How to Live a Little Happier with Dr. Laurie Santos

I think one thing you can do to make your kids ultimately happier and definitely to make them psychologically healthier is to let them be unhappy. It is to let them fail; it is to let them screw up; it is to let them cry; it's to let them see you do the same things because that is the way by which they do stuff.

A very core mechanism of our emotions is that they are contagious. If you're a super anxious, super unhappy mom, your kid's going to pick that up.

There is lots of evidence that doing for other people can make us happy, but that's only if we have the bandwidth to do for other people. And the problem is that we sometimes don't.

Emotions are signals, and overwhelm is a good signal of 'this means you got to step back; you gotta start saying no to some of these obligations.

If you're deeply unhappy in a relationship, you're not making the other person as happy as they could be.

As my colleague Dan Gilbert, who I mentioned before, is fond of saying, happily ever after only works if you have six minutes to live.

You need to find ways to kind of say 'no' to give yourself the bandwidth; boundaries are healthy ... Make sure when you're saying 'yes' that it really is a real yes.