I'm Alan Alder and this is Clear In Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

My guess is for most people listen to this podcast.

If you have like a decent middle class income, if you have a roof over your head and food

on the table, pretty much changing your circumstances is not going to affect your happiness in

the way you think, which is a startling discovery.

It violates every intuition that I definitely have about happiness and that most people have.

We think that happiness comes from our circumstances, but in practice, it comes from all kinds

of other things.

It comes from our mindsets, it comes from our behaviors, which is frustrating because

as a happiness expert these days, I see a lot of people putting lots of work into changing

your circumstances, but that's not going to help you in the way you think.

It's Yale University Professor Laurie Santos.

Her college course called Psychology and the Good Life became the most popular course

in Yale history with around a quarter of the undergraduate population enrolled.

She now hosts a popular podcast called The Happiness Lab, which gives advice and insights

into how to be happier.

Just like those Yale students, I was eager to learn more, but we started our conversation

with an encounter we almost had once on an island full of monkeys in the Caribbean.

This is so great to be talking to you because we didn't meet when we should have met on

the Isle of Kayao Santiago.

Well, you know what's funny is we actually filmed on Kayao Santiago.

I'm trying to remember when it was.

...