Dr. Laurie Santos is what you might call a “happiness expert.” As the host of The Happiness Lab podcast, she taught the most popular class in Yale’s history!! That’s saying something.
So, safe to say she knows a thing or two about finding happiness.
Let’s dig in. Here are her best tips. For source audio clip and further explanation, tap the link above.
Express Gratitude
“It turns out that the simple act of scribbling down 3–5 things you’re grateful for at the end of the day can significantly improve your well-being in as little as two weeks.”
Do More Cardio
“There’s one study that suggested a half-hour of regular cardio exercise every day can be as effective as a prescription of Zoloft for improving your mental health … There’s also evidence that exercise can have a long-standing effect on your well-being. So, you do, say, a half-hour of cardio Monday morning, the data suggests that little bump in endorphins… that will still be there with you, if you do it Monday at 9 AM, until around Tuesday at, like, 1 PM.”
Don’t Skimp on Sleep
“One famous study had subjects get normal sleep for two days, then deprived sleep for a week (deprived wasn’t zero hours of hours of sleep, it was five hours of sleep), and then you go back to normal sleep. And what you find is that, during that week of deprived sleep, subjects’ mental health tanks — almost to the point that it looks like their mood levels had hit clinical depression.”
Be Social
“I think the fastest thing you can do to improve your happiness is to get in a little social connection. Even really simple studies show if you chat with the barista at the coffee shop, if you talk to somebody on your commute, those quick moments of social connection, even with a stranger, can boost your positive mood.”
Spend Money on Others
“There’s some work by Liz Dunn and her colleagues that shows that spending money on yourself actually makes you less happy than spending money on other people.”
Be Other-Oriented
“There’s this, kind of, mistaken notion that happiness is all about self-care and self, self, self … But what the science suggests is that happy people are really other-oriented.”
Consider Getting a Dog
“Dogs make us happier because they change our behavior. They get us out to exercise more. They get us to be more socially connected … They get us to be more present because we’re noticing stuff because the dog’s noticing stuff.”
Use Breathwork to Activate the Parasympathetic Nervous System
“One easy thing we can all to right now is to shut off that fight-or-flight system through our breath. One thing to know about that fight-or-flight system is… it’s built to get out of threats quickly, but we run it constantly.”
Set Boundaries and Give Yourself Bandwidth
“There is lots of evidence that doing for other people can make us happy, but that’s only if we have the bandwidth to do for other people. And the problem is that we sometimes don’t … You need to find ways to kind of say ‘no’ to give yourself the bandwidth; boundaries are healthy … Make sure when you’re saying ‘yes’ that it really is a real yes.”
Focus on Your Relationships
“If you look at the positive psychology literature, one of the hugest effects on our own happiness is our social connection … Social relationships and strong social relationships are necessary for happiness. They’re not sufficient for happiness, but you can’t find happy people that don’t have them.”
