201. 5 scientific ways to ACTUALLY be happier

Before we get into it today, I want to let you guys know that my latest line of notebooks, in collaboration with the illustrator Rosy Pink, have launched and are live now and ready for you guys to get your hands on. A lot of love and care went into

designing and producing these beautiful companions to the podcast. If you're somebody who likes journaling, who likes to take notes while listening, who likes, I don't know, just a gratitude journal, who likes to have a little planner, a little to do list, whatever you need a notebook for, these ones are adorable and definitely up there as being one of my favorite things I've ever created. It's also an amazing way to support the show and to support me as

a creator. So if you are even thinking about it, thank you so much. And if you hit purchase, you are my favorite person in the world. So, without further ado, let's get into the show. Today, we are going to be taking a look at one of our most primary and significant emotions, and that is happiness. This huge concept, if we can even call it that that sounds so reductive to call a concept. It plays such an everyday,

valuable role in our life. And yet I realized that I have never actually sat down and done an episode on happiness. Even in two hundred episodes. It might come up, but it has never had its time in the spotlight all on its own. And today is that day when we are going to give all of our attention and focus to this primary, deep, important emotion. I think everybody on this planet wants to be happier in some sense.

They want more contentment, they're striving for greater satisfaction in some area of their life, more pleasant emotions, or they are you know, they recognize that they are unhappy and they're looking for some way out of their despair or their emotional rut. And yet I don't think many of us really know how to change that. We don't really know what brings us joy or contentment. We kind of spend a lot of our life at this baseline level, this like fifty percent mark of not being onhappy but

not really excelling as a happy human. The other alternative is that we spend a lot of time doing things that we think will improve our life satisfaction, doing things that we think bring temporary pleasure and temporary joy, but which don't actually have that sustainable happiness factor behind them, right, They don't actually improve our emotional state in the long term. I'm thinking about things like retail therapy, that's the first one that always comes to mind, but other concepts or

other behaviors like binge drinking, emotional eating. Yes, we feel better in the moment. Often we use these things to self soothe, but I think that if we see happiness as a scale, a lot of those activities that we pursue to improve happiness really don't have a lasting effect. On top of that, I also think that in our minds for a lot of us, happiness is like important, absolutely, but it's also seen as rather uncomplicated and very much out of our control. When life is good, we are happy.

When bad things happen, we are not, And so we really do tend to project our happiness and see it as the responsibility of our circumstances, the responsibility of what is happening around us, that is what has the biggest impact. But actually that is not necessarily the case. There is this model called the happiness pie which says something completely differently so behavior geneticist psychologists. They actually attribute about fifty

percent of our happiness to genetics. So every single one of us is born with what we call happiness set point, a baseline level of happiness. This kind of relates to the individual differences between being a pessimist and being an optimist. When we are born, we are just naturally hardwired to see the world as perhaps realistic, but more so either

a brighter or darker place than it actually is. So fifty percent genetics, and then ten percent of our happiness comes down to our life circumstances, which is shocking because I think so often we blame our context and external events for our emotional state when actually it really can only tip the scale, not throw it off completely. I think, of course, during intense moments of loss or grief, that

ten percent is really going to dominate. But on the average day, our happiness really comes down to our mindset and our outlook and our habits. And so we finally arrive at that final slice of the pie, the forty percent that we can actually attribute to our personal choices. Forty percent of our happiness is dictated by us. Science would say that it is within our control. And that's what we're going to focus on today, that part of the equation, and five ways that we can, you know,

scientifically improve our level of happiness. And I really wanted to talk about tips that were actionable, accessible, simple, but also inexpensive. Right, I'm not going to recommend some like fifty dollars workout class or supplement, because it's kind of ridiculous to think that only wealthy people would have access to joy and peace. But I'm also not going to give you like the basic tips that we all know.

You know, I think we all understand that when you exercise and move more, when you get eight hours of sleep, when you eat better, you are going to be happier. That is pretty basic knowledge. But I want to go a little bit deeper today. I want to really look at some of the academia and the research about what can really impact our happiness on an everyday level. What are some of the secret habits of really really joyful, happy content people. One final caveat. I know I've been

rambling for a while. These are not tips that are going to, of course, cure you of your mental health concerns, of your mental health symptoms or conditions. They are more so additions to our life. They are techniques that can elevate the work that we're already doing in therapy with the help of medications. I just want to say that loud and clear, this is not a replacement. These are just bonuses. So without further ado, let's get into our

five evidence based ways to actually truly be happier. Let us jump straight into it with my first tip, invest as much time in your platonic relationships as your romantic ones,

if not more. I think that it is important that if we are focusing on happiness, we need to firstly focus on our social connections, and that requires us to spend at least I would say, thirty minutes every day day doing something that meaningfully connects you with another person and that keeps you in touch even as life gets busy. Even as the older we get, you know, the more focus we become on our partners, or our romantic lives

or our marriages. Keep those platonic connections alive with those people from your past and new friends as well, even when it feels hard, even when it feels tedious, and dare I say, even when it does sometimes let's admit it feel like a bit of a chore. I think we all go through these like social ruts where we want to isolate, where we do feel withdrawn or you know, just simply lonely. And the best thing that you can do for your happiness is to find some way, any

way of getting back in touch with others. That is one of the core needs that we have as humans. So let's talk about some of the research behind why this is so crude, sure, and why it's often neglected. So possibly one of the most brilliant and significant studies of all time provides so much evidence for why this

is such an important step in our happiness. So back in nineteen thirty eight, that is almost ninety years ago now, this huge team at Harvard University, they decided that they wanted to track two hundred and sixty eight current sophomores at the time, and they didn't just want to track them for the you know, for the year, for the term.

They wanted to track them for the rest of their lives, regularly checking in with them, regularly seeing how they were going, to determine what parts of their lives, what factors were determining whether one person was healthy and one person wasn't, What events and characteristics meant that these men succeeded or failed, what caused their early deaths or their long lives, what made their marriages flourish versus fail, And also what it was about these people's lives tracking them from when they

were nineteen till ninety and even past that what made these people happy versus miserable. So this is now known as the Grant Study. It is actually the longest longitudinal study of all time. When I'm recording this right now in twenty twenty four, I think only about like eighteen

of the men are still alive. But the biggest finding across all of those decades of observation and research was that the one thing that determined happiness above all else was positive social relationships, not money, not promotions or careers, not material possessions, but friendship and love, and even deeper than that, just genuine companionship and a warmth from relationships. There is something really valuable in that that I think

we often forget. I think there is often this sense of like friendships and you know, relationships are just there to feel empty space, They are there to make me feel less lonely. Always sometimes end up thinking that our careers and material fulfillment is actually what determines our happiness. And this is a bit of a wake up call that no, if you are going to invest in anything in your life, anything at all, that's going to ensure that not only do you live longer, but you're happier.

It is those really meaningful, platonic friendships and relationships that was like the pioneering study on this. There have of course been so many follow up research projects that are finding the exact same thing. Another example of this is a more recent one and research has employed the use of this app and it was called the Mappiness App, and basically what they wanted to determine was when a people happiest on an eleven point scale from no, oh I'm not happy at all to I am extremely happy.

This app would send them little alerts to rank how they were at that very point throughout their day, and they had over three million submissions from nearly fifty thousand volunteers. And what they found was that the point where people

are happiest is when they are with their friends. Amongst everything else, that they were able to track when they were with their partners, when they were with their parents, when they were with their children, when they were at work, when they were exercising, when they were with their friends always came out on top. So applying this tip, here are three things that we can do once a day,

find thirty minutes minimum to deepen your bond with someone. Literally, it could be as easy as sending them tiktoks or texting them, but if you really want to improve your chances, here giving that long distance friend a call, or grabbing lunch with a friend on your lunch break, going to the gym together afterwards. You know, after work, those small thirty minute like kind of points of contact are so

valuable in building up that relationship. Once a week you need to be doing minimum at least a one to two hour even longer, hopefully in depth catch up with one of your friends where you actually have a deep, meaningful conversation, You get vulnerable, you disclose, you laugh, and more important, you make memories. And then it comes to once a month. Once a month, become the host. Now, if you have listened for a while, if you know

me in real life, you will know that. One of my secrets too, I would say being an incredibly optimistic, happy person and a present person as well is finding ways to build community, not just for myself but also for the people that I love. And I think hosting events in your house, in your neighborhood small things is an expression of that. When I stopped waiting for other people to do or organize cool things and hopefully invite me and just started being the person who literally just

did fun shit, my life got so much better. So once a month, what I really would implore you to do is to get together a big, random bunch of people for like a friendship group pot luck, or a movie night at somebody's house or you know, trivia brunch, a run club. You be the organizer, you be the host,

You be the person around which community is built. I think you know, reflecting on that, and why it makes so much sense is that in this day and age, we really lack some of the structures and activities that used to bring us together. You know, in the past, we used to have so many more places to operate within a community, right We had community dances, we had town squares, we had small village like place and spaces where you were surrounded by people. A lot more people

went to church or were involved in religion. There was a bigger focus on community essentially, and I think as society has progressed and become more globalized but also a lot more online, for example, we've lost a lot of that and that disconnection really bleeds into other areas of our lives. So deliberately making our way back to that, making engagement a practice rather than something we passively fall into, is so valuable. My second tip for today spend your money better.

might just be the path to it. Money does make us happier up to a point, though only up to a point. So in a really famous study I think we probably have all heard of it at some point, and they actually revised it last year. Basically they wanted to measure at what point does an extra dollar really not do much for our happiness? At what point does making more money not really move the need or when it comes to how good we feel? And they recently

updated this for inflation and nowadays. What they say is that once you're making around one hundred k a year in US dollars, so do the conversion. If you live outside of the US, more money doesn't really do much to make you feel better, and it doesn't do much to eliminate misery or sadness. Yes, you might be able to,

you know, buy objects and experiences that you value. You definitely will have more freedom and independence and security, but at that point there isn't much more that would provide you with already that baseline, So if your happiness hasn't already been influenced by that level of wealth, more money isn't going to help you, but there's something else that will.

So a study by Harvard Business School and the University of British Columbia, they found that once you've actually pulled yourself out of poverty, so once you can actually afford your basics, spending money on other people actually gives us more joy than spending money on ourselves. So they found that even a minimal amount can make a difference. It's really interesting because I think that that power generosity has

been lost, but it is such ancient, ancient knowledge. I think in almost every major religion, every major historical text, you will find evidence that for a long time, when you've known that doing good by other people makes us feel better, I think it also has the effect of turning the attention away from you and your problems for a moment, and remembering what it is that you have that others might not, that you could assist them by

giving to them. So use your money, devote some portion of it to basically engaging in random acts of kindness. Quite literally, I want you to budget it. In One way that I do this is called good deed Sunday. Every Sunday you practice essentially being generous you give back in some way or another. It actually doesn't even need

to be that much. Could be that, you know, when you go and do your weekly shop, you buy some extra items for your local community pantry, or you ask somebody doing it tough outside if you can buy them something, If you can buy them a couple of items that they really need, you could find a you know, random GoFundMe and budget literally five ten fifteen dollars each week to go towards this random act of giving back and kindness.

I know it feels kind of strange giving to others for your own happiness rather than just because you feel compelled to do so, but I actually think it's more about adopting an attitude and a genuine lifestyle adversely, gratitude for what you do have, and generosity by realizing that there is so much that you could give to others that you should essentially feel really privileged to already be in possession of. And as I said, the studies repeatedly say,

you will feel better for it. You will feel so much better giving that small portion of what you're making to somebody else than using it to buy something that you might not actually need. So a brief second layer to this tip around spending your money better to promote your happiness. If you're not spending that extra coinage on others, if that's not really what you want to do with

your time and your money, that is okay. A study by Cornell University found that you're actually better off purchasing experiences than things because the joy and the satisfaction that you get from an object is going to wane and decline pretty quickly after purchasing. But the enjoyment of an experience, it's like a nice wine. It gets better over time as you age. Those memories do become more valuable, They

become an investment, they become an important asset. The other thing that the researchers pointed out around this in this study by Cornell was that your experiences are actually just inherently less comparative. It's a lot harder to you know, compare them to somebody else and feel like you're lacking the same way that we can do with material objects. And we also don't typically have buyers remorse when it comes to memories. When it comes to experiences, because even

if they were terrible, they are still a story. So if you want to spend your money better for your happiness, give to others, and give to your memories rather than to your kind of like material rather than to the material side of things. So let's move on to our third tip. Have one project, one thing that you are actively trying to finish or accomplish or get better at.

I say this a lot on the podcast, so I'm very sorry if I sound like a broken record at this point, but I say it because it's important and it's something that I believe in very deeply. Sometimes the easiest thing to do isn't what's best for us. What's best for us is the thing that requires a bit

more effort for a lot more gain. I think the older we get, we do tend to become more passive in our lives, especially during our free time, during our downtime, because hours a long, life is exhausting, life is busy, Everything just gets a bit harder. I think we have all had that feeling at some point of just wanting to take the path of least resistance through life, getting home from work and just genuinely wanting to sit on

the couch and scroll. But when we were kids, when we were teenagers, we often had the privilege of something to work towards, something that actually gave us a sense of drive and purpose. I think that we have lost that a little bit now. And you know, everybody tries to blame social media and technology. I'm going to actually quickly jump on that bandwagon for a second. I think with social media, if we're getting the same amount of dopamine from saying other people do cool and rewarding stuff,

why would we need to do it ourselves? And the reason why. The answer to that question is that we need purpose. If we think about happiness as being made up of four components, in my mind, they would be joy and pleasure, connection, altruism and meaning doing something that actually makes you feel like you are alive and contributing,

and just having a sense of purpose. So in twenty thirteen, this group of researchers at UCLA they actually identified this through some research they were doing on the two distinct kinds of happiness. We have hedonic happiness and eudaemonic happiness. Hopefully I'm pronounced that right. You demonic, Yeah, you demonic happiness.

There we go, correct me if I'm wrong. But hedonic happiness comes from self gratification and pleasure seeking hedonic is obviously relating to the idea of hedonism, prioritizing pleasure over everything else. But you, demonic happiness comes from having a deep sense of meaning and purpose in life, doing things for others, but more so doing hard things that do take time. Rather than getting all of your joy and pleasure from instantly gratifying experiences, we tend to spend a

lot of time in hedonic happiness. We look to external pleasures to make life enjoyable. Because you, demonic happiness is harder. Simply put, it's just harder to obtain, but there are so many benefits. So simply put, if you are in a bit of an emotional rut right now, I think creating meaning is an essential way to switch from adonic happiness to eudonic happiness. Just have a little bit more of that more sustainable form of joy in your life.

And we create that meaning by creating goals or things that we can strive towards, because I think you know, in that act of striving, we feel engaged and proactive, meaning, we realize that we can do things to change our lives and how we feel about it. Now, those goals this big, very daunting idea of purpose. It doesn't have to be as large or as scary as it sounds. You just need to have something. And I prefer to think about this as a project rather than thinking about

this huge mission that we all need to have. You just need to have something. For some people. That is, you know, running a marathon, perfect example, and also super timely, because I think everybody I know right now seems to be training for a marathon or some running event of some sort. But you know, that's fabulous because you're working towards something that is harder and bigger than yourself that

you actually can't achieve overnight. But I also have a really good friend whose purposeful thing for the year is hitting her fifty two book target on Goodreads. My dad, for example, right now, is learning Japanese. You know that is something that you progress towards. And for me, well, it was finishing my book, but that has done so now. It's kind of being consistent in the gym, right I can't just like show up one day and you know,

hit all my prs and do everything perfectly. It is once again the act of striving that is so so meaningful in these situations. So just stop and pause with me right now, and I want you to honestly ask yourself, is there something in my life, anything that ischallenging me or that I am working towards? Do I have a project? Or when I finish work, when I finish uni, when I say goodbye to all my friends? Is my only function to scroll and consume? And is that really what

I was designed to do? Is that really how I want to spend my life? Does it make me feel human? Does it make you feel meaningful? You can still, of course unwind in that way, but I just want to encourage you to think about what else you are made for and whether you actually would be happier if you were putting time into something that you really had something to show for it at the end of it all, you really had something that you felt was important and

that you felt proud of. Alrighty, I have two more tips for you, but firstly we are going to take a small break and then we will be right back. Welcome back. I have two final tips for you today, and the first one takes place outdoors. If you want to be happier, if that is what you are striving towards, and I'm assuming that it is because you are listening

to this episode. You need to rewild yourself. You need to quite literally touch some grass, get your feet stuck in the dirt, you know, experience or as you look at the stars, take a dive in the ocean. Pretty much anything that gets you connected with nature, our literal you know, natural habitat can boost serotonin beyond even some of the strongest antidepressants. Now again, not a cure for

serious mental health concerns. I am never going to sit here and say go off your medication and like get outdoors, because I think that is ludicrous, that is ridiculous, that is unethical to even suggest. But it is an important addition. I think we are so detached from nature in today's world. We are so like you, caught up in concrete and indoor environments that we have lost touch with what makes us wild and what makes us as a species, what

makes us connected to the world around us. And when researchers have deliberately intervened and essentially forced people to go outdoors as part of studies, the impact on their overall happiness, on their udontic happiness, on their joy, on their genuine joy and love for life, the results and the impact of that is just honestly so impressive. So I have three examples for you to take away with you today, three examples of how we can really activate this part

of us that responds so well to nature. So in twenty seventeen, there was a study on this and it was run on a group of thirty eight Northern Californians, so not a huge sample size, but just hear me out. So these thirty eight Californians, sorry in Northern Californians, maybe there is a distinction, I don't know. They were split up into two groups. One group took a ninety minute walk in nature every day and the other group did

that same walk in the city. At the end of this study, have a guess who was having fewer negative thoughts. Have a guess who had a better self esteem. Have a guest who was reporting greater levels of happiness. It was the people who were walking in the outdoors. The urban walkers who were walking amongst the city did not report the same significant amount of change when they kind of controlled for the general serotonin in endorphin boost from exercise.

It was those who did it out in nature and who were you know, actively rewilding themselves who really experienced the most benefit. What's more, fMRI scans revealed less activity in the brain region that plays a role in mood disorders and negative thought patterns. These individuals had genuinely seen their brains almost rewire to be more positive. So the dirt example I gave before, you know it may have sounded like a joke, me telling you to go out

and touch some dirt. You know, touch some dirt, and they go willy nilly, you're happier, But there is actually some evidence that the literal smell of mud of dirt may lift your spirits. So what it comes down to is actually this harmless bacteria that exists in the soil. It's called Myobacterium vacate. So if you want to give that, you know, fancy Latin name a quick google, what you're going to find is that when you smell dirt, that smell that you can remember right now, really picture it

smelling that like that fresh soil. What you're actually spelling and is that specific bacteria. And when it enters your olfactory center in your brain, it leases a whole wave of euphoria and serotonin, so much so that in human tests when cancer patients were administered this bacteria, They're moved, despite their circumstances, despite this terrible, terrible disease, their outlook greatly improved. It is like nature's antidepressant, this bacteria. It

is really you should google it. It has this strange impact on our brain and how our neurons communicate. Even anecdotally, I don't think I've ever met an unhappy person who was gardening. I have never been miserable whilst repotting my plants, or hiking, or taking my feet off and like squishing

them around in the mud. So one final study to convince you of the healing power of the outdoors and why if you are prioritizing happiness, you should be prioritizing quite literally your outdoor time is this study that was focused on what eating outdoors can do for our well being, and it turns out that it can do quite a bit. One thing that I hear a lot, and I think it's super understandable, is that you know, I just don't have time for that, And that is actually so reasonable.

If you are working from eight am to six pm and it's the middle of winter and the sun is you know, not even coming up until you're at work, not even setting until you're home. How are you possibly meant to, you know, go play in the dirt or frolic in the ocean. How are you meant to do that? I understand, you know, it's really difficult for me to sit here and you know, give you this advice when we are like, there's just practicalities that prevent me from

doing this. So the simple solution is spending your lunch break that thirty minutes or our lunch break that we all legally get, eating outside, or eating somewhere with windows to at least see some kind of nature. Do not sit at your desk and eat, please and thank you. Do not sit in the middle of a crowded food hall with no natural light and expect, you know, to see a difference. So in twenty thirteen, another study for you guys and full of them today. These scientists from

the University of Sussex. They measured the happiness of these this group of employees who ate lunch in different locations. So the results showed that workers they were actually happiest when they ate their lunch on the beach. Of course you're going to be happy doing that, but it's also not reasonable that you can get from your offers to the ocean so quickly, but even just getting outside in the sun was a huge contributor to basically like staving

off misery. People who ate in parks, people who ate outdoors, they had a more positive attitude about their jobs, about their lives, about their connections than those who were eating at a restaurant or sitting on their couch at home. So if you want to be happy, even slightly, if this is something you're consciously trying to do, prioritize your

outdoor time that one. You know, one change that you can make is literally just sitting outside while you have your lunch, something that you are already you know, it's already factored in your day that you will have to do this. I am going to finish up with my most counterintuitive tip of this entire episode, one that you will probably be surprised would show up in an episode about happiness. Here it is you need to be sadder

more often. And let me explain why we often think of happiness as the absence of sadness, but it's actually a mastery of sadness. It is a recognition that shit happens life sometimes hurts a lot, It is boring, It can quite frankly be a little bit bland if we're not searching for hedonistic pleasure at all times. But that doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile. And it also doesn't mean that we suppress those feelings and adopt the delusion that everything is fine and hope that it will be.

We need to give ourselves permission to wallow. We need to be tender, we need to feel, We need to watch that sad movie. We need to let ourselves be open about our emotions. There is a brilliant Vice article about this back when Vice you know, it was actually good, and it's called You'll be Happier if you let yourself feel like crap, and I would really really recommend you go and read it. We have such high standards when it comes to our emotions like joy, like euphoria, like excitement,

like passion, like love. We of course want to feel them all the time. That is so human to want to feel amazing all the time, but it can create a gap between expectation versus reality, and you know that actually results in us sometimes feeling less happy overall because we're disappointed that we can't feel happy all the time. And I think, you know, we live in a time when our culture is very obsessed with this idea of

constant happiness. And I know it is so ironic that I am doing a whole episode devoted on this feeling whilst I am saying that, But seriously, I do think that maturing and developing and evolving is knowing that you cannot be happy all the time. And this author to Boor to Boor, that is their full name. She published a study in twenty twenty three talking about how when we as individuals rebrand sadness as valuable rather than as

something that we want to escape from. This transformation occurs because the very expression of this emotion begins to normalize it as part of our human can be, and instead of only focusing on how it is maladaptive, how it is unpleasant, how we want to avoid it, we think about what it actually can give us. I think that our ability to embrace our negative feelings provide so many benefits.

There have been so many papers on this, so much evidence that people individuals like you and I, who accept all of our emotions without judgment, we are less likely to ruminate on you know, those hard times, we are less likely to suppress mental experiences, you know, which typically

backfires to only amplify those experiences in the end. And we are also less likely to experience meta emotional reactions, which is feeling, you know, upset about being upset, feeling even more unhappy about the fact that we are unhappy.

You know. There was this fabulous article. It's in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the authors put it this way, when we accept, versus judge, our mental experiences, we let those experience you know, experiences run there natural and also relatively short lived course, rather than focusing on them and exacerbating them. So that's my final tip. Express

your sadness. Find ways to communicate it to your friends, find a home for it, find an expression for it, find a way to sit with it even when it's uncomfortable. And the research tells us that counterintuitively, it actually makes us happier in the long term. Here are some quick final notes for me on this. You don't have to do all of these things, you know, that's a lot of work. Just choose one or two of these tips and implement them slowly, implement them over time, and just

notice whether something changes. You know, I'm not going to choose which one you should do first. I think that all five are really important, but whichever one resonates with you most, that is the one that you should choose. And I also want to say one more time, don't forget the other core components of your wellbeing. I know I said I wouldn't talk about exercise or eating well or going to therapy, but you know, those are our foundations.

You can't really accept your sadness or have a project or think that going outdoors is going to do as much as getting those basics down pat will do in the first place. So really I'm rooting for you these. You know, with small changes comes big, big impact and big results. And I just want you to remember the happiness pie. When life feels overwhelming, you get to control forty percent of it. That is all up to you and your perception. So I'm sending a lot of love

and strength. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to share it with somebody else might also benefit from it. Who you think might get something from this, And if you do feel cool to do so, please leave a review five stars. Of course it would really make my day. It helps the show grow. It helps this information get to more people and it just makes me really happy. Make sure you're following along as well, so you know

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