filling in for Scott Galloway.
Pivot on Salesforce Plus.
Let's bring in our friend of Pivot.
Santos is a professor of psychology
where she teaches the university's
most popular course in over 300 years.
psychology and the good life.
She's also the host of The Happiness Lab,
a podcast based on her course.
She joins us today to finally reveal
a secret to a happy life.
Welcome, Dr. Laurie Santos.
Thanks so much for having me on the show.
We're just. Talking about.
You just wrote about Yale's
I don't know if you like being known
is destroying her students.
a little bit about your piece
and what you were talking about?
This anxiety is destroying your students.
I didn't write that quote.
That was The New York Times,
you know, blow quote to kind of
but but I do think, you know,
if you look at the level of mental health
dysfunction we're seeing in our college
really unprecedented, right?
Nationally, over 40% of college
being too depressed to function.
feeling overwhelmingly anxious.
So, you know, which could.
Be pandemic related, correct?
No, this is actually pre-pandemic,
said the last National College
And so some of these numbers
have gotten even worse. And so.
Well, what would be your your feeling
got an enormous amount of
the research is quite there yet.
and these rates of depression,
hang on to each other perfectly.
But of course, correlation
Another thing that we know is just
different is parenting styles, right.
professor, I get anxious parents
calling me about students
grades, about students rooming situation.
You know, this just again,
but it's different than it was
where you really have parents
stepping in to solve kids
problems in a different way.
you know, from the tiny, tiny
to getting a B-plus on an exam.
that parents need to call in.
that they're helpless in this.
sense of kind of learned helplessness
that's happening in this generation
I went to an all boys high school
who whose parents kind of
I was lucky enough to have parents
they were more like Kara,
you got to figure that out on your own
or you're going to have to go
You're going to have to have
I'm not going with you. Right.
If your teenage kids are messing up,
you might be doing something right.
if they're getting the worst grades
their first semester of college,
they're challenging themselves.
they're sorting it out on their own
the appropriate kinds of failures.
are really failure deprived.
And I think it really connects
to their mental health. Right.
If you've never missed anything up,
then the tiniest mess up seems enormous.
It seems like the kind of thing
that you should be really worried about.
What makes people happier than others.
So it depends where you are.
well below the poverty line,
if you can't put food on your table
or roof over your head. Yes.
is definitely going to help right now
or at least in in a 2009 study in the US,
if you start earning over 75 K, doubling
your salary isn't going to have
in your long term happiness.
okay, you could put in the time
to quintuple your income,
things you're grateful for
in your gratitude journal at night,
and that will have a five
fold increase on your happiness bigger
than quintuple in your income. Right.
you could talk to a stranger on the train
and much more significantly
improve your positive mood.
the money doesn't make us happy.
It's like it doesn't move
in as big a way as we assume.
This is it having family,
is it friendships? Is there
something that adds more to the other
than anything else to it?
Yeah, it's it's really all of the above.
to connect with really close
and close family members.
that talking to a stranger
on the train on your commute to work
improve your positive mood. Right.
Is really just other humans in real life.
So 3 million students have taken
this course on Coursera. Correct.
are seeking this answer to happiness?
I mean, I think we've always been worried
Like it's in the Declaration
It's like up there in life liberty.
But I think lately, you know,
we've been sold a lot of false promises.
I mean, look at my Yale students.
I think so many of them believed
if I killed myself in high school
and I put everything on hold,
and I'd be happily ever after.
And then they get to Yale
and it's like up the carrot. Just move.
Now I have to get into exactly.
or I have to get my investment
And so I think there's all these cheap
I talk about all the time
not the American promise.
So I think that the reason
that so many people are seeking out
People are putting time and effort
into improving their well-being
and they're putting the effort in
and it's just not working.
And so I think that was true before
and then the pandemic hit.
And I think people are really looking
signed up online to learn more.
What do you think the biggest challenge
to finding happiness is? If you had to.
You don't want to stack rank them.
But there probably is one big challenge.
And what's wrong with sadness, I guess.
What's wrong with sadness?
One thing that we get wrong
is that we think like true happiness.
The true sense of purpose in
life is really about being happy
smiling emoji, like beaming at you.
And that that's not right.
What we know from truly happy people
is that people experience
with their negative emotions.
of the kinds of experiences that happen.
to be sad in the face of sad stuff.
It's it's part of the human experience.
