How to choose joy: ‘Try This’
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 31 December 2024
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Happiness, it turns out, comes down to a science — even though what makes each of us happy can vary widely. Host Cristina Quinn talks to happiness scientist Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director at UC-Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, about exactly what makes us happy and how much our sense of joy is within our control.
Drawing from the science of happiness, Emiliana explains that happiness isn’t about chasing fleeting positive emotions, but rather about fostering an overarching sense of contentment, belonging and resilience. She also lays out how much of happiness is influenced by genetics, external circumstances and the choices we make.
This course reminds us that happiness isn’t out of reach — it’s something we can cultivate every day.
Emiliana and her colleagues at the Greater Good Science Center have been collecting data on happiness through the Big Joy Project, a seven-day online study where participants are assigned a micro-act of joy every day. Learn more about the project here.
For some extra happiness tips, read about trying new things for joy and embracing “joy snacks.”
Subscribe to The Washington Post or connect your subscription in Apple Podcasts.
To hear more, check out “Try This” wherever you listen to podcasts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, it's Martine. Here on Post Reports, we've got something special for you this holiday season, a show about joy. The episode comes to us from another Washington Post podcast called Try This. Try This is a series of short audio courses. It's hosted by my colleague Christina Quinn. And let me tell you, |
| 0:22.1 | as someone who gets to work with Christina, she is joy personified. She's hilarious, |
| 0:28.5 | someone you want to spend time with and learn with. Christina loves life hacks, and she loves |
| 0:33.6 | helping people learn how to improve their lives. And that brings us back to cultivating |
| 0:38.4 | joy, the subject of the latest try this course. On this first episode of the course, |
| 0:43.5 | Christina talks to an actual happiness scientist about defining exactly what makes us happy |
| 0:49.7 | and how much of our joy is within our control. And after you listen, be sure to follow Try This and your |
| 0:56.3 | podcast app. All right, here we go. Hey, welcome to Try This from the Washington Post. Try This is a series |
| 1:05.6 | of audio courses to help you take on common challenges and learn something new without having to |
| 1:10.3 | make a big time |
| 1:10.8 | commitment. I'm Christina Quinn, and I'll be learning with you as we embark on a quest for joy. |
| 1:21.1 | Yeppers, that's what we're doing in this course. Tis the season of joy. But with that expectation, we can feel stressed and weighed down with |
| 1:30.0 | obligation. And that can distract us from actual joy. So here on Try This, we're going to learn |
| 1:38.0 | how to cultivate joy whenever and wherever you are in life. |
| 1:46.3 | Here's how this will work. |
| 1:51.6 | Each try this course has anywhere from two to five classes, or in other words, two to five episodes. |
| 1:56.7 | In this course, we'll have three classes that focus on how to identify what brings you joy, |
| 2:01.3 | how to make it again and again, and finally, how to spread it around. |
| 2:05.5 | Okay, classes in session. Let's try this. |
| 2:14.9 | The things that bring any one person joy in happiness seem pretty arbitrary, right? |
| 2:19.4 | Something that could spark joy for me may be a major snooze fest for you. |
| 2:26.0 | For example, I love watching marching band videos on YouTube. But it turns out that the arbitrary nature of happiness doesn't preclude it from being a science. In this first class, we're going to really |
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