#42: Laurie Santos & The Happiness Lab: Exploring The Science Behind Happiness

Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan

Heather Monahan

Entrepreneurship, Education, Business, Self-improvement

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2020

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We all want more happiness. But what if our brains lie to us about how to get there? Psychologist Dr. Laurie Santos, whose Yale course “Psychology and the Good Life,” is the most popular class ever offered in the history of the university, illuminates what science says about what makes us happy and also how to put effective happiness strategies into practice. But not everyone can enroll in Santos’ class at Yale or has the time to take the online equivalent on Coursera. In Season One of THE HAPPINESS LAB, Dr. Laurie Santos explores startling truths and explodes myths about what makes us happy in ten exhilarating and informative episodes. Examining questions such as: will a new job or relationship make us happy, are we happier when we have unlimited choice and how can we harness technology to improve our well-being. Through surprising interviews with the likes of David Byrne, Michelle Kwan and Michael Phelps’s coach, along with in-depth storytelling and the science to back it up, Santos explores how our minds lie to us about our feelings of contentment and teaches listeners how to find more effective ways to become happier. About The Guest: Laurie Santos is a Professor of Psychology and the Head of Silliman College at Yale University. After observing a disturbing level of unhappiness and anxiety among her students, she began teaching a course entitled "Psychology and the Good Life," which quickly became the most popular course in Yale's history and has also reached over 350,000 people from all over the world through it’s online version. Although she’s now best known as a "happiness expert,” Santos's research explores the much broader question of "What makes the human mind unique?" and often includes comparing the cognitive capacities of non-human animals to humans. More from Laurie Santos, AKA “The Yale Happiness Lady”: Listen to THE HAPPINESS LAB podcast Website: hapinesslab.fm Finding Laurie Santos: Twitter: @lauriesantos If you'd like to ask a question and be featured during the wrap up segment of Creating Confidence, contact Heather Monahan directly through her website and don’t forget to subscribe to the mailing list so you don’t skip a beat to all things Confidence Creating! *If you know someone who might be feeling like they're in need of a Confidence Boost be sure to share this or one of our other unique episodes with them! Also be sure to subscribe, comment and review us on iTunes! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals,
0:05.6	overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow.
0:08.9	That's in your seat. I'm ready for my close-up.
0:12.0	Hi, and welcome back. I'm ready for my close up. Hi and welcome back.
0:14.0	I'm so glad you're here.
0:16.0	You have no idea how exciting it is for me, truly.
0:19.0	It's really kind of ridiculous how excited I get.
0:22.0	But it's true, it's real real keeping it real for you today.
0:25.0	So in the spirit of keeping it real, I had this big plan for my week, always on Sundays, I sit down, I map out the week, I do it for my son in his
0:36.1	school, his tests, his games, etc. and then I do it for me and what I want to
0:41.4	accomplish, what is potentially out there.
0:44.5	I take my to-do list from the prior week.
0:46.8	I go through to see if there's anything still pending,
0:50.5	anything that I need to follow back up on.
0:52.4	I really try not to let balls drop and it's just a good exercise for me.
0:58.0	Sundays just the night that I or the afternoon that I really like to get on top of everything and have that plan.
1:04.4	Granted, the plan changes.
1:06.0	Oh my gosh, the plan does change.
1:08.6	So it was so funny, there was two big things.
1:11.6	One really big thing I have to share with you first.
1:14.0	I wrote my second book and I did that over the past year and I did it in different waves like
1:22.1	when I was,
	...

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