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What We Get Wrong About How To Be Happy With Dr. Laurie Santos of The Happiness Lab

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

happiness, drink, people, yale, students, called, work, engaging, podcast, life, gratitude, class, big, happy, college, friends, feel, feel better, kids, night, fun, how to be happy, happier, self-compassion, Science, well-being, Psychology, Good Life, being happy in your life, being happy with your life, satisfied, change, behavior, mindset, shifts, Happiness Lab, how little our circumstances matter for happiness, arrival fallacy, happy people, other people, focus, giving back, helping others, community, self-care, practical strategies, habits, adopt, mindful, treat yourself with kindness, common human, teachers, professors, social connections

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Dr. Laurie Santos of The Happiness Lab

00:02

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a buzz, how to sit with your emotions when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

Hi there. I am so excited for this episode because we are talking about

The Science of well-being and happiness.

What We Get Wrong About How To Be Happy

And my guest is Dr. Laurie Santos. You may know her because I heard of her years and years ago, before I ever became a Coach or started this podcast. Because her Yale Course, The Psychology of The Good Life teaches students the Science of Psychology and provides important hints about how to make wiser choices and live a life that’s happier and more fulfilling.

She’s a professor of Psychology at Yale University and host of the Happiness Lab podcast.

She’s an expert on the Science of Happiness. Her course recently became Yale’s most popular course in over 300 years, with almost 1 of 4 students at Yale enrolled. Her course has been featured in numerous news outlets, including the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, the today’s show, GQ magazine, slate and O magazine, a winner of numerous awards, both for her science and teaching. She was recently voted as one of popular science magazines, brilliant Ted young minds and was named in Time Magazine as a leading campus celebrity, her podcast, the happiness lab has over 100 million downloads.

So, Laurie, welcome.

Laurie Santos  02:58

Thanks so much for having me on the show.

Casey McGuire Davidson  03:01

Yeah, I was so excited that you said yes, I know. You are really busy and super famous. So, I have to admit, I’m totally fangirling.

Laurie Santos  03:12

And thank you. That’s so nice to hear. Thank you so much.

Casey McGuire Davidson  03:15

Yeah, well, to start, can you tell us a little bit about your journey and what inspired you to create the Happiness Lab and the Science of Well-Being and the Psychology of the Good Life? All of your work?

Laurie Santos  03:29

Yeah, yeah. So, I’ve been a Psychologist, you know, forever. I’ve been teaching at Yale for almost 2 decades now, which makes me feel very old. But in the last 5 years or so, I took on a new role on campus. I became what’s known as a head of college. Expensive college are these faculty members who live on campus with students in one of these rare so-called “residential colleges”.

Yale is kind of like one of these weird schools like Hogwarts in Harry Potter, where there’s like colleges within a college and sort of Griffin Doris Leatherman kind of thing.

I became head of Silliman College, and that meant, as a faculty member, I was living on campus with students. My house was in the middle of their quad, and I was sort of seeing student life up close and personal, because that was like eating with students in the dining hall and sort of seeing them, you know, not in class, but really at their leisure and kind of in the trenches, as it were. And honestly, I didn’t like what I was seeing. I was sort of seeing the college student mental health crisis up close and personal. I mean, right now nationally, not just at Yale, but nationally, more than one in five college students reports being too depressed to function most days, over 50% of college students say that they feel very lonely over 60% are overwhelmingly anxious, more than one in 10 have seriously considered suicide in the last year, like the stats are really terrible. And I was seeing that, you know, in my own personal community.

And so, the kind of path to teaching all these courses was to think about, well, how can I help my students? I really wanted to give my students just like straight up evidence-based strategies that they could use to feel better. And so, I said, Well, why don’t I teach a new class on this topic? So, I prep this class Psychology and the Good Life, you know, with all these kinds of evidence based strategies that students can use to feel better. And when I first taught the class, I wasn’t sure, you know, what was going to happen. You know, just like submit the syllabus, and you know, see how many students show up. You know, I thought it would be like 30 or so students. So, I was shocked when, you know, over 1000 Students rolled in. You know, we had to teach the class in a concert hall, because that was the only spot where the class would fit, which is incredible. And that sort of taught me that, you know, young people are voting with their feet, they don’t like this culture of feeling stressed out and anxious. And I think they were excited to, you know, have some tips and strategies that you could use to feel better, but what was even more interesting was, that the class not only became viral on Yale’s campus, it kind of went viral off campus, like we had quickly had a New York Times article about the class, which is not normal for a typical college class, where the New York Times is rolling in to kind of do an article about your Psych class.

We got all this national news attention, and I think it was because so many of us at the time, this was back in 2018. So many of us were kind of feeling like, you know, something was missing, right? You know, we were doing. We’re checking off all the boxes, but we were still feeling, you know, maybe kind of depressed or a little burned out and so on. And all of this was before COVID.

But, but I think the picture that emerged was it, I just started realizing so many people need these strategies to feel better. So many people feel like they’re struggling right now. And that was sort of what launched the online free version of the class, which is available on coursera.org called the Science of Well-Being. So, if you’re listening now, and you want to check it out, you should go sign up.

But also, the sort of podcast version of the class, which, as you mentioned, is called the Happiness Lab. So yeah, so that was the long-ish origin story of how I got interested in all this stuff.

Casey McGuire Davidson  06:34

Yeah, I mean, that’s so interesting. I can’t imagine you thinking that only 30 Students would be interested in this class. Why do you think that students at Yale are feeling and honestly, everywhere? Are feeling that amount of stress and anxiety and sort of unhappiness? What do you think has changed?

Laurie Santos  06:59

Yeah, well, we definitely know it has changed. I think it’s worth noticing, worth noting that I mean, we have data now running, you know, since in some cases since the 70s, and 80s, depending on that data set. And all of these datasets are showing that your rates of depression, rates of anxiety, all these things are increasing a lot over the last few decades. In fact, the rate of depression has doubled in almost the last 8 or 9 years. Right. So, something is changing. But I think the million dollar question is still, what I think, there’s probably not like one causal factor, there’s probably a bunch of things, I think there have been really serious changes to student’s academic stress. And the academic stress starts earlier and earlier, right? You have toddlers competing for what preschool they can get into.

So, I live in, I’m in Boston this summer, and I live near a train track, which is not great for podcaster. Because when the train goes by I the whole way down here on the Zoom, but my whole mic is shaking and things. So, I’m going to probably have to do that. Again, I think there’s not just one causal factor, I think there’s a bunch of things going on. One of the big ones is I think academic stress has gone up right. Not just for college students. But even before that, I think the pressure to get into a good college or to get into a college is sort of higher than ever. And you see students stressing out earlier and earlier in high school, sometimes even in middle school and before, to kind of get the best grades, you know, have the most homework. No test taking this perfect, perfect way. So, I think that kind of academic perfectionism has skyrocketed in the last decade.

I think there are special pressures that come from social media and being online all the time. Not even. Just social media so much as having technology around you all the time. Right? Even as an adult, I know that when my phone is out, I’m kind of not paying attention to the social folks around me as much, right? It’s easy to kind of dive in and multitask, right. And that kind of multitasking with technology winds up making students a little bit anxious as well. And so, I think that’s another thing is, we haven’t really fully come to terms with a sort of, cost of technology and so many ways, both for like just the fact that it’s stealing your attention. But also, of course, on social media, things like social comparison, you know, for most teens, it’s a mechanism for losing sleep, right? Because people are kind of paying attention to their phones rather than like, you know, sleeping at night. And so, I think our technologies in general have changed a lot of how we connect what we pay attention to, and how kind of calm and not so anxiety provoking our life is. And then I think they’re just other factors, right? The world is changing, and the world has become a really different anxiety provoking place.

And the news media that’s gone along with that has changed too. Right? You know, back when I was in college in high school, like you would look at the newspaper once a day. And yeah, there was anxiety provoking stuff. It was still sort of, if it bleeds, it leads back then, but I could close that paper and walk away. And it wasn’t like the bad news that was going around the world was like digging in my pocket. And so, I think that the changes to the kind of not just what’s happening in the world and some of the scary stuff like polarization and climate change and the economy, but just the fact that that news is central, right? It’s kind of in our faces all the time. That’s really different to so. Yeah, so it’s really a million dollar question. But I think there’s a lot of changes, and a lot of them have had negative effects on young people’s mental health, but honestly, on all of our mental.

Casey McGuire Davidson  10:15

Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, I see that as well. My husband is actually the head of a middle school and a fifth through 12th, like private college prep, type school. And my son’s there. He’s a sophomore now. And one of the things the school is most concerned about is student mental health. And a lot of that is actually, you know, pushed by the parents who put their kids in the schools. And you know, I see it in sports, too. My son plays three different varsity sports, but most kids now specialize, right? They play one sport the entire year. And it’s just so different. I went to college. I graduated in 97. So, I’m 48.

Laurie Santos  10:57

And to the class of 97, that’s when you’re kidding.

Casey McGuire Davidson  11:01

Yeah. It was totally a different world that, you know, unless you caught the nightly news, or picked up a newspaper. You were very immersed in classes, but also your friends and things outside of school.

Laurie Santos  11:15

Yeah, totally. And I think that social connection, oddly is going down, right? This is the loneliest generation of young people that we’ve ever seen since we’ve been taking data in history of the world. And, and that’s sort of telling to right, you know, I remember, you know, high school in college is a time of making connections, right. But right now, more than 50% of college students say they feel very lonely most of the time. And so, yeah, I think that just human to human contact is going away, too.

Casey McGuire Davidson  11:41

Yeah, and I think this applies, you mentioned everyone, but I actually started coaching, not planning to be a sober coach, but just wanted to be almost a life coach for basically every woman I knew in corporate America, which is the women who had sort of done everything, right, sort of like Goldstar girls, right? You went to college and got your first job, and you climb the ladder. And for a lot of people, they got married, had kids bought a house. And yet they’re 40. And they’re looking around and are just, why am I unhappy? Why aren’t I happy? Is this all there? Is? Is this what being an adult is like, literally people have said to me, am I supposed to just put my head down and grit my teeth till my kids graduate college? And, you know, I mean, I think it’s pervasive. So what is like for people listening? What is the science of happiness? How do you define that?

Laurie Santos  12:37

Yeah, well, we Scientists tend to think of happiness. And in sort of 2 ways. You could think of it as being sort of happy in your life and being happy with your life.

And also, being happy in your life is this idea that you have lots of positive emotions, where you experience joy and laughter, and you have those in a decent ratio to negative emotions, being happy doesn’t mean no negative emotions. In fact, a good life probably requires lots of negative emotions. But hopefully, your ratio of things like laughter and joy to like, you know, sadness, anger, anxiety, hopefully, you have a decent ratio that’s going to being happy in your life.

But researchers also think about the importance of being happy with your life, you know, so that’s the answer to the question, all things considered, how satisfied are you with your life, right. And I like this definition, in part, because it includes these sort of two parts, which can vary at different times of your life.

You know, your listeners, probably, many of them, or parents might think back to the time when their kids are newborns, right? That was a time of kind of being really happy with your life that you brought this new life into the world. Maybe it’s your first kid, but like, you know, in your life, there’s dirty diapers, and no sleep, and you know, and so on, right.

And I think we all know people, or maybe even had situations in our own life where the reverse is true. Maybe we’re in situations where we’re having lots of hedonic pleasure. You know, we’re like, there’s a lot of joy and laughter and kind of fun things happening. But, you know, with our lives, we’re feeling a little empty, and we’re not so satisfied with where things are going.

So, the best case scenario, what the science really tries to do is to ask, what are behaviors and mindsets that can boost both of these that can make you feel a little happier in your life and with your life?

And the way the scientific approach works is just to kind of do experiments, like literally ask people, Hey, can you change your behavior for 2 weeks to a month?

Does that increase how happy you’re feeling overall?

Or let’s sort of change your mindset. Maybe want to give you a mindset of being more present or being more grateful or, or kind of being a bit more self-compassionate? What does that then do to your happiness?

And so, the scientific approach really ask these questions.

Are there behaviors and mindsets we can engage with to feel happier?

and it does the right testing to make sure those things really work.

Casey McGuire Davidson  14:39

So what are the most surprising findings that you’ve had? In your research on happiness?

Laurie Santos  14:45

Yeah, well, one of the biggest ones is how little our circumstances matter for happiness.

Right?

You know that big list you mentioned of the 40 Something women? It’s like, well,

✅ I want to get married.

✅ I want to have a kid

✅ I want to get my first house right.

We assume those things will make us feel, are not just great in the moment when they first happened, but that they’ll kind of have this continued lasting happiness over time. This is what scientists usually referred to as the arrival fallacy. I’ll be happy with, I’ll be happy when I get married or I’ll be happy when you know, I make partner, I’ll be happy when you know, I buy that new house. And it is true that those good events make us happy for a little bit. But usually, the boost in happiness is less big than we expect. And it lasts for less of an amount of time than we expect. We kind of just go back to baseline. Right?

And I think that, that, that the surprising thing for people, because if you look at what we’re taught, culturally, it’s like, go out and get those things and, you know, kind of slap your hands together, you’ll be done. And we’re like, we’re good to go, you know, finish that finish life, you know, scored the gold star in life, right? But that’s sort of not really how happiness works. And so, I think that’s a big shocker to people, as our circumstances matter less than we think.

The other shocker is kind of like, what actually does matter, right? It’s not about us as much as we expect.

I think another misconception is that happiness is all about being selfish or self-care. We see that a lot in magazines, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this phrase or treat yourself, you know, and like magazines, right?

But, but really, when you look at happy people, happy people are much more other oriented. You know, they’re spending their time and energy on helping others, on focusing on other people, of giving back to their community. It’s kind of less about us than we realize.

So, those are some of the big misconceptions.

Casey McGuire Davidson 

Hi there. If you’re listening to this episode, and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, The Sobriety Starter Kit®.

 

The Sobriety Starter Kit® is an online self study sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step by step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one on one coaching. And the sobriety starter kit is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it. And when it fits into your schedule. You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time.

This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step by step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking, from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

You will sleep better and have more energy, you’ll look better and feel better. You’ll have more patience and less anxiety. And with my approach, you won’t feel deprived or isolated in the process. So if you’re interested in learning more about all the details, please go to www.sobrietystarterkit.com. You can start at any time and I would love to see you in the course 

Casey McGuire Davidson  16:24

What about like practical strategies or habits that women can adopt to improve their well-being, especially when you do have a lot of pressures and time on your life? I mean, I remember when my kids were young, it was get up, go to work, try to get to daycare before it closes, come home, you know, Bed, Bath, all the stuff and then catch up on work email afterwards.

Laurie Santos  16:50

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, one of the biggest mindset changes that I think busy women need to make right is to give themselves a little bit of grace. Right?

I think one of the big mindset shifts that we know can improve happiness is to give yourself a little self-compassion.

I think the problem with this schedule that’s so busy like that isn’t just the schedule itself, is that we’re often beating ourselves up, right? We’re, you know, doing a good job and like making it through, but there might be that one email that slipped through the cracks, or you weren’t able to make you know, cupcakes for your kids soccer game, or the house isn’t perfectly clean, right? I think the problem is that as busy women, we tend to kind of treat ourselves like some sort of mean drill instructor or we’re kind of screaming at ourselves, we kind of have a lot of self-criticism.

But research in this is a lot of the work by Kristin Neff at UT Austin has shown that, a better way to motivate yourself is through a little bit of self-compassion, right? She knew she defined self-compassion as having these three parts were for sure. Kind of mindful, you’re sort of recognizing I’m struggling right now. I’m frustrated right now. I’m like, overwhelmed right now. Right? So, you kind of notice where you are.

But the second part of self-compassion is that you agree to kind of treat yourself with a little bit of kindness, you say, you know, how could I talk to myself, like I’m a friend, right? And you do that.

In part because of the third principle, which she calls, common humanity, you recognize I’m not perfect, I’m not going to be perfect, right? I’m going to be good at a lot of things. But I’m still going to let some balls fall like when I’m juggling too much, or something slipped through the cracks. What can I do to take care of myself, even when that happens, and Neff is found that that approach, you know, it doesn’t solve the busyness, but it solves the kind of harm and the negative emotions that we cause ourselves more constantly beating ourselves up.

So, for super busy women, I feel like that mindset shift is like one of the first one of the first spots to go, and then a lot of the other stuff winds up falling into place.

Casey McGuire Davidson  18:40

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I know a lot of women who listen to this podcast and, and I did this for years and years, are, do all the things take care of everyone else. And then I used to drink a bottle of wine a night unless I was like, desperately trying to control it or take a break, which never worked for more than like four days. But you’re doing all the things you come home you drink, thinking that that’s your relief, your happiness, your huge dopamine hit, and then you lose all those hours at night. So, you feel even more overwhelmed. And you wake up at 3am so you don’t sleep well. And then you wake up in the morning and I remember, like just the self-loathing is pretty universal. Like what is wrong with me? Why do I do like, it’s so hard to hate yourself?

Laurie Santos  19:34

Well, yeah, and I think that’s where the self-kindness really can come in. Right? Because if you think about you know how you would talk to a friend that was doing that you know, say you find out your friend is you know, banging back a bottle of Chardonnay every night you wouldn’t scream at them. You wouldn’t kind of love them as a person. But you’d get curious you check in you’d be like, what is going on in your life that you’re feeling so overwhelmed with? This seems like you know… How’s that working out for you or the things you can do? Ah, why are you turning, too? You look, assume your friend is a smart person who’s going to that behavior for some reasonable reason, you know, maybe misguided, but there’s a cause there’s a reason there. And you might kind of dig in. And you might realize, like, I don’t have any other fun in my life, I don’t know how else to relax, right? And as a kind friend, you might be like, okay, that relaxation is a good instinct, right? You should get that. But how can we do that? Maybe in a way that’s healthier, that’s, you know, more harm. Your liver is much more, harm your sleep as much and so on. But that’s a totally different way that to engage than we normally do. Normally, it’s just like, on instinct and on preventing just kind of grab the wine, but then horridly beat ourselves up afterwards. And neither of those approaches are helpful.

It gets to another thing, I think that, you know, busy people need help with when it comes to feeling happier, which is finding ways to get a little bit more fun in their lives. I think one of the reasons people turn to alcohol is like, you know, in the middle age, we just don’t know any other way to have fun, right? Like, we’re too busy for hobbies, we haven’t given ourselves space to kind of honestly connect with other people, Middle Ages of time, and a lot of people’s friendships fall by the wayside. So, you’re kind of feeling a little lonely. And, you know, it makes sense to kind of, you know, turn to that glass of wine when you don’t have anything else. But what would it look like, if you built true fun back into your life, you know, it wasn’t eating something, it wasn’t having a drink, it was really kind of engaging, socially, finding something that would make you feel present, finding something that you’re doing just for the pleasure just for the enjoyment of it, right. And so, think finding practices where you can build that fun back in is not only a way to feel happier, but a way to avoid the kind of substance use stuff that comes up when you’re just sort of missing that thing. That’s your own delight in your life.

Casey McGuire Davidson  21:41

Yeah. Well, do you take your own advice? Like how do you build fun into your life?

Laurie Santos  21:47

Yeah, mostly, fun is definitely one that I’m trying to work on, right. I think part of it is really embracing a little bit more of a beginner’s mindset, right? I think when you’ve been kind of off track on finding fun and your life, it can kind of feel a little clunky when you try to reengage with it. But one of the practices I love, I’ve stolen from the journalist, Katherine Price, she has a book called, The Power of Fun, where she sort of talks about how we can get fun back. And she says that, one of the things you want to do is to like really almost journal about the things that were fun back in the day for you. She calls it your fun factors, right? So, you almost journal, what was the last time you would describe as I had so much fun. Like that thing that I did was so much fun, and just kind of scribble notice, like, who was there? What were you doing and so on. And so, taking Katherine’s advice, one of the things I noticed about fun is that I haven’t had the most fun when there’s like music involved. But I don’t think of myself as a very musical person. I didn’t grow up playing an instrument or any or anything like that. But you have tried to find these like, little, tiny moments of fun.

I downloaded. We have an old very old PlayStation my husband and I have downloaded an old copy of Guitar Hero is like, my school. You know, it’s like early 2000s. Right? But it’s it’s it’s actually fun. And I like you know, like rocking along with Motley Crue. It seems ridiculous, but I have, I have a good time with it.

I recently tried to join a choir. There’s a choir in the Massachusetts area called rocker voices, where they sing at songs, the summer is the summer of Queen. So, they’re all singing Queen songs. And so, I’ve been kind of going to that which is again, it’s like goofy, it’s silly, but it’s kind of social. And so all of those things, it’s worth noting that like, felt hard. At first, I felt stupid for doing it, you know, but as you kind of get into it, it can be a little bit more enjoyable.

Casey McGuire Davidson  23:35

That makes so much sense. And that’s something we do as well, because when you know, become an adult, like you said, I used to have all these hobbies before I had kids. And you know, I mean, I used to go to yoga or Pilates or take guitar lessons or go hiking or backpacking. And then once I had my kids, you know, you could drink while you were cooking dinner, you could drink while you know, the kids were taking a nap or whatever it was like your world kind of shrinks and you hold on for that like one date night every two every two weeks or you know you’re going on a vacation, but with two little kids, it’s hard. And so, once the kids go to bed you drink right. And I totally agree. Like we almost have to go back to what was fun before alcohol sort of took over your life. So, you know, summer camp for me was so fun or I took up playing guitar again once I stopped drinking women.

You mentioned choir, I have a lot of women who take singing lessons or join a choir or take dance or painting lessons like whatever it is that can be a hobby that brings them joy that isn’t, you know, in the bottom of a wine bottle.

Laurie Santos  24:58

Yeah, and I think you know, it’s where Recognizing that at first those things are hard, right? Like, one of the reasons that wine bottle becomes the habit is it’s the habit, right? It’s your kind of quick go to, but these other things can become quick dough twos as well, you just kind of need to give them time to become the thing that you, you tend to do. I started my sort of Guitar Hero habit, you know, during COVID, where there’s a lot of these zoom meetings, and I was sort of doing podcast interviews, and I have another meeting and I’d have these like, you know, kind of 510 minutes in between and I would realize like, oh, that’s time to do you know, one Bon Jovi song and I would run over, like, do this really ridiculous thing, get a PlayStation and come back. And then it sounded silly, but like that was so much of a better use of those five minutes than like, grabbing a snack or if you know, for folks who are worried about alcoholic, you know, having a drink, right? Like you can it as you get more used to engaging in these hobbies and fun things, they can become your go to, to, like, it’s not so much that you get craving for them, like you get a craving for alcohol, but like, you can fit it in even in these awkward times. Just like you would fit in a glass of wine.

Casey McGuire Davidson  26:02

Yeah, that is so funny. I love that we’re the same age because all the songs and artists you’re mentioning I’m like, Oh, yeah.

Laurie Santos  26:11

And when people listening who are like in their 30s and be like Jovi, I swear to God, almost everyone who listens to this is like 40s 50s, some 30 year olds, but not that many.

Casey McGuire Davidson  26:15

But I was laughing because my son, you know, it’s hard to talk to I don’t know, if you do you have kids or kids? Yeah. Okay. It’s hard to talk to teenage boys, and you talk to the most when you’re driving. And otherwise, it’s like deadly awkward, like just driving them around and silent. And so, I was like, why don’t you put on your music mix, and you know, whatever. And this song, pour some sugar on me came on. And I started singing along and he turned to me horrified and was like, how do you know this song? And I was like, Are you freaking kidding me? This is like, my high school anthem. It

Laurie Santos  26:58

It is funny working with college students. It’s funny, you know, which songs from like the 80s and 90s. They know I blame Glee a lot. It’s like Glee has brought it kind of back into their lives a little bit. But, ya know, it’s when you shock them. We’re like, how do you know this? I’m like, Look, I grew up on the Backstreet Boys. Okay, they’re my they’re there. They weren’t leads first.

Casey McGuire Davidson  27:18

Well, so, you talked about social connections. And, and there’s a book out there that I read, which was like, friendship in the age of loneliness. Like, how do you make those social network connections as an adult? Is it through finding hobbies or something else?

Laurie Santos  27:36

Yeah, well, I think that it’s kind of two ways to think about social connections, like in midlife, right? One is kind of making new social connections. And I think you do it in the ways you said, right, you know, I’m meeting people at choir, if you go out, you’ll actually talk to people, right? So, you can meet new people through new activities. But I think a bigger thing for folks in middle age is actually just reconnecting with the people that you care about, right. Most of the people who are listening right now had friends in their 20s, or had friends in college or had, you know, new parent friends in your 30s, that maybe as your kids get older, and kind of, you know, don’t contact as much, it can be as easy as literally going through your phone, you know, scrolling through when you’re kind of, you know, messing around, rather than being on Instagram, go back through your contact list, and just text somebody you haven’t texted in a long time.

You know, when you think about the possibility of doing that you often can feel awkward, you’re like, Well, I haven’t talked to this person a long time, it’s going to be weird. But it turns out, researchers have studied this. And that’s a misprediction. Most people when they get a text out of the blue from someone they haven’t heard from in a long time, just, you know, hey, thinking of you, you know, they’re really excited, you know, think about you, if you get a text from one of those friends that you hadn’t heard from in a while, that was like, hey, just thinking of you, that might even make your day. And so, I think we need to overcome the awkwardness of reconnecting with the people that we haven’t connected to in a while. Because it’s new, they’re the kind of like whole source of our history, and they know a lot about our past. And they’re probably going through a lot of the same stuff that we’re going through too.

And so, so I think we need to think about making these connections in two ways.

One is making the new connections. But the second is just like putting in the work to like, recontact other people and pushing for it, right? You might need to be the friend that’s like, Okay, we’re going to set a date, like, you know, set a date for some time. You know, I don’t know a way in the future months and months from now, but let’s just get it in our calendars, right. But the act of doing that can really be powerful. It can allow you to reconnect with the people that you did care about that you had so much in common with before, and you can rebuild those relationships.

Casey McGuire Davidson  29:34

Yeah, I’m very lucky enough to live in the same town as my best friend from high school. And she actually went to Yale as well. So, I know a little bit about the houses and sort of the structure there. But like when we were 16, we were really into Billy Joel. We were not the coolest at 16. So, we called it like, Billy Fest, and we know every song in his repertoire and he’s super are old, but he would hate me saying that. But we saw him on Friday night concert. And like all the old songs and everybody’s singing together, it was such a rush of happiness. It was really fun.

Laurie Santos  30:15

Yeah, I’ve done this with equally, you know, painfully, maybe not very good artists. I think Billy Joel beats out mine though, because I was doing this with the New Kids on the Block, right? Connecting with friends of ours, and like going back to see them, you know, they’re, you know, they’re maybe not so old. But you know, they’re getting okay. And so, yeah, but I think that that kind of silliness that sort of stalled. You’re right, like I imagined that was like, so fun, right. But somebody had to make that call, somebody had to book the tickets, and so on.

And so, I think, you know, as middle aged women, we’re often investing in so much, right, we’re investing in our kids and investing in careers and things, I think we need to realize that got to put that same investment into your close relationships, otherwise, they’re going to wither over time, right. And it’s useful for your happiness, it’s also useful for your health. There’s this lovely study of what’s called the Harvard study of adult development that sort of followed people across their lives and into their 80s. And what you find is that the thing that predicts not only your longevity, how long you’ll live, but also whether you’ll, you know, die of something like heart disease, or cancer or so on. It’s not so much your physical factors, but it’s a lot your social factors, right. And so just that investment in your social connection is actually an investment in your health, too.

Casey McGuire Davidson  31:29

Yeah, and I think that sometimes one of the biggest fears that women have when they’re looking at stopping drinking is that if you’re a big drinker, so many of your friends are huge drinkers as well, like, it’s how you socialize and get together. And they’re worried that they’re going to lose all their friends, right? Like, yes, I’ll start feeling better. And it’s better for my health and, you know, less depressed, less anxiety, but then will I lose all my friends, and I think there’s this balance, like I didn’t, I had to change the way I socialize with all my friends, you know, fewer happy hours, and cocktail bars and more yoga and walks. But also, you do make new friends. When you stop drinking it, I mean, I made more friends in the year after I stopped drinking, than I had in the previous three years, which was the opposite of what I thought would happen.

Laurie Santos  32:30

Yeah. And I think, you know, we’ve seen you know, even if, for folks who haven’t stopped drinking, yet, even folks who are maybe sober, curious and thinking about it, like, you’ve also been through times where your friendships have shifted, and you’ve had to change your habits, and you’ve sort of sorted out, you know, like, cut back to, like, you know, the end of the year 2020. You, and we were doing our zoom hangouts and doing like zoom trivia, or Zoom Yoga, you know, it’s like, you change things up, and you made it work, right? You weren’t necessarily going out to bars in the same way, right. And so, I think for all of us, we’ve had these moments where we’ve had to get creative about how we’re doing things. And we were able to do that, right.

So, you can do that in the context of not necessarily going out to bars and having cocktail nights, you can kind of switch it up to I think there’s also just much more of a like, an appreciation for people who are so burned out or even doing like, you know, kind of, like, like, no drink month or something like that. You know, every restaurant around me right now has like, a whole mocktail menu, right. And so, I think, even if you don’t switch it up, even if you’re kind of doing the like, oh, we’ll go out to a restaurant together. There are ways to engage in it that are a little bit healthier and that don’t involve alcohol now.

Casey McGuire Davidson  33:39

Yeah, absolutely. I love the sober curious movement. And it’s even so much different on college campuses, right? I mean, I read that like 25 to 30% of college students don’t drink right now. And when I went to college, it was all about keg parties.

Laurie Santos  33:56

Yeah, I think it’s kind of complicated, though, right? I think in some ways, I actually worry about what’s happening on college campuses, because in the spots where you do still see drinking the form of it takes a different kind of path than it did back in our day. And I think, you know, back in our day, people know, back in our day, there was like, a day, but back in our day, they were kind of, you know, parties that people would go to and drink, right?

These days, at least at Yale, what you often see is that students are really busy, right? So, they’re trying to get through their schoolwork. And they have a different kind of binge drinking, though the way often works is like you’re working, working, working till 1 or 2 in the morning. And then you’re like, oh my gosh, I have to catch up because I haven’t been partying. And so, you binge drink by just like chugging a few shots in a row. So, it’s not like, long days of drinking a lot. It’s drinking a lot really quickly. And it’s doing that to kind of like, downsize the anxiety about your schoolwork.

You know, I’ve even heard, individual students say to me like, well, one of the reasons I get drunk on the weekends is so I can stop worrying about my work because if I’m drunk, then I can’t stress about that term paper or put more I’m into my resume like, Oh, gosh. So, I think it’s overall you’re seeing these things go down. But the particular nuanced way that they’re engaging with it is actually something I worry about, too.

Casey McGuire Davidson  35:10

Yeah, I’ve seen that even with my clients where they’re literally say, I drink to incapacitate myself so that I won’t have to be on email because I can’t. And that’s, like, so crazy that we don’t feel like we can set our own internal boundaries or external boundaries to stop working. And to do it, we kind of have to knock ourselves unconscious.

Laurie Santos  35:35

Totally, totally. And I think that’s again, another moment for kind of self-compassion and self-kindness, right? Like, that’s only going to feel worse if you kind of scream at yourself. But if you just take a curious like, Oh, my goodness, like, Why? Why didn’t I feel comfortable setting that boundary? Like, what’s going on that I was unable to take care of myself like that? Right? How can I change that in the future?

So, kind of engaging with that, kind of, even if there’s something nasty like that going on in your life engaging with that challenge with some curiosity and kindness is a better way to navigate it.

Casey McGuire Davidson  36:06

You mentioned gratitude? And do you have any specific practices that you suggest for people?

Laurie Santos  36:13

Yeah, one of the easiest ones that researchers talk about a lot is writing in a gratitude journal, you know, so just scribbling down three to five things you’re grateful for every night sounds cheesy, but there’s evidence that in as little as two weeks it will start making you feel a bit more satisfied with your life. There’s also evidence that kind of gratitude makes it easier to help your future self. So, people who experience more gratitude are more likely to eat healthier, they’re more likely to save kind of for retirement more. And it’s kind of like, you sort of want to give back so almost to your future self. And so, I actually think there’s an interesting, this hasn’t been studied exactly with substance use. But the data, you know, studied so far with kind of eating healthier suggests that it’s easier to avoid your cravings if you’re feeling grateful. And so, it might also be a practice that’s very helpful for the recovery community as well. Yeah,

Casey McGuire Davidson  37:01

I can totally see that when I was in my first year, I joined a gratitude group with other people who had stopped drinking, just through Facebook. And every day, we had to list five things that we were grateful for. But what I liked about it, is it took it away from Oh, I’m grateful for my health and my family, and you know, my home or, you know, safety to like, oh, my gosh, you know, I, you know, this person smiled at me, or my friend was making this spreadsheet and offered to share it with me. So, I didn’t have to start the format, like little things, which actually makes you look around you for the good. Yeah.

Laurie Santos  37:44

And then I think gratitude works in a couple of ways. It’s powerful, because for sure, noticing those things. And again, in our like, multitasking, you don’t not so present world, just the act of noticing the good stuff is powerful. But then you kind of bring that good thing back to mind. Right? Imagine what the gratitude group, you have to tell them what it is. And so, it’s not like you just noticing it when it happens. You can kind of cue those good things up, right. And you’re normally the human brain is biased towards negativity.

There’s something that’s even called a negativity bias, which actually bracketed something Kylie studied in kids and showed that babies have a negativity bias.

Casey McGuire Davidson  38:19

But I don’t know if that’s where the podcast but no, no, that is so cool. But um…

Laurie Santos  38:23

but yeah, but he was really wired towards negativity. And so one of the things that gratitude does is it really shifts that bias, right? So you can attend to an intentionally notice all the good stuff around you, because honestly, usually, there’s good stuff around you even in the worst of times, there’s, you know, the warmth of your coffee mug and a person smile on the street, right? Like, those things are still there. It’s just our brain can’t pay attention to them. So just this practice of noticing the good things and scribbling them down, starts training your brain in the other direction. I think that can be really powerful. Yeah,

Casey McGuire Davidson  38:55

absolutely. I mean, when one of the things that we were taught in coaching school is obviously, try to move people out of wherever they are, if they’re feeling stuck to agency, but if everything they say is negative, like the last question I need to ask is, why aren’t things worse? Then?

Yeah, like, well, at least this thing didn’t happen, or this person helped.

Laurie Santos  39:20

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s, you know, it’s, it takes a little bit of work, and it can feel a little bit cheesy, but, you know, the evidence is so powerful there that I always tell people just try it, even if it doesn’t kind of feel like the right move, just try it out. And just sort of notice how that feels. A related practice that some people are into is rather than sort of talking about what you’re grateful for. Just try to notice what you might call delights out there in the world, because sometimes gratitude can feel a little heavy like it’s all about you, but like, delights are just like, you know, again, I was like walking over here to get set up for this podcast interview and some car was going by blasting like some really cheesy music and that was like, Oh, that’s such a delight. Write this little silly thing. But I’m kind of noticing it. And so, if gratitude is kind of feeling like too much just make a practice to notice and share just some funny, goofy things that happened that kind of filled you with the light.

Casey McGuire Davidson  40:11

Yeah, my cats sometimes are that, you know, when they were little kittens, I remember just watching their little bodies go down the stairs. And that was something that just made me smile. Totally.

Laurie Santos  40:23

And I think cataloging those things, right. So, you can go back to them later. That’s a great thing about a gratitude list or a kind of like, delight list is, you know, you go back, and you scroll through that list on your phone, and it’s like reliving those happy memories all over again.

Casey McGuire Davidson  40:35

Yeah, absolutely. One thing I wanted to ask you about is I don’t know where I heard this, but it was sort of related to your idea of you think that you’re, you achieve X or you do Y or you go on X vacation that that’s going to make you happy, and that that it does, but it’s very short live, do you think people have sort of a happiness set point or a place where they sort of, you know, each person has sort of a different set point of where they are? Is that totally miss misconception?

Laurie Santos  41:09

Yeah, I mean, I think there’s lots of evidence that we tend to have these kinds of set points. I mean, we kind of, you know, this fits with our, like, way of just kind of viewing the world, you know, there are some people out there that are naturally a little bit of a higher happiness set point. Some people that are like, you know, just kind of a little bit lower, right. But the problem with the set point is that it’s it tends to be because when we try to change our happiness, we do that through our circumstances, right? What can actually change your setpoint is if you’re regularly engaging in these behaviors, and mindset shifts that do seem to matter for happiness.

So behavior shifts that we’ve just talked about, right, like getting a little bit more social connection, doing some nice things for others, right, getting making sure you’re sort of prioritizing your sleep, mindset changes, getting a little bit more self-compassionate, and trying to be a bit more present, trying to be a bit more grateful, those kinds of things can actually move your setpoint because unlike a quick vacation or promotion at work, they’re the kind of happiness things that stick around, if you keep doing that. I mean, that’s the key, though, right, is that if you keep engaging in gratitude, you keep engaging in social connection, it’s not just a one and done kind of thing, which is something I have to remind myself, it’s happiness as possible. But it does take a little bit of work. It’s kind of like any good thing.

The analogy I often use with my students is like, likening happiness to sort of fitness. You know, I’m trying to get back into, you know, in my 40s, trying to get back into strength training and stuff. And, you know, I went to my trainer recently. Did it once. And I was like, wait, you know, to have this work, I have to go back. I have to go back Thursday, and I have to go back Saturday. It’s like, it’s not a one and done deal. And the same is true for these happiness practices, engaging in a little social connection, scribbling in your gratitude journal, you know, getting a great night of sleep that works. But you got to do it day after day, to kind of get the real benefit.

Casey McGuire Davidson  42:53

Yeah, how important is you mentioned, exercise, and sleep? How important are those sorts of physical restoration practices?

Laurie Santos  43:03

There are big ones, right. And I think you know, too, that you can even add, like healthy eating, you know, not drinking so much right, we forget our bodies are connected to our minds. And so, of course, it makes sense that our physical health and what we’re doing to treat our physical bodies well matters for our mental health, but, but the effects are more profound than we think. There’s one that’s called a meta-analysis, which is a study of studies with a study that like pools all the data from other studies together on the effects of exercise. And it finds that getting a half hour of cardio in every day is probably as effective as taking an anti-depression medication prescription, right. Just like moving your body a little bit is good for that.

And we see similarly powerful effects with sleep, I actually think we could solve a lot of the mental health crisis in the college students that we were just talking about if we can get our young people to sleep a little bit more, right? Because it’s so profound for improving our mental health. And so, and I think if you think about something like alcohol, of course, it’s sort of dovetailing with both of these, right?

You know, on a night after binge drinking, you’re, of course, not sleeping very well. But it also makes it harder to get up for that, you know, 7am Pilates class too, right. And so, I think these things can kind of cycle together in ways where how we’re treating our physical bodies winds up having a huge impact on our mental health. Yeah,

Casey McGuire Davidson  44:19

I’m wondering. At Yale, these are all things individuals can do. And things individuals can control. And you said, that’s more important than sort of the bigger external circumstances you’re in. But have you talked with the school administration about like the overall pressures or the overall environment and priorities that kids learn about?

Laurie Santos  44:46

Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely something we’re sort of talking about a lot. I founded on campus, what’s known as a Good Life Center, which is a sort of well-being center where we try to actualize all these sort of evidence based tips that I talked about in class. You know, sort of things like taking time-off. And, you know, making sure you’re prioritizing sleep and presence, right?

Put your phone away, put your laptop away kind of thing. But it’s hard, right? You know, so many of these pressures are pushing against the normal things that we value, like busyness and productivity and success at all costs, right? I think what we’re starting to learn, and I think we’re at work kind of more often sort of seeing eye to eye with administration is, you as people start to see more and more of these data showing that those bottom line things like success, productivity, good grades, like, if you’re focused on your happiness, you’re more likely to get there. Right? One of my favorite studies that looked at this looked at this nonacademic context, but in a work context, right, you know, you could ask, as a busy professional, what are the kinds of things that would make me the most successful in my job? Or maybe if you’re a leader at that organization, you know, say you’re in the C suite, what are the things that could make my team members, you know, do better. And we don’t often think of happiness.

But there’s a study out of the University of Oxford that was, was collaborated with the job website, indeed. So, it got lots of ratings of 1000s and 1000s of companies of people’s happiness at work. And what you find is that the happier companies wind up being the most successful companies.

In other words, the companies that have the happiest workers have the best stock performance. And it makes sense why because when you’re happier, when you’re in a positive mood, you end up performing better, right. You like probably less likely to leave work, you’re not going to take sick days, you’re not going to go off and go on LinkedIn and try to get a new job, right, like you’re present and working hard and performing well. And but that means that you need to prioritize your happiness. And so, I think this is something that we can kind of mistake is that we often think of sort of, you know, work life balance, right? That they’re in this kind of, you know, relationship where as one goes up, as work goes up, well, we know life is going to go down, and vice versa. But I think a better metaphor is what you might call work life harmony, where if you’re taking care of your life, and you’re focused on your happiness, and making sure you have social connection and taking care of your sleep, that’s going to make you work better. And as you work better, it’s going to be easier to do the other things and vice versa.

So, I think we need to think of these as like, positive cycles and harmony rather than the sort of, well, if you prioritize one, you’re necessarily going to lose out on the other.

Casey McGuire Davidson  47:12

Yeah, cause I think that’s what people are scared of. Right? Yeah, prioritize my happiness, then I’m not going to take care of my kids get promoted, etc. Exactly.

Laurie Santos  47:25

And I think it just doesn’t fit with what the data show, right? I think that’s a fear. That’s like, just really unfounded, right? The data really show that the more you engage in positive emotion, the more innovatively you’ll problem solve at work, right? The more you engage in positive emotion, the happier your kids are, because there’s evidence for what’s called emotional contagion, right? Like, if you’re happy, it’s going to have an effect where your happier family is a little bit happier, you know, think about when your teens are in a good mood just puts you in a good mood if you’re a parent, right? And so, the same is the reverse. And so, I think we often think like, oh, well, you know, I’m doing this, this all this sacrifice, you know, but I’ll work harder. And I’ll sacrifice my mental health now. But in the end, my performance will be better, I’ll be more successful, and so on. And I think we just do that at our peril, because the data suggests it just the emotions just don’t work like that we’d be better off, even for everything we thought of is the bottom line if we just focused on our mental health? Yeah.

Casey McGuire Davidson  48:15

And so that’s like, a societal shift that we have to buy into and change, which is why I love that, your course and your work and your podcast are getting so much attention, like you said, The New York Times covered because it’s not just on college campuses that this is going on. I mean, I think our whole society is bought into the idea of, I have to work harder, but like this fear base, because if I don’t, x will happen.

Laurie Santos  48:49

Yeah, and I think, you know, I think the good news is I see that pendulum shifting, I mean, I think a lot of us, like went through a bit of a reckoning about how unhappy we were both with the pandemic and what’s happened after the pandemic, you know, think about conversations about quiet quitting, and burnout, burnout, culture, and these kinds of things. I think people are recognizing that the path we were on before was making us all very unhappy and very unhealthy. And so, I think there’s a kind of pushback that I expect is going to last for a while, and I expect it’s going to last for a while because the data bear out, right? If you’re the CEO of a company, and all you want to do is, you know, have your stock portfolios go through the roof and just like make everybody a ton of money, the data is starting to suggest the way you do that is by having happy workers, you know, and so I think, you know, and I love this because like the results, this is the thing about doing the science of happiness, as opposed to like the platitudes of happiness, like the science didn’t have to go that way. Right?

There was a direction that happiness at work was going to predict maybe would predict that companies make money could go the other way. Maybe you want to make your quizzes unhappy as possible, right? But turns out not so it turns out that the way you are the best as you the way you perform best in business, is that you focus on Your mental health as an individual and as aggregate, you know, and as companies. And so, I think given that the data are looking like that, I think this is something that more and more companies are going to pay attention to, hopefully, because it’s the ethical thing to do, but also because it’s going to increase their bottom line.

Casey McGuire Davidson  50:15

Yeah, and one of the best things my general manager ever did, because she was the one who traveled a ton and sent emails at three in the morning, and then everybody sort of woke up and anxiety spiked or sent all these emails on the weekends. And the best thing she did, because I noticed such a before and after is, after her signature, she finally put in, I, you know, we’re a flexible work culture. And I work when you know what works for me, I don’t expect you to digest or reply to this email outside of regular working hours. And because she was the boss, boss, everybody kind of took a breath. And it really helped people not, you know, spike into that stress cycle.

Laurie Santos  51:03

Yeah, and I think this is a thing that we need to recognize, as, you know, business professionals and leaders, right, is that, whether or not we’re taking care of ourselves, no matter for the people around us, too, right. So, you’re not just kind of burning yourself out, you might be burning people around you out, too. And, you know, this was something, you know, in my own experience that I took really seriously beginning you asked me, you know, I, I kind of practicing what I preach, am I finding my fun and doing all these habits myself? And the answer is yes, but it takes a lot of work. It takes so much work that sometimes I realize I’m getting a little off track. And then, I have to kind of reset my course a little bit.

And one of these things happened in the context of my position, being a head of college on campus. You know, I was a head of college, when I started this course and started this podcast, I was incredibly busy, then COVID hit. And that was a nightmare to be out of college on campus in the middle of COVID. Because we were you know, kicking our students off campus and enacting all the public health measures, it was kind of a nightmare. And honestly, I realized I was burning out. And so, I made the tough decision to step down from this head of college role, in part because I was realizing like, if I don’t do that, then people are going to see me burning out. And what does that mean, you know, the happiness Professor isn’t following her own advice. And so, I kind of made this tough decision to step down. But after that, I got tons of emails from people at Yale and beyond who said, you know, thank you for you being the one that stepped back and admitted that you needed a break and that you needed more rest, that you needed to rebalance, it kind of gives other people permission to do the same.

So, I think that’s something else, if you’re the kind of person who has a tough time, you know, doing that yourself, I think, remembering that you’re going to have a positive impact on other people, you’re going to give them permission to be compassionate with themselves, too.

Casey McGuire Davidson  52:54

I think that can be a powerful motivator to kind of take care of yourself, if it’s tricky, it’s the kind of thing that is hard for you, taking care of yourself winds up taking care of other people, too, when we model it for our kids as well, like my daughter is super into now. ASMR. At night, apparently, all the 10 year olds are really into ASMR. And like, she’s into box breathing, I’m just like, when I was 10, I did not know any of these.

Laurie Santos  53:13

But I think that’s imperfect, because, you know, the mental health challenges are not just in college students. And unfortunately, you know, we have, you know, increases in suicidality in 10 year olds that we’re seeing empirically now, right. And I think everything we can do to model positive self-care, as parents, I think is going to be so important for our kids. Yeah.

Casey McGuire Davidson  53:33

And I realized I was looking at her like, I would leave the house, even in college and would not look at my face, or body for the rest of the day till I got back to my dorm or home and looked in a mirror again, like or went to a bathroom. It was not something that was like every picture you took every time you looked at your phone. Yeah.

Laurie Santos  53:55

And I think that, again, there’s so many ways that I think technology is changing things. But I think the looks conscious culture that we experience with modern technology is another hit on, you know, teen identity is but and especially for girls, too.

Casey McGuire Davidson  54:11

So, I love you’ve mentioned the research a million times, which I love.

Is/are there any future projects or research that you’re really excited about? That’s, you know, being done in the field of happiness and well-being?

Laurie Santos  54:26

Yeah, well, that our next season of the podcast I run the happiness lab is on my happiness challenges. So, I’m kind of like, looking at the spots where the happiness teachers sort of flunking the class as it were. So, I’m focused on things like my perfectionism, how I have trouble being bored, right, which I think is a big relevant one for people who are trying to drink a little bit less right because I know for me, like, you know, I turned to a glass of wine when I’m feeling a little bored at night, right for a bit of a release. Yeah. I’m also focused on things like how to engage my time a little It Better right how to kind of deal with the fact that I’m busy all the time, and even come a little bit to terms with the fact that I’m finite and mortal and I can’t do everything right. And so, so that season of my podcast is going to launch on June 3, and so you should check it out. And the next big kind of teaching project that we have going on is that we’ve watched the original science of wellbeing class, which is a sort of version of my yoga class for any adult out there. But we realized that you know, so many teens need this content, too. And so, we recently launched the science of wellbeing for teens on coursera.org. So teenagers, high schoolers and middle schoolers could take it. Well, we have seen from that is that lots of parents are watching the teen class because they want to know how to help their teens. And so, our next big project, which you launching sometime this fall, is a happiness class specifically for parents for parents thinking about how they can help their kids mental health, but how they can also take care of their own mental health at the same time. And so, Oh, my God, just some fun future projects that everyone should be sure to check out.

Casey McGuire Davidson  56:01

Well, I can’t wait to listen to your next version of your podcast or the next phase. Because I am sure that you know, same thing, right. I’m interviewing people all the time about well-being and that sort of a reminder and a lesson for me, but I can’t wait to hear about sort of your journey and what you’re going through as well. And as a mom of a teenager, and a 10 year old, I definitely want to listen to the versions of the course. And as a parent, but also my husband and being at the school, like I said one of their school missions or priorities is around the mental health and happiness of both the students and the teachers there.

Laurie Santos  56:43

Yeah. And I think that’s really important, right, you know, especially post COVID. Teachers are more burned out than ever, and so think teachers need to find ways to put their own oxygen masks on.

Casey McGuire Davidson  56:54

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast. You mentioned one of my clients, who is fantastic and wonderful mentioned that you were her dissertation professor, which is incredible and hooked me up with you. And I know your time is very valuable. So, thank you.

Laurie Santos  57:13

Thanks so much for having me on the show.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Hello Someday podcast.

If you’re interested in learning more about me, the work I do, and access free resources and guides to help you build a life you love without alcohol. Please visit hellosomedaycoaching.com. And I would be so grateful if you would take a few minutes to rate and review this podcast so that more women can find it. And join the conversation about drinking less and living more.