#139 Laurie Santos: The Pursuit of Happiness

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish

Shane Parrish

Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.7 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2022

⏱️ 102 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Can you accurately identify what aspects of life make you happy? Would you even know if you found true happiness? Leading psychology professor and happiness expert Laurie Santos dives deep on all the factors that contribute to our happiness, why we spend so much energy pursuing it, some evidence-based methods to boost your happiness, why it’s crucial to protect yourself from unhappy people, and so much more.

Santos is a Professor of Psychology and the Head of Silliman College at Yale University. Since 2018 she’s been teaching Psychology and the Good Life, which is one of the most popular courses at Yale and at one point included approximately a quarter of the school’s undergraduates. She has also turned her course into a popular podcast series, The Happiness Lab.

Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/

Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/

Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	In my own work, I tend to use the social scientist definition,
0:03.6	which is thinking about happiness as a sense of being happy
0:07.6	in your life and with your life.
0:09.6	So being happy in your life is just having lots
0:12.8	of positive emotions like joy, contentment, awe,
0:16.0	those kinds of things.
0:17.8	The second part is being happy with your life.
0:20.3	And that's sort of the answer to the question.
0:22.2	All things considered how satisfied are you with your life.
0:25.2	And these are what social scientists call
0:26.7	the kind of affective component of happiness
0:28.8	or the emotional component of happiness
0:30.6	that's the kind of happy in your life
0:32.4	and the kind of cognitive component of happiness.
0:34.8	You think your life is pretty good.
0:36.9	Best case scenario is we maximize both of those.
0:39.2	For me, that's kind of the experience of a happy life.
0:42.7	Welcome to the Knowledge Project Podcast.
1:01.2	I'm your host, Shane Perish.
1:04.3	The goal of this show is to master the best
1:06.3	of what other people have already figured out
1:08.0	so you can unlock your potential.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Shane Parrish, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Shane Parrish and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.