Boost your mood in 15 minutes

Sometimes you're just feeling blah: maybe the weather's bad, you can't get out of bed and you're struggling to shake off that listlessness. In these moments, the solution is often simpler than we think. This episode, NPR's Science desk and Life Kit staff present research-backed mood boosters to instantly shake yourself out of a slump and turn your day around. This episode originally published September 3, 2024. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit https://www.instagram.com/nprlifekit/?hl=en Sign up for our newsletter here. https://www.npr.org/newsletter/life-kit Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening and convenient playlists of popular help topics like personal finance, getting healthy, and more. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:26Marielle Segarra?

  Hey, everybody. It's Marielle. The other day, I woke up feeling sad, and I wasn't really sure why. It just got worse as the day went on. I started wondering, like, what is bothering me? Is it a dream I had? Am I stressed about something, some unresolved trauma I should dig up? Then around 2:30 in the afternoon, I finally had lunch. I bit into a juicy salmon burger with pickles and aioli on top and realized, oh, I was just hungry. Yeah, bad moods, sometimes they have a big, underlying emotional reason. And sometimes they're a signal that we need to meet one of our basic bodily needs, like eating, or drinking water, or talking to another human.

• 1:10Marielle Segarra?

  Now, let me be clear, it's OK to be in a bad mood. As we know from Inside Out, all of our emotions, sadness included, serve a purpose. But let's say you want to pivot. There are a lot of things you can do. On this episode of Life Kit, with help from NPR's Science Desk, we are going to hand you a menu of research-backed mood boosters. These are actions you can take when you've got less than 15 minutes to spend and you want to escape that gloomy cloud hanging over you. Just a note here, none of these actions on their own can treat serious mental health conditions, but they can supplement your pre-existing mental health routine, and they can help you shake off that bad vibe, at least in the moment.

• 1:58Speaker 02

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• 2:50Speaker 04

  Hi there. I'm Brittany Luce. And not to brag, but I host a really fabulous podcast. It's called It's Been a Minute. I love making it, and I think you'll love listening to it. Over the last year, hundreds of thousands of listeners have been tuning in, and I got to say, if you haven't yet, you're missing out. Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR today.

• 3:14Marielle Segarra?

  Our first mood booster is a cool one, a really cool one. You ever heard of a polar bear plunge? That's when a bunch of people get together, sometimes as a New Year's Day tradition, and jump into the freezing ocean. Ready, guys?

• 3:28Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:29Marielle Segarra?

  Gonna walk in, walk in with intention. Well, people are now doing this all year round. It's called cold plunging. Ready? Go. One, two, three.

• 3:46Marielle Segarra?

  And cold plunging is exactly what it sounds like. You submerge yourself in cold water.

• 3:51Speaker 06

  Usually, in the studies, we're talking about temperatures lower than 60 degrees. But there's no one definition. People are practicing it in different ways, depending on what they have access to.

• 4:03Marielle Segarra?

  That's NPR Health and Science correspondent Will Stone. He lives in Seattle and cold plunges a few times a week. Let's see if I can do it.

• 4:13Marielle Segarra?

  You're hearing him on an outing with a group called the Puget Sound Plungers. And some of their members told him that a cold plunge can feel transformative.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  There's this point where you hit a level where it's not cold anymore, and this, like, calm washes over you. It's pretty cool. Any anxiety, anything I'm struggling with, it's just gone. And when I come out of the water, it's, I've left it in the water.

• 4:36Marielle Segarra?

  OK, Will, what do we know, broadly speaking, about the benefits of cold plunging? You've reported a bit on what happens in those first moments when you get into cold water.

• 4:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's right. There is a first, kind of, physiological reaction you have, which is called the cold shock response. This is when your body basically freaks out. You know, your heart rate jumps, your blood pressure spikes. It activates your fight-or-flight response. This is the, called the sympathetic arm of your nervous system. You'll have a release of, like, stress hormones, like adrenaline. And scientists do believe that, you know, some of the benefits that we see, specifically around mental health, has to do with that first intense, this cold shock response that you have to kind of deal with and encounter when you first get in.

• 5:24Marielle Segarra?

  OK. Well, let's talk more about the mental health benefits. What is the evidence that you've seen?

• 5:30Speaker 06

  So I would say the evidence is still pretty thin, but I do see it as one of the most promising areas of research. There's a one small study from the UK that shows even a quick dip in the cold water can improve your mood. And this one study on mood found it didn't really matter if it was five, or 10, or 20 minutes in the water. It all seemed to help, about have the same effects.

• 5:58Marielle Segarra?

  All right, so that's our first mood booster. Try a cold plunge. If it's your first time, Will says, find a body of water somewhere in the 50 to 60 degree range and prioritize safety. Make sure you have a friend with you and a plan to warm up fast after. And if you can't get to a pool, or a lake, or the ocean quickly, a cold shower or an ice bath can give you similar benefits.

• 6:20Marielle Segarra?

  Our next mood boost starts with a team of researchers aiming to answer this question: what is the least amount of movement needed to offset the risks of sitting? Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center recruited a bunch of middle-aged and older adults and had them sit for eight hours, a typical work day. And then they started including breaks for them to walk on a treadmill. NPR's Allison Aubrey reported on this.

• 6:43Speaker 05

  They learned that just taking a one- or two-minute walk once per hour helped to lower blood pressure. And this wasn't a huge surprise, because it's known that when you stand up, when you move, your muscles burn more fat and you increase blood flow. So that's very beneficial. That's helpful. But when the participants upped it to twice an hour on the treadmill for longer periods, up to five minutes, they saw more impressive results.

• 7:11Marielle Segarra?

  So I have to tell you, I just did this. I put my shoes on, walked out the door, set a timer for five minutes, and just kind of walked around, walked a few blocks. Yeah. Had the sun on my face. Nice. How did you feel? It felt really good. I mean, I do try to stand up from my desk, but the walking part of it felt, there was something else about that. There, it was like, suddenly, my problems didn't feel as heavy.

• 7:39Speaker 05

  Wow, OK. Well, that's big. That's worth noting. And I'll point out that there was one more benefit of these short, frequent breaks that was noted in the study. I spoke to Kathleen Janz. She's a health promotion researcher at the University of Iowa. And she points out that the participants in the study felt better when they built in more walking breaks. People felt less fatigue.

• 8:00Marielle Segarra?

  People were in a better mood because they took those breaks. I wonder, too, do you have to walk to get the benefits of this? Can you just move for five minutes? Like, can you vacuum, or can you dance around your apartment for five minutes and get the same benefits?

• 8:18Speaker 05

  Absolutely. So however you do that, however you build in movement, that's the goal here. And if you're bored by walking, you can dance, as you say.

• 8:31Marielle Segarra?

  That's our second mood booster. If you have 15 minutes, five minutes, one minute, get up out of bed or away from your desk and go on a walk, or dance around your apartment, or do some upright stretching, or just do a load of laundry. Move that body.

• 8:48Marielle Segarra?

  All right, our next mood booster comes from Life Kit's digital editor, Malika Gharib. Malika, I know that is your nine to five, being our digital editor, but you actually have a five to nine after that. What is your other job?

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I actually love that phrasing. I do a myriad of things. I am a cartoonist. I'm writing a screenplay. I'm a graphic novelist. Doing these things makes me feel really relaxed, and it's my way of expressing myself and my emotions, and helps me understand what's going on inside. It's like a compulsion. It's a compulsion to help me understand myself and the world.

• 9:28Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah. So you've actually looked into this, why it feels so good to make something. What is the benefit we get from, whether it's doodling or some other creative hobby?

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I reached out to experts about this. I talked to Girija Kaimal, and she's a professor at Drexel University and a researcher in art therapy. Things change in your body. Your stress levels go down, your...

• 9:55Marielle Segarra?

  Sense of perceived stress, your mood improves.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  And so one of the coolest things that she told me about this, this need and the reason why we make art is that it may serve an evolutionary purpose. Girija has this theory that art making helps us navigate problems that might arise in the future. And she wrote about this in a 2019 study in the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association.

• 10:21Marielle Segarra?

  So this act of imagination is actually an act of survival. It is preparing us to imagine possibilities.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  And that makes sense, right? We've been making art since we were cave dwellers. And maybe making art helps us prepare for problems in our lives or helps us imagine better futures for ourselves.

• 10:42Marielle Segarra?

  I feel like it can also take emotions that are in here and get them out there. So you can start to, I don't know, it's almost like to remove them from your body and put them on the page. It almost sounds like a cliche, but yes, it's, it's helping you process what maybe you didn't even fully understand you were feeling.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Art can do amazing things and it can improve your mood in a big way.

• 11:06Marielle Segarra?

  Engaging in any sort of visual expression, coloring, doodling, free drawing, results in the reward pathway in the brain being activated, which means that you feel good and it's perceived as a pleasurable experience. So the researchers have also found that coloring and other forms of art, they lower stress and anxiety, right?

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. There was this 2016 paper in the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association that Girija worked on. And she and some researchers basically measured cortisol levels of 39 healthy adults. And they found that 45 minutes of creating art significantly lowered cortisol levels.

• 11:50Marielle Segarra?

  Okay, so I wonder, Malika, is all art equally beneficial in this way?

• 11:55Speaker 02

  You know what? That's a really cool question. Girija recommends using modeling clay to just mess around with. Take some in your hand and like make a bowl or make a sculpture, just do anything with it.

• 12:06Marielle Segarra?

  Some media like clay, which engages perhaps both your hands and therefore many parts of your brain, your sense of touch is deeply engaged, your sense of three dimensional space, sight, maybe a little bit of sound, all these are engaged. So when you are using several parts of yourself for self-expression, that's likely going to be more beneficial.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  But really, she says, just do whatever feels good to you. You know, if you really like making zines, which is what I like making, make zines. If you really like painting, paint. Do whatever feels good for you. You just want to be able to keep coming back to do that art thing.

• 12:46Marielle Segarra?

  All right. So Malika, what is a good creative exercise someone could do if they have, say, 15 minutes and they want to lower their stress or feel like they're getting that reward?

• 12:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I'm the queen of micro art projects.

• 13:00Marielle Segarra?

  Love it.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  I'm a big believer of making things sloppy and fast, just so that you get that high of having completed something. And so one of the things that I love to recommend to people is to challenge yourself to make a little mini zine. It's an eight page mini zine in one sitting. And like in one sitting, it can be in five minutes or in 10 minutes, you can finish a zine, just like tell a story in eight pages and get it done.

• 13:29Marielle Segarra?

  Mood booster number three, create something. And Malika says, don't be too precious about your creations. These do not have to be perfect.

• 13:40Marielle Segarra?

  We will have more Life Kit after the break.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Thumbtack. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app.

• 14:15Marielle Segarra?

  Download today. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive and more. Try it free for 14 days at g o o dot g l e slash workspace with Gemini. Rapid fire round of mood boosters with NPR journalist Ryan Kelman. Hey, Ryan.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Hey, Marielle.

• 14:41Marielle Segarra?

  All right. So a few years ago, Ryan, you got together with some other folks at NPR to look at research backed ways that we can make ourselves feel good, right?

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. So, you know, we were coming sort of out of the pandemic at the time, which was incredibly isolating for a lot of people. And, you know, people had been deprived of many of their sources of joy that they once had. So we had the idea to create an app to help counteract some of that, shake off some of those, you know, pandemic feelings. Big shout out to Meredith Rizzo, Kama Roth, and the whole News Apps team here at NPR. And basically, the app offers a menu of ways you can enter different positive emotional states like wonder, gratefulness, anticipation, that kind of thing.

• 15:31Marielle Segarra?

  The app is called NPR Joy Generator. You can find it at npr.org/joy. All right, Ryan, let's go into some of these techniques.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Let's, how about this? How about we test them out on you?

• 15:42Marielle Segarra?

  Okay, I'm down.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  So what I want you to do is listen to this for me and tell me how it makes you feel.

• 15:54Marielle Segarra?

  I don't like it.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  That's fair. That's fair. It's not, that's not the sound for everyone. What that actually is, is someone playing with slime. Sounds weird, I know. But for some lucky people like myself, sounds like that will give you this sort of brain tingly sensation. It's called autonomous sensory meridian response, otherwise known as ASMR.

• 16:25Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, I have, I have seen ASMR videos and some of them I like and some I don't. The what? I, I get that sensation when I watch people put makeup on other people.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Oh, I like that fun, specific detail about you. Fantastic. Yeah, so there actually isn't a ton of research, but in one study from 2018 that was published in the Journal Plus One, a team of researchers hooked up dozens of participants, people who got this ASMR feeling, to biological feedback machinery. And they found that when they watched ASMR videos, hearing those sounds of things like plastic wrappers cranking, peeling garlic, pouring a fizzy drink.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  When they heard those sounds, their heart rates decreased on average by more than three beats per minute. And they got these pleasurable chills, you know, these goosebumps or shivers up your spine. For me personally, it's, it's hard to describe, but it's something like what you might feel when you're listening to a really good song.

• 17:43Marielle Segarra?

  I think what I like is about those makeup videos is that often the person putting the makeup on is talking very softly too, like they're sort of talking like this. And I think that that's the kind of ASMR that I like.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah, whispering is big in the ASMR community for sure.

• 18:03Marielle Segarra?

  And how mu, I wonder like how much ASMR would you need to listen to to get that mood boosting effect?

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Well, with the videos that the researchers showed in that's one study, they were showing about three minute videos. So, you know, conceivably, you can get those tingly sensations pretty quickly.

• 18:21Marielle Segarra?

  All right. Mood booster number four, tap into ASMR to calm your mind. Watch a soothing video online. Figure out the triggers that are most pleasing for you. What is the next mood booster?

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Well, let me ask you this. Are you a cat person or a dog person?

• 18:39Marielle Segarra?

  I would say dog person.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Okay. Good answer. No wrong answer there, folks. It's all good. But here, I'm going to send you this link of YouTube video to watch for me. Okay, so we're watching this puppy pile dog video, right?

• 18:54Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, it's just like, it looks like maybe a mama dog with her little baby puppies sleeping next to her and they're just like breathing and somebody was petting their fur. Is this a live stream?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a live stream. So what's going on here, what's meant to be happening here is the, the power of cuteness. Some lucky researchers at the University of Leeds actually have attempted to look into why we like watching puppies and kittens, stuff like that so much. And they showed 30 minute

• 19:28Speaker 05

  Montages of cute animal videos to stressed out college students. And they found that their blood pressure, heart rate and anxiety all dropped.

• 19:38Marielle Segarra?

  And it's like, you don't actually even need to be with a puppy. You could just look at videos of puppies.

• 19:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, right? There's, there's a reason that, you know, so much of my social media is subscriptions to dogs doing things, you know, cute animals, right?

• 19:58Marielle Segarra?

  Mood booster number five. Maybe you could have guessed this one, but cute animals make us feel good. So sidle up next to your cat or dog or parrot or rabbit or snake, if that's what you're into. No pets in your house? Those live puppy cams and cat cams on the internet do the same thing for us.

• 20:14Speaker 05

  Okay. So I have one last thing for you to listen to. And I just want you to sort of note what you're feeling as you listen to it. Does it evoke anything? Does it remind you of anything? So let's check it out.

• 20:30Marielle Segarra?

  Ooh, it feels cozy.

• 20:36Marielle Segarra?

  Huh.

• 20:38Marielle Segarra?

  I'm feeling like cozy mystical beachfront.

• 20:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:42Marielle Segarra?

  Grandma's cottage vibes.

• 20:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, homie, right? It's kind of homie. So yeah, what we were, we were doing in creating this app for this particular chapter of it, right? We were trying to put together sounds and visuals that might evoke memories. And for, you know, a broad generation of listeners, right? So from the sound of a disk drive booting up to a cat purring to, you know, rain on a windowpane. So these are things that might feel like familiar and take you back to your childhood, remind you of your past. And what we were trying to tap into is nostalgia. And that's that bittersweet yearning, right? We feel to go back in time. And it's a pretty intricate emotion, actually.

• 21:28Speaker 05

  For one, nostalgia is actually a universal experience and even kids feel it.

• 21:34Marielle Segarra?

  Okay. So why, sometimes when I think of nostalgia, I think it feels a little sad. So I'm surprised this is a mood booster.

• 21:43Speaker 05

  Right, right. So what scientists think is that nostalgia has a couple of different functions, right? For one, tapping into these memories might help us when we're lonely, right? The good, the good ones by reminding us of fond, personally meaningful times. And when we're nostalgic, people report feeling a stronger sense of belonging and describe their lives as more meaningful. And these memories remind us also to strengthen our current relationships.

• 22:14Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah. It sounds like nostalgia can be a little reminder of what we love or what matters to us.

• 22:24Speaker 05

  Right, exactly.

• 22:25Marielle Segarra?

  How would you put yourself in this state apart from listening to some audio like we just did?

• 22:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, you can actively put yourself in this state. You could, you know, go through your camera roll and, and like pull up pictures from, you know, years ago, or even not even that long ago. You could cook an old family recipe or read your favorite kid's book from growing up, right?

• 22:49Speaker 05

  You know, I, something I like to do is like, listen to the music I listened to in high school, which, you know, actually had like different meaning for me then, but I still look back on it with nostalgia.

• 22:59Marielle Segarra?

  There's that one song, it's like Fallout Boy.

• 23:03Speaker 05

  I hope it's Fallout Boy.

• 23:04Marielle Segarra?

  Sugar, we're going down. We're going down, down in an earlier round.

• 23:08Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:09Marielle Segarra?

  Sugar, we're going down swinging.

• 23:10Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah, who is that?

• 23:16Marielle Segarra?

  Fallout Boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. That song takes me back.

• 23:24Marielle Segarra?

  Thank you, Ryan, for, for all these mood boosters.

• 23:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, happy to be here.

• 23:30Marielle Segarra?

  So mood booster number six, nostalgia is a powerful, complicated, but deeply enriching emotion. Spend a few minutes looking back in your camera roll. Maybe go through the pictures you took on this very day, five, 10 or 15 years ago. Or Ryan says you could listen to your favorite songs from high school just to feel that connection to your younger self.

• 23:50Marielle Segarra?

  Okay, it's time for a recap. If you're feeling low energy or listless or just having a blah day, that's the scientific term for it, I've heard, we've got tips for you that research shows will help make you feel better. Shock your body with something cold. Cold plunge, splash at the pool, a cold shower. Move your body. Maybe go on a walk or dance around the house or wave your arms around. Create something. Make it fast and messy. This isn't the time to be precious. Watch some ASMR videos to get those nice brain tingles going. Spend some time loving up on cute animals virtually or in person and tap into your nostalgia. Crack open the old Facebook albums, take a little virtual walk down memory lane.

• 24:36Marielle Segarra?

  For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We've got one on different stress resets to snap out of your anxiety and another on longer term ways to feel happier in life. You can find those at npr.org/lifekit. And if you love Life Kit and want even more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org/lifekitnewsletter. Also, we love hearing from you. So if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email us at [email protected]. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our digital editor is Malika Gharib and our visuals editor is CJ Ricolon. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor and Lauren Gonzalez is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagel, Claire Marie Schneider and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Kwasi Lee.

• 25:21Marielle Segarra?

  I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? No catching up on manual edits, no more guesswork. HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current and helps you understand what to do next. So marketing builds more demand, sales wins more deals and customers keep coming back. Learn more at hubspot.com. This message comes from Capital One with the Venture X Card. Earn unlimited double miles and a $300 annual Capital One travel credit. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Terms apply. Details at capitalone.com.