961 The 5 Keys to Long-Term Happiness and Prosperity with Dr. Laurie Santos

“Focusing on others will make you happier than focusing on yourself.”Lewis is joined by Dr. Laurie Santos, a Professor of Psychology at Yale University and the host of The Happiness Lab podcast, to discuss the science of well-being. They discuss five actionable steps to become happier today, the benefits you receive by helping others, how to maximize your mental health in this challenging moment, and so much more. For more tips on happiness, visit lewishowes.com/961. And text Lewis at 614-350-3960. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 961 with Dr. Lori Santos.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a 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.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Malala 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, we're all about making empowered 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. Lori Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale University, and expert on human cognition, decision-making, and the search for happiness. And a couple of years ago, her course, Psychology and the Good Life, which is now called The Science of Well-Being,

• 1:17Lewis Howes?

  became the most popular class in the 319-year history of Yale. Dr. Lori Santos is the host of the podcast, The Happiness Lab, and will forever alter the way you 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 talk 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.

• 2:02Lewis Howes?

  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. 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 Podcasts, 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 Dr. Lori Santos.

• 2:34Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. We've got Dr. Lori 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've got a class at Yale 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, because 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 it was like 400 million, something in a long time. And I think it maybe

• 3:17Lewis Howes?

  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 won this lottery? I was like, No, I wasn't paying attention. And he said, Well, I looked on his Twitter, and a few tweets ago, 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 as 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

• 4:01Lewis Howes?

  FaceTimes and talked, and I was coaching him and just 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 and the science of happiness. I'm curious, what made you fascinated in learning about happiness in the first place? Were you just not a happy person? Were you the happy person that no one else around you was? What was the reason?

• 4:26Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, yeah, no, 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 a head of college. So Yale's 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 soundingness. But that means I like hang out with students on a regular basis.

• 4:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow, you're like a big sister almost.

• 4:52Laurie Santos?

  Kinda, yeah, like an aunt. I call myself a benevolent aunt.

• 4:55Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 4:55Laurie Santos?

  I'm too old to be the sister. But yeah, so, so living with them, I got really up close and personal with the so-called mental health crisis that we're seeing among our young people. 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 sixty-five percent say that they're lonely or overwhelmingly anxious. Over eighty percent say that they spend most days feeling overwhelmed by all they have to do. It's just like, it's just 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 where I'm like, you know, again, they're benevolent aunt and I'm seeing them, you know, not be able to function because they're too stressed

• 5:39Laurie Santos?

  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.

• 5:46Lewis Howes?

  Like we're teaching them how to be overwhelmed with science and math and all these, and psychology, but they're too overwhelmed to actually take it in. And if they're stressed and mentally unwell, what's the point of it all, it sounds like?

• 6:00Laurie Santos?

  Exactly. You know, we act like we're being educators and we're teaching them like computer science and Chaucer and Shakespeare and all this stuff. And it's like, they're not, none of that's going in.

• 6:08Lewis Howes?

  They're not happy.

• 6:09Laurie Santos?

  If they're, yeah, they're just, or that they're that mentally distressed, you know, maybe if you're having like a not perfect day, great, but

• 6:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 6:15Laurie Santos?

  You know, if if sixty percent of the, you know, two thirds 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.

• 6:25Lewis Howes?

  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?

• 6:49Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, like simulate, if your listeners can simulate the last time they were feeling overwhelmingly anxious, like, was that an awesome productivity day? Like, did you learn a bunch that day? Were you on your best? Like, no, right?

• 7:00Lewis Howes?

  I mean, donuts and cookies and just watching Netflix, right?

• 7:04Laurie Santos?

  Exactly, exactly. And so, so, so I wanted to do something about it, but, 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, I'm not doing the stuff that I need to do to be happy either. And so part of me was excited to teach my students this class because I figured, you know, I get 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, so it was kind of a little, you know, selfish too. And so, so basically I just.

• 7:40Lewis Howes?

  When did, when did this start, where you were like, okay, I want to learn about this and retrain myself for?

• 7:44Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, so this was like early in, I, I started as head of college in two thousand sixteen, and I'd say like, basically through two thousand seventeen or so, I started reading more about this stuff. And, and in January of two thousand eighteen, 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. Um, but also how, 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, I'm sure you talk about a lot in the podcast quite well, so. Um, so yeah, so at the time I didn't know what was going to happen, you know, it was a new class at Ivy League school, so I thought, you know, thirty or forty kids will take it.

• 8:28Laurie Santos?

  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 zero to a hundred students, but mine had this weird scale that was different than all the other classes where it went from zero to a thousand students.

• 8:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 8:48Laurie Santos?

  That's weird. And what wound up happening is we got around 1,200 students.

• 8:53Lewis Howes?

  Taking over the basketball arena.

• 8:55Laurie Santos?

  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, this is like where Yo-Yo Ma plays when he comes to Yale's campus.

• 9:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow. How many people showed up?

• 9:07Laurie Santos?

  Just under 1,200, which is, which just for reference is like about one out of every four students at Yale took the class.

• 9:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow. And now is this underclass, is this upperclassman, is this?

• 9:16Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, it was mostly, it was.

• 9:17Lewis Howes?

  Teachers are coming out of retirement and saying, I need to take this class.

• 9:21Laurie Santos?

  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, you know, I'd hear from, you know, the women's basketball coach that, you know, she was sitting in on it because she thought it'd be so helpful. Our faculty colleagues of mine would be like, you know, I snuck in yesterday, great lecture. And I'm like, you know, who am I lecturing to? But, but it kind of became this weird phenomenon on campus, right? With so many people taking this class.

• 9:46Lewis Howes?

  Crazy. Now, so you did this as an experiment, and then you've been continually doing it. And then you decided to do a bunch of podcasts and a course for people which they can take, I think, for free right now. Is that right?

• 9:59Laurie Santos?

  Yeah. So, so kind of what happened was that the class went totally viral on campus, but which I didn't expect. But what I super didn't expect was for the class to go viral off campus, right? Like, here I am, just, you know, a professor doing my thing. And now the New York Times shows up and is 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. Talked to the New York Times, but then it's, you know, the Today Show and NBC News, CBS News, and then international media, you know, people, you know, writing about the class in like Croatian and Thai. It was just kinda crazy. But what that press made me realize was, you know, this isn't just Yale 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.

• 10:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:45Laurie Santos?

  And I think people were looking at these Yale kids of like, these kids are at Yale, they're nineteen, like their whole life is made. What do they need a class on happiness for? Like, give it to me.

• 10:53Lewis Howes?

  It's so simple. Yeah, they got simple. They just gotta show up to class and they are daddy's money or whatever, paying them to go and all this stuff, right?

• 11:00Laurie Santos?

  Yeah.

• 11:00Lewis Howes?

  It's a real responsibility. It's fake, false responsibility at the moment.

• 11:04Laurie Santos?

  And I think that, 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 could take it now. And, but then we still got some emails and, and, 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.

• 11:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:35Laurie Santos?

  We realized that, you know, as, 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.

• 11:52Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing. Yeah, 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 Rubin's got an amazing book on happiness. There have been other, I guess, happiness educators, teachers, experts, whatever you wanna call it, for over a decade. Why is this picking up and such with so much steam, when, you know, happiness has been talked about for a decade, it seems like for me, in lots of different platforms?

• 12:22Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, it's not entirely clear. I mean, one answer is like, nothing's new about this, right? I mean, Harvard had a class on the science of happiness taught by this guy Tal Ben-Shahir over a decade ago. Also, Sean Aker, 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. You know, we've been worried about happiness since, I think, since we've been human, right? Like, basically, chimpanzees aren't out there worried about happiness, but probably we are. You know, it's in the Declaration of Independence, like Aristotle was talking about eudaemonia back in the day. Like, it's, in some ways, this is super not new. I think what is new is that, like, a lot of us are focused on this right now, because I think,

• 13:04Laurie Santos?

  you know, things are pretty good, you know, like, on the internet, there's this idea of, like, first-world problems, right? And that's the problems that a lot of us face, right? Like, we feel like, you know, we have food on our table, we have a roof over our head, 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's supposed to be fine, right? Everything's supposed to be perfect. Like, why do I not feel like everything's right? Why do I feel like I'm not flourishing?

• 13:34Lewis Howes?

  Why do we feel that way?

• 13:36Laurie Santos?

  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 are also thinking, "Oh, if only I could be like that nineteen-year-old lottery winner, everything would be perfect," right? So people are doubling down, they're playing the lottery, they're spending more time at work, they're investing in all this stuff, thinking, reasonably based on their intuitions, thinking it's going to improve happiness, but 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, it's just the science suggests they're wrong. Like, it's not like you're not putting the work in, we're putting the work in, in the wrong stuff.

• 14:12Lewis Howes?

  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...

• 14:23Lewis Howes?

  Insecure about everything they do in their life. They're mentally struggling. They're they don't feel like they fit in with friends. They don't feel like they feel like they're got so much classwork 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's the even starting process when you're in that situation?

• 14:53Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, well, I feel like step one is to just realize how not alone you are if you're in that situation. That's why I start this class with the stats, right? Like, oh, you feeling overwhelmed? Great. Eighty seven percent of your college peers are feeling that way, too. 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, and so, so I think seeing the stats.

• 15:17Lewis Howes?

  Awareness.

• 15:18Laurie Santos?

  Powerful. Yeah. And 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. And then we project onto other people. And whenever 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 dissed for a date, or feeling really homesick, or something like that? And what you find is people consistently overestimate how many good things other people are getting. In other words, other people aren't doing as

• 16:01Laurie Santos?

  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.

• 16:08Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:08Laurie Santos?

  Almost 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. And the fact of the matter is, the data suggests that's just not the case. So that's kind of step one is, like, you're not alone.

• 16:25Lewis Howes?

  Okay, step two?

• 16:26Laurie Santos?

  Step two, I think, you know, not take the, take the online class, right? You know, like, um, you know, no, but seriously, I think that what science suggests is that there's ways to intervene in small ways in 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 Rec style. Uh, but what the science suggests is that happy people are really other oriented. You know, they're, they're reaching out, they're 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 stressed, especially as we get lonely,

• 17:11Laurie Santos?

  we end up turning inward, we become more like me, me, me focused and it's kind of this.

• 17:16Lewis Howes?

  The 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, and show that I'm supporting them? When we take it away from us to others, that's when we get our greater joy.

• 17:41Laurie Santos?

  That's exactly right. Yeah. It's, it's again, it goes against our intuitions, but doing nice for others is better than maybe focusing on ourself. One awesome study, uh, did this where they, 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? Their 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 yourself. So that's the kind of treat yourself sort of condition. Or by the end of the day, spend this on somebody else. 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.

• 18:20Lewis Howes?

  I think, I mean, it's always fun, I guess, to get gifts, but I think it's 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, to watch someone else light 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?

• 18:42Laurie Santos?

  No, you're, you're totally right, but it's not, 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?

• 18:50Lewis Howes?

  I mean.

• 18:50Laurie Santos?

  Like for me 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 want to get a nice manicure for myself and treat myself. I'm not like, let me give a coworker a nice manicure gift card right now. But you're right, the data suggests I'm totally wrong. I'd be so much happier and I'd get so much more bang for my money buck in terms of happiness by spending it on other people rather than myself.

• 19:18Lewis Howes?

  My entire, uh, I would say teens until now, the earlier my life, I was very insecure and obsessed about what I wasn't getting. 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 it may be, putting myself out there. It was always a fear of rejection and insecurity. Once I said, I'm just gonna do this to give to people and I'm gonna be kind and I'll walk down the street and I'm gonna smile and say hello and I'm gonna ask people questions. It was like, everything started to shift and change because I was,

• 20:02Lewis Howes?

  became outgoing towards other people. And I try to look for in every situation I can, how can I, I give to someone else? If I'm at Starbucks, how can I pay for someone for five bucks? If I'm in a grocery line and someone's struggling, how can I just help them and, and get something, something small? It doesn't have to be money, but just how can I show that people, uh, 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

• 20:46Lewis Howes?

  and make you feel that spark of joy as well. At least that's the way I feel.

• 20:49Laurie Santos?

  Well, that's exactly what the science suggests. I mean, it, 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 amounts. It wasn't always twenty dollars. Sometimes it was five dollars. And what they find is the amount of money doesn't matter. Like it can, you know, it can be an incredibly small amount of money and incredibly small amount of time. It's the fact that you're doing something nice for somebody else and you.

• 21:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. Now, on a scale of one to 10, 10 being you're happy a hundred percent of the time, where was your happiness level? Five years ago, or three, four years ago, before you like got into this, were you an eight, five? Or was it kind of like most of the time?

• 21:28Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, well, I actually have data, legit data on this, on like, you know, and it is a one 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, 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 talk about, it's, 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.

• 22:01Lewis Howes?

  It takes time. It doesn't happen overnight? Is that what you're telling me?

• 22:04Laurie Santos?

  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.

• 22:16Lewis Howes?

  That day, but it's the consistency every day you've got to show up in order to rewire your brain, I'm hearing.

• 22:22Laurie Santos?

  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 and be like, I'm done, good, like, legs are gonna be great, you know?

• 22:34Lewis Howes?

  Based on, based on all the science and research that you've seen,

• 22:40Lewis Howes?

  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 point or two consistently over time? And it doesn't cost any money, and it doesn't take a ton of time. Uh, but if you did these five things, your life would start to be a lot happier.

• 22:59Laurie Santos?

  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, you know, have enough disposable income to spare a teensy weensy bit. And so what can you do to spend that money on, or that time, or whatever, on other people? So that, that would be topic, that'd be number one. I think number two would be another thing you just echoed in 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 they tend 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 is like,

• 23:43Laurie Santos?

  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 it into practice, right? You know, if you found out you were on your deathbed, you know, this week and you knew you had a week to live, you might not like go to work, like you you'd probably like want to focus on those people you care about in your life, like whoever 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 but happy people don't do that. They're prioritizing right now. And so whatever you

• 24:26Laurie Santos?

  can do to shift to being a little more social and a little more kind of social and then can connected with the people you care about. That's like

• 24:34Lewis Howes?

  So it doesn't have to be strangers socially or fake friends, but being social with people you care about on a consistent basis.

• 24:42Laurie Santos?

  It can actually be the strangers. In fact, there's one study by researcher Nick Epley and his colleagues where he just like, I mean, psychologists are always forcing people to do stuff with money, but so 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 weird and cheesy.

• 25:03Lewis Howes?

  But it's amazing. You did an episode on this, too.

• 25:06Laurie Santos?

  Exactly. Yeah. So that's one of our famous episodes. I actually got got hate mail after that episode because people were like, you're crazy telling people to talk to people on the train like you're going to get people killed. But I think that's how it's drawing our intuitions are, right? Is that we, you know, 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.

• 25:29Lewis Howes?

  Okay. All right. So the first two are other, others oriented and showing up for others.

• 25:34Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, I think the third one would be uh to kind of focus on the power of gratitude. Um, again, it always sounds so cheesy when you mention these things, but you know, sometimes science is cheesy, but um, you know, I think our instinct when things are good and when things are bad is that it's funny to kind of gripe 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 do. Happy people are spontaneously counting their blessings. And this is a spot where I think popular culture has gotten on to something with things like gratitude lists or gratitude journals. Like just taking time to count your blessings, even if it's like thirty seconds at night.

• 26:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:18Laurie Santos?

  You can see statistical boost in happiness within about two weeks of that practice.

• 26:22Lewis Howes?

  And I do this with my girlfriend. Uh, every night before I go to bed, we both say three things we're 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, things to be grateful for. So it's just reminding ourselves to calm our mind down before we go to bed. And then when 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 your life. The, the sleep isn't as quality and you wake up more tired and you become more reactive the next day.

• 27:06Lewis Howes?

  And that's why I think you're right. The power of gratitude, this is something that I swear by.

• 27:12Laurie Santos?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Lewis Howes?

  Without it, I'd be, I'd be unhappy.

• 27:15Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, no, I think, I mean, again, it's all about also like kind of just being mindful of these things, right? I mean, sometimes I'll leave a like gripe fest with a friend and just notice and be like, I feel really crappy now. You know, like I thought like getting all that off my chest and like complaining about whatever. But no, no, I think, yeah, and there's lots of evidence suggesting that gratitude can have a specifically powerful effect on sleep. Even things like immune function, like it makes our immune systems work better. And so which is something else we need right now in the context of this virus.

• 27:45Lewis Howes?

  How much does griping or talking about the things you don't like, how much does that actually affect 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.

• 28:02Laurie Santos?

  Yeah.

• 28:02Lewis Howes?

  But is there science or research that says like, if you talk about negative things or you complain with your friends or you talk about what you don't like gossip, it's going to bring your happiness level down or is this just a theory?

• 28:13Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, I mean, it's more, it's less that, so I think part of it is how you're griping, right? And so you can gripe about like, everything's terrible, everything's terrible. And therefore I'm going to problem solve by doing X, Y, and Z. If you do that where you're kind of griping to problem solve, then that can be really powerful because it can be kind of identifying problems and then fixing them. But if you're griping just to like gripe, gripe, gripe, gripe, gripe, and there's no like forward motion on it.

• 28:38Lewis Howes?

  There's no solutions.

• 28:39Laurie Santos?

  Exactly. That's not really helpful and it comes at an opportunity cost. You could be spending that time talking about what you're grateful for.

• 28:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Laurie Santos?

  And so, so what I try to do with friends now is, you know, because I definitely still have friends where, you know, they're in, they're in gripe fed space, 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 coworker is a pain in the butt. But like, what can we do to, so, so try to move it towards problem solving 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.

• 29:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Laurie Santos?

  Your blessings.

• 29:16Lewis Howes?

  Okay. So that's number three, power of gratitude.

• 29:19Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, uh, number four is kind of a smushed one, but it's basically

• 29:23Lewis Howes?

  Smush it up, Lori.

• 29:24Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, it's like, it is, 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 and our mental health are intertwined. So, you know, getting some regular exercise and movement and, um, making sure you're prioritizing sleep and, 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. You know, 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 and our brain. And so we really have to kind of make sure we're protecting our physical health, because that has a huge implication on our mental health.

• 30:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I just had a doctor on today, actually, on my show, Dr. Stephen Gundry, who talks about, um, essentially how to boost the immune system, how to reverse disease, how to, uh, de-age, all these things about the body. And he was a, a heart surgeon for forty years and stopped doing heart surgeries because he realized that wasn't solving the root problem. Nutrition and other things solve the root problem of disease. And he was saying, all, um, all disease is stemmed from like a leaky gut. And the foods we eat create a holes in the gut where things seep 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

• 30:53Lewis Howes?

  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 heart, the brain and the gut. So just like you said, uh, I think that's a great, a great point. So you're pushing.

• 31:08Laurie Santos?

  But I mean, the exercise and sleep connection is even, you know, I mean, 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 psychiatrists, you know, might not make as much money if they're prescribing, hey, hop on the treadmill or your Peloton, you know, for a half hour, but, 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.

• 31:35Lewis Howes?

  That's it. If they just weren't exhausted. Overwhelmed and exhausted is a combination for unhappiness.

• 31:41Laurie Santos?

  Exactly, and not making good decisions and not learning and doing all the stuff we need to do on college.

• 31:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and then just needing, needing the sugar fix to like stay awake and needing 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. Uh, okay, so the fourth was a smush of movement.

• 32:03Laurie Santos?

  Healthy habits, healthy habits.

• 32:05Lewis Howes?

  Healthy habits, sleep, uh, all those things. And then what would you say the fifth one?

• 32:09Laurie Santos?

  And I think the fifth one, I mean, again, I'm, you know, cutting off here, but I think the fifth one would be, uh, finding ways to practice being more mindful, being more present. And I mean that in a couple of ways, you know, one is like, you know, the standard Buddha meditation-y way 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 thinking about the, the grip thing of like afterwards, after that gripe fest session, I'm like, I feel kinda yucky, you know? Maybe after you like do something nice and give somebody something at Starbucks, you have a presence and notice like, I feel kinda good, like my heart feels warmed, I'm breathing in a different way and so on.

• 32:49Laurie Santos?

  And so I think, you know, we, we constantly have these theories about what we should be doing with our time. But 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 is so true on social media in general, but particularly right now during the virus, right? It's like, I have this intuition of like, oh, I'm like bored or feeling a little anxious, like I'm gonna just do a quick Twitter check, I'm just gonna hop on Facebook just for a second. And if you notice, if I notice how I feel afterwards, I'm like, I feel either apathetic or bored or my anxiety has spiked, or I feel kinda inadequate and sort of yucky about myself, like I wanna buy something, like, none of those are good feelings that I wanted, but if you're not present and you don't notice them, then you just act on those urges.

• 33:34Laurie Santos?

  You know, I'm kind of buying something because I feel inadequate or.

• 33:37Lewis Howes?

  I know. What do you, I mean, in your opinion, what's the worst thing we could be doing during quarantine? Being isolation, you know, obviously watching news or overeating or excessive alcohol, sugar, social media.

• 33:49Lewis Howes?

  Well, all that hurt our well being and what's the worst thing we could be doing?

• 33:55Laurie Santos?

  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 my anxiety skyrockets when I'm like panic scrolling right now, you know, so I have to like.

• 34:07Lewis Howes?

  I mean, like looking at all the negative news and be like.

• 34:10Laurie Santos?

  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, you know, breathing is really shallow. And 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 you're 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 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.

• 34:55Laurie Santos?

  You basically start breathing like you're about to run a marathon.

• 34:58Lewis Howes?

  That's a sympathetic nervous system.

• 35:00Laurie Santos?

  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 curate it.

• 35:17Lewis Howes?

  I think.

• 35:17Laurie Santos?

  The good news is like, the good news is like, there's this other half of our sympathetic, this other half of our nervous system, which is the parasympathetic nervous system. That's the flip side, the rest and digest. Um, the the best analogy I've heard about these, uh, which only works if you're like a child of the eighties like me. But I don't know if you know this movie Airplane, like this really bad movie from the eighties.

• 35:37Lewis Howes?

  I grew up at eighty, I was born in eighty three, so.

• 35:40Laurie Santos?

  Anyway, it was this cheesy comedy movie. For your listeners who know this reference, there's a scene in the plane where this woman starts freaking out and 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 like, get over it and whatever.

• 35:54Lewis Howes?

  All right.

• 35:55Laurie Santos?

  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 nervous system and be like, there's no tiger, dude, just like chill the heck out. Um, and, and 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.

• 36:23Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 36:23Laurie Santos?

  We can force our bodies

• 36:25Lewis Howes?

  Awareness. Yeah.

• 36:26Laurie Santos?

  To breathe slow, breathe super slow, and also breathe into your belly. Cause like, if you've ever, you know, been on the treadmill, you're like, you're feeling it in your chest, but deep belly breath, like you're not gonna 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, I'm trying to watch when my chest is tight. That's the action of the sympathetic.

• 36:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:57Laurie Santos?

  Be like, oh, I need to kind of remind my parasympathetic that it needs to kick in now. And that's super helpful.

• 37:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I, I, I can't remember if someone, it might've been Jay Shetty who said something like this. Uh, 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, sep- you know, being aware of the facts, being aware and updated on what's happening, being conscious and mindful, being safe, but also focusing on the good side of things. Is it where my mind tries to focus on? And my girlfriend is more focused on checking all the, the bad and telling me

• 37:47Lewis Howes?

  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, 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.

• 38:23Laurie Santos?

  Yeah. And again, I think it, 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.

• 38:31Lewis Howes?

  And just blocked.

• 38:32Laurie Santos?

  Blown up in it, you know, and so, so for him, it's okay, but you know, we've had to work on kind of 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, I think, an important thing for friendships and relationships is like, different people are at different points with this and you gotta kind of regulate depending on who you're talking to and what they.

• 38:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:53Laurie Santos?

  I mean, there's 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, let me tell you the latest terrible statistics, you know, so.

• 39:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they're in Cancun with all their friends at the bars or whatever and saying, ah, who cares if I get it, right? That's, that's not the way you want to be either.

• 39:11Laurie Santos?

  And, 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, 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 hands. 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, to not get rid of it. Cause all like, let's be fair, this is an awful grieving, sad, yucky time. We're gonna 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.

• 39:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And if we're seeking joy and happiness, you know, there's definitely times in our life where 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 you, breaking up in a relationship, there are grieving periods for sure, and 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 on 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? Face timing someone, showing up and doing something nice for someone. How can I, you know, work out?

• 40:30Lewis Howes?

  How can I get, try to get some little bit extra sleep? How can I eat a 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.

• 40:43Laurie Santos?

  Exactly. All of it reminds me of this wonderful parable, um, it comes from Buddhist tradition of the second arrow and. And the way this parable works is so Buddha is talking to students and he's asking his students and he says, you know, if you get shot with an arrow on the street, is that really bad? And people say, yeah, that's super bad getting shot with an arrow. And Buddha asks, okay, would it be worse if you were shot with like a second arrow too? People like, yeah, second arrow would be worse, you know, two times as bad as the first arrow. And so then Buddha goes on to explain, he's like, look, the bad stuff that happens in life is 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, my Yale students, for example, the seniors,

• 41:27Laurie Santos?

  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, you know, how much sleep you get tonight. Or what you, you know, again, the, the best choices you make. And, you know, sometimes we're going to stab ourselves with those second arrows, but the idea is to reduce them as much as possible. A lot of those are in our control.

• 41:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, disaster is inevitable. You know, pain is inevitable. 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 you say.

• 42:17Laurie Santos?

  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 the, there are going to be the ice, there are the ice cream Netflix days, you know, like that's going to be the second arrow, right?

• 42:30Lewis Howes?

  No, I get it. Yeah, but it's the consistency of it every day after day. You're, you're, you're in control of, here's, 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.

• 42:51Lewis Howes?

  You know, there's different doctors and research that'll say like you can cure depression, mental health, like you have tools that you can apply. And then there's other people 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

• 43:33Lewis Howes?

  challenges, I feel like I don't have those thoughts anymore. But I always thought something was wrong with me. Where, 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 it's chemically unable to change?

• 43:58Laurie Santos?

  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 use is with health stuff. So imagine you come in, I'm a doctor and you come into my office and you say, hey, doctor, I have high blood pressure and I'm a little overweight. I'd be like, you need to hit the treadmill, hit the treadmill every day for half hour. But if you walk into my office and you're like clutching your heart and you're like, I'm in acute cardiac arrest, doctor, 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, you know, 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, write a little gratitude, you

• 44:40Laurie Santos?

  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. I think if you're 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 they're kind of just like in the exact way 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.

• 45:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What's the difference between mental health and happiness?

• 45:28Laurie Santos?

  Uh, I think it kind of depends on your definition. I mean, I 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 we're experiencing positive emotions and 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 to shoot for.

• 45:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And you talk about this in your class about rewirements. Um, 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?

• 46:09Laurie Santos?

  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, you know, 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.

• 46:53Laurie Santos?

  It takes being other oriented when you're kind of in selfish mode. Like you have to do those habits over 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've 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, you know, I'm really craving this 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? To kind of know a little bit what's going to work better.

• 47:23Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, as a professor and with someone who's got 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 imposter? And I don't want to say this to like, in a negative way, but I've felt this way over my career at different times of like, man, I'm saying these things, but am I living up to them 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 in what I'm teaching? Cause I know I'm not living up to it fully, like sometimes, but is there anything like that for you?

• 48:04Laurie Santos?

  I mean, are there ever moments where I'm not? I mean, I think that's the real question. I 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. Um, in class, we talk about this other fallacy that kind of gets back to the eighties culture. It's called the, the G I Joe fallacy. I don't know if you know G I Joe. G I Joe is this eighties cartoon.

• 48:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:31Laurie Santos?

  Army dudes. Um, 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 this self-help book. Now I know what I'm supposed to do. That is not, it's not half the battle. It's probably like, not even 10% of the battle. It's 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. Um, I'm acutely aware of what I, 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, and I think that's, I think honestly, that's one of the reasons people like the class and the podcast is that they see that I'm kind of a screw up too.

• 49:16Laurie Santos?

  Like, I'm an honest indication that like, this stuff takes work and we're not going to be perfect and it takes baby steps. Um, and that's what you need to kind of feel better.

• 49:25Lewis Howes?

  I mean, it, 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 going to 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 because we don't care enough about the desired result? Is it because there's a disconnect? Why is that?

• 49:56Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, I think part of it's 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 is 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 or do whatever. 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. And I think this is what happens with all this stuff.

• 50:38Laurie Santos?

  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 or putting down the social media. Like those are not things that I crave at all, but they're things that my body and my mind are really gonna like. And it's so stupid that the brain is wired up in this dumb way that they don't align up, but that's, that's the problem.

• 51:09Lewis Howes?

  Well, I mean, how do we change the craving then?

• 51:12Laurie Santos?

  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 notice like, huh, didn't, did not like that so much. Hey, brain, 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 try. I had this wonderful yoga 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. Do you like that feeling? And again, it's sort of starting to rewind of like, actually, I do like that feeling.

• 51:56Laurie Santos?

  I'm gonna try to go after that. Yeah. And so again, it gets back.

• 52:01Lewis Howes?

  Coming back to mindfulness, coming back to presence, coming back to awareness of how you feel, awareness of your thoughts, if they are serving you or not or supporting you, and just trying to do more of those things that support you. Um, I got a couple of 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 abused kids are becoming more abused, um, you know, relationships that have a lot of tension are exploding. Now, I don't know if you're aware of the stats or if you can shed light on any of that.

• 52:45Lewis Howes?

  What can people do during this time of isolation where they can't leave, where they feel like they're being abused, screamed at, uh, violence, physical violence, emotional violence? How can people manage it when they literally can't leave?

• 53:01Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, well, I think, I mean, they, 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. Um, 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 two 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, those 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? You don't want to put yourself in another physically dangerous situation because of the virus.

• 53:44Laurie Santos?

  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 nine 11, their divorce rates do go up. Um, 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, so the, the research really suggests 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 one we talked about a little bit before, which is just a little bit of self compassion, right? Like we have a way to frame, you know, it gets back to this sort of idea of the second arrow we talked about, right?

• 54:28Laurie Santos?

  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 are 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.

• 55:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:02Laurie Santos?

  Normal spiral of emotion that we sometimes get, you can kind of nip that in the bud um to help out right now.

• 55:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I think you said, remind me 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?

• 55:19Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, probably six. Now I'm more like seven or eight. Yeah.

• 55:22Lewis Howes?

  Now you're more of a seven or eight in three years. Is the goal to continue to increase to seven, eight, nine, 10? And so what's missing from you in order to get to that 10 level?

• 55:33Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think, you know, the goal for me is just to, to do my best, right? And to remember what I can control, what I can control. Um, you know, I think I'm at a pretty good level, you know, maybe a nine or 10 is there. Um, it's worth remembering too 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 like, 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. 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 a nine or a 10? Probably not. I'm pretty happy to like be as bumped up as I am. And if these practices continue to pay more and more dividends over time, that's great too.

• 56:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's awesome. Um, this is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths. So imagine that it's many, many years from now, it's as long as you want to live. Hundred, 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. You've increased the consciousness of the world to happier people. All those things happened. But for whatever reason, all the work that you put out there, it's got to go with you to the next place, the next world, wherever you believe you're going next.

• 57:01Lewis Howes?

  So no one has access to your information anymore about how to be happier or anything that you've 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. And this is all you would have to leave behind are these three lessons or these three truths. What would you say are your three truths?

• 57:22Laurie Santos?

  Oh, that's a tough one. You like wait to the last minute of the podcast to do that. This is sort of being, I think one of the truths would be that there's a lot that we can control and we need to recognize the things we can control and the things we can't. Because those can be really powerful, kind of like similar to the second arrow.

• 57:41Laurie Santos?

  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, that I'd be really happy to go knowing that I connected with others and did as much for other people as possible.

• 58:17Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I love that, Dr. Laurie. 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 the research and the stories. So I think everyone needs to go download the Happiness Lab, go check it out. Is there, the free course is online right now, where can we get the course?

• 58:38Laurie Santos?

  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.

• 58:44Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. And what, do you have a book coming out or anything? Or I'll just throw that out there?

• 58:49Laurie Santos?

  Not the line. Yeah, you know, you know, those things. But yeah, I'll come back on when it's out.

• 58:54Lewis Howes?

  Okay, perfect. And where can we connect with you on social? Are you on Instagram? Are you on?

• 58:58Laurie Santos?

  I try to limit my social media, given my own panic scrolling, but you can find me on Twitter at Laurie Santos.

• 59:04Lewis Howes?

  Okay, on Twitter @LoriSantos, not Instagram.

• 59:07Laurie Santos?

  No, you can find Happiness Lab on Instagram.

• 59:09Lewis Howes?

  Okay, perfect, okay, cool. I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Lori, for taking on your own life and allowing yourself to be a guinea pig on how to improve your happiness 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 adults 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 what's your definition of greatness?

• 59:42Laurie Santos?

  What's my definition of greatness? I think having a great life, having a good life. The definition of greatness is the good life.

• 59:48Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Dr. Lori, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

• 59:51Laurie Santos?

  Thanks so much. It was super fun.

• 59:56Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for taking the time and listening to this interview and episode with Dr. Lori 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 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. Show your

• 1:00:39Lewis Howes?

  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" to 614-350-3960. Again, if you want inspirational messages every single week sent by me to your phone, then text me right now, 614- 3503960 and make sure to follow me over on social media to get more inspiration on all

• 1:01:20Lewis Howes?

  your favorite channels. We are also now doing daily stuff over on Tik Tok. So make sure to follow me at Lewis on Tik Tok 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 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.