0:00

Happiness is a massive topic.

0:02

Where do we even begin?

0:05

After your podcast, more than 35 million downloads,

0:07

why are our young people so unhappy? If

0:09

you look at very happy people, what are

0:11

they doing differently? What you find is they

0:13

spend a lot of time with other people.

0:15

They don't spend a lot of time on

0:18

screens. They spend more time disproportionately in real

0:20

life, whether that's being present, walking around outside

0:22

or something. Touching grass. Yeah, all negative

0:24

emotions really have a good evolutionary purpose. Boredom is

0:26

our cue that like, oh, I should go out

0:29

and do something stimulating. I should find something meaningful.

0:31

Whereas when we can kind of slap the screen

0:33

band-aid on our boredom, we never have to feel

0:35

it long enough to find what we really want

0:38

to do. Happiness tends to have to sort of

0:40

U-shaped curve. It starts off good when you're young

0:42

and you're a kid, you tend to be pretty

0:44

happy, and then you get to midlife and it

0:46

kind of sucks. There's lots of research showing that

0:49

perfectionism is going up since the 80s to now.

0:51

There are like 30 to 40 percent increases. The

0:53

level of depression right now nationally is more than

0:55

40 percent of students report being too depressed to

0:57

function most days. And that number has doubled in

1:00

the last eight to nine years. Similar things for

1:02

anxiety right now. And anxieties are like... So

1:08

it's happened again. Last week, I got a

1:10

notice in the mail, another data breach. This

1:12

time it was with my healthcare provider. I'm

1:14

sure you've been here. Sadly, this problem is

1:16

not going away. Obviously, they tell you to

1:18

go and lock down your credit reports, but

1:20

there's so much more at stake here. From

1:23

the second your data is breached, it's being

1:25

resold by companies called data brokers. Now,

1:27

the good news is that as evil as these

1:29

companies are, they're also companies. That means that if

1:31

you take your time to monitor, to find your

1:34

data, and then you hire a lawyer to send

1:36

them takedowns, you can have some success. Now,

1:38

obviously, your time is more valuable than that. So I

1:40

wanted to tell you about a service that I use.

1:43

As today's sponsor, it's called Delete Me. They

1:45

use a power of attorney to work on

1:47

your behalf to find and methodically remove your

1:49

data from these data brokers. And

1:52

they are continuously monitoring these sites. There's over 750 of

1:54

them out there. And

1:56

they keep removing your data as it shows up,

1:59

which unfortunately, It constantly does. And

2:01

recently, Delete.me has expanded their core service,

2:03

which is the ability to easily extend

2:05

protection and peace of mind to anyone

2:07

that you wish to include in your

2:09

Delete.me account. They have a new area,

2:11

it's called the Family Account Management, which

2:13

creates this unified hub for your entire

2:16

family privacy protection. And right

2:18

now you get 20% off all plans

2:20

with the code KevinRose. Head

2:22

to joindelete.me.com/KevinRose. This

2:26

week's episode is brought to you by DRAM. Now

2:28

you've probably heard me mention that way back in the

2:31

day, back in 2000, when I

2:33

was a wee lad, I gave up

2:35

soda, absolutely cold turkey. That means nothing

2:37

with corn syrup, aspartame, sugar, or any

2:39

other crap, but I still really love

2:42

sparkling beverages. That's why I'm

2:44

excited to tell you about DRAM. DRAM

2:46

is unlike anything you've ever had. It's

2:48

packed full of real functional ingredients made

2:51

from plants. Imagine a drink

2:53

that's zero calories, zero sugar, and

2:55

it's made with steam distilled organic

2:58

ingredients. They have this citrus flavor

3:00

that has orange blossom, hibiscus, lemon

3:02

salt, rind from a grapefruit.

3:04

It's fantastic. And my favorite though, is

3:07

their cola. It tastes just like classic

3:09

cola, but it's made with adaptogenic mushrooms,

3:11

such as chaga, lion's mane, shiitake, and

3:13

cordyceps, but you don't even taste the

3:15

mushrooms. It tastes just like cola. Lastly,

3:18

I love that their cans are BPA

3:20

free and that their water is free

3:22

from those harmful, they call them these

3:24

forever chemicals, they're really

3:26

bad for you. None of that in their

3:28

water. It's just absolutely fantastic stuff. You gotta

3:31

give it a try. If you head on

3:33

over to kevinrose.com/DRAM, you'll get my three favorite

3:35

flavors as a bundle pack, and you'll also

3:37

get 20% off everything at the store. So

3:39

use the code Kevin Rose. That's kevinrose.com/DRAM, D-R-A-M,

3:42

and the code Kevin Rose. And thank you

3:44

DRAM for sponsoring the show. Lori, thank you

3:46

so much for being on the show. Yeah,

3:48

thanks so much for having me. Happiness

3:51

is a massive topic.

3:53

Where do you even

3:55

begin when you approach

3:57

this? If someone comes up to you at a party. And

4:00

you say, Hey, I study happiness. How

4:03

do you even start to talk about

4:05

this topic? You go way back, right?

4:07

I mean, Aristotle was talking about this stuff. It's in

4:09

the Declaration of Independence. So it's not like a new

4:11

thing where people are pursuing this stuff, but usually

4:14

start with the story of how I get interested

4:16

in this stuff. Cause like, I was like a

4:18

nerdy professor who studied animals for a long time

4:20

and then switched and made this

4:22

pivot to studying happiness and mental health, because

4:24

I was seeing the mental health crisis in

4:26

my students. I took on this weird

4:28

role at Yale, which is called the head of college.

4:30

So you're a faculty who live on campus with students

4:32

and I expected college life to be

4:35

what it was like when I was there in the nineties,

4:37

there was stress and stuff, but it was mostly fun. And

4:40

that just like was not what I was seeing

4:42

in my community. I was just seeing so much

4:44

anxiety and depression and students who were suicidal. And

4:46

it was just like jarring that the mental health

4:48

crisis was so bad. That took place over the

4:50

course of a decade or so that change that

4:53

shift. Yeah. Well, what's interesting is you look at

4:55

the data, these things are skyrocketing, right? So the

4:57

level of depression right now, nationally is more than

4:59

40% of students report being too depressed to

5:01

function most days. And that number

5:03

has doubled in the last eight to nine years. Similar

5:06

things for anxiety right now. I think anxiety is at like

5:08

67% of students say

5:10

they're overwhelmingly anxious. Most days college

5:12

students nationally, those rates just

5:14

were not there. My colleague who runs the

5:16

mental health and counseling at Yale is fond

5:18

of saying the rates are skyrocketing enough that

5:20

we know they'll level off, but that's just

5:22

cause like a hundred percent of people need

5:24

clinical care on college campuses. And it was

5:26

just in my community. I was just seeing

5:28

these students who are really struggling and realizing,

5:30

hang on, my field has some strategies we

5:33

can use to do better, to feel

5:35

better, to feel less depressed and anxious.

5:38

And so I developed this class to like

5:40

teach students these strategies retrained in the science

5:42

of happiness and put together the class. And

5:44

that was when everything changed for me because

5:46

the class went totally viral on

5:48

campus. We had a quarter of the entire

5:50

Yale student body signed up to take the

5:52

class. Well, and you did a Coursera thing too,

5:54

right? And then we put 4 million downloads or something.

5:57

Every time we put out content, people flock to

5:59

it. I think it's because people want to

6:01

be happy, but also people are struggling right

6:03

now. There's legit things in 2024 that are

6:06

making us all feel overwhelmed

6:08

and burned out and scared

6:10

and... What's the route? Obviously, there's band-aids

6:12

and then there's the root cause. When

6:15

you did your research, where did you begin and

6:17

how did you start to suss out what's causing

6:19

all this and why now? I wish there

6:21

was like a silver bullet because it would make it so

6:23

easy because we could just get rid of whatever that

6:26

thing was and make everything... You mean the iPhone? Yeah,

6:28

the iPhone, right? Technology is

6:30

probably part of the answer here. I

6:33

should say, it's not just, I think everybody points

6:35

a finger at social media. I actually think it's

6:37

deeper than that. I think it's these devices that

6:39

we have that often steal our

6:41

attention away from real world things. If

6:44

you plot those rates of depression I was just

6:46

mentioning and you plot number of iPhones in teen

6:49

pockets, like the one I think looks

6:51

perfectly... Oh my God. I mean, correlation

6:53

doesn't equal causation obviously, but it looks pretty bad,

6:55

right? One of the things

6:57

technology promised us, especially phones in our

6:59

pockets, was connecting with other

7:02

people, being social in real life. I

7:04

think what's shocking is that how much we use it

7:06

to not be social in real life. We're

7:08

here having this conversation in Austin at South

7:10

by Southwest. If you walk around this conference

7:12

where there's so many interesting things to see

7:14

and do, you'll see a bunch of people sitting

7:16

around scrolling like this on their... They

7:19

pay to come interact with these amazing people and

7:21

there's this opportunity cost where we're hanging out on

7:23

this tiny screen all the time. I

7:26

think has real psychological consequences. Liz Dunn,

7:28

who's a professor at UBC, does these

7:30

studies where she just checks what happens

7:32

to people's social interactions when they have

7:34

their phones with them versus not with

7:36

them. She measures these subtle things

7:39

like how often people smile at one another. She

7:41

finds that smiling decreases like 30%

7:43

when your phone's around because you're not

7:46

even looking at the people around you. You're

7:48

just locked into your phone. What's causing that

7:50

though? What do you think the phone provides?

7:52

Because if you're having a real

7:55

intimate friend conversation, someone's struggling,

7:57

you're sitting down with them, you're grabbing a

7:59

beer or something. something that's meaningful

8:01

to me. It feels much deeper than a

8:04

chat. But what is it that's pulling

8:06

people South by, for example, they have

8:08

the ability to go

8:10

and connect and laugh, have fun,

8:12

hang out, but yet they're choosing

8:14

the device over the humans, which

8:16

in theory, the human connection should

8:19

be more powerful, but yet

8:21

the phone is winning. Yeah. Why?

8:24

So I think the phone wins for two reasons. One is

8:26

it's just easier, right? If I'm at South by and I

8:28

have to talk to someone, you're standing up and be like,

8:30

Hey, how did you come to South by? What are you

8:33

doing? There's like this teeny friction. Whereas my phone, there's no

8:35

friction. I just pull it out and there'll be something interesting.

8:38

And I think we're worse at the friction than we have

8:40

been because we're out of practice at it. I think older

8:42

folks like us, because COVID, I think our young people just

8:44

never do it in the same way that we grew up

8:46

doing it, right? If they go to pick their friend up

8:48

at their house, they don't like go knock on the door

8:50

and have to talk to mom. I'm like, where's Joey?

8:52

They just text like I'm outside. Come. And

8:55

younger individuals have less practice with that friction.

8:58

So I think friction is one thing, but I

9:00

think we just forget how interesting our phones are

9:02

like how much cool crap's on it. But your

9:05

brain doesn't forget your brain knows Liz Dunn, who

9:07

I just mentioned. She's this analogy. She's like, imagine

9:09

to this conversation instead of bring my cell phone,

9:11

which is in my pocket right now, I brought

9:13

this big wheelbarrow and in the wheelbarrow is printouts

9:16

of every email I've had since 2005, like

9:19

big DVDs with everything that's on YouTube from

9:21

cat videos to porn printouts of everything Donald

9:23

Trump and Biden has said in the last

9:25

week, CDs of every song that's on Spotify,

9:27

this big wheelbarrow that went up into the

9:29

sky. You and I would want to have

9:31

a conversation, but you'd be like, oh, I

9:33

just want to take a real quick pic

9:35

at that cat video or whatever. Your brain's

9:37

not stupid. Your brain knows that full wheelbarrow

9:39

and much, much more that I don't have

9:42

time to say is on the other

9:44

side of that phone. You're super interesting. It's fun,

9:46

but I don't know you as interesting as every

9:48

cat video out there, right? I

9:50

think we've created this enormous

9:52

temptation for our attention that's in the

9:54

pockets of billions of people around the

9:56

world, and we don't know psychologically what

9:58

that's doing to us. One question I

10:00

have for you, Instagram or TikTok reels

10:03

reels to me are the most addicted

10:05

thing because as the algorithm

10:07

fine tunes itself, it's fine in the dumb

10:09

stuff that I lack my ass off at.

10:11

Back in the day, I'm old enough now

10:13

to remember before pre-cell phone pre-cell phone. You

10:15

would have one of these moments once

10:18

a week with your friends where someone would fall

10:20

out of a chair, something hilarious would happen, and

10:22

you would laugh your ass off. And

10:24

it was like, that was so awesome that we all

10:26

experienced that. And you'll laugh about it for years to

10:28

come. Now I'm having

10:30

that moment every 30 seconds. So

10:33

the reward that I'm getting every 30

10:35

seconds is like those rewards that I

10:37

used to get once a week, and

10:39

it's just like nonstop. And

10:41

so here I am being entertained to the level

10:44

like that I absolutely love. And

10:47

then when I don't have that any longer, now

10:50

I'm I have to sit with my feelings and my

10:52

emotions and everything else. And the things that I don't

10:54

like, is that part of the issue, do you think?

10:56

There's some evidence that things like boredom

10:59

proneness is going up, that when we

11:01

have this moment where we can't whip out

11:03

our phones and look at our reels, we feel this

11:05

intense, terrible boredom. But

11:08

also the stakes get higher because we have

11:10

this being hit on the funniness stuff every

11:12

30 seconds. And these algorithms are making that

11:14

even more frequent and even more powerful a

11:17

dopamine hit. It means that like

11:19

real life just hasn't kind of caught up.

11:21

My husband's a philosopher. We have great dinner

11:23

party conversations, but he doesn't have an algorithm

11:25

in his brain that's tracking what I find

11:28

funny and super interesting and updating every

11:30

30 seconds to give me content that I like.

11:32

And I think that means temptation wise, we're

11:35

really pulled to the screen world, the TikTok

11:37

world. If you think of like our psychological

11:39

nutrition, actual psychological joy we

11:41

get out of it, we get this sort

11:43

of quick dopamine hit from the TikTok, but

11:45

as soon as you put it down, you

11:47

feel gross and lonely and maybe overwhelmed and

11:49

a little dizzy or whatever, whereas

11:51

you don't get that from talking to people.

11:53

I think this is something that's just neuro

11:56

scientifically like super fascinating, which is our reward

11:58

systems are weird and we don't necessarily. go

12:00

for and crave the rewards that are going to make

12:02

us feel the best in

12:04

life. There's this interesting neuroscientific

12:07

disconnect between systems that

12:09

code for wanting versus liking.

12:12

So if I had this long dinner with my husband, we have this

12:14

intense conversation, I'll like that. I'll feel really

12:16

connected to him afterwards. That will feel really pleasurable for me. But

12:19

I don't necessarily want that or crave that in the

12:21

same way I might for the next reel in

12:23

like a TikTok series, right? Like I crave,

12:25

I really want. But if you were

12:27

taking a measure in my pleasure centers of whether or

12:29

not I liked it, I might get that like quick

12:31

hit off of liking it, but it's not a deeper

12:33

liking. And it turns out that

12:35

this is just a feature of the brain that

12:38

these circuits that code for wanting and craving and

12:40

going after stuff are just different than liking. And

12:42

that means there's all this stuff we crave that

12:45

we'll spend money on. We don't end up liking

12:47

in the end. It also means there's all this

12:49

stuff we really probably will like that we don't

12:51

have craving for like deep social

12:53

connection or contemplative time where you're just

12:56

kind of present or you're even

12:58

to a certain extent exercise and moving your body. I

13:00

think some people get the craving for exercise, but like

13:02

I'm just not one of those. I have to work

13:04

at it and force myself to do it all the

13:06

time. So I feel

13:08

like if we could just line up the brain

13:10

systems for wanting and liking, we'd be better off.

13:12

But what makes companies money is algorithms that just

13:15

tap into the wanting. They don't really care about

13:17

the liking. In my mind, it's not any one thing.

13:19

If I have to feel it has to be a composition

13:22

of different aspects

13:24

of life and interactions and

13:26

things that we do to create

13:28

the perfect stew of happiness. Is that

13:31

accurate to say? TikTok's not going to

13:33

make me happy. Deep conversations with my

13:35

wife aren't going to check every single

13:37

box that I have. What

13:39

does that composition look like and how do you actually teach

13:41

that to people? Part of it's just overcoming

13:43

the misconceptions we have about the stuff that we think

13:46

is going to make us happy but isn't going to work.

13:48

So in our young people today, they think the main

13:50

thing in that big composition pile is money. If

13:52

I could have money and fame, then I would be fine. And

13:54

it is true that if you don't have any money,

13:57

then getting some money is important. You get your basic

13:59

needs sorted. Resninski,

16:00

who's at the University of Pennsylvania, she does all

16:02

this work on what she calls job crafting, which

16:04

is like you take your regular job description and

16:07

you infuse whatever your values and

16:09

strengths are, whether that's creativity or

16:11

bravery or through social connection or

16:14

persistence or learning or whatever it is.

16:16

She does most of her work in

16:18

hospital janitorial staff workers. So these are

16:20

people who are like cleaning up the

16:22

linen in a hospital room. And what

16:25

she finds is that between 20 to 30% of

16:27

them say that their job is a calling. They

16:29

don't hate their job. They love it. They wouldn't

16:31

change it for anything. And when she digs into

16:33

what they're doing, they're taking their normal job description

16:36

and finding a way to add this meaningful thing

16:38

in. Is it a calling then

16:40

or is it an addition of something that

16:42

creates a calling? One example she has is

16:45

this guy who worked in a

16:47

chemotherapy ward and crappy thing, but having cancer and

16:49

having to get chemo as you get sick, his

16:51

main job was like cleaning up vomit because people

16:53

throw up on the floor. And he

16:55

said, yeah, I have to do that. But like my main

16:57

thing is I like humor and I like making people laugh.

16:59

These people have like such a crappy life

17:01

right now. And he had like his

17:03

whole standard. So it was the under joke, I guess

17:05

was like, he makes fun of, oh, you vomit it

17:07

again. I'm going to get overtime. You keep throwing up

17:10

this week. Let's lock it out. But then the person

17:12

last, he's like, that's my job. She

17:14

talks about another staff member

17:16

who worked in a coma ward. She couldn't talk

17:18

to the patients because the patients are in comas,

17:20

but she would move the art around or plants

17:22

like this little plant that were sitting near here.

17:24

She'd like move the succulents around the room to

17:26

get creative. That was how she found meaning in

17:28

her work. And so resonancy stuff

17:30

basically says, look, even in the kind of

17:33

narrowest, perhaps crappiest job,

17:36

you can find ways to bring in your values. And what's

17:38

cool about her work is you might assume if you were

17:40

a manager of these people, you'd be mad at the chemo

17:42

guys, you know, chat with the people and not cleaning up.

17:45

But what she finds is that managers self report that

17:47

these workers are doing the best job at their real

17:49

job description because they love their job. They're like in

17:52

a good mood. They're not slacking off and trying to

17:54

go to the break room. They want to engage because

17:56

they've figured out a way. And that's

17:58

why I love her work. It really suggests that like, look,

18:00

any of us could job craft. We just have to get

18:03

creative about ways to fit

18:05

stuff in. All right. It's

18:07

time to talk about Notion. I am

18:09

always on the hunt and always playing with

18:11

the latest and greatest productivity software. Notion

18:13

is one that I've used for many, many years now.

18:15

So I'm stoked to have them on as a sponsor.

18:18

Notion has been a tool that's been taking

18:20

my productivity absolutely to the next level. I

18:23

love the way you can build it out

18:25

to suit your specific needs. Notion combines your

18:27

notes, your docs, and your projects all into

18:30

one space that's simple and beautifully designed. And

18:32

they have this new fully integrated Notion AI,

18:34

which helps you work faster, write better, and

18:36

think bigger. Tasks that

18:38

normally took hours, you can now do in

18:40

seconds. You don't have to go to some

18:42

external provider, any other AI product. It's all

18:45

built right inside of Notion. If you haven't

18:47

tried Notion yet, obviously you've heard about it.

18:49

If you haven't tried it yet, you should

18:51

definitely give it a shot. You can try

18:53

it for free when you go to notion.com/kevinrose.

18:55

And when you use our link, you'll be

18:57

supporting the show. That's

18:59

notion.com/kevinrose. Today's

19:02

sponsor is NordVPN. Stay secure and anonymous

19:04

online with NordVPN, which has been my

19:07

trusted VPN for years now. I like

19:09

it because you can access geolock content

19:11

from anywhere. So I'm in Japan or

19:13

Mexico at least a couple of times

19:16

a year, and I want to watch my favorite

19:18

shows. NordVPN is really handy to

19:20

bypass all of that geofencing, and

19:22

it needs to be fast. This is another

19:24

essential thing for a VPN, and Nord is

19:26

lightning fast because they have thousands of servers.

19:28

So if you want to stream and game

19:31

without lag, it's great. And then

19:33

equally as important is privacy. They have

19:35

a great policy, no logs, nothing to

19:37

store, nothing to see, nothing to share,

19:39

which is pretty much as good as it gets. And

19:42

their apps are just really lightweight, so it's not bogging

19:44

down your system the entire time, and they have it

19:46

for desktop and mobile. Don't miss

19:49

this incredible deal, which is

19:51

two years at a huge

19:53

discount plus four free months

19:56

if you use my link,

19:58

nordvpn.com/kevinrose. That's nordvpn.com/kevinrose. and

20:00

it's risk-free. There's a 30-day money-back

20:02

guarantee which makes this a no-brainer.

20:05

One question about that, how much shaming

20:08

comes from employment?

20:10

I'll give you an example. When I traveled

20:13

to Japan, I always seek

20:15

out small little artisans that are the best

20:17

at their craft. I

20:19

met this guy one time in Tokyo

20:21

that is known for aging

20:23

coffee beans. He has coffee beans that

20:25

are 10-15 years old. It

20:27

takes him about 20 minutes to make a single cup

20:29

of coffee because he does

20:32

this insanely slow pour process that

20:34

just takes forever. He

20:36

can probably do, I would say, maybe 20-25

20:38

of them a day. You have to be

20:40

lucky enough to get in. The price

20:43

is about $7. It

20:46

was fantastic. He wears a bow tie

20:49

and he dresses up and he's dressed

20:51

to the nines. There

20:54

is so much pride in

20:56

what he does. Not only

20:58

pride in what he does,

21:01

but pride from the community as

21:03

well and a respect for

21:05

someone that just hones their

21:08

craft. I don't think

21:10

we have that here. Yeah.

21:12

Capitalism isn't awesome about respecting

21:14

those kinds of things. She's like, oh

21:16

my God, well, if we could train other people

21:18

to do it and then you can make a

21:20

machine that really great and stuff, we'll scale it.

21:23

I think a couple of things. One is I

21:25

think Rizninsky's work shows that within the scope of

21:27

people's typical job description, you don't have to have

21:29

a job like that guy to find meaning. But

21:31

if you are that guy and you have a

21:33

craft that allows you to get meaning, it is

21:35

the case that adding these extrinsic rewards on

21:38

top of it winds up screwing up

21:40

your feelings towards it. I think we

21:42

don't need to be a guy with that

21:44

level of talent and specific skill. Take the

21:46

normal enjoyable pursuits we have like running. You

21:48

get a Fitbit and now all of a

21:50

sudden you get obsessive about it. It's no

21:52

longer the kind of internal rewards you got

21:54

from the running. I watched this in my

21:56

students who want to say like, oh, I'll

21:58

have my side hustle. the side

22:00

hustle was just like, you did some art or you designed

22:02

it because it was fun. And now you

22:04

have a due date at Thursday at 7pm and you

22:06

hate it because you've got a rush to do it.

22:08

All the joy has been stolen from it. So I

22:11

think it is the case that as we add

22:13

these extrinsic rewards onto the stuff we care about,

22:16

all of a sudden it feels yucky. And

22:18

I think this is one of the reasons

22:20

we're seeing so many increases in depression and

22:22

anxiety, particularly among our teens and our young

22:24

people, because we've taken a lot

22:26

of the fun stuff that kids did and turned

22:28

it into like a LinkedIn resume building or

22:30

college application building process. Kids usually just play soccer,

22:33

but now it's like, well, you got to be

22:35

on the soccer team. Oh, it's an extracurricular. Well,

22:37

that'll look good for totally. I

22:39

think part is that they don't have any time anymore.

22:41

This is another thing as we talk about the recipe

22:43

for a happy life, free time

22:45

and what the social scientists these days are calling

22:48

time affluence. The sort of fact that you're wealthy

22:50

in time, you seem like you have a lot

22:52

of time, such an important part

22:54

of our wellbeing and that, you know, I mean,

22:56

you younger kids, like the kids are just so

22:58

busy. They have a play date that has to

23:00

happen at one o'clock and we've got to drive

23:02

in traffic to get there. And so we're kind

23:04

of changing around what used to count as intrinsic

23:06

rewards and was just fun. And we're kind of

23:09

turning it more extrinsic and more

23:11

scheduled. And those features make it

23:13

less enjoyable. Have you seen

23:15

any old Mr. Rogers quotes when

23:17

he's interviewed by Charlie Rose? He

23:20

says one of the greatest gifts that he's

23:23

received is the gift of silence, where he

23:25

has that decompression time and he's very well

23:27

known for I studied Mr. Rogers quite a

23:29

bit because I love that guy. And

23:32

I think he was enlightened. I think he just

23:34

did. Totally. Yeah. And he used to swim every

23:36

single morning and that was like his time. It's

23:38

his silence. And he didn't miss a beat.

23:40

It would go and swim for an hour. I wonder

23:43

how do we reintroduce silence

23:46

into our everyday life?

23:48

My youngest, who's five now,

23:51

when I let her watch Daniel Tyer because it's based

23:54

on Mr. Rogers, which is a great show. And

23:56

so we do give them some iPad time, not

23:58

for games, but more so. whether

36:00

it's like hire the neighbor's kid to clean

36:02

up the yard or something, that can actually

36:04

be helpful. An even better one though is

36:06

to make good use of what's called time

36:08

confetti. So journalist Bridget Schultz has this term

36:10

time confetti, which is like the

36:12

five minutes in the grocery store at line or the

36:15

10 minutes when your kid falls asleep early and you've

36:17

got a little extra. She suggests that you need to

36:19

use that. Well, the problem is we blow it off.

36:21

We look at Tik TOK. Whereas if I use that

36:23

to take a breath, like

36:26

text a friend, get my

36:28

bearings, call a friend, moving your body is

36:30

a huge thing for happiness. Exercising, right? Like

36:32

do the seven minute in your time to

36:34

work out. If you get seven minutes, this

36:36

way of using our time confetti. Well, that's

36:39

what I was going to ask you because it's one thing

36:41

to say, okay, I'm going to hire someone to mow the

36:43

lawn. But if you just then go and sit down

36:45

and do Tik TOK, there's no upside

36:47

there. If someone says, Hey, and we can

36:49

take this to students as well, they're like,

36:51

Hey, I'm depressed. I'm having a hard time

36:53

here. Obviously depression

36:56

is something to take very seriously. So I

36:58

mean, you want to seek out professional help

37:00

ASAP. But aside from that in

37:03

terms of tangible things that people

37:05

can do, if you had

37:07

to stack rank them, maybe this

37:09

is an impossible thing for you to do. But

37:11

like, would you say walks out doors? Social

37:13

connection would be really high on the list.

37:15

How about nature? Something for other nature. Nature

37:17

bathing is a thing. Not as much in

37:19

this country, but in other countries. Move

37:24

your body exercise. Honestly, for most young people, sleep.

37:26

I actually think we could solve most of the

37:28

young people, mental health crisis. If we could just

37:30

get them to sleep a little bit more. So

37:32

those are all behaviors in terms of mindset. We

37:34

can do a lot of hacks. So scribble in

37:36

a gratitude journal, take some time to be a

37:38

little bit more present screen away and just like,

37:40

what does this room look like? We're in this

37:42

beautiful space. We have these black walls. I could

37:45

look at them. Just that moment of, I'm present,

37:47

I'm embodied and I'm here can

37:49

be a lot. Are you a meditator? I'm

37:51

supposed to be a meditator. I do meditate.

37:53

Sometimes I don't meditate enough as I should.

37:55

I take a lot of walks. I walk

37:57

to work. And even though I'm a

37:59

podcast. My

46:00

favorite one, the one that's most effective, I use this

46:02

in talks sometimes is you mentioned your kids. Imagine

46:05

right now, last time you saw your kids, it's the last

46:07

time you're gonna see them. They're gone,

46:09

that some terrible things happened. Right?

46:11

That's why you gotta do this to me. But I bet the

46:13

next time you see them, you're gonna go to a

46:15

park. It seems like that's an evil practice. No, it

46:17

causes you to notice all the good things. The kid

46:20

one is all terrible, right? But like, let's take my

46:22

phone. I lost it, right? Daily V in the car,

46:24

Daily V at the restaurant, where is it? Found

46:26

it in 10 minutes. 10 minutes, I'm like, oh my God, all my

46:28

photos are on there. If I back them up, oh, my password is

46:30

gonna be such a pain in the ass. And I get my phone

46:32

back, I'm like, oh, I wasn't appreciating

46:34

my phone at all. I had no gratitude for my

46:37

phone before I lost it, but then you lose it.

46:39

And the negative visualization is good, because you don't actually

46:41

have to lose it. You just have this moment of

46:43

like, what is this? What would this be like? Do

46:45

you think travel helps with that? Travel to the countries

46:48

where we don't have as much? Totally. If

46:50

you're in a kind of luxury situation

46:52

a lot, resetting the experience

46:54

is good. Sometimes for talks and things

46:56

like fly first class, I don't wanna

46:58

always fly first class, because then you get used to

47:01

it. You gotta go back and coach every once in a while, because

47:03

it makes you can't do anything. You should try

47:05

it, it'll suck that time, but you stopped experiencing

47:07

the benefits of the... No, but this...

47:10

I'm allowed one thing, you gotta give me one thing.

47:12

Yeah, you first class for me is just like... They are small. If

47:15

it's a short flight, fine. But long flights,

47:17

I can't do it. It's good, the next

47:19

time you go back though, you're like, oh, I

47:21

forgot, they bring the stuff in the glass, not

47:23

the plastic. You don't notice any of that now.

47:25

If it's too hard, you could do the negative

47:27

visualization. I mean, I X-Flight, I wanna be in

47:29

coach and really think about it like, oh, it's

47:31

a plastic glass and it's really small. And then

47:33

when you get like, oh, this is great. Yeah,

47:36

we can use imagination to kind of break out

47:38

of Hidana adaptation. Another one that I find, and

47:40

this is I think why we get happiness so

47:42

wrong. We assume if I had all these pleasurable

47:45

experiences, it would continue to be

47:47

pleasurable. But because we get used to stuff,

47:49

the sunset with the Mai Tai, that experience

47:51

stretch, feels good the one time it stretched,

47:53

but we can't. It's unlikely that you're gonna

47:55

be able to have the privilege of stretching

47:58

infinitely. Yeah, a lot of Mai Tai. Sometimes

48:00

these... Extraordinary experiences make you feel worse.

48:02

Also, these extraordinary experiences sometimes make you

48:04

unable to connect with other people I

48:06

just had this at South by my

48:08

podcast company at this really cool private

48:10

concert with folks for just like 30

48:12

people And I got

48:14

to see this amazing band that last played at Madison Square

48:16

Garden Privately, yeah, just standing there.

48:18

Yeah, I both had a wonderful experience And

48:20

then when I left I was kind of

48:22

like this is gonna literally ruin Never

48:25

gonna be able to go back like oh you're in row

48:27

20 now You're like, man, it's not as

48:29

good. The other thing is I'm gonna go home and people

48:31

are gonna go how I stopped I'm like, oh my god.

48:34

I had this amazing Then I feel like an asshole cuz

48:36

they don't have that Well, that's tough and some people don't

48:38

have that filter and if you just drop that on a

48:40

friend It's like that's not a very thoughtful

48:42

thing that that can crush somebody

48:44

else There's this evidence from Dan

48:46

Gilbert and Matt killings worth that these

48:49

so-called extraordinary experiences Like you

48:51

get to fly to the moon or like

48:53

go in space or have some amazing concert

48:55

or Coachella private backstage You think

48:57

it's gonna be amazing? But actually it

49:00

winds up doing two things that winds up Ruining

49:02

all the other experiences you have because not everything's

49:04

gonna be like Coachella backstage Yeah And then it

49:06

winds up making you feel kind of lonely Because

49:08

you can't really share these experiences whether they're people

49:11

you feel sort of isolated And

49:13

this is the thing that happens to people

49:15

who get these quick wealth windfalls people who

49:17

win the lottery Wind up

49:19

feeling incredibly lonely because it's like

49:22

nobody can share these experiences When

49:24

in one of my podcast episodes on my

49:26

podcast the happiness lab I interviewed this guy

49:28

Clay Cockrell who's a mental health professional who

49:30

works with the point zero zero zero one

49:32

percent So he's like super wealthy people and

49:35

they complain about things like they can't make

49:37

any friends One of them joined it that

49:39

kind of like regular guy not super wealthy

49:41

Jim and he was like chatting with

49:43

the guy like Oh, what'd you do this weekend? And

49:45

the guy was like, oh, I tried out this new

49:47

Mexican restaurant What'd you do and he couldn't admit like

49:49

I flew with my wife in a private plane to

49:51

Paris to try this new champagne It tears like a

49:54

very similar experience. They both tried something But he like

49:56

felt like I can't tell somebody that and so one

49:58

thing we don't predict about about becoming

50:01

extremely famous or extremely wealthy is like, you

50:03

just can't share that. Not that many people can come along

50:05

with you on the ride. And so you feel so lonely.

50:08

One thing that I do, I love that I

50:10

have you here because I can throw out some

50:12

curve balls your way that I'm personally struggling with.

50:15

We can do just Kevin therapy. Thank you. I

50:17

love that. If you can get like something I can

50:19

recline in and we can just do a full therapy

50:21

session. I suck at a lot of things.

50:23

But one thing that I'm pretty good at is

50:25

seeing something and being grateful that I'm

50:28

having that experience. I have this thing

50:30

where when something bad happens

50:32

in our household and it's really not that

50:34

big a deal, I'll say to

50:37

my wife, well, at least we have

50:39

warm running water. And she

50:41

hates that. She's like,

50:43

that's not helping the situation. And

50:45

I'm like, we live better than

50:47

kings. Kings and queens did not

50:49

have warm running water. Sometimes if

50:51

you can frame it back to

50:53

those times, you can

50:55

just be like, yeah, I missed my FedEx package

50:57

that I was hoping to get because it was

50:59

going to be my weekend project, whatever.

51:02

But I have warm water. It's clean. And I can

51:04

drink it. Does that help or am

51:06

I just being an asshole? So it helps, but

51:08

you have to be ready for it. So I

51:11

guess two things. One is what we don't want

51:13

to get into is the kind of toxic positivity.

51:15

There are the FedEx packages that don't come in.

51:17

There are bad days. Why is that crappy? So

51:19

it goes. I think you both want to have

51:21

a moment to acknowledge that crappy, but then reframe

51:23

it. I think we don't want to get in

51:25

a knee jerk of any negative emotion is bad

51:27

because sometimes the negative emotions are normative. Maybe not

51:30

about the FedEx package. That might not be it.

51:32

Sometimes my wife, my child, a friend, a

51:34

colleague will be having a negative emotion where

51:36

I look at that. I'm just like, you're

51:38

just being ridiculous here. The world

51:40

is not going to end because of what you're

51:42

saying right now. And I can't relate. And

51:45

so I should have some empathy for how they

51:47

are feeling. Is that the way to do it? First

51:49

of all, it's part of the human condition. Sometimes

51:52

we're going to be frustrated. And actually, there's some

51:54

evidence that one of the things we want for

51:56

this recipe of the happiest life is all the

51:58

emotions. We want what researchers call psychologically rich

52:00

life. You wouldn't want a life where you didn't

52:02

have the realm of like damn FedEx. Sometimes our

52:04

negative emotions are useful signals. If you're frustrated with

52:06

the FedEx, that might mean you need to like

52:08

switch to different company. Again, that's a kind of

52:10

narrow example. But if you're looking at the news

52:12

and you're feeling really anxious, that's telling you something

52:14

about how you might want to get involved in

52:17

the future. If you're kind of feeling lonely or

52:19

you're feeling really overwhelmed is a huge one. You

52:21

come home and use the example of you're talking

52:23

to your wife, she's slamming things around and feeling

52:25

really stressed out. That's not like, oh, we have

52:27

running water. That's like, oh, this is a useful

52:29

signal that something's off and we might need to rethink.

52:31

I say the running water thing. And it does not land.

52:33

I think compassion for the human condition and the

52:35

question of what is this negative emotion trying to

52:38

tell us? And sometimes it's not trying to tell

52:40

me anything. I could just reframe it and be

52:42

fine. This is actually helpful to sort of pay

52:44

attention to. Again, the ancients were so on top

52:47

of this, the Stoics got it where you can

52:49

update your negative emotions, but first take a quick

52:51

look to see, is it telling you something interesting?

52:53

Because I also watch the people who suppress every

52:56

emotion or just rewrite everything. And that kind of

52:58

gets you into toxic positivity landed. Yeah,

53:00

that actually is my downfall as well.

53:02

Because sometimes if I'm feeling something like

53:04

that, I'll say, well, I have running

53:07

water, but I'm really just pushing it

53:09

down a little bit. And

53:11

then later it manifests when in aggregate,

53:13

they all add up and I'm like,

53:16

oh, shit, I didn't actually let that go the way I

53:18

thought I was letting it go. That's a

53:21

challenge. Sometimes you have to look at the emotion

53:23

to figure out what the Buddhists

53:25

had this lovely analogy for this. It

53:27

comes with this parable that Buddha used to tell. So

53:29

the parables Buddha is telling to his followers, he says,

53:31

hey, if you're walking down the street and you get shot

53:33

by an arrow, is that bad? And the followers like, yeah,

53:35

it's terrible. I'd like Buddha's day, just get shot by arrows

53:37

randomly. But he's like, well, if you're walking down the street,

53:40

you don't get shot just by one arrow. But you also

53:42

get shot by a second arrow. Is that

53:44

worse? And the followers like, yeah, it's much worse to

53:46

get shot by two than one. So

53:48

Buddha says the first arrow is life. We

53:50

can't control it. That's the FedEx package that

53:52

doesn't show up. That's the bad thing. But

53:54

the second arrow is on us. It's how

53:56

we react to it. We

53:58

control that second arrow. It's

1:04:00

kind of like a very short free version of the

1:04:02

Yale class I teach. And because we've seen that a

1:04:04

lot of young people need this stuff, we also have

1:04:06

a new one called the science of wellbeing for teens,

1:04:08

which is for middle school and high school students. Is

1:04:10

that something that's publicly available or do you have to

1:04:12

be going to Yale? They can actually get that. The

1:04:15

Yale One Live, you go to enroll in Yale and

1:04:17

pay the Yale money and stuff, but you get the

1:04:19

free version on Coursera. It's a shorter, not like 26

1:04:21

week version, but it covers all

1:04:23

the relevant content and you'll learn exactly what the

1:04:25

Yale students are. Any books in your future? I

1:04:28

like the podcast because so much of the happiness stuff,

1:04:30

these tips that we've been talking about, these

1:04:32

short little narrative short, quick strategies. That's what I

1:04:34

like. I feel like that's what people need in

1:04:37

the moment is like, I'm feeling frustrated or I'm

1:04:39

feeling overwhelmed. I don't have any time. You're getting

1:04:41

it out now versus waiting a year and a

1:04:43

half to publish something. Amazing.

1:04:45

Well, thank you for being on the show. Thanks so much for having

1:04:47

me.