Pod Insights The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos "Birds Are Like My Afternoon Martini" (Birding with Lili Taylor) About this episode Lili Taylor loves her acting career - but the emotional intensity of her work and the constant travel can take its toll. But Lili has found a way to relax and unwind - watching birds.
As Lili explains in her new book Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/743576/turning-to-birds-by-lili-taylor/ - if we stop to listen to birdsong or pause to watch their busy daily lives - we give ourselves a break from our own stresses.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:00 Laurie Santos? Pushkin.
2:06 Laurie Santos? Today on the Happiness Lab, we're continuing our series on the unexpected creative ways that people cope with stress.
2:12 Speaker 03 Can you hear me okay? Testing, testing.
2:15 Laurie Santos? And in this episode, I have the tree of speaking with someone who's featured prominently in some of my all time favorite movies. So we usually just have folks begin by introducing themselves. So tell us your name and who you are and what you do.
2:28 Speaker 03 I'm Lily Taylor, and I'm an actor. And I've done movies, TV, and theater.
2:34 Laurie Santos? This is actually not the first time Lily's voice has appeared on the Happiness Lab. If you're a fan of the show, you might remember our how to series on the happiness insights of romantic comedies. Back then, I shared an entire episode devoted to Say Anything, the coming of age movie starring John Cusack as the lovestruck underachiever Lloyd Dobler. Lily played Lloyd's musician best friend Cory, who performed the emotionally charged and now iconic breakup song, "Joe Lies."
3:00 Speaker 03 (singing) Joe lies.
3:04 Speaker 03 Joe lies.
3:07 Speaker 03 Joe lies.
3:10 Laurie Santos? I revisited the movie, having not seen it since like the 80s, right? And that was like one of the parts that I genuinely remember. Do you still play "Joe Lies," or no?
3:19 Speaker 03 I don't play it, but I get asked to sing it a lot on the street.
3:23 Laurie Santos? Lily has had a rich and varied career since Say Anything. You may know her from her lead role as Anne Blaine in ABC's American Crime, or as Lisa Kimmel in HBO's Six Feet Under. Artists of her caliber often use their work as a means of coping with difficult emotions, a process that Freud famously referred to as sublimation. But what happens when an artist's work is the thing that's causing their stress? Where do you turn when your creative outlet becomes a source of emotional weight? Lily's had to confront these questions throughout her acting career, especially during more challenging roles.
3:56 Speaker 03 Part of my job is that I merge with a character. Like, maybe I'd been working with the character all day and we'd been in a really difficult situation. So we'd been crying all day. And then the day ends. I need to leave her there and then I have to return back to me.
4:13 Laurie Santos? But returning back to her own identity after a tough role isn't the only challenge Lily's faced in her acting career. An even tougher stressor is the ceaseless travel that being a professional actor requires. Lily often finds herself filming on location far away from home. She has to uproot her life and travel to another part of the world at a moment's notice.
4:33 Speaker 03 So I can be in my little routine and then I can be somewhere else very quick. And I can be there anywhere from a couple of weeks to six months to even a year.
4:46 Laurie Santos? She found herself in this very situation recently. A new TV series sent her to Santa Fe, New Mexico. During the project, Lily struggled with more anxiety than usual. She was homesick and worried about her performance. Plus, the unconventional studio space the show filmed in gave her an eerie, uneasy feeling.
5:04 Speaker 03 It was actually a school, a college, that had been abandoned. So it had even like a sad quality. You know, it was full of life and now it's just like empty dorms and tossed chairs.
5:16 Laurie Santos? Lily was used to a little discomfort while filming on location, but this time was different. Her sense of stress and disconnection was starting to feel overwhelming.
5:24 Speaker 03 And then I realized I'm actually just afraid, afraid of the unknown, afraid of the character. I was going to be there for about five months.
5:32 Laurie Santos? What could Lily do to make her strange space feel like home? The answer came from above.
5:37 Speaker 03 What happened was these house finches started to sing.
5:42 Speaker 03 And I was aware of their song wherever I went. Almost like I was the baton that they were sort of passing amongst each other. And they sort of passed me from place to place. And so everywhere I went was like, oh, there's a song, there's a song. And I felt sort of welcomed. So I realized, okay, wait, I can use that right now. I can set up a feeder, a bird feeder, so I have some friends, so I can get to my neighbors. My little house finches were my main neighbors. So this place doesn't feel so foreign to me.
6:14 Laurie Santos? Lily says that she often finds herself turning to birds during times of stress. Hence the title of her new book, Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing.
6:23 Speaker 03 What I've realized about birds is, first of all, they're everywhere. So I really have a friend anywhere I go. And they're connected to where they are because they depend on the environment, they depend on food sources, on water. So they're almost like a guide. And there's usually a story that brings me into other parts of the whole area. It's like, even if someone's not into birds, there's still a pretty interesting way to get to know a place. You know, National Audubon has a phrase, "Birds Tell Us." And I love it because like, birds tell me what is going on in New Mexico. They tell me there's lots of different ecosystems, there's lots of different
7:06 Speaker 03 altitudes. They give you a deeper sense of where you are. And like, I've realized, I don't know where I am a lot, like, in a deep way. Where's north even? I don't even know where north is. What am I standing on? What's around me? I don't know anything. And when I start to realize, like, oh, I'm standing on a glacier that moved 10,000 years ago, it makes me feel like really a part of time, a part of history. So if I'm gonna make the new place home, one of my ways in is birds. When I get to know the birds, I get to know the environment. And so anywhere I go starts to take on more meaning in that. I can be on a highway that can feel lonely,
7:49 Speaker 03 but I know there's a river right next to me. And I know that there's habitat yonder. I know all these things that start to make the place feel friendlier to me.
8:01 Laurie Santos? Birds also help Lily find peace after an emotionally draining day on the job. They can help her finally settle down after bringing a complex character to life.
8:10 Speaker 03 Going to just sit and just watch some birds and just relax, like I guess would be my transition back into myself. I guess it's the equivalent of a afternoon martini that they used to do in the, in the old days. But we all need to find ways to leave the job and go back to ourselves. And birds can be a transition because they can just sort of bring you from one world to the other.
8:34 Laurie Santos? And that's why Lily invests in creating inviting spaces for birds wherever she goes, including that abandoned college campus that she had previously found so unwelcoming. All it took was a quick trip to the hardware store, some bird seed and a bit of elbow grease.
8:48 Speaker 03 So I bought a birdhouse and I bought a bird feeder and I bought a water tray. And then I bought a hummingbird feeder and then a whole habitat started to get created. You can sort of make something out of nothing. Life will come.
9:03 Laurie Santos? So how did you get into birds in the first place? Right. It seems like you have this deep connection with them, but like, what's the origin story there? How did it start?
9:10 Speaker 03 I feel like I always knew about them more than maybe the average person. My parents put out a feeder and water and breadcrumbs. I had an awareness of them. I liked them. I thought they were interesting. But the whole thing with me was I wasn't really noticing them. And that happened when I had a quiet moment, very similar to everyone else's COVID moment, where a lot of people slowed down during COVID. People started to get into different things. And some people did get into birds during that COVID moment. Well, mine happened just 15, 20 years earlier.
9:49 Laurie Santos? At the time, Lily had been going from project to project without a break. She was noticing all the psychological signs of burnout. She was emotionally exhausted and feeling uninspired by her work. With her star on the rise, she could have kept pushing. But instead, she chose to do the courageous thing we recommend a lot on this show and something that I did myself when I was feeling burned out. Lily took a sabbatical.
10:11 Speaker 03 I was so depleted and exhausted and maybe hadn't been listening to myself. What's a great example of a door closes and a door opens. Sometimes we have to kind of bring ourselves to that sort of heightened level, right? In order to get a message, it's like a nightmare. You know, nightmares aren't necessarily bad. They can sometimes really say, hey, I really need you to listen to this. And that's kind of what I had.
10:33 Laurie Santos? During her sabbatical, Lily retreated to her home in upstate New York, which sits on 100 acres of protected farmland. Most years, the property would be busy with incoming trucks and the incessant buzz of farming equipment. But this year, the farmers who tended the land chose to let it lie fallow. They were giving the soil a break so that it could heal for the future. All the usual activity, all the usual buzz, it just stopped.
10:59 Laurie Santos? That silence felt like the perfect metaphor for the grace Lily was trying to give herself.
11:04 Speaker 03 And so things quieted down. I started to hear things in a way that I hadn't before. And so there was that space where I was able to say, wait a minute. That thing that I'm hearing, that call, that bird call, is not just a general call. There is something going on there and realized there's stories going on out there. There are things with meaning, drama, mating, death, life, the will to live. And so then I started following those noises, those sounds. I followed it into different kinds of life and start to look outside myself and see what's around me, start to pay attention.
11:47 Laurie Santos? In the book, you taught me something really interesting, which was the Latin root of attention, which I guess is tendere, which is like tendon. It's reaching towards, which I really love, this idea of reaching towards. How do birds cause you to reach towards them? And what does that do to your emotions and your sense of joy?
12:03 Speaker 03 I mean, they are full of life. They're beautiful. They fly. There's usually some question that comes from just watching them, observing them, that leads to other questions. I think we're drawn to mystery. And so reach, reach, reach, reach, reach. Stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch.
12:23 Laurie Santos? But what are the emotional benefits of all this reach, reach, reach, stretch, stretch, stretch towards things of beauty? After the break, we'll turn to the surprising positive psychological effects of bird watching. We'll hear about the power of awe, and we'll learn why tracking a reclusive catbird may offer the same benefits as meditation.
12:44 Laurie Santos? The Happiness Lab will be right back.
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14:38 Laurie Santos? As a professor, I get to travel a lot for work. And I'm often asked, "What's the best place I've ever had the chance to visit?" And my answer is pretty much always the same. "If you get the opportunity," I say, "find a way to visit the Galapagos." The Galapagos Islands are a small volcanic archipelago about 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador. They're most well-known for being the spot where Charles Darwin began formulating his famous theory of natural selection. And if you visit the islands, you'll immediately see why they inspired Darwin so much. Because the Galapagos are about as untouched today as they were when Charles Darwin visited them back in the 1800s. These islands are one of the few places in the world where the animals aren't afraid of people.
15:19 Laurie Santos? You can sit and watch them closely while they go about their daily lives. On a typical visit, you'll get to snorkel with sea lion pups who twirl and play all around you. You'll get to watch giant tortoises slowly lumbering through the trees and marine iguanas chilling out in big piles on the beach. But the real highlight is that you get to watch the unique mating rituals of lots and lots of incredible birds. The blue-footed booby is the Galapagos species that gets the most airtime, which makes sense because they are really awesome. They somehow manage to be both incredibly beautiful and incredibly goofy-looking at the same time. But my favorite Galapagos bird has always been the waved albatross. It's a mostly brown bird with a striking white head and a very sharp, bright yellow
16:04 Laurie Santos? beak. And waved albatross are huge. With a 2.5-meter wingspan, they're the largest birds in the entire archipelago. But the reason I love this species so much is because of its unique mating ritual. Like many bird species, waved albatross mate for life. So they put a lot of work into not only finding the right partner, but also re-establishing their relationships when they meet up after being apart for the whole year. And their highly ritualized mating dance is completely over the top. One biologist christened it "the ecstatic ritual." It's got these slow, sweet parts where the partners use their sharp beaks to gently caress one another. But it also gets weird, like when the pair begin what's called their "head-swing walk",
16:47 Laurie Santos? moving back and forth while exaggeratedly bobbing their heads across their bodies. Oh, and then there's the comical moments of beak fencing, in which the pair start fake-fighting one another, as though they're sword fighting with their faces. The entire ritual is punctuated with these funny "honk calls."
17:08 Laurie Santos? But the best part is when the couple just stops the entire dance. They just pause and sit there lovingly, looking into one another's eyes. I've only had a chance to watch this display live twice in my life. But both times, I was moved to tears. I was just filled with this sense of overwhelming transcendence. This sensation is now something I recognize as the emotion of awe. A feeling that the American Psychological Association defines as the experience of admiration and elevation in response to physical beauty. Awe is an emotion that actress and bird lover Lili Taylor prioritizes experiencing very often. And unlike me, she doesn't need to travel halfway around the world to find a bird that will give her this sensation.
17:52 Laurie Santos? In fact, Lily meets birds who give her a sense of awe in the most mundane places, like the heart of Manhattan.
17:59 Speaker 03 I was going into Central Park and it's like 300 yards in from 59th Street. I hadn't really kind of connected to myself. And all of a sudden, I felt emotion. I started to like feel like I was going to cry. I was stopped. I was feeling a part of something. I was in awe. Some feelings were coming up that maybe I had been pushing away, but they didn't kill me and they weren't going to hurt me. I don't know why I was afraid of them. They just sort of wash over.
18:31 Laurie Santos? I think that's one of the most interesting things that we know from the science of awe is that it's not a purely positive emotion, right? It kind of makes us feel small. It kind of has this fear component. But there's so much evidence that experiencing it makes us feel better. Ultimately, we feel more connected to people. We feel more connected to things beyond us. And so it's such a funny emotion because it's one of these few emotions that like has these negative components, but ultimately taking time to experience it makes us feel so much better.
18:56 Speaker 03 Yes, just like planting your feet and just saying, "I'll stick this through, this thunder, this frightening, whatever it is." It's almost like you're open and then things can come in. It's like receptivity can be really scary.
19:10 Laurie Santos? Another thing that gets to come in, though, is like the appreciation that we have for things. And these were some of the most beautiful parts of your book. It seems like you really do a lot of savoring of birds. And this is something we know from the psychology, this act of savoring, noticing the good things, noticing the delights. Like, that is what we need to have a fulfilled life.
19:27 Speaker 03 You know, I love that word. I hadn't really realized how important that is. But I guess what birds have helped me do is slow down. Because I move fast. Part of why I'm moving fast is getting away from something inside. I was doing this more like in my teens and twenties, was like running from some kind of thing that I thought was going to devour me or something. I still move fast, but birds have helped me slow down. And so I guess I can just say, wait, am I savoring right now, or am I not? Use that as a barometer? Like, wait, no, I'm not savoring at all right now.
20:02 Laurie Santos? I want to turn to this idea of just how helpful birds are in terms of slowing down. You seem like the kind of person that would be sort of into meditation and so on. But in the book, you talked about how that wasn't your path to kind of being present.
20:13 Speaker 03 You know, I might be one of those people that maybe meditation isn't good for me. I found sometimes, especially in my twenties and thirties, that things got even louder when I meditated, to the point that I felt worse when it ended. And so maybe I'm just one of those people that I need like an activity or something. I need something outside of myself, maybe. I need that extra help.
20:37 Laurie Santos? And birds were that for you. Explain kind of how birds are like your meditation.
20:41 Speaker 03 Well, I'm focusing on something that's not me. I'm focusing on something that's a part of something greater, that I'm a part of too.
20:51 Laurie Santos? Talk to me a little bit about the listening skills you brought to birds and how your training kind of in a very different domain was sort of helpful for that.
20:58 Speaker 03 So acting is usually one character's talking to another. There's a lot of just listening. Like when I'm doing the play, I'm listening for two hours, you know. On a deeper level, I'm have to really take in that other actor and be as open as I can to them, because that's going to light- Made up my mirror neurons, that's gonna set a lot of stuff in motion. And that's really what's going on, not my own little memories of whatever I'm trying to do for the character. That's not as interesting or as alive. So I find that when I start to get into listening more as a verb, that was a much more active way for me to get kind of grounded.
21:41 Speaker 03 As opposed to, I'm trying to be present, or I'm trying to be in the moment, which was very vague for me and I didn't know what was the criterion, like, well, how do I know if I'm in the moment? There was nothing to hang on to, except judgment in a way, or feeling like I didn't get there. But listening, like, I know when I'm listening and I know when I'm not. Like, there's somewhere to start with listening. And I've gotten more compassionate, I guess, in that to expect myself to listen perfectly and a hundred percent is unrealistic. It's not gonna happen. That's something I've used with acting. And then because I'm acting a lot, I've been working it a lot. And then because I realize it's a skill, yay, I can do something, I can practice.
22:22 Laurie Santos? As I was speaking with Lily, I couldn't help but think of the work of Harvard psychologist and mindfulness expert Ellen Langer. Lily's book celebrates the power and beauty of noticing that come with being a birder. Ellen describes mindfulness as the process of actively noticing new things. Like Lily, Ellen was always frustrated with the common advice to be in the present moment. She's even called the idea an empty instruction. Instead, she argues that to truly ground yourself in the present moment, you need to intentionally notice new things about your environment. And research shows that this practice has significant physical and psychological benefits. It can help you manage anxiety, depression, and everyday stress. Lily uses this more intentional path to mindfulness every time she notices something new.
23:07 Laurie Santos? A bird's song, their plumage, even a subtle change in their habitat. So it's no surprise that Lily's getting better and better at regulating her emotions more effectively, especially when things don't go her way.
23:18 Speaker 03 Birding has a lot of falling down and getting back up. A lot of trying too hard, willing, jumping the gun. And so instead of yelling at myself, just being gentler. Cause I used to yell at myself. That's so not constructive and on stage too. It's like when I'm on stage and I go out of the moment, you know, to yell at myself inside. I know a lot of other actors do that too. But that practice, I guess of going in and out, you start to just get back in, just get back. Look at the bird, just look at the bird. That's all we gotta do.
23:51 Laurie Santos? So watching birds is funny because on the one hand, they kind of get us to slow down. But I think on the other hand, they can kind of just teach us that like life is going on. Just do your thing and stop worrying. Like, is that something that you get out of birds too? Just kind of watching them do their thing?
24:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, they are moving forward. They don't stop and hang around. They are moving and we should be too, in some ways, even if it's inside. We shouldn't be resenting or stagnating inside our mind. We should be trying to move forward in our mind. I mean, when I'm looking at the birds migrating in the spring and I know they've gone through so much and you would never know it. They are facing obstacles and they just, their eyes are on the prize and they keep moving forward. And I just said, well, I can too. They're a power of example. Keep going, don't sit and fret. You got things to do.
24:44 Laurie Santos? You had this lovely story, I think it was a catbird in Bryant Park, where you sort of had to realize and step back a little bit. Share that story and what you learned.
24:51 Speaker 03 So I went into Bryant Park and I thought I was being really open because like I took a risk to go into this park when I didn't feel like going in. And so I came in looking for a catbird and I was like, yeah, and I'm looking for a common bird. And I know a catbird and I went in really kind of like confident to the point of being cocky. And I realized I really was like, I feel like John Travolta, like I'm strutting almost, you know? And then just the bravado or that confidence just wore down quickly. Like I wasn't finding anything, first of all, not even a frigging squirrel or a house sparrow, nothing. Because I wasn't receptive. And then I realized I really didn't know the catbird at all.
25:33 Speaker 03 A bird I thought I knew, a common bird I've heard a lot, seen a lot, no. I hadn't noticed it really. I didn't really observed it, thought about it. Where does it even like to be? I don't even know where it likes to be. Low, high? So then I had a little surrender out of being uncomfortable and defeated and overwhelmed. So then I started with manageable. Took it step by step. Where am I right now? I'm in front of a green thing. Okay. And I have this app I naturalist. Let's identify it. It's called Viburnum. The catbird likes Viburnum. So I've just kind of located myself somewhere with something. Keep walking, keep walking, open, focused, loose.
26:17 Speaker 03 And feel the myopia coming in, loosen up, in and out, in and out, in and out. Catbird.
26:26 Speaker 03 That whole thing probably only took 15 minutes. I was exhausted by the end. Once I had the catbird, I was like, I'm done. I felt like I'd benched 50 pounds and I should get a break. That fleets the whole thing. Why not stay now with the catbird, seeing that I don't know it at all?
26:43 Laurie Santos? And it's fleeting too, which is something, at least in my limited experience with birds, that I had to come to terms with, right? You hear this call and for me, I'm like ready to pause some app and trying to figure it out. And then it's just like, it's gone. You know, the, the good things are fleeting. But also it seems like birding has taught you that the discomfort, the bad things are fleeting too, right? You know, you can be kind of restless and kind of not wanting to do it as you were in Bryant Park. And then there's a way to sort of soften too. It teaches us like both the good and bad parts aren't going to be there forever.
27:12 Speaker 03 That's right. And we need those experiences to see, oh, this passed because it passed 50 other times.
27:18 Laurie Santos? After the break, I'll talk more with Lily about some of the surprising benefits of bird watching. And I'll share where I'm at in my own birding journey. The Happiness Lab will be right back.
27:29 Laurie Santos? In 2026, MassMutual is celebrating 175 years of helping people protect their financial futures. And now they're building on that legacy to encourage even more longevity. That's why the Living Well Rider is now available with eligible MassMutual whole-life policies. The Rider offers access to proactive wellness benefits, all at no additional cost to policy owners. Learn more at massmutual.com/Wellness. That's massmutual.com/Wellness. Okay, quick pop quiz. Ready? What's your daily routine for fueling your gut? If your brain immediately went, "Ah, that's fair." We spend a lot of time thinking about what fuels our body, but when it comes to gut
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29:08 Laurie Santos? In a society that rewards hustling to the point of exhaustion, it can often feel like any time not spent being productive is time wasted. I fall into this trap a lot. I know all the research showing that setting boundaries when it comes to work is crucial for your well-being, but it can be hard to do. Of course, it's important to make time to rest and move your body, but it's also just as essential to spend time doing things for no other reason than the simple fact that you enjoy them. Psychologists have a word for these kinds of activities: atelic, as in not-elic, not-reward-driven. Think things like listening to music, doodling, or reading for pleasure. Atelic activities not only help us manage stress, they can also bring a sense of purpose
29:50 Laurie Santos? and meaning, which are, of course, key ingredients in improving our well-being long-term. Actor and author Lili Taylor finds that bird watching is one of the most beautifully atelic activities around.
30:01 Speaker 03 It is an activity that is just for the sake of. And so birding has also helped because I do like lists. I like results. I don't have to have a goal with birding. I can just enjoy it for the sake of. And I don't have to bring anything home to show for it.
30:18 Laurie Santos? And I think the more we allow ourselves to not be doing things for these extrinsic rewards, like we get out of hustle culture, we're not ticking stuff off the list. We can do stuff just to be, right? We can kind of just get rewarded from what's happening in the world, right? It doesn't have to be, you know, on our LinkedIn profile to kind of matter, but we can sometimes get in the boat where that's what it feels like. We just have to be working all the time.
30:38 Speaker 03 It's allowed. We are allowed it.
30:40 Laurie Santos? And this is just your way to have something that's enjoyable. That's not like work. It's just not another thing.
30:46 Speaker 03 Are you at Yale?
30:47 Laurie Santos? I am at Yale, yeah.
30:48 Speaker 03 Right. Because Rick Prum is there.
30:50 Laurie Santos? Rick Prum, yeah, who's my colleague at Yale. He has this wonderful book called The Evolution of Beauty.
30:55 Speaker 03 Great book.
30:55 Laurie Santos? Where he kind of just argues that like, we can understand so much about even human beauty from understanding birds and how they evolve so many colors and shapes and things like that.
31:03 Speaker 03 He helped me realize I can just love it for the beauty. I don't have to have a reason. It can just be beautiful.
31:09 Laurie Santos? Another benefit that I didn't expect to see in your book, but makes a lot of sense, once you get into it, is that birds have been a path for you towards social connection. Pretty much every available study on happy people suggests that happy people are more social. And maybe this was my stereotype, but I didn't really associate birders with being very social. I kind of thought it was like a solo, kind of by yourself in the woods activity. But you told all these beautiful stories of how birds helped you connect. I think my favorite one was a story of a downy woodpecker that you ran into in Brooklyn. Can you share that story with my listeners?
31:39 Speaker 03 Sure. I was looking up at something in Brooklyn and someone stopped, which is what usually happens. And she asked what I was looking at. I told her I was looking at a downy woodpecker. She didn't know what a woodpecker was. I told her what it was and we shared a moment together. And the woodpecker flew from a tree right in front of us to this hanging basket of suet, which is fat. Birds need fat in the winter. So the brownstone we were in front of was also connected to something because they were putting suet out for birds.
32:19 Speaker 03 So if you add some stuff to an environment, like food and shelter, not only will animals come, but people will come too. You had people who were caring and sharing something, a little moment, and that was enough.
32:38 Laurie Santos? Yeah, I feel like especially in a city where a lot of people think like, well, nobody's paying attention to each other, this everybody's just anonymous strangers on the street, that was like your one moment to feel connected with a neighbor and to teach her something new.
32:49 Speaker 03 That's right.
32:50 Laurie Santos? And so it seems like there are many, many benefits of bird watching. If someone is listening to this and is like, it's for me, how should I get started? What's your advice to a birding newbie?
33:01 Speaker 03 Well, I would just say, just step outside and see what's around, see what's in your neighborhood, and just maybe stay in one place for a few minutes and see if anything happens. And if you hear something, maybe walk towards it and just see if you can see it. And if you can, follow it just for a couple of extra minutes. It's like when you're at the gym and when you start to get tired and you're like, I want to get off this thing, you just stay on that extra minute, see what happens. And then I would say, just like, look out your window a lot and see who's there. It's like, get to know your neighbors, put a feeder out. If you start to like what's happening and you start to like, oh my God, I saw that bird twice now. And it's like, cool. Then get the Merlin app.
33:44 Speaker 03 It's the Shazam for birds and it just shows you there's so much more happening than you even realize. So that's always fun. It's like, kind of like Christmas presents or something all around.
33:54 Laurie Santos? Okay, I'm so glad you brought that up because I have the Merlin app, but I don't use it nearly enough. And so I was going on a hike, just kind of for exercise and inspired by your book. I was like, oh yeah, I should take out the Merlin app and see what I hear. And that caused me to start listening. And so I was like, oh wait, there is some bird chatter going on. What is it? And I pulled out the app and it was like, in my brain, it was like a bird. But it was like, a few weeks ago, we're having this conversation in May. So it was like the big migration. And it was just like a ton of good stuff. I pulled out, I had great crested flycatcher, an ovenbird.
34:24 Laurie Santos? Tucked in titmouse.
34:27 Laurie Santos? I even had worm eating warbler.
34:31 Laurie Santos? But that was like magic. It was like, oh, my gosh, there's this incredibly rich story that's happening. I don't know, I just felt less alone when I started to realize how many other birds were there.
34:40 Speaker 03 You just summed up the whole thing. I mean, that to me is the metaphor is like, I seem to think there's less around, less meaningless stuff than there is. And what that Merlin app does is it confirms there's a lot going on and a lot to look forward to and a lot to be open to, more than I seem to think. I seem to underestimate life out there.
35:01 Laurie Santos? Yeah. And this is a way to just feel connected to more than you honestly ever thought possible.
35:05 Speaker 03 And I love that it's like an outside in. It's fine using an outside thing to activate the hearing. It's like the Merlin was like, I'll start it off for you.
35:13 Laurie Santos? Because then I spent like 10 minutes like walking around and trying to find them and looking up in the trees. It got me to use the senses that I have to notice this interesting stuff.
35:22 Speaker 03 Which is when technology is fantastic.
35:24 Laurie Santos? Yeah.
35:24 Speaker 03 If you really start to love it, get a pair of binoculars and then also the Sibley guide. Sibley is a wonderful ornithologist who draws birds and he knows behavior. So you can learn more about the bird and how to identify them and how they behave.
35:41 Laurie Santos? I love you can just see your joy on your face when you talk about this stuff. It's making me, my face is hurting from smiling so much. I hope hearing about Lily's creative coping strategy has inspired you to get out and experience the wonder of birds. But even if you're not quite ready to grab binoculars or to start tracking worm eating warblers, there's still a lot of great coping strategies to take away from Lily's story. First off, if you find yourself feeling exhausted and teetering on the edge of burnout, that's a sign that you need to seek out a quiet space to reconnect with yourself. Second, look for moments of awe, especially in the natural world. That can be the sound or sight of an unexpected bird, but it could also be other things of beauty, too. There's transcendence all around you if you just take some time
36:24 Laurie Santos? to look. Next up, practice mindfulness by intentionally noticing what's new in your surroundings. And give yourself permission to take a break from your goal oriented mindset and embrace atelic activities. And finally, if you need a good laugh, fire up an old DVD copy of Say Anything and watch Lily's hilariously deadpan performance of the awkward breakup anthem, Joe Lies.
36:48 Laurie Santos? And that final suggestion is a nice transition to the creative coping strategy we'll be exploring next week, because when the Happiness Lab returns, we'll be learning about the stress relieving power of music. We'll meet a cellist who found solace in his instrument, both for dealing with everyday stresses and for handling a particularly difficult time that threatened to change his identity forever.
37:09 Speaker 04 My fatigue, it's like I'm wearing a coat of heavy metal or armor underneath my skin.
37:17 Laurie Santos? All that next time on the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.
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39:15 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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