Laurie Santos: Psychology and the Good Life

At the Aspen Ideas Festival

Taken from a .docx file

  • Students are often so stressed and busy that they feel they lack the time to do things that supplement their education like reading

    • At Yale, around a third are so depressed “it’s difficult to function,” 40% report feeling hopeless and over 60% report crippling anxiety

  • Including healthy habits as a suggestion in a class syllabus managed to greatly increase interest in the class and actually was followed by Yale students

  • About 50% of our happiness is not inherited; we have the power to affect 50% of our happiness if we set out to

  • Life circumstances matter significantly less to our happiness than people think

    • People who have a terrible event occur to them tend to see more meaning in life

  • Improving our happiness through behaviors (about 40% of happiness controlled by this) takes a lot of hard, consistent effort

  • GI Joe Fallacy: Knowing is not half the battle, it’s a lot less; following through is more

  • Our intuitions lie to us about what will make us happy

    • Having more money, for example, would increase our happiness because it generally means more stability, but the increase in happiness is not even close to linear as money increases

      • Happiness bump from $10k -> $20k salary is vastly larger than $75k -> $85k

  • Prioritizing the people they care about is a very important part of living a happy life

    • People on a train asked to try to make a connection with a stranger on the train were much happier than those who were asked to keep to themselves

      • The solitude people would normally spend the time trying to do some work and failing to really accomplish anything, which led to frustration; those who talked with others took away something meaningful

  • Helping others can greatly increase your happiness

    • A study showed that people who spent free money on themselves were much less happy both immediately and after a week than those who spent it on another

  • Doing simple things to improve your physical health is significantly more effective at causing happiness than people realize

    • 30 minutes of cardio can have the same effect as taking Zoloft

    • Getting proper sleep (high schoolers get 4-5 hours) can greatly improve mood, not just immune system

      • People getting as much sleep as high school students even for a short experimental time ended up having mood levels low enough to be considered clinically depressed

  • One strong way to improve mood is to live more in the present rather than being absorbed by anxiety about the future

    • This also means staying in the moment when doing something unpleasurable rather than dreaming of a more pleasurable time

    • Just being aware of your present situation helps you appreciate all the good

    • Meditating even 10 minutes a day is enough to greatly improve your mood

  • Prioritizing (leisure) time over money generally causes one to be happier

Now I have the knowledge…but this is far less than half the battle.

Ways I Can Improve my Mood (things I’m not already doing):

  • Pay more attention to friends and family, making sure to take advantage of opportunities to spend time together when possible

  • Help others with things whenever possible

    • Will be a lot easier when WHAT Center starts

  • Get back into an exercise routine, half an hour at least each day

  • Set bedtime of 11:00 on days that homework allows, which will be easier to follow if I…

  • Live in the moment to stay focused on less pleasurable things, like taking notes on a psychology video (ouch, sorry)

  • When treating myself, focus on all of the enjoyable aspects about my situation