0:15

Pushkin. If

0:24

there's one holiday I adore, and you

0:26

can ask anyone who knows me well, it

0:28

has to be Halloween.

0:32

The candy, the costumes, all the general

0:34

creepiness. I love it. Sadly,

0:37

I've never been all that enthusiastic about

0:40

Christmas. It's never really been my

0:42

thing. I also know a lot of people who

0:44

have a really tough time during the Christmas season,

0:46

and so I wanted to do something to change that. So,

0:49

even though we're busily working on a special

0:51

New Year's season of the Happiness Lab, one that

0:53

will launch January sixth, I wanted

0:55

to bring you a few super super quick tips

0:58

for how you can feel a little bit happier

1:00

this holiday season. So,

1:02

without further ado, welcome to The Happiness

1:05

Lab's very very short guide to having

1:07

a merrier Christmas with me, Doctor

1:09

Laurie Santos. The

1:19

Christmas season provides lots of opportunities

1:21

for improving your well being, things

1:24

like getting together with other people, taking

1:26

time off to celebrate, and relax. All

1:29

of these are practices that science shows

1:31

can make us feel happier. But the

1:33

holidays can also be really stressful, and

1:35

so here are some useful things that might help the

1:38

first lesson involves the power of giving.

1:43

Finding Christmas presents for everyone on your

1:45

list can feel like a stressful chore for

1:48

a distraction from the thing we really want to

1:50

do, which is buying stuff for ourselves.

1:53

But research shows that this might be another spot

1:55

where our minds lead us astray.

1:59

Liz Done, a professor at the University of British

2:01

Columbia, has done some great research on this.

2:03

You know, I don't think treating ourselves is a terrible

2:06

idea, like spending money on ourselves can

2:08

be good. It's just that spending money on somebody

2:10

else could actually be helpful, I think is

2:13

especially easy to overlook. She

2:15

asks people to spend money either on

2:17

themselves or on a gift for someone else.

2:20

People predict that treating themselves will feel the

2:22

best, but it turns out they're

2:24

wrong. Subjects who buy nice

2:27

things for others report feeling happier at

2:29

the end of the day than people who buy nice

2:31

things for themselves, and that effect

2:33

holds even when relatively large amounts

2:35

of cash are involved. Liz also finds

2:37

that doing nice stuff for others doesn't even

2:40

need to involve money. In fact, she's run

2:42

these same kinds of gifting studies with very

2:44

young children using the kiddy equivalent

2:46

of cold hard cash goldfish

2:49

crackers, And so we gave

2:51

these little kids a windfall of goldfish

2:53

for themselves, as well as a chance to give

2:55

some of those goldfish away to a puppet named

2:58

Monkey. Even children under the age of

3:00

two seem to exhibit pleasure from

3:02

giving their resources away. It's

3:04

kind of just reassuring. As many problems

3:06

as we have in the world right now, it's like the

3:09

tiny humans are starting out

3:11

with this proclivity to derive

3:13

joy from giving

3:15

their stuff away like that.

3:17

To me, I don't know, it makes me optimistake

3:20

again about the world.

3:25

So the big happiness lesson is that giving

3:27

feels better that our lying minds realize,

3:29

and science shows that the price tag isn't

3:31

the important part. It really is the

3:33

thought that counts. My second Christmas

3:36

tip is about the kinds of gifts we should

3:38

be giving others. It turns out that there's

3:40

one kind of holiday present that can

3:42

be super valuable and hugely

3:44

happiness inducing, and that is the

3:48

gift of time. Psychologist

3:50

Ashley Willins from Harvard Business School looked

3:53

into this. So we ran this

3:55

experiment where we gave people forty

3:57

dollars in one week to spend in a way that would save them

3:59

time, and forty dollars in another week to

4:01

spend on a material purchase for themselves. And

4:04

what we found is that on weeks where people

4:06

made this time saving purchase, they felt

4:08

happier, less stressed. But

4:10

it wasn't about the objective amount of time they

4:12

saved. It was that these time saving

4:15

purchases getting a house cleaner, ordering

4:17

takeout help people feel like they were

4:19

more in control of their time, and

4:21

that was what was driving the happiness benefits,

4:24

not the fact that people saved an hour and a half

4:26

from cooking, but that people all of a sudden felt

4:28

like they had a windfall of time, that they were more in

4:30

control of their schedule. Our third holiday

4:33

tip is to take time this Christmas season

4:35

to experience gratitude. The

4:38

reason, according to gratitude expert

4:40

Robert Emmons, is that feeling thankful

4:42

can give us the strength we need to weather

4:44

tough situations. For me, I

4:47

think the most important good of

4:49

gratitude is that it helps us

4:51

live resiliently. There's no

4:53

resilience without gratitude. I mean,

4:55

it's just impossible gratitude is

4:57

absolutely indispensable for

5:00

I think you know, just for growing an unshakable

5:03

center, a core of calm, strength,

5:06

and happiness. And it helps us to deal

5:08

with the slow trip of every day's stress, as

5:10

well as the massive trials and tribulations.

5:13

And also it widens our perceptual

5:15

feel. It helps us see the big picture and

5:17

the opportunities in it, and of course it connects

5:19

people together. Robert's work

5:21

has shown that taking time for gratitude can

5:23

have an important impact on your happiness, whether

5:25

you're trying to navigate the usual seasonal

5:27

aggravations or even facing a

5:30

more profound sense of holiday malaise. So

5:32

take a second to jot down a few things you're

5:35

thankful for each night this season, or

5:38

steal a fantastic gratitude tip from

5:40

my colleague here at Pushkin Industries, the economist

5:42

Tim Hartford, who has a fantastic new

5:44

podcast called Cautionary Tales, which

5:47

I hope you'll check out. Tim's holiday

5:49

gratitude hack is making his children write

5:51

a thank you letter whenever they open a present,

5:54

not the end of the whole pile, but each

5:56

time an individual gift is unwrapped.

5:59

I really love this idea. It lets

6:01

Tim and his family savor more time together

6:03

by slowing down the whole unwrapping process.

6:06

It forces Tim's kids to think about what

6:08

we're seeing each gift feels like, and

6:11

the act of writing a thank you note, organizing

6:13

our feelings of gratitude and setting them down

6:16

on paper. That's great for our happiness

6:18

too. Now this might seem

6:20

like a hokey family ritual, but that

6:22

gets to my final Christmas tip, which

6:24

is that if we want to be happier this holiday season,

6:27

then we need to embrace dumb rituals

6:29

just like this. In fact,

6:32

research from Harvard Business School professor Mike

6:34

Norton shows that rituals have a way of

6:36

making us feel a little bit more connected during

6:38

the holiday season. If you report having

6:40

a ritual, you're more likely to keep

6:42

getting together with your family for the holidays,

6:45

and it's more likely to go well when

6:47

you do get together. If you've ever been

6:50

to a family holiday, after a

6:52

few years, sometimes it occurs

6:54

to you in your head that you have nothing in common with

6:56

these people. You know, they have different political

6:58

beliefs, they have different lifestyle choices.

7:00

You're kind of wondering, why am I related to them.

7:03

It seems as though rituals provide

7:05

kind of a framework for the fact that

7:07

we're a family, because as we've always

7:09

been eating Nana's roles for the past

7:11

fifty years, so I guess it's

7:14

something that we all do together. The

7:16

other thing the rituals do for family events

7:18

like that is which is almost as important

7:20

as they tell you what to do at each moment.

7:23

So again, if you've ever been to a family holiday,

7:26

mainly it's people standing around awkwardly

7:28

hoping that arguments don't start based on

7:30

something that happened in seventh grade. Rituals

7:33

tell everyone exactly what they should do at all

7:35

time. So it's you and you go out and do that,

7:37

and then we'll do this in the kitchen while you do

7:40

that over there, and then we'll get picked together at four

7:42

and watch the thing, and then dinners over at six and then

7:44

we're done. And it actually allows

7:46

the day to happen where

7:48

everyone kind of sorts themselves

7:50

in a way that's optimal, and then

7:53

suddenly it's all over and nobody killed anybody.

7:58

Ah, yes, the true meaning of Christmas.

8:01

We got through it and nobody killed

8:03

anybody. Anyways, I

8:05

hope you found these short tips helpful. The

8:09

Happiness Lab will be back on January

8:11

sixth for four special shows

8:13

exploring how you can become happier in

8:16

twenty twenty. I

8:18

hope you'll join me in the new year to learn how

8:20

the science of psychology can boost your

8:22

well being, and if you can't wait, sign

8:25

up for our newsletter right away at Happiness

8:27

Lab dot fm.

8:30

So until we return, Happy holidays

8:33

from the Happiness Lab with Doctor Laurie

8:35

Santos.