Winning the Lottery Could Ruin Your Life

24:32This is an important thing to know because people often feel that if their happiness has come back to baseline after something wonderful has happened, something's wrong. Why didn't this marriage, this child, this promotion give me the eternal happiness I was seeking? Because there is no such thing as eternal happiness. So happily ever after is just not psychologically realizable. Happily ever after is only true if you have three minutes to live. But this process also has an important upside. we get used to all the bad stuff, too. That horrible breakup, the chronic illness, that worse job with the lower salary.

25:09As we hedonically adapt to these things, they gradually start to distress us less and less. The problem is, we don't realize it. Despite the fact that two months prior, I was sitting in my bed crying my eyes out, wishing I would die, it just shows that life goes on. It's not the end of the world. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. The best summer pieces are the ones you end up wearing on repeat. For me, that means clothes that feel comfortable, versatile, and somehow look right for every occasion. That's why I love quince. They make elevated essentials using premium materials like European linen, organic cotton, and washable silk, without the traditional retail markup.

25:57This summer, I've been obsessed with Quince's washable stretch silk tiered maxi dress. It's made of silk with just enough stretch to actually move with you. It looks just as perfect at a posh summer dinner party as it does on a beach walk. Plus, it has pockets, which I love. But that's just the beginning. Quince has denim that's broken in and soft, and their 14-karat gold jewelry, think hoops and delicate chains, are the kind of finishing touches that make a five-minute outfit look completely intentional. Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to quince.com slash happiness for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

26:33Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com slash happiness for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash happiness. Your space should feel like you. And if it doesn't feel like you yet, sometimes that comes down to a budget problem. Wayfair fixes that. Before I turned to Wayfair, my garden herbs were sitting in plastic yogurt containers. They were functional, but not that great looking. But then I turned to Wayfair. I bought two large outdoor trough planters. After shopping at Wayfair, my mini garden looked sleek and organized. I've now changed my morning routine to eat my breakfast sitting by these planters, and the space gives me so much joy.

27:13With those planters in place, my outdoor patio just works. And I gotta give Wayfair credit here, because I couldn't find the planters I needed anywhere else. They had to be a specific size to fit the patio space, they had to be lightweight, and Wayfair had exactly what I needed. If you've been putting off sprucing up your home because you're not sure you'll find exactly what you need, then my advice is to try Wayfair, like I did. Ready to upgrade your home for way less? Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

27:50Life has a funny way of changing when we're not even looking. One day your routine feels set, and the next something shifts. A new job, a move, or maybe just a quiet realization that what used to work doesn't quite fit anymore. On this show, we talk a lot about how the little things in our daily lives shape our well-being, often more than the big flashy milestones. And that includes what we drive. Because when something you use every single day feels aligned with your life, it removes friction. It makes ordinary moments smoother, less stressful. That's where Cars.com comes in. They have over 2 million new and used cars and powerful filters that let you narrow your search by price, mileage, features, whatever actually matters to you.

28:38And their deal badges highlight when a listing is a great price, so you can feel confident you're making a smart choice. It's not just about buying a car. It's about choosing something that truly fits your routine and your next chapter. Start your search at cars.com. Where to next? If you want all of your data in one place, if you want a single home for all of your entities, if you want to spend more time working and less time searching, you need the Intuit ERP. I know because I'm Damon John and I run my growing business on Intuit Enterprise Suite, the AI native ERP that's powerful, painless and proven.

29:22Learn more at Intuit.com slash ERP. Basically, I remember I was on Tinder because all these great stories start on Tinder. Raffaella Guns is telling me how she met the man of her dreams. He's a super beautiful, beautiful guy. Blue eyes, full lips. And how he changed her life forever. I really liked him. I was so into him. After chatting with him for a while on Tinder, Raffaella agreed to a first date. Something really low-key. The couple just walked around, getting to know each other. They didn't even kiss. But things picked up after that. We were hanging out for hours and hours, and we decided to go back up to my neighborhood.

30:08so we could sit by the river, by the Hudson River, because it's, like, super pretty to just watch the sunset over there. And we ended up having sex. And I thought I did everything right. Like, I carried condoms around. In my mind, I was doing everything right. But Raffaella was about to hear the sort of news that nobody wants to hear. The next day, he sort of came down with what he thought was, like, a cold or something. He had, like, a sore throat, and he was feeling very fatigued. And then a couple days later, I started coming out on the same thing. Her beautiful boy with the blue eyes was the first to seek medical advice.

30:46He sent a text. I went to the doctor, and they think all this might be a sign of herpes. And so, like, that was a weird text message. So I go into Urgent Kit crying, and I'm like, I need a herpes test. Raffaella got her official diagnosis soon after. Those first few days, I remember I was just sitting in bed crying. You know, I, like, thought my life was over. I wanted to die. It was the worst thing in the world. Like, not only was I, like, physically uncomfortable, but how am I going to date someone? How's anyone going to love me? In addition to being in physical pain with red bumps on her genitals, she was also in emotional pain.

31:20Her dream guy dropped her in a flash. Yeah, he was like, oh, this changed my vibe on you. He was, like, very, very distant. I thought, like, okay, we both have this thing. Like, we can go through it together and sort of, like, learn about it together and figure this out together. but he was very much sort of like in it for himself. I felt sort of, I don't know if betrayed is the right word, but that's the word that's coming to my mind. Rafaela didn't only feel betrayed by the man who gave her herpes and disappeared. Her diagnosis also freaked out the people closest to her. She was like one of my oldest friends.

31:55But then when I confided in her when I'm like sitting on my bed crying because I have all these itchy red bumps and, you know, the guy is ignoring me now, things changed. She was like, I just think, you know, it would be better for my own sanity if you used toilet seat covers when you were here. And, you know, if you use hand sanitizer a lot and this and that. So that was really hurtful. I mean, this was one of your oldest friends. Yeah. This was someone I've known since we were in diapers. And she's not supporting you for one of, it sounds like one of the most scary times in my life. Yeah. That just sounds awful.

32:29So that was horrible. let's take a second to predict how you would feel in Raffaella's situation. You contracted an incurable and highly stigmatized disease. Your romantic partner has ditched you, and some of your oldest friends are shunning you because of what happened. Would you describe all of this overall as a good thing? As a positive change in your life? As a present from the universe? Because that's how Raffaella sees it. She even wrote an article for Ravishly.com, which she titled, Getting Herpes Was a Gift. Some people were like, what the f**k? Like, how is this a gift? Like, almost angry and like calling me like delusional, all these sorts of things.

33:10Like, how would you possibly think that's a gift? So why is it a gift? It's a gift because I'm more knowledgeable. It's a gift because I've been able to write things like that article that helps people. Raffaella says all the fallout from her diagnosis has given her insight into the people who really matter. It's a strong litmus test for those who are actually going to be there for her. If a friend can't accept all of you, warts and all, pun intended, they're not really your friend. They're fair weather friends, you know? But it also gave Raffaella a new filter for her dating life. it saved her time figuring out which guys were worth her time and which guys just didn't get it he said some dumb shit about oh am i gonna get it if i kiss you and i'm like no it's on my vagina do you think you know would you change anything would you do it i mean it sounds like you learned so much from this like would you keep it would you do it over again i'd keep it first of all as much of a dick as he was he was really hot really hot and the sex was really good so i don't regret that secondly it it helped me in my dating life I feel a few months after I was diagnosed I met my current boyfriend who we've been together for like three years and I told him right away and he was fine with it um so that was nice to know that's like especially when you're when you can track something like herpes you tend to think like all my life's over no one's ever gonna want to sleep with me again no one's ever gonna want to date me again I'm never gonna get married this But it was fine.

34:40Like, there are people that have much, much worse problems than little red bumps. Getting herpes was much, much better than Raphael and May have predicted. And that kind of adaptation to adversity is something Dan Gilbert has found over and over again. What we find consistently is that in the face of negative events, people don't feel as bad as they themselves expected to. Although we're pretty bad at predicting how we'll feel after a good event, like winning the lottery, Dan has observed we're worse at predicting how we'll feel after a bad event, losing a friend, failing to get a job, or even getting herpes.

35:18Our impact bias is even bigger when we make predictions about negative life circumstances because we're prone to overcome bad events more quickly than we think. One of the things we fail to do when we mentally simulate is we fail to consider adaptation. We are a remarkably adaptive animal. We have been born and bred to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and soldier on. When the going gets tough, we get going. Dan calls this capacity to overcome adversity our psychological immune system. Just as our physical immune system kicks in when we get sick, our psychological immune system turns on when we're in mental distress.

35:56And our psychological immune system works really, really well. As soon as we start to feel bad, our mind deploys a whole host of mental defenses. If you've ever had a friend experience a breakup, you know at first they're really unhappy, and then pretty quickly they get around to rationalizing. Oh, she was never really right for me. This is really a chance for me to start my life over. I don't think we had that much in common in the first place. She didn't like my mother. When you mentally simulate a breakup, you mentally simulate the anguish. but you never mentally simulate the rationalizations.

36:27What's amazing about all those rationalizations, though, is that the happiness we get from rationalizing a bad event is just as real as the happiness we get from something objectively good. Well, there's no doubt that when people rationalize, everybody around them feels that they found some sort of phony and substandard form of happiness. I don't believe that for a minute. You know, the happiness you get when the person you love says yes to the marriage proposal isn't qualitatively different than the kind you produce for yourself when she says no. There's absolutely no data that I know of to suggest that it's an inferior form of happiness, and indeed, in some cases, it can be more long-lasting.

37:08Raffaella's misery about contracting herpes was very deep and very real. But her misery was also short-lived. But what about situations that are so horrible, there's no way a person can carry on normally? What about events so profound and so awful? that they'd change our lives forever. After the break, we'll hear about the true power of our psychological immune system, how it can transform the most terrible incidents a human can endure into a form of joy we'd never expect. 19 years old, I'm in this Humvee. I'm thinking I'm going to die. It felt good to just kind of just close my eyes and just kind of let it happen.

37:47The Happiness Lab will return in a moment. The best summer pieces are the ones you end up wearing on repeat. For me, that means clothes that feel comfortable, versatile, and somehow look right for every occasion. That's why I love Quince. They make elevated essentials using premium materials like European linen, organic cotton, and washable silk, without the traditional retail markup. This summer, I've been obsessed with Quince's washable stretch silk tiered maxi dress. It's made of silk with just enough stretch to actually move with you. It looks just as perfect at a posh summer dinner party as it does on a beach walk.

38:25Plus, it has pockets, which I love. But that's just the beginning. Quince has denim that's broken in and soft, and their 14-karat gold jewelry, think hoops and delicate chains, are the kind of finishing touches that make a five-minute outfit look completely intentional. Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to quince.com slash happiness for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash happiness for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince dot com slash happiness. Life has a funny way of changing when we're not even looking.

39:03One day your routine feels set and the next something shifts. A new job, a move, or maybe just a quiet realization that what used to work doesn't quite fit anymore. On this show, we talk a lot about how the little things in our daily lives shape our well-being, often more than the big, flashy milestones. And that includes what we drive. Because when something you use every single day feels aligned with your life, it removes friction. It makes ordinary moments smoother, less stressful. That's where Cars.com comes in. They have over 2 million new and used cars and powerful filters that let you narrow your search by price, mileage, features, whatever actually matters to you.

39:47And their deal badges highlight when a listing is a great price, so you can feel confident you're making a smart choice. It's not just about buying a car. It's about choosing something that truly fits your routine and your next chapter. Start your search at cars.com. Where to next? If your finance team spends more time finding data than using it, if there's one entity here and one here and one here and one here, if scaling your business feels like starting over, you need the Intuit ERP. Intuit Enterprise Suite is the AI native ERP solution that's powerful, painless, and proven. Learn more at intuit.com slash ERP.

40:29If you're always on the lookout for a great audiobook or just want help figuring out what to listen to next, there's a podcast you should know about. It's called Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, hosted by Cal Penn. Each episode takes a closer look at some of the most talked about new audiobooks on Audible, spanning a wide range of genres, from sci-fi and literary fiction to rom-coms, thrillers, and comedy. Cal is joined by guests who dig into what these stories are about, what makes them stand out as audiobooks, and why they're connecting with listeners right now. If you're looking for your next listen, this is a great place to start.

41:07Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I joined as an infantryman because I wanted to, I wanted to be in the action. J.R. Martinez had just finished high school in a small town in the south, the only son of a single mother from El Salvador. After graduation, he decided to enlist in the army. It was just after 9-11, and he had a few predictions about how things would go. You know, my thought process was three years. I would be in it. I would give back to this country. It would give me an opportunity to travel, to get more discipline.

41:44It would give me an opportunity to get money for college. And I remember one of my sergeants, you know, one day sitting down and talking to me and telling me that I needed to be prepared because we were going to be deploying sometime soon. And my response to him was, I'm not going anywhere yet. I just got out of basic training. Very naive of me, and he was absolutely correct and right in the sense of where two months later, I was on a plane with the rest of the unit heading over to the Middle East going to war. JR was part of the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was already a tough transition for a 19-year-old, and within weeks, tragedy struck.

42:20Here we were, you know, a few days shy of a month of being in Iraq and escorting the convoy through a city car, Carballah, when the front left tire of the Humvee that I was driving ran over a roadside bomb. The blast ripped through the entire truck and everything it was carrying. The ammo, spare fuel, and other explosives. It was a fireball. There was three other soldiers in the vehicle with me. They all got thrown out of the vehicle, but I was trapped inside. And within a matter of seconds, this Humvee was engulfed in flames and I was completely conscious. J.R. was pinned inside the burning truck for several minutes.

42:53He described screaming as he watched the skin on his hands melting. Eventually, he was pulled from the vehicle, but the damage was done. In addition to broken ribs and a lacerated liver, he had third-degree burns over his entire body, and he'd been gulping flames into his lungs through the whole ordeal. He was immediately medevaced, first to Europe and then to the U.S. Army Burn Center in San Antonio, Texas. I remember coming out of my medically induced coma three weeks later and my doctor essentially just kind of laying out all the cards and saying, this is the circumstance. You can't feed yourself.

43:32You can't walk. You can't sit up. You can't go to the bathroom by yourself. They also told me that I would no longer be able to remain in the United States Army, which was incredibly difficult and challenging. When this happened, you were 19 and you spent like the next three years. I turned 20, 21, 22 in the hospital. That's amazing. Yeah. Just to be clear, how much just to get a surgery? 34 % of my body was burned and majority of that was third degree. So it consisted of, for the listeners that can't see me, it consisted of my head, my face, my arms, my hands, portion of my back, portion of my legs.

44:04There's no way to really fully describe the pain unless you've been through it. But what's incredible about being a burn survivor, a burn patient at the time, is that the part of your body that isn't burned still hurts because they usually use the areas of your body that are not scarred as skin to do skin grafts. And usually a donor site is more painful than the actual injury itself. But JR's physical pain was nothing compared to his emotional anguish. When he enlisted, he'd been something of a local heartthrob. You know, it's funny because growing up, I always heard, you know, from like my mom's friends, you know, all these women, you know, would say, oh my God, he's so cute.

44:41He's so this, he's so that. And so I grew up just thinking like, that's what I am. I'm, you know, no one ever said he has an amazing personality. He's funny. He's, he's whatever, articulate, nothing. It was cute. And so suddenly I look at myself and I'm like, that's not cute. What I see in the mirror, that's not. And that person that I see, I do not recognize. I have no relationship with that individual, the old J.R. had died. And as you can imagine, I fell into a deep, dark place of, I was depressed, I was angry, I was resentful, I was a victim in every sense of the word. Deep burns and thick scars over his entire body, dozens of surgeries and years of his young life wasted in the hospital, plus the permanent loss of his good looks and his military career.

45:32Those are some of the most profound and tragic events a person can endure. But how does JR think about all these awful events today? I can tell you right now that what happened to me is a blessing. That's right, as a blessing. Considering the fact that I was trapped inside of a burning truck for five minutes, I'm fortunate to only have what I have. I have a lot of friends and I know a lot of people that unfortunately have missing limbs or, you know, have are more scarred, you know, or disfigured, you know, so in that sense, I'm incredibly fortunate. It's so cool to hear you say that you're incredibly fortunate.

46:07Because again, I think people who just heard the story, you know, guys, Humvee explodes, he spends, you know, a decent chunk of his 20s in the hospital having major, major surgeries, lives with scars for the rest of his life. And then you're saying, I'm fortunate, like, I'm the lucky one. Yeah, well, I am. Because, you know, I think about how I'm blessed to have a second chance at life. I don't want to take this second chance for granted. And J.R. did take every opportunity that came his way. Being a badly injured vet opened doors that J.R. never dreamed of. He became a mentor for other burn victims, which led to a few lucrative speaking gigs.

46:43Telling his story so openly built up J.R.'s confidence. So much so that when a friend casually mentioned that J.R. should try out for an acting job, he decided to go for it. I became an actor on a soap opera, All My Children, and that led Dancing with the Stars to ask me to be on the show, and then I acted in some other shows after that, and I wrote a book about my life and my mother's life and my family's life, and it became a New York Times bestseller. I mean, People Magazine put me on a cover. Because of these scars, I have this incredible ability to get people's attention. The 15 seconds of curiosity, right?

47:21Like, who is that? What happened to him? Those 15 seconds of curiosity that people have, it's my job, mine, to take that 15 seconds and turn it into 30 seconds, into 45, into 60 seconds, into 5 minutes, 10 minutes, a lifetime of actual educated dialogue. This is who I am. Everything I thought I wanted in life, you know, I wanted to be a professional football player and have fame and have all this money and be able to do all these things. If I would have accomplished those things, would I be as happy as I am now? Would you change anything? Would you do it over differently? No, I wouldn't change anything.

48:01I 100 % mean that. But you wouldn't change the explosion, the scars, the surgery. You'd keep all of that. Yeah. Yeah. Because the life I have, I mean, the beautiful wife and the beautiful daughter and the beautiful life that I've created for myself. I mean, gosh, I mean, I'm blessed.

48:27With bad events, we often don't realize that some good can come out of them. Dan Gilbert is unsurprised that people like JR see more positive than negatives, even in the worst of circumstances. He's seen it time and again in his work on hedonic adaptation. Startlingly, if you ask people who've lost a child, which is the single worst event that people can imagine experiencing, and indeed it is one of the worst events people can actually experience, if you ask people who've lost a child, they never say, gee, I'm glad that happened. But if you ask them to name the good and the bad things that have come from it, they tend to name more good than bad things.

49:05Now, that's a very stunning fact. That we should just sit back and marvel at the possibility that the worst thing in the world could happen to us and probably more good than bad will come out of it. There are awful events that will cause you to feel pain and hurt and loss. But we're fighters. When push comes to shove, we're really resilient. The problem is, we don't realize that. I think if you understand the power of the psychological immune system, our remarkable ability to rationalize in the face of adversity, it makes you braver. You realize that you will make the stakes and it will be okay.

49:44I think there's a lesson there for all of us.

49:52After making this episode, I've become even more convinced about that lesson. Hedonic adaptation means the lows of life aren't going to be as awful as you imagine, just as the highs will be more temporary than you hope. As a psychologist, I already knew that winning the lottery and other great circumstances don't bring lasting happiness. But honestly, I often forget about the flip side. So I'm going to make a conscious effort to be a bit braver, to stop worrying so much, to remember that I have a kind of emotional superpower, one that can get me through the worst of circumstances. And I hope you'll do the same, because even though your mind might tell you otherwise, joy doesn't come from everything in life working out perfectly.

50:35It comes from adopting better habits and better behaviors. All strategies we'll be discussing in coming episodes of The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

51:13Transcription by CastingWords The Happiness Lab is co-written and produced by Ryan Dilley. The show is mixed and mastered by Evan Viola and edited by Julia Barton. Fact-checking by Joseph Fridman. And our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Mia LaBelle, Carly Migliore, Heather Fane, Maggie Taylor, Maya Koenig, and Jacob Weisberg. The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

51:50If you're always on the lookout for a great audiobook, or just want help figuring out what to listen to next, there's a podcast you should know about. It's called Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, hosted by Cal Penn. Each episode takes a closer look at some of the most talked about new audiobooks on Audible, spanning a wide range of genres, from sci-fi and literary fiction to rom-coms, thrillers, and comedy. Cal is joined by guests who dig into what these stories are about, what makes them stand out as audiobooks, and why they're connecting with listeners right now. If you're looking for your next listen, this is a great place to start.

52:29Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Toilets are one of those things that you don't really think about until you experience one that changes your expectations. That was my reaction to the Kohler Smart Toilet Collection. The Kohlerville Smart Toilet completely changed my expectations of what a modern bathroom can look and feel like. It's sleek and minimal in a way that makes the whole space feel more intentional. Design changes everything, and Kohler Smart Toilets are a really great example of that. Discover Kohler Smart Toilets at Kohler.com.

53:06Whatever your goal, trade show giveaways, client gifts, or team gear, 4imprint has the promo products to match. With thousands of options, from apparel to drinkware to tech and totes, it's easy to find the right fit for your brand and budget, with standout choices at every price point. And with their 360-degree guarantee, you can be 4imprint certain your order will show up just right, right on time. Explore more at 4imprint.com. 4imprint. 4certain. The Happiness Lab is proudly sponsored by Amika Insurance. When it comes to taking care of their customers, Amica goes the extra mile. From listening to your insurance needs to following up after a claim, Amica provides coverage with empathy.

53:49Because as a mutual insurer, Amica is built for its customers and prioritizes you. It's the way insurance should be. Amica, we're your priority number one. Visit amica.com and get a quote today. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.