0:15

Pushkin. So

0:18

did he tell you what we're doing today? No, I

0:22

did tell you more than I

0:24

usually do. You told me a bit. You didn't

0:26

tell me much. Grapes. Something about

0:28

grapes, Yeah, something, that's what I remember, something

0:30

about grapes. I'm chatting with PJ Vote

0:32

and Alex Goldman, the co host of the podcast

0:35

reply All. It's really hard to describe.

0:37

We do all sorts of crazy stories about things that's out

0:39

true but our true, and it's a wonderful podcast.

0:41

Pj's right, you should listen to reply All.

0:44

It's about the Internet, modern life, and

0:46

how to survive it. Plus, PG

0:48

and Alex are a great pair. They're clever, funny,

0:51

and not above using the occasional curse word,

0:53

as you'll probably hear in the next half hour.

0:56

But a real highlight of reply All for me is

0:58

when Alex gets going on his favorite topic,

1:01

graping. There's like this pink mystery

1:04

scuff on our floor and I'm like, what is

1:06

that? Why can't I get it off? It's

1:08

making me so mad and like, no sane

1:10

person should care about it. I'm glad I'm work married

1:13

to you in that life, married to you. I feel like we

1:15

wouldn't live together a while. Alex is particularly

1:17

into griping. It's a way that he likes

1:19

to bond with his listeners because,

1:22

if we're being honest, griping feels

1:24

kind of fun. I mean, I like to

1:26

gripe, My best friends like to gripe,

1:28

My family likes to gripe. It's

1:31

funny, and griping lets us connect

1:33

with the people around us. I one day some we

1:35

were the first thing. We were like. We hate all the same things,

1:37

and most of the time, venting our frustration

1:39

seems to make us feel better. Or

1:41

does it is griping really all

1:44

it's cracked up to be? Or is this yet

1:46

another spot? Or our mind is leading us astray.

1:50

Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be

1:52

happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What

1:55

if our minds are lying to us, leading

1:57

us away from what will really make us happy.

2:00

The good news is that understanding the science

2:02

of the mind can point us all back in the right

2:04

direction. You're listening to

2:06

the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.

2:14

Gripes became a regular part of Reply All by

2:16

Necessity. One of the show's early

2:18

sponsors was a website hosting company

2:20

and PG and Alex had to deal with a problem

2:23

that many podcasters face, how

2:25

to make an ad for a company like that

2:27

that sounds fun to listen to and not super

2:29

cheesy. And then at some point we realized Alex

2:32

is a habitual griper, and I think I was saying

2:35

that you should have a website where it's just you're complaining.

2:37

Then it went from just Alex's gripes to taking

2:39

like listener gripes, and the listener grapes

2:41

are great because they're almost like a picture

2:44

of what the world is like in a given moment. Like there's

2:46

like a real feeling to like summer gripes,

2:48

and like when world events are really anxiety

2:50

producing, everyone seems to be like griping in the

2:52

same direction. The way the

2:54

website works is people just submit grapes and they end

2:57

up on a spreadsheet that I can go through whenever

2:59

I choose. As it happens, Alex has

3:01

his laptop open in his studio. The spreadsheet

3:04

is huge. I certainly didn't expect it to become

3:06

what it is because we do one of the

3:08

ads every three to four months, but

3:11

I would say probably twenty to twenty five people

3:14

leave grapes on there a day. Really,

3:16

maybe more. I didn't realize there's that much. There are

3:18

over thirty thousand grapes on my spreadsheet.

3:21

I didn't know. I like to check the reply

3:23

all recently submitted grapes because they're pretty

3:25

funny. And one recent complaint

3:28

really spoke to me. Stickers

3:30

on fruit. Oh, because

3:33

a grape isn't just a complaint, like a grape

3:35

is a specific kind of complaint, and some

3:37

complaints don't make good grapes like that, Like a grape has

3:39

certain qualities. Talk to me, Alex,

3:42

how would you how would you put it? I would describe

3:44

it as something that is annoying

3:47

enough to complain about, but mostly

3:49

not annoying enough to do something about.

3:51

Yes, yeah, yeah, and it's

3:53

nice. If they're like sort of good

3:55

fiction, they should be highly specific

3:58

and also universal at the same time, Like sticker

4:00

on fruit is really good. Here's a grape

4:02

we got today at eleven fifty eight am.

4:04

This is like a perfect example of one washing

4:06

my hands after cracking eggs and then having hands

4:09

are two wet to pinch and sprinkle salt on your eggs.

4:11

That's a good gripe. It's really good. Yeah,

4:13

PJ, you said that Alex isn't a griping

4:16

like, so why do you like the gripe being so much? I

4:21

think that probably the strength

4:23

I have is that I don't hold anything in.

4:26

I'm just like a constant pressure release valve.

4:28

It's just like a way to get it out of my head

4:31

and so that the you know, ahead of steam doesn't build

4:33

up and I don't become like miserable.

4:36

It's interesting that you say that, because I

4:38

think sometimes that's how it works. Other times,

4:41

as a long time Alex could an observer

4:43

an expert. Sometimes I feel like there's

4:45

a type of complaining you'll do where it gets howt your system is

4:48

gone. There's a type of complaining you do where

4:50

it's actually just like a chorus to a song where every time

4:52

you sing it, you sing it like slightly louder. But it's

4:54

not like PJ only has to hear Alex's

4:56

louder gripes. There's also the Internet,

4:59

which PJ describes as a complain

5:01

box for things that don't have complain boxes. We complain

5:03

on Twitter, we complain on Reddit, we

5:05

complain on WhatsApp. Any site

5:08

or service that allows to post a comment seems

5:10

to attract gripes like moths to a flame,

5:13

But that raises a question. Why

5:15

do we choose to share our gripes or

5:17

willingly read the gripes of total strangers.

5:20

I think one thing, it's just like you don't feel

5:22

alone in the world. You're like everyone's encountering

5:25

this. Like I have this theory that

5:27

when you love somebody, you're like, oh,

5:29

they're so nice, they're so great. And people describe the people

5:31

they love very vaguely, and when you dislike

5:33

somebody, you're like, he's got this weird little

5:36

walk, like he thinks he's the Prince of Tennessee,

5:38

and like blah blah blah blah. And like what I

5:40

like about graping complains it is like you are noticing

5:42

the world, you know what I mean. Griping makes

5:44

you present. It makes you very very

5:47

present, And like I can deal

5:49

with anybody complaining as long as they're funny about

5:51

it. And it's like you're taking the shit of

5:53

the world and turning it at least into like an

5:55

observable moment or something. Gripes

5:57

are a guilty pleasure. They're like sugary candy.

6:00

We know we shouldn't really indulge too much,

6:03

but we just can't resist, And just

6:05

like eating too much candy, it's pretty

6:07

clear griping too much has a downside.

6:09

Well, everyone thinks I'm a cranky asshole.

6:12

Yeah, I don't think everyone thinks you're a cranky

6:14

asshole. Sarah has several friends who

6:16

just call me grumps, so oh okay,

6:18

yeah everybody thinks a cranky asshole.

6:21

Yeah, I think you can make you unpleasant company. In

6:23

the last season of The Happiness Lab, we talked

6:26

about the need to curate our emotional lives

6:28

to make sure we're controlling those feelings

6:30

that we're exposed to. Flirting

6:32

with gripes can demonstrate how witty and cool

6:34

we are, but recreational complaining

6:37

can sometimes turn into a habit, which

6:39

means we're constantly surrounded by

6:41

negative feelings. We used to work with somebody

6:44

who was like a high level

6:46

constant graper, and it wasn't like stickers on fruit. It

6:48

was like everything sucks. And I remember reaching

6:50

a point where it's like I can't talk to this person

6:52

anymore because either I have to

6:54

argue with them all the time or I have to

6:56

see things the way they see them. And if I see things the way

6:58

they see them, I won't like my life anymore.

7:01

I'm dying to know who you're talking about. Oh

7:03

okay, yeah,

7:07

but literally it was like, I can't talk to you anymore. Like I can't,

7:10

I don't even want to make small talk, which I've never that's

7:12

the associopath thing to do. I've never done that before. And

7:14

it was a small office. Yeah, it was a thing

7:16

where you'd be like, hey, it's a beautiful day out and then

7:18

they'd be like, yeah, well the sun was burning

7:20

the back of my neck. I was like, yeah, man, even relative

7:22

to me, this is wild. That was another

7:24

level. We all

7:27

have relationships that center around swapping

7:29

gripes and grievances. I mean, there are

7:31

definitely certain people in my life who I

7:33

know I'll covetch with as soon as I see

7:35

them. And if I'm being honest about

7:37

how I end up feeling during and after those gripe

7:39

sessions, it's usually not

7:41

great. It often ups my stress

7:44

levels. But the biggest downside

7:46

to all this cavetching, at least according to

7:48

science, is one of our minds can't see

7:51

it. Turns out there is an opportunity

7:53

cost to griping, there's something else

7:55

we could be doing instead that allows for

7:57

better social bonding and a lot more

7:59

happiness. The Happiness

8:02

Lab will be back in a moment. Certainly,

8:20

there's that social commiseration

8:22

component to it, right, There's a bonding that goes

8:25

on when we share complaints. I'm talking

8:27

with doctor Robert Emmons, a professor of

8:29

psychology at UC Davis. We're chatting

8:31

about the upsides of griping. There's some social

8:34

benefits. Certainly, it can help connect us

8:36

together kind of a shared collective

8:38

grievance, and that can feel good. There's also the you know, the physiology.

8:41

I think it feels good to express the emotional least temporarily,

8:44

but in the long run it actually doesn't service very

8:46

well. Robert worries that the benefits

8:48

of griping depends a lot on the kind

8:50

of cavetching we're engaging in. Some

8:52

are more detrimental to well being

8:54

than others, and some are perhaps a little

8:56

bit more facilitative or actually can be adaptive

8:59

if it results in problem solving

9:01

or insight. It turns out that griping

9:03

for the sake of griping doesn't make us feel

9:05

good, but when we express our frustrations

9:08

in order to process us a bad situation, to

9:10

make sense of it and find a solution that

9:13

can have a more positive effect. When people write

9:15

about a negative event that happened to them

9:17

and they express their emotions about it, that's

9:20

not as beneficial as getting some insight

9:22

for why the event happened in the first place, or

9:25

now what a person can do about it. So

9:27

you could say that starts with a complaint, certainly

9:29

noticing what's going wrong, but the

9:31

goal is always to move beyond that. The

9:34

problem is we don't always take our

9:36

griping to that next level. In fact,

9:38

if you're a call that was pretty much

9:40

how PJ and Alex defined gripes earlier.

9:43

Something that is annoying

9:45

enough to complain about, but mostly

9:47

not annoying enough to do something about. But

9:50

not doing anything about our gripes isn't

9:52

even the worst part of our urge to complain.

9:55

The biggest issue is that we get the benefits

9:57

of griping all wrong. Our

9:59

minds lie to us about how good it will

10:01

make us feel. Said, it's if shown complaining

10:04

or listening to people complain has an

10:06

effect both on the listener as well as the complainer.

10:09

It's another case where we do things which are bad

10:11

for us, but we don't realize that. Robert

10:13

examined this in a classic study back in two

10:15

thousand and three. He had college students

10:17

fill out a weekly survey for a couple months.

10:20

He asked a bunch of questions about the subjects,

10:22

while being their overall mood, how

10:25

grateful they were feeling, and even whether

10:27

they engaged in healthy habits like exercise.

10:30

Some students were then asked to list five mundane

10:32

events that had happened during the week, but

10:35

other students were asked to complain not

10:38

about the big things in life, mind you, just

10:40

the small stuff, the stickers on

10:42

fruit level problems. They had the typical every

10:44

day guarden variety types of hassles

10:46

related to roommates and finances

10:48

and parking problems and professors. Not me, of

10:50

course, but some of the other ones, of course,

10:53

Robert. But did giving students the

10:55

chance to complain about these little annoyances

10:57

improve their mood over the ten weeks? The

10:59

answer was striking. Griping

11:01

didn't help at all. If anything,

11:04

people who talked about their hassles had a

11:06

worse time. For example, the griping

11:08

group wound up exercising almost forty

11:10

five minutes less than those in the control group.

11:13

But Robert included one additional group of participants

11:15

in this study. Subjects in this third

11:17

condition showed improved well being relative

11:20

to the Hassle's condition and even

11:22

higher levels of gratitude, more frequent

11:24

exercise, and fewer physical symptoms

11:26

like headaches and stomach problems. What

11:29

were the people in this well being supercharged

11:31

group asked to do? They were told

11:33

to think back over the past week and

11:35

write down up to five things that they were thankful

11:38

for. They were asked to do

11:40

the opposite of griping, focus

11:42

on things you're grateful for. Robert called

11:44

this the blessings condition. In

11:46

this and lots of other studies, Robert

11:48

has found that counting your blessings leads

11:51

to a host of positive outcomes. I used

11:53

to be able to keep track of all the findings, but now

11:55

it seems like almost every day and in every

11:57

way, we're learning more and more ways in which gratitude

11:59

works that it drives good

12:01

outcomes in people's lives. So, whether you're talking

12:03

about emotional health, relational

12:06

satisfaction, physical well being,

12:09

you see that gratitude matters The

12:12

stats that Robert cites in his book, The Little Book

12:14

of Gratitude are pretty incredible. People

12:17

who count their blessings show twenty three

12:19

percent lower levels of stress hormones like

12:22

cortisol. They reduce their

12:24

dietary fat intake by as much as

12:26

twenty five percent. People

12:28

suffering from chronic pain show a ten

12:30

percent improvement in sleep quality and depression

12:33

levels that are nineteen percent lower. Science

12:37

shows that gratitude also increases our

12:39

resilience. In contrast to griping,

12:42

focusing on the good things in life seems to

12:44

be a strategy that allows you to take action in

12:46

order to fix the bad things. We know

12:48

from the studies that that gratitude helps us recover

12:51

from loss and trauma. It helps us

12:53

to deal with the slow drip of every day's stress,

12:55

as well as the massive personal upheavals

12:58

and the face of suffering and pain

13:00

and loss and trials and tribulations. Gratitude

13:03

is absolutely sensual. It's part of our psychological

13:05

immune system. But the biggest benefit

13:08

of counting your blessings, according to Robert,

13:10

is that it connects us with other people. Yes,

13:13

that one good thing that griping gives us,

13:16

we can get that kind of relationship boost from

13:18

gratitude too, right, absolutely,

13:20

I mean one of the benefits of gratitude is that

13:22

it connects us so deeply with other

13:24

people. And a colleague of mind

13:27

social psychologist at a Chapel Hill,

13:29

North Carolina and Sarah Algo, talks

13:31

about gratitude as basically the interpersonal

13:34

emotion. It is the find, remind,

13:36

and bind emotion. Sarah

13:39

and her colleagues have found that practicing gratitude

13:41

can completely shift people's mindset about a

13:43

personal relationship. Taking time to

13:45

think gratefully about a friend or partner makes

13:47

you spontaneously notice more positive qualities

13:50

about that person. It makes it

13:52

easier to remember happier memories with that

13:54

person, and drives us to spend more time

13:56

with them. And all of these little

13:58

mindset shifts wind up making us feel

14:00

more connected. Sarah calls gratitude

14:03

a booster shot for our relationships. The

14:06

positive evidence for focusing on the good things in

14:08

life are pretty clear, but it's

14:10

still not something that comes naturally to

14:13

many of us. If you're going to express sentiment

14:15

online, being like I hate a nice

14:17

sandwich, I'm really grateful to be alive today is like it

14:19

comes across I think as well dopey. I think I

14:21

think the problem with niceness and goodness and happiness

14:24

as express online is like it

14:27

can feel you feel like you're bragging.

14:29

It can feel like you can feel insincere.

14:31

Enguelan since here, yeah, yeah, PG and

14:33

Alex kind of nailed it here. Gratitude

14:36

does feel a little dopey. Robert knows

14:38

that if he's going to get us all signed up to that blessing's

14:40

condition, he's going to have to change that attitude.

14:43

I like to say that gratitude really is

14:45

an old fashioned idea,

14:48

but the science makes it brand new. In

14:50

fact, we know now from the science that

14:52

gratitude actually does deliver on its promise

14:54

and on its potential. To paraphrase Robert,

14:57

gratitude seems dopey, but it works.

15:00

Getting past the cheese takes effort, but

15:03

it's definitely effort worth doing. Part

15:05

of why I do this, you know, part of why I study

15:07

gratitude and try to con people

15:09

that gratitude is the best approach to life is

15:11

just to convince myself, is to remind

15:13

myself that every day I need to practice

15:16

gratitude. Even though Robert's an expert

15:18

on this. It didn't always come easy. I

15:20

was always you know, planning ahead.

15:22

I was always you know, the person who said, Okay, well

15:24

I'll be happy when such and such happens,

15:27

when I you know, get into college, when I

15:29

get into graduate school, and when I get tenued,

15:31

when I get I was always delaying or

15:34

putting off happiness. And I think

15:36

it was because I wasn't grateful enough for my

15:38

current situation. That I

15:40

had everything I needed perfectly

15:42

to be happy and to be grateful, to be content in

15:44

the moment, but I was always looking for

15:47

something bigger and better and brighter,

15:49

you know, down the road. Doing these

15:51

sorts of you know, interviews, writing the

15:53

books, doing the research, giving the talks

15:56

is just really almost like a personal journey

15:58

for me to become more grateful.

16:00

So for people who are kind of in the in the

16:02

complaining camp or like, you know, think that

16:04

that's that's focusing on the hassles is

16:06

where it is any last

16:09

advice for them to get on the gratitude

16:11

bandwagon. So I think a really good thing

16:13

to do is just take one daily hassle,

16:15

some area that you struggle with, and

16:17

try to view that through a lens of gratitude.

16:20

Take the bad thing that you are most

16:22

likely by default to complain about,

16:25

and see if you can extract at least one

16:27

benefit from that bad thing. That's

16:29

something that anyone can do, whether or not

16:31

we complain by nature or

16:33

by practice. I think you know, once

16:35

we start doing that, we can see that can shift

16:38

us that the house. We're not going to go away. We're always going

16:40

to have those, but at least we'll have a backdrop by

16:42

which we can view those with some degree

16:44

of hope and trust in the future and positivity

16:47

after the break. We're going to take Robert's

16:49

advice to the next level because science

16:51

shows that there's one way to experience gratitude

16:54

that doesn't just boost your well being in the moment,

16:57

It can make you happier for a long, long time,

16:59

like for over a month. I wanted

17:01

to try out these bold scientific claims directly,

17:04

and I knew just the subjects. You

17:06

guys don't mind being guinea pigs, nor the

17:09

Happiness lab will be right back. This

17:20

exercise, allegedly, according to science,

17:22

can boost your mood not just for the rest of the day,

17:24

but for over a whole month. Really.

17:27

Yeah. In two thousand and five, psychologist

17:30

Marty Seligman and his colleagues recruited

17:32

over five hundred people to try a

17:34

bunch of different happiness interventions. Simple

17:37

behavior is designed to quickly boost well

17:39

being, but Seligman also wanted to test

17:41

whether these interventions caused sustained

17:44

improvements and happiness and mood like

17:46

ones that lasted for weeks and weeks. One

17:49

of these interventions was called a gratitude visit.

17:51

Here's how it works. You think of someone

17:53

you care about a lot, someone you're really

17:55

grateful for, but also someone

17:58

you've never really thanked. Then you

18:00

sit down and write that person a genuine,

18:02

heartfelt letter. You explain

18:04

why that person has had such a meaningful impact

18:07

on your life. And when you're done, rather

18:09

than mailing the letter or sending a quick email, you

18:12

ask to meet them in person. And

18:14

so when I went to interview PG and Alex,

18:17

I just happened to bring along some happiness lab

18:19

notepaper. We have a

18:21

little project for you all. Are we doing gratitude

18:24

journalism? Oh my god, here's

18:27

your prompt. I want you to each write a quick

18:29

letter of thanks to each other. You

18:31

want to express your thanks in a way of

18:34

something you've not expressed to each other, and so

18:36

you're just going to scribble some stuff down, Okay.

18:38

Well, PG and Alex are working on their letters. I

18:40

wanted to dig a bit more into the science of how this

18:42

intervention works and why, like

18:45

PG and Alex, many of us seem

18:47

to dread openly expressing gratitude. I'm

18:49

Nicholas Eppily. You can call me Nick. I'm a

18:51

professor of behavioral science at the University

18:53

of Chicago's Booth School of Business. I

18:55

study mind reading for a living. I study how people think about

18:57

each other's thought and some beliefs and attitudes, and mostly

19:00

how people screw that up and misunderstand each other

19:02

a lot. Nick does lots of experiments in which

19:04

he forces people to do stuff they think is

19:06

going to feel really awkward, but winds up

19:08

making and feel happier than they expect. If

19:11

you listen to Season one, you might remember

19:13

the guy who forced people to talk to strangers

19:15

on a train. That was Nick. You

19:18

give somebody else a compliment on a given day,

19:20

you could sit down and write a gratitude

19:22

letter to somebody else. And so what's of interest

19:24

for me is a psychologist, is why aren't we doing

19:27

those things? Writing gratitude

19:29

letters we know makes people feel happier. Most

19:32

people are listening to your podcast today didn't do that

19:35

today. Question is why not?

19:37

Why didn't you do that if that makes

19:39

you feel good? The answer is

19:41

that we just get the consequences of expressing

19:43

gratitude all wrong. When

19:46

participants here they need to sincerely convey

19:48

their thanks to someone's face, they usually

19:50

have a pretty strong reaction. They're

19:52

thinking, oh my god, this is going

19:55

to feel cheesy. One of the things that we

19:57

find here, like we do in so many other contexts,

19:59

is that people just underestimate the

20:01

positive impact that their social engagement

20:04

will have on other people, and

20:06

therefore it makes them reluctant to do it, which

20:08

causes them to miss out on opportunities that would

20:10

make them feel good too. Nick didn't experiment

20:13

asking subjects to do a gratitude letter, but

20:15

before they started, he asked them to make some predictions.

20:19

How happy will the recipient be about getting the letter,

20:21

how surprised will they be, and how awkward

20:23

will they feel? I husked

20:25

PG and Alex the same thing. Actually talk through

20:28

what it's feeling like if you're trying to write it

20:30

stressful and I can hear Alex writing so more

20:33

stressful. I just wrote so far, Oh

20:35

guy, dear Alex M.

20:43

How are you feeling, Alex weird?

20:45

Because I feel like I'm gonna have to read it. I

20:47

wish I right about that there's some possibility.

20:49

Yeah, people say nice things to me like actually shuts

20:52

my brain down, like I can't respond, like I

20:54

don't know how to respond, just

20:57

like public expressions of gratitude

21:00

and kindness, they just

21:02

make me feel nervous,

21:06

like they make me feel vulnerable. How do you think PJS

21:09

going to react to the letter? PG

21:11

is going to do a thing, this thing that he

21:13

always does, which is his eyes will get wide and he's

21:15

like, oh, that's really nice, thank you. That's

21:18

fucked up. I got you pegged son on

21:21

a scale of one not really that impressed to

21:23

ten he's really touched. Where is he going to be? Probably

21:27

an eight PG at a scale of one

21:29

to ten. How do you think Alex is gonna

21:31

feel after this? I think also probably

21:34

around an eight right, probably

21:36

higher? No, probably about Yeah.

21:39

I can't newly wait to game him as well as he canna do meet

21:42

Like, I don't know what is Maybe

21:44

I'll say thanks Bud. I

21:46

wouldn't say bud. You say bit a lot

21:48

times when you're touched. So those are PG and Alex's

21:50

predictions, but Nick's experimental data

21:52

suggests they'll both be wrong. We found

21:55

that the letter writers consistently

21:57

underestimate how positive the recipients

22:00

are going to feel. That the

22:02

letter writers underestimate how surprised

22:04

the recipient will be about the content, underestimate

22:07

how happy the recipient will feel. They predict

22:10

recipients will be happy recipients are

22:12

even happier than that. They're basically at the ceiling

22:14

of our measure, And they overestimate

22:16

how awkward the recipient is going to feel.

22:18

When we think about sincerely expressing thanks

22:20

to someone, we assume it's going to feel weird

22:23

for everyone involved, But that's

22:25

totally wrong. People love

22:27

hearing our gratitude. And just put yourself

22:29

in the shoes of a recipient for a minute. You've

22:32

got somebody who

22:34

has valued something that you did

22:37

for years and hasn't told you about this,

22:39

And you know, the more it

22:41

matters to them, the more depth

22:44

they go into, how does it

22:46

feel to receive something like that? Really

22:49

really really good? Right? And every

22:52

professor I know somewhere

22:54

in their office has a collection

22:57

of gratitude letters that

22:59

they've received from students. Everybody. Mine

23:01

is right next to my office. Choeah,

23:03

Mine's in my bedroom drawer. Actually there

23:07

you go. Yeah, everybody

23:09

keeps those, I promise you. So why

23:11

are we so bad at this? Like even I,

23:13

as a psychologist, just don't get the intuition

23:15

when I think about it, that it's going to be as meaningful.

23:17

I think it's going to be awkward. Like, where does this

23:19

misconception come from? It's crazy, It's

23:22

not crazy, it's psychology. It's perspective.

23:24

So that's the big problem here. So in

23:26

all of these social interactions, you've got two minds

23:29

going on. You've got the mind of the agent, the mind

23:32

of the actor, the person who's starting the interaction,

23:34

person who's writing the letter or whatever

23:36

it is. And then you've got the mind of the person receiving

23:39

the act. And if we know anything

23:41

in psychology, it's that bridging those two

23:44

minds is super hard. There's a gap

23:46

there, and the gap is between

23:48

me writing it and you reading it.

23:51

Now, what's my perspective when I'm writing it?

23:53

So I'm having to come up with all the words, and

23:55

I'm revealing all this personal stuff,

23:58

and I'm having to get the words just right, and

24:00

I'm you know, I'm worried. Am I saying this

24:02

sentence? Am I really expressing what I feel?

24:05

Am I articulating it just right? Does that

24:07

sound weird? I'm

24:09

focused on all the words that I'm

24:11

saying, right, I'm focused on my

24:14

competence. How good of a letter writer? Am I?

24:17

The sort of competence focus is definitely

24:19

what was playing out with the reply all guys with

24:22

a dash of mild competitiveness thrown into

24:24

the mix writing a fucking novel over there? Come on?

24:26

Man, Wow, it

24:29

does kind of feel like a competition of who's writing the most

24:31

right now? And I will lie, yeah, it feels

24:33

awful done.

24:42

Being them first doesn't mean you did better. I

24:44

know you're like the Q like finishes the test right away

24:46

and like walks out cartway ling and

24:48

then gets a d I'm saying such a nice

24:50

shit. Mat All you need is like two sentences.

24:54

According to Nick, Pugie and Alex need to relax.

24:56

Their letters aren't going to be graded like some AP English

24:59

exam actors. Attend to the words

25:01

they're saying, to their competence and so they're worried

25:03

about it being awkward and weird and all

25:06

of that stuff. The recipients

25:08

couldn't care us about that, or don't care very

25:10

much about that. They care about

25:12

the meaning of what you're saying, the warmth

25:15

that you're conveying, that you're reaching out to them

25:17

and expressing gratitude, and that

25:19

is just super powerful. Oh

25:22

my god, it's

25:26

time so the guys exchange their letters.

25:29

Can you even read my handwriting? Yeah, I'm sure I can.

25:31

It's pretty bad. Mine's pretty bad. Okay,

25:35

PJ. Thank

25:38

you for fielding all the annoying HR stuff

25:40

lately and for being sensitive to my mental health

25:42

struggles. I love working with

25:45

you, even though I

25:48

even though you vaped too much, even though I vaped too much.

25:51

And it looks like it's signed by Baba.

25:55

It says Alex, I was supposed to be a heart. Oh

25:57

that's really nice. Fuck Ah.

26:05

That's the way that we deal with each other's coming us by'm

26:07

laughing at and mocking it. Fee

26:09

it is christ all right, here we go. Dear

26:11

Alex, thank you for being a friend and collaborator

26:13

and weirdo partner in crime for the past decade.

26:17

You make me laugh more than anybody. And I can't imagine

26:19

going through the ups and downs of this decade without you as

26:21

my partner. Love you, buddy, Thanks

26:24

Bud. All

26:29

right, quick skill One's ten. How are

26:31

you feeling like

26:34

eight? Or nine? Yeah? More like nine?

26:36

Yeah. PG and Alex performed

26:38

exactly like Nick's subjects. They knew

26:41

the letters were going to feel good, but they underestimated

26:43

just how good. And I thought they definitely

26:46

seemed happier after the activity. Yeah,

26:48

it's nice.

26:50

Now, in theory, if I came back like a month later, you'd

26:53

still be like slightly more above baseline than

26:55

you were. That's what the data suggests. Really,

26:57

yeah, which is crazy. That's

27:00

crazy. How much of a boost When Marty

27:02

Seligman made his test subjects read their gratitude

27:04

letters, they showed a significant bump in

27:06

well being. They gained about five points

27:09

on a hundred point happiness survey known as the

27:11

Steen Happiness Index. But

27:13

what's most impressive is that participants

27:15

stayed boosted by at least a few

27:17

points on that test for an entire month,

27:20

which is kind of crazy. A whole month

27:22

just by reading a short little letter. Yeah,

27:24

it's like you just gave your antidepression medication

27:27

like performance enhancing drug for the podcast

27:30

it. I'm not sure if these letters are going to have a

27:32

huge bump in their reply all mood for weeks

27:34

to come, but they definitely made PJ

27:36

and Alex a little happier during that interview,

27:39

and despite all their initial predictions, PJ

27:41

and Alex ended up leaving the experiment feeling

27:44

more positive. We're good. That was awesome, you

27:46

guys. Our

27:49

mind tells us that openly celebrating our blessings

27:52

or sincerely expressing our thanks to people will

27:54

feel awkward and weird. We

27:57

think it'd be better to bond with the people we care about

27:59

in other ways, like having a constant gripefest.

28:02

But that intuition is wrong even

28:04

for expert level gripers, the ones

28:06

like Alex, who can make us really laugh when

28:09

complain I had the DVD from for like four

28:11

months for like a year. Yeah,

28:14

that's a grape right there. The songs

28:16

shows that the cost are our constant gripe bing is

28:18

bigger than we think. We're getting

28:20

ourselves and others all worked up without

28:22

really addressing the problems we face, but

28:25

we're also missing out on better ways to bond

28:27

with the people around us because we don't

28:29

realize how good expressing our thanks will

28:31

make us feel. And

28:35

so I, for one, I'm going to try to take this evidence

28:37

to heart. The next time I'm at dinner

28:39

with a friend. I'm going to resist the urge

28:41

to talk only about the annoying stuff in life,

28:44

and I'm going to scale back some of my online gripe

28:46

posting too. Instead, I'm

28:48

going to take a bit more time to focus on the blessings,

28:51

starting with the fact that you listen to my podcast.

28:54

So thanks podcast listener. I'm really

28:56

proud that you're here, and I hope that you'll

28:58

join me for the next episode of The Happiness

29:00

Lab by Doctor Laurie Santos. The

29:14

Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan

29:16

Dilley with the help of Pete Naton. Our

29:19

original music was composed by Zachary Silver,

29:21

with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering

29:23

by Evan Viola. The show was edited

29:25

by Sophie mckibbon and fact checked

29:28

by Joseph Fridman. Special thanks

29:30

to mil Lavelle, Carlie mcgliorre Heather

29:32

Fame, Julia Barton, Maggie Taylor,

29:35

Maya Kanag Jacob Weisberg and

29:37

my agent Ben Davis. The Happiness

29:39

Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries

29:42

and by me, doctor Laurie Santos,