Activating the Science of Happiness: Healthy Habits, Self-Compassion, and Meaning, with Dr. Laurie Santos
Science can change your life. The more we study what makes people develop, grow, learn, and flourish—the more we see how the practical application of scientific findings can help us transform our life and experience—into a life of value, meaning, purpose and true thriving. Yale psychologist Laurie Santos has spent her career investigating the human brain and how it thrives. From her popular Yale course to her podcast, The Happiness Lab, she’s communicating actionable and hopeful lessons for how to build lasting habits, cultivate self-compassion, manage complex emotions, and realign our lives toward meaningful happiness. In this conversation with Dr. Laurie Santos, we discuss: - How the mental health crisis affecting young people changed her, and how she teaches psychology - How our brains lie to us - The role of positive and negative emotions in a good life - How feeling good can lead to doing good - The psychological and relational benefits of faith and spirituality - And she offers practical insights, science-backed guidance, and powerful exercises for managing misalignment and difficult emotions. Laurie Santos on how to activate psychological science for more happiness and meaning (from the episode): “Some of these factors that we know scientifically do work. From simple behavior changes like being more social, doing nice things for others, just healthy habits like sleeping and moving your body, to mindset shifts, to becoming a little bit more present, to becoming more other oriented, to becoming more grateful, more self-compassionate, and so on. There are shifts that we can make that can have a huge effect on how we actually interact in the world. We need to understand that we're not perfect, we're just human. And we will mess up a little bit too. But it's really the journey that matters.” **About Laurie Santos** Dr. Laurie Santos is the Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology at Yale University and host of The Happiness Lab podcast. Dr. Santos is an expert on the science of happiness. Her Yale course, Psychology and the Good Life, teaches students how the science of psychology can provide important hints about how to make wiser choices and live a life that’s happier and more fulfilling. Her course recently became Yale’s most popular course in over 300 years, with almost one of our four students at Yale enrolled. Her course has been featured in numerous news outlets including the *New York Times*, *NBC Nightly News*, *The Today Show*, *GQ Magazine*, *Slate* and *O! Magazine*. A winner of numerous awards both for her science and teaching, she was recently voted as one of Popular Science Magazine’s “Brilliant 10” young minds, and was named in Time Magazine as a “Leading Campus Celebrity.” Her podcast, The Happiness Lab, has over 100 million downloads. Listen to [The Happiness Lab](https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos) podcast Visit [drlauriesantos.com](http://drlauriesantos.comhttps://www.drlauriesantos.com/) **Show Notes** - How Laurie got up close with the mental health crisis affecting young people - Self-care - The history of The Happiness Course at Yale University - The impact of COVID-19 - “Things have gotten worse.” - Statistics: More than 40% of college students report they are too depressed to function - Anxieties provoked by technology (Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge) - Stress levels across the developmental lifespan - How our brains lie to us - Behavioral changes and healthy habits - Mindset shifts and dispositional transformations - The importance of science for validating spiritual beliefs, values, and practices - Sometimes spiritual traditions get some things right, but can also be wrong, and need empirical study - Manifestation - Imagining the positive outcome isn’t as good as planning out the if-then strategy. - “The science can help us with the nuance so we can really get things right.” - Laurie Santos defines happiness - Psychological approach to happiness: “subjective well-being” - Positive vs Negative Emotions and the role they play in a good life - Why is happiness helpful to us? Is happiness really the goal? - The “feel-good, do-good effect” - Any cause-based activism requires - Laurie Santos answers: What is thriving? - Mindset and behavioral change - Non-judgmental response - Self-compassion and curiosity - “It’s really the journey that matters.” - Helping others - Burnout and Self-care - Stressors that lead to burnout - The impact of rest on productivity - Religion and Happiness: Are religious people happier than non-religious? - Social connection - Growing up Catholic - Comparing Beliefs vs Behaviors and Mindsets - It’s less about religious beliefs and more about religious practices - Communal Practices - Transcendent Emotions - Oversimplifying transcendent emotions - Awe and Wonder often come along with a disturbance, such as feeling very small, feeling out of control, feeling disoriented, feeling overwhelmed, etc. - Dacher Keltner’s tourist studies “Draw yourself in your scene” - Feeling tinier, and yet more connected - “I’m part of everything, but I am nothing. How do I deal with that?” - Evolution and the human mind - What is our brain for? It’s for survival. It’s not for feeling great. - Negativity Bias - Kent Barrage: Neuroscience of Hedonic Pleasure - Liking vs Wanting - Drugs of Abuse - “If there was one thing I could change about the brain it would be …” - Psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin - David Yaden (Johns Hopkins) on psychedelic drugs - We can change (and a lot of people are shocked by that) - Can’t change vs. Changing circumstances - Sonya Libermursky - “Yes, you can change, not by changing circumstances, but by changing your habits.” - Netflix and a glass of wine? Or something healthier? - Introducing new habits over time - Meditation Practice: Cultivating Presence When Things are Feeling Bad - “Nauseously Optimistic” - Tara Brach and Radical Acceptance - R.A.I.N. (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture) - Fundamental needs - Natural selection and cravings - Craving doomscrolling on Reddit - [*Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing](https://www.ivpress.com/thriving-with-stone-age-minds)* (Justin Barrett and Pam King) - Self-flagellation, frustration, and criticizing ourselves - [Kristin Neff on Self-Compassion](https://self-compassion.org/) - Self-Compassion: Mindfulness, Common Humanity, and Self-Kindness - How to talk to yourself - Self-compassion is helpful for cultivating new habits - Practice: Self-Compassionate Touch - “The beauty of self-touch is that your brain is stupid. It doesn’t know who’s touching you.” - Taking stock and paying attention to our own emotional dashboards - New Year’s Advice: A moment of fresh starts and new beginnings
