What Smart Women Get Wrong About Food, Motivation, and Happiness – with Dr. Laurie Santos | TMOHP Episode 187

 Melissa McCreery: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am really glad you are here for this episode today because I have a conversation to share with you that I think is so important for all of us to hear. This conversation is about why maybe you're working so hard and you're not as happy as you think you ought to be.

Maybe you're not feeling satisfied. Maybe you are really frustrated with yourself around overeating and emotional eating and feeling like you're not getting anywhere, and you're just so mad and guilty about the whole thing.

Maybe like many of us, you are stuck in a cycle with your thoughts, where your brain is actually telling you what it takes to be happy. And it's a lie. I've brought in an expert to talk to us today, and Dr. Laurie Santos, she knows what she's talking about. Dr. Santos is an expert in the science of happiness and in the ways our minds can tell us lies about what it takes to make us happy.

She's a professor at Yale and her course there, psychology and the Good Life became Yale's most popular course in over 300 years. With almost one out of four students enrolled in this class. Her course has been featured in the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, the Today Show, GQ Magazine, O Magazine. And the online version of her class, which is the Science of Wellbeing course on coursera.org, has tracked over 4.5 million learners from around the world.

She's won a ton of awards both for her science and her teaching, and she was recently voted as one of popular science magazine's Brilliant 10 Young Minds, and she was named in Time Magazine as the leading campus celebrity. She has her own podcast, which is the Happiness Lab. It is a top three Apple podcast and has attracted over 150 million downloads since it launched.

And you've probably heard her because she seems to be everywhere these days. So I am thrilled that you've taken time out of your schedule to be here with us today. Laurie, welcome to the Too Much on Her Plate podcast.

So Laurie, I am so glad to have you here and when I was thinking about you coming on the podcast after sharing your introduction, I'm sure everybody can realize we could go in a million different directions. There's so much stuff we could talk about. But what I really want to talk about is why, why we're so hard on ourselves. First of all, why we're so hard on ourselves and why we are not happier.

And I have a feeling we're going to talk about how that kind of interacts and overlaps with how food ends up taking up so much space in Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Laurie Santos: yeah. I think all of the three of those interact in really nasty ways when it comes to how we feel a lot of the time. But yeah, starting with this idea of why we're so mean to ourselves.

Yes. I think it's partly because we have bad theories of motivation. I think so many of the people listening to this right now are people who are, you know, successful folks, right? Like women who are driven, who have goals, who want to get things done, who want to say yes to as many projects as possible. And we kind of have these theories about how you do that.

And I think one theory we have is the sort of drill instructor theory of motivation. That the way I get the most out of myself is I scream at myself like a drill instructor and push myself really hard. And if I didn't do that, then I'd never get off the couch. It'd just like be me on the couch with the bon bonds all the time. Right?

And I think that that causes us to talk really meanly to ourselves. I think it causes us to not give ourselves grace about limits about the number of things we put on our plate. It causes us to have really harsh views when we inevitably mess up. because we haven't given ourselves enough space or rest.

But I think it come, it comes from a good place, which is like, we're just trying to motivate ourselves. And, and we can ask whether that's a good theory of motivation, right. You know, like, is that just the way the human mind works? And turns out psychologists have looked and turns out no. Really terrible way to motivate yourself is to scream at yourself.

True for motivating anyone. It's like fun fact that motivating anyone screaming at them doesn't, you know, work as well as you think. You know, what it causes is it causes lots of procrastination. It causes a lot of resistance. So you do the thing that you're, you scream at yourself to do for some time. But then as soon as you stop screaming, you go in exactly the opposite direction.

And of course, it makes us feel pretty crappy. So not such a great actual way to motivate ourselves.

Melissa McCreery: Why, why is it so compelling? Because when you describe that, and you know, when I think the, the question I always ask people and everybody, yeah. Would you talk to your friend this way? Right? Mm-hmm. Would you motivate your child this way?

And it's always so obvious that no, of course not. Yeah. Yeah. Why is it so compelling to be so mean to ourselves? Why do we keep coming back to that?

Laurie Santos: Yeah, I think it's two things. One, I, one, I think we like to believe we can take it, right? Mm-hmm. We don't really want to push our kids or our best friends to the breaking point, but we have these messed up theories about what we can do.

I think this is also why we schedule ourselves with too many things on our plate. It's why we kind of push ourselves past the breaking point when it comes to our goals and our rules about eating and these kinds of things. I think we kind of think like, no, no, no, I can take it.

Which sort of fits with the that, that's nice that's a nice feeling to have. It feels like we're really, we're tough, we're sort of badass, like we can take it. But of course we're also human. We, you know, have the same constraints as other humans. I think another thing is that we're really worried that we're going to be too soft on ourselves.

We're really worried about self-indulgence. Right. And I think we don't worry as much about indulging our friends or our kids. Maybe we should be worrying more about indulging our kids a whole other different conversation. But I think we're really worried that if, if we didn't kind of hold ourselves to the rod, that we just would never get anything done.

And so I think it's, it's almost like the pe, we really don't want the pendulum to go in a self-indulgence direction. And so we wind up swinging it too far towards just being mean.

Melissa McCreery: Which is so interesting. And that was actually something I wanted to ask you because I feel like this idea of self-compassion, which I talk about a lot, and which I think is so important.

And yet, I feel like it's this word you have to kind of be very careful about. Mm-hmm. Because for a lot of people, it feels like, first of all, I don't know why self-indulgence is bad. I think we, maybe we could talk about that. But also, I feel like people are okay maybe with self-compassion, as long as you say, well, it's not self-indulgent, it's not being too kind to yourself. And then there's this whole idea that self-compassion is fluffy.

Laurie Santos: Yeah, it, it has terrible marketing. Terrible marketing. Yeah. If we called it like, you know, maximum performance for women or something. Which it is empirically, people would be really into it. But yeah, self-compassion sounds fluffy.

Melissa McCreery: But wait, say more about that. How is, how, tell me how self-compassion is maximum performance for women.

Laurie Santos: Well, there's so much empirical data on what happens when we talk to ourselves with self-compassion. And it's worth kind of defining what that means yeah again, because as you know, we get this wrong so much. I love the psychologist Kristin Neff's definition.

She's a professor at UT Austin and she talks about self-compassion is having these three parts. Part number one is a sense of mindfulness. You know, what's going on. You're like, this is tough right now. This is really hard right now I feel like a failure. I feel ashamed I'm having a tough day.

And you. You kind of experience that mindfulness with a kind of sense of radical acceptance, like you're not kind of pushing against it. You're just like, this is how it is. This is tough right now. That's mindfulness. Part number two, which I find is the hard part the hard part for probably a lot of the women listening to this podcast. Is the common humanity part.

You say, this is really tough right now and that makes sense because I'm just human or that makes sense because this is a really hard time in my schedule. Or That makes sense because everybody screws up and feels ashamed sometimes. Right? You say common human experience. I'm not some magical robot that can do everything. I'm just a human like everybody else.

That's kind of part two of my of self-compassion. But part three is the magical part. And that's what Kristin Neff calls self-kindness. You say, how can I be nice to myself? What can I take off my plate? How can I treat myself like a friend, right? Given that this is a common human experience, how can I just like, treat myself like I'm human?

 And those three things together are the kind of thing that allow us to talk to ourselves with more kindness, more compassion, but also to treat ourselves better. And so Kristen's gone off and said, okay, if you talk to yourself with those three parts, mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness, what happens?

And she finds it really is just like a fabulous formula. You procrastinate less; you wind up achieving more. You wind up being kinder to the other people around you. because one of the hardest people to be kind to as ourselves. So then once you get good at practicing compassion to yourselves, it's really easy to be compassionate with your kids and your spouse, and your coworkers and so on.

 But more it gets you through incredibly tough times. You know, she's done this lovely work with people who are in true traumatic situations. So she's worked with veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. And she finds the ones that she can train to talk to themselves with kindness that go through the same horrible stuff.

They're in as much combat, see as much death and destruction, but they're less likely to come out with rates of pt, high rates of PTSD, this post-traumatic stress disorder. Even when things are actually going bad, when your mindfulness is going, this is terrible, this is an awful situation. You don't react to it as awfully because you're not beating yourself up the whole time.

Melissa McCreery: I think that's so important and I actually think that first, the first stage mindfulness because, and I teach that a lot like the fir it is self-compassion to say this is hard. Or I'm having just a crap day. Or, you know, I, I'm so tired of this battle with food. I am so tired of, you know, and here I did it again and it is so hard.

And I think that the idea that that is okay or that that's important. I guess it goes against the inner drill sergeant thing that you were talking about.

Laurie Santos: Totally, because you're not allowed to have a bad day, you know, with the drill sergeant. Yeah. It's like, and, and I think that, you know, a symptom of not paying attention to that mindfulness step, to not noticing what's really going on.

Is all the stuff you talk about in this podcast. You know, what, what are you kind of filling the void with if you can't allow yourself to admit I need rest, or I need a break, or this is really hard? You often fill it with food among other kind of mm-hmm bad things that ultimately are not going to serving your purpose of recognizing No, what I need is rest or know what I need is just an acknowledgement to myself that this sucks right now.

and so I think that mindfulness first step is so critical. Because if you're not paying attention to that, you wind up doing all kinds of things to cover up the fact that it's not really going okay. And that doesn't really serve you well either.

Melissa McCreery: And there's shame too, right? Shame and guilt. Because if you are not supposed to be a human being, and if you're not, if, if this isn't supposed to be hard. Yes. Because I think that's the thing, right? It's like, well, it shouldn't be hard. We should have figured this out.

Laurie Santos: I mean, the steps, when I, when I engage in mindfulness, it's often like a meta mindfulness of like, this is hard right now. And I don't want it to be hard. I'm ashamed that it's hard. I'm embarrassed that it's hard. I'd like to pretend it's not hard. I'd really like to push through and it not be hard. That just makes it all worse. Of course.

Melissa McCreery: Well, okay, you say of course, but let's talk about the difference between shaming ourselves and guilting ourselves and having a more, a self-compassion approach. Yeah. Would tell me about what you can say from science and yeah.

Laurie Santos: Yeah. Well, I think that common humanity step is really the critical one. You know, I'm like, that's the moment where you're like, this sucks right now. I'm ashamed right now. That's step number one. Which is already hard, right? To give ourselves space to notice how crappy we are feeling. But if we get to the point of noticing how crappy we are feeling and saying, and that makes sense.

Not only do I not have to be ashamed of it. Like. Of course this is happening. Like there's no one to whom this doesn't happen. Like I'm just a human. It's okay. And even as I sow those words to you on your podcast, I'm curious what listeners are feeling. I just feel like a, like, it's okay. It makes sense. There's nothing wrong with me. It just like. This is just how it is, right?

Already you can kind of lift that kind of moment of feeling like so ashamed and so kind of caught up and just feeling this nastiness. Like, nah, that makes sense. Of course, everyone goes through it. I do this with my students. I'm, I'm still, I'm a faculty member at Yale and so I teach lots of incredibly type A brilliant students whose tendency to beat themselves up is incredibly strong.

And when I just tell them like of course you're going to mess up your first year. And like, you know, feel like you picked the wrong classes. Of course you're going to feel overwhelmed and like there's not enough time to get in these opportunities. Like, that's just what it's like to be an Ivy League student. Like everybody feels like that.

You can just watch their shoulders drop and just like, huh, I have permission to feel how I'm feeling. I don't have to have that additional layer of shame, which isn't working.

Melissa McCreery: Well, not only work, not working, but it, it, it derails everything, uh, because of course you're having these experiences as a freshman at Yale, or of course you're having these experiences when you're trying to change your relationship with food.

Because you're used to doing something else, and this is, this is that learning moment, right? Mm-hmm. This is mm-hmm. Where it's, you're figuring out what works and what doesn't work. And when we go into shame and guilt, it just, I, I feel like com self-compassion is one of the things that opens up the possibility for growth.

Laurie Santos: And that's exactly right, because when you're not, when you're, when you're in the mode of both denying your feelings and denying that it's natural. You don't look for the right solutions, right? If I, if I'm like, it is my fault that I feel this. I shouldn't feel this about changing my relationship with food. It should be so easy, right? What? What the heck's my problem?

Now I'm not looking to correct solutions about like, well, maybe I need some rest or maybe I need to open things up, or maybe I need to change my rigidity. I'm just thinking that the correct response is, well, I got to push myself more. Then the drill instructor, you know, starts cracking the whip even further.

Right? And so I think the problem is that it doesn't work because it doesn't allow us to see the right solutions. And the right solutions often come from that third step of self-kindness you say. What do I need right now? Or a phrase I have, I've heard you say on the podcast, what do I know about what I need right now?

Sometimes it's hard to admit that we need something, right? We're still, still baby steps in the self-compassion. But what do I know about what I need right now? How would I talk to a friend? What I, what would I suggest to a friend? That she needed right now. If, if she was in the same situation I am in. And now the problem solving is turned on, now you're looking for adequate solutions.

Like you don't need another diet plan, you need to rest. Or you need to ask your husband for some help, you know, around the house with the kids. Or you need to do the hard step of taking something off your plate.

I think when we think self-compassion, there's a different kind of mistake we make, which is we get into the like self-help magazine mode of self-compassion where we think it's like it's a bubble bath or it's like a whatever. And often it's, it's not, it's, it's a hard conversation with somebody that you might need to ask help from. It's really admitting that you know, what you're pushing yourself to do is just too tough.

You know, maybe the, the expectations you have about whether it's weight loss or your relationship with food, maybe you got to ease up on those. because it's just realistically just not going to happen. And those are a lot harder, you know, than running to the nearest, you know, drugstore to get a nice bath bomb.

 Those are tricky. But you can only see those solutions if you give yourself the space and the kindness to, to allow yourself to say, without shame, this is a real limit as a human, and, and I have to honor that.

Melissa McCreery: Okay. What you said there just struck me as so important. I mean, this idea that we have to have space is huge.

And, and that self-compassion can be uncomfortable, right?

Laurie Santos: For sure.

Melissa McCreery: She doesn't have to feel good. It's not, that's not the litmus test that it is. Being really kind to yourself sometimes is uncomfortable. But it takes space to be able to see that and also to do uncomfortable things.

Laurie Santos: Yeah. And I think that this, this kind of, how would you treat a friend?

You know, thinking of self-compassion as kind of being compassionate to others. You get that sense that it's uncomfortable, right? Some of the most compassionate conversations I've ever had with friends are some of the most uncomfortable, right? They weren't uncomfortable because I was treating my friend like a drill instructor, and I was like, you need to change your behavior. And screaming at them.

They were uncomfortable because I said, look, I care about you and this isn't working. Like, let's, let's problem solve. Why are we going at it like this? Right? Let's kind of get to the, you know, the real reasons behind this, which can be hard to look at. And then you get to the solutions of what you have to do, and it's often really uncomfortable.

It'd be all, this whole process would be easier if we could solve all our food issues by just buying a bunch of bath bombs and like being compassionate in that way. Sadly, it often takes harder conversations with ourselves and, and if we're being compassionate with others, with others.

Melissa McCreery: But I bet there's somebody trying to sell those bath bombs.

Laurie Santos: I know. They're like food rules, bath bombs. I'm sure there's one. Yeah.

Melissa McCreery: So, okay. At competition with self-compassion or in competition with self-compassion is so often the soundtrack that we have in our heads. Mm-hmm. Right? Like you can listen to this podcast episode, you can read Kristin Neff's books. You can do all this stuff, and then you still have the drill instructor in there who just feels like she sabotages everything. Mm-hmm.

For somebody listening to this, who knows, I don't talk nicely to myself. It is not helpful, but it just feels like who I am. What have you, what do you know about what works to start to change that?

Laurie Santos: Yeah. Well, I'll say if you're listening to this and think I talk to myself like that, you're already at step one, right?

Because you've noticed that terrible voice in your head. I find that it's even harder when we're at the stage before that, which again I see in lots of my students, and I'm sure you see in your practice of people trying to change their relationship with food. Is you don't even realize the voice is as harsh it's as it is. Right?

And so if you're thinking like. That drill instructor sounds like me. It's like, you know, sergeant me in my head. You're already at stage one because you realized it. Now the next step is just to practice probing that voice and questioning it. And there's a few ways that the research suggests we can do it.

One that I love because it's just so easy. Is just to give a name to that voice. You know, you can call it Sergeant Laurie, or you can call it Karen. A lot of my students use Karen because I think that's just like a name that they make fun of. Apologies to any Karens who are listening now. But call, call it whatever, you know call it your mother-in-law like.

But say, okay Sergeant Laurie, I hear you. You think, you know, you're really screwing up right now and that sucks. Why is that so powerful? You're just distancing that voice from reality to like a voice in your head. And the studies show it's really powerful. It just gives you a little psychological distance to ask, do I need to believe that?

Could I, could I think something different, you know, based on this thought? So that's kind of step number one. And then step number two is to just practice. Going through those three steps that Kristen Neff talks about to engage a little self-compassion. She has a hack that I love teaching my students, which she knows that sometimes changing our self-talk is really hard.

But it's easy to bring in a physical behavior and there are lots of physical behaviors that signal self-compassion and sort of self-love. If you're listening to this on the podcast, you can't see, but a quick action you can do is just. Take your hand and kind of stroke your arm in a nice way or give yourself a little self-hug.

You know, if it was your child who was going through something, you'd probably have an instinct, going to give them a hug or kind of like a little stroke. Oh honey, it's okay. You just do that physical thing to yourself. And a beauty, funny thing about the human brain, it doesn't know who's touching you. We know about this in other kind of contexts, right?

But like it doesn't know that that hug’s coming from you. It just feels. You know, a very soft care best and a kind action towards itself. And it works. And that can be a nice signal I know for me that I need to switch my talk around. So when I'm hearing the drill instructor, voice Sergeant Laurie is going off, I say, you just give myself a little hug, and then that's a signal to go through those steps.

Mindfulness, this sucks right now. I hate this. I feel really ashamed that I'm having such a hard time with this. Calm humanity. But this just makes sense. This is how you process, you know, this relationship with food. This is going through a tough time in life. Self-kindness. What can I take off my plate? What do I know about what I need right now? How would I talk to a friend who is going through something like this?

And it, for me, when I'm doing the kind of self-stroking or a little self-hug, it's just a little cue. Okay? Change your self-talk around. So that's one that I love to use.

Melissa McCreery: That's really useful.

And it reminds me of a conversation I just had with somebody who I think if she was here would say, okay, I got the compassion piece. I can, I can give myself the little hug. I can ask myself, okay, what do I need? What do I need to do? And then she would tell you for the next, and, and I'm. Realist. She would give you a very realistic list of why she could do nothing and it was impossible and the situation isn't fixable.

And of course she's, and she has plenty of compassion. The situation sucks, but, but it's a loop. Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So I'm, I'm just wondering what your thoughts are about that. because we've all been there. Yeah.

Laurie Santos: Oh, completely. Right, and, and you know, I'm talking about this stuff as though I'm good at it. I'm as much a student as one of my Ivy League students.

We're all human beings. We're all human beings, and we are all learning, right? I mean, the sad thing is like, none of this stuff is natural. Right. I think a motivating factor that I sometimes think about is that there's also lots of evidence that the more you can develop a self-compassionate voice with yourself, you make it easier for the people around you to use that voice. Especially moms and their young kids.

So if as a mom you struggle with this, but you want your kid to be nice to themselves, you don't want your kid screaming at themselves like a drill instructor. Practicing it with yourself is one of the best ways to teach it. And so sometimes I find that factoid can give people permission mm-hmm. Who otherwise have a trouble with this to kind of do it themselves.

But yeah, no, it's, it's hard. It's hard for all of us. But yeah, I think if you're in the mode of recognizing, like, ugh, I just, I just can't, I see no path forward. This is where I think this role playing as a friend can be really helpful. And, and one way that studies from folks like Ethan Cross at the University of Michigan suggests we can do this is just to talk to ourselves literally as though we are a friend using the pronouns we would use to talk to a friend, namely you, second person, Laurie.

 It sounds a little goofy. It sounds a little Yoda like from Star Wars in your brain mm-hmm. Where I'm like, Laurie, you can do this, or whatever. But there's literal studies showing that it's powerful.

So when you get really stuck, say, okay, I don't know my way out of this. Let's talk about this, Laurie, what can you do a little bit differently? Is there any path forward? Is there anything you can take off your plate, Laurie? Well, you know, maybe I could take off, you know, just one meeting. Okay. Where are you going to take off that meeting?

Right? You know, just like go into your calendar and cross something out or just talk to like really look for something. But you see what I'm doing there? I'm saying, look Laurie, you can do this, and two things happen. One is when I hear, Hey Laurie, you can do this. That activates a friend talking to me. I'm much more likely to take compassion with that kind of style of language than if I'm talking to myself.

But the second thing it does is more powerful. It turns you into a better problem solver. Usually when I'm using you the second person language or talking with somebody's name, you know, Dr. Melissa, you should do whatever. Usually I'm coming up with good strategies. because we're much better at giving advice to other people than ourselves, right?

When we have that conversation with a friend, we're much better at giving advice. But we are just like turning on those same mechanisms for ourselves and just those little language cues. Do it. I mean, there's some just fascinating studies where you tell people, you know, talk to yourself and how you'd normally do it.

Like, oh, I'm such a, you know, what is going on? Why can't I do this? Versus, hey, Laurie, you can, you know, how should you figure this out? And just that little linguistic switch gets our problem-solving mode going better. It causes people to be more self-compassionate, but it also causes people to ruminate less.

So you don't get stuck in those loops as much. And you're more likely to come up with. Better strategies. It also shuts off negative emotions. So talking to yourself in the sort of second and third person makes you less anxious too. Which I think is, you know, part of our struggle when we're in the mindfulness loop of this sucks.

Anything we can do to reduce that emotional burden can be helpful too.

Melissa McCreery: That's, I love that. I love that. I knew a little bit about that, but, okay. So because you're right, it sounds kind of ridiculous just mm-hmm. To your, okay.

Laurie Santos: And I think with all of these, like, I mean, there's a lot of ridiculous stuff that works that just like, that looks ridiculous.

That works, right. It's funny, I feel like we accept this in the like food and diet domain. If there was like, you know, videos of us doing half the stuff we do to try to develop a perfect relationship with food, we'd look really stupid. We accept that there. But when it comes to being kinder to ourselves, you know, well that sounds stupid.

I'm not going to try it. You know, so just try it. Mind are dumb, like they're in beta version still. There's a lot of stuff that looks dumb that's really quite effective.

Melissa McCreery: Yeah. This whole question of why we are so against being kind to ourselves, I, I find it really fascinating. So when I, when I was, sharing your bio, I love that there's this, how, how you are, you know, expert at, the science of how our minds lie to us about what makes us happy.

And I want to make sure we, we go into that. I mean, we have been, but uh. Because that, as you know, touches my heart. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it's so insidious, right? Just like, just like the drill sergeant versus the self-compassion. We think we're doing the right thing. We think we are helping ourselves. So tell us, tell us more about how we are lying to ourselves. And some of the stuff that maybe we're doing that we think is good for us that just keeping us stuck.

Laurie Santos: Yeah, I mean, there's so many things, and I think so many things that are really relevant to, to what you cover on this podcast, right? Like how we can develop a healthier relationship with food. So one of the big ones is how much we prioritize money, accolades, material possessions, stuff.

More and more and more, more, more. Versus just having some rest. Just having some free time. Tons of studies on this new concept that's called time affluence. Which is kind of being wealthy in time. Usually when we think of wealth, we think of money and material stuff. This is being wealthy in like the ability to just look at your calendar and there's just like space for stuff.

And if your friend texts you is like, hey, I'm going to be in town in the next couple weeks, do you have time for coffee? It's not like, how about never. Because like you just look and you just have bandwidth. Right? We, or at least I'm imagining many of the people who listen to the podcast, me included, just do not prioritize this stuff at all.

Right? How many times do we grab that last 15 minutes in our calendar just to like, add one more meeting with the hope that, you know, it'll make us a little bit more productive. Or it'll get us, you know, one more accolade at work or something. And study after study shows. We'd just be better off leaving that space open.

Studies show that if you self-report the opposite of time affluence, which is what researchers call time famine. Where you're literally starving for time. I think it's very relevant how much these metaphors like play into food concepts, right? That if you're feeling time famished, that's as bad as recently becoming unemployed for your wellbeing.

So if you say, I'm really starved for time, that's as bad as losing your job, right? In terms of your happiness and your wellbeing. Yet so many of us, not only feel time famished, but we do it willingly. We do it kind of knowingly. Ly we do it. We're proud of it. Magic honor, you know? Yes. Like, how are you doing this week?

You know, how was your summer? How are you feeling? Oh, busy. And then we kind of pat ourselves on the shoulder. because look at us, we're so busy. But it's actually kind of making us miserable. And so one of the big happiness hacks that I talk to my students about and that I honestly really try to work on myself is, you know, sort of fighting that lie of the mind, right?

Trying to realize that a little bit of spaciousness and time is going to matter more then, you know, whatever performance I'm going to get at work from that next meeting. And even trying to kind of hack my time so that you feel like you have a little bit more time. Because sometimes let's be realistic. You know this folks, if you're listening now, you probably have a lot on your plate, whether it's kids or work or whatever.

Objectively opening up more time might not help. But there are things we can do to do that. You know, in our brains, but maybe not in real life. You can, for example, spend some money to get back some time, right? Hire the neighbor's kid to mow the lawn, you know, get takeout just so you save yourself a little bit of work or just, you know, the pre-chopped veggies, whatever it is.

Just kind of giving yourself a gift of time can feel amazing. This is one of the reasons that every time I teach my happiness class on campus, I like to have one lecture that's in the syllabus on time affluence. But the trick is that it's not going to be a lecture. Students are going to show up for class and I hand them a little flyer that says, hey, time affluence is so important and now I've given you some surprise no class.

And what's amazing is how students react. You know, it's only an extra hour and 15 minutes that they get. But some of them literally burst into tears and they'll say things like, I haven't had a free hour and a half in, like, as long as I can remember. You know, so giving yourself that gift, like literally if you're listening right now. Go into your calendar months from now, just put a little block in there and you're like, Google Calendar that says time affluence.

And I promise when you hit that hour, you will enjoy it. But we just don’t realize that that's when we think of a gift we can give to ourselves, it's a treat. You know, it's something that costs money. Whereas the true gift to ourselves might be spaciousness to rest, to think about new creative ideas, to meet with friends, to do whatever. But just spaciousness. No should in a small time block can feel amazing. But but our brains don't realize that

Melissa McCreery: we are so wired to do right.

Everything to do. What should I do? How can I, how do I, what do I do to fix it? What do I, and it's the older I get and also the more I do this work, so many of the answers have nothing to do with doing.

Laurie Santos: Yeah, but it can be so hard to stop doing. I mean, this is something I know I experience too, right? Even when I get those little time affluence blocks, I'm like, well, now I will do the thing that will, you know, maximize this time.

I will meet with friends. I will meditate; I will go exercise. Like even in my brain, I'm trying to fill it with stuff that I can do to feel happier. But you're exactly right. What you really want to do is just. To be. To get rid of all the, the shoulds. The shoulding, all over yourself as I like to tell my students.

Melissa McCreery: Well, I think, you know, we get so into what do I need to do, and the question of who do I want to be?

Laurie Santos: Mm-hmm.

Melissa McCreery: We don't ask.

Laurie Santos: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And our brains are really prone to see more and more and more. It's really hard for us to think in terms of less, less, less. You know, if you're feeling unhappy, often you want to add something to your plate. You know, maybe you want to buy something.

Or maybe if you know the happiness science, like I'm going to add a meditation practice, or I'm going to add a new exercise routine. It's very hard to ask what am I taking off the plate? Like not, not take off the plate to then meditate, right. But just like take off the plate. Like I'm just going to cross that off.

So hard to do. And I think it's just like any tricks our brains don't think in terms of absence,

Melissa McCreery: any tricks that will help sneak that past our brains?

Laurie Santos: Well, one is to use the fact that we're less worried about the productivity of our future selves, you know, so if I said, today, go in your G cal and take an hour off. You'd be like, uh, I can't, it's already packed up. I couldn't cancel that meeting.

But if I say in three months, go in your g cal and put a little block that says time affluence, that doesn't feel as scary. And so locking yourself into future time, openness and really locking it in, right? Don't just have it and then cross it off. That can feel safer and once you get up to it, it can be really helpful.

Another way to do it that I find because my schedule's often really packed is that I like to use when you have these moments of windfalls of time to leave them open. So I have this new rule that I'm trying out this semester that if something gets canceled, I can't put anything into that date. It still stays in the date book.

So I travel a lot to give talks. I was supposed to be traveling to give this talk and it recently just got canceled. It's like about three weeks away. And I have promised myself that I'm going to leave that talk in the calendar. It's as though it still exists. I can't fill it with something else. And that works because you know, as it.

You know, it was recent that it was in there, right? So it kind of, it's even easier than like going in and erasing it. But that like lets us use these little windfalls of things that we get in the future to be kinder to ourselves. Those are just some little silly hacks I use, but the stuff is hard. You got to come up with these little mini rules, mini hacks to, to protect yourself.

Melissa McCreery: But I think what you've, what you have shared today is such a service because you've given us the why, right? Mm-hmm. This is, I love to, listening to your podcast. I love talking to you because you can stuff that, okay, I know this. You can give us the facts and the research behind us and like, no, it's actually proven.

It actually is. It's actually is a, a high-performance technique to have self-compassion, right? Yeah. I love that one. Right? Spaciousness. Spaciousness is good for you. Like all these things that sound good. Or they sound kind of good and maybe they're a little fluffy and dangerous you can give us mm-hmm some proof for.

Laurie Santos: And, and this is the thing that we get wrong so much. If our only goal was to be as productive as possible, you know, calm and humanity be damned like our rest be damned. Right. The ironic thing is what we would probably do is talk to ourselves with kindness. What we know from the productivity work is that we would, what we would do to be the most productive as possible is to work for a small, shorter amount of time.

A new podcast that's coming up, is one where I talk to Juliette Sho, who's the author of the Four Day Work Week, and she's been doing studies for decades, finding that when we work less days, we wind up more productive than if we worked more days. So oftentimes when people switch from a five-day work week to a four-day work week, they get more done than if they had worked for the full five days.

And that seems mind boggling. Like our brains just can't latch onto that. But what that means is we're often not just setting ourselves up for lives and schedules that feel overwhelming. That cause us to, you know, have bad relationships with food and not take care of ourselves. But also, we're working less well.

Like we're, even if our overall goal is productivity, we're not achieving that as well as we could be.

Melissa McCreery: I love this. I love this. So all this is just great. I want to say ammunition, but I don't want to use that word.

Laurie Santos: Yeah, like it shouldn't be the case that we have to like figure out what's, we should just want to do it to take care of ourselves.

Yeah. But it's more ironic that we're wrong about how to be most productive. Right. It'd be one thing if we were a drill instructor and it's like, hmm, actually just being super mean to yourself is a way to go if you want to be productive. But like our brains are wrong. It's actually just being nice to ourself is though what to do if you just want to be productive.

Melissa McCreery: I love it. Okay, so if people are really excited about this and they want to know more, where can they get more Dr. Laurie Santos?

Laurie Santos: Yeah, so you should check me out on the Happiness Lab podcast, which you can download wherever you get your podcast. Wherever you've got this podcast, you can check it out. And I actually have a free course online on coursera.org.

It's called The Science of Wellbeing. So if you want a more like in-depth nerdy version, you can hop on there and learn more that way too. On coursera.org.

Melissa McCreery: Coursera. It's COUR…

Laurie Santos: like course ERA, like corer. Okay. Or honestly, if you just Google Laurie Happiness Lady course, you'll find it.

Melissa McCreery: And we'll put the link in the show notes and all those places where we put links.

But that's such a great resource. And did, are you doing something for. Teens or kids or,

Laurie Santos: yeah. So one of the funny things we heard, when we first put together that course, uh, was so many people said these strategies, like, I wish I learned them when I was younger. Or, you know, I, I'm a parent and I really want my teens to learn this stuff.

So we did a version of that online class for teenagers. We called it the Science of Wellbeing for teens, so that's also available on YouTube and Coursera. I'll give you the links. But a funny thing, once we made that course that we found, which I think fits with a lot of the stuff you talk about on your podcast. Is that when we looked at who was actually taking that teenager course, it was more parents who were really anxious about their kids, who were trying to learn strategies for the kids, but then also for themselves.

So we recently made a version of the course specifically for busy, overwhelmed parents called the Science of Wellbeing for parents. So if you're a parent who is like, I really want to learn these strategies for my kids, but secretly I want to learn these strategies just for myself, we can hook you up with that new course too.

Melissa McCreery: Yeah. And you're allowed to do things just for yourself. Exactly.

Laurie Santos: It doesn't have to just be for your kids. Yeah.

Melissa McCreery: Okay. Anything before we wind this up? Anything we didn't talk about or that you want people to walk away with? because this is fun. No, this was great. Yeah,

Laurie Santos: yeah. No, this was great. Thank you.

Melissa McCreery: Thank you for taking time out of your very, very busy schedule and this has just been phenomenal.

I really appreciate you.

Laurie Santos: Thank you so much.

Melissa McCreery: Yeah.

Laurie Santos: Yay.