You are one of the leading researchers on happiness. You've been studying happiness for decades now. So for the majority of this podcast, what I'd actually like
to do is play a game. The game's called Overrated, Underrated, and I what I have is a stack of cards here and on each card is something in life and you're going to tell me, is it overrated as it relates to happiness, or is it underrated and it's overrated in the sense of a random person on the street likely thinks it's too important or not important enough. I like this game. Yeah, already. I thought you would. I thought you would.
The podcast that's saving the world won fewer Fuck at a time. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson. Before we start, I think it might be useful to to get a definition of happiness. And is your definition of happiness different than a random person on the street would define it? So I define happiness the way that happiness scientists define happiness. Which is that happiness has two
components. The first component is basically the experience of positive emotions. So people are happy frequently or fairly frequently experience joy, tranquility, pride, affection, curiosity. Of course, happy people experience negative emotions because they're also adaptive. When you see injustice in the world, you you need to be angry so you can do something about it. And anxiety is adaptive, and so
is sadness. But when negative emotions are chronic or intense, then they become dysfunctional, and they're then they're just suffering. So one important part of happiness is the fairly frequent experience of positive emotions, less frequent experience of negative emotions. And then the second component is basically having a sense that your life is good, that you're satisfied with your life, that you're progressing towards your life goals in a reasonable and reasonable pace.
So I like to think about these two components of happiness as being happy in your life and being happy with your life. So both are important. OK cool. So first one is a classic which is money overrated or underrated as it relates to happiness. OK, it's it could be it's a complicated one. I. Know. See the thing about scientists that say, well, it. Depends. It depends, yeah. The obvious answer is it's
overrated. But I want to qualify that by saying that absolutely, money matters to happiness. People who have more money are happier, and that is true at every level. It's certainly not surprising that that when money keeps you from being poor, then it really matters. But it even matters at the highest levels, although we don't have as much data at the very highest levels. And why is that?
You know, some obvious reasons. If you have money, you're able to spend time with people that you like, doing things you like it. It buffers you from adversity and, you know, gives you luxuries and conveniences. There's lots of caveats. Another really important caveat is that money is related to happiness, but the pursuit of money is related to unhappiness. So having money is great, but being materialistic, being someone who's really cares about
money, not great. And that's true for a lot of things. It's like wealth, power, beauty, fame. Those are those those goals that that are called extrinsic goals. And then we kind of know, at least hopefully we know our grandparents tell us that they don't make us, they don't make us happy. It turns out people who are beautiful and have power and
money are happier. But if you pursue beauty, you pursue you really care so much about beauty, power, money, then you're probably less happy than the average. Person Why do you think that is? So the kind of person who cares about money, like the materialistic person. Or you might think like a narcissist. They tend to be less happy. But if you have it, the other kind of cliche and research supports this is that money makes you happy when you spend it on the right things.
So if you spend money on philanthropy, on your family, on sort of pursuing your passion, great, right? But if you're spending money on again, like buying brands. Impressing people. Impressing. People, right? I'm sure you or many of your listeners know about. Research on possessions versus experiences, right? That makes us happier if you spend our money on experiences like dinner with friends or travel than possessions like something that you put in your
closet on your shelf. But even that could, you know, could make you happy, right? So if you have you, if you're an art collector and you love art or you love wine, you could really enjoy those things, you know? And you could share it with your friends and family. So it's nuanced. Interesting.
So coming back to this idea of like being the type of person, as I understand it, the recent research on money and happiness finds that money increases happiness for most people, but the people it levels off for are the people who are already unhappy. And you've read the very, very latest research which which showed that. Well, it's ironic because it's like if you're happy without money then you're going to be happier with money.
But if you're not happy without money then it's not going to help Eddie and that's. Probably true for everything, right? But actually, it reminds me of this Dear Abbey column from a long time ago where someone wrote in and this woman says, you know, I hate my job and my boss is terrible, and then I hated my previous job and all the jobs that she's ever had. Yet. And Abby says I think the problem is not the job, the problem is you. So the only thing all of your
jobs having. Exactly the common denominator or your relationships. Totally, Totally. All right. Next one. Marriage. Marriage. OK, wow. Marriage. Overrated or under? Oh, that's a hard one. I feel like people are pretty, like, pretty accurate. You could say properly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, pretty accurate, because I would I'd rather than use not, say, marriage, but relationships. OK, let's say. Relationships. Yeah, romantic. Relationships. Yeah, romantic relationships are
really important to happiness. But I against so many caveats. You don't have to have a romantic relationship. It's really relationships. So there are people who are very happy who don't have romantic relationships, but they have really wonderful friends and maybe they have kids or they have family members that are very close to. So I don't want to say like, oh, it has to be romantic.
But on the other hand, I think 9 out of 10 people or more in the world have romantic relationships and they matter to them very much. So romantic relationships, yeah. 00:05:56,440 If anything, I would say are even underrated because they are so important to have. Is there any research as far as you know that looks at the quality of the romantic relationship? Because I imagine a bad relationship makes you. Absolutely. Right.
So when we say relationships are the source of our greatest joys and the greatest suffering, right. So we're like, you know that sart quote. Hell is other people. Yeah, I. Loan. Exactly. Loan. Fer Selizontra. Right. Hell is other people. So yeah. So other people are both the source of our greatest choice and and our greatest sorrows. And so yes, of course. And so there's, yeah, tons of research. It's it's good quality, high quality romantic relationships, committed relationships that
that matter. But I guess, how do I say this sort of all things being equal, they're going to be more positives, yeah, than negatives, I hope for most people. Well, and I I think one of the thing you talk about in your books is that the actual events of marriage and divorce slash, breakup are maybe overrated. Like they they're very temporary. Like there's a high, a temporary high or a temporary low. But we adapt pretty quickly back to baseline. Exactly.
So hedonic adaptation is very powerful, this idea that. Right. Human beings adapt or get accustomed to almost any change in in our lives, especially positive changes. And so, yeah, so whenever you talk about specific events, people are like, oh, I want to have that wedding that I want to get married or win the lottery or or even or negative events too. It's, yeah, we adapt to the that one point in time event, but events have consequences, right. So, for example, diagnosis of
illness is an event. People do adapt to the diagnosis, but then that can have many consequences, right? That can affect your life in many ways. So marriage, it's like a diagnosis. You're diagnosed with marriage. You're diagnosed with marriage. I've never thought of it that way. You're married. Getting married has so many
consequences. I remember when I, you know, fell in love with my husband and and I was talking to a friend who had just gotten married and he said this is the beginning of so many wonderful things, right? So it's like it's not just getting married, it's all those things that it leads to. Yeah, Next one. Occupation. Maybe even underrated. Underrated.
Interesting. I mean, I calculated once how many hours of of the average person's life and let's just say in the US we spend working and it's incredible number if you don't like your work. Right. It seems consequential, and it's you. Also, occasionally you see those surveys of, like most miserable professions, you know, and it's always lawyers, police officers, doctors. There has to be some sort of
correlation I imagine. Yeah, no. You spend so many hours working, and if it's and if it's something you know, that's not your passion. It's something that you don't. If you think it doesn't matter to the world, 'cause that that even even if you don't love doing it, if you think it, you're helping people, You're making the world a better place. That's really important. It's interesting to think about that.
In the past I had a couple friends who were cops and I remember talking to them about it and they said the problem with being a police officer is like it does feel meaningful and impactful. But he said that you are literally just being exposed to the worst aspects of humanity day after day after day, and I could see how that could drain somebody. Absolutely. And what we pay our attention to really matters.
So one of my favorite quotes of all time is from William James and he said experience is what I agree to attend to. So basically if I'm attending to it, yeah, it matters it it's affecting my happiness sure. And if I'm not attending to it, it's like as though it's almost not happening. And I like the word agree because there's like this subtle acknowledgement of you are choosing what to attend to or what to pay attention to in each moment. I'm a big William James fan. I like you.
This is a good one. Age. Age, OK. Overrated, underrated. Cuz there's the famous U curve. Right. With how. Yeah. Yeah. Don't get me started on that. OK Yeah. Yeah. Not a fan of that. OK Well, because most of that work is controlling for everything. And they're trying to figure out, it kind of has started to figure out what is the pure effect, like a pure age. I don't even know what pure age means because age comes with things. Sure. OK. So let's get back to overrated.
Underrated. So I would say overrated. OK, but there's some caveats. So for example, most of us, well, most of the media, social media especially, Sure, kind of like adore youth. Turns out the least happy people are age 14 to 28. You think, Oh what? Great, I want to be 28 again. No, you don't want to be 28 again or 20 again for lots of obvious reasons, right? Like so when you're young, you don't have your identity set yet. Maybe you haven't found your
passion. You haven't found your person yet. And so people get happier as they age. And the happiest? If you look at raw data, a lot of surveys show the happiest are pretty old. There was one study that 67 was kind of the 71. And then for again, lots of obvious reasons, the happiness drops off. Yeah, when you're, you know, getting much older than that. Which would make sense, 'cause that's when you Yeah, health, physical health starts. Physical And then you know
people are people die. You know your friends and family. So yeah, so we we sort of think that younger is better and we and really even I like, I'm like, oh, I'd like to be 39 again. I remember. So when I turned 30, I posted basically a survey to to my blog followers. At the time, this was 2014. So you're 39. I'm. I am 39. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a I'm a fan.
I'm a fan of 39. So I asked all my blog followers, you know, if you're over 40, what, what advice would you give to a 30 year old or what advice would you give to somebody entering their 30s? I got hundreds and hundreds of responses and one of the things that struck me was that everybody from 40 into fifties, 6070, every single person said don't be afraid of aging. It gets better. Like don't listen to anybody who claims about midlife crisis or
anything like that. Every single person was like 40, was better than 3050 was better than 40. And I can see why. Like, it's you. Like you said, you really establish your life, you establish your identity. You understand what sort of people you want to be around, how to relate to those people you're confident in yourself. It does make sense.
I totally agree. And so Laura Carson, who's a professor at Stanford. I was one of my professors when I was there in the PhD program a long time ago, has a theory called Socio Emotional Selectivity Theory. Life Socio. Emotional. Selectivity. Very catchy, yeah. Right. But basically, I guess the way I would summarize it is that people become emotionally wiser
as they get older. So when you're older, you kind of know what people in your life make you happy and you want to spend time with people in. Your life. Intuitively that makes so much sense because when I look back at my 20 year old self, my 20 year old self was still really smart intellectually. Like emotionally was a complete idiot. I had no idea what he was doing. 00:12:57,920 And now, now. And she talks. Yeah. And she talks about how, you know, it makes sense.
You take out more risks when you're younger. And so because you never know, that person you might meet could be your new partner or your business partner. But yeah, I would agree. So so yeah, the older you are. Yeah. Kind of the wiser you are. It just would be nice to, I don't know, still like, look like you're. I mean, there's just certain things that would be nice to have. Yeah. Like, still look like you're 39. 00:13:24,000 Or have the the energy and the
the recovery. Yeah, the physical health of a 2022 run as. Fast. All that like that. But apparently, what is it? Reaction times peaks at age 19. So is downhill. From there, I'm a big fan of that, saying that youth is wasted on the young, which. Youth and psychedelics are wasted, right? That's the famous Michael Pollan's quirk. That's awesome. All right, next one. We we already mentioned this briefly, but friendships? This is something, I guess,
anecdotally from my audience. I think people overestimate romantic relationships a little bit, particularly if they don't have one. And they underestimate friendships. Yeah, So it's funny, 'cause I just today I have these two really good female friends and we send each other WhatsApp messages. And I had said friendship is what makes life worth living more than even romantic, right? And I said, kids too, You know, it's hard to compare. Or, I mean, we can't leave that out. Yeah, exactly.
We. Can't leave that out. And they and I just got a message from one of them and she said, oh you're so right. I said friendship is what makes life worth living. And again I mean to me, I guess I would just say connection, feeling loved. You know my co-author Harry Reese and I are about are writing a book called How to Feel Loved.
And so this is very much on our minds and sort of feeling loved and in it. But by friends, I don't know, friends is who you can really, I guess, count on in some ways, maybe even more than your kids or your family members or romantic partners. And also, they're your chosen family. I would even say within a long term romantic relationship, because as you pointed out, the romance, it eventually fizzles and then for the rest of the relationship it comes and goes and in waves.
But if there's a solid bedrock of friendship there, like I actually feel like that's where most of the long term value probably is, is is having that companionship and that that closeness with a with a person who's with you every day. Exactly. And then and then but because they're romantic partner right they they really are with you every day and you can count on them which is we had we didn't
really touch on this. But even your closest friends, you know, you don't want to kind of like quote bother them with everything you know, you, you know, but it's it's great to have like one person in your life who you can call for everything. And the way I see it is like when the when the really good thing happens to you and a bad thing happens to you, like who who do you call? So there's, you know, theory about love that there's two kinds of love, passionate love and companion at love.
And the idea that for most couples the passionate love turns into companion at love and companion at love is what you're talking about with that that sense of warmth and trust. And like I, you know, this is a person that I admire and I want to be with and they're my role model and they support me and I support them. Romance. Romance. We just talked about. Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah. Overrated. Yeah, we'll go overrated on romance, underrated on
friendship, I think. And both, Both within the committed relationship, but also. You know romantic love, right? Falling in love is this dopamine? It really isn't. You know, I think scientists have really basically showed it's basically cocaine. Yeah. Yeah. Or heroin or whatever. Yeah. It's you're on drugs. You're it's the same kind of feeling. Sure. And so that is, yeah, a rush. And it's, it's beautiful. But that, yeah, that doesn't last. It just can't.
Last, and I think also similar to maybe cocaine or or an opiate it it it can cover and mask damaging or painful dynamics. So you can romantically fall in love with somebody who's actually really terrible for you and subtly hurting you, or you're hurting them in various social and emotional ways, but you're so in love you don't realize it and you're just jumping in head first. Absolutely. And I I think we've all made that mistake at some point.
Actually, I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday who was saying he's like, you know, I think my problem is, is when I fall in love, I want to accommodate myself to the other person. So if they say like I wanna move to this other city, even if they never want to live there, they're like and I said, you know, I think most people do that, like they you're willing to make sacrifices that you later on, like I can't believe I. Was. I can't, Yeah. Why did I do that? Yeah.
So yeah, it's not. Yeah, I don't want to say it's it sounds like it's not healthy. Sure. But again, like this idea that it, it stems from, you know, sort of romanticism, you know, and it's actually a pretty new quote, new concept, this idea that it's this wonderful thing and that that we all have a there's a soulmate out there for us. Yeah, there's an amazing book by Stephanie Koontz called Marriage a History.
And that was mind blowing because she shows that basically through most of human history romance was diagnosable to bring back the old joke. But basically romance was seen, was looked at with skepticism, it was seen as a sickness. It was seen as something to be avoided at all costs. Parents used to be very preoccupied and anxious that their 15 year old was gonna romantically fall in love with the the neighbor next door and do something really stupid and
run off somewhere. And so it was romance was actually something that was socially guarded against by the community. And it wasn't until the 1800s with a lot of romantic literature and everything that it started to be celebrated. Like most people, I think I read Romeo and Juliet when I was like 8th or 9th grade. And when you're young and naive, you read it as this like incredible love story and like, Oh my God, they're so in love.
And you know, there's movies made about it that kind of have to take the same angle. And in that book she talked about like, no Romeo and Juliet, it's a cautionary tale. It's a tragedy it. And it's tragedy in a literal sense of look what happens when you let two teenagers get away from their parents and act on their own devices. They make stupid, horrible decisions 'cause they fell in love and we can't let them do that, right? Fascinating. So fascinating.
Kindness or acts of kindness? I guess I would say underrated for happiness because we think of we're kind to others, you know, because it's the right thing to do. It's sort of a moral duty, you know, if you're religious especially. And then we benefit the other person and of course we do benefit the other person, but it turns out that we benefit ourselves as much or even more.
So I my lab has done quite a few studies where we ran, you know, randomized controlled experiments where we randomly assign some people to do acts of kindness on a regular basis, maybe three acts of kindness once a week for a month. And then we follow them across time and then compare them to control groups that don't do that or do other kinds or do acts of kindness for themselves, which is kind of a nice
comparison. And we find that people who do acts of kindness for others, they feel happier, they feel more connected and we even find genomic effects. So basically effects in the body. So here's an example of a study we've done. So we ask people to do acts of kindness either for others or for themselves or control groups over the course of a month. And we take their blood before and after and then we send it to
the lab. And what we have found is that only the group that does acts of kindness for others shows changes in their RNA gene expression that are that are associated with. Basically a stronger immune profile. Really a healthier immune profile. Wow, that is really cool. And we actually, we were shocked when we got that at first. We were hoping that would. Happen. That's nuts. That's how great kindness is.
Not only does it make you happier, more connected, but also changes something in the body as well. What's interesting about that, hearing you talk about those experiments? There's a very large movement on social media these days, like hashtag self-care. Like it's self self-care is celebrated and I think to a certain extent rightly so. But it's interesting that acts of kindness towards others would outperform acts of kindness towards. Yes, absolutely.
And we designed this, this self kindness condition, you know, sort of for a reason, 'cause we thought like, well, that's also important. It's also positive and it should make you feel good. And so, like, so like, you know, whatever, to take a walk or get a massage or have a piece of chocolate. So these are really just things. 00:21:09,720 They're not all self-care. Some of them are kind of like self indulgent acts, just something that makes you feel good.
Well, the line between those two things is very blurred. Right, right. Exactly, exactly. But we're not talking about doing something like really dysfunctional. And so the idea is that it makes you feel good at the moment and that's actually very important. So research shows that even like a fleeting positive motion can neutralize negative motions can make it like so I could and it can lead to what are called upward spirals. So if I feel good, I have a piece of chocolate, right?
I'm not saying we should eat chocolate all the time, but, you know, once in a while. Chocolate solves everything. Exactly. I'm a huge believer that we should do everything in moderation. Yes, including moderation. Including moderation, Yes, sometimes. We should do things to excess, right? So I have a piece of chocolate and it makes you feel good in the moment. What happens when you have a positive motion? I might smile and you know you react more positively to me.
Or I make a new friend, someone approaches me. I'm kind I people are more creative when they're positive. So even a short term, fleeting positive emotion can lead you to have a new idea. And so, so those are all things that have consequences. So, so I don't want to like denigrate a positive, you know, fleeting positive emotion. So it's important too. So, so and then of course
self-care is really important. When you're like depressed when you're not doing so well, that's really, really critical. But I think what's happening in our studies is that those that self kindness is just, it's just fleet, it's too fleeting. And so like a week later, a month later, we don't see, we don't see an effect. Yeah. So maybe in the moment you're you're feeling good, but a month later we don't see the fact. But but kindness to others is
not as fleeting. First of all, can the pursuit of happiness turn toxic at some point and start backfiring? And if so, where is that point exactly? Yes, yes, yes, yes. And again, this is really interesting because we were talking about how like money and beauty are associated with happiness, but the pursuit of those things are associated with unhappiness. So it's a little bit similar with happiness, right.
So if you pursue happiness to to kind of deliberately and and obsessively, especially again, everything in moderation that's associated with unhappiness. So there's research showing that people who who kind of like agree with statements like, you know how happy a person is says a lot about that person or sort of sort of happiness really tells them sort of how worthwhile they are and they really are really kind of obsessed with happiness. Like that's not good.
So that's associated with unhappiness. And so that's not surprising and this is kind of a cliche, right, that you should enjoy the journey to get there and so, but if you're too focused on like I want to be happy, I want to be happy, you measure, you're kind of assessing it all the time, just like you don't want to weigh yourself or look at the stock market every minute, right? You don't want to be asking yourself, am I happy yet? Am I happy yet? Am I happy yet?
That kind of focus on how happy you are can definitely detract from. That, yeah, the act of questioning itself removes you from it, which is kind of kind of gets into like a very Buddhist type of attachment thing. But it's interesting because it, you know, at the beginning of the conversation you mentioned how every negative emotion is ultimately adaptive. And I think what gets missed a lot is that happiness is also adaptive. It's not adaptive to be happy at
a funeral. It's not, you know, you you don't want to be happy if a school burns down like it is. Of course. And it's like it's a time you can think about a sort of like the time place context dosage. I'm I'm a big believer in sort of looking at dosage, like what's the optimal dosage of happiness can you be too happy. And it turns out in some it shows that in relationships. Well at least one study showed you can't be too happy in
relationships. We all like to be with happy partners but at work you can be definitely too happy. So we don't want people who are too happy at work, partly maybe because you're maybe distracted and you can't be as productive. Also, we don't like people who are too happy because, you know, we think hey, right if. They're inappropriately happy, yeah. We yeah, we don't like people who are too happy. We like people who are kind of like happy but not too happy. So there's sort of an optimal
point. Yes. There's just so many nuances there. And just like, as you said with negative emotions, there's a, there's a dosage of negative emotions if you're angry all the time, right. If you're too sad, you know, everyone agrees that is not functional. But sometimes people who study happiness are interpreted as like, oh, we want people to be happy all the time. We don't believe in negative. And of course it's ridiculous negative and and there's the contrast, right?
How can you be happy if you've never known anything else? Yeah, I think you run into that more in my space with the self help industry. You sometimes see promises of that and even some people kind of pushing that message a little bit, which I've just, I mean, I've made my bones just telling people how unrealistic that is and ridiculous it is. But I wonder, like so, does anyone really believe that you should be sort of positive all the time?
I've run into some, you know, in this space, and yeah, and I do think it is. I think maladaptive is the proper word for it, because life will inevitably throw you curveballs. Something's gonna get fucked up at some point. And if you are in a mindset of having to always maintain a positive effect no matter what, you essentially have to become delusional and detached from reality to maintain that when things go wrong. And that's just maladaptive. It's not helpful.
It's funny cuz sometimes it just seems so obvious to me that maybe it's not obvious to everyone. I mean, positive thinking is very important. Optimism is very important. It's very powerful. But there's a time and place and dosage and time timing matters, right? So when something bad happens, that's why when you give advice to people right after a negative event, we want to sort of make them feel better and we want to give them kind of a reappraisal, right?
Like, oh, but you know that you will grow from this experience or and and but if it's too soon it's it's really offensive actually because they want to be validated in their negative emotion and the suffering. You're supposed to be sad at a funeral. You know, you're supposed to be upset when an injustice happens. I've been surprised over the years how many readers and emails I've gotten where my responses essentially simply been It's OK to be angry.
It's OK to be sad. It's OK to be anxious. Like, this is an anxious moment in your life. That's fine. I think there's a weird, at least in in in our culture, there's a weird tendency to judge certain emotions and to judge them as appropriate or inappropriate or as reflections of our character, which I think is just incredibly unhealthy. So interesting. But what's so hard is that balance? Is that so? At what point or how long?
Yeah. Do you stay sad or angry when you have kids and they're, say, very anxious about something? They're anxious, anxious and you wanna validate them. Yeah. But then at some point you're like, OK, yeah. You wanna also try to help them reframe? Sure. It's very difficult. And I guess maybe that's what therapists are for, to try to figure out that balance.
We haven't really talked about the baseline happiness or like the set point of happiness, but there's people probably have different set points for other emotions. You know, some people are just naturally more anxious than others. Some people are naturally more angry than others. And I think the same way we we tend to return to the same happiness level naturally. We probably have similar dynamics with other emotions as well. Next one meditation.
Meditation. Well, depending who you talk to, I would say underrated. But you know, like the people I know are all, like, really into meditation. Yeah, well, yeah, out out here in Santa Monica, CA might be overrated. Exactly. It's so funny because I feel like I just can't meditate. I've tried inside and actually I saw talk somewhere that showed actually meditation has effects that are like bimodal, so that for some people it really doesn't do anything, and for
others it does a lot. But it also depends how you define meditation, right? It's just about a way of like learning how to kind of focus your mind and redirect your attention. Back to that William James quote, experience is what I agree to attend to. So if you teach yourself how to kind of redirect attention, you know, and that's that's really important. So I would say it's it's underrated and tons and tons of research shows that meditation has benefits and all kinds of
domains. So I'm not an expert, but whether in research or or personally. I think the important point there is it can help a lot of people, but it doesn't necessarily help everybody. I think it it definitely got overhyped maybe 10 years ago and there was this sense of of like everybody needs to be meditating and and and if and if it's not helping, you're not doing it
right. I think now the the research seems to have gotten a little bit more nuanced and they found that even in a small percentage of people it it, it actually seems to make things worse for them. I've kind of downgraded it in my toolbox to kind of like try it and if it helps keep doing it and if it doesn't try something. 00:30:03,000 Else, Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, So. And it makes me feel better because all these years I'm like, I don't.
Know what am I doing wrong? Working and like is there something wrong with me? But I would also generalize, kind of broaden what you just said to like almost everything, right? So, and actually my first book, The Health Happiness, talked about 12 different strategies, 12 different strategies that people can use to be happier. And that's fairly arbitrary that it's 12 and there's really like 100. And it's really what there was
research on at the time. And now actually I'm I'm trying to update the book, 'cause it's it's all the same, the advice, it's just this more research. But one of the themes of that book was the theme of fit is that you have to choose or find what fits your personality, what fits your lifestyle, what fits your values, what fits your strength and weaknesses. And it was in response to and back then there weren't as many
really hap. There's really, there were really no science based happiness books before that book. But the books kind of all said like do this, like do this, like like count your blessings. And my advice based on research is that, well, it depends, right. So some of you counting your blessings would be like the perfect practice for you. And then for other people like I. Then another example like I find counting blessings just kind of trite and hokey. Yeah, it doesn't work for me.
I mean, gratitude, I think, is a very powerful practice, but we might choose to practice it in a way that works for us. So anyway, the point being meditation. Whether it's meditation or gratitude or exercise, even positive thinking that some of these fit some of us better than others and we sort of choose what to focus on, yeah. Excellent drugs and alcohol. Again it depends on who your audience is cause the cause the right answer is like well it's sort of you know overrated right.
We shouldn't use drugs and alcohol to be happy. But I have a a more nuanced response to that. And by the way, addiction. Terrible. Terrible, right? Leads to so much suffering. But if you don't have an addictive personality, I think drugs and alcohol can can sort of amplify, can kind of be a supplement, can be like a bonus to your life. Yeah, just like anything, just like chocolate, right? Just like having a massage or going to Paris. Yeah, you know. Wait, let me write this.
So chocolate and drugs. Yeah, right. Well, again, everything in moderation, yeah, That when you think about what makes you happy and also does not lead to unhealthy behavior, is not dysfunctional in moderation. I think that could be on the menu if you don't have an addictive personality and you're not a child. Yeah, but I'm a little unusual in arguing that cuz most people would say, well, of course, no, that's terrible. Carl Hart, who's a neuroscientist at Columbia.
He wrote a book called Drug Use for Grownups and he. Makes a sense. It's a. Great book. He makes a pretty strong argument that we could do heroin if we do it responsibly and we don't have addictive personality and we make sure it's not tainted. I mean, he kind of takes that strong argument, you know, and for a reason. I don't need or want to argue that. I'm just saying that almost anything positive in life can be in that toolbox. Yeah, to sort of amplify your
life. You know, there's that fascinating story. I don't know if you've heard about heroin use in the Vietnam War. So apparently in the Vietnam War, heroin was abundantly available to all the soldiers over there, and heroin use was just sky high for understandable reasons. It was something like, I forget the amount, but it was like 2535% of the US soldiers were using heroin in Vietnam.
And so among the military, there was a lot of discussion and talks with the US government of like, hey, when all these guys come home, we're going to have a public health crisis. And when all the soldiers did come home, it's like 99% of them stopped using and they all went back and had normal lives. And and it's so it's this, it's a really fascinating anecdote of how so much of addiction and and substance abuse is driven by
context and and environment. If you're stuck in a in a quagmire of a war, heroin use might actually be the rational thing to do. Absolutely. Yeah, it's such an interesting story. One of my friends, George Bonanno, wrote a book called The End of Trauma, and he argues that the best kind of coping he calls flexible coping. And so it depends, right? It really depends on the situation. It's not like, again, kind of like the half happiness, right? It's not the one thing you need to do.
But there's a concept that he discusses that I've never heard before, which he calls ugly coping. And ugly coping is that sometimes the only thing you can do maybe to survive that moment, is to do something that might be considered really unhealthy and dysfunctional. It could be getting really angry. Yeah. It could be getting really drunk. It could be like, driving very, you know, unsafely. And he's like, sometimes, like, you need to do that. Like people do that.
And maybe if you didn't do that, you would sort of, yeah, yeah, you'd go really downhill. So ugly coping sometimes is necessary. Yeah, what about psychedelics? It's becoming very trendy right now, especially out here in California. And my personal observation or or my trepidation with it, and I've said this a few times to my audience, is that the research that's happening in psychedelics right now is that it, it can be incredibly transformative.
You know, take somebody with PTSD or chronic depression and it can be absolutely life changing. But if you go to a party out in Venice, you know all the people microdosing and taking mushrooms and MDMA all the time. You know, it's it's like startup founders and tech nerds and Jim Bros. So what are your thoughts on that? I can talk for hours about this. 00:35:47,720 So a couple of things. One is so before COVID, I kind of got obsessed with research on MDMA. And the reason was that I was
studying happiness. And I realized that all the interventions that that my lab and I have ever done that work to make people happy work because they make people feel more connected. Like you write a red letter of gratitude. It makes you feel more connected to your mom or whoever you do acts of kindness. It makes you feel more connected. And then MDMA, of course, by the way, it's not a psychedelic, but I can. I'll just.
I'm just gonna include it in sort of a that that space makes people feel really connected really warm really loving understood and and there's research on this And so I got into this area and so I actually am doing research now on MDMA and I do believe that it can really help people who have social challenges and who don't really feel connected maybe who are lonely. It could really help people feel like, wow, like maybe for some people, for the first time in
their life, they feel like really, really close to someone. 00:36:46,600 And it can really and it can improve relationships. And so, you know, back in the 60s, seventies, you know, there's sort of these underground therapists that used MDMA for like couples counseling. And now, you know, hopefully, you know, it's going to be a schedule 3 by the end of 2024 for PTSD, but probably then it'll be used for other reasons too. So like, couples counseling
could really be transformative. And again, this is kind of, this is what you're saying for people who kind of need it for sure. I had a next door neighbor in Santa Monica who told me that he used MDMA with his ex-wife to work on their divorce settlement under the divorce. Agreement. With a with a therapist. And I thought that is just brilliant, right? That's incredible, right? Because it makes you feel not defensive, right. So I can imagine like a really amazing uses for it.
So I can talk about that forever. And then, of course, there's research on on the other other drugs and how helpful they could be for depression, for substance use disorder, for, you know, for death anxiety, lots and lots and lots of things, as you say. And there's clinical trials on all of these going on right now. So it's really beautiful, the, the resurgence of psychedelic science and psychedelic medicine that I'm lucky to be a part of. OK.
So I started doing this before COVID, and then a lot has changed. I remember giving a talk in my department in 2020 on Zoom because that was like the first time we suddenly went to Zoom and being really, you know, really nervous about it. Like I was going to talk about this drug, you know, in this academic setting and now, like, no one cares, right? Well, at least in in those settings, like a lot has changed in 3-4 years. But now I see so many people doing these journeys, but they
do them so often. So like is is, if something is so transformative, right, it's going to change your life. Why do you? Why would you do it like? Why do you need another one? Yeah, a month later. Yeah, and at some way I can understand why, because you have these epiphanies and you want to kind of build on them. I mean I had the life coach actually who said all these epiphanies are completely useless unless you act on them right. I guess I guess true for
anything, right. And so unless these individuals are really acting on it and by the way I'm I've never done one of these journeys but I actually am really interested. I'd like to not once a month but maybe you know maybe only once or maybe once a year. So I do think that then in this research on neuroscience that is showing how the brain can change and and sort of creating kind of more connections and kind of more entropy. So there's really something
there. You know, it's not just in people's minds, but I I do agree that it's kind of becoming like a little too trendy. It makes me uneasy. And as somebody who did a lot of psychedelics when he was younger and benefited a lot from it and had a fucking great time but also had some epiphanies, some realizations that were were
pretty profound. One thing I've noticed out here in California and that's very interesting to me is that most of the people who are really into it, it's actually a very it's subtly a very social thing for them. So I'll get invited to a party out in Malibu and in the invitation it will say by the way if you want to join us with Shaman Guru, so and so for a journey pre party come at 3:00.
Otherwise the party starts at 7 and a lot of people show up early and they do the whole journey and then they're on the psychedelic during the party and it made me realize.
To kind of come back to your point that ultimately so much of happiness is driven by a sense of connection, maybe a lot of the journey is really just almost like an excuse to get that connection, You know, it's like, well, it gets me in a room with a bunch of other people who are experiencing the same thing at the same time and it's a very intense experience and we feel very together. The drug removes a lot of your
inhibitions. If you're a socially anxious person or self-conscious, you know it gets rid of a lot of that and so it opens you up to all these other people and then that is very powerful and the people are just mistaking the power of that for the drug itself. Absolutely. And and and of course, like alcohol has always been that drug. Booze does the same thing, yeah. And and and by the way, there's research on how alcohol makes people more social and of course
it does. You know and alcohol is also fairly toxic. You know in terms if you look at the that harms it's it's underestimated sort of how toxic it. Is so Are psychedelics the new the new booze? But it is more powerful of course the. Psychedelic much? More powerful, but yeah, I will once again say yeah, connection is the key to happiness. Taking kind of the big picture perspective, there's this toolbox that has lots of things
in it, right? Including psychedelics, including booze in moderation in the right time and place dosage that can really enhance your life. Yeah, All right. Moving on, goals. Super important. Yeah. I guess I would say underrated. I want. I have a line in the health. Happiness is something like a happy person has always something to look forward to. Yeah, and a goal is something that you pursue that could matter. Mattering is really important.
I mean, we already touched on goals, but I guess to say it again, that pursuit of significant life goals hugely correlated with happiness. I think most people assume that the value of goals is achieving the goal itself. And I've always kind of felt like most of the value of having goals is, like we talked about earlier, that experience of progress and incremental improvement.
And being able to, like, legibly measure yourself against something like knowing that I am slightly better today than I was a week ago and I'm gonna be better next week than I am today. Like that just seems to have so much psychological significance for. Us. Absolutely. And again, it sounds like cliche. We need to enjoy the journey. We're just talking about journeys. Another kind of journey, another
journey, Journey We get there. As opposed to the end goal, because because human beings, because of hedonic adaptation, once we achieve the goal, we don't stop for very long. And now we have a new goal, which is probably, which is a good thing. It's fine, yeah. Cuz otherwise we'd all kind of stagnate and just be passive. But goals are. Pursuit of goals are, yeah, really important. OK.
Next one's a big one and as far as I know, a little bit controversial in your field, parenting or children. My students and I have a paper that I think kind of addresses the controversy. It started with a lot of media articles saying kids make parents unhappy. Yes, Classic example of how journalists like just ruin science. But also it it gets attention, right? People are like, oh, yeah, parents are miserable. And so we have all these
headlines. And so one of my students, Katie Nelson and I were like, that just can't be, does that really true? Like, so we wrote a paper published in Sex Science, one of the top journals where we had three different studies that basically showed that's not true
in different ways. Like if you just look at parents overall, if you look at parents, if you just look at people with and without children, if you look at people who are spending time with kids versus spending time doing other things. So then we thought, well they really the answer is it depends like anything. And so we have this paper on the effects of parenthood on happiness. And the the answer is it depends. It depends on the age of the child.
Do you have a baby or do you have a 25 year old? It depends on your age. It depends on whether your your kids have problems. It depends how much money you have. So it depends on lots of things. 00:44:02,920 So, but it's not the case that parents are less happy than not parents. Now the problem is you can't ever do the experiment. But we we did find that the least happy people were men without children. Really. Yes. Just in general.
In general, yeah. Just like if you do the representative sample, sort of men, women with children without children, the least happy were men without children now and then. Women with children were a little less happy than women without children. And you could kind of argue about why that. Yeah. And men with children were the
happiest. My recollection of those old studies that were publicized a bunch, I think it was about 10 years ago, was that they showed a pretty significant dip after the birth of the child, and then it slowly recovered as the child got older. And my thought was that of course they're less happy, they're not sleeping. So sleep. Overrated, Underrated. Well, first of all, yeah, yeah. When you look at, it's actually
kind of funny. When you look at happiness, birth of a child, it it it's you're you're the happiest when you're pregnant and you're like yay and. Then if this is going to be amazing. And often like you're newly married so you're also your relationship is happy and then the biggest dip comes at year two and why do you think that. Is terrible twos.
That's what most people think. I don't think that's what it is. 00:45:21,920 I think you have child #2 on average two years later and that's really bad. And as someone who's been through that twice, yeah, that's the. Hardest you can attest first child. Is. Yeah. Hard. But anyway, so sleep. Yeah, absolutely. Incredibly important, I would say. Yeah. Underrated. Even those of us who think like, yeah, it's so, so important.
And then the Danny Kahneman is a Nobel Prize winner and his colleagues have done studies where they're looking at kind of daily happiness and it might have even been the number one sort of factor and. Sort of how happy you. Are today is how much sleep you had last night. Sleep is the number one. Factor Well, just like out of the like right now, this momentary. Yeah, I believe that. I mean, if I don't sleep at least six hours, I am a horrible person. Genetics. Yeah, huge.
Overrated. Underrated. Underrated. Now it's almost like politically incorrect to talk about the power of genetics, but they're very powerful and so all of us are, you know, are influenced by our genes. I would say like our happiness range is sort of influenced. Doesn't mean that we're faded to be a certain level of happiness. It's just, it's just it's an influence. There's like a center of gravity. Just like, yeah, exactly. Just like with weight, right? Some people just have a hard
time keeping their weight down. But but any human trait is influenced by genetics, your blood pressure, your susceptibility to depression, your you know everything, including happiness. It's not surprising. So we've been talking about the hedonic adaptation and how humans tend to always return to this kind of set level of of baseline happiness. As I recall you talked, I think you said roughly 40% of that baseline level is so genetically determined. So I I've stopped using those
numbers. OK. Because they're just so commonly they're so much misinterpreted. Sure. I just, I just say forget, forget those numbers and I have a paper that that talks about like what the, the numbers really mean. Yeah. I kind of regret ever using the numbers. Just think of it as like there are three buckets that determine your happiness level or your happiness kind of baseline. You know one is genetics and that's important. One is your life circumstances.
Generally, they're not as important as we think they are unless they're very bad, right. So if you're if you live in a war zone or if you're poor, or if you're in an abusive relationship, absolutely, there's gonna be a huge difference in your happiness. And then the other bucket is sort of what we do and how we think like our actual behavior that we have that we choose to enact, OK, is the third bucket. Yep, that's the next one. Mindset. Attitude. So that's. Huge, I imagine. Exactly.
Part of that, what we choose to, how we choose to think and how we choose to behave in our daily lives, profoundly effects our happiness. By the way, part of that is positive thinking. Part of that is having sense of control or being grateful. I could define that it. Divide that into how we think and then how we behave. So that's mindset. Attitude is how we think. 3 buckets. I like that. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, 3 buckets.
All right, last one. Sex. Sex. The exciting one good question I can answer for you For men under 30, Overrated, because the men under 30 make it the most important thing in the world. That's so funny because again, as a scientist, I'm just like, what do you mean by underrated? Oh my God. Because in some ways I'm like, one of the greatest things in life, of course, is sex. But we also adapt. Having sex with a single partner we know passion decreases in
almost all relationships. Yep. This is not scientific, but I can speak from personal experience. Sex with multiple partners or many partners in succession. That also gets old there. There's a hedonic adaptation of that. It's like, #8 is exciting. When you get to like 28, you're like, oh, it's Saturday, you know. Exactly. So we adapt to so we can adapt. Sex with love can be, incredibly, the greatest thing in the. World amazing. Right. Especially when you're falling
in love, yes. So yes, it's really hard to answer that question, because in some ways, like at the right time, with the right person, one of the greatest experiences in in life, yes. But can you sustain that? Very difficult to sustain either, whether it's with one person or with several. It's kind of like parties. Like we were talking about parties before we turned. We started recording. You know, 90% of the parties you go to in your life are kind of meh, like they're OK, maybe a
little disappointing. And then there's maybe 10% that are just incredible. Some of the best nights of your life, yeah, but you never know when that nights going to be. I feel like the same as with sex, too. Like, it's most sex is just like, OK, that was fun, but every once in a while you get. Right. Transcended, right? Yes, Incredible. So. But that's also true with like conversations, right? Yes. Once in a while, you have a conversation that's incredible. Right. Or vacations?
Or vacations. Or seeing a work of art or music. Yeah, I wanted to include that in there because I'm followed by a lot of young men and one of the consistent themes that I see when I talk to my young male followers is, is and I I get it. I was the same when I was a 18 year old guy. So it's a it's like, calm down boys, It's you're going to be fine.
But getting back, though, to that study by Danny Kahneman where they asked people to kind of write down what they did yesterday and what kind of determined their happiness today. And so sleep, you know, bad sleep was one of the worst things. And then also like, commuting was bad, but sex was like one of the most if not the most positive. We're not talking about, like transcendent experience.
We're just talking about kind of like your mood right now has depended on, like, if you had pretty good sex yesterday, so it didn't have to be transcendent. So it it does. Of course it is important for happiness, and it's correlated with good things like a happy relationship often. Or Or maybe you're a socially skilled, charismatic, attractive person who has lots of friends and partners or or possibilities. Yeah, so that person is often
happier than someone. So, like, if you have opportunities to have sex, you're probably better off in other ways, too. So maybe a sneaky underrated. In a way. Like it's a signal. Yeah. Like it's a signal of other things. True that also are good in your life. So maybe not be the sex, but what it comes, what's correlated with, right. Like having a happy relationship. Yes. Or as I said, like someone who
has opportunities. Yeah, it's probably someone who. 00:51:41,920 Attracting, yeah, attractive partners. Yeah, right. And and. And which is enjoyable and happy. People attract, right? If you're an unhappy person, people don't don't wanna have sex with you, right? Yeah, like if you're really unhappy, this is very true, right? Right. So there you go. That's the conclusion of this. All right, Sonia, it's been a pleasure. Let me show off your books to the to the audience both. Hello.
Yes, both Yellow, The Howl of Happiness, The myths of happiness, and you're currently working on a new one. Yes, called How to Feel Loved. And really feeling loved. Connection is the key to happiness. So it's a perfect third book. Yeah, with with a collaborator, Harry Reese. Cool. So we'll we'll have to have you back when that comes out. So would love to. Thank you. Thanks for coming on.