort of see it for what it is and that can disarm it sometimes too. I like that idea. Actually, I had not thought of investigating it more closely. If it's rhythmic, I can capture the rhythm of it and then it sort of disappears. It's the intermittent ones. But to your point, I'd either try and tell myself, don't be annoyed by it or I make it go away. I do one of those two, but I have not that much now that you're saying it turned towards it in a curious way. Learn more about it. How often is it? What are its frequencies? What, you know, I think that's helpful. All right. What about being driven crazy by the sound of other people eating?

30:05Can you fix this problem? Thank you. Yeah. Maybe same technique. Get out of the room while you're eating. Yeah, exactly. It's just funny. I mean, it's the same with all affective things, right? You know, if you can really investigate your own preferences, sometimes you start laughing at yourself, right? You're like, I'm really, really annoyed by this guy chewing chips. You know, like if you can kind of get to a meta awareness of what's really upsetting you, then again, through this process of kind of allowing it and investigating it, you can sometimes get some purchase on it to be like, wait, that doesn't make any sense.

30:37Again, it doesn't make it perfect and it does take a lot of work, right? but you can kind of get to the other side on things.

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31:42And Quince makes lots of elevated everyday essentials just like this dress. They use premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and washable silk. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash happiness. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash happiness. This is Jacob Goldstein from Business History.

32:20Imagine Henry Ford trying to create the assembly line. He had factory plans, production schedules, supply information, research, and ideas coming from all directions. His team spent years studying how to make the process work. Now, imagine having ChatGPT work. ChatGPT work can help with big projects that have lots of steps. You give it the goal along with real information like notes, files, reports, feedback, and project plans. It can use approved apps, connected tools, and files to help turn all of that into something useful. A plan, an analysis, a tracker, a presentation outline, or a workflow you can keep improving.

32:59And you stay in control. You give direction, review the work, approve actions, and choose the final result. Would Henry Ford have built the assembly line faster with ChatGPT? We'll never know. Ford didn't have ChatGPT. You do. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans. Another episode that you had recently, it was about, in essence, on one level, working too much. or how much is too much to work. But the insight that came out of it that I thought was really interesting was that we all want more time.

33:39We have this desire. I used to say, I want to be able to do whatever I want whenever I want, right? Which is in my case, an unqualified disaster when that occurs. But the point of the episode is that there is a sweet spot for how much discretionary time is helpful and that even moving small amounts of discretionary time can be very helpful back to this little and often. So can you tell us a little bit more about that one? Yeah, yeah. So this was work that was looking at kind of how much discretionary time do we need? It was an episode with the psychologist Cassie Holmes, who's fantastic. She's got a great new book out on some of these topics.

34:14And I think we assume that like infinite time is good, right? Like all the free time possible. But what she finds is that you definitely need some free time, time that you would describe as free that's not scheduled, but it's really not infinite. It's actually just a couple hours a day, you know, maybe even the range of like two to three hours a day. And I think two things there. One is like when you realize it doesn't have to be infinite, you're like, OK, this seems much more doable, right? Like I think I can move things around to objectively get that much free time or it's a little easier than if I was going for infinite free time, for example.

34:44But the other thing that she talks a lot about is that we really need to prioritize that free time, right? And I think look really carefully at what's digging into it. You know, sometimes what's digging into it is work and paying the bills. And, you know, yeah, that's a thing. But sometimes what's digging into it is stuff that's just like filling our time that we don't need. You know, I know you love parables on the show. You know, she talks about the perhaps apocryphal tale of some professor who was trying to teach his kids, you know, about the power of this. And he says, like, you know, I have these ping pong balls.

35:14How many ping pong balls can I fit in this class? People say some number of ping pong balls. And he puts them in. And he's like, so is the glass full? And people are like, yeah. And then he brings out these little like marbles. And he's like, well, you know, actually, can I put some marbles in? And they're like, oh, yeah, you can. So he fits some marbles in. He says, well, now is the glass full? And people are like, yeah. And then he pulls out the sand. And he's like, uh-huh, yeah, I put the sand in. The reason this is relevant is he says, you know, your time is this glass. And if you start filling it with the sand first, you won't be able to fit the ping pong balls, which are the things you really want to be doing with your life, the things that really fulfill you and build you up.

35:50And so I think, you know, with that metaphor, I think we can ask the question, like, what's the sand in our lives that fill things up, you know, and what's the ping pong balls? And sometimes when you do that analysis, you realize, you know, the sand was, you know, every free 10 minutes I had, I was looking at something stupid on the Internet. And the sand was ruminating over and over again when I could have, like, you know, popped out and, you know, done a quick workout or something like that. It really allows us to analyze and be more intentional about how we're spending our time and recognize that it's a limited resource that we often don't think of as one.

36:23Perhaps our most important limited resource, you know, money, if you blow it, you might be able to get more money someday. But time when you blow it has gone forever, you know, in your life. It's not coming back. When we're talking about discretionary time, are we talking about time that we get to choose what we want to do in and we may fill it up? Is it still discretionary time? For example, if I'm like, all right, well, I want to exercise for an hour and I want to meditate for 20 minutes and I'd like to do this. Would we still consider that sort of discretionary time because I don't have to do those things?

36:55Or would we still say even beyond that sort of thing, I need some amount of time that's just do whatever I feel like? Yeah. Honestly, I think it kind of depends a little bit on how you frame it. You know, you use the example of like the time to exercise. There's different ways to frame that, right? You know, you could frame it like I'm done work and I get to do the things that are for me. What's the thing for me? Oh, I'm going to exercise. I'm going to have this amazing yoga session, right? Or you could frame that exercise as like, I have to do it. If I don't do my half hour exercise, I'm failing at my happiness mission.

37:25I'm going to like die of a heart attack. Like there's a sort of half do-ness, a should-ness to certain kinds of things we do. And, you know, a lot of shouldness obviously comes from work and paying the bills and things, but sometimes we build up that shouldness in our brain for things that aren't a have to, right, that are supposed to be a want to, but now have somehow turned into a weird should have to, you know, and the joke I use with my students is that you don't want to be shoulding all over yourself, you know, but I think we often should all over ourselves in ways that make even the most leisurely things, even the things we would normally be doing, you know, as a gift to do ourselves, as this thing we should savor, you know, this delicious ice cream cone of time that we've spent.

38:04And it just feels like crappy. Like we're just trying to like push our thrills through it. You know, it feels like the most onerous work task. So I think it's not exactly defined by a particular thing. It's often defined by our attitude towards that thing. And this is one of the time hacks I think can be quite powerful, right? Is that you don't necessarily have to change how you're objectively spending your time to, you know, in some ways subjectively think about your time use differently. If you can kind of change your attitude towards how you're spending your time, that might be enough. Yeah.

38:33I think that is such a powerful intervention is to get to this. I'm choosing to do X, you know, even do get to, you know, get to do this. It's amazing. Yeah. Well, even something like doing work as a parent can very much feel like I have to, you know, I had this realization. I've shared this on the show a number of times when my son was, I don't know how old he was, nine or whatever. And I was complaining about having to take him to soccer practice again. And I just went like, no, I don't. Like, there's no law that says I have to take my son to soccer practice. Like, I simply don't have to do that.

39:09Matter of fact, I could choose not to come home and his mother would have to take care of him. No, I'd have to pay child support, but I could make that choice. And just reframing it that way then caused me to go, okay, so I am taking him to soccer practice. Why am I doing it? And now I'm sort of linking this thing to something I value, you know? And the same thing as you're saying with exercise, Like I can turn it into a have to do it, but I don't actually have to do it. I'm totally in charge of choosing. I'm choosing to do it. Why? Okay, because I know it makes me feel better. I know, you know, blah, blah, blah.

39:41So I think reframing things as choices in our lives, A, gets us out of that feeling of obligation or we have to, that feeling, it's a trapped feeling for me, right? And then also does get me back in touch with my values, what matters to me. Then I can make a choice. Well, maybe that doesn't matter to me that much. Why am I doing that? Yeah, no, I think that's really profound, right? In two ways. One is kind of, as you mentioned, getting back to your values, right? So now you can appreciate this thing, right? You can have some gratitude for it. It's like allowing you to harness the things you care about.

40:14I think it also gets you back to a sense of agency, which just psychologically is powerful. We don't like to be forced, you know, and helpless and doing things. But I think that choice can remind you that like, it's a choice. And, you know, to go back to the metaphor we mentioned, like you can ask yourself, is this the sand or is this the like, you know, big ping pong balls, right? You can really say, you know, and like really assess whether or not this is the kind of thing you want to be doing. Because sometimes some of the things we think are have to's in life have moved away from our values, right?

40:42They're not serving us in the way that they served us before. That's right. You mentioned our theories of ourselves are several years old. In some cases, I think our kind of meta theories of what our values are might be wrong. When we really introspect, you can be like, I don't have to do this. And in fact, I don't want to do this, even in terms of my value. So it can allow us to engage in behavior changes that really are going to serve us a little bit better. Yeah. You know, a lot of the stuff in your happiness course talks about, you know, there's some very basic things in there that I often am like, I wish I had recommendations that were more interesting than exercise, good sleep and meditate.

41:19Like feels a little bit like eat your vegetables, right? People pay you and they're like, wait, really? This is the rocket science of happiness research right now? Yeah. You know, one thing I like to tell my students is like, yeah, totally common wisdom, but definitely not common practice, right? Yeah, that's good. One of the reasons I think it's powerful to understand the scientific benefits of these things is I think it sometimes can help us pop over a little bit to behavior change, right? When you really reflect on the actual benefits of something like getting a half hour of cardio in or the actual benefits of getting some sleep for your mental health.

41:54You know, you see, like in my case, my students, like they see these graphs of like, do you want to be here on your mental health or here? You know, this big graph. It's like, oh, like, you know, that can sometimes give you the motivation that kind of kick in the pants to get back in gear with some of these things. But yeah, I mean, there's stuff our societies have been saying, our cultures have been saying, our grandmothers have been saying, you know, for hundreds, if not thousands of years. But somehow in the modern world, we've got away from actually practicing these things. Yeah. So we're talking about this don't shoot on yourself or reflecting on choice, right?

42:25Which is very valuable. There are still gonna be times, you know, with me, I'm like, okay, I know unequivocally the single best thing I can do for my mental health is exercise. Like it is the number one intervention for me. I know that. I have internalized that. And yet there are days where I'm like, I just don't want to do this. So there's a certain amount of like, yes, I want to have agency and I don't want to do this. And there's a certain amount of time where there is a need to sort of push and say, Eric, this is good for you and do something that in the moment I may not be wanting to do. So how do you balance those two sort of, you know, not getting locked into obligation, not making something that's good for us a chore, knowing that sometimes we have to just go through the motion?

43:08I mean, if you only have days when you experience this, you're doing well because I have months.

43:15I think, you know, one of the big insights I think that the research shows us is that a lot of this isn't what the actual activities themselves are, but it's how we talk to ourselves about them. Right. So the shooting brain is really this kind of drill sergeant kind of idea of motivation where you just think if I just scream at myself and berate myself for being such, you know, idiot that I won't want to go to the gym, then that'll motivate me to go to the gym. And that feels like a should, it feels like a ought. It can turn the best thing that you love the most into this thing that feels like an external obligation.

43:50But then you also don't want to have the pendulum shift too far in the other direction where you go into indulgent mode where you're like, oh, do whatever, just be this crazy hedonist and hurt yourself, right? Because that can lead down a bad path too. And so what you're trying to do is to find a happy medium, always hard, of course, but one of the voices to channel I think that helps with that happy medium is a voice of self-compassion. Self-compassion in the way that researchers like Kristen Neff at UT Austin talk about it, where you're trying to talk to yourself as a close friend would talk to you, right?

44:22You know, so let's say, you know, you haven't been to the gym in a while. You're feeling like crap. Your close friend shows up. What are they going to say to you? They're not going to be like, Eric, you need to get your act together and get to the gym. What a loser. Like, they're not going to scream at you. They're not going to be like, no, you have tomorrow morning, 8 a.m. You got to go to the gym. Like, I'm going to beat you up or something. Right. But they're also not going to be like, no, not a problem that you're never going to the gym. Like, eat more ice cream. Like, sit on your butt. Like, they're going to be like, Eric, what's going on?

44:47What's going on? why aren't you going to the gym, right? They might be curious. They're going to be kind. They're going to try to get to the bottom of it. They're not going to let you indulge. Self-compassion is not self-indulgence, but they're going to try to figure out what's going on. And I think that's sort of the attitude we need to take to ourself. When we're feeling that resistance, one move is to actually get curious about the resistance and say, what's going on? And I've done this. I mean, I definitely have had this specifically with exercise a lot. As I said, it's not days for me sometimes it's months.

45:19But I find that when I get curious about it, it can help. Like, what's happening? Why does this feel like an obligation? What have I done? And sometimes you analyze and you realize, like, you know, it's the particular thing I'm compelling myself to do. There are other things that feel like a should in my life. And if I can't harness that time that I was exercising for something else, like there's another thing that I'm missing that I want to get into. But all of that is, it's not necessarily which solution I come up with. It's just the fact that being curious about the resistance can allow you to stop butting heads against it, either kind of, you know, plowing through it like a drill sergeant, which doesn't work, or ignoring it and letting it continue when the resistance is really not serving you.

45:56So again, it's this kind of how you talk to yourself and allowing yourself to kind of get curious and pay attention and investigate what's going on with you. Yeah, I think that's really good. I think another phenomenon I've noticed in myself is particularly with exercise. It's like I look at exercise and I'm like, okay, my plan is I'm going to do a 60 minute bike ride that day. And I know how much energy a 60 minute bike ride takes. It takes 10 units of energy. And I look inside and I'm like, I have got one. This is not going to happen. Right? So, you know, the other just sort of simple thing to do is to break it down and go like, okay, can I get on my bike shoes?

46:35That takes one unit of energy. I got myself one step at a time into the thing can be another, just sort of a simple hack, for lack of a better word, to kind of get over that hump. Because I don't know what it is about exercise. I've asked, maybe you have a theory on this. I've never gotten a good answer for it, or not a complete answer, which is I have exercised, let's say, I don't know, 5 ,000 times in my life. I don't know what the number is. It's a big number now, right? I'm not a young man. Every single time I've done it. When I'm done, I'm like that. I'm so glad I did that. That was the right choice.

47:12That was awesome. Going to do that. Yeah. Never once, not once have I been like, ah, man, I wish I didn't do that. Right. You would think that it would just be easy to do it. Right. It just seems like my brain would learn that's good. Do it. And yet it's still sometimes a big effort. I don't know if it just comes down to conservation of energy as a species. I don't know. You have any thoughts on that? Because it's strange to me. You're good if it's just exercise for you. I mean, for me, it's like sit down to journal, do your meditation, like call your mom. Like there's so. Yeah. And so one hint that we get from the neuroscience is that you'd like to think that, you know, the brain was organized in the following way.

47:48It was good at detecting what I really liked, you know, what drove pleasure. It would notice that really well. And then it would have mechanisms that motivate you that say, hey, whenever you feel that, you know, that little burst of pleasure, do that more often. Turns out the brain doesn't have that many pleasure centers. They're like really tiny and hard to find. Even as neuroscience researchers early on, we're looking for them like we don't have any pleasure centers, meaning we don't often notice what feels good. Right. We notice things that really hack into those systems. So, you know, drugs of addiction like those hack into the system.

48:18Great. We notice that those feel good and those are very hooked up to the motivation systems. Yeah. You know, sweet things. Right. You know, these visceral states we get. But, you know, the nice warm feeling I get from doing a nice gesture to somebody, you know, the warmth I get from social connection, the exercise endorphin high, don't notice it as much. However, the brain has lots and lots of neural real estate devoted to what you might call wanting. So if the pleasure systems are like the liking, the brain has lots of wanting stuff. And so you get these systems that like give you lots of craving to do stuff that, you know, just happen to be a hack in this liking system.

48:53Again, whether it's drugs of addiction or things like social media or, you know, all these like little dopamine hacks, our brain is really ready to go after those. But it has no mechanism to learn about, you know, the big highs, the, you know, kind of like deeper pleasures in life. And that sucks. It's such a stupid way to organize the brain. I mean, it probably worked for rats. Great for them. But like not for us, you know. So how do you kind of combine these systems for wanting and liking better? You know, all the forms of liking, get them to talk to your wanting better. Sadly, there's not an obvious way, but there are hints that one way you can do it is to kind of ramp up your intentional noticing of the rewards you get.

49:33So my colleague, Hedy Kober, who's a neuroscientist at Yale, she's really interested in mindfulness approaches to addiction and things like that, you know, claims that you can use the same sort of approaches to notice the good things, just as you can with, say, a craving for a cigarette or something. Notice, like, actually, what I'm craving is kind of gross, you know, like really pay attention to how this makes you feel, which is like not that good. You can do the reverse for something like exercise. And so this is something she practices all the time. She's like the annoying friend that always wants to do like the hard yoga or the run or the like, you know, she never has the thing that we were just describing.

50:04But it's in part because she's forced herself at the end of it. In that moment, you talk about you're like, this feels great to sit there and meditate on it. Like, oh, my chest feels lighter. I feel really good. Right. Like she's kind of giving her brain some time to be like, wait, like the reward areas that are kind of slow, unless it's like a straight up dopamine hit, they can kind of notice this stuff. And, you know, does that perfectly lock up your wanting and liking systems? No. But I think it can kind of help this sort of mindfulness practice of noticing the rewarding parts. Just in the same way you might notice that the negative things that are not serving you when you sort of notice those consequences and really attend to how they feel, they can kind of get into that circuit a bit more too.

50:55Thank you.

51:39You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself reaching for over and over again? Those are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe. And that's exactly what Quince does so well. For me, the quince piece that I reach for over and over again is their washable stretch silk-tiered maxi dress. I originally bought it in black because it was something I could wear to dinner, layered up with a nice sweater. But I loved it so much that I ended up buying it in two more colors. That quince dress is exactly what I love in my fall wardrobe. It's comfortable, versatile, and it looks effortlessly put together.

52:12And quince makes lots of elevated everyday essentials just like this dress. They use premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and washable silk. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash happiness. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash happiness. This is Jacob Goldstein from Business History.

52:49Imagine Henry Ford trying to create the assembly line. He had factory plans, production schedules, supply information, research, and ideas coming from all directions. His team spent years studying how to make the process work. Now, imagine having ChatGPT work. ChatGPT work can help with big projects that have lots of steps. You give it the goal along with real information like notes, files, reports, feedback, and project plans. It can use approved apps, connected tools, and files to help turn all of that into something useful. A plan, an analysis, a tracker, a presentation outline, or a workflow you can keep improving.

53:28And you stay in control. You give direction, review the work, approve actions, and choose the final result. Would Henry Ford have built the assembly line faster with ChatGPT? We'll never know. Ford didn't have ChatGPT. You do. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans. That's a really interesting perspective, the liking and wanting systems, and that a lot of the things that these pleasures we're describing that come from wholesome activity, they're a subtler thing. And so savoring them is really important.

54:07It's just so interesting. Having been somebody who had drugs of addiction, right, as a heroin addict, it amazes me looking back on the amount of pleasure I was getting at the end was so small compared to the price I was paying. You know, and I've heard people describe some theories of addiction people have is that there's learning disorder associated with it in that your brain is just not updating its prior, so to speak, right? It just, it's stuck on the heroin good signal, even though heroin is clearly not any longer good. My brain is like, it doesn't get it, you know? And so I think that these things are really tricky, that liking and wanting.

54:48I think it's really interesting that the brain has a lot of real estate devoted to wanting. Yeah. And in that the wanting sticks really strongly to certain things, right? You know, again, drugs of abuse, a lot of times are hacking your dopamine system, as does the intermittent reward of your Instagram feed, you know, as does the like really central pleasures like sugar and, you know, lounging around and things. But that wanting system has nothing to stick onto for these bigger pleasures. And it doesn't update well, you know, as you mentioned, you know, I think one of the sad things that, you know, if you're really addicted to a particular drug is that you're habituated to it.

55:21You're definitely not getting, not only are the consequences super high, but you're also probably not getting the same pleasure that you were getting in the beginning because your brain's kind of used to it. But yet still the wanting systems like one, one, one. That's right. I could go back in evolutionary time and like tweak one thing about the brain. Yeah, it would probably be to put more pleasure zones for the bigger, you know, more meaningful pleasures. And it would be to hook the wanting systems up a little bit better to those. But sadly, I did not get consulted on how brains should be designed.

55:49So, oh, well. So do you think, though, that this is just pure conjecture, that if we as a species manage to not exterminate ourselves in the next several thousand years, that will change? Because to your point, for rats, it's a very simple system, right? They don't have meaningful pleasures in the same way that we do, right? Do you think that we might evolve to be a little wiser about these things and to shake off some of this evolutionary baggage? One being that maybe we would realize sugar and fat are not always good. Do you think that humans will evolve? And again, this is just conjecture, but I'm curious what you think.

56:29Yeah, yeah, no, totally. Scientifically speaking, I think these selection pressures have to be pressured to change things around in the brain. You know, if sugar and fat were killing us, you know, then we might over time develop adaptations not to like it. And that's kind of true, but not so quickly, you know, in like real evolutionary time. Like evolution always moves towards directions of adaptation, but sometimes does it really slowly, right? You know, so not in our lifetime and not in a long time for the human species. That said, I think, you know, this is where cognitive hacks can come in, right?

57:02You know, if we can get good at noticing, mindfully paying attention to certain rewards, you know, that really seems to be a hack on the system. It takes a tremendous amount of work. I mean, this is like, you know, we're talking like Buddhist meditation levels of, you know, commitment to this stuff. But there's a sense in which you're kind of hacking these things. And this is one of the things I love about, you know, recent neuroscience work that looks at people who engage in these ancient spiritual practices is that they are literally hacking their brain. You know, if you look at a long-term meditator, they just have less neural real estate devoted to mind wandering.

57:36You know, if you look at a monk who's done, you know, many, many hours of compassionate meditation, their brains just go more quickly to engaging with compassion to other people. If you look at drug addicts who've used mindfulness practices to overcome craving, when you look at their brain when they're in a craving state, it looks different than a recovering addict who might not have used these mindfulness practices. And so there are hints that we can start hacking these systems through work and so on. That's not as easy as like, you know, meteor hits. Like only people with certain wanting liking systems stick around, be way easier, you know, although maybe more tragic.

58:12But the good news is that with effort and intention, there are some hacks that can help this stuff. Yeah, I think we can change this wiring extensively. My own life just being a testament to that. I've shared this story several times recently on the show. So sorry, listeners, if it's getting boring. But I think it's an important one, which is my mom broke her hip and I was picking up all her prescriptions. I was carrying Oxycontin back and forth from my mom's house. The amazing thing is not only did I not want it, I didn't even think about it. It was a month or two into it that I was like, that's incredible.

58:45But I would have robbed somebody at gunpoint for that once upon a time. You know, I mean, I think that just speaks to change is really possible if we just keep doing these things. Now, I've got a lot of years away from heroin, so it doesn't happen overnight, but it is possible. Yeah. And I think that's important to remember. It gets back to something we were talking about before that little and often, right? The often is the key, I think, in your case, right? Like you have to fight that craving or allow it or investigate it a lot to get to the point that you're at. But it does get easier over time, for sure.

59:18We've been talking a fair amount about behavior change here, and there's lots of techniques and tools for behavior change. But one of them is that the support of other people, or a term I've seen you use as cultural or religious structures, you talk about how it seems kind of very clear that like your CrossFit gym, or your church, or these things can help make behavior change occur. And you then go on to say, well, what's driving it? Is it the beliefs of the organization of the thing or is it simply the commitment to it? And I just would love to hear you kind of talk through that again because I think it's really interesting.

59:58Yeah, yeah. I mean, so you know this better than anyone in your listeners to your podcast. If they've been listening for a while, know this better than anyone. Behavior change is a hard, hard, hard, hard, right? So any hacks that we can figure out to help us can be huge. And I think one of the hacks that we forget about, we love this sort of Protestant work ethic idea that like I'll just power through it, you know, me, me, me, this individual changing my behavior against the world. But one thing we find is that behavior change often seems a lot easier when you have environments and structures around you that are kind of consistent with that change.

1:00:29You know, what do I mean? Like if you want to exercise, that's much easier if all your friends exercise, right? Like that's much easier if you have like, you know, this like padded out home gym that's amazing, right? Like that's much easier if you just happen to live in a place where there's no cars. You've got to walk all the time. You're just going to get that in more naturally. So the environments can really help us. And sometimes those environments are physical structures, like lots of walking paths and an elliptical machine in your apartment. But sometimes those structures are really like cognitive structures.

1:01:00They're belief systems, right? They're about the people around me value this, right? The people around me are committed to this. And I think both of those kinds of things can really work their magic. Those are both kinds of structures that seem to really help us. But it's often not the kind of beliefs and values we think. You know, so one of the big findings I talk about in my class is that overall religious individuals tend to be happier. People who have a belief in afterlife, belief in God, and so on. And so you could say like, well, maybe it's their personal beliefs, right? Like they have this belief in afterlife that gives them meaning and so on.

1:01:34Turns out not so much. It turns out if you factor certain things out, a belief in a God or something like that doesn't actually matter. What seems to matter a lot more is the practices you engage in. Religious individuals go to services, so they engage in social connections. Religious individuals often are part of organizations that engage in charity, so they do nice things for each other. They pray and so they get a chance to be mindful and take some time where they're present. They often engage in practices related to things like gratitude and other pro-social emotions. You know, they're just like physically around other people all the time because they're engaging with these other folks.

1:02:07And so we think structures have to be about our own personal beliefs and like what we believe and what we value. But sometimes the environments around us can be shaping our behavior in ways that are so much easier. I have a recent episode of my podcast where I interview the inventor of these so-called blue zones, Dan Buettner. He's an author who studies places around the world that tend to have these positive practices, either for like physical health, like places that induce longevity where people live healthily for a really long time, or places that induce happiness. And he's fond of saying that like any attempt to individually change your behavior without your environment supporting you is doomed to failure.

1:02:46Like, you know, you could do all these different hacks and download apps and get coaches and whatever. But like if you just moved to a place that was happier or moved to a place where you exercise more, that would impact your behavior so much more. You know, he's being a little harsh. We know that with work you can change your behavior. But it's definitely true that if you can find some environmental support, that helps enormously. It makes such a huge difference. I mean, I got sober in 12-step communities and I've had friends of mine who were former heroin addicts say it was harder to quit smoking than stop doing heroin.

1:03:17And there's a variety of reasons for that. But one of them I think is simply when we went to get off heroin, we were embedded in a community that was focused on that. And when we stop smoking, primarily most people just simply go, all right, I'm going to stop smoking. And they do it entirely on their own. I think it makes such a difference. And I think this idea between beliefs and practices, I've often heard people describe Judaism as a religion that's less about belief and more about practices. You know, I often try and tweeze apart what in 12-step programs worked. What was it that was actually working there?

1:03:55And, you know, it's interesting to think about, but I do think that the community aspect of it, that piece of it is really, really important. In 12-step programs, they talk about unity, service, and recovery. And I think that's really interesting. The unity are the people. The service is doing something that cares about other people. And then the recovery was some method of personal internal transformation. I think that can just be applied to us generally as humans. You know, those three things are really helpful orienting points. Totally. And I also think this idea of, you know, giving up control, you know, which can be complicated.

1:04:31I think it has certain religious overtones and so on. But, you know, ultimately, it's really accepting your common humanity, you know, which is something that people who do work on self-compassion talk about, right? It's like, I'm not going to be perfect. I'm just going to be human. I am going to be tempted, right? You know, like I have to kind of come to terms with the fact that I'm not the one, you know, who's in control all the time. And that humility can often ground us in a whole host of attitudes and ways of talking to ourselves that allow us to be a little bit more self-compassionate, right?

1:05:02Like, you know, I'm not going to be perfect. Maybe let's not put myself in this situation. It's going to be really hard. Like, I'm not Superman, right? Like, I need to ask for help, right? You know, all of these are practices where you're kind of compassionately dealing with yourself, but those are practices that also make behavior change much easier. Yeah. I'd like to turn now towards loneliness. There's a lot of it out there and it's not such an easy thing to solve. I was talking with someone who is lonely about this, and this is a person who's had lots of loss in their life. So everything that they sort of relied on is just kind of gone.

1:05:39And they're sharing how, you know, it's one thing when you've got a spouse to go out and find some additional community by joining a club. But that when you have none of those foundations, it's very, very difficult. So I'm wondering what might you say to someone who's in that position, who's, you know, really isolated and becoming unisolated feels like a tremendous amount of work and is very discouraged by it. Yeah. I think first they can recognize that you are not alone. Like a lot of people relate, right? Like loneliness is skyrocketing, even if you don't have people talking to you about it.

1:06:14I mean, you know, even the Surgeon General of the United States, Vivek Murthy, has been focusing on loneliness in part because he thinks it's a public health crisis, a public health crisis because of how dangerous it is, but also a public health crisis because of how common it is, right? And so I think that's step number one is like, you know, you're not a loser. There's not something wrong with you. Like, this is something a lot of people are going through. But that also comes with, you know, something that's related, which is that if you reach out in a baby step way, you'll often be surprised about how many people will follow up.

1:06:45I think one of our fears of loneliness is, or one of our worries when we're feeling lonely about doing something about it, is we're kind of simulating how much work it's going to take and how much success we're going to get, right? We're simply like, oh, it's going to be such a pain to like call somebody or go to this club or whatever. And we're simulating, you know, if I do reach out, people aren't going to like me, right? And scientists have looked at this, And there's evidence that both of those intuitions are wrong, right? Our predictions about how much of a pain in the butt, how stressful, how, you know, annoying, how maybe awkward it's going to be to reach out, they're all wrong.

1:07:17Like our brain is telling us, oh, don't do that. It's going to be a pain. Not going to be as much of a pain as you think, right? And our brain is also telling us stuff about how successful it's going to be. And there's so much evidence that we mispredict how many people are going to like us. We mispredict how much people will appreciate or attempt at reaching out, especially if we haven't reached out in a long time. And I think recognizing that those biases are biases, that our intuitions are wrong, can be really helpful when you're making the decision to try to overcome your loneliness. Because you're like, this feels like it's going to be a lot of work.

1:07:46You can be like, nope, science says it's not. Let me just try it. Right? Let me just try it and take a baby step towards it. And then often, if you're paying attention, you'll get some positive reinforcement back. Right? You think, oh, it's going to be so onerous to go to this club, especially if I don't have a spouse, I have nobody to talk to. But then when you try it, it actually works. The key, though, I think, you know, especially with the science is that you kind of have to try it the right way. And the right way is really making sure that you're doing that first step to reach out, you know, including when you go to a place, you know.

1:08:15So, you know, I've seen friends who say, you know, I'm, you know, lonely. Like, maybe I should go to CrossFit or, you know, I'll go to a book club or I'll go to this thing. But then they get to the book club and they like, you know, are on their phone checking their email or they're like playing with the cat, you know, at the book club. Right. Like they're not actually talking to people. And what does that do? you know, it reinforces a cycle where people think, well, you're not interested in them, so they're not going to try to talk to you. And so I think we need to recognize that it's not just putting ourselves in this situation, but it's having our own openness.

1:08:44Often solutions to loneliness involve not like someone reaching out to us, but us reaching out to other people, us trying to solve other people's loneliness, us feeling like, you know, we're the ones who're going to talk to somebody so they feel better. That's what kind of opens things up. That's a really interesting perspective. And actually, I think my own experience would bear that out in certain cases. One on one, I am pretty fine with people put me in a room full of people that I don't know, and I hate it. You know, if I could have three glasses of whiskey, I would like it a whole lot more, but I don't.

1:09:17And so what I found though in some of those situations is exactly what you just said is the strategy for me sometimes is look around and see who looks lonely and go approach that person as a starting point. It's funny when you said that like you go to the event and you're on your phone or you're playing with the other people's cat. I am totally that way. Put me in a new social situation. What I've learned about myself is I may not even be able that first couple times to overcome it. Like it just may be too strong. But if I keep going, I can find something. And I've seen some research talking about, you know, it takes a while to build a connection or a friendship.

1:09:56And the thing that I've done so many times in my life is show up someplace once and be like, no, not my people because nothing happened. Right. And I just know for myself that the first time I show up, my defenses are just they're unconscious and they're high enough that I'm either going to think I don't like these people or they don't like me. One of those two things is going to be going on in my brain. And I just kind of have to ignore it and go, well, try again. You know, try a few times. If this seems like it's a place that might offer the kind of community I want, I may have to venture into the space multiple times.

1:10:30And then sooner or later, I find like all of a sudden my walls start dropping. And so that's a way of doing it, even if you can't quite overcome, you know, what you're saying. Like the first time I'm there, all I can do is play with a cat because I feel so shy. I like your suggestion there. You can also look at it from the other people's perspective, right? Like, why didn't they connect with me? It might not be because, you know, you're a loser and unconnectable. It might have been you were playing with the cat the whole, you know? So it's like, I think if you frame it more like I'm going to help the loneliest person at the party, that's super helpful.

1:11:03I mean, I've seen this on one-on-one, you know, if you're feeling anxious, socially anxious and a party's not the right scene, fine. Look through your phone or your email list and say, I'm going to text or email the person in this list that I think might be the loneliness. And I'm just going to check in. And you'd be surprised how much good work that does. This is my final question. To what extent does virtual connection, can it be a replacement for in-person connection? Is it 50 % as good? 75 % as good? Am I asking the wrong question? It's a good question. And the answer is sort of, it depends on how you do it, right?

1:11:37You know, you and I are talking virtually over our favorite podcast app, and it feels pretty good. Like we're having this nice connection. I see you. And that's in part because it's in real time, right? We're talking using the same things as primates that we were built over evolution to do, right? We're talking in real time with one another. I think that virtual connection works less well if you're not doing it in real time. Like, you know, a text thread where you're texting a friend. It just kind of doesn't jive with the way our psychology is used to. But the cool thing is we have lots of tools now that allow us to do that from like FaceTime and Zoom where you can see each other or just like the old school phone.

1:12:10Right. We have these smartphones that are our cameras and our alarm clocks and all these things. And we forget, like, you could just use it as a phone. And we know the phone is pretty good for social connection. It was like really all we had for a very long time. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the thing that sometimes people will do, and I know I've been guilty of this, is like, well, in-person connection is what's really important. So I won't do Zoom. Right. Thinking it's somehow inferior, but it's still way, way, way better than nothing. And I think this for me was, you know, a gift of the pandemic.

1:12:41You know, I could talk about silver linings and blessings and really awful situations was that, you know, I think it got a lot of us to, you know, do these Zoom hangouts with the friends or Zoom movie or game nights and Zoom yoga classes. I was doing Zoom yoga with friends and it made me realize like, wait, this is pretty good. You know, there are people that live far away that I won't see in person for a while, but connecting with them over Zoom was great. And some of those, you know, Zoom things I was doing, I'm still doing with those friends. My college roommates are scattered all across the country and we still do these like once a month kind of, you know, spa night hangouts over Zoom because we realize like it's better to see them that way than not at all.

1:13:18So I think, you know, listen to those lessons. They can be powerful. Well, Laurie, thank you so much for coming on. It has been such an enjoyable conversation, and I'm so grateful that you had time to join us today. Thanks so much for having me on the show.

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