62. The Big Lies & the Truth About Happiness with Dr. Laurie Santos

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All right, so I am very curious about what the hell is going to unfold in this episode.

And that is because today we are talking about happiness.

And I have a very complicated relationship with happiness.

I'm honestly kind of against it.

Okay.

I just.

For so long have resented the fact that we seem to have some kind of unwritten cultural happiness mandate, that it's just like

accepted that all women must be happy all the time.

And then because of that,

it feels to me when I'm out in the world that the world is

just teeming with happiness bullies, like happiness gatekeepers.

And I stand against them.

Okay.

I stand against them wherever they are.

But I might suggest that many of them are at the airport for some reason, insisting that women they do not know smile at them for no reason.

Okay.

But honestly, they're everywhere.

And I guess we're all happiness bullies to some extent.

It starts when we're born.

Every time a child expresses something other than happiness, we can not take it.

We just bully

the unhappiness away.

Turn that frown upside down.

Shh, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry.

Can we just pause for a second?

Why in the Sam Hill

do we tell people not to cry?

Don't cry, don't cry.

We say it to our friends.

We say it to our kids.

We say, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry.

It's like saying, don't sneeze or like, don't pee

because crying is a physical freaking release.

And it's also a spiritual release.

It's like organic baptism.

It's like how we wash it all away and begin again.

So I stand for crying.

I stand for lots of crying, right?

Even though I myself.

cannot cry because for some reason I feel the feel the the crying feeling and then the Lexapro like stops the tears right at the ducts.

Like it doesn't come out.

That's exactly right.

No water involved in your tear ducts.

No.

So I literally have to say the words to my people.

I'm crying.

I'm crying because they can't see it.

Okay.

So you're an anti-happiness pro Lexapro warrior.

Correct.

Correct.

I'm a clinically depressed motivational speaker.

All right.

So I literally motivate people to go ahead and feel sad.

I stand against toxic positivity in all its oppressive forms.

So at first, I was hesitant to dive into the work of our guest today.

And then, as soon as I did,

I got hooked.

Okay,

I got hooked.

Dr.

Lori Santos

is not a happiness bully.

Okay, I am going to admit to my beloved pod squad that Dr.

Santos makes me

happy.

Okay.

Dr.

Lori Santos is a professor of psychology and head of Silliman College at Yale University,

which, if you haven't heard of it, is a fancy ass place.

Okay.

Dr.

Santos is an expert on human cognition and the cognitive biases that impede better choices.

Oh, Jesus, please tell us all the things.

Her course, Psychology and the Good Life, teaches students what the science of psychology says about how to make wiser choices and live a life that's happier and more fulfilling.

Her class is Yale's most popular course in over 300 years and has been adapted into a free Coursera program that has been taken by over 3.3 million people to date, one of whom is my wife.

She'll tell you about that, Dr.

Santos.

She's a winner of numerous awards, both for her science and teaching from institutions such as Yale and the American Psychological Association.

She has been featured as one of Popular Science's brilliant 10 young minds and was named Times Leading Campus Celebrity.

Her podcast, The Happiness Lab, launched in 2019, has over 48 million downloads.

But to be fair, Dr.

Santos, 47 million of those are from me in the last two weeks.

So

I am so excited to talk to you, Dr.

Santos.

Thank you for being here.

I feel like this is a happiness expert meeting a sadness expert.

And I just want to know who's, who's going to win.

I think it might be you because of Yale.

How did you become a happiness professor?

Yeah, well, it actually all started by me seeing like just how stressed out and depressed my students were.

So I've been teaching at Yale for a very long time, like over a decade, which makes me feel super old.

But in just the last couple of years, I took on this new role as a head of college on campus.

And so Yale is one of these funny schools like Hogwarts and Harry Potter, where there's like a Gryffindor and a Slytherin.

Like there's these like colleges within like the college.

And so I'm head of Silliman College, which means I live on campus with students.

So I like eat with them in the dining hall and I like hang out with them in the coffee shop.

And I was expecting college life to be like, you know, party, party, party, a little bit of work here and there, you know, maybe with some adjustment because it's Yale.

But like what I saw was this college student mental health crisis up close and personal.

Like so many students reporting that they just feel depressed and anxious, you know, asked, how's it going?

Students be like, oh, if I could just get to the weekend or if I could just get through midterms.

I'm like, you're 19 and you're like fast forwarding your life, you know?

And so I started digging into this mental health crisis.

And it turns out this isn't just like stressed out type A Yale students.

This is a national issue, right?

So right now, nationally, over 40% of college students report being too depressed to function most days.

Over 60% say that they feel overwhelmingly anxious.

And more than one in 10 has seriously considered suicide in the last year.

Like this is not like a couple of snowflakes who are having a tough time.

Like this is a real crisis.

And so, you know, I'm a psychologist.

So I was like, okay, there has to be some strategies that these students can use to feel better.

And, you know, if I'm being honest, I'll say, you know, as I was worried about them, I was partly worried about myself, right?

I was, you know, kind of doing this sort of motherly thing that you do in a head of college role where I cared about my students.

But the sad thing is I was seeing myself and all of their answers.

You know, they'd be like, oh, if I could only get to Friday.

And I'd be like, yeah, dude, me, me too.

And like, you know, your schedule.

And so I was like, wait, what is going on?

That we're kind of, you know, really striving for happiness, you know, in all the ways you talked about with this toxic positivity, but like we're clearly getting it wrong.

So what can we do to do better?

And so, yeah, so I started this new class.

Like it was totally new on Yale's campus.

I figured like 30 kids would take it because, you know, just this like random class.

But then we had to teach the class in a concert hall because a quarter of the entire campus tried to enroll.

Oh.

Bless their hearts.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I'm so grateful to you because I was a teacher.

You taught at Yale.

I taught at Annandale Terrace Elementary School.

Same, same, different levels.

Same, same.

Yeah.

But I always felt like, why aren't we teaching these kids how to human?

How to be, we're teaching, I used to spend weeks teaching them hieroglyphics, but not like how to feel their feelings or find joy.

So in your course, you teach about the misconceptions about happiness.

Okay.

So can you just share with us what are those?

How are we thinking wrong about happiness?

Because

I mean, so many ways, right?

Because like the sad thing is, like, so many of us are working towards happiness.

You know, even if you hate happiness, you don't want to be miserable, right?

Like, you're trying to do things to feel better.

The problem is that we go about it all wrong.

You know, for example, we think happiness is all about our circumstances, right?

We think, oh, if I could just get that next promotion or get that new relationship or just get to the end of the week or something, then suddenly I'll be happier.

But in practice, what the science shows is like people with really fantastic circumstances are totally miserable, like, you know, like full hedonic pleasures that just find their life empty.

And people in like totally crappy circumstances are often feeling good, right?

Or at least feeling like the things that they're going through are building resilience or building strength and so on.

And so that's like the big one, right?

Is that we want to change something about our lives to feel happier.

We want to buy something or do something new or get the next career thing.

But in practice, those things just don't make us as happy as we think.

We kind of have these incorrect theories about what will bring us happiness.

Okay, so if those things

aren't going to make us happy, then what does make people happier?

Yeah, Dr.

Santos.

Well, it's not, it's like when you hear it, you're kind of like, oh, well, yeah, I guess I kind of knew that.

It's like common wisdom, but not necessarily common practice, right?

So one of the big things that affects happiness is social connection.

It doesn't sound right when you're feeling kind of like you don't want to deal with people, but every available study of happy people suggests that happy people are more social.

They spend more of time, like just physically spend more time around other people.

And then they trend to prioritize time with their friends and family members.

There's also lots of evidence that happy people aren't really focused on self-care.

You know, in the toxic positivity world, we hear a lot about treat yourself like self-care, self, self, self.

But if you look at happy people, happy people are doing for others.

They're volunteering their time, controlled for income, like happy people donate more money to charity than not so happy people.

Like they're kind of doing self-care through like other care.

And then, you know, happy people just tend to have a really different mindset.

You know, they have a mindset of gratitude, as cheesy as it sounds.

Like they're not focused on the gripes.

You know, they have an attitude and a kind of mindset of presence where they can just kind of be, you know, they're not like waiting for their outlook to ping them or going to the next thing because they're just so anxious about it.

They're just like there and allowing the present moment to be just as it is.

And so the key, the cool thing, and this didn't have to be the case, but the cool thing is that like there are behaviors we can engage in and mindset changes we can go towards that will make us feel a little bit happier.

It's under our control.

We're just like doing it wrong.

Can I ask you about,

I think some of the tyranny of happy is like this, this pursuit that like we should be happier.

I have been an advocate for the hedonic adaptation theory because I'm like, I was not depressed by that.

I was so liberated.

This idea that like you're just about as happy as you're going to be.

So just give up the struggle and settle in because welcome to your level of happiness.

Is that, can you talk about that and whether it's like

just the idea that there's happiness out there could be part of what's making us unhappy?

Yeah.

And also, and also, can you define happy for us?

Like, I think we need to talk about what are we talking about?

Yeah, let's start there.

Let's start there because I think that's really important.

So, I mean, we could have a very, very, very long podcast about what happiness is.

I mean, like whole ancient philosophers spent their whole careers talking about happiness and eudaimonia and all these big Greek words and so on.

Social scientists like have to kind of figure something out in a really reduced form to try to study it.

And to be fair, that's what they've done with happiness.

But social scientists tend to think of happiness in two ways, being happy in your life and being happy with your life.

And so being happy in your life is that you have a reasonable number of positive emotions, at least relative to your negative emotions.

So you have laughter and joy.

It's not that you don't have sadness, anger, you know, all those things.

That's toxic positivity.

It's not no negative emotions.

It's just making sure the ratio looks okay, right?

Like it's not all, it's not zero positive.

That's kind of being happy in your life.

But being happy with your life, it's different.

It's like, all things considered, you know, how satisfied are you with your life right now?

My dean and her wife, they just had a new baby and like, you know, they're so happy with their life, right?

Like the sense of meaning of being new moms together.

But then in their life, like it's kind of, you know, like there's poop and there's no sleeping and there's like i don't know what happened to the laundry like it's just a mess right but but those things dissociate right but but the best case scenario is you have a life where you're happy with your life you have a life of meaning a purpose you're satisfied with it and you get as much positive emotion as you can or at least kind of get the negative emotion mixed in with some joy and laughter here and there is one more important than the other Like, can you be, if you're not happy with your life, is the being happy in your life not like doesn't endure or vice versa?

Yeah, I mean, you, you, you kind of want both, right?

I mean, we know people in each category.

You know, I use the newborn mom, like or the mom of the newborn as the example of like, you know, so happy with your life, but in your life, it's kind of, it's a little bit of a struggle.

Now it's going to get better, but it's just like, you know, short-term things, but like, it's tough, right?

But the reverse is maybe even worse, right?

We all know those people who, you know, they're super rich, they have every hedonic pleasure possible.

Like in their life, it's like pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, but with their life, they feel horridly empty.

And so, you know, best case scenarios, you have both, but I think if you want to maximize one, you want to go with kind of satisfied with your life, because ultimately, the more you have that, it makes it easier to kind of endure a little bit more the like not so satisfied, you know, inside your life in the moment.

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So what do you think about what sister was saying about that?

What's the theory, sister?

Yeah.

So this is this, this idea of hedonic adaptation, which I love.

I can tell everybody's taking my class and they're learning all the vocabulary words.

But like hedonic adaptation is just a very fancy way of saying that we get used to stuff.

So, you know, you like, let's pick a just like dumb buying things example, right?

Like you get the new iPhone, right?

And you're like, the first time you get it, you're like, oh my gosh, it's got all these new features.

The camera's so much better.

Like for a day, you're like playing with it and it seems all like glossy and amazing.

But then two weeks later, it's just your phone.

Like you do not derive any more pleasure from it.

We kind of get that with material objects, but we forget that with like big life changes, right?

Like you get this new promotion or you get a new salary or you get into a relationship.

At first, yeah, it's it's amazing.

But then over time, like it's just, you know, you just get used to it.

And this is hedonic adaptation.

All the best things in life, we kind of just get used to over time.

My colleague Dan Gilbert at Harvard talks about the first time your child says mommy, right?

When you're like, that first moment is like, yes.

But like last week when your kid said mommy, like nobody cares.

Like that was annoying, right?

Or like the first, the first time your partner says, I love you, like that's like a moment, right?

But you know, you know, kiss on cheek, I love you out the door.

Like, nobody.

And so.

Glennon, you still feel that way.

I do.

But I was just thinking about how the kids used to go, mommy, mommy.

And I literally would think, say, mommy again, I dare you.

Say it one more time.

Like it was, it felt so aggressive at a certain point.

And this is, this is the sad thing is like the stuff that could give us the most joy in life, we get bored with, right?

My Yale students in my class, one of the many weird things they do is that when they get their admissions decision, they like film it and put it on YouTube.

So this like moment of like potentially sheer, like the biggest shame and embarrassment, they like got a phone of like, all right, I'm going to click on the link now.

Did I get into Yale or not?

And the ones that do get in, right, then post this video of like screaming and their parents crying and all this stuff on YouTube, right?

It's like the sheer, like if you want to see a video of like sheer happy emotion in the moment, like look at kids getting into Yale, right?

But then I show these videos to my students on like some random Tuesday in the middle of the semester.

And I'm like, did you wake up in the morning screaming like that?

Like you're still at Yale, right?

Like, you've been at Yale for two years, but like, no, you got used to it.

Like, that first moment's great, but it kind of goes away.

This is hedonic adaptation, which you could think sucks.

Like, this is a crappy feature of our mind that, like, the good stuff doesn't stay good.

But hedonic adaptation also has a very good side, which is that the same is true for negative emotions, right?

You know, you have a horrible breakup, right?

You're super sad that first day, but you know, six months later, a year later, you're fine, right?

You know, like you get really bad job news or really bad health news, like you kind of adapt to that.

And surprisingly, we adapt much more quickly than we really think.

In fact, the hedonic adaptation for negative stuff actually kicks in faster and better than hedonic adaptation for positive stuff, right?

We get used to the bad stuff even more quickly, which kind of makes sense.

We like there's real processes there.

We like rationalize it.

We have friends who show up with ice cream for us.

You know, like there's things that kick in for that.

But that means we're much more resilient than we think.

Like we don't realize, we don't like take risks because we think, oh, if that happens, like, you know, something bad will happen and a bad outcome and how horrible that will be.

Well, your brain's just going to adapt to it anyway.

So, you know, put yourself out there.

The part that's liberating to me about hedonic adaptation is that I always have the like, look, I have healthy kids.

I have this wonderful partner.

I have this job.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I should theoretically be so happy.

But when I learned that from you, I was like, oh, no, I shouldn't.

I'm just adapting properly to my baseline happiness.

Like, I don't feel the guilt on top, which I think has been liberating to me.

Yeah, it makes total sense, right?

Because it's like, this is just a normal process.

Like, it doesn't mean you don't love your job or your partner or whatever.

That's just kind of what happens.

But then the sad thing is like, okay, what are some strategies we can use to get that joy back, right?

You know, like my Yale student, that moment she found in there was a reason she was so excited to go to Yale.

Like, how can we re-harness that?

And there are a few strategies we can use.

One is a really ancient one.

In fact, the ancient Stoics, like back in the day, talked about it.

They called it negative visualization.

So the Stoics thought literally when you wake up in the morning, you should have this little meditation where you think, today, I'm going to lose my job.

I'm going to lose my spouse.

I'm going to get ostracized.

Ostracize, like a big deal back in Greek.

Like every crappy thing that can happen to you, you think it's going to happen.

Not like you dwell on this for hours and hours.

You just do this for five minutes in the morning and then you open your eyes.

And then all those terrible things didn't happen.

And you can kind of have this little appreciation of it.

I do this exercise when I give talks for parents.

I say, you know, that like mom, mom, mom, like everyone has that phenomenon.

But I'm like, imagine that's the last time you ever hear that word.

Like whatever horrible scenario you want to stick in there, go for it.

But that's it.

Never going to hear that word again.

My guess is the next time you hear mom, mom, you're going to

and grab them.

And like, like, all it takes is this one second of kind of breaking that adaptation up.

And we can all do that, you know, and we have it naturally.

You know, I was talking about the adaptation you get from your phone.

Like, occasionally, I'll like, I'm like really bad and misplace stuff all the time.

And so occasionally I'll be like, my phone is gone.

I like must have left it at some restaurant.

It's like never going to see it again.

Oh my gosh, all my photos, all this stuff, I haven't backed anything up.

And then you find it and you have this like incredible gratitude, like my phone,

embrace it.

Right.

So we can kind of create those little mini negative moments for ourselves.

And it doesn't take long, but it does bring back the appreciation because relief re to me there is no better don't tell me about happiness tell me about joy whatever relief is the ultimate happiness to me like when i think something horrible is going to happen and then it doesn't happen that's my biggest joy is there anything better than relief no and and in fact that's in part because of another feature of our minds which is you'd think that we'd evaluate our life in objective terms, right?

Like whatever is happening, right?

But we don't.

We really think relative to expectations.

So if you think something bad is going to happen and it doesn't, even if whatever happened wasn't that great, you're like, it wasn't the most horrible thing ever.

Like, awesome.

Like, it turns out our expectations matter.

The problem is that not everybody has like reasonable or appropriate expectations for stuff.

You know, we expect, you know, for example, as moms, we expect our kids to be perfect, perfect, perfect, to never cry.

You know, don't cry, don't cry.

Oh my God, there's crying.

Something horrible is happening.

Like, that's an unreasonable expectation for a human, but we kind of have that.

You know, same thing in our lives.

Like we just tend to look towards whoever in our life has stuff better than us.

And that really affects our judgment.

One of my favorite studies on this tried to look at people who like were objectively really awesome, but might have had somebody to compare themselves against.

And so they went out and they studied Olympians, people who just won medals at the Olympics.

And like, so the gold medalist, they got the gold meda, they're super excited, you know, happy on the stand.

Question is, what about the silver medalist?

And what you find is instead of like slightly less happy, what they're showing is like active emotions of contempt, disgust, deep sadness.

Like they're not just like slightly less happy, they're like actively miserable.

In fact, some silver medalists say it was the worst moment of their life.

They're second best in the world.

They're better than like literally billions of people.

They're bringing home a medal for their country, but they feel like crap.

Because they didn't win.

They didn't win silver.

They lost gold.

Exactly.

Whereas what's funny though, is if you look at bronze medalists, you might think the same thing.

You might be like, well, they lost silver and gold.

Like, how terrible.

But no, it turns out that if you analyze their expressions, they're super happy.

Why?

Like, their salient comparison point wasn't gold or silver.

You know, maybe it was silver, but like, definitely wasn't gold.

That was super far away.

A very salient comparison for them is like, if I just screwed up by a couple more points or a couple more seconds, I would be going home empty.

Like, I wouldn't even be up here.

So they're just like, by the skin of my teeth, I'm like reasonable and meddled.

and like, thank goodness.

And that is such a message for us, right?

Like there's not really that much objective difference, but our vision, our expectations make it so.

You're doing the strategy like great, right?

Which is like, you want to set your expectations not low, but like reasonably, because you can get this like awesome boost in happiness that comes from, you know, meeting those expectations and even in some cases, going beyond them.

Abby and I often will say, okay,

what's the worst thing that could happen?

And I've always felt kind of like,

like I'm being negative when I do that because, you know, but actually it's super helpful because it's like when we're scared, we're scared of this nebulous thing that we don't know.

But when you say, okay, what's the worst thing that can happen?

First of all, everything's uphill from there.

You're like happy.

Except if it's like death and you're dead.

Right.

But that's also, you know, there's an acceptance and peace to that too.

But yeah, but literally,

literally, you are stealing a strategy out of like an ancient playbook that's like over a thousand years old, right?

Like, this is what the Stoics thought you should do.

And they were kind of just like you, where they weren't so much like obsessed with happiness and like being happy, but they kind of just wanted to be even killed.

Like they wanted to like experience the negative emotions, but not get messed up by them.

It's like they're there.

Like, we'll allow them and accept them, but not kind of be in them and ruminate in them.

I think that that's really interesting.

So

my question is a little bit about relationships.

So my setting is happy.

I'm, what we would call on this podcast.

I'm like 2 p.m.

I'm like sunny.

I'm like, I see the positive in the world, glass half full.

And my wife's setting is, and I wouldn't say sad.

That's not what I would call it.

I would call it, she's contemplative.

How do sunny people and moon people?

Love each other well.

Like if you have these different, because truly, I mean, we do a great job, but I think our listeners would love to hear if you have a partner that doesn't have the same

point.

Default.

Default.

Default.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we do have these different defaults.

I mean, it's worth noting that there are these interesting, like probably genetic differences in our kind of natural set point for happiness.

It's not as deep a genetic difference as you think.

It doesn't mean like people are set and that's it and they'll never change.

All these things that we're talking about can change you around, but people do have a set point.

And I actually think that there's something to be said for people with slightly different set points, right?

You know, because I think, you know, the toxic positivity is a thing, right?

Like you need to experience negative emotions, especially right now, right?

Like if you're going around in like, you know, the world filled with a global pandemic, structural racism, all this stuff, and you're like, everything's hunky-dory, like Pandora, like that's not normative.

Like there's something wrong with that.

Like you, to be paying attention means you got to feel some negative emotion.

And so you kind of don't want to be too off in the the toxic positivity side.

But the flip side is that, you know, sometimes like you need a little reminder of things to be grateful for, of things to be optimistic about.

It is the case that we can reshape our mindset towards more things that are joyful or delightful.

Not in a cheesy way, but really in a like a attention-setting way.

Like our brains are just more tuned to the good things.

And so I think that like couples who have, you know, two, like two folks who are like slightly different can really help one another.

Because, you know, maybe she can kind of tune you more to the like, you know, moonlight things and they're moonlight things and you seem to appreciate them.

But by the same token, you know, maybe you might tune like back towards the positive in a different way.

So,

yeah.

And this idea of like, what is happiness, I think is so important to me because to me, happy, happy, happy.

I mean, I'm from a recovery background too, right?

So sometimes people who are smiling and happy all the time looks fake to me.

It's like, what's, it feels like you've just had a lot of Red Bull or something.

Like, it doesn't feel real, you know?

I mean, to me, happiness is kind of just like a,

like an alert

paying attention and like being open and grounded.

But it's not like a hyper,

it's not like Tigger.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, but it's not like Eeyore either.

It's like Piglet.

Yeah.

It's like Piglet.

Yeah.

Who?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think happiness gets a bad rap, right?

You know, I mean, literally, if you Google, if you do a Google image search for happy, you get like horrid, like happy emojis, like super smile, smile, smile, yellow face.

You get pictures of people jumping and you often get like Pharrell and like pictures from that video, which also have people jumping and emojis of happiness, to be fair.

But like, that's not what it's about, right?

I mean, it's about kind of, again, being sort of happy in your life, which involves this kind of combination of negative emotions and being happy sort of with your life, which you can't do that if you're kind of Pollyanna-ishly going through things and ignoring the bad stuff, right?

Like a true good life of flourishing involves recognizing negative emotion.

It involves a kind of moral life as the Greeks used to think about where you're sort of solving the big problems of the world.

And so I think that like happy, happy, you know, gets, it's, it is culturally kind of problematic.

And this, this happens to me a lot, right?

Like I go on podcasts and I give talks and you all didn't do this, but sometimes it's like they'll be playing like Bobby McFerrin of like, don't worry, be happy.

You're like, ooh, happy, happy.

Like we're getting happy, clappy.

And you're like, that's not what this is about.

Like, this is really about kind of acceptance and coming to terms with what's going on and finding a way to make peace with things.

And so, yeah, it doesn't have to be like revved up Red Bull, you know, emoji happiness.

I think, you know, true happiness doesn't look like that.

And I just have a question because I've traveled the world.

And what I find to be very interesting is Americans, especially,

have this

need

to be happy, happy right um and in fact i had a teammate one time sitting in a locker room she was from norway and evidently she brought to our attention that americans we americans we say that's funny but then we don't laugh

so like

and i do that i'm like that's funny she's like but then you don't laugh like i don't understand like what you're what you're so my question is culturally speaking are there other cultures in the world that get this more more right than maybe we do here in America?

Yeah, I think

definitely.

I mean, the empirical data bear this out.

I mean, just culturally, Americans are obsessed with happiness.

Like it's literally in the Declaration of Independence, like life, like not being killed, like freedom.

And like, what's the other thing?

Oh, like happiness.

Yeah, happiness.

Happiness in there, right?

Like, it's like the top three.

But we don't do it.

I think because we go out, we go about it all wrong.

And then you look, when you look cross-culturally, what you find is that, you know, there are lots of other countries that self-report being way happier than the U.S.

And then you can ask, like, okay, what are the factors?

One, you might expect it's not wealth, it's actually inequality in wealth.

So, the U.S.

is a pretty wealthy country, but we're a really unequally wealthy country, and that's kind of a hit against happiness.

But the other is just like a whole conglomeration of behaviors that are the kind of thing I talked about before.

You know, social connection, gratitude.

Another one we haven't mentioned is just like exercise, moving your body, being in nature.

If you look at the countries that are ticking off high on happiness, and Norway is up there, Denmark is usually like the highest.

It's countries that just naturally, culturally prioritize that stuff.

Like in Denmark, people walk to work.

Like they're moving their bodies.

They're out.

They're present.

They have a shorter work week.

Another thing I bet we'll talk about is this idea of having more free time.

Like that matters a lot for happiness, not feeling time famished.

Like they go to work at four.

They have hobbies and friendships.

Like it's just weird in Denmark not to like have a ton of friends who are doing weird hobbies with you.

They kind of just have this like like reaction against talking about your accolades, right?

Like you just don't brag about stuff at work.

You know, it's like you don't ask like when you meet someone for their first time, it's not like, well, what do you do?

It's like, well, that's just not, that's not part of your identity in the same way.

And so it's not so much that like, you know, in Denmark, everyone's genetically more predisposed to be happy.

They just have a whole cultural infrastructure to do the stuff that makes them happy.

You know, now cut to the U.S.

where we don't, you know,

you're so time famished, we don't even have like maternity leave.

You're working a billion hours.

Like, you know, we don't get social connection because we're too like time strapped to do it most of our leisure is not walking around and moving around with other people we care about it's like plopping down and watching tv like we're just culturally doing stuff that's not as good for our happiness and so it's not surprising that we're kind of on average less happy because it's like all we do is work really hard and then rest crash But there's like a whole nother third, right?

That is like joe, rest is not necessarily fun and joy in life.

And it's also weird, like the evidence suggests we're really crappy at rest.

Like, first of all, we don't get very much of it, right?

We rest with our phone near us, right?

Where it's like pinging us and our outlook's just like, you know, humming around in the background.

And when we do finally get rest, we don't do things that feel like engaging.

We're usually so exhausted that we just like plop and like watch TV, which is not social.

It's not moving our bodies.

It often doesn't even feel engaging.

One of my favorite studies has this funny thing where they survey how people, how happy people are feeling, just in terms of positive mood when they're at work and when they're at home.

And so when you survey people at work, they often actually report that they're kind of sometimes happy, right?

Because at work, we often get flow.

You know, you all are at work, but we're having this nice conversation.

It's kind of enjoyable, right?

Like most, a lot of people's work has some element of flow where time is like flying by and you're feeling engaged or you're doing something, right?

Then they survey people when they're at home and they say, how are you feeling?

And they often like, you know, catch people when they're, you know, on screen number 47 of Netflix where you're like, well, I might want to watch a movie, maybe it's talking about it.

And they say, How are you feeling?

You feel like I feel gross, like kind of apathetic, and just like, whatever.

But then, if you ask people, would you rather be at work or rather be at home?

People are like, We're home, like, definitely at home.

Like, I want leisure time, which of course makes sense.

We don't always want to be at work all the time.

But the problem is, like, we don't, we don't, we're not paying attention to the fact that we're not using our leisure time well.

Like, we'd feel more rested and relaxed if we actually used it appropriately.

Like, how?

How?

Yeah.

Tell me what, because I want people who are out there to be thinking, like, what can people do?

They're tired.

They did all their things.

What can they do to that will inevitably eventually increase their happiness?

Yeah.

Well, we actually, so this is something I struggle with a lot as a busy professor.

I often find myself incredibly time famish, incredibly exhausted.

And my instinct is to do exactly what I just said, like, makes you feel like crap, which is to like plop down and like look at TV.

Or if I'm even too exhausted for TV, like the Netflix scrolling just seems too much.

I'm just gonna like pull out my phone and look at whatever feed is there and it's like I don't even have to work I'm just gonna scroll through the feed and then afterwards I feel like now I feel gross like now I feel super gross whereas I'd be better off doing something that was a little bit challenging challenging like in a physical way like just doing a reasonably a reasonable yoga class not even a heart yoga class but just like one that moved my body calling a friend and connecting with somebody like taking a walk out in the world, right?

Engaging in some sort of like hobby that like feels good, like like even something silly like Duolingo or you're like learning a new language or something like that.

Like these things are going to feel better, but our mind tells us that they're not.

One of, we talked about a couple other stupid features of the mind, but the feature of the mind I hate the most, the stupidest feature, is that if you think about the kinds of things we like, the kinds of things we really enjoy that give us pleasure, the way the brain processes those is different from the things that we want, the things we crave, the things that we naturally have these motivations to go after, right?

So, what are some things we crave?

Like, if you're as addicted to your phone as I am, like, the email ding is something you crave.

Like, you want to get to that next screen of your inbox.

There are mechanisms that are telling you to do that.

I personally don't have mechanisms to tell me to get on my yoga mat, right?

Like, afterwards, I feel great.

I really like it, but I don't crave my yoga mat like I crave like a glass of Chardonnay or like I crave a good cupcake or like I crave anything to do with technology or interacting with screens.

Like, but then I end up doing the thing I crave and I don't really feel good.

And so, this is a really dumb feature.

This, this feature of our mind goes really bad in cases of addiction.

You know, you're talking about being in recovery, right?

Like, you can have an incredible craving for alcohol or a drug that is not going to make you feel good.

And in some cases of drug addiction, you can have a drug that you're completely habituated to, but you still have this incredible craving for it.

So, even when you get it, it doesn't make you feel as good as you're expecting.

But these wires are also kind of not connected up, even even in people who don't experience addiction.

It speaks to, you know, discipline, because I feel like discipline has such a tie to happiness, my version of happiness, which is just like a low humming of like acceptance,

because it's like all day you have to not think, what am I craving?

But you have to make yourself do the thing that you know makes you feel better afterward instead of worse.

Yeah.

And that's, you know,

this again, I feel like you were like, were part of the the Greeks.

Like maybe you're like reincarnated from the Greek times.

Like this was Aristotle's idea of happiness.

Like what Aristotle thought was that you, happiness required setting up the right habits and the right situations.

Like the world's always going to move you around.

You can't trust your own virtue.

What happiness is, is like practicing the right stuff and setting up so it's easy.

And he actually thought that's what virtue was generally, not just for happiness.

But he thought like being a good person meant like setting up the situation so you wouldn't mess up.

And so I feel like we get away from this now in the like Protestant, like, work ethic, you know, like founding fathers who had the pursuit of happiness in there.

They thought like it should be hard, like it should feel really difficult.

And that's how you push yourself.

But actually, Aristotle's like, no, it shouldn't feel hard.

Cause if it feels hard, you're going to screw up all the time.

You're going to make bad choices.

Like, just make it easy for yourself and get the right habits in there.

And then you'll be fine.

The ease is part of the joy.

It's like also our culture screws us up.

You say, Dr.

Santos, you say moving your your body.

Yes, that is correct.

Except our culture twisted that so much for me and twisted it.

So twists it so much for women that I turned the joy of moving my body into this barbaric, like work, like eating disorder, do it so hard until you like it's a punishment.

Totally.

I had to quit that.

We do this with so many things.

We do this even in our leisure.

You know, one of the reasons that the Netflixes of the world kind of make us feel so gross is that we've packed it with so many choices, right?

Like if there was just like one show that was reasonable, it was just like Ted Lasso, that was the only thing you'd watch when you turn on TV, it'd be fine, right?

It just, that's it.

But we don't want a world where there's one show, even if it's good.

We want like a billion choices.

And then we like exhaust ourselves.

So we like end up setting up these structures that make it worse for ourselves, assuming that that's what we want.

And that's what's going to make us happy.

But in practice, it just gets all messed up.

This is why the monks have three versions of cereal and why happy people don't have 40,000 million pieces of clothing to decide from every morning because we overwhelm ourselves with all of these little choices and then we can't make the big choices.

President Obama, for example, had just like a whole set of the same shirts and ties, just so he just would never have to make a decision.

And he apparently claimed, you know, allegedly that like, he was like, I got big decisions to make when he was president.

Like, I don't need to be thinking like, oh, the blue tie or the light blue tie today.

But like, we literally spend our income to purchase this stuff to give ourselves choice overload, as it's called, this idea that we're like exhausting ourselves from too much choice.

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What interview on your Happiness Lab podcast changed your life the most?

Like what interview did you do that you were like, actually, I'm going to do that thing.

And that has made me happier.

Well, I'm involved right now in a, in a, what I'm calling a fun intervention, a fun intervention where I'm trying to have more fun.

Because as I just mentioned, right, like my job is really busy.

It can be the case that I just feel exhausted all the time.

And I think it's, it can feel tough to prioritize fun, right?

It can feel really tough to prioritize enjoyment.

And so the guest that changed me the most is this woman, Catherine Price.

She's a journalist.

She's amazing.

I first met her because she has this wonderful book called How to Break Up With Your Phone, where she argues that you don't have to break up with your phone, but you need to take it to couples counseling so you can get some sort of like agreements about when the phone's going to be there and what its deal is.

But she's more recently gotten obsessed with fun.

She has this lovely book called The Power of Fun.

And

she's really tried to take this like empirical approach to like, what is fun?

What do we get wrong?

And how can you build more of it into your life?

Oh, i love it we've we've talked a lot about fun on the because abby has told me that i am i have no fun that i'm zero fun you have a great sense of humor i love being around you but i don't think that you take any time in your life to figure out what is actually fun for you yeah it's like a hierarchy to me like a pyramid of needs and i'm still in the middle just trying to not lose my

And that's all the discipline things, like the yoga and the meta.

Fun feels to me like

Yale level

life.

But this is, this is, I think, I mean, I'm with you.

This is a misconception that so many of us have.

But if you look at the research, and this is Catherine reviews this in such a lovely way in her book, what she finds is like, actually, if you put in more fun, it makes the productivity part better.

Like what, there's so many surprising benefits of the fun.

It like reduces your inflammation.

It like, you know, improves your like heart condition.

Like it can improve your relationships.

It actually stimulates brain growth.

This is why what like very young kids play a lot and like baby animals play all the time because like play and doing fun things can actually increase brain growth.

But it also has a surprising effect on your productivity.

Why?

I mean, you get it, right?

Like if you've ever had like a like super fun activity, right?

Like a super fun vacation or something, you kind of go back a little bit more ready for the like BS of life, right?

You're kind of a little bit more energized.

And so we forget that it can, it's not just like good for us in general and fun, but it can like help us with this bottom line.

Like it can help with the productivity and the forming good habits part.

And then is part of happiness also just rejecting that idea?

Like I, NAP Ministry has helped me a lot with this, but it's like, I hate the idea of my, all of my rest, all of my joy, all of my, just actually being

another way to get back to work and produce more.

Like isn't that just like a capitalistic, exhausting, I resent it.

Yeah, I resent it too.

But it's like the way I can sell my administration on running ahead of time.

Okay.

It's a class for yellow students, right?

She's like, don't ruin it for me, Dorothy.

Yeah, yeah.

Don't ruin it.

A lot of corporate money, man.

No, no.

But really, this is like fundamentally problematic that the only way like we should value, for example, fun is to say like, oh, it can help me with my productivity.

But the point is, like, actually, it does, right?

So it's like, it didn't have to be that way.

So it's kind of like a win-win.

But yeah, no, it's, it's, it's hard, but I think it's worth it.

I mean, so Catherine defines fun as this kind of combination of playful, connected flow.

So play is just like, like, you're just in a playful mood.

You're kind of joking around, like something that I bet you could do a lot, right?

But you have to kind of have that in the space where you're trying something out, which means you can't be like beating yourself up, saying, I suck at this, like being self-conscious about it.

For me, whenever like.

like information about my body is activated, like my body identity or something like that, now I'm like, oh God, do I look okay?

Like that kills playfulness.

Flow is just this sense of like time flying by.

You're just present and involved.

And that means you can't be distracted.

You You can't be trying to, like, I'm going to have fun for this four minutes before I have my Zoom call.

Like, that doesn't work because you can't kind of get into flow, you know.

And this idea of connectedness is that, like, most of the time, we're having the most fun when we're with other people, right?

But, but again, our leisure is so like split up in the day and weird times.

And sometimes we feel so exhausted, we don't realize the benefits we can get from other people.

So, she, she argues, if you can get that kind of bullseye connection of playfulness, connection, and flow, then

you'll achieve some fun.

And there's also, I've heard you talk about this kind of place where fun,

happiness, playfulness intersects with Padonic adaptation, where it's like, you don't, you know, like if you're going away for a seven-day vacation, by day one, you're like, I'm used to this, here I am.

That like splicing in the ability to

get the

maximum like initial buzz where you can actually feel it from the fun actually argues for smaller splices

of that stuff rather than what Americans do, which is like, be miserable for 51 weeks of the year and then have that one and hope it lasts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And she, Catherine talks about these like, you know, fun inoculations, right?

Where we get this like little mini dose, you know, kind of like a little dose of fun that can kind of get you through the week.

And I think, you know, that's a thing that we should think about, right?

I mean, you know, Americans in general don't take their vacation.

The number of like vacation days that are left that people just don't use is really depressing.

But sometimes when we do get a vacation, it's like we horridly kill ourselves.

No breaks throughout the week, even weekends.

And then we go on this one vacation that we have like such high expectations for, getting back to expectations where it's like, it must be perfect.

No one will cry.

There will be no brains.

Everything's ever going to be perfect.

And then like, we're miserable.

And I was like, well, that didn't really work.

Whereas if we allowed ourselves to take real breaks, get some what's called time affluence in, where you really feel like you have a little bit of breath of time, you'd feel so much better.

Go ahead, sis.

I want, I've heard you before tell the parable of the second arrow, which I

is also subtitled the story of my life.

So do

can you tell

us that?

Yeah, it can't be the story of your life because it's also the story of my life.

But yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, this, this gets back to kind of this idea that, you know, we have more control over this stuff than we think, and that there's ways to kind of navigate when you're not feeling good, right?

That happiness isn't all about, you know, perfect, you know, happy emojis times, but it's really about like navigating and allowing the negative stuff too.

And so the way the parable of the second arrow goes is Buddha is talking to his followers and he says, you know, if you're walking down the street and you get hit by an arrow, is that bad?

And the followers are like, yeah, sucks, sucks to get hit by an arrow.

And he's like, all right, well, if you're walking down the street, Buddha says, and you get hit by not just one arrow, but two arrows, is that worse than just getting hit by one arrow?

And the parable, you know, his followers are like, yeah, you know, two arrows suck even more.

Also just like bracketed.

It's very strange.

Like, I don't know what was going on in Buddha times where like arrows are just like flying around hitting people, but whatever.

But Buddha goes on to say,

you know, the first arrow you can't control.

That's like the circumstances in life.

That's like, you know, if your partner leaves you or if you get a bad medical diagnosis or if there's a global pandemic, like that's just circumstance.

But he says says the second arrow is your reaction to it.

It's whether you, you know, react to the global pandemic by being like pissed at your kids for like, you know, the next six months, or you react to the breakup by like, you know, gorging yourself with ice cream and never seeing a friend, right?

Like the second arrow is usually our reaction to the suffering.

And the bad part is maybe good and bad part is he says, that's on you.

Like a lot of those second arrows, you are.

jamming yourself with.

And you know, it's, it's the parable of my life, too, because like I do this all the time, right?

Um, you know, I'll have a coworker at work who makes some mistake.

And like, you know, that's annoying.

But then like six hours later, I'll find myself like complaining to my husband, like, did you know what that person at work did?

Oh my God, they did that.

And it's like, we're having dinner.

Like, we could just be enjoying the dinner.

That's not the arrow of, you know, the coworker messing up.

That's like me stabbing myself with it.

And so often, if we think about the things that get us, it's like, this is my reaction to it.

This is my lack of understanding that that I'm human and like bad stuff happens.

This is my like, you know, thinking that I'm supposed to be special and none of this is supposed to happen to me, but it's like all on us.

And so powerful to realize the second arrow.

And we do this.

And that's our fault, right?

Yes.

Like we could have had a better strategy, you know?

And then the question is like, what's the better strategy, right?

Because it's one thing to realize you're not supposed to react to these negative things.

And then it's another to like do it.

And, you know, that's where I think all the principles you talk about in recovery, you know, this idea of allowing and like, we're just going to to be with this.

And I'm not going for happy.

That's not the baseline.

You know, that's not perfect, perfect that we're going for.

We're going for just present with what is.

Like, those are just some strategies you can use to deal with it.

And I love that too, because I think part of our second arrowing is like justifying and make sure everyone's onboarded with the injustice against us.

And there's, there's a difference between being compassionate to yourself, acknowledging it and being like, that wasn't okay.

That feels bad.

But any more than any more of your time and energy and emotion that gets backed up into proving out that point really just goes in the bucket of what you're talking about with the happy in your life, because you're like, now that thing that could have been processed in five minutes with me acknowledging it was wrong.

I have given three hours of my time and negative emotions.

So I've not enjoyed my day because I've been feeding that fire.

And if it's just three, if it's just three hours, honestly, with your second hour, you're making it out good.

Right.

Like I got arrows that like three years ago, man, like it's like, I'm still like, and then that person did that.

It's like, they are, you know, gone.

Like, you know, yeah, we can hold on to these things for so long.

And it's just our ego, right?

It's our ego and our need to fulfill the story or the narrative that we are, we are constantly writing in our mind about.

what our life is rather than just accepting what actually is.

I think that that's something I know that I definitely do.

We talk about that.

Like, are we accepting this or are we changing this?

Because it's one or the other.

What we're not going to do

is

talk about it for seven years.

Like either we're going to say, this is what it is and I accept it

or we're going to do something

and change it.

And even that last, even that last second thing of doing something, it's just going to be so much easier to do something if you're not like in the negative emotion space.

Yeah.

Last night I had some friends coming over and I was like, like slightly time famished and frantic.

And I made this like little like tray of hors d'oeuvres or something.

And I went to put it on the table and the rug wasn't in the right spot.

And I was moving the table and the tray of hors d'oeuvres fell on the floor, right?

Fell on the floor.

And it's like, okay, I need to fix this, but it's going to be a lot easier to fix it if I wasn't like.

then you know slamming the cheese and like angrily you know like yelling at my husband while i'm doing like if i'm like oh it just fell things fall gravity total force of the universe this is a thing Like, I'm just going to clean it up.

Like, that's very different than the typical reaction to something like that, which is making it so much worse with your own emotions.

And also, Laurie, is there, is there something to be said for one of the things that keeps my sanity, which is my happiness, my version, is

deciding that whatever just happened is something that just happened.

It's not

yet another example.

So if that's, if my hors d'oeuvre tray falls, I am like looking at that tray and thinking, yep, this is what happens to me.

Of course, this is just like when I was 15 and this happened.

And this is just, this is the pattern of my, and the story, the hors d'oeuvres are now a metaphor for my entire life.

Yes.

Okay.

And I think we do this all the time.

I think women do this more.

I had this interesting conversation with one of my faculty colleagues who's like an incredibly competent human.

She's like a dean here.

And she was expressing like deep shame over the fact that she'd bought this corn that she hadn't had time to cook and had gone bad in her crisper and she was like i'm the kind of person that like wastes food and i'm like i'm like the corn was two bucks like throw the freaking corn away like no one cares like you wasted the corn but but again like you said it's like this is just a pattern i'm like a person who does like it's every single trigger and bad thing you ever thought about yourself gets a lock to this piece of vegetable that you could have just tossed away and so we do this all the time and this is a spot where I think practices like self-compassion can really help us out.

You know, self-compassion is, you know, it's a bunch of different things.

The researcher Kristen Neff defines it in three parts, which is kind of the mindfulness, sort of recognizing, wait a minute, I'm beating myself over with a corn again.

Kindness, like stopping yourself from doing that, finding strategies for more positive self-talk.

But the most important one with the corn is like this idea of common humanity, which is like, you're not the only person that left, you know, like I'm not the only person that accidentally dropped an Odor of Stray like at some point.

Like gravity happens.

Like I'm not the only person that forgot what vegetables I have in my CRISPR.

Like I'm just human.

And that doesn't mean I'm a bad person.

It's just like the way it is.

And also that is so helpful in relationships because our relationship changed completely when I stopped coming to the

conflict and attaching what just happened to 40 million things that happened in the past.

So saying, we did, this happened to us yesterday.

We got in a little conflict.

And staying like, this is about what just happened.

And it's not like, this is how you always do it.

I think this is really powerful, right?

Is that, you know, we want to stay not in the like noun space, like you are, this kind of person, you are a, and it's like, this is just what happened.

We want to be in the event space, right?

We want to be in like, this is just a thing that happened.

I mean, the other thing is it's not just things that happen.

It's often our thoughts about things that happen, right?

You know, like I could drop the hors d'oeuvres on the floor and have the thought like, this sucks.

I've wasted these hors d'oeuvres, whatever.

Or I could have the thought of like, you know, I'm privileged enough that if I drop that food, I'll just find something else to put out.

Like they're just as good as other thoughts.

And our thoughts create our emotions.

Correct.

Right.

And so if you think like this is the worst thing ever, your body is naturally going to react to it as though you've experienced a threat, right?

You know, that hors d'oeuvre tray falling on the floor becomes a sort of proverbial tiger in the evolutionary sense because it activates our fight or flight response.

Now I'm pissed off.

Now I'm like wanting to go inward because I feel like a loser for dropping the thing.

And like,

we're literally changing our physiology with our thoughts,

which is kind of incredible.

And it's not just changing your emotions, right?

Like once you activate your fight or flight, you're releasing stress hormones.

You're putting your cardiac system under stress.

You're literally shutting off your sexual function, your digestive function.

Like you've changed the physiology of your body because of your interpretation of an event.

And getting control over that is probably pretty good.

So our thoughts are our interpretation of an event.

So if we interpret it

in a positive way or a meaningful way, then our emotions will follow.

follow.

Okay.

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If you had to pick one thing

that people could do

today

that would increase their happiness, And we need it to be not that hard of a thing.

Okay.

It's called

remedial.

Remedial.

Like two-minute window.

Yeah, yeah.

We're tired.

Our pod squad is tired and they want to know what's this easy thing they can do that will increase their happiness just like one percent.

Yeah.

Well, just since we just talked about the fight or flight system and since so many of us are running it so often, one really easy thing we can all do right now, we can do it together is to shut off that fight or flight system through our breath.

And so one thing to know about the fight or flight system is like, again, it's engineered.

So like tiger pops out, your body's like, crap, run.

And you either run or fight it or like freeze so you don't move.

It's built to like get out of threats quickly.

But we run it constantly.

I mean, we've all been running it in the context of this pandemic constantly.

I think we run it with like low-grade stress about our kids and our careers and what's happening in our relationships.

It's just like on finding these little often pretend imaginary tigers all the time.

But when we're running our fight or flight system, our sympathetic nervous system, that means we're shutting off what's so called the rest and digest system, the parasympathetic nervous system.

That's what would normally just be ongoing, digesting your food, building your body tissues, like the normal maintenance stuff.

And normally, like that system, the fight or flight system is built to act like just on a stimulus.

So if a tiger popped out, you couldn't be like, no, fight-or-flight system, don't go on.

Like, it can just turn on.

But there is one way it turns out that we can consciously shut it off.

And it's good that nature gave it to us, and it's our breath.

The breath is kind of connected to this vagus nerve that when you kind of take a really big, especially deep belly breath in and then out,

what that does is it activates the vagus nerve.

And as you're doing that, your body, somewhere in your brain, is saying, like, well, there can't be a tiger there if you're taking a really long, deep breath.

Like, you're not running away from it.

So, like, all right, switch back, rest, and digest.

Let's do it.

So, to turn on your parasympathetic nerve season, let's take a deep in-breath way into the belly

and then slowly out.

And we just did one.

I think if you're mindfully noticing what that feels like, it feels different than three seconds ago.

That was one breath, like three seconds.

It probably took us, you know, I guess we did like a couple seconds in, couple seconds out.

But like, that's awesome.

That's a way that you can activate the rest and digest system of your body.

And that will have a whole cascading set of effects on, you know, how easily you're going to stab yourself with that second arrow because you're just giving yourself a little break.

It'll kind of cause your reactions to be different because you're not like running your stress hormones on like red alert all the time.

Super useful.

You all seem a lot calmer, I'll say.

Thank you.

So much better.

I buy that.

I am with that.

I agree with that.

I fully support breathing.

And that is going to be our next strike thing for today.

Everybody,

relax your jaw,

relax your face, drop your shoulders.

Deep breath.

We can do hard things.

We're going to be back

with more from Dr.

Santos.

We're not letting her leave.

Thank you for being here.

When things get hard this week, deep breath.

We can do hard things.

I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle.

I walked through fire, I came out the other side.

I chased desire,

I made sure I got what's mine.

And I continue

to believe

that I'm the one for me.

And because I'm mine,

I walk the line.

Cause we're adventurers, and heartbreaks are map.

A final destination.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we can do a hard game.

I

rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start.

I'm not the problem,

sometimes things fall apart.

And I continue

to believe

the best

people are free.

And it took some time.

But I'm finally fine.

Cause we're adventurers, and heartbreaks are map.

Our final destination we lack.

We stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find

our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we can do a hard pain.

We're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

We might get lost, but we're okay.

We've stopped asking directions

in some places

they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find

our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we can do hard

things.

Yeah, we can do hard things.

Yeah, we

can do hard

things.

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