This is episode number 96. One with dr. Laurie Santos. Welcome to the school of greatness. My name is Lewis Howes former pro athlete turned, lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week. We bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, let the class begin.
Allah once said it is important to know who you are to make decisions to show who you are and Les Brown said, help others achieve their dreams and you will achieve yours here on the school of greatness were all about making Empower decisions in our quest for happiness and growth. And my guest today has created a career out of studying, how to make wiser choices and live in a more.
Fulfilling way. Dr. Laurie Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale University and an expert on human cognition decision-making and the search for happiness in a couple of years ago, her course psychology and the good life, which is now called the science of well-being, became the most popular class in the 319 year, history of Yale. Dr. Laurie Santos is the host of the podcast, the happiness lab and will forever alter the way you think.
Think about finding contentment. I was so inspired by our conversation and I'm sure you will be as well. And in this episode, we talked about the five steps that you can take today to be happier. Right now, The Importance of Being in service to others, to maintain your individual happiness, how we can express frustration in a constructive way instead of an angry one, the power that sleep and exercise has on our mental health and different, mental health needs for different types of people.
Especially in this challenging time that and so much more. I'm so grateful to share this information and episode with you. And remember, make sure to pass this along if it's making an impact on you because you have the power to change someone's life by sharing this. And if this is your first time here, make sure to subscribe to the school of greatness on Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you're listening to podcasts again. Thank you so much for being here. And without further Ado. Let's dive into this episode with the one, the only
Sir, Laurie Santos.
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Welcome everyone to the school. Greatest podcast. We've got dr. Laurie Santos in the house. I'm super excited that you're here. Thank you for taking the time with me today. And you are one of the most popular professors in the world right? Now. You got a class at Gail about happiness and you have an incredible podcast, the happiness lab, which I've been a fan of since it came out. I really love the one about the lottery winner, guys. I think a lot of people think that, if you just get all this,
Money that just drops in their bank account. They're going to be happy and I actually met a lottery winner, who won the biggest jackpot in Florida. I think was like 400 million something in a long time and I think it maybe it was a couple of years ago. And it's since been surpassed I think, but he was 19 when he won and a friend of mine messaged me and said, hey, did you see this guy? One is lottery. I was like, no, I wasn't paying attention and he said, well, I looked on his Twitter in a few tweets ago.
Though, he posted a link to your podcast. I think he's a fan. And so I just sent him a DM and I said, Hey, listen, I can only imagine the amount of joy and excitement, and unbelievable feelings. You're having right now is a 19 year old. But as, you know, most lottery winners go broke, go bankrupt, you know, commit suicide have a lot of bad times afterwards. So if you ever need anything, I'm here to support just as a friend to help out and we got on a bunch of face times and talked and I was coaching him.
They're trying to keep him grounded during that time, because it was very challenging. So, I appreciate that episode. And so many interviews, you've done and episodes about happiness. In the science of Happiness. I'm curious. What made you fascinated in learning about happiness in the first place where you just not a happy person where you the happy person that no one else around you was what was the reason?
Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's a great question. I think the interest in the happiness was twofold part of it started in my role at Yale. So I
live on campus with students. I'm ahead of college. So heels one of these strange schools like Hogwarts where there's like Gryffindor and Slytherin and these like weird colleges within a college, right? So I'm head of Silliman college, no relation to Slytherin despite the kind of similar sounding us, but but that means I like hang out with students on a regular basis and
what I would say sister
almost kind of yeah, I like an aunt. I call myself your Bernard. Okay. I'm too old some tool to be the sister salad. But yeah, so so living with them. I got really up close and personal with the
Called Mental Health crisis that we're seeing among our young girl. I mean, the stats nationally are just staggering. So over forty percent of current day, college students report being too depressed to function. Most days over 65% say that they're lonely or overwhelmingly. Anxious over 80 percent say that they spend most days feeling overwhelmed by all they have to do. It's just like this is really tough right now. And so the happiness, the interest in the happiness science came out of that which is, you know, I'm part of this community.
See where I'm like, yeah, again their benevolent onto them seeing them, you know, not be able to function because they're too stressed out about their midterm or just like having panic attacks about their summer internship applications. And I'm like somebody needs to do something about this
to like we're teaching them how to be overwhelmed with science and math and all these psychology but they're too overwhelmed. Actually take it in and if they're stressed and mentally unwell what the point of it all it sounds
like exactly, you know, we act like we're being Educators and we're teaching them.
Computer science and Chaucer and Shakespeare and all this stuff and it's like they're not, none of that's going in. If we're happy if they're yeah, they're just or that they're that mentally just stressed, you know, maybe if you're having like a not perfect, a great. But right now if 60% of the you have 2/3 of the kids in my class are overwhelmingly anxious during that class. Like, you know, it's just it's we're not educating our students in the way we thought. And so
and it's hard to receive information and remember and assimilate the information when you're under extreme mental stress and
Emotional trauma or even if it's even if it's not real and it's made up trauma, it's still hard to remember things and test, well, and write great essays. It's it's really challenging under that type of mental stress, right?
Yeah. I mean, you know, like simulate if your listeners can stimulate the last time they were feeling overwhelmingly anxious. Like, was that an awesome productivity day? Like did you learn a bunch that day where you want your best like? No, right.
Donuts and cookies and just watching Netflix.
Exactly. Exactly. So so so I want to do something about it. But on your question about am I a naturally happy person. I feel like if I'm being honest, the other part of that story was, you know, I wasn't feeling like I was flourishing at the time, you know, I'm looking at these students feeling anxious and I could say, you know, I'm stressed about work. I'm worried about publications. I'm not doing this at the. I need you to be happy either. And so part of me was excited to teach my students this class because I figured, you know, I got to practice what I preach, right? Like once I learn this stuff.
I'm supposed to be an example to them about doing this stuff. Right? And so, it was kind of a little, you know, selfish too. And so, so
basically, I just ended. When did it start? When you were like, okay, I want to learn about this and retrain myself, for.
Yeah. So, this was like early and I started as head of college in 2016 and I'd say like, basically through 2017 or so. I started reading more about this stuff and in January of 2018. I hit go on this new class. I basically threw together all this material and created a new class for the students at Yale. Where you learn about
Kind of the science of what makes you happy misconceptions. We have about happiness, like money and the stuff we were just talking about but also how to put those things into practice because it's one thing to know what you're supposed to do, but it's another to like, actually do it as you probably know. And we whisper, you talked about a lot in the podcast quite well, so, so yeah, so the time I didn't know it was going to happen, you know, was a new class at Ivy League school. So I thought, you know, 30 or 40 kids will take it. You could imagine my surprise when we get this wonderful little tool on Yale where we can
See how many students are looking at our class. They don't register ahead of time. So they're kind of only show up that first day of class and most most of the classes had a scale from 0 to 100 students, but mine had this weird scale that was different than all the other classes where I went from zero to a thousand students. Oh, my goodness. That's weird. And what wound up happening is we got around, 1,200
students who'd taken over the basketball arena.
Well, that we actually, like we joked about, you know, taking over the football, stadium in the end. We taught the class in a concert hall on the big, you know, there's like a Yo-Yo Ma play.
When he comes to yells campus
and how many people showed
up just under 1,200, which is which just for reference is like, about one out of every four students at Yale took the class.
Wow, and I was just under class, is this upperclassmen is this? Yeah. It was mostly it was in tears are coming out of retirement and saying I need to take this class. Well,
that was so interesting. I mean, it was an undergrad class, but because it was in this big concert hall, you know, it's hard to, you know, it's not like we have somebody at the door, keeping track. And I know I'd hear from, you know, the women's basketball coach that, you know, she was sitting in on it. He thought it
Be so helpful or faculty colleagues of mine would be like, you know, I snuck in yesterday, great lecture and I'm like, you know, who my lecturing to, but it kind of became this weird phenomenon on campus, right? With so many people, taking this class
crazy now, so you did this as an experiment and then you've been continually doing it. And then you decided to launch a podcast and course for people which they can take. I think for free right now. Is that
right? Yeah. So kind of what happened was that the class went totally viral on campus, but
I didn't expect what, I super didn't expect was for the class to go viral off-campus, right? Like here. I am just, you know, Professor doing my thing. And now, the New York Times shows up and he's like, oh my God, you're teaching this class to so many kids, you know, a quarter of Yale, students are learning about happiness, what's going on? And so talk to the New York Times, but then it's, you know, the Today Show and NBC CBS News and then International media, you know, people, you know, writing about the class in lake Croatian and ties. It was kind of crazy. But but what that press may be realized.
Was, you know, this isn't just yell students. I was framing this. Like, this is a mental health crisis among college students. Let me teach them, but what the Press convinced me was like, lots of us are feeling, like, we're not flourishing right now, right? In. And I think people were looking at these yell kids of like these kids are at Yale their 19. Like their whole life is made, what do they need a class on happiness for like give it to me.
It's a symbiotic, not simply just kind of show up to class and they are Daddy's money or whatever. Pain them to go and all this stuff. Right? Yeah, and so it's no possibility. It's fake false responsibility.
A
moment. I think that was you know, that was what a lot of the coverage was like and so it made us realize like this could really help a lot of people. And so so we put it online, totally for free on coursera.org. It's called the science of well-being. You can take it now and but then we still got some emails and news articles. That was like, I'm overwhelmed. My life is falling apart. I need a class on happiness, but I don't have time to take a class on happiness. Like, give me the cliff notes version. Like I need it fast and that's where
That's where the happiness Lab podcast came in. We realized that, you know, as you know, so well with this podcast, like there's so many folks who are looking for insights looking for good stories looking for ways to learn about what to do better. And so we decided to just kind of give all the insights that we've given in the class in kind of short podcasts, fun form.
Sameh the entertainment. So you can be entertained and learn and be educated. Now, I'm curious, you know, people have been talking about happiness for, you know, in the last decade. I feel like I've seen
Lots of books out there. Gretchen Rubens got an amazing book on happiness. There have been other, I guess happiness, Educators teachers, experts, whatever you want to call it, for over a decade. Why is this picking up in such with so much steam when you know happiness has been talked about for a decade. It seems like for me and lots of different
platforms. Yes. It's not entirely clear. I mean want to answer is like, nothing's new about this, right? I mean, Harvard had a class on the science of Happiness, top by the sky table and she here.
Over a decade ago. Also a Shawn achor. Another famous happiness researcher was part of that class. And so in some ways like every time somebody does this, it kind of goes a little viral. We've been worried about happiness since I think since we've been human, right? Like basically, you know chimpanzees are out there worried about happiness, but probably we are it's in the Declaration of Independence like Aristotle was talking about eudaimonia back in the day like it's in some ways. It's a super not new. I think. What is new, is that like a lot of us are focused on
This right now because I think you know, things are pretty good, you know, like on the internet. This is idea of like first world problems, right? And that's the problem that a lot of us face, right? Leap. We feel like, you know, we have food on our table. We have a roof over. I had we have good jobs and good families, you know, great internet and Netflix, but something's missing. And like, and that when you're feeling those first world problems, I think it's even more profound because you're like everything supposed to be fine, right? Everything supposed to be perfect. Like, why do I not feel like everything's right. Why?
Why do I feel like I'm not flourishing. Why do we feel that way? Well, I think the problem is that our mind kind of sucks. We have these really bad intuitions about what makes us happy. I mean people who are in that state, where are also thinking all if only I could be like that 19 year old lottery winner. Everything would be perfect. Right? So people are doubling down there, playing the lottery. They're spending more time at work there. They're investing in all this stuff thinking reasonably based on their intuitions thinking it's going to improve happiness. We're just going about it the wrong way and that's why I think the class can be so powerful. It's not like, we don't
Know what to do to be happier. We have these strong theories is just the science suggests. They're wrong. Like yeah, if you're not putting the work in, we're putting the work in in the wrong stuff.
So, imagine, I mean, it sounds like you've had this experience with a thousand different students. You've worked with. Imagine a student right now is feeling so overwhelmed and so insecure about everything they do in their life. Their mental each struggling there. They don't feel like they fit in with friends. They don't feel like, they feel like,
There got so much class work and they're just struggling. And every day is a battle of how to find a joy in the smallest things, but they can't find any Joy. What does a kid like that start of actually being happy? Like what statement starting process when you're in that
situation? Yeah. Well, I feel like step one is to just realize how not alone you are. If you're in a situation, that's why I start this class with the stats, right? Like, oh, you feeling overwhelmed, great.
87% of your college peers are feeling that way to, you know, feeling really depressed. Like actually probably a quarter of you are admitting that you're feeling that way, right? Feeling overwhelmed. Well, that's three-quarters of you like in so. So I think seeing the staff awareness. Yeah. I think this is another spot where our mind lies to us. There's this wonderful study. I share with the students in my class that has you predict how other people are feeling right? Because we're constantly doing that like we're in our own heads feeling depressed and anxious or feeling inadequate.
Adequate and then we project onto other people and whatever we look at other people. We think they're doing fine. And so there's this one study that has college students predict how many good and bad events. Other people are going through, like how many other people out there like got their dream job or got a perfect grade or got invited to a cool party versus bad things. Like how many people out there, you know, got just for a day or a feeling really homesick or something like that. And what you find is, people consistently overestimate. How many good things other people are getting the other words, other people aren't doing as well as you think. But what's worse is people
Really really, really seriously underestimate the number of people that are going through bad things, right most by double digits. And so the problem is like we're all kind of suffering in silence and in stigma, right? Because we don't want to admit like we're feeling like we're not flourishing, but everybody else seems great, but the fact of the matter is, the data suggests that's just not the case that. So that's kind of Step. One is like, you are not
alone. Okay, step two,
step two. I think, you know, not take the take the online class, right? I like, um, you know, no, but seriously, I think that what's
Science suggested that there's ways to intervene in small ways and baby steps that can matter a lot. And one of those first steps. The research suggests is to kind of reach out to other people. Is, I think this, this, there's this kind of mistaken notion that happiness is all about self-care and self self self, like treat yourself, kind of parks and recs style. But what the science suggests is that happy people are really other oriented, you know, they're reaching out there making social connections. They're worrying about how they can help other people and other
People's welfare. That's what seems to lead to a happy life, which is problematic. Because as we get stress, especially as we get lonely, we end up, turning inward, become become more like me, me, me focused, and it's kind of
this world is against me. No one understands me. All the bad things are happening to me, but when we, when I'm here, you say and what I've been learning through my own experiences when we actually get out of ourselves and say, how can I help someone else? How can I be a listening ear to someone else? How can I show up to someone's?
Event and show that I'm supporting them. When we can take it away from us to others. That's when we get our Greater Joy.
That's exactly right. Yeah, it's surprising again. It goes against our intuitions, but doing nice, for others is better than may be focusing on ourselves one. Awesome study did this where they basically forced people to give money to others. So you walk up to somebody on the street and you're like, do you want some money there? People are like, yeah, give me some money. So you hand somebody $20 and you say by the end of the day, either spend this on.
So that's the kind of treat yourself sort of condition or by the end of the day, spend this on somebody else. Mmm. And, you know, we could predict like what's going to feel better. Most people think, you know, treating yourself is going to feel better. But it turns out that at the end of that day, the people who spent the money on someone else feel better.
I think, I mean, it's always fun, I guess to get gifts, but I think it's a way better to give the gift, you know, for a birthday or Christmas or whatever you want to celebrate, just giving a gift to give it. You ought to watch someone else light up.
Up is for me, the greatest gift. It's more selfish to give because what you gain from it. As opposed to just, okay, give me things all day long. Am I right? Or is that is that
all? You're totally right? But it's not what I mean. That's why you're such a happy guy, but I think it's not most people's. It's not most people's intuition. Right? I mean, yeah, for me, is personally, I mean, I know all the data but my, as I said, I'm not generally a happy person, which I think translates to my intuitions, aren't normally great. Like, if I'm having a really crappy day. I'm not like, I'm like, I
To get a nice manicure for myself and treat myself. I'm not like, Let me Give A co-worker a nice manicure good time right now, but you're right the data suggests on totally wrong. I'd be so much happier and I get so much more bang for my money buck in terms of Happiness, by spending it on other people rather than
myself my entire, I would say teens until now, the earlier my life. I was very insecure and obsessed about what I wasn't kidding. Once I started to shift into my teenage years.
And start to challenge myself by allowing myself to be rejected. The potential of being rejected by saying hi to people or, you know, just being nice in the line of getting a coffee or whatever. Maybe putting myself out. There is always a fear of rejection and security. Once I said, I'm just going to do this to give to people. I'm going to be kind and I'll walk down the street. I'm going to smile and say hello and I'm going to ask people questions. It was like, everything started to shift and change because I was became outgoing.
Towards other people. And I try to look for in every situation I can, how can I give to someone else if I'm at Starbucks? How can I pay for someone for five bucks? If I'm going to grocery line and someone struggling, how can I just help them get something? Something small? It doesn't have to be money. But just how can I show that people show people that I am thinking about them that? I see them that I acknowledge them. And I think when we come from that mindset of giving, we feel more fulfilled and happier because
we realize we contributed to someone else's life. Again, with your example of money. It doesn't have to be money. But how can you contribute and bring joy to someone else? And that contagion of positivity will reflect back and make you feel that spark of joy as well. At least. That's the way I feel.
Well that's exactly what the science a Jessamine and it doesn't have to be money. It can be time or it can be a small amount of money. One thing about that study. They did different dollar amount. So it wasn't always $20. Sometimes it was five dollars. And what they find is the amount of
He doesn't matter like it can, you know, it can be an incredibly small amount of money and Incredibly small amount of time that it's the fact that you're doing something nice for somebody else and you
react. Yeah. Now on a scale of 1 to 10, 10, being you're happy 100% of the time. Where was your happiness level five years ago? Or three, four years ago before you like, got into this where you an 85 or was it kind of like most of the
time? Yeah. Well actually have data legit data on this on like, you know, because and it is a
A 1 to 10 scale and basically I was probably like at a like a, you know, like a six maybe and now I'm pretty consistently at like a seven or eight which kind of makes sense like that. I think doing these doing these practices, all the stuff we teach about in the class, you know, from being other oriented to experiencing gratitude to mindfulness and all the stuff we talked about. It's not gonna like it doesn't like immediately, change your life. So you go from like zero happiness to like a million happiness, but
it's time it doesn't happen over.
Is that what you're telling me?
There's some stuff that happens overnight. I mean if you like have a really great exercise class, you feel immediately better. I bet even if you do the like nice Starbucks thing, you know, for like that day, that's what the research suggests for that whole day. You're feeling a
higher project. But it's the consistency every day. You've got to show up in order to rewire your brain. I'm
hearing and this is the bad news about happiness. Is that like all good things. You have to continue to put the work in. It's like, you know, it's like working out at the gym, right? You can't just like, go do your leg day one day. Be like I'm done good like
Like, it's gonna be great, you know,
Mesa based on all the science and research that you've seen. What would you say? Are the five things that if people did these five things, every single day on a consistent basis, their happiness level would go up a pointer to consistently over time and it doesn't cost any money and it doesn't take a ton of time. But if you did these five things your life would start to be a lot happier.
Yeah. Well, I think we just talked about one. I think this act of becoming other oriented.
However, that works for you, whether that's, you know, donating an hour of your time or just like holding the door open for somebody, you know, giving some money like we all can probably have enough disposable income, disparity, teensy-weensy bit. And so what can you do to spend that money on or that time or whatever? On other people said that would be topic. That would be number one. I think number two would be another thing. You just echoed in terms of how you're talking about changing your life, which is to show up for other people. So, all the research suggests that happy people are really social, they tend to
Attend to talk to random strangers. They tend to be around other people and they really make time for the people that they care about in their life. And so, I think this would be kind of big change number two. It's like, how can you just be reaching out to people more often? And I think, you know, this is one of these things where like we kind of know it, but we don't often put into practice, right, you know, if you found out you were on your deathbed, you know this week and you know, you had a week to live, you might not like go to work like you'd probably like want to focus on those people. You care about in your life like,
They are, you would see your friends. You would hang out with your family that you care about, you know, you put time into your romantic relationship, whatever. That's what you do. But if you look at how we tend to spend our time, it's, you know, we're caught up in work. Sometimes, we're not even present with our family members when we're around them, you know, because we're like, you know, let me put the phone down kind of thing. And so, but happy people don't do that. They are prioritizing right now. And so whatever you can do to shift, to being a little more social, and a little more kind of Social and again, connected with the people you care about.
About. That's like
good doesn't have to be strangers socially or fake friends, but being social with people you care about on a consistent
basis. It can actually be the strangers. In fact, there's one study by a researcher Nick Eppley and his colleagues were just like I mean psychologist always forcing people to do stuff with money, but he forces people with money to talk to strangers on the train. He does this on the L train in Chicago. So he says, you know, for the next half hour you have to talk to somebody and make a connection. People predict. This is going to be actively miserable and we
Bird and
cheesy amazing. You did an episode on this too.
Exactly. Yeah. So that's one of our famous episodes, actually. Good got hate mail after that episode because people were like, you're crazy telling people talk to people on the train, like you're going to get people killed all the stuff. But I think that's how strong our intuitions are, right? Is that? We we really think. Oh my God, talking to some random person in the coffee shop. I'd rather just pull out my phone and check my Instagram feed. But again, our minds are leading Us in the wrong direction here.
Okay. Alright, so the first two are other others.
And showing up for
others. Yeah, I think the third one would be to kind of focus on the power of gratitude. Again. It always sounds so cheesy When you mention these things, but, you know, sometimes science is cheesy, but, you know, I think our instinct when things are good, and when things are bad, is that it's funny too kind of grape about stuff, right, you know, like it's funny to kind of complain. You probably even have people in your life that whenever you see them. You just start like the complaining Fest like happens, but that's not what happy people.
Happy people are spontaneously, counting their blessings. And this is a spot where I think popular culture has gone on to something with things. Like gratitude, lists or gratitude journals, like just taking time to count your blessings. Even if it's like 30 seconds at night. You can see statistical boost and happiness within about two weeks at that practice,
and I do this with my girlfriend every night before going to bed. We both say three things were grateful for and it puts our mind at peace. It gives us a moment of reflection of even
if you know, there's a lot of stress in the world with the virus and the pandemic and everything, even with all that, it's still good things to be thing to be grateful for. So it's just reminding ourselves to calm our mind down before going to bed. And then we sleep. We have a grateful heart. You wake up with a grateful heart as opposed to an angry heart and I think the more you go to sleep, frustrated, angry and ruminating over things you don't have or you don't like about what's happening in our life W that the sleep isn't as quality and you wake up.
More tired and you become more reactive the next day and that's why I think you're right. The power of gratitude. This is something that I swear by and not without it. I'd be, I'd be unhappy.
Yeah. I know. I think I mean again, it's all about also be like kind of just being mindful of these things. Right? I mean, sometimes I'll leave a like Grape Fest with a friend and just notice and be like, I feel really crappy. Now if you know like yeah, like getting all that off my chest and like complaining about whatever. But no, no, I think it. Yeah, and there's
There's lots of evidence suggesting that gratitude can have a specifically powerful effect on sleep. Even things like immune function, like it, immune systems work better. And so what do ya think? It's we need right now in the context of this virus. So
how much does griping or talking about the things? You don't like? How much does that actually effect your happiness? I mean, I'm all for creating a container where I'm saying. Hey, listen for the next 10 minutes. I just want to share things. I'm frustrated about but then here's all the things. I'm grateful for to kind of get both of them out. Yeah.
Is there science or research? That says, like, if you talk about negative things, are you complain with your friends? Are you talking about what? You don't like gossip? It's going to bring your happiness level down. Or is this just a theory?
Yeah. I mean, it's more. It's less that. So, I think part of it is how your griping right? And so you can gripe about, like everything's terrible. Everything is terrible. And therefore, I'm going to problem solve by doing X Y & Z. If you do that, what your kind of griping to problem-solve, then that can be really powerful, because it can be kind of identifying problems and then fix
Seeing them. But if your griping just to like, grape grape, grape, grape, grape, and there's no like forward motion on, you know, Solutions, exactly, that's not really helpful. And it comes into opportunity. Cost. You could be spending that time talking about what you're grateful for. And so, so what I try to do with friends now as you know, because I definitely still have friends where, you know, they're in there in grape headspace, you know, you know, that's that's what they're going to do. But like, whenever we're in that space either move it more towards problem-solving, like, oh, yeah. Okay, that co-workers, a pain in the butt.
But like what can we do to? So try to move it towards problem, solve it, or try to do exactly what you said which is like, you know, you can fill up your frustration bucket, but kind of match it with a bucket that's equally filled with. Yeah. Nothing's.
Okay. So that's number three. Power of gratitude.
Yeah. Number four is kind of a smushed one, but it's basically should have more. Yeah, it's like it, I'll throw together a bunch of things under the context of like healthy habits and by what by that what I mean is like things. We know are good for
Our physical health, but we often forget that our physical health, our mental health are intertwined. So, you know, getting some regular exercise and movement in making sure you're prioritizing sleep and having good sleep habits. So it's not just like, you plop down for a certain number of hours a night, but you're really trying to do things before you go to bed and during your day to make sleep better even healthy eating. Like, we don't, we forget the connection between our gut and our brain between our bodies and our brain between our stress levels in our brain. And so we really have
Kind of, make sure we're protecting our physical health because that has a huge implication on our
mental health. Yeah. I just had a doctor on today. Actually my show. Dr. Steven gundry who talks about essentially had a boost the immune system, how to reverse disease, how 2D age, all these things about the body and he was a heart surgeon for 40 years and stop doing heart surgeries because he realized that wasn't solving the root problem nutrition and other things solve the root.
A problem of disease. And he was saying all all disease is stem from like a leaky gut and the foods we eat, create a holes in the gut where things see through and then it causes eczema and it causes different disease because the immune system is broken down which attracts disease. And so it's all about the things we eat to make sure we boost our immune system and we feel better. We have greater energy and it also connects to the brain. Everything the hard, the brain in the gut.
So just like you said, I think that's a great, a great point. So you're
beautiful. But I mean, the exercise and sleep connection is even, you know, if there's evidence suggesting that like a half hour of cardio every day is, as effective as a prescription of Zoloft for reducing depression symptoms, right? So the psychiatrist, you know, might not make as much money if they're prescribing. Hey, hop on that treadmill or your Peloton, you know, for a half hour, but that's what the data suggests, and then same thing with sleep. I feel like we could solve most of the Mental Health crisis on College.
Campuses. If we just got these kids to sleep,
that's it. If they just want the exhaustion, overwhelmed and exhausted is a combination for
unhappiness. Exactly. And not making good decisions and not learning and doing all the stuff we need to him to do
oncology. Yeah, and then just needing needing the sugar fix to like, stay awake and meeting some adrenaline. So checking social media or whatever it is doing the wrong choice, to get the fix, to keep them awake or have some attention because they're so distracted. Okay, so the fourth was a smoosh of
Movement, a habit, healthy, habits,
habits, sleep, all those things. And then, what would you say? The
fifth one? And I think the fifth one. I mean, again, I mean, you know, cutting off your but I think the fifth one would be finding ways to practice being more mindful, being more present. And I mean, that in a couple ways you no one is like, you know, the standard Buddha meditation anyway, to be present where you're like, paying attention to the present moment, but it's also just like paying attention to your body and where you are with things. I mean, we mentioned this a little bit when you're
You're thinking about the griping of like afterwards after that gripe session. I'm like, I feel kind of yucky, you know, maybe after you like do something, nice, and give somebody something at Starbucks. You have a presence in notice. Like, I feel kind of good like my heart feels warm. Do I'm breathing in a different way and so on. And so, I think, you know, we constantly have these theories about what we should be doing with our time. If we actually pay attention to how our bodies feel and be present during it. We can see whether we're going in the right direction, the wrong direction for me, this
So true on social media in general, but particularly right now during the virus, right? It's like I have this intuition of like, I'm like board or feeling a little anxious. Like, I'm gonna just do a quick Twitter. Check. I'm just going to hop on Facebook, just for a second. And if you notice, if I notice how I feel re afterwards, I'm like, I feel either apathetic or bored or my anxiety has spiked our. I feel kind of inadequate and sort of yucky about myself. Like I want to buy something like none of those are good feelings that I wanted, but if you're not present and you don't know,
Notice them then you just act on those urges. You know, I'm kind of buying something because I feel
inadequate or I know what I mean. In your opinion. What's the worst thing? We could be doing during corn time, being isolation, you know, obviously watching news or overeating or excessive alcohol, sugar social media. We'll all that hurt our well-being, and what's the worst thing we could be doing?
Yeah. I mean all that hurts. Our well-being. You know, what's worse? Probably. Depends a little bit on what's hurting you the most? I mean, for me, I feel like
Anxiety skyrockets when I'm like Panic scrolling right now, you know, so I have to
like me, but I look at all the negative news more like, yeah,
just like going through my Twitter feed and scrolling deeper and, you know, doing more and more clicks of like, let me check the latest statistics. Like I can watch my chest get tight. I can watch my breathing is really shallow. And basically what you're doing when you're doing that is that you're you're spiking your sympathetic nervous system. So, you know, quick bio, you know, back to AP Biology class, right? Like
Your you have two parts of your autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is like the fight-or-flight, right? Like that's what's in your evolutionary Arsenal, so that you can run away from a tiger, who's about to attack you, and it has those features. It shuts off everything, that's not essential. It shuts off, digestion, and sexual health, and immune function, and all this stuff and it turns on your muscles and your breath to breathe as quickly as possible. And you basically start breathing, like, you're about to run a marathon.
That's a sympathetic nervous system.
Yeah. And so, and so, it's what we're activating.
A lot during this crisis because it's not a Tiger. It's like a doorknob that somebody touched or, you know, like the latest, you know, bad statistic about what the death rate is and we have to know about that stuff, but we can be intentional about how we cure
it. I think I don't ya,
the good news. Like there's this other half of our sympathetic. There's other half of our nervous system, which is the parasympathetic nervous system. That's the flip side, the rest and digest, the, the best analogy. I've heard about these which only works if you're like,
A child of the 80s, like me, but I don't know if you know this movie Airplane, like this really bad movie from the 80s,
early 90s grew up in 83. I was born in 83. So
it was his cheesy comedy movie for your listeners who know this reference? Okay, in the plane where this woman starts freaking out. She's like, I gotta get out of here and there's this funny scene where there's like a big line of people who are basically going to smack her and be like, shut up like you're getting over it. And whatever. Right. And so the parasympathetic is that big line of people being like shut the heck up, right? Like it's ready to like just calm the heck out of the sympathetic.
Just be like, there's no tiger dude. Just like chill the heck out. And in the problem is that the only way we can activate the parasympathetic nervous system is to convince our bodies that there's no tiger, which we do by like getting rid of the threat, which is hard during the virus. But there's one way we can take action on our parasympathetic nervous system and that's through our breath. So he can
force our by Earnest and rattling awareness.
Read super slow, and also breathe into your belly. Because like, if you
Ever been on the treadmill, you're like, you're feeling it in your chest, but deep belly breath. Like you're not going to do that if a tiger is about to jump out, right? And so it's actually activating the vagus nerve. It's like really working through the pieces of our body. But what it does is it turns back on that rest and digest? So that's the one thing. I I'm trying to watch when my chest is tight. That's the action of the sympathetic. Yeah. Feel like I need to kind of remind my parasympathetic that it needs to kick in now. And that's super helpful.
Yeah, I can't remember if someone I might have been Jay Shetty. You said something like this. He was like, you know, imagine standing in front of a train track and seeing a crash happen. Every minute of your day in person people getting killed, and crashes and different things like you would constantly be in reaction mode. And that's essentially what we're doing by checking these updates and news and stats and seeing the worst of humanity during this time, as opposed to, you know, separate, you know, being
Be aware of the facts being aware and updated on what's Happening being conscious in mindful being safe. But also focusing on the good side of things is where my mind tries to focus on and my girlfriend is more focused on checking all the bad and telling me of what's happening. And I'm just like, yeah, it's bad. And it's gonna get worse, and it's really sad, and it really sucks. But where's the good, where's the value? Where can we find meaning in this? And how can we make sure that we are safe?
Our loved ones are safe. And we put out information that serves people at a high level to overcome these challenges. So, that's where my head goes. And she's finally starting to shift more into that. And I can see her anxiety, go down because she's not consuming as much. So, consuming was what I'm hearing is, one of the worst things we can do, especially if you're an anxious
person. Yeah, and I guess, I think it kind of matters. The kind of person you are, like, I have a very nerdy husband who's a philosopher and he can look at the stats and just not get and just blinked.
End up in it, you know, and so for him, it's okay. But, you know, we've had to work on, can exactly what you're saying is that he'll tell me and I'm like, my chest is pounding. Like I'm not be able to sleep and it's like you kind of have to. This is a think, an important thing for friendships and relationships is like different people are at different points with this, and you got to kind of regulate depending on who you're talking to and what they. Yeah, probably some friends that you want the opposite, you know, I have other friends who are like, you know, not taking this seriously and not Sheltering in place. And for them. I'm like, bring braid latest horrible.
Just takes you know,
so now they're in Cancun with all their friends at the bars or whatever and saying who cares if I get it, right? That's that's not the one you want to be
there. And that's a good way to think about emotions in general is that they're they're functional like emotions have a purpose, right? There's a purpose to why my chest freaks out. When I see these statistics is like, I'm supposed to take action. I'm supposed to wash my hand. I'm supposed to social distance. But once you're already taking action, the anxiety is not really helping and the good news is we have we have
tools to not get rid of it because all like, let's be fair. This is an awful grieving, sad, yucky time. We're going to feel that stuff but we can have some control over how much we feel it when we feel it, when it's appropriate to feel it
and so on. Yeah, and if we're seeking joy and happiness, you know, there's definitely times where life when we may not feel that because of grief because of loss because of deaths because of, you know, losing a career, losing a person, close to your breaking up in a relationship.
Our reading periods for sharing. This is one of them. And I think what I'm hearing you say is, you can still find joy and not be exhausted all day long, and useless as a human being. You can still find Joy through just following through, in a few of these things which is getting out of self and what you're angry about and say, well, how can I be a solution by calling a friend FaceTiming? Someone showing up when doing something nice for someone, how can I, you know, work out, how can I get try to get some little bit extra?
Asleep, how can I eat? Little bit, but just make a better decision, the next decision. And it's not easy, but it's worth it. If you want to be happy. It's the only things you can do to be happy, really? So,
exactly. All of it reminds me of this wonderful Parable. Making fear comes from Buddhist tradition of the second arrow. And the way this Parable works is so booted. Stalking his students, and he's asking a students. And he says, you know, if you get shot with the arrow on the street, is that really bad? And people say, yeah, that's super bad. Getting shot with an arrow and Buddha ass. Okay. Would it be worse if you were shot with?
A second Arrow to people like, yeah, second Arrow would be worst new two times as bad as the first arrow. And so the Buddha goes on to explain. He's like look the bad stuff that happens in life as the first Arrow, you know, we're living through a pandemic that is a big arrow that we're getting hit with but our reactions to it is the second Arrow, right? You know it is, you know, we might lose loved ones. We might be trapped in the house. We might, you know, my Yale students, for example, the seniors aren't going to have graduation. They've lost all their weeks of party with their friends. They're in mourning.
But to like, not eat healthy, or not exercise or fight with your spouse or, you know, cry in your covers all the time. Like, in some ways that second part is on you, you know, you might not be able to control covid-19, but you can control how much sleep you get tonight or what, you know, again, the best choices you make and, you know, sometimes we're going to stab ourselves as arrows, but the idea is to reduce them as much as possible. A lot of those are in our control.
Yeah, I mean disaster is inevitable and, you know, pain is now
Bowl, bad things are going to happen, but it's a greater disaster to respond in a negative way to fall down and pity yourself and hurt yourself more. That's the greater disaster. Is what I'm hearing is.
That's right. That's right. And again, you know, within reason because I always like to put in, you know, like with a little self-compassion, right? Because there are going to be that there are going to be nice. There are like ice cream Netflix days, you know, like all right, you
know, I get it. Yeah, but it's the consistency of it.
Every day after day, you're you're in control of. Here's a, here's a question because I want to make sure that I'm very careful when I talk about control and mental health, and mental illness and mental challenges, depression anxiety, you know, there's different doctors and research that will say like, you can cure depression mental health, like you have tools that you can apply and then there's other people
All that will say no. This is a chemical imbalance. That this is who I am. I can't be fixed. I need medication for the rest of my life.
Where are you at with this? In terms of mental health and depression anxiety, the spectrum of it, you know, I feel like I went through more depression type, thoughts and anxiety, and Suicidal Thoughts. When I was a lot younger and now, over time with practice, with improving myself every single day, and going through challenges. I feel like I don't have those thoughts anymore, but I always thought something was wrong with me. Where were you? What's your opinion on this?
On is there a spectrum for mental illness and mental health? Can you improve your ability to be less mentally, ill or depressed? Or is this something? We are born with and chemically unable to change?
Yeah, I think I mean, it's worth remembering that there is a spectrum of this stuff and the kinds of interventions you want to take at different points in that Spectrum, might look different. And so the analogy, I always would uses with health stuff. So imagine you come in, you know, I'm a doctor and you
Come into my office, and you say a doctor. I have high blood pressure, you know, a little over way. I'd be like you need to hit the treadmill, hit the treadmill, every day, for half hour, if you walk into my office and you're like, clutching your heart and you're like, I'm an acute Cardiac Arrest. Dr. What do I do? I'm not going to say, hey, get on the treadmill because like you need to hop on the treadmill today, right? Like you need something different and I think if your listeners are feeling like acutely suicidal, you know, like you're in the midst of a panic attack, I'm not going to say, Hey, you know, right, I little gratitude, you know, list right now like you're going to need a different kind.
Of care, you're going to need something that deals with something much more acute. And I think, you know, medications in those cases, you know, Professional Therapy, like those are tools. We know empirically tend to work and there's lots of individual differences of who it works better for, and so on. But like, those are tools that are there for acute cases. Thank you for just kind of feeling like, you know, I'm a little depressed and I'm not flourishing right now. I'm feeling really anxious in the current situation. You know, that's when you're in the kind of Crisis, where a lot of these long-term tools, can really help these tools that like build on themselves.
Over time. So that kind of just like in the exact but you were sharing with your story where it's like you start with baby steps and then these things become habits that you're doing all the time that are protecting your mental
health. Yeah, what's the difference between mental health and
happiness?
I think it kind of depends on your definition. I may think you know, mental health is all the things that kind of go into whether we're feeling happy, whether we're feeling flourishing, whether experiencing positive emotions. So on I think there's a lot of fight about these different definitions, but we kind of know it, you know, like you both want to be mentally healthy and happy and there's some overlap there might be some Nuance around the edges but you know, mostly they're good. Things tissue
for. Yeah, and you talked about this in your class about requirements is
It possible for us to actually change who we are and rewire our minds, our thoughts, and our level of happiness. Or is
this? Yeah. I mean, I think the answer to that is like, yes, but not maybe in the way you think, right. It's possible to rewire our habits, just like, it's possible to like, become healthier in terms of our physical fitness or lose a bunch of weight or something like that, right? You can do it, but it's not like you. Do you go to the gym once and then you're good? And then you
Pack up your gym bag, and that's it. Like, you actually have to put in constant effort. And so, the research suggests that it's for sure possible to change your levels of happiness. Every single one of your listeners could achieve higher levels of statistical, well-being. It's not going to be perfect all the time. It's not going to change, but everybody can get better, but to do that, it takes work, you know, it takes like, you know, sleep and exercise every day. It takes being social, even when you don't feel like it takes being other oriented. When you're kind of in selfish mode, like, you have to do those habits over.
Our time, the good news is as you do them more and more. And I think as you see the benefits kind of like as you said in your own story, it becomes a little easier to do it both because it's kind of like a habit that you're used to but also you've seen the reward. So when you're kind of not feeling it, you're like, okay, I know I'm really craving is ice cream right now, but like, you know, maybe it's better for me to just like, you know, hit my yoga mat instead, right? Yeah, you know, a little bit. What's going to work
better? I'm curious as a professor and with someone who's
All this Spotlight on them right now and all these people are taking your class at school and around. The world podcast is blowing up all these things. I'm sure the book deals are in the works and all this stuff are happening. Do you ever feel like an impostor? And I don't want to say this too like in a negative way, but I felt this way over my career different times of like and I'm saying these things. But am I living up to him at the highest level for myself. Is there ever a moment where you feel? Like, gosh, I'm teaching this, but I'm just, I'm not happy with myself.
Self. And what I'm teaching because I know I'm not living up to it fully like sometimes. But is there anything like that for
you? I mean are there ever moments where I'm not? I mean, I think that's the real question mean. No, I think one of the challenging things about this work is that just knowing the science, doesn't change my intuitions, right? Like I know all the things I'm supposed to be doing but that doesn't instantly mean that I'm doing them in class. We talked about this other fallacy that kind of gets back to the 80s culture and it's called the GI Joe found.
See, I don't know if, you know, g.i. Joe. Chiodo is 80s. Cartoon army, dudes. Had this famous saying at the end that like knowing is half the battle, go g.i., Joe and stuff if you remember, but but but it turns out that this idea that knowing is half. The battle is a fallacy. Like, we think, once I know what I'm supposed to do, you know, I read this management book. I read the self-help book. Now. I know what I'm supposed to do. That is not, it's not half. The battle is probably like not even 10% of the battle. Its most of the battle is putting it into effect in your own life. And so,
There are lots of times when I slack off and I'm not putting it into effect in my own life. I'm acutely aware of what I acutely aware of what I'm supposed to do. I acutely know what I'm supposed to do, but I'm aware that I'm not doing it and I think that's, I think, honestly, that's one of the reasons people, like, the class in the podcast is that they see that I'm kind of a scrub to, like, I'm in honest indication that like this stuff takes work, and we're not going to be perfect, and it takes baby steps. And that's what you need to kind of feel better.
I mean, it seems pretty common knowledge.
That most of the world knows that you shouldn't be eating bad food, if you want to lose weight. And yet we know it's like you said, we know the knowledge like eat less, and you'll probably lose weight and feel a little better. Don't eat the sugar all day long and you're probably feel better. It's most people know this information, but we don't put it into action. Is it? Just because it's hard. Is it? Cuz we don't care enough. About the desired result. Is it because there's a disconnect? Why is that?
Yeah, I think part of it's been hard.
Part of it actually is an accident of Neuroscience that I'm totally fascinated with this accident of how our brains are hooked up. So it turns out that there are different circuits in the brain for wanting something like the craving that you get and like the amount that you want to go after something and really actually liking something like how much you enjoy it when you actually do it. Super weird that the brain doesn't line those up, but they don't the biggest case where you see that as in the case of addiction. So people who are heroin addicts, for example, incredibly crave, the drug, you know, they're going to steal from their family. You're
Ever but then when they actually get it, they're really habituated to the drug. So they don't actually even enjoy it that much when they get it. Like these circuits have totally dissociated. I think this is what happens with all this stuff. You know, I will, you know, crave a sugary meal or crave sitting on my butt watching Netflix or you know, crave money or something like that. But those Cravings don't map onto the liking and then there's the flip side. There's stuff that I'll really like like, you know, doing nice things for others or like really pushing myself at the gym or getting to bed, really early at putting down the social media.
You like those are not things that I crave at all. But there are things that my body and my mind are really going to like it's so stupid but the brain is wired up and it's dumb way that they don't align up. But that's, that's the problem.
What I mean. How do we change the craving
them? So one part is just awareness, right? And so and you kind of talked about this, just even in your own life, right? It's to kind of force the noticing and be present with the liking, right. So when I panic scroll on social media, I noticed like didn't did not like that. So
Hey Brian, let's remember didn't like that so much. You know, when you do something nice for someone else. You're like, actually this felt super good, you know, with exercise I get this a lot. I feel like I'm slowly rewiring my craving for things like yoga and Hard Exercise where it's, like, I really tried. I had this wonderful good teacher for a while who at the end of a really hard practice. Would say, take a moment to notice what your body feels like. After you just did that that feeling and it again, it sort of starting to rewire. Like, actually I do like that feeling. Yeah. Try to
Go after that, yeah, and so again going
back to mindfulness coming back to your presence coming back to awareness of how you feel awareness of your thoughts if they were serving you or not or supporting you and just trying to do more of those things that support you. I got a couple questions left for you. This one is something that I'm concerned with because I don't know the stats, but someone told me the other day that because of isolation and coronavirus domestic.
Violence is going through the roof and abuse kids are becoming more abused, you know, relationships that have a lot of tension are exploding now to know if you are aware of the stats or if you can shed light on any of that, what can people do in, during this time of isolation, where they can't leave, where they feel like, they're being abused. Screamed at the violence, physical violence, emotional blinds. How can people
Manage it when they literally can't
leave. Yeah. Well, I think I mean they I think that is a real worry. In fact, we're doing an episode of the podcast with Eli Finkel who's a relationships expert. He's has a whole book on how to have happier marriages. And this is something that we talked about directly that he's really worried that, you know, individuals are stressed. You get to people who are stressed out together, you put them in an incredibly stressful situation and not great behaviors emerge. And so I think if you're in a period of abuse, you know,
Is hotlines those places that will help you. They're still there. Like if you are in like real physical or mental abuse situation, get out and you'll go somewhere else where you can socially distance, right? Yeah, you put yourself in another physically dangerous situation because of the virus, but I think there's a lot of folks who are, you know, a few steps down from that but still really struggling right now, you know, marriages, a lot of the data suggests that during crises like, you know, Hurricane Sandy or you know, after 9/11 their divorce rates do go.
Go up. But the good news is that marriage rates. Sometimes go up as do kind of birth rates, which means you know, the baby-making thing is happening. Right? And so the, so the research really suggest we could go either way. And so then the question is like what are the tools that we can use to kind of, you know, protect our relationships from this stress? And I think, you know, one of those tools is when we talk about a little bit before which is just a little bit of self-compassion, right? Like we have a way to frame, it gets back to this sort of idea, of the second Arrow. We talk
That right, you know, my husband makes a snippy comment at me, you know, during the day and I could either react to that and like freak out and be pissed off at him and Spike My cortisol and Spike my stress hormones, or I could be like, you know, he's under a lot of stress. He probably didn't mean it. Let me give him the benefit of the doubt and I think a lot of our family lives were going to be a lot happier if we can just kind of remember that, our first reaction should be, give people a little bit more of a benefit of the doubt right now. And then, you know, sometimes that can that can lead up.
Right, you know, if you're doing that with your spouse, that means you're going to be less snippy with them. Yeah. Well, I'm will spiral of emotion that we sometimes get. You can kind of nip that in the bud to help out right now.
Yeah, I think you said remember what you said, you know, a few years ago before you started this process of figuring out your own happiness. You're at a six. Is that right? Or
roughly? Yeah, probably six. Now more like seven or eight.
Yeah, anymore were seven or eight and three years is the goal to continue to increase too.
Seven, eight, nine, ten. And so what's missing from you in order to get to that 10
level? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think, you know, the goal for me is just to do my best right into remember what I can control, what I can control. You know, I think I've got a pretty good level, you know, maybe a nine or ten is there. It's worth remembering to you. That, you know, a lot of happiness is under your control, but there are some like genetic limits, you know, this gets back to the lake, are we wired to be depressed and anxious. Some of us does not did not hit the genetic Lottery when it came to that stuff.
Yeah, but even that even if you're a person for whom that's true, there's still movement. And so take the movement you can get. So, you know, will I be devastated? If I don't hit our 9 or 10? Probably not. I'm pretty happy to like be as bumped up as I am. Yes, these practices continue to pay more and more dividends over time. That's great, too.
Yeah, that's awesome. This is a question. I asked him when I think I called the three truths. So imagine that it's many many years from now. It's as long as you want to live.
100 200 years or whatever, but it's your last day on Earth and you've accomplished every dream. You could imagine every podcast book class. You want to create, you've done it all, you've done everything. You've seen all the people in your life have happy lives. Even Kris the consciousness of the world, to happier people, all those things happened, and but for whatever reason, all the work that you've put out there, it's got to go with you to the next place. The next
If World, wherever you believe you're going next so no one has access to your information. Any more about how to be happy in her or anything that you shared but you get to leave behind three things, you know, to be true about the lessons. You've learned in your life, the lessons that have supported you. The most that you would want to leave behind. This is all you would have to leave behind. Are these three lessons? Or these three truths? What would you say? Are your three truce?
That's a tough one. You leg wait to the last minute or the podcast to do that. Instead of being
I think one of the truths would be that there is a lot that we can control and we need to recognize the things we can control in the things we can't because those can be really powerful, kind of like similar to the second Arrow. The second two would be related. It would be lots of self-compassion beating ourselves up doesn't really help and a lot of these tips are about paying attention to what you're doing to yourself and how you're feeling yourself, and the related tip would be compassion for other people that we
Forget the power of that approach of being connected to other people. If the final truth is just to make sure you're being other oriented and connect with others, as much as possible. If I had a life where I did that, but I'd be really happy to go knowing that I connected with others and did as much for other people as possible. Hmm.
I love that. Dr. Lori now. Is there anything that we can do to support you in this moment? Your podcast is a must for me. I love it because I love hearing.
Research and the stories. So I think everyone needs to go. Download the happiness, lab, go check it out. Is there the free courses online right now? Where can we get the course?
Yeah. So the class is on coursera.org. It's called the science of well-being and happiness, lab, you can grab wherever you get your
podcasts. Okay, cool. And what I do have a book coming out or anything and I just threw that out there. I'm not
sure how the line. Yeah, you know, you know how those things go? Yes, I'll come back on when it's out.
Okay, perfect. And where can we connect with you on social? Are you on Instagram?
Are you on?
I try to learn my social media given my own Panic spilling, but you can find me on Twitter at Laurie Santos.
Okay. On Twitter. Alloy Steel's not
Instagram. Now, you can find happiness lab on, it's okay. Perfect.
I don't acknowledge you for a moment Lori for for taking on your own life and allowing yourself to be a guinea pig on how to improve your happiness and, and have a more positive mind and have healthier habits in your life. And through doing this, you're teaching so many kids and so many
Who need this information? So I acknowledge you for the gift. You are in the world and for diving in on this scary and fun project at the same time and then is what's your definition of greatness?
That's my definition of greatness. I think having a great life having a good life. The definition of greatness is the good
life. They go dr. Lori. Thank you so much. I appreciate
it. Thanks so much for super
fun. Thank you so much for listening to this conversation.
Even if you enjoyed it and you want to dive into another similar School of greatness episode, check out the links in the podcast description. I've done more than 950 episodes over the past seven years and I want to bring you more inspiration. Just like this.
We've been choosing for Lucky winners, each week like many from Tel, Aviv, Israel. Kelsey from Toronto, Canada, Roberto from California, and so many others. That's right. They each one at 25 dollar gift card to Amazon. But here's why I need your help to get to know you better. So I've created a short and simple survey. All you have to do is fill out a quick questionnaire at Lewis, house.com survey and that's it. It'll only take a couple of minutes, but it will go a long way towards helping me and this podcast served.
At the highest level possible and as a thank you for completing it. I am choosing for new winners. Every week to get a 25 dollar. Amazon gift card. So go to Louis house.com survey to fill it out. Now. I'm excited to get to know you guys even more and be able to serve you in the best possible way. Thank you so much for taking the time and listening to this interview and episode with dr. Laurie Santos. If you enjoyed it, please share this with a friend. Let me know what you learned about happiness and share with your friends about.
About happiness as well. How they can be happier in their life. You have the power to change and transform. Someone's life by just connecting with them by reaching out by being a good listener by being a good friend and sending them this podcast will help them. Give them the tools to just be a little bit happier today. Then you're doing something pretty good, and if you haven't listened to my recent episode with Kevin Hart, he mentioned on the podcast. It's a bigger win when you show other people how to win. Again, spread this message.
Sit, show your friends and family how to be happier, how to be more successful and how to win. And speaking of Kevin Hart, if you haven't listened to that episode yet, make sure to check out the full interview with the comedic Superstar. Go check it out right now over on the school of greatness. And if you enjoy being inspired, if you enjoy, getting positive messages sent directly to you. And you would like me to text you on a weekly basis, then shoot me a text right now, with the word podcast. 2614 350. 360. Again, if you want in.
Operational messages every single week sent by me to your phone. Then text me right now. 614 350 360 and make sure to follow me over on social media, to get more inspiration on all your favorite channels. We are also now doing daily stuff over on Tick Tock. So make sure to follow me at Lewis on Tick-Tock and check me out there and to take you home. I want to finish with this quote, by Deepak Chopra gratitude opens the door, the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe. You open the
The door through gratitude being a grateful person, brings more happiness and joy to your life. I'm so grateful for you for taking the time to be here today and all the difference that you make in the world with your talents and gifts. Thank you again, for spending the time with me today. I love you so very much. And, you know, what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.
