IMO Live at SXSW: Combatting Hopelessness with Dr. Laurie Santos

This episode is brought to you by Rivian.

Please welcome to the stage former First Boston. Hi, Craig Robinson.
My big brother. Yay.
He's's so nice you all are nice but how about my sister Michelle Obama yeah you know I'm not used to being up here with somebody usually when I'm speaking I'm speaking on my own, but I got company. I appreciate it.
And I appreciate Monica remembering that I used to be a coach. Go Beavers.
We heard a lot of that. Thanks, Monica.
When was the last time we were on a big stage together? You remember? It's been a while. Remind me.
What are you thinking? I am thinking about the 2008 convention. And that was a big moment for me because that was Barack's first campaign.
And in that campaign, people didn't know me. So I got accused in the press of being angry and combative because of the way I spoke.

So I found that I had to use this speech to reintroduce myself to the country. So this was a big speech, major speech at the DNC.
I remember that. And my big brother introduced me.
And we were on stage together. It was quite an honor.
It was quite an honor. But in his introduction, when you're on stage and you're doing a big speech, you have teleprompters.
So you have prompter in the front, have prompter on the left, prompter on the right, because you're reading from the prompter, because it's timed. You got to hit it right.
It's national. It's live.
But let me cut in here. She had to read from a prompter.
I memorized mine. Here we go.
Favorite child. He memorized everything.
Memorized. Memorized.
Well, my speech was a little longer, a little more impactful. So, so I needed the teleprompter, right? So he does this beautiful introduction of me.
It's all action-packed.

And he says, and ladies and gentlemen, the next first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama.

And I come on stage and they're cheering.

And we do this greet in front of the prompter where I think that my big brother is going to lean down and give me a hug and say, you got this girl.

I love you.

I'm so proud of you. So I go out there and we're on national TV, and do you remember what you said to me? I do.
I do. You leaned down to my ear, and you said, left prompter out.
And he walked off. I was looking out for her.
Left prompter out. I was looking out for you.
I knew you hadn't memorized it, so I didn't want you to be surprised. But, you know, I mean.
When that wasn't working. So now I'm thinking, what was he talking about? So I'm waving, trying to play it off, and I'm walking up to the stand.
And what he meant was the left prompter was out. And I was like, okay, good looking out.
But but anyway that was my brother looking out but that

was the last time we were on stage that was the last time and look at us now we are here launching our new podcast IMO yeah and we're already doing a live show I know this is our first live show. Okay, y'all.

But

before we go any further, I just want to say how grateful we are to partner with the folks at Rivian who have enabled us to do this podcast. Thank you, folks.
I really appreciate it. Now, we're really excited.
We've got a lot of great partnerships, and Rivian has been top of the heap, and we're going to be doing something with them after this. So we'll be able to talk to RJ, the head of that joint.
So we're excited to be here. So how's this working? How are we going to do this, this podcast? Well, what we've been doing, we're going to chat a little bit.
So you guys will get a sense of our dynamic and sort of some of the lessons we learned growing up. And some of this podcast was started because, you know, this last year was pretty, I won't say completely say completely rough but we had some we lost our mom this year for those of you don't know Marian Robinson and as a result yeah yeah our mom she and our dad were some amazing people and I think as a result of that loss Craig and I you know it brought us even closer together we were already close but I don't know about you but there's just something about losing what was our last parent and any time in your life when you lose a parent it's tough but you think you're going to be ready for it as an adult, but I think, you know, part of losing mom, it kind of puts us in the position where we are the, we're the wise ones in the family.
Hard to believe, huh? I know. I mean, I talk to Malia and Sasha about this all the time as they are becoming adults.
I know Malia always says, well, when do you actually feel like an adult? And I was like, never, not really ever. Do you feel like you know what you're doing? So I said, the fact that you're in your twenties and you feel like you are clueless, it's like you're right on schedule.
Because I remind her that even now at 61 and how old are you? 63. Let's be very clear.
He's my big brother. Although people, because she's so iconic, people think I'm her little brother, if you can believe that.
Well, that's because you're bald and you have younger kids. That is true.
I think that helps because he's got a set of older

kids and he's got a set of younger kids as well. So he, I call him the head of the ODC, the old dad's club.
He is president and CEO. But even at this age, it's a little daunting to think that now we kind of have to step up in our family and be that wisdom.

Yeah.

And we're always doing it at home with our families answering questions. So we're going to be doing that with our listeners.
So as we get going, you'll see we'll have listener questions and we'll have one later today. So stay tuned.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, um, you know, our, our, our goal is to share some of what we learned. We know people are going through some tough times and I don't think Craig and I are feeling any different than anyone out there.
Um, you know, we're, we're dealing with a lot of uncertainties. Um, I, for one, uh, feel for folks who are struggling and will continue to struggle in these uncertainties.
I worry about folks being out of work. I worry about how we think about diversity and inclusion.
I think about how we treat one another and the voices that we hear and what that does, what models that setting for the next generation. Who do we want to be as a country, all of that keeps me up at night and I know that a lot of people are struggling with some of those things, but I find in those moments that it is better not to try to figure that stuff out alone.
And for me and Craig and our family, you know, we always try to step outside of our loneliness and talk as a family and as a community and to share those concerns. And I hope that our listeners are pushed to do some of the same things too, that, you know, we're not going to figure this stuff out on our own and that we need each other and we need to step out of our loneliness and start talking to each other.
So hopefully this podcast will spark some conversation, but more importantly, I hope it leads people to seek out their own communities of trust and conversation so we're not sitting alone in these feelings. So that's my hope.
And, oh, go ahead and clap. Yeah.
See, we're not used to a live audience yet. So no, I absolutely agree with Mish.
And to her point, and in the video, we talked about not having all the opinions. Or all the answers.
Or all the answers. We have a lot of opinions.
We got plenty of opinions, but not all the answers. We're going to have a guest with us on most of our episodes.
But sometimes it'll just be the two of us kind of chopping it up. But before we bring out our special guest today, I thought I'd pose a question to my sister because we were we we we it's interesting now that we're doing the podcast.
We talk all the time, but now we save our talking for when we see each other. Like, don't don't say anything.
Don't say anything. Save it.
Don't say anything. But do you remember how how mom and dad taught us how to handle adversity? You know, yeah, yeah.
I talk about this in both of my books. For those of you who don't know our story, our dad, Frasier Robinson, he developed MS in the prime of his life.
You know, he didn't always have it. He grew up as a boxer, an athlete, a swimmer.
And, like, in his early 20s, he contracted MS, and he couldn't walk without the assistance of a cane, and the disease progressed. So we only knew our father as someone with a disability.
And I think that growing up with a parent with a disability, looking back on it, we were always kids that were growing up with a real sense of vulnerability right before us. Because our father was the sole breadwinner.
Our mom stayed home. He was a city worker.
So that salary was important. I think we knew that.
But to know that the person that you lean on most, you know, is vulnerable, I think it always made us clear about adversity. I think we lived within adversity to a certain extent.
and it sort of made us both a little wary in interesting ways for a kid. And Craig, I don't know if you remember little things that we didn't at the time tie to our dad's disability, but Craig was always like doing disaster preparedness stuff around the house.
I mean, I kid you not, this little boy, and he was about 10 and I was always his willing sidekick running behind him. Like, what are we doing now? And he came home one day and said, you know, how are we going to get out if there's a fire? So he made us all, do you remember? I do.
I do. Tell your little worries.
So I was, I was worried about, and you know, back in the seventies, there were a lot of house fires. I don't know about you guys.
There weren't smoke detectors. There weren't smoke, no sprinkler systems.
We're talking young people back in the stone age. So I was always worried that we lived on the second floor and our dad couldn't get around.
So how would we get out if there were fires? So I, coming home from school

and having done a fire drill. At school.
I set up a fire drill for us at home. But it wasn't just that.
He had to make sure that he could drag our dad to safety. So he made.
I made my dad. Get on the floor.
He had to be humiliated.

But he humored you.

I had him stand up, and I grabbed him from behind and put my arms under his shoulders

and then just leaned him back, and I dragged him through every room of the house

to make sure that I could get him around, and he let me do that. Yeah, yeah.
God bless him. Yeah, yeah.
But that indicated this little boy was worried about some stuff that probably a normal 10-year-old wouldn't worry about. And that wasn't it.
He would tie his left hand behind his back. My right hand.
Your right hand, because he was right handed, because he was worried that he would lose the use of his right hand. So he needed to know how to do everything with his left hand.
There was one week that you walked around blindfolded just in case you lost your, I mean, his eyesight. And I'm there, little me going, no, to your left, Greg, to your right.
No, wait. She was right there.
Right there. I was like, I don't know why we're doing this, but my brother says we're doing it.
And our parents would just humor us. But while we lived with probably that underlying level of uncertainty, I think when you talk about how we learn to deal with adversity, I think we learned it by watching our father persevere.
Because let me tell you, our father, despite his disability, was a man who got up every day and went to work. I mean, I don't remember a time in our life that our dad missed a day of work.

Blue-collar worker.

He took... up every day and went to work.
I mean, I don't remember a time in our life that our dad missed a day of work. Blue collar worker, he took pride in the little things that I think we take for granted, like paying your bills on time, not being house poor.
That was a word, we don't want to be house poor. But my father would never let a bill go by.
He was resilient, and he was positive in his life. He was a joyful man because I think adversity was relative in our house.
Because if you could walk, if you could hold down a job, if you could take care of your family,

if you could love your kids, if you could live with honor and decency, well, who cares if you

couldn't walk? He saw the blessings. So I think as I look at it, for me, we learned to,

I mean, adversity was relative. Adversity was a part of life, but it wasn't everything, you know, that you'd have to just work your way through it.
And the other thing I think dad taught us was gratitude, immense gratitude. I mean, our father, as you could tell from the stories, was a kind, gentle man.
He rarely raised his voice or got angry, but you know when he was disappointed in us was when we showed a lack of gratitude for what we had. You know, if we had a bowl of ice cream and we were looking for the second scoop before we finished the first the first group what would he say never satisfied

never satisfied that would be the one admonition never satisfied i hate those two words to this day yeah um and you know so when when i i face adversity his words stand stand you know sit in my brain. what am I, what do I have to complain about? What is it that I can't overcome because of the model that my father set for me? You know, why wouldn't I be happy? Why wouldn't I be able to get through this? Because we saw a man do it every day and do it without complaint.
Because if anybody had a reason to complain would be my father, who was a black man growing up in Chicago, raised in desegregation, who was an intelligent man with ability to do art, but couldn't live up to his promise. I mean, there were a whole lot of reasons for our father to be upset and angry and not happy and to feel disappointed, to feel sorry for himself, but he was the exact opposite.
And so that's what I think about when times get hard. It's like, look, my dad would push through it.
Right, right. And we could talk about our dad for two shows, right? But we've got the perfect guest to talk about happiness and adversity and all that kind of stuff.
Dr. Lori Santos is a Yale professor.
Oh, you guys, all right, all right. Yeah, yeah.
Good. She's host of a wildly popular podcast called The Happiness Lab.
She's also the teacher of one of the most popular classes at Yale. Wish we had this when we were here.
I wish we had it. And that's psychology and the

good life. And she's just an all around great person.
So can you welcome Dr. Lori Santos, everybody? Well, hey, Professor.
Hey, Michelle. Thank you for being on here.
Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A little intimate group. This is a little intimate chat.
So how did you come to teach the course? I know you've answered this question a million times before, but what led you to understand that young people today need a course on how to be happy? Yeah. Well, I took on this new role on Yale's campus where I became what's called the head of college.
Yale's one of these funny schools where there's like colleges within a college, like Harry Potter, like Gryffindor, Slytherin kind of thing. So I became head of a college on campus, and that meant that I was like living with students, like eating with them in the dining hall, hanging out with them up close and personal, and I just didn't realize the college student mental health crisis was as bad as it was.
You know, right now, nationally, more than 40% of college students say they're too depressed to function most day. More than 60% say they're overwhelmingly anxious.
Like, this was a real crisis that I was seeing. And that felt really frustrating because, like, my field has all these strategies we can use to feel better, experience more resilience, feel less stressed.
And I was like, let me just develop this class. And then it got very, very big.
Not as big as this, but pretty big.

Well, unfortunately, we're on a time constraint here, and I cannot wait to hear you talk more about your podcast and your class,

but we've got a live questioner here,

and I know we have a person, James, are you here? Oh, there he is, James. James, can you stand up? All right.
I'm standing. All right, James.
All right, brave man. Hey, so excited to be here.
My question is, I'm 28 and I live in LA. The fires impacted people close to me and it feels like that's only going to become more frequent.
And everything that's been happening politically, domestically, and globally, it feels like a version of the world is ending. And when I talk to friends, they say, this is the new normal.
And my immediate instinct is to push back. You know, we can't accept this.
But personally, living with the inevitability of it, it also forces me to rethink what I always assumed adulthood would look like. You know, buying a house, starting a family.
So my my question is do you have any advice on how to plan for a future that feels so different from the one we were promised without becoming apathetic or just resigning yourself to things getting worse thanks so much thank you james yeah that that's an amen from everybody in this room, right? Everybody's feeling like that a bit. Lori, you want to start by taking a stab at an answer? I mean, yeah.
I mean, I think the first thing to answer, the first thing to say for that question is that this is normal, right? You're not the only person in the room that's going through that. And I think that normalization is critical.
All too often we can get into this toxic positivity vibe where it's like I'm feeling kind of embarrassed that I'm so upset and frustrated and overwhelmed, sad about what's going on in the world. But we're supposed to feel that.
Negative emotions are normal in an abnormal world. And I think it's fair to say that we are, you know, it's not great, but we are in an abnormal world right now.
And so I think that's kind of point number one. The other reason that normalization is so important is that psychologically, it can help us.
When you realize that these negative emotions are a common human experience, that they're emotions that are there to help you, they still don't feel good, but it can allow you to get through them a little bit better. Even here in UT Austin, there's a researcher, Kristen Neff, who studies this process of what she calls common humanity, right? Recognizing, like, we're all going through it right now.
And what she finds is that can actually help you get through tough times. She does this cool research with Afghan and Iraqi veterans and finds that those that give themselves self-compassion realize that everybody's going through a tough time here.
They wind up coming out with less evidence of PTSD and other related disorders. So like when you give yourself a little grace for feeling those negative emotions, realize they're normal in bad times, that actually helps you get through the negative emotions.
The other thing that I want to get your take on, Lori, is what's happened to the bar on happiness happiness because it really feels like these days that the expectation of young people are so high and some of that I think is our fault as parents you know when we were growing up I mean life was a lot simpler you know I mean just to give you an example of excitement in our house was getting

pizza on report card day if we got good grades you know I mean at Christmas time we could ask

for three gifts that was it you know go through the Sears Robux wish book you could pick three

things out and that was it wait the young folks don't know what that oh yeah it's it's a it's a

catalog first of all Sears and rope that was the only store you go to you get your card

Thank you. is it? Wait, the young folks don't know what that is.
Oh yeah. It's a catalog.
First of all, Sears and Rope. That was the only store you go to.
You get your car tuned up in a washing machine and your school clothes all in one place. And they have a catalog.
And you know what a catalog is, young people? It's the thing you look through for items and you pick it out. Well, that came out each year and that's where all the toys were.
So, you know, our parents just, you know, they were happy that we got good grades. You know, I can tell you, did my, our parents push us to go to Princeton? No, they were just like, go do something with your life as long as you're a good person.
But when I think of young people today, the standard for happiness is like gone through the roof. I mean, you don't just go to college, but there are like seven colleges you can go to, or it doesn't matter.
Or, you know, people, you look on house hunters and everybody's looking for, you know, marble counters and tray ceilings and a, you know, House Hunters and everybody's looking for marble counters and tray ceilings and a man cave. And there's a certain car.
And you're not supposed to be successful, but you're also supposed to be famous because social media tells you that that's what it means to be happy. So I guess that's a long way of asking, is some of this, you know, not just the world, because the world's been bad, and it's been worse than it is right now, but people, young people are more unhappy than I think we ever were with a lot less.
That's right, and we have data on this, right, looking across time, and those rates of depression,, anxiety and stuff I just talked about, they're worse than they are in young people right now than ever since we've recorded them, right? Like it's, and it's much worse. And I think you're exactly right.
I think it's a lot, our expectations, right? We have tools that allow us to see those fancy houses, those fancy vacations, those fancy schools. And they're just in our pockets, dinging all the time, giving us a comparison that makes us feel kind of crappy, right? And what we know from the happiness science is that it's not what we objectively have that makes us happy.
It's what we're expecting. It's what we're used to.
You know, that's why I love the story of your dad, right? You know, just getting a little bowl of ice cream, like that should be enough, right? And so I think, especially in young people, the definition of enough has changed. There's lots of reasons for that.
But I think getting to a better point of accepting and what our expectations are, that'll help a lot. And that's different from being complacent, right? Because I think we were taught that you don't need everything and you're not entitled to everything.
You're not, we were taught, not even

entitled to happiness. Exactly.
Our parents didn't think they were responsible for our happiness. For anybody in our generation, you imagine a parent who worried about whether your child was happy.
We didn't come from that. It was like, you're not happy.
Get over it. Read a book.
Get out of my face, move along, go outside, you know.

And our generation of parents and me, we lose sleep if a little person is sad today. And it's like sadness and anxiety, that's all a part of life.
But we, as we parent our children, sometimes I think we've made them a little less resilient. And again, that's not to say that people aren't dealing with real anxiety and mental health issues.
But I think one of the things I try to think about as a parent, and I think our parents did to us, they tried to prepare us for what the world was going to be, which was oftentimes disappointing, most of the time hard. And there would be deep anxiety that you'd have to get through at all times.
So they gave us those tools much earlier than I think some parents today are willing to let their kids go through some of those tough feelings. So then they get out in the real world and they're confronted with a whole lot of emotions that nobody ever told them was coming.
That's right. And I think it leads to mental health crisis, not just in our young people, but also in parents.
The former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy talked a lot about parent mental health and parent stress. He actually issued like a public health advisory on the fact that parents are going through their own tough emotions.
But the biggest tough emotion that parents reported is guilt as though, you know, they're not doing enough for their kids' happiness. They're not doing enough to kind of give them everything they need.
And I think that reflects exactly what you're saying. Laurie, I want to get, James' question sort of deals with a little bit of hopelessness there.
And I was just trying to figure out, what does it mean for our culture with so many people feeling hopeless? Yeah. It was bad, as you probably guessed.
Not great to live in a completely hopeless culture. And we really do live in more of a hopeless culture than we ever have before.
Your researchers go out and study this and they have over time.

One of the best questions for this is they just ask people, on average, can you trust

the other people around you, right?

In the 1970s when they asked folks that question, around 50% of people said, yeah, on average

most folks can get trusted.

When you ask that same question in 2018, it's down to a little less than a third.

That doesn't sound like a big drop, but if I was plotting that, that's basically how

much money we lost in 2008 when the financial crisis happened, right? So this is a complete off-a-cliff decline in people's sense of trust and people's sense of hope. And it's bad for lots of reasons.
It's bad for us personally, people who experience less hope, experience more depression, experience more anxiety, experience more loneliness, which is interesting. Hope seems to be connected to our social connection.
Also bad for our bodies. People who are more cynical report experiencing more diabetes, experiencing more heart disease, and it's probably bad for us as a society because when you don't experience hope, what you think is like stuff's never going to get better.
And when you think stuff's never going to get better, you don't take action to make it better, right? You don't vote. You don't do things pro-socially to help other people.
And what you find research-wise is if you study people who are cynical, they self-report not voting, they self-report not donating to charity, not doing the stuff that you need to do to make things better. So yeah, it's really bad.
And it becomes a vicious cycle, right? Because as more people get hopeless, then they look out in the world with this hopeless lens. They post on social media with a hopeless lens.
We get podcasts that are very hopeless. And it just becomes a cycle where we reinforce each other's bad perception of the world, one that might not even be really accurate.
Yeah. And you talk about that transference, the ability for us to, you know, export our bad energy onto other people.
And we naturally, as humans, we pick up those cues. Can you talk a little bit more about that transference that you? Yeah, I mean, we know for sure that emotions are contagious, right? They're just like COVID.
And we know this, right? You go into an office and you hang out with somebody who's feeling hyped up and optimistic and excited. You kind of catch that, right? You go into the same office with somebody who's down and not feeling it.
Like you catch that too, right? These days, we don't just catch emotions from the other people we're around. We have this transfer system online where folks are catching emotions globally.
You know, I hop on some social media platform. I'm catching some emotion from somebody on Instagram that lives in a different country in a completely different time zone, but I catch that too.
And that's made worse by the fact that these social media companies obviously have algorithms that thrive not on us catching each other's positive emotions, but on catching each other's anger and outrage and sadness, right? That's what gets eyeballs on our phones. And so all these things together means not just that there's transference, but there's particular transference of the bad stuff, of the hopelessness.
Michelle and I are here in Austin for South by Southwest, and we are joined by the Rivian founder and CEO, RJ. RJ, how's it going? It's going well.
It's great to have you guys here. It's great to be here.
It's great to be here. Great to be with you.
And we are just so grateful that Rivian is a sponsor, not just because you're a cool guy, but the cars are amazing. So I was just like, Rivian is one of our sponsors.
Are we going to get to drive one? And lo and behold, we did. You guys have outfitted us with cars.
Thank you. That was really nice of you to do that.
And I got to tell you, for me being 6'6", and for you probably, which is now I understand why there's enough leg room in the car. There's ample leg room in the front and the back seat.
And then if you want to use the third seat, there's plenty of room there. Not only leg room, but headroom, storage space, the navigation system.
And it made me wonder what was in the mind of somebody who developed such a beautiful car. Well, first, thank you for joining me here.
I mean, the story goes way back to me being a kid. And I grew up a massive car enthusiast.
And I realized as I got a little bit older, I realized they were causing so many problems. There you go.
And so you first realize they're polluting, so they're causing air quality issues. Then you pull the thread, you're like, oh, it's causing a lot of our global disputes with challenges of access to oil.
Then you pull the thread a little further and you're like, oh, this is one of the primary contributors to climate change. And then I fell into this feeling of like, oh boy, these things I love, is it wrong of me to like cars? And decided I wanted to work on them and be part of a solution to figure out how to make personal transportation and the

automobile something that can continue to exist and exist in a positive way. Sure.
You know, we had a wonderful conversation here at South by Southwest about hope. Yeah.
And because a lot of people are feeling a little hopeless these days. And I think when I hear your story about being a 10-year-old, you know, starting out as a 10-year-old with enough of a dream, and you're here now with a line of amazing cars that are environmentally responsible, that are creating jobs all over the country.
And it's a beautiful product. I think it reminds us that, you know, even when things are dark, you know, if we invest in our kids and believe in their dreams and give them the space to create, you know, that next generation is going to come up with the answers that we need.
We have a guiding principle that we use in how we make decisions within the business. And some of the hardest decisions, you can get completely sort of twisted around thinking about how to make the decision.
And the way we simplify it is we think of it through the lens of our kids, kids, kids. Yeah.
And it's helpful both in terms of helping you to identify what are the important pieces, but I find it's incredibly inviting to all different points of view. And a lot of the debates and discussion and some of the tension we see, I think, in society today is actually around different tactics on how we create a better world for our kids, kids, kids.
And I think it's just important to recognize that at least that's a point of commonality. And whether you're on whatever side of the political you're on, whether different countries, different cultures, everywhere I go, I find that to be really consistent is that we as humanity want a better world for our kids.
And so when I look at the world as we're in today, we've got a complete global ecosystem that's been built around fossil fuels that we, this generation, is responsible for driving an inflection point off of that. Yes.
And that was already like an amazing opportunity. Like how lucky are we to be part of the end of what the history books will say many, many years from now, the fossil fuel era.
Right. Yeah.
I think it's a remarkably exciting, but as you said, a challenging time.

Yeah.

Well, congratulations on everything you've accomplished.

And thank you so much for believing in our vision of the types of conversations that

we can have to help spark that promise in the generations to come. We're happy to be involved.
So thank you. Thank you.
You know, our mom, and Misha will remember this, obviously, we didn't have social media growing up, but we had friends who had stuff or friends who said things. And our mom was always, why do you care about what they say? And I find trying to give my kids that advice is hard with social media.
And I think a lot of parents find it hard. How do we balance that these days with social media? Because, you know, we recently were talking with someone else who was telling us, if you take social media away, you got to replace it with something.
But my question is, how do we help folks find a balance here? Yeah. I think one of the ways to find a balance is just to realize that what we're exposed to affects us, right? You hop on Instagram and you start scrolling through that feed.
You might know that some of the stuff you look at is Photoshopped. You might know that some of the stuff, you know, these companies are, they have algorithms that are sort of pointing you in a bad direction, but that doesn't enter psychologically.
You're just soaking in emotions and then the stuff you see, right? But I think that knowledge can be a little bit of power, right? You can even ask yourself, like, how do I feel after that scroll through Reddit or through social media? And ask yourself the question, do I feel more empowered, more hopeful, or do I feel kind of gross and, like, in despair, right? You can make the choice to put that away, right? You can kind of notice mindfully how it's making you feel and you sort of choose to stick it back in your pocket. Social media companies wouldn't have these algorithms if all our eyeballs weren't on phones anymore.
And we actually have more agency than we often remember in that fight. People always ask me and Barack, how did we stay hopeful in not just the eight years that we were in the White House, but beyond? Because let me tell you, there was a lot of negative energy floating our way, a lot of rumors, a lot of gossip, a lot of, you know, my husband wasn't born in this country, we didn't care about, we weren't patriotic, you know, he didn't get into Harvard.
I mean, you know, I don't know if you all remember. I certainly do.
He wore a tan suit. Wore a tan suit once.
I mean, you know. Blasphemous.
A level of scandal. Please.
That occurred. But through it all, what kept us sane, and we tried to instill this in our daughters, is, you know, you cannot live through social media.
I don't think I have ever once looked at a comment section, period, at all, ever. And I know it's difficult for this generation, but, you know, I would implore young people to stay, don't let that negative energy enter into your space.
These are people who don't know you. A lot of this stuff is made up and it does not feed you.
And I, you know, I mean, you can't do it. And we never do.
Now, that doesn't mean you don't stay informed. But staying informed has nothing to do with the comment section.
You know, it has everything to do with the content of the stories that you take in. And I think, you know, we cannot get so trapped by social media that we feel so caught up into the one way we get information.
We've got to broaden our spectrum and we have to get off the phone, you know, which is another thing. And I would love for you to talk a bit about that as a tool.
I know you've got a lot of tools, but there are a lot of people here of all ages who are trapped by their phones. And when you talk about us being disconnected and not talking to each other, I am not out in the world like a normal person anymore.
But when I am, people don't even recognize me. You know why? Because they're on their is looking at each other i could walk right past somebody with a hat on you know and i'm just a black woman in a cap um but that's i don't know no i've done it i don't know about i have done it i fly commercial i am out there with the people and folks are not paying attention.
I fly commercial. Okay.
Okay. See, it's a good thing I'm here.
It's a good thing I'm here. You know with this face walking around flying commercial, how's Michelle? Tell Michelle I said hi.
How's she doing? They okay? Anyway. Strategies.
Strategies. Yeah.
I'm going to get a mute button for her. Yeah, no, but strategies.
I mean, I think awareness is really key here. One of my favorite strategies for sort of dealing with your phone and being on your phone all the time comes from the journalist Catherine Price.
She has this lovely book, How to Break Up with Your Phone, where she argues that you don't have to break up with your phone so much as you need to take it to, like, couples counseling so that you can, like, deal with it better. But she has this really handy acronym that she uses whenever she finds herself on her phone.
It's WWW, which you can think of because you're probably on the World Wide Web, right? But this is not World Wide Web. WWW stands for what for, why now, and what else? So what are you on your phone for? Maybe you're checking your email or looking at a map.
Maybe you're just deep in some TikTok dive, right? Was there a purpose, right? Why now? This is an important one because you notice your emotions. What drives you to your phone? Were you bored? Were you anxious, right? What's your your cue that gets you there? What's that craving coming from? And then finally, what else? What's the opportunity cost of being on your phone right now? You might be missing Michelle Obama on your flight.
There's a saying right next to you. You didn't notice.
You might miss the beautiful scenery. You might miss the opportunity to talk to someone who has interesting stories, interesting ideas.
right? That what else question is critical because what studies show us is that because we're on our phones, we're less social than we could be. A lovely study by Elizabeth Dunn at the University of British Columbia had people with their phones or without their phones sitting in a waiting room.
They weren't even using their phones. It was just like present or not.
And she just measured the amount of smiling that people did, you know, casual, somebody's in your room, you smile at them. She sees 30% less smiling when phones are present, right? Calculate that by all the phones, you know, on planes and Austin and so on.
So, so we're really missing out. But that strategy of WWW, I think what it gets us towards is like, we just have to be mindful.
We just have to notice. These are good tools, right? We know even from COVID times, they were so useful.
That's right. But we just have to use them in a healthy way.
Yeah, I love that. Lori, what can we do to find hope when things are tough? Like in James' situation, he's looking at his friends who have lost things in a fire or other personal disasters.
What can we do? Yeah, I think there are a couple things, right? One is making sure you have the right definition of hope, because I think sometimes when we think of hope, we think of what at least psychologists might call optimism, where you're just like, everything's going to be fine, and I think that everything's going to be fine is like, I mean, look at the new, like, look at X, like, look anywhere, it's not fine, right? And so I think it's important to, like, call it the way it is. It's not fine.
But hope isn't that. Hope says things are not fine, but I can actually see at least a few paths for things to get better.
Why is that psychologically so important? If you think things are fine right now, are you going to act? Are you going to take agency? Are you going to do anything about it? No, because you're just kind of, things are fine right now. The world's not on fire.
When you experience hope, what you feel is things are not fine right now, but there's a path. What does that path do? It gives you agency.
It gives you a sense that something can be done, and probably I can be a small part of what needs to get done. And that small part is key, because I think when we think we have to be the only one out there fixing everything, that also makes us feel a little overwhelmed and sad.
But when you realize that you're a small action, you're checking in on someone, you're donating five bucks to a cause you care about, you stepping up in any way to make things better, that actually matters. And one of the things we know psychologically is that it also helps us feel a little bit more hopeful when we take action, right? So you show up at that cause you care about, go to a protest, right? Donate some money.
Psychologically, you start to feel like, oh, we're even getting closer to a solution because I stepped up. Maybe other people step up.
You also see good social evidence that you're not the only one. You show up at a protest, you're usually not the only one there.
You get a whole room like this full of people who care. Now all of a sudden your beliefs start to change.

So you can, instead of being that vicious cycle of hopelessness that we talked about before,

you can become part of a virtuous cycle of hopefulness.

And that's the kind of thing that can also be socially contagious.

And as somebody who has seen all kinds of power at work,

you know, I've been at some of the most powerful tables. One of the things I remind people of is, yes, there is large power.
There are a handful of people in the world who can do a few things that can impact so many. But the truth is that the small power that each of us has to do something right in front of us, if we're all doing that, outweighs anything that, you know, some big leader somewhere can do.
I mean, if you just think about, yeah. Just think about as our parents did, you know, Marion and Frazier Robinson, who didn't go to college, you know, mother stayed at home, father was a city worker.

And let me just stop and give a big shout out to city and federal workers, people who are the lifeblood of this country. Also, those jobs help to create an entire middle class of people like our fathers, our father, our parents, and they do the lion's share of the work in this country.
You know, if we're going to start asking who's doing what, I would, from my experience, the folks who are working on the ground and picking up our garbage and making sure that our, you know, schools run and that our air is clean and that

our flights stay up in the air, that those people are the true heart and blood of this country. but

um

um But that power is what changes things. You know, those parents, with the little bit that they were able to do with their power, raised two of us.
And if you just think that if everybody on this planet was valued and had an opportunity to have a job and to take care of their kids and to raise them with some level of honesty and kindness and with humanity and taught them to love everybody and to be inclusive, you know, just imagine if everybody did that little thing right in their plate. You know, if you're going to have some kids, you know, if you can have the courage and the power to exercise that small thing of raising them with some truth and some honesty, just imagine where we would be right now as a country.
You know, imagine what our leadership would look like and how we would ask them to speak and to act and to model. That is the beauty of small power.
So as James thinks about what to do, I hope that retreating into hopelessness is not on the list. Because shoot, if my dad didn't, this is how I feel, if my father, Frasier Robinson, didn't retreat with all that he could have retreated from in times a lot tougher than this, because he wanted to lay a foundation for us, then we have that obligation, all of us, to do the same thing.
We can't afford to be hopeless, I would say. Yeah, and I love that you share the story of your father because it's also one of the strategies that we can use, a tiny strategy we can use individually to do better, which is sharing these positive social stories.
Like the world and social media, all these algorithms are filled with terrible stories, but you can actually see the good ones. You can say, you know, my dad in the midst of experiencing this terrible disease was hopefully taught us gratitude, right? And, you know, it doesn't even have to be Michelle Obama's dad, right? You can find these little examples of moral goodness, but don't just keep them to yourself, share them.
And I think if you're a parent, this is one of the best things you can do to your kids, right? Because they maybe don't have as much kind of frontal lobe power to go out there and find those good stories. Over the dinner table, what moral goodness did you see today? What was something that delighted you, that kind of made you happy, specifically about what somebody else was doing? We don't share these enough, but the sad thing is like they're out there.
We just don't hear about them enough. And so that's one of the reasons I'm so glad y'all are doing this podcast.
Oh, that's nice. Because there's going to be way more stories than that that come out that allow for what researchers call social savoring.
We're sort of savoring the goodness of other people. And that's also a way, I'm sorry, Craig, for people to use their social media, you know? You know, it's there.
For a reason, there's power in it, you know? but we have to resist the notion to use it to harp on each other, to diss and to, you know, spread gossip and to, you know, I mean, each of us in our world can encourage the people within it to use the tool for good, you know. It is a choice that we can make.
Right now, everybody in this room, everybody listening to this podcast who hears us, you can make a choice to either use these tools for good or use them for evil or to use them to appease your frustration. Because remember, as Lori said, we pass on that energy.
We're passing it on. Our anger, our rage is one of the reasons why when our household, we use the motto, going high is important because going high is the model, especially if you have a platform like we did for eight years.
Yeah, it's easy to get on a big platform and rile people up and to say hateful things and to make fun of people. Of course, anybody could do that.
Any leader can do that, right? That's the easiest way to lead because you're sort of tapping into your easiest basis, you know, core and you lash out, you share that anger. The strength and the power comes is when you can harness that and understand that if you have a platform, if you're going to be on social media, that you now have an obligation not to spread hate and bitterness and anger.
And if only because I want to give James some takeaways, but I. This is Craig's job.
We also have we also have the happiness doctor here. So how can we.
And let me back up, because our mom used to say you're responsible for your own happiness and that was some of the most empowering advice she ever gave us how can we help those out there who don't have a marion robinson or a social group how can we help them work through making themselves happy well your mom might have been a better happiness scientist than you guys thought because she's like reading the evidence out there because that's what the evidence really shows is that it takes some work, but you can do things to feel better, even in a horrible situation, right?

Even in a horrible situation, there are things you can do to feel a little bit better.

And I think one of the biggest ones is really to connect with other people.

You know, you talked about the problem of phones leading us away from each other.

You talked about the loneliness crisis.

Like you're in a room with lots of other folks right now.

You're probably in lots of rooms with lots of other folks.

Just talk to them, right?

Check in on your friends.

Reach out to them.

These things sound silly.

They sound like such a tiny thing to do.

But they allow us to get towards more civic action, right?

They're really, like, in a very tiny way, the basis of democracy, right?

Just talking to people and getting to know them, right? And so in your own small world, do that and reach out to the people that you care about. We often assume, again, that that's kind of a silly thing to do, but what the studies show is that when you're reaching out to other people, when you're checking in on other people, that boosts your happiness too.
So you're ultimately, by doing nice things for others, growing the pie, and you giving yourself a little bit more of a sense of hope. Cause whenever you take action, you're like, Oh my gosh, I have some agency.
Things can't be that bad. I can make it a little bit better.
And I know Craig, you're a coach. You've coached, you've, you know, mentored.
Um, I, I know that, you know, mentoring isn't just about, just about giving, you know, it's about what you get in return. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, I, you know, I started out in corporate America and moved into coaching, but I always felt like I wanted to be a coach or a teacher because I was coached and mentored by my dad, my mom, and really good coaches.
And I thought it was really the reason why I got to do all the wonderful things I got to do. And I felt like I needed to share that with all these other young people out there.
And to Lori's point, it makes me feel fantastic. And it just is just such a wonderful, warm feeling to be able to help folks.
Yeah. And I think another thing that we can do again, kind of channeling your parents, because I think they were on top of this stuff is what your dad said, right? Find something to be a little bit grateful for.
That can feel big in the situation that James is in, right? When it feels like everything is collapsing around you. It's hard to be living in LA in the midst of these fires and be like, well, I'm grateful for, if that feels hard, choose a like lighter version of that strategy.
Look for just something that's a little bit of a delight in the world, like just a delight, something great. This is a practice I heard from the writer Ross Gay.
He has this lovely book called A Book of Delights, where he decided every day he was just going to go out and find some small wonder in the world that delighted him. And they're tiny things, like you see somebody on the train give each other a fist bump.
You walk into a cafe and it's playing El Debarge, like Rhythm of the Night, which is like, great song. And Bosque was like, that's a delight, right? And what it does is it allows him to train his brain away from something that our brains do naturally, which is what researchers call a negativity bias.
We instantly notice all the bad stuff. You scroll through your feed, and your brain is locked on to the bad information.
But to find the good stuff, to find the delights, you've got to put a little energy into it. And when it becomes a game, when you know you're sharing them with someone else or writing them down, now all of a sudden you find them a little bit more quickly.
And one of the reasons I love Ross's book is that he actually shows that this power of delight can help you fight all kinds of stuff. In lots of ways it's a book that deals with a lot of the bad stuff that's going on.
It talks really explicitly about racism, it talks really explicitly about cultures of violence and things like that. But when you find the delights, you're able to kind of get through it.
It's like you're kind of padding yourself with some positive emotion to deal with the negative stuff. And this is one of the reasons I think we need to find our light a little bit more is the other thing that research shows is that if we want to make changes, we kind of need the emotional bandwidth to do that.
And one of the ways you do that is finding your light, right? Focusing on positive emotions. There's this researcher, Konstantin Kuchlev, who works at Georgetown, and he asked the question, who's out there doing the work to solve the problems, right? Who's showing up at the protests? Who's engaging like climate justice? And what he measures is people's positive emotion and he finds that the more you self-report having more positive emotion versus negative emotion, the more you're going out to that protest for a cause you care about, the more you're donating to kind of fix the things out there in the world.
It's kind of like putting your own oxygen mask on first so you can help others, but it's not just like others, it's like helping the whole world. And so that, that bit of research has helped me because sometimes it can feel bad to not be hopeless in a hopeless world.
Like if you're going through what James is going through, it's like, should I experience delight? Should I get happy? Because El Debarge is on in this cafe. It feels like weird.
But his research helps me because it's like, no, it's almost your responsibility to find positive emotion because it actually allows you to get towards the actions that can fix stuff. All right.
So for James, we've got five minutes for some takeaways. And that was a great place to start.
You find your light. All right.
I'm looking toward Lori for a couple of takeaways. Yeah, let's do it.
I think a big one is to notice how you feel when you're participating in the 24 7 news cycle, right? The news cycle didn't used to be 24 7. We all probably remember there was a day when you get the paper in the morning, you read it, you were very informed, but you put that thing away, it didn't walk around with you in your pocket, right?

I think you can probably be informed with like 80% less time on your phone,

and you'll still know all the terrible things that are happening, I promise.

They'll still be covering them, you know, 23 hours later.

But just kind of give yourself a little bit of a break.

Why?

Information is good, you'll still have that, but you'll kind of protect your positive emotion a bit.

I think the second one is just one that we talked about already. Social connection.
Reach out and try to help someone else. Especially if you're feeling vulnerable, especially if you're feeling in a crummy place, just ask what can I, what very small thing can I do for somebody else? For a friend, text them to say hey thinking about about you, donate three bucks or something, whatever you can financially afford, a little tiny thing to a charity.
All of a sudden, that will start making you feel good, and you'll be doing good in the world too. Absolutely.
Thank you. And I just want to throw a mom hat kind of piece on there for James is that, you know, your physical health is directly tied to your emotional status.
And I know young people, you aren't at the point where you believe what we've been telling you that you got to get sleep. You really do.
It absolutely matters. You know, why are older people probably a little bit happier?

Because I take a nap and I go, I will go to bed.

And I love nothing more than going to bed early.

Now, if you're in your 20s, that sounds really crazy.

But, you know, it absolutely matters. And what you eat and whether you move your body, you know, we've got Lori here because, like, there is real evidence.

We still live in a world where science matters. Still, please, please.
As we wonder what is wrong, you know, and how we fix it, you know, we can't ignore the fact that there are really smart people who have done really important research to come up with the whys and to give us answers. So this stuff actually matters.
And when you're 60 plus, it all makes sense. And taking care of yourself, getting outside, making sure you get a little bit of fresh air, how you move your body, what you put in it matters.
So if you're young and you don't feel it yet, because when you're our age, you will feel it. If you start some of those habits now, you know, it doesn't change the world for sure.
You know, it is not, it is, voting still matters. But in the meantime, you know, not partying every night of the week and thinking that you're going to wake up in a good mood.
That helps, too. But I think I think you're like not only does it you said it doesn't matter for voting.
It doesn't matter. I think it does.
Right. You take care of your body.
You're going to be you're going to have the bandwidth and the resilience to fight, whether that's fighting at the voting booth or fighting in other ways. And you also channeled something else that I often

talk to my students about. We mentioned gratitude, right? And gratitude is really changing your

thought patterns. It's noticing the delightful stuff and trying to move away from the negative

stuff. But there's other ways we can use our thought patterns to feel good.
I think one of

them is just thinking back, right? Getting a little bit of psychological distance. As Michelle said before, things have been bad before, right? And when you remember that, you're like, oh, we came back from it.
We've come back from really awful stuff historically, especially if you look in long history, we've come back from really awful stuff. And what does remembering that do? It makes you realize, oh, things could be different.
Even in a bad situation, I can see a path to something being better. What's that? That's hope.
That's fighting your own cynicism right there. And one more thing, one more thing, one more thing.
You know, for young people out there, I just encourage us all to sort of right size our happiness meter. Yes.
You know, and take a little pressure off of ourselves and not to measure joy and happiness by the wrong things. And let me tell you, look, we are successful.
We got degrees. We make money.
There's nothing wrong with that at all. But I will guarantee you that having stuff or money or fame, all the things that right now seem to be so important, you know, extolling the virtues of how much stuff you get.
In my experience, that really, truly is not the key to happiness. And finding out what your purpose is, you know, who you are helping and why over how much money you have in your bank account.
You know, truly, I know a whole lot of these billionaires and not all of them, as we can see, seem happy, you know, because that's not ultimately, if that's your only goal is to have more than you need to never be satisfied, if you get on that path and that's what you're going after, you know, there will be a hole in your heart. And it may feel like it's the world, but it may actually be our misguided sense of what it means to be human.
and truly what it means to be human isn't whether we get to space

or how much money we have in our bank account. sense of what it means to be human.
And truly what it means to be human isn't whether we get

to space or how much money we have in our bank account. It's really how we treat each other.

How do we make each other feel? How do we care for one another? And I guarantee you,

if you spend your life doing that, really reordering your steps to be that person in the world, I can tell you that's what makes me feel better and hopeful, is directing my energy at a real purpose. So I would urge James to make sure he's driven by that and not by some other artificial goals that we've been told are important.
That's a great point to end on, Mish. Please help me thank Dr.
Lori Santos for being with us. Thank you, Lori.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
As you can see, we do have a lot of opinions and we could keep this thing going on and on, but you have other things to go to. But before we go, I just want to say thanks for following us on our new IMO podcast journey.
Yeah, thank you, guys. And please submit questions to imopod.com

and listen and subscribe.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you guys.

Thanks, Lori. Thank you.