Welcome to Trained, a podcast exploring the cutting edge of holistic fitness.

I'm Ryan Flairity, Senior Director of Performance at Nike.

For now, I'm still recording from home, calling up some of the world's leading experts in mindset, movement, nutrition, recovery, and sleep.

To discuss all the ways you can train your body and mind.

Today, I'll be talking with a psychologist who's groundbreaking research on what makes us happy and what doesn't,

has caught the world's attention at just the right time.

Think of all the good and bad things that could happen to you in life, even big versions of those, and those are your circumstances.

Question is how much does that affect your happiness?

Well, in the moment to moment, it's affecting it a little bit, but it turns out that most of those big changes in the long run don't really matter for happiness that much because we go back to baseline.

And so research resists to make that that could be as little as 10% of our happiness.

That was Dr. Laurie Santos telling us something that might be a little hard to hear.

That all those things that we've been chasing after, getting that raise, winning that big game, getting 1,000 likes on Instagram, they aren't likely to do much for our overall happiness.

And this isn't motivational poster psychology.

Santos's approach is based on rigorous meta research.

She actually has proof that a new car won't make you happy.

The news might seem discouraging at first, but it turns out that the things that do affect our happiness are much more within our control.

Mindfulness practice, expressing gratitude, taking that daily walk.

These are things that we can make happen without waiting for them to happen to us.

And if Santos's data is any indication, we can see immediate effects.

But what does this mean for athletes, trainers, or anyone with their eyes on a goal?

That's just one of the topics that Dr. Santos and I got into.

Hey Ryan, how's it going?

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