Author:: [[Huberman Lab]] Date Finished:: URL:: https://www.airr.io/episode/63723a8fe6f628000e198f12 Rating:: Tags:: # Science-Based Tools for Increasing Happiness | Episode 98  [[Money can't buy happiness but it absolutely can buffer stress]]. [[We are terrible at putting ourselves in the arc of our lives causing the present to effect our happiness more than it should]]. [[Sharing of trivial things is paramount for the building of the deepest relationships]] [[Having an ongoing set of choices leads to significantly less happiness than choosing and sticking]] ## Highlights Speaker 0: I venture the argument that while money truly cannot buy happiness, it absolutely can buffer stress and in particular it can buffer stress in the form of the ability to purchase or pay for goods and services and in particular services. You're not going to tell me that having Children doesn't involve some increase in the demands on your life, less sleep and more demands. And it certainly is the case that if you can hire help to clean, you can hire nannies, if that's your, your thing, you can hire help to assist with babysitting or even night nurses. If you're having trouble sleeping, that will literally allow you to sleep while they take care of your child in the middle of the night often give excellent care. One hopes ([Time 0:31:02](https://www.airr.io/quote/63750fd6ed93a3b7e58b8a2e)) - Note: Create note, money can’t buy happiness but it absolutely can buffer stress. Speaker 0: And one of the ways that buffer stress is by allowing options of different kinds of social interactions, options of different types of recreation that one can engage in to access new forms of social interaction and so on and ([Time 0:36:47](https://www.airr.io/quote/637510f8ed93a3b7e58bbdcf)) - Note: It’s less about the absolute income and more your income relative to what place in life and in the world you are in at the moment. Speaker 0: if we look at the data on happiness across the lifespan dated maybe 30 or 40 years back or even 20 years ago it is consistently described in that literature as a so called U shaped function where people in their twenties report being very, very happy, but as time goes on and they acquire more responsibility. So typically getting married and having Children and their mid to late twenties and thirties and into their forty's, having more work demands etcetera. Happiness is tend to be rated lower and lower, at least in those previous studies. And then happiness tended to increase as people approach their fifties and sixties and they tended to retire in their work demands were shed from them and they were able to enjoy the small things of life. Despite the fact that in general, I would say almost always people's health is not as vigorous when they're 70 as it is when they're when they're 20 they're exceptions to that of course. But ([Time 0:43:26](https://www.airr.io/quote/63751189ed93a3b7e58bd534)) Speaker 0: many people report feeling rather low on their birthday because they use that as a benchmark or a window into the things that they have not accomplished, the things that despite being aged blank, they still haven't accomplished. And so that's interesting because what it really points to is two things One, the extent to which much of our feelings of happiness are relative in particular relative to our peers. So there's that social aspect again, and the fact that most of the time we are not very good at orienting ourselves in the longer arc of time. We're pretty good at knowing where we are in the arc of a day or the arc of a week or the arc of a month or even a year, but that most of us are not very good at reflecting on where we are in our life arc and of course, most of us don't know how long we will live anyway, but we do have some general sense, I mean very few people live past the age of 100 many people live to be 70 or 80 and again, life span is Extending as far as we know from year to year. But in general people report that on their birthdays and I should say these are for birthdays aged 25 or later, at least in the studies I was able to access, right, I don't think that a lot of three year olds sit around comparing themselves to other three year olds and how well they're doing or 12 year olds, you can imagine some people might do that at 18, etcetera, but it's really by the mid twenties that people start evaluating themselves to their peers in terms of life progression and so called milestones. It's been argued that that's ([Time 0:51:11](https://www.airr.io/quote/637514faed93a3b7e58c8a3f)) - Note: This reminds me of how we socially compare ourselves to those we identify with. So on our birthday we are surrounded by so many people we identify with. And we are reminded of the passing of time. I wonder if there is a way people can turn this reminding into a positive thing like some do with death ## New highlights added 17-11-2022 at 11:46 AM Speaker 0: it turns out receiving gratitude is a more powerful stimulus for the release of neurochemicals and activation of brain areas associated with so called pro social behaviors and feelings of well being, including happiness, but also observing stories in the form of movies or books or other narratives of other people receiving help is also a very powerful stimulus for gratitude. Also giving gratitude is very powerful but not as powerful as receiving gratitude at least. That's what the research says. Or observing powerful exchanges of gratitude between other individuals. What the study from AmES showed is that gratitude as a state of mind and as an emotion does not exist in a vacuum. It's not independent of our surroundings. So for instance, just writing down all the things you're grateful for while it has some positive impact, the impact of that or receiving gratitude or observing gratitude is far more potent, right, bigger increases in happiness and feelings of well being and indeed neurochemicals and activation of brain areas associated with happiness and well being. When there's a reciprocity when the person receiving is understand something about the person that's giving to them and understand that the person is giving genuinely for instance, so there's an environmental interaction, it's not just about receiving, it's receiving from somebody that you know, genuinely wants to give. And likewise for the giver in that equation, the feelings of well being are far greater when the person receiving whatever it is money. Food assistance in some form or another, it could be, you know, physical assistance etcetera when the giver has knowledge that the person receiving it genuinely needed. The ([Time 1:21:25](https://www.airr.io/quote/63765658ed93a3b7e5bc93e1)) Speaker 0: say. So the takeaway from this study and studies like it, I think it's pretty obvious that um to the extent that we can and again when I say to the extent that we can this means whatever percentage of our own income that we can afford to give away or if we don't have income, the percentage of our effort, right? I mean this was about money but it's also about effort. We can help others, right? You can servin food kitchens, you can do um community gardening, you can pick up trash, you can do any number of of things, you can assist a neighbor with childcare or assist a neighbor who is physically less able to retrieve their paper, etcetera, etcetera. It the point is that giving resources certainly in the form of money, but also in the form of effort and time is immensely beneficial for synthesizing our own happiness. That is for the giver us to increase our levels of happiness. But the degree of an increase in our own happiness is proportional in some way to the extent to which the person receiving actually needed that help and registers that help. Excellent research ([Time 1:30:45](https://www.airr.io/quote/6376570aed93a3b7e5bcadc1)) - Note: This positive emotional effect this has is probably increased if the person or people we are helping are identifiable because of the identifiable victim effect. Speaker 0: In fact, the mere focus on what they were doing was more powerful than anything else, even if they didn't enjoy what they were doing. So they go on here to say quote, Although negative moods are known to cause mind wandering analyses strongly suggested that mind wandering was generally the cause the cause and not merely the consequence of unhappiness. And so there are a lot of aspects of this study that are worth going into, but the major takeaway or the one that perhaps we should all be most concerned with is that when we are not focused on what we are doing, we tend to be far less happy than when we are focused on what we are doing. Even if what we're doing is something that we don't deem very pleasant. And certainly if we are engaged in something that we consider very pleasant and we are very focused on well then our levels of happiness or the highest that sort of obvious. ([Time 1:35:06](https://www.airr.io/quote/63765808ed93a3b7e5bcdf23)) - Note: Is this because creating order in consciousness is inherently pleasurable. This is why multitasking is so bad. Connect to multitasking note. Speaker 0: That's surprising to a lot of people because I think a lot of people here quality social connection and they think deep conversation. But it's very clear from the research that oftentimes our conversations with people that we are closest to are actually quite shallow. If you think about it, if you've been in a romantic relationship or a friendship for a long period of time or maybe even a sibling relationship or other family relationship, much of what you talk about is fairly superficial or fairly trivial. In fact it's often a sharing of the trivial day to day things between two people or through groups of people that leads to the feeling that people are really connected to one another. In particular ([Time 1:40:19](https://www.airr.io/quote/63765895ed93a3b7e5bcefca)) - Note: Create note it’s often sharing of trivial things that leads to feeling that people are really connected to each other. Speaker 0: connection, I think most of us tend to think about deep meaningful conversation or long walks on the beach or camping trips together or travel together. And while all of those certainly qualify as wonderful opportunities for social connection, opportunities for quality social connection are certainly not limited to those kinds of interactions. In fact, I can recall times in my graduate career. So this would be times when I was living in the laboratory because that was a significant portion of my graduate years. And one of the more important social connections for me was the staff that worked there in the wee hours of the night and that came in very early in the morning. So one of the more regular social connections I had is I would brush my teeth in the hallway bathroom and there was no one else really around at that time except for the janitors that tended to leave ([Time 1:41:29](https://www.airr.io/quote/637658d5ed93a3b7e5bcf8bc)) - Note: This reminds me of weak toe relationships from the hidden brain episode. Speaker 0: when people have an ongoing set of choices, it leads to reduce levels of happiness. Now that might come as surprising to many of you, but I want to be clear about what this means. This is not to say that having a lot of choices of what you like most leads to lesser happiness and that having fewer choices about things you do or objects you acquire etcetera, leads to greater happiness. What this set of experiments really points to is that when we make a choice, if we are forced to stick to that choice, we tend to be far happier with that choice than if we maintain the option to change our mind. The ([Time 2:05:41](https://www.airr.io/quote/63765cebed93a3b7e5bd860b)) - Note: This reminds me of cognitive dissonance. If we have the option to reverse our decision and we aren’t sure it was the right one, there is a lot of dissonance for our decision. I wonder how dissonance level relates to happiness.