Winning the Lottery Could Ruin Your Life

What would it take to make you happier? A raise? A promotion? Getting into your dream school? Winning the lottery? It turns out that we’re surprisingly bad at predicting how these events will actually make us feel. When they do make us happier, research shows that the highs won’t last as long as we expect. The good news is that the lows won't last as long as we expect either. We're just as bad at predicting how life's setbacks will affect us. Dr. Laurie speaks with Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/daniel-gilbert about why our minds exaggerate the emotional impact of life’s biggest events. She also hears from psychotherapist Clay Cockrell https://www.walkandtalk.com/bio/ about why extreme wealth often comes with misery, and from writer Rafaella Gunz https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafaellagunz/ and Army veteran J. R. Martinez https://jrmartinez.com/about about their journeys toward happiness and meaning after experiences they once thought would ruin their lives. Experts Mentioned: Daniel Gilbert https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/daniel-gilbert, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University Clay Cockrell https://www.walkandtalk.com/bio/, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Psychotherapist Daniel Kahneman https://kahneman.scholar.princeton.edu/, Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs, Emeritus at Princeton University Angus Deaton https://deaton.scholar.princeton.edu/bio, Professor of International Affairs, Emeritus, and Professor of Economics and International Affairs, Emeritus at Princeton University Matthew Killingsworth https://www.mattkillingsworth.com/, Senior Fellow at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Rafaella Gunz https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafaellagunz/, writer and social worker J. R. Martinez https://jrmartinez.com/about, Army veteran, actor, author, and podcast host Resources Mentioned: “Billie Bob’s (Mis) Fortune https://www.houstonpress.com/news/billie-bobs-mis-fortune-6565369/,” by Steve McViker (Houston Press, 2000) “The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143114956?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback,” by Sonja Lyubomirsky (2007) “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20823223/,” by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010) “Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2016976118,” by Matthew Killingsworth (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023) “Income and emotional well-being: a conflict resolved https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120,” by Matthew Killingsworth, Daniel Kahneman, and Barbara Mellers (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023) Stumbling on Happiness https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400077427?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback, by Daniel Gilbert (2006) “Immune neglect: a source of durability bias in affective forecasting https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-12057-003?doi=1,” by Daniel Gilbert, Elizabeth Pinel, Timothy Wilson, Stephen Blumberg, and Thalia Wheatley (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1998) “Affective forecasting: Why can't people predict their emotions? https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13546780600872726,” by Peter Ayton, Alice Pott, and Najat Elwakili (Thinking & Reasoning, 2007) “Anticipated versus actual reaction to HIV test results https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/docs/loewenstein/AnticipatedvsReactionHIV.pdf,” by Elaine Sieff, Robyn Dawes, and George Lowenstein (The American Journal of Psychology, 1999) Well-Being: Foundations of Hedonic Psychology https://www.amazon.com/dp/0871544237?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback, by Daniel Kahneman, Edward Diener, and Norbert Schwartz (1999) “Getting Herpes Was a Gift https://www.ravishly.com/2016/12/28/getting-herpes-was-gift,” by Rafaella Gunz (Ravishly, 2016) “The impact bias is alive and well https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-37998-002,” by Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2013) Full of Heart: My Story of Survival, Strength, and Spirit https://www.amazon.com/dp/1401324746?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback, by J. R. Martinez with Alexandra Rockey Fleming (2012) Related Episodes: “Why We Sabotage Our Future Selves https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/does-the-you-of-today-hate-the-you-of-tomorrow” “Why the ‘Good Enough’ Relationship Beats the ‘Perfect Partner’ https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/why-the-good-enough-relationship-beats-the-perfect-partner” “Working Your Way to Happiness https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/working-your-way-to-happiness” “Why Nostalgia Ain’t So Rosy https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/why-nostalgia-aint-so-rosy” See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 3:25Speaker 03

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• 3:32Speaker 03

  Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. Welcome back to our Happiness Hot Take series, a whole season in which I call out the bad happiness advice that I so often hear on the internet. Today, we'll be going back to an episode from the very first season of the show to revisit the hot take that I get the most pushback about, the idea that more money doesn't necessarily make you happier. And it certainly doesn't guarantee a happy ending. But that's okay, because as we'll learn in today's episode, happy endings are sort of overrated to begin with. Here's this week's, in case you missed it, Happiness Hot Take. I hope you enjoy it.

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  It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. These were the words uttered by Billie Bob Harold Jr., a man whose life had been unremarkable before a fateful event that ruined everything on June 28, 1997.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Before that worst thing ever event occurred, Billie Bob was a relatively happy, middle-aged Texan. He was a religious family man who cared deeply about his parents, his wife Barbara Jean, and their three children. Billie Bob worked at the local Home Depot, stocking shelves with electrical equipment. It wasn't the most lucrative career, but Billie Bob and his wife found ways to make ends meet. His life, by all accounts, was relatively blessed. But one hot summer evening, everything changed. Within months, his marriage had fallen apart. His beloved Barbara Jean filed for divorce. Billie Bob tried dating younger women, but still felt terrible. He lost almost 50 pounds, making him look sickly and gaunt.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  His children would later say that his personality completely changed. He switched from the happy dad they knew into a moody depressive.

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  In May of 1999, less than two years after that incident, which I've not yet named, Billie Bob couldn't take it anymore. He locked himself in his master bedroom and took his own life.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  So what was that worst thing ever occurrence? That awful event that destroyed Billie Bob's family and his entire life? It was this. Billie Bob won the Lotto Texas jackpot.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Good evening and welcome to the official Lotto Texas drawing.

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  In a split second, he was $31 million richer.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Now, that probably wasn't the kind of worst ever event you were imagining. When we think of tragedies, we imagine the death of a family member, some disfiguring car crash, or total financial ruin. What Billie Bob experienced is actually something many of us yearn for. He became a multimillionaire overnight. He was suddenly rich beyond his wildest dreams, wealthy enough to quit his job and to buy whatever he and his family needed for the rest of their lives. But the wonderful fortune he literally prayed for is certainly didn't make him as happy as he expected.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  I bet you think that wouldn't be the case for you. Most of us are convinced that making tons of money would feel good. But as it turns out, we're probably wrong. And not just about money. Research shows that we suck at predicting what will make us happy generally, both when we're imagining how we'll feel when we get what we want, the good stuff like hitting the jackpot, getting the perfect job, being accepted to our dream school, but also when we envision some of the worst events a person could possibly endure. Why are we so bad at making these predictions? What's going wrong?

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos.

• 7:35Speaker 05

  If you have an enemy, go buy them a lottery ticket. Because on the off chance that they win, their life is going to be really messed up.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  I'm speaking with Clay Cockrell. He knows that the misery Billie Bob experienced after winning the lottery wasn't a one-off. Clay's a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. His business address is up near Columbus Circle in New York City. But more often than not, he can be found in Central Park or on the banks of the Hudson River.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  I do something unusual in that I walk with my clients instead of meeting in an office. Walk and talk, I think better on my feet.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  His methods as a psychotherapist are novel, but Clay also works with a rather particular clientele.

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  About 10 years ago, I started working with the super wealthy, people in the 1% of the 1%. Somehow, my name got passed around this very small world as someone who doesn't bring judgment. So if you're struggling with, I can't find a place to park my yacht, I have no judgment about that. I'm going to help you. Your problem is as real as someone else's.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Clay finds that providing counsel to the richest of the rich generates a certain amount of hostility from the other 99.99% who think the mega wealthy have it pretty good. Being anxious about yacht parking doesn't play well with, well with, most people, honestly.

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  The general public, when they find out what I do, they don't have a lot of sympathy because they bought into this idea that they have a certain amount of problems that are related to money. And they have this belief that if I have money, my problems will go away. But when they find out that there's somebody out there that has a lot of money and they still have problems, it busts that fantasy. So this thing that they're working toward, I just need a little bit more money is going to solve my problems, it really challenges that belief system.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Clay's right that most people believe they just need a little bit more income for their troubles to end. One study asked people, how much money would you really need to be happy? What's an income level that if you got it, you wouldn't need anymore? People who are currently earning $30,000 a year say they'd need 50K to be happier, which makes sense. But do folks who actually earn 50K think that was all that's needed? Not really. People earning twice that much, $100,000, said they'd need a salary of 250K to truly be happy.

• 10:07Speaker 05

  This myth, more money equals happiness. So I just got to get some more. I'll get there. I just got to get some more.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  We've all heard that money can't buy you happiness. But is that really true? Two Nobel Prize-winning scientists, Danny Kahneman and Angus Deaton, teamed up to find out. They tested how annual salary in the US today affects three different measures of well-being. What did they find? Well, it turns out the income does affect well-being for people at lower salary levels. If you earn $10,000 or $20,000, then earning more will make you feel less stressed and happier. But that effect of income on well-being starts to level off, and it does so really quickly. Based on their estimate-

• 10:53Speaker 05

  It is much better to earn 70,000 than 40,000. Life is a lot different, but it's not a lot different from 70,000 to 150 or 250.

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  Kahneman and Deaton found that once you're earning an annual income of $75,000, getting more doesn't help. You don't get less stressed or happier. Your well-being just flatlines, even if you double or even quadruple your salary. That's what the data suggest, but it's definitely not what most of us believe.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. This is Dr. Laurie Santos in 2026, coming to you live with an important research update. Back when we recorded this episode in 2019, the study I just described was the final word when it came to money and happiness. But as you probably know, science isn't stagnant. And in the years since we recorded this episode, there's been a few important updates. So I couldn't help but time travel in from the future to tell you about them. Update number one is drumroll, inflation. That $75,000 cutoff I mentioned, that was in $2010. Adjusting for inflation, the same cutoff in $2026 would be more like $115,000-ish. Update number two is that there have been a few new papers on this connection between

• 12:10Speaker 03

  money and happiness. The first is a 2021 paper by Matt Killingsworth, which used a new and improved measure of people's well-being, one in which people were pinged at different times during the day and asked about their happiness in the moment. This new method prevents people from forgetting how they actually felt at different times, which is just better for answering how money really makes people feel. What did Killingsworth find? Well, first, his results showed the same thing that that Kahneman and Deaton study found before. People at incomes lower than $75,000 would definitely be happier if they got more money. But Killingsworth's new study also showed that there continues to be a connection between money and happiness even at higher incomes. But the effect he found is really, really tiny.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  Ergo, more money after a certain level might make you a tiny bit happier, but definitely not as happy as you think. But more recently, in 2023, there was an even cooler paper that tested the same question. And that paper involved a tag team between Matt Killingsworth, the researcher I just mentioned who did the 2021 paper, and Danny Kahneman, the guy who did the original paper that Killingsworth had kind of shown was wrong. In research, this is what's known as an adversarial collaboration. Two people who disagree about a set of findings agree to come together to do one final paper that's going to resolve the disagreement for good. And that's what Kahneman and Killingsworth did. They went back to Kahneman's original data and broke it down by happy and not-so-happy people.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  And what they found is pretty cool. All people at lower levels of income get happier as their income rises. But after a certain level, that slope looks different for happy and not-so-happy people. For not-so-happy people, more money after $100,000 has no effect on your happiness. But if you're already happy, then getting more money after $100,000 actually seems to make you a tiny bit happier. But even for these already happy people, the size of that effect is still really, really tiny. So what should we conclude from this new work? Well, if you're not so happy, then getting more money after $100,000 is probably not going to help. If you're already pretty happy, then getting lots more money might make you a teeny, teeny, tiny bit happier.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  And the emphasis should be on the teeny, teeny, tiny part. Because even quadrupling your income, the best you'll get is about five points on a 100-point happiness scale. This is about the same level of happiness boost that you could get by scribbling in a gratitude journal once a week or exercising an extra 20 minutes. It's a super small effect for something as huge as quadrupling your income. So does more money really make us happier? After a certain income level, the answer seems to be, not really. And definitely not as much as we think. Okay, enough nerding out about new science. Back to our originally scheduled episode.

• 14:59Speaker 05

  When I first got out of grad school, I made $14,000 a year. And I was, wow, this is amazing. So you begin to think, okay, there's a correlation here. More money equals a better life. And that keeps working until you get to around $75,000, $80,000, and your basic needs are met. But you've learned a lesson. More money incrementally is going to make you happier and your life easier. But you start getting more and more money and more and more money, and it's not working like it used to. When I went from 14 to 35, I just need to work a little harder and get up to 250.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  Our intuition that more money equals more happiness means we don't realize the host of problems that come with being incredibly rich. But Clay has seen these problems firsthand in his many clients.

• 15:43Speaker 05

  They struggle. They're not sleeping at night. They don't have good relationships.

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  One of the most common problems Clay sees is guilt. The wealthy also buy into the idea that money brings happiness. That cognitive dissonance of being so rich yet so sad can pitch them into emotional turmoil.

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  My life isn't perfect, but it should be. I shouldn't complain. I shouldn't seek psychotherapy to help me deal with my problems because I really shouldn't have them.

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  And like Billie Bob Harrell after hitting the jackpot, the rich often struggle in their close relations.

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  It's hard to trust because they've been burned a lot, particularly in romantic relationships. And then you get into prenuptial agreements, and are you only getting into this relationship because I'm going to buy you nice things?

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  Even casual friendships can be hard to maintain.

• 16:32Speaker 05

  They call it the 1% for a reason. There's not a lot of people out there that have this kind of money. So a majority of the population, on a fundamental level, you're not going to be able to relate to. There's a lot of isolation. Are you being my friend because of my bank account? If we go out to lunch, am I just expected to pick up the tab? When you're talking about your weekend, I had this one client that got to be friends at the local gym. And that weekend, he just happened to have taken his private jet to Paris to try out this new restaurant. So how do you talk about that without it feel like you're rubbing your wealth in someone's face?

• 17:10Speaker 03

  But the biggest problem Clay sees is that the rich feel trapped. For most problems we encounter in life, there are painful but culturally acceptable solutions. If you're in a bad relationship, you can pack your bags and leave. You hate your job, so quit. But if you're loaded and miserable about it...

• 17:29Speaker 05

  You're not going to give it away. You're too attached to it. It gives too much freedom. So you're trapped, the golden handcuffs. So I have a lot of people who say, I can't get rid of it because it's amazing. It's great. But God, there's so much unhappiness and isolation and guilt that comes along with having this.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  Ironically, the rich then fall prey to the same bias we do. Maybe the problem isn't the money. Maybe it's just that they need a little bit more.

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  I've worked with people who've had $50 million, and they say, yeah, but I really, I can't do everything that I want. There's this wonderful painting that would really eat into my savings. This one guy had $500 million, but had a sense that, once I hit that billion, that's when things really change. And you think, that's, that's crazy. You have more money than you could possibly spend. But they're searching for happiness, and people don't believe me. And I understand. It's hard, it was hard for me to think that. But after living in this world, working with these people, I understand money is not going to buy you happiness.

• 18:41Speaker 05

  So be careful what you wish for.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  Be careful what you wish for. That's a warning many of us have heard before. But it fits with a growing body of research showing that nearly every amazing thing in life, from tons of money, to an amazing house, to the perfect grades, those things simply won't make us as happy as we predict they will.

• 19:03Speaker 06

  Almost all of us believe that we would be happy if we could just get what we want. And the only impediment to our happiness is that we can't always get what we want.

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  This is Dan Gilbert. He wrote one of my favorite books on human psychology. It's called Stumbling on Happiness.

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  It turns out that when people get exactly what they want, they're not always happy. When they get the opposite of what they wanted, they often are. That's a little bit of a mystery. It's the kind of mystery that attracts psychologists.

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  This puzzle, as Dan's research over the last two decades has shown, stems from one of our most exceptional cognitive faculties, our unique ability to run mental simulations of the future.

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  This is a brand-new faculty that is wired into the human brain. No other animal can do anything vaguely like it. No chimpanzee has ever thought about whether it's going to look good in a bathing suit when it retires. But these brand-new abilities are still in beta testing. In a sense, we have an ability you might call Prospection 1.0. And it's still being worked on, so it's got bugs.

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  One of the bugs in Prospection 1.0, that ability we have to plan for the future, is that your brain can't simulate all the parts of a given event.

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  When you're imagining things unfolding over time, you can't imagine them unfolding in real time, can you? If you could, then somebody would say, imagine moving to Chicago. And you'd have to spend four months imagining moving to Chicago. That's how long it actually takes. So one of the wonderful things about simulation is that it gives you a quick sketch and then it runs it at hyperspeed. But that's also one of its flaws, because a quick sketch often lacks important details. And when things run at hyperspeed, they run right over the details that often matter.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  We miss the critical details of almost any good event we try to simulate. But let's look in more detail at the example we started with earlier, getting rich beyond our wildest dreams. What kinds of details do, say, lottery players miss when they think about winning all that cash?

• 20:58Speaker 06

  If you close your eyes and imagine winning the lottery, most of us imagine ourselves in a bathtub full of money, or on a yacht, or quitting our job, buying a big house, all the things we can get with money. You're not thinking about all the things you're going to lose. It's very unlikely you're going to continue all the same social relationships you have with people who need money but don't have any. You're underestimating the number of people and relatives that will come out of the woodwork begging you to help them over and over. You'll fail to realize that the social groups to which you would like to belong don't want to have anything to do with you because you got your money the wrong way, on and on and on. None of that is in our mental simulation of the future.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  Dan has shown there's a nasty consequence to missing these important details. It means our emotional predictions of how these events will feel are way off track.

• 21:47Speaker 06

  Would you rather have a weekend in Paris or gum surgery? It's kind of a one-item IQ test, and almost everybody gets that right. But what they don't realize is that the weekend in Paris won't be as good as they think it will be, and the good feelings won't last as long as they expect. The same is true, thankfully, for the gum surgery.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  These two mispredictions, being wrong about how intense an event will feel and how long we'll feel that way, is what Dan has christened impact bias. In one famous study, he asked young professors at the University of Texas to forecast how they'd feel when they got tenure, that permanent position that all new faculty crave. Dan tested people's predictions using a seven-point happiness scale. Most professors thought they'd be really happy if they got tenure, around a six out of seven on that scale. But how did professors actually feel when they heard good news? They reported only being a five out of seven. Dan also tested what happened to professors who got bad news. The ones who found out, they didn't get tenure.

• 22:48Speaker 03

  They assumed they'd be a 3.4 out of 7 on that happiness scale. But in reality, actual professors who got denied tenure were only a 4.7 on average. They felt a whole point better than anyone expected. I see a similar misprediction all the time in my college students. At Yale, students are convinced they'll be ecstatic if they get a good grade and are sure they'll feel devastated if they do badly. Psychologists have now seen the same pattern in many walks of life. Lovers predict they'll take a long time to recover from a sad breakup, but bounce back far quicker. Student drivers believe they'll be devastated if they fail to get their license, but aren't as sad walking out of the DMV empty-handed as they think.

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  Same is true for job applicants who are passed over, and even patients guessing how they'll feel about a positive or negative HIV diagnosis.

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  Put simply, the good things won't be as good, the bad things won't be as bad as your mind leads you to believe.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  Dan has shown that this pattern stems from yet another way our minds lie to us. We don't notice that we have a tendency to get used to stuff. Even when something feels amazing at first, we can't enjoy it forever. This is a phenomenon that psychologists call hedonic adaptation.

• 24:05Speaker 06

  You can't be really, really happy endlessly all the time, or your emotional system isn't doing its job. It has to come back to baseline so it can once again guide you to the next good thing that you, as an organism, ought to be doing.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Hedonic adaptation means that after a while, we tend to go back to a baseline level of emotional satisfaction. My students are happy for a while after getting a perfect grade, but after a day or so, they just go back to their usual set point level of happiness. The good and bad events don't move us up or down for as long as we think.

• 24:39Speaker 06

  So it's just a hard and fast truth that you can't stay at 10 forever and ever and ever. People mistakenly think they can. They think happiness is a place that if they could get to it, they could build a house and live there their entire lives. It's only a vacation destination. It's a place you can visit more and more often if you do the right things, and you can stay longer and longer, but you can't stay forever. This is an important thing to know because people often feel that if their happiness has come back to baseline after something wonderful has happened, something's wrong. Why didn't this marriage, this child, this promotion, give me the eternal happiness I was seeking? Because there is no such thing as eternal happiness.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  So happily ever after is just not psychologically realizable.

• 25:21Speaker 06

  Happily ever after is only true if you have three minutes to live.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  But this process also has an important upside. We get used to all the bad stuff, too. That horrible breakup, the chronic illness, that worst job with the lower salary. As we hedonically adapt to these things, they gradually start to distress us less and less. The problem is, we don't realize it.

• 25:48Speaker 07

  Despite the fact that two months prior, I was sitting in my bed crying my eyes out, like wishing I would die, it just shows that like, life goes on. It's not the end of the world.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself reaching for over and over again? The sweater that somehow works with everything? The jeans you know will always fit just right? Those are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe. And that's exactly what Quince does so well. I recently pulled my fall clothes out of storage, and I was so excited to see my black Mongolian cashmere full zip hoodie that I got from Quince. It's soft and warm and perfect for cozy nights. I love it so much that I now have a gray one in my quince.com cart right now. And when I buy that new gray hoodie, I know I'll feel good about my choice because everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. And as the weather gets colder,

• 26:47Speaker 03

  Quince has everything you need to round out your wardrobe, from warm, reasonably sourced down jackets and cozy cashmere scarves and gloves, to beautiful 14 karat gold jewelry. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was the Happiness Lab. It's the best way to support the show.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  This is Jacob Goldstein from Business History. Imagine Henry Ford trying to create the assembly line. He had factory plans, production schedules, supply information, research, and ideas coming from all directions. His team spent years studying how to make the process work. Now imagine having ChatGPT work. ChatGPT work can help with big projects that have lots of steps. You give it the goal along with real information like notes, files, reports, feedback, and project plans. It can use approved apps, connected tools, and files to help turn all of that into something useful. A plan, an analysis, a tracker, a presentation outline, or a workflow you can keep improving. And you stay in control.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  You give direction, review the work, approve actions, and choose the final result. Would Henry Ford have built the assembly line faster with ChatGPT? We'll never know. Ford didn't have ChatGPT. You do. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  I just moved into my new sabbatical house, and I've been trying to make it feel more me. The living room is already furnished with a boho vibe, but it lacked the perfect rug to bring the room together. That's why I turned to Wayfair. I bought Wayfair's washable, distressed, vintage floral oriental rug in blue. That rug is so soft and cozy, and I was able to find it in a vintage-looking blue color that perfectly matched the rest of the items in the space. And with Wayfair, you can get rooms that look great at every price point. I'm only staying in my sabbatical place for a short time, so I didn't want to spend a lot on a new rug. But with Wayfair, you can shop thousands of products across every style and budget, whether you're simply replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom for the holiday season. And now that the weather's getting colder,

• 29:10Speaker 03

  I gotta say that I'm especially loving the coziness of my new rug. Find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair Rewards. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  Life has a funny way of changing when we're not even looking. One day, your routine feels set, and the next, something shifts. A new job, a move, or maybe just a quiet realization that what used to work doesn't quite fit anymore. On this show, we talk a lot about how the little things in our daily lives shape our well-being, often more than the big flashy milestones. And that includes what we drive. Because when something you use every single day feels aligned with your life, it removes friction. It makes ordinary moments smoother, less stressful. That's where cars.com comes in. They have over 2 million new and used cars

• 30:13Speaker 03

  and powerful filters that let you narrow your search by price, mileage, features, whatever actually matters to you. And their deal badges highlight when a listing is a great price, so you can feel confident you're making a smart choice. It's not just about buying a car. It's about choosing something that truly fits your routine and your next chapter. Start your search at cars.com. Where to next?

• 30:41Speaker 07

  This week, I remember I was on Tinder because all these great stories are on Tinder.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Raffaela Guns is telling me how she met the man of her dreams.

• 30:50Speaker 07

  He was a super beautiful, beautiful guy. Blue eyes, full lips.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  And how he changed her life forever.

• 30:59Speaker 07

  I really liked him. I was so into him.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  After chatting with him for a while on Tinder, Raffaela agreed to a first date, something really low key. The couple just walked around, getting to know each other. They didn't even kiss, but things picked up after that.

• 31:15Speaker 07

  We were hanging out for hours and hours, and we decided to go back up to my neighborhood so we could sit by the river, by the Hudson River, because it's like super pretty to just watch the sunset over there. And we ended up having sex. And I thought I did everything right. Like, I carried condoms around. In my mind, I was doing everything right.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  But Raffaela was about to hear the sort of news that nobody wants to hear.

• 31:39Speaker 07

  The next day, he sort of came down with what he thought was like a cold or something. He had like a sore throat, and he was feeling very fatigued. And then a couple of days later, I started coming down the same thing.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  Her beautiful boy with the blue eyes was the first to seek medical advice. He sent a text.

• 31:59Speaker 07

  I went to the doctor, and they think all this might be a sign of herpes. And so like, that was a weird text message. So I go into urgent care crying, and I'm like, I need a herpes test.

• 32:09Speaker 03

  Raffaela got her official diagnosis soon after.

• 32:12Speaker 07

  Those first few days, I remember I was just sitting in bed crying. You know, I like, thought my life was over. I wanted to die. It was the worst thing in the world. Like, not only was I like physically uncomfortable, but how am I going to date someone? How's anyone going to love me?

• 32:26Speaker 03

  In addition to being in physical pain with red bumps on her genitals, she was also in emotional pain. Her dream guy dropped her in a flash.

• 32:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, he was like, oh, this changed my vibe on you. He was like very, very distant. I thought like, okay, we both have this thing. Like, we can go through it together and sort of like, learn about it together and figure this out together. But he was very much sort of like, in it for himself. I felt sort of...

• 32:53Speaker 07

  I don't know if betrayed is the right word, but that's the word that's coming to my mind.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Raffaela didn't only feel betrayed by the man who gave her herpes and disappeared. Her diagnosis also freaked out the people closest to her.

• 33:04Speaker 07

  She was like one of my oldest friends. But then, when I confided in her, when I'm like sitting on my bed crying, because I have all these itchy red bumps and, you know, the guy is ignoring me now, things changed. She was like, I just think, you know, it would be better for my own sanity if you used toilet seat covers when you were here. And, you know, if you use hand sanitizer a lot and this and that. So that was really hurtful.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  I mean, this was one of your oldest friends?

• 33:31Speaker 07

  Yeah. This was someone I've known since we were in diapers.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  And she's not supporting you for one of, it sounds like one of the most-

• 33:38Speaker 07

  Scary times in my life, yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  That just sounds awful.

• 33:40Speaker 07

  And so that was horrible.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  Let's take a second to predict how you would feel in Raffaela's situation. You contracted an incurable and highly stigmatized disease. Your romantic partner has ditched you and some of your oldest friends are shunning you because of what happened. Would you describe all of this overall as a good thing? As a positive change in your life? As a present from the universe? Because that's how Raffaela sees it. She even wrote an article for ravishly.com, which she titled "Getting Herpes Was a Gift."

• 34:13Speaker 07

  Some people were like, what the? Like, how is this a gift? Like, almost angry? And like calling me like delusional, all these sorts of things. Like, how would you possibly think that's a gift?

• 34:23Speaker 03

  So why is it a gift?

• 34:25Speaker 07

  It's a gift because I'm more knowledgeable. It's a gift because I've been able to write things, like that article that helps people.

• 34:34Speaker 03

  Raffaela says all the fallout from her diagnosis has given her insight into the people who really matter. It's a strong litmus test for those who are actually going to be there for her.

• 34:45Speaker 07

  If a friend can't accept

• 34:48Speaker 07

  all of you, warts and all, pun intended, they're not really your friend. They're fair weather friends, you know?

• 34:55Speaker 03

  But it also gave Raffaela a new filter for her dating life. It saved her time figuring out which guys were worth her time and which guys just didn't get it.

• 35:04Speaker 07

  He said some dumb shit about, oh, am I gonna get it if I kiss you? And I'm like, no, it's not my vagina.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  Do you think, you know, would you change anything? Would you do it? I mean, it sounds like you've learned so much from this. Like, would you keep it? Would you do it over again?

• 35:15Speaker 07

  I'd keep it. First of all, as much of a dick as he was, he was really hot, really hot. And the sex was really good. So I don't regret that. Secondly, it helped me in my dating life, I feel. A few months after I was diagnosed, I met my current boyfriend, who we've been together for like three years. And I told him right away and he was fine with it. So that was nice to know. That's like, especially when you're, when you contract something like herpes, you tend to think, like, all my life's over. No one's ever gonna wanna sleep with me again. No one's ever gonna wanna date me again. I'm never gonna get married, this and that. But it was fine. Like, there are people that have much, much worse problems than little red bumps.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  Getting herpes was much, much better than Raffaela might have predicted. And that kind of adaptation to adversity is something Dan Gilbert has found over and over again.

• 36:09Speaker 06

  What we find consistently is that in the face of negative events, people don't feel as bad as they themselves expected to.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  Although we're pretty bad at predicting how we'll feel after a good event, like winning the lottery, Dan has observed we're worse at predicting how we'll feel after a bad event: losing a friend, failing to get a job, or even getting herpes. Our impact bias is even bigger when we make predictions about negative life circumstances because we're prone to overcome bad events more quickly than we think.

• 36:39Speaker 06

  One of the things we fail to do when we mentally simulate is we fail to consider adaptation. We are a remarkably adaptive animal. We have been born and bred to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and soldier on when the going gets tough. We get going.

• 36:54Speaker 03

  Dan calls this capacity to overcome adversity our psychological immune system. Just as our physical immune system kicks in when we get sick, our psychological immune system turns on when we're in mental distress. And our psychological immune system works really, really well. As soon as we start to feel bad, our mind deploys a whole host of mental defenses.

• 37:17Speaker 06

  If you've ever had a friend experience a breakup, you know at first they're really unhappy and then pretty quickly they get around to rationalizing. Oh, she was never really right for me. This is really a chance for me to start my life over. I don't think we had that much in common in the first place. She didn't like my mother. When you mentally simulate a breakup, you mentally simulate the anguish, but you never mentally simulate the rationalizations.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  What's amazing about all those rationalizations, though, is that the happiness we get from rationalizing a bad event is just as real as the happiness we get from something objectively good.

• 37:49Speaker 06

  Well, there's no doubt that when people rationalize, everybody around them feels that they've found some sort of phony and substandard form of happiness. I don't believe that for a minute. You know, the happiness you get when the person you love says yes to the marriage proposal isn't qualitatively different than the kind you produce for yourself when she says no. There's absolutely no data that I know of to suggest that it's an inferior form of happiness. And indeed, in some cases, it can be more long-lasting.

• 38:19Speaker 03

  Raffaela's misery about contracting herpes was very deep and very real. But her misery was also short-lived. But what about situations that are so horrible there's no way a person can carry on normally? What about events so profound and so awful that they change our lives forever? After the break, we'll hear about the true power of our psychological immune system, how it can transform the most terrible incidents a human can endure into a form of joy we'd never expect.

• 38:50Speaker 08

  19 years old, I'm in this Humvee. I'm thinking I'm gonna die. It felt good to just kind of just close my eyes and just kind of let it happen.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  The Happiness Lab will return in a moment.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  This is Jacob Goldstein from Business History. Imagine Henry Ford trying to create the assembly line. He had factory plans, production schedules, supply information, research, and ideas coming from all directions. His team spent years studying how to make the process work. Now, imagine having ChatGPT work. ChatGPT work can help with big projects that have lots of steps. You give it the goal along with real information like notes, files, reports, feedback, and project plans. It can use approved apps, connected tools, and files to help turn all of that into something useful: a plan, an analysis, a tracker, a presentation outline, or a workflow you can keep improving. And you stay in control. You give direction, review the work,

• 39:49Speaker 01

  approve actions, and choose the final result. Would Henry Ford have built the assembly line faster with ChatGPT? We'll never know. Ford didn't have ChatGPT. You do. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  Life has a funny way of changing when we're not even looking. One day, your routine feels set. And the next, something shifts: a new job, a move, or maybe just a quiet realization that what used to work doesn't quite fit anymore. On this show, we talk a lot about how the little things in our daily lives shape our well-being, often more than the big flashy milestones. And that includes what we drive. Because when something you use every single day feels aligned with your life, it removes friction. It makes ordinary moments smoother, less stressful. That's where Cars.com comes in. They have over 2 million new and used cars and powerful filters that let you narrow your search by price, mileage, features,

• 40:55Speaker 03

  whatever actually matters to you. And their deal badges highlight when a listing is a great price, so you can feel confident you're making a smart choice. It's not just about buying a car. It's about choosing something that truly fits your routine and your next chapter. Start your search at cars.com. Where to next? I'm in the market for a new mattress upgrade for my guest room. I want my friends to actually look forward to staying over. And that means a mattress that makes my friends feel welcomed. That's why I'm going to turn to Helix. Helix has over 20 different mattress models. So whether you're shopping for yourself, a guest room, or even someone with a very specific sleep preference, there's a good chance that Helix has something that's a great fit.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  And if you've got guests that complain about being too warm, Helix even has cooling options on select models. And with Helix, buying a mattress online doesn't have to feel like a gamble. Helix gives you a 120-night sleep trial, so you actually get to sleep on the mattress in your own home instead of laying on one in a showroom for five minutes and hoping for the best. If you've been putting off replacing your mattress or you're finally ready to give your guest room the upgrade it deserves, check out Helix. Go to helixsleep.com/happiness for 30% off site-wide. That's helixsleep.com/happiness for 30% off site-wide. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. helixsleep.com/happiness.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  A business gift is never just a gift. It's a thank you, a milestone, a moment of appreciation. It's a message about how much someone matters and what your brand stands for. At 4imprint, you'll find thousands of customizable options like premium apparel, branded drinkware, tech totes, and more, each chosen not just for function, but for meaning. You can tailor every detail: your logo, your message, your presentation, so your gift feels personal and on-brand. And with expert support, dependable service, and thousands without a setup fee, creating something thoughtful doesn't mean making it complicated. Every order is backed by 4imprint's 360-degree guarantee, so you can be 4imprint certain

• 43:09Speaker 03

  it'll arrive exactly as expected, on time, and with the care your brand deserves. Because when the moment matters, the right gift speaks volumes and the right partner makes it easy. Explore gifting with purpose and certainty at 4imprint.com. 4imprint, for certain.

• 43:29Speaker 08

  I joined as an infantryman because I wanted to, I wanted to be in the action.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  JR Martinez had just finished high school in a small town in the south, the only son of a single mother from El Salvador. After graduation, he decided to enlist in the army. It was just after 9/11, and he had a few predictions about how things would go.

• 43:49Speaker 08

  You know, my thought process was three years. I would be in it. I would give back to this country. It would give me an opportunity to travel, to get more disciplined. It would give me an opportunity to get money for college. And I remember one of my sergeants, you know, one day sitting down and talking to me and telling me that I needed to be prepared because we were going to be deploying sometime soon. And my response to him was, I'm not going anywhere yet. I just got out of basic training. Very naive of me. And he was absolutely correct and right in the sense of where two months later, I was on a plane with the rest of the unit heading over to the Middle East, going to war.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  JR was part of the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was already a tough transition for a 19 year old. And within weeks, tragedy struck.

• 44:33Speaker 08

  Here we were, you know, a few days shy of a month of being in Iraq and escorting the convoy through a city car carburetor when the front left tire of the Humvee that I was driving ran over a roadside bomb.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  The blast ripped through the entire truck and everything it was carrying. The ammo, spare fuel, and other explosives. It was a fireball.

• 44:51Speaker 08

  There was three other soldiers in the vehicle with me. They all got thrown out of the vehicle, but I was trapped inside. And within a matter of seconds, this Humvee was engulfed in flames and I was completely conscious.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  JR was pinned inside the burning truck for several minutes. He describes screaming as he watched the skin on his hands melting. Eventually, he was pulled from the vehicle, but the damage was done. In addition to broken ribs and a lacerated liver, he had third degree burns over his entire body, and he'd been gulping flames into his lungs through the whole ordeal. He was immediately medevaced, first to Europe and then to the US Army Burn Center in San Antonio, Texas.

• 45:30Speaker 08

  I remember coming out of my medical induced coma three weeks later and my doctor, essentially just kind of laying out, you know, all the cards and saying, this is the circumstance. You can't feed yourself. You can't walk. You can't sit up. You can't go to the bathroom by yourself. They also told me that I would no longer be able to remain in the United States Army, which was incredibly difficult and challenging.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  When this happened, you were 19?

• 45:55Speaker 08

  Uh huh.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  And you spent like the next three years.

• 45:58Speaker 08

  I turned 20, 21, 22 in the hospital.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  That's amazing.

• 46:02Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  And just to be clear, how much, just to get a sense?

• 46:04Speaker 08

  Thirty-four percent of my body was burned and majority of that was third degree. So it consisted of, for the listeners that can't see me, it consisted of my head, my face, my arms, my hands, portion of my back, portion of my legs. There's no way to really fully describe the pain unless you've been through it. But what's incredible about being a burn survivor, a burn patient at the time, is that the part of your body that isn't burned still hurts because they usually use the areas of your body that are not scarred as skin to do skin grafts. And usually, the donor site is more painful than the actual injury itself.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  But JR's physical pain was nothing compared to his emotional anguish. When he enlisted, he'd been something of a local heartthrob.

• 46:45Speaker 08

  You know, it's funny because growing up, I always heard, you know, from like my mom's friends, you know, all these women, you know, would say, oh my God, he's so cute. He's so this, he's so that. And so I grew up just thinking like, that's what I am. I'm, you know, no one ever said, he has an amazing personality. He's funny. He's, he's whatever, articulate, nothing. It was cute. And so suddenly, I look at myself and I'm like, that's not cute, what I see in the mirror. That's not. And that person that I see, I do not recognize. I have no relationship with that individual. The old JR had died. And as you can imagine, I fell into a deep, dark place of, of, I was depressed, I was

• 47:25Speaker 08

  angry, I was resentful, I was a victim in every sense of the word.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Deep burns and thick scars over his entire body, dozens of surgeries and years of his young life wasted in the hospital, plus the permanent loss of his good looks and his military career. Those are some of the most profound and tragic events a person can endure. But how does JR think about all these awful events today?

• 47:52Speaker 08

  I can tell you right now that what happened to me is a blessing.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  That's right, as a blessing.

• 47:58Speaker 08

  Considering the fact that I was trapped inside of a burning truck for five minutes, I'm fortunate to only have what I have. I have a lot of friends and I know a lot of people that unfortunately have missing limbs, are, you know, have, are more scarred, you know, or disfigured, you know? So in that sense, I'm incredibly fortunate.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  It's so cool to hear you say that you're incredibly fortunate because again, I think people who just heard the story, you know, guy's Humvee explodes, he spends, you know, the decent chunk of his twenties in the hospital, having major, major surgeries, lives with scars for the rest of his life. And then you're saying, I'm fortunate, like I'm the lucky one.

• 48:33Speaker 08

  Yeah, well, I am because, you know, I, I think about how I'm blessed to have a second chance at life. I don't want to take this second chance for granted.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  And JR did take every opportunity that came his way. Being a badly injured vet opened doors that JR never dreamed of. He became a mentor for other burn victims, which led to a few lucrative speaking gigs. Telling his story so openly built up JR's confidence, so much so that when a friend casually mentioned that JR should try out for an acting job, he decided to go for it.

• 49:06Speaker 08

  I became an actor on a soap opera, All My Children, and that led Dancing With The Stars to ask me to be on the show. And then I acted in some other shows after that. And I wrote a book about my life and my mother's life and my family's life, and it became a New York Times bestseller. I mean, People Magazine put me undercover. Because of these scars, I have this incredible ability to get people's attention. The 15 seconds of curiosity, right? Like, who is that? What happened to him? Those 15 seconds of curiosity that people have, it's my job, mine, to take that 15 seconds and turn it into 30 seconds, into 45, into 60 seconds, into five minutes, 10

• 49:48Speaker 08

  minutes, a lifetime of actual educated dialogue. This is who I am. Everything I thought I wanted in life, you know, I wanted to be a fresh professional football player and have fame and have all this money and be able to do all these things. Like, if I would have accomplished those things, would I be as happy as I am now?

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Would you change anything? Would you do it over differently?

• 50:12Speaker 08

  No, I wouldn't change anything. I 100% mean that.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  But you wouldn't change, like the explosion, the scars, the surgery? You'd keep all of that?

• 50:20Speaker 08

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 50:24Speaker 08

  Because the life I have, I mean, the beautiful wife and the beautiful daughter and the beautiful life that I've created for myself, I mean, gosh, I mean, I'm blessed.

• 50:40Speaker 06

  With bad events, we often don't realize that some good can come out of them.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  Dan Gilbert is unsurprised that people like JR see more positives than negatives, even in the worst of circumstances. He's seen it time and again in his work on hedonic adaptation.

• 50:55Speaker 06

  Startlingly, if you ask people who've lost a child, which is the single worst event that people can imagine experiencing, and indeed, it is one of the worst events people can actually experience. If you ask people who've lost a child, they never say, gee, I'm glad that happened. But if you ask them to name the good and the bad things that have come from it, they tend to name more good than bad things. Now, that's a very stunning fact, that we should just sit back and marvel at the possibility that the worst thing in the world could happen to us and probably more good than bad will come out of it.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  There are awful events that will cause you to feel pain and hurt and loss, but we're fighters. When push comes to shove, we are really resilient. The problem is, we don't realize that.

• 51:42Speaker 06

  I think if you understand the power of the psychological immune system, our remarkable ability to rationalize in the face of adversity, it makes you braver. You realize that you will make mistakes and it will be okay. I think there's a lesson there for all of us.

• 52:05Speaker 03

  After making this episode, I've become even more convinced about that lesson. Hedonic adaptation means the lows of life aren't going to be as awful as you imagine, just as the highs will be more temporary than you hope. As a psychologist, I already knew that winning the lottery and other great circumstances don't bring lasting happiness. But honestly, I often forget about the flip side. So I'm going to make a conscious effort to be a bit braver, to stop worrying so much, to remember that I have a kind of emotional superpower, one that can get me through the worst of circumstances. And I hope you'll do the same because even though your mind might tell you otherwise, joy doesn't come from everything in life working out perfectly. It comes from adopting better habits and better behaviors.

• 52:51Speaker 03

  All strategies we'll be discussing in coming episodes of The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

• 53:08Speaker 03

  If you enjoyed the show, I'd be super grateful if you could spread the word by leaving a rating and a review. It really does help other listeners find us. And don't forget to tell your friends. If you want to learn more about the science you heard on the show, then check out our website, happinesslab.fm. You can also sign up for our newsletter to get exclusive content. The Happiness Lab is co-written and produced by Ryan Dilly. The show is mixed and mastered by Evan Viola and edited by Julia Barton. Fact checking by Joseph Fridman. And our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Miele Bell, Carly Migliore, Heather Fain, Maggie Taylor, Maya Koenig, and Jacob Weisberg.

• 53:50Speaker 03

  The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

• 54:03Speaker 03

  The Happiness Lab is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. You know what they say, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. So go with Amica and get coverage from a mutual insurer that's built for their customers, one that looks after what's important to you together. Auto, home, life, and more. Amica helps you protect what matters most. Visit amica.com and get a quote today.

• 54:30Speaker 09

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• 55:07Speaker 02

  For I don't know how long, maybe 12, 13 years, I've worn a Whoop band on my wrist. I started doing it because I met the founder of Whoop at a conference. He heard that I was a runner and he said, oh, you'll love this. It's perfect for athletes. And he was right. I've worn one ever since. Every time I work out, I see how hard I worked, how long I need to recover. I wake up in the morning and I get a complete picture of how my sleep went, which helps me understand the kinds of things that lead to a bad night and the kinds of things that lead to a good night. It's sleek, long-lasting battery, and now with AI looking at all my numbers and coaching me. Whoop is a winner. New members can try Whoop with a 30-day free trial before committing to a membership.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  That's whoop.com for your free month of Whoop.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.