December 16, 2024 • 38 mins
The holidays are supposed to be a time of joy. But all too often, the darker, colder days of winter, and even the stress of preparing for the holidays themselves, can lead people to feel something else: rushed, stressed, lonely, or even hopeless. How can you make sure this year is bright?
Dr Laurie joins Dave DeSteno on his show How God Works: The Science Behind Spirituality to unpack the psychological secrets of celebrations from Christmas, to Hanukkah, to Yule, and more. They’ll also discuss how we can put that wisdom into practice, whatever our beliefs, to make this season a happier and healthier one for all.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. This is our final show of twenty twenty four,
and it's a good opportunity for me to thank you
for listening to and supporting the Happiness Lab. Your support
means a lot. But you don't have to wait long
until we're back. On January first, we'll be launching a
new series for the new year. I'll be doubling down
on the practical happiness advice. I know you all appreciate.
(00:37):
We're making a series of how to guides to help
you joyfully navigate things like relationships, stress, and the messiness
of our daily lives. By the end of each show,
you'll have heard at least five tips that you can
put into action right away, direct from the mouths of
some of the smartest well being scientists and thinkers. All
that starting January first. I know you'll love it. But
(01:01):
right now, the holiday season is here. It's supposed to
be a time of joy, but way too many of
us are feeling rushed, stressed, lonely, and even hopeless. What
are some scientific strategies we can use to have a
happier holiday season? And can we also get some happiness
insights from the traditions of the past. These are the
questions I had a chance to explore with my good
(01:22):
friend Dave Distello. Dave's a psychology professor at Northeastern University.
He also hosts a podcast called How God Works, an
entire show devoted to looking at the wisdom we can
get from ancient traditions no matter what our own beliefs are.
Dave and I had a super fun chat on his
show about how he can put psychological science and ancient
wisdom into practice this holiday season to feel happier and
(01:44):
less stressed. So I decided to share that episode with
you today. It's my holiday gift to you. I hope
you enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
You know that turn of phrase, the dead of winter,
Well there's a good reason for it. In the northern climes.
This is the season of death, dark, and dormancy. All
the color and bounty of the fall harvest is gone.
Even the sun is disappearing earlier and earlier, and the shorter,
colder days we're facing lead to a drop in serotonin
(02:28):
levels and changes to our circadian rhythms. The result feelings
of stress, gloominess, anxiety, and isolation for many people. And
as much as we might like to hibernate and sleep,
away these dark cold months. For us humans, life goes on,
(02:50):
which is one reason why many northern cultures have come
up with some of the most festive, cozy, and celebratory
winter holidays to help get us through. From lighting candles
to reciting communal prayers and songs, to giving gifts and
aid to others. Many of these traditions are rooted in religion,
but there's also reason to believe that these traditions can
(03:10):
bring comfort and happiness regardless of faith, if you do
them right. By that, I don't mean reciting the prayer
correctly or lighting the candles just so, but rather by
focusing on the heart of the traditions and advice they give,
which is why I'm so thrilled to have my friend,
podcast hosts and happiness expert Lori Santos joined me today
(03:32):
to talk about how and why these time honored holiday
traditions work on our brains and bodies. And for those
of us who find the traditions themselves the source of
worry and stress, we'll find ways to reconnect with the
good stuff to make this holiday season a brighter, happier
one for all of us. Hi, Laurie, thanks for coming
(03:54):
on the show again. Thanks for having me back, and
happy holidays.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Happy holidays, Dave, Did you not I don't actually like
I'm not that into the holidays? Did you know that? One? Yeah?
I did.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I was going to ask you because actually you and
I have been friends for a while, but I didn't
think I ever asked you for you doing Christmas as
a child something else.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, I grew up with Christmas a little bit Thanksgiving,
although that wasn't really a big holiday. But my favorite
one was Halloween. So I'm really into Halloween. You know,
the costumes, the candy, all the spooky stuff. And when
November first comes around, I have to work really hard
to not wind up in a deep depression because, like,
my favorite holiday is done. When they take off all
the Halloween stuff and they move the candy out and
(04:31):
they put the Christmas lights in and the decorations, it's
a little period of morning for me.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well, I think you're not that alone. I mean, the
surveys show that for a lot of people this time
of year, even though many say they're looking forward to
the holiday, is they're also feeling a good bit of stress, sadness, fatigue,
and even loneliness. So given that you are in some
ways one of those people. What do you think leads
to that what makes this time so hard?
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I think part of it is our expectations. I mean,
they're literally songs jingling on the radio claiming it's the
most wonderful time of the year. So if you're thinking like,
this is the kind of time of year when I
feel little bit lonely, or this is a time of
year when I feel super whelm because there's just like
a lot on my plate, you can start to feel
like you're doing it wrong, there's something wrong with you.
(05:15):
And so I think that this expectation that it's supposed
to be the most wonderful can lead us astray. I mean,
as you know from so much work in behavioral science,
it's really not the objective way that a situation plays out.
It's really our expectation that affects how we think about it.
So if our expectations are really high, even a reasonably good,
just fine holiday, it can make us feel kind of crappy.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yeah, like we're not doing it right. But I recently
saw a study that piqued my interest, and it was
looking at people during the holiday season, and what it
showed is that people who celebrated in the more traditional
way actually ended up having more positive emotions, higher satisfaction
with their lives, in greater well being. And so that
led me to the question of why, what parts of
(06:02):
these traditions boost happiness and what can we learn from that,
whatever our beliefs might be. And that my friend is
where you kind of in.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Its not my deep patriot of the holiday season. It's
my deep knowledge or real science.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And yeah, yes, yes, but sometimes coming from a place
where it wasn't working and learning how to put it
into practice along with that science is really important because
as we all know, having the goal is important, but
understanding how to actually make it a practice and not
just a goal is what really matters.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yeah, and this is actually something that I've been putting
into effect in my own life. Given that I don't
like the holidays, what can I do to make them
a little bit happier? Find my own rituals and so on.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Let me start with one thing that often I think
gets in my way in the holidays, all the rushing
that we do. No, it almost feels like a frenzy
to prepare. It's like shop, cook, write cards, and then
wrap and shop some more. And even though I know
I'm supposed to be enjoying the season, I'm not really
doing it. As I go along, I keep saying, when
(07:02):
this is done, I will have time to be happy.
When this is done, I'll be happy, And then it's
like the day after Christmas, and I'm like, where did
it all go? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I mean, I think there's lots of studies on this,
just broadly in the field of happiness science. This bias
that researchers called the arrival fallacy. It's kind of like,
I'll be happy when, right, I'll be happy when I
just get through all the shopping and we can get
to the actual day where we open the Presence, Or
I'll be happy when New Year's rolls around and I'm
through all the work parties. Right, We're kind of constantly
sort of fast forwarding like this moment where we can
(07:33):
take a breath and stick around and safer and notice
all the good stuff. And of course, as you might imagine,
that arrival fallacy messes us up for a couple of reasons.
One is that we're not enjoying the journey as we
go through. So these moments that could be kind of
fun when you're shopping and hearing the cool music and
seeing people and enjoying the bustle. There's a kind of
really richness to that that we could get into. We're
(07:54):
not doing that because we're just like fast forward until
we get that done and go on to the next thing.
And so it means that we're missing these moments of
joy along the way that we're not paying attention to.
But the second reason that falling prey to this arrival
fallacy is so bad is that we tend to get
these predictions wrong. Christmas morning, with my family sitting under
the tree, we think when I get there, I'll be
so happy, But we're forecasting that that's going to feel
(08:16):
really awesome, and in fact it's going to have its
problems too, Right, maybe it's kind of cold out, or
I didn't get the gift. I like, very few people
have the privilege of having a holiday that goes swimmingly
across all those expectations. It's going to actually have its
like little bumps, and so inevitably we wind up kind
of fast forwarding to this time that we're forecasting is
going to be super perfect but might not be as
(08:37):
perfect as we think, And then we wind up having
missed out on the stuff we should have been enjoying
along the way.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
But when I was a kid, and I see this
in lots of young kids, it's what's the next present?
And I open it and I look at it and
I'm like thanks, and I throw it to the side,
and then what's the next present? Do you have any
advice for getting really excited kids to savor during the holidays?
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Well, in some ways, you're like asking the wrong person,
because when I was a kid, and even in my
family now, you get the presence and everybody just like
rips them open like you're in your own little me,
me me world. And when I first went to the
holidays at my in law's family, which you go to
my husband Mark in Iowa, they had this tradition that
was so incredibly foreign to me where they waited and
(09:21):
went around the room and everybody opened one present at
a time. And it was so funny to me how
like I was like ready to rip in and he
was kind of looking at you, like, Laurie, like Mom's
opening your present, just wait, and I'm like oh, And
it winds up being a very long procedure, which kind of,
you know, was really hard for my normal temporal discounting
where I kind of wanted to open my presence right away,
but they turn it into like a really day long
(09:43):
event and we kind of open present, so we talk
about each present and we go through. But for kids,
I think you need to get creative about the rituals
of this right and so that can be having something
that happens in between every present. Maybe people have to
comment on presents, you have to say one thing you're
grateful for in between every present, or you know, you
need to share a delight that you have at the
(10:04):
end of the day throughout the holiday season, and sometimes
you'll find that even when you're struggling to figure this
stuff out, if you give them a new tradition, especially
little kids, they sometimes really get into it. And for
many parents, I think seeing the holiday season through the
eyes of a kid, if you can help that kid
articulate the things that they're savoring, that can be so
good for your own positive emotion.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
But that's a really important point that I didn't think of,
because if you do it that way, and if you
reflect on it that way, that's the opportunity for the
savoring and for the gratitude.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Exactly and so I think whatever you can do to
sort of extend it out can be really powerful.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
It's interesting because when I look at many of the
traditional celebrations, they were usually multi day. In the Christian tradition,
there's Advent, you know, four weeks before when people come together,
do crafts together, pray together, eat together. And Hanukkah there
are eight days of families coming together, and Mule it's twelve.
(11:08):
I think they just give you more opportunities to savor.
And right now in the US, at least, we've kind
of made Christmas one day and it's the be all
and the end, all right, So if we're trying to
think this season about how to take more time to
save her, to not fall prey to the arrival fallacy,
(11:29):
what should we do?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
So one of my favorite suggestions, which I actually learned
from Liz Dunn, she's a professor at the University of
British Columbia. She actually suggested harnessing our pro social emotions
to save her more. One of the things she suggests
is to give your savoring as a gift to someone.
So what does she mean, Let's say it's a holiday event.
I'm making genderbread houses with my niece and it's messy.
(11:52):
I'm feeling a little frustrated. But if I was thinking
pro socially about what I would want to give my niece,
I would say, let me try to be fully present
and have a really good time. This is going to
turn into a fun memory that she's going to look
back at later. Right. In some ways, I'm not savoring
for me because it's going to help my journey in
the holiday season, I'm savoring for my niece, or you know,
a different holiday version. Sometimes family tensions can come off,
(12:15):
but it's like, you know what, I'm going to engage
in this holiday event with no tension. I'm just going
to shut all that off so that we can have
a good time. And that's the gift to my mom.
Even when savoring is hard for us, if we're setting
this up as a gift for somebody else, help.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
What that suggests in some ways is that presence is
a shared experience. And what we're learning more and more
from behavioral science is that experiences in some ways matter
more than material goods for happiness. Right.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, that's right, And I think this is something we
can really get wrong, especially in the holiday season. We
get obsessed with kind of giving a particular thing. But
what we know from a lot of the behavioral science
and happiness field, does material possessions just don't really increase
our happiness as much as we think, or definitely for
as long as we think, we'd be much better thinking
about gifts of experiences, whether that's something we literally give somebody,
(13:04):
you know, give somebody a gift card for going to
a cool new restaurant, or a gift hard to take
a course online, but it can also be the experiences
we give people during the holiday season when we're present
with them. One of the cool things about the holiday
season that we forget is it's one of the few
times of year that we kind of all are in
the same groove. People have time off for the major
(13:26):
holidays and New Years and so on. It's a time
that we can kind of like connect together even though
we're all busy, like we're all sort of going through
it together. And so I think it's really a time
where we can harness social connection to feel a little
bit healthier.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
But I want to get back to the gifts because
in some ways that is such a big part of
the holiday season. You know, you and I can talk
about this and people can say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
where's my present? For many people, as you said, this
can seem like one of the most stressful parts of
the holidays. I've got to get this from my kids,
I've got to get this from my coworkers, my great
aunt Jenny, she hates everything. What am I going to get?
Hur But in reality, you know, I think the reason
(14:05):
many of these traditions remind us to give gifts isn't
just to make other people happy, but to let us
realize that the act of giving itself brings us joy
and happiness. So what does the science of happiness tell
us about giving to other people, whether it's spending money
on them or giving them our time.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Well, the evidence here is super clear, which is that
doing for others is one of the fastest ways to
make ourselves happy. And I think this is something our
culture gets wrong a lot. It shifts a little bit
in the holiday season where it's the sort of season
of giving, but even in the season of giving, and
definitely for the rest of the year, it feels like
we're not in the season of giving, We're in the
season of self care or treating ourselves right.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Treat yourself in a time that you gave yourself to
break your head, trade yourself.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
I mean even in the holiday season, you can look
to these sort of self help books, which is like
how to get self care during the season of giving right,
it's all about us. So controlled for the amount of
income people have, people who donate more money to charity
or happier than those that tend to not do need
as much money to charity. Controlled for the amount of
free time people have, people who volunteer their time to
support others wind up being happier than those that keep
(15:16):
their time to themselves. And in studies where you force
people to do nice stuff for others, you wind up
finding that even forcing somebody to do nice things for
others makes them feel happier. One of my favorite of
these studies is based on some of the work of
Liz done She and Lara Acknin. They just walk up
to people on the street and hand them twenty bucks. Here,
I want you to spend this twenty bucks to do
something nice to treat yourself, that's one condition. Or here
(15:39):
I want you to spend these twenty bucks to do
something nice for somebody else. You could donate this money
to charity, you could buy something nice for a friend.
And what Liz finds is at the end of the
day and even later on when she surveys people, people
who spend the money on others are happier. Now, this
is an effect that really violates our intuitions. I think generally,
anything we can do that has a positive effect on
other people winds up increasing both their happiness and our
(16:03):
happiness more than we expect. Nick Epley, who's a professor
at the University of Chicago, has this great term for this.
He calls it under sociality or alternatively, he sometimes calls
it the pro sociality paradox. We kind of know that
doing nice stuff for others is going to be good,
but we completely underestimate how good it's going to feel
both for the other person. Nick has at least all
this evidence showing that, like if you predict, say how
(16:25):
good a compliment will feel to a stranger on the street,
or kind of you know, giving a like little gift
of coffee if you're the coffee shop buying the coffee,
you know, for the person behind you, we predict it's
gonna be good, but we consistently super underestimate how good
both for the other person but also for us. And
those biases are really problematic because if you think about
when do we make these decisions to do nice things
(16:46):
for other people, it's usually because we have a prediction
about them, right. You know, my brain has this little
mental calculator that's assessing, like, well, should I buy the
latte for myself or should I give the latte to
the person behind me? And if you're predicting like well,
for myself, it's going to feel great, You're usually going
to act on the basis of that false prediction. And
that's why I think these religious traditions can be so
(17:07):
helpful because they force to develop habits of doing that.
You know, you just kind of build in charity etched
into the belief system that you're working with, or they
allow us to form habits where we get some experience
with this, right, so we get practiced with it over time.
I mean, we can learn like, well, even though my
intuition says this, you know, last time I donated the
money to charity when I had a little extra and
I was feeling bad, it felt kind of nice. So
(17:29):
maybe I should do that again. And so I think
it's helpful to have these structures to help us.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
One thing that I learn is that the fifth night
of Hanukkah is focused on giving to others outside of
the family. And actually children are encouraged to give gifts too,
So it's not only that they're receiving, but whether they're
given money or they buy toys, they're encouraged to basically
give it to other people, other children and buy that
(17:56):
act they're basically less done study in some way exactly
and learning that. And again, right, here's where I think
we see some of the wisdom of these spiritual traditions
and these holidays that are all about giving. I think
part of it is sometimes you have to actually have
the experience to realize that that all the data we're
talking about actually is true and means something to you.
(18:20):
But it's not just money, right, it's giving of yourself, time, care,
reaching out, whatever it might be. Is it true that
engaging in service to others outside of the giving of
money has the same effect for sure?
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And I think when you see the phrase service to others,
it almost feels like, well, I got to pack my
bags and go to the soup kitchen for like ten hour.
You know, no a service to others can look like
texting a friend you haven't talked to in a while
and just saying, hey, thinking of you. It can be
giving a compliment to someone on the street. It can
be expressing gratitude to someone in your workplace who did
something really great. It can even be, and I think
(18:57):
this is super important to remember in the holiday season,
it can even be asking for help, because the act
of asking for help often let somebody do something nice
for you. One of my favorite examples of this is
think to the last time you're walking around and someone
asked you for directions, especially directions to somewhere you knew.
How did you feel about that. You're like, yes, I
get to do this nice thing. I get to show
(19:18):
my knowledge, like I'm helping this person. Like you got
asked for something, but you felt great. And that's typically true.
When people ask us for stuff, especially stuff that's pretty
easy for us to do, it winds up making us
feel really good. And so during the holiday season, when
you're feeling overwhelmed, think about the possibility of, like asking
a family member for help. It's such a simple action,
(19:40):
but it makes other people feel competent and gives them
the benefit of helping you, and then everybody kind of
winds up feeling happier. It kind of boosts the overall
pie of good cheer in the holiday season in ways
we don't anticipate.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
As Laurie said, every active giving doesn't have to be
a major project. In fact, when time is short, like
it often is at the holidays, finding simpler ways to
help others might be what makes those good deeds not
just more possible, but also more enjoyable. And that idea
of scaling down, of not being the person who's got
(20:39):
everything together and does everything perfectly can apply in other
ways too.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
We recently just talked to the writer Oliver Berkman for
my podcast, who has a really great new book on
the idea of imperfectionism, where what would it look like
to kind of do things a little bit less good
in ways that allow you to not feel so overwhelmed
so you can be present and happy during the season.
And he had this notion that I loved of scruffy hospitality,
(21:05):
where the ideas like if you go to the holiday
party and the cookies really done yet, and like everything's
kind of a little bit of a mess, and the
host is like, hey, can you kind of help frost
those little sugar cookies because I need some help. You
feel like you're seeing a vulnerable side of the people
you're interacting with, and you are comfortable. But you know,
sometimes you go to that holiday dinner party and it's
like perfect, It's got the kindles and everything set up,
(21:27):
and how do you interact if you're a guest there,
you kind of feel a little maybe on edge or
should I hit my shoes off? Like I put my
napkin in the right spot. If you go with the
scruffy version, you personally don't feel as overwhelmed when you're
running your own dinner parties and so on.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
You are absolutely I've had this experience with people I know,
and I've gone to these parties and not eve only
have I felt like, Okay, which fork do I use?
But I also feel like, oh my god, I can
never have them to my house. I can't reciprocate me
because I'll never be able to pull this off.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And I you know, and one of the things we
know from the work from the research is that you know,
social connection is such a huge part of our happiness,
but I think some of us shy away from social connection.
Especially during the holiday season where we feel like, you know,
maybe I don't have enough money for presents, or I
don't have you know, the time or the bandwidth to
decorate my house. We can get kind of messed up
about how much we have to do, and so I
(22:15):
think resetting those perfectionist expectations, giving yourself permission to do
it eighty five percent, eighty nine percent, just that permission
can be really powerful.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
This brings up the second point I wanted to talk
about about gift giving and getting. It's sometimes I get
a gift and I'm like, oh God, now I got
to get this person something, and I'm not proud of
that response, but it feels like an indebtedness, right. I'm
not feeling gratitude for it. I'm feeling like it's another responsibility.
And so the question that I have is how do
(22:48):
we cultivate more of a sense of gratitude and not like,
oh great, now I owe you something at the holiday season.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
It's interesting gratitude. It's a complicated, positive emotion, right, because
it makes me feel good that someone thought about me,
But it does have this kind of sense of indebtedness,
like I kind of want to give back and that
kind of motivation. And this is kind of the getting
to the pro social emotions that you've talked about. In
the kind of ways that gratitude motivates us to be
good people. It can be the little juice we need
(23:17):
to do that nice, good act to somebody else, which
winds up making us feel better. Right, And so one
of my favorite strategies for this is to commit to
being a good gift receiver. Sometimes we think that the
way to be a good gift receiver is to like
give materially the same kind of financial transaction back, right,
you know, if you get the socks, is like, well,
I have to get something equivalent for the socks to,
(23:38):
you know, Aunt Joline, who I didn't think was going
to get me anything. A different way we can be
a good gift receiver is to really verbally and clearly
express our gratitude about the gift. And I think best
expressions of gratitude are ones that are specific. So, oh,
my gosh, I really like these socks. They are a
particular color that goes with my suit. I can see
myself wearing them, So you're kind of simulating the specifics
(24:01):
of why that thing is really helpful. For you. But
even better way to be a good gift receiver is
to thank people not just at the moment where you
rip the present open, but when you're actually using them later.
So I've committed to trying to do this with gifts
that I've got. Like I have this wonderful Dutch oven
that my dad and my stepmom gave me at this
point many years ago. But Dutch ovens, you know, live on,
and there's moments when I, like, you know, I'm just
(24:22):
making some cast role or something, and I think this
is so cool that they gave me this gift, and
I'll just like a quick text of like I was
still using your Dutch ovens still around, I'm still enjoying it.
Another great thing gratitude can do is it can get
rid of what's called hetonic adaptation, which is like you
just kind of get used to stuff that it's good
stuff in your life, but you kind of stop noticing
that it was really awesome. Tage my Dutch oven, for example,
(24:44):
right when I'm thinking about, man, I'm so grateful that
my dad got me this thing. It makes the Dutch
oven kind of feel a little bit more exciting when
it could have just been this pot, you know. And
again it's just a boost for all of us and
a boost to the relatedness relationship, right, because that's what
the gifts are really about. It's not like well, financial
transaction and now I'm in dead and know the goal
is to create more of a connection, and ideally one
(25:05):
that lives, you know, past December twenty sixth too.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
And I think one thing that we learn from the
spiritual traditions is when they talk about gratitude, it's not
so much focused on the object, it's focused on the
effort and the cost to the person to do it.
Maybe they knit in be a hat, and maybe it's
a hideous hat, but they put their heart and soul
into that thing, right, And in some ways that means
(25:32):
more to me than a beautiful hat that somebody got
me at Macy's on their way out of the store
as an extra, you know, gift topper. And so I
totally agree that we need to thank them for it
and keep those relationships going. I think, you know, part
of what we need to do more is to appreciate
the intention behind the gift.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
And I think it can help if you try to
think about that intention in terms of their relatedness, right,
you know the hat that wasn't it, or maybe you
don't love the hat, you're not going to use the
hat like you can think back to like Derek moments
where you know that cousin was sitting there, you know,
knitting this wonderful thing for you, thinking about you enjoying it.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
I often talk about gratitude related to how it makes
us more virtuous people, more generous people. But what does
it do just for our health and happiness?
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Oh my gosh, it has so many positive effects that
are like kind of striking when you read the literature.
So individuals who are generally just you know, personality wise,
a little bit more grateful wind up sleeping better. There's
evidence from folks like Bob Emmon's lab that it can
reduce things like inflammation. How does gratitude reduce something like inflammation?
When you're more grateful, you're more future oriented, you need
(26:38):
a little bit healthier, you go to the gym a
little bit more. That by itself is going to reduce inflammation.
So has this cascade of tiny positive effects both physically
and I think mentally that allow us to engage in
the right behaviors and motivations that wind up making us
healthier and happier over time.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
So if for celebrating traditionally we're doing gratitude prayers during
Advent and Christmas, during the eight days of Hanukkah, if
we're kind of celebrating in a secular way, what are
the ways that you encourage people to cultivate gratitude.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
There's lots of secular gratitude practice does at work pretty well.
The simple act of writing in a gratitude journal every
day you know three to five things you're grateful for
that can wind up making you feel happier. If that
feels a little bit onerous, one of my favorite alternative
versions of that practice is something I've done with Catherine Price,
who's a journalist. She actually talks about developing a delight
(27:28):
practice where if you just see something delightful in the world,
you just text each other I saw this ridiculous thing.
Delight you know. The normal bias we have is a
negativity bias right where we're out seeking the tough stuff,
and I think in a holiday season where our expectations
are I that negativity bias can be on like you know,
high alert. But a gratitude practice or a delight practice
(27:49):
trains your attention to find the delightful things, and like religions,
it's ideal if you do it with somebody else. One
of the reasons religious traditions work so well is most
religious traditions aren't you know, you and your house all
by yourself, you know, engaging in something. It's doing something
with other people. Like if you're doing a delight practice
with other people, you got to find the delights because
you know they're going to take you three times with
delights and you're gonna feel like, oh man, gotta find something.
(28:12):
But then your attention is out there looking for the
good things in the world, looking for the nice stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
And I think back about the holidays that I did
throughout my life. Some of the ones that seemed most
rich and brought me the most joy involved doing the
traditional things for Christmas, and one of those was going
to Mass Christmas services. I was raised Catholic, I was
(28:48):
an ultra boy. I have none of those things now.
I'm a good old agnostic scientist, but I still like
going to those services with the majesty and the music.
And this got me thinking about your friend and mine.
Dak Or Keltner's work on awe, And it seems like
during these holidays, there are these times when you can
(29:10):
experience awe the art, the music, the beauty, even lighting
your first Christmas tree at home with your family. And
so what do we know about how those experiences of
awe affect happiness?
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Research shows that experiencing awe winds up having these very
important positive consequences. One of them is that it winds
up making us feel more socially connected. This is some
of my favorite of dak Or Keltner, who you mentioned work,
where he does these studies where he puts people in
a really awe inspiring situation. He doesn't use the Christmas
trees or the holidays. He brings people to these kind
of places like Yellowstone and where you can kind of
(29:45):
experience this sort of awe and nature. And he says, hey,
you look at this little map of you and your
community and show me how much overlap there is. Is
there kind of a lot of overlap or less overlap.
And what he finds is that people self report experiencing
a lot of overlap with their community, right, which is
kind of striking because they're again, they're not in front
of a Christmas tree with their family. They're looking out
(30:06):
at this vast landscape with nobody in it. They're feeling
really socially connected. And I think that's what aw does
in the holiday season too, right. One that Daker talks
about a lot is the sort of awe that we
get from moral actions. I think the holiday season is
one of the only times of the new cycle where
we can see people doing really wonderful good things in
the world. It's also a moment where we get off
(30:28):
from collective effervescence. You know, why does the music at
a church resonate with you if you don't believe any
of that stuff. It's because we're all kind of saying
it together. When you're in the middle of a Hallelujah chorus,
you know, you could be the biggest atheist in the world,
but something's pumping through your brain that's making you feel
really socially connected.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
The holidays are supposed to be a time for rest
and renewal, too, right. If we're going to be happy,
we need that downtime, that time to disconnect. And so
whether it's prayer or simple contemplation, these holidays build those
(31:07):
moments in And it's interesting because it's often around the
idea of candles and candle flames right, which is an
ancient technique for focusing the mind. So Christians focus on
candles that they light in the Advent wreath. Many Jewish
folks often focus on the candles and the menora. There's
even some Jewish traditions that emphasize focusing on the candles
(31:30):
of the manora as a way to meditate. And even
in the old celebration of Pagan Yule around the Solstice,
there was this idea of the Yule log. And I
don't know if you had this, because I grew up
in New York and New York there's something called the
Yulog TV show.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
This Christmas Eve when all the wonderful old traditions of
this special night, as so much in our hearts. WPIX
Television and one o two WPIX.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Channel eleven in New York on Christmas Eve would all
night show a picture of a log and a fire
and for those of us who didn't have fireplaces that
are we would sit there and we would look at it,
and it was soothing and it would lead to contemplation.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
We empt at all regular programming and commercial to bring
you the warmth, good cheer, and friendliness of a u
log fire accompanied by the most beautiful and familiar Christmas gals.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
I'm laughing at you, But actually, when I first moved
into the house that my husband and I lived in
New Haven, we bought the house because it had this
nice fireplace. But it turns out we didn't look into
the fireplace, and it turns out it's bricked off at
the top. It's just like a fake fireplace. And so
I actually bought like a little DVD of flaming fireplace
that you ali. I didn't know this was like an
old school thing. I thought it was DVD technology, but no.
(32:38):
But the reason we like looking at it is that
you get back from that you know, trafficky moment of
shopping and so on, and you look at the flame
and your breath kind of entrains to it. And working
on their breath is a really powerful way to hack
the relaxation system that we experience. You know, a lot
of the holiday season activates what's called our fighter flight,
our sympathetic nervous system, which is we're kind of on
(33:00):
high alert. We're incredibly vigilant, our hearts beating fester. What
we really want to do is to activate the kind
of sister system to our fighter flight, which is what's
called the rest are est or the parasympathetic nervous system.
And when you look at a flame and you're just
kind of watching it over time, your breath kind of
entrains to the slow movement of the flame. So I
think the fire is a really great way to do that,
(33:21):
and maybe one of the best ways to do it,
you know, in the holiday season. Plus, it's light when
you're on your intro. You talked about this is the
time that's dark and our serotonin's going down, and so
something that gives us light in a way that also
entrains our breath and gets us kind of a little
bit meditative. It's a super great practice, especially for secular folks.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
And you know, speaking of secular folks, it's true that
a lot of people celebrate holidays like Christmas, even if
they aren't very religious. It's more about Santa than the
birth of Jesus, right, But there's probably still ways they
can practice elements of the holidays to find that joy
connection and all the other good things we're talking about.
But that makes me wonder, is there a way that
(34:03):
we can create our own rituals and traditions, ones that
don't have anything to do with the existing holidays, but
still allow us to celebrate them in a way that
feels meaningful.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
This is the time when you can kind of create
these traditions and you'll be surprised at how many of
them kind of stick. My mom has one, and she
was very close to her godmother, who has now passed
a long time ago, and her godmother really enjoyed lobster.
It was her favorite thing. And so my mom, kind
of in honor of my godmother for the holidays, will
purchase a live lobster. My mom doesn't eat shellfish though,
(34:40):
so she doesn't like to eat the lobster. What she
does is she takes this live lobster to the beach
and she sort of releases the lobster to the beach.
And the idea is it's just, you know, it's a
way of kind of thinking about her godmother and sort
of giving back. It's very funny if you watch the ritual,
it's really fun for the lobsters because the lobster's kind
of get the little lobster clothing he's taken off, and
they're on the beach and they're like a little confused,
(35:00):
but they're like great and they just dive into the ocean.
One of the things I think we forget about rituals
is that, like Mom's case, you's buying and slapt there,
but like they don't have to cost any money, they
don't have to make sense, right, they can be kind
of dumb, like even sometimes absurd, and at least for
you know that a more atheist, secular person like me,
(35:21):
the kind of absurdity is sort of fun in rituals.
But these are the things we can we can embrace,
and I think especially if you feel frustrated by holiday traditions,
you maybe you're grieving the old holiday tradition. You're looking
for something. This is a spot where building new stuff
can feel really good. This is something we've done in
my own family. I have, you know, a family where
(35:42):
you know there's there's divorce, and there's lots of families
vying for our attention. And in the Christmas season, you
know there's there's somebody who's gonna get you on Christmas morning.
But it's really hard to be in all the places
on Christmas morning. And so our family has developed a
new tradition of celebrating around the Solstice, which is not
as busy a time. You know, flights are a little
bit cheaper, so everybody can get together. And it's like
(36:04):
we just developed all these dumb rituals of the Solstice,
these Solstice cake watch, some Carl Saga and these kinds
of things, and so it's like you just make stuff up,
but really it winds up feeling a lot better.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
But it's bringing you together. You're having those experiences of
gratitude and sharing. That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Like turn these things into rituals as though they were
sort of blessed by some religious authority, and you have
to do them every year, and those kinds of rituals
will wind up making you feel a lot better.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
The doing is the point. Listeners. Right now, as Laurie
and I are going to be leaving, it is cold
and dark in Boston, and I will say that I
can attest to this because my holiday season is already
feeling better because I have social connection with my good
(36:52):
friend Laurie, who I haven't seen in a while. I'm
incredibly grateful that she's so busy that she made time
to come on this and so thank you, Thanks Dave,
and happy holidays, Happy Holidays. That's it for season seven
of How God Works. If you enjoy today's episode, please
leave us some comments or stars wherever you listen. We'll
(37:14):
be back in the spring with new episodes that explore
more of life's big questions and what advice science and
spirituality has to offer. In the meantime, we'll be sharing
some special surprises as well as some of our favorite
episodes from the archives. For now, all of us here
are wishing you and yours a truly happy holiday season
and all the best for the coming year. How God
(37:44):
Works is hosted by Me Dave Disteno. This episode was
written by Josie Holtzman and Me. Our senior producer is
Josie Holtzman. Our producer is Sophie Eisenberg. Our associate producer
is Emmanuel Disarme executive producer is Genevieve's sponsoror. Merrit Jacob
is our mix engineer and composed our theme, which was
arranged by Chloe Disteno. The executive producer of perr X
(38:07):
Productions is Jocelyn Gonzalez. This podcast was also made possible
with support from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more
about the show and access episode transcripts. You can find
our website at how Good Works all one word dot org,
and for news and peaks at What's Coming. Feel free
to follow us on Instagram at how God Works pod
(38:29):
or me on exer Blue Sky at David Disteno
Pushkin. This is our final show of twenty twenty four,
and it's a good opportunity for me to thank you
for listening to and supporting the Happiness Lab. Your support
means a lot. But you don't have to wait long
until we're back. On January first, we'll be launching a
new series for the new year. I'll be doubling down
on the practical happiness advice. I know you all appreciate.
(00:37):
We're making a series of how to guides to help
you joyfully navigate things like relationships, stress, and the messiness
of our daily lives. By the end of each show,
you'll have heard at least five tips that you can
put into action right away, direct from the mouths of
some of the smartest well being scientists and thinkers. All
that starting January first. I know you'll love it. But
(01:01):
right now, the holiday season is here. It's supposed to
be a time of joy, but way too many of
us are feeling rushed, stressed, lonely, and even hopeless. What
are some scientific strategies we can use to have a
happier holiday season? And can we also get some happiness
insights from the traditions of the past. These are the
questions I had a chance to explore with my good
(01:22):
friend Dave Distello. Dave's a psychology professor at Northeastern University.
He also hosts a podcast called How God Works, an
entire show devoted to looking at the wisdom we can
get from ancient traditions no matter what our own beliefs are.
Dave and I had a super fun chat on his
show about how he can put psychological science and ancient
wisdom into practice this holiday season to feel happier and
(01:44):
less stressed. So I decided to share that episode with
you today. It's my holiday gift to you. I hope
you enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
You know that turn of phrase, the dead of winter,
Well there's a good reason for it. In the northern climes.
This is the season of death, dark, and dormancy. All
the color and bounty of the fall harvest is gone.
Even the sun is disappearing earlier and earlier, and the shorter,
colder days we're facing lead to a drop in serotonin
(02:28):
levels and changes to our circadian rhythms. The result feelings
of stress, gloominess, anxiety, and isolation for many people. And
as much as we might like to hibernate and sleep,
away these dark cold months. For us humans, life goes on,
(02:50):
which is one reason why many northern cultures have come
up with some of the most festive, cozy, and celebratory
winter holidays to help get us through. From lighting candles
to reciting communal prayers and songs, to giving gifts and
aid to others. Many of these traditions are rooted in religion,
but there's also reason to believe that these traditions can
(03:10):
bring comfort and happiness regardless of faith, if you do
them right. By that, I don't mean reciting the prayer
correctly or lighting the candles just so, but rather by
focusing on the heart of the traditions and advice they give,
which is why I'm so thrilled to have my friend,
podcast hosts and happiness expert Lori Santos joined me today
(03:32):
to talk about how and why these time honored holiday
traditions work on our brains and bodies. And for those
of us who find the traditions themselves the source of
worry and stress, we'll find ways to reconnect with the
good stuff to make this holiday season a brighter, happier
one for all of us. Hi, Laurie, thanks for coming
(03:54):
on the show again. Thanks for having me back, and
happy holidays.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Happy holidays, Dave, Did you not I don't actually like
I'm not that into the holidays? Did you know that? One? Yeah?
I did.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I was going to ask you because actually you and
I have been friends for a while, but I didn't
think I ever asked you for you doing Christmas as
a child something else.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, I grew up with Christmas a little bit Thanksgiving,
although that wasn't really a big holiday. But my favorite
one was Halloween. So I'm really into Halloween. You know,
the costumes, the candy, all the spooky stuff. And when
November first comes around, I have to work really hard
to not wind up in a deep depression because, like,
my favorite holiday is done. When they take off all
the Halloween stuff and they move the candy out and
(04:31):
they put the Christmas lights in and the decorations, it's
a little period of morning for me.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well, I think you're not that alone. I mean, the
surveys show that for a lot of people this time
of year, even though many say they're looking forward to
the holiday, is they're also feeling a good bit of stress, sadness, fatigue,
and even loneliness. So given that you are in some
ways one of those people. What do you think leads
to that what makes this time so hard?
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I think part of it is our expectations. I mean,
they're literally songs jingling on the radio claiming it's the
most wonderful time of the year. So if you're thinking like,
this is the kind of time of year when I
feel little bit lonely, or this is a time of
year when I feel super whelm because there's just like
a lot on my plate, you can start to feel
like you're doing it wrong, there's something wrong with you.
(05:15):
And so I think that this expectation that it's supposed
to be the most wonderful can lead us astray. I mean,
as you know from so much work in behavioral science,
it's really not the objective way that a situation plays out.
It's really our expectation that affects how we think about it.
So if our expectations are really high, even a reasonably good,
just fine holiday, it can make us feel kind of crappy.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Yeah, like we're not doing it right. But I recently
saw a study that piqued my interest, and it was
looking at people during the holiday season, and what it
showed is that people who celebrated in the more traditional
way actually ended up having more positive emotions, higher satisfaction
with their lives, in greater well being. And so that
led me to the question of why, what parts of
(06:02):
these traditions boost happiness and what can we learn from that,
whatever our beliefs might be. And that my friend is
where you kind of in.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Its not my deep patriot of the holiday season. It's
my deep knowledge or real science.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And yeah, yes, yes, but sometimes coming from a place
where it wasn't working and learning how to put it
into practice along with that science is really important because
as we all know, having the goal is important, but
understanding how to actually make it a practice and not
just a goal is what really matters.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yeah, and this is actually something that I've been putting
into effect in my own life. Given that I don't
like the holidays, what can I do to make them
a little bit happier? Find my own rituals and so on.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Let me start with one thing that often I think
gets in my way in the holidays, all the rushing
that we do. No, it almost feels like a frenzy
to prepare. It's like shop, cook, write cards, and then
wrap and shop some more. And even though I know
I'm supposed to be enjoying the season, I'm not really
doing it. As I go along, I keep saying, when
(07:02):
this is done, I will have time to be happy.
When this is done, I'll be happy, And then it's
like the day after Christmas, and I'm like, where did
it all go? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I mean, I think there's lots of studies on this,
just broadly in the field of happiness science. This bias
that researchers called the arrival fallacy. It's kind of like,
I'll be happy when, right, I'll be happy when I
just get through all the shopping and we can get
to the actual day where we open the Presence, Or
I'll be happy when New Year's rolls around and I'm
through all the work parties. Right, We're kind of constantly
sort of fast forwarding like this moment where we can
(07:33):
take a breath and stick around and safer and notice
all the good stuff. And of course, as you might imagine,
that arrival fallacy messes us up for a couple of reasons.
One is that we're not enjoying the journey as we
go through. So these moments that could be kind of
fun when you're shopping and hearing the cool music and
seeing people and enjoying the bustle. There's a kind of
really richness to that that we could get into. We're
(07:54):
not doing that because we're just like fast forward until
we get that done and go on to the next thing.
And so it means that we're missing these moments of
joy along the way that we're not paying attention to.
But the second reason that falling prey to this arrival
fallacy is so bad is that we tend to get
these predictions wrong. Christmas morning, with my family sitting under
the tree, we think when I get there, I'll be
so happy, But we're forecasting that that's going to feel
(08:16):
really awesome, and in fact it's going to have its
problems too, Right, maybe it's kind of cold out, or
I didn't get the gift. I like, very few people
have the privilege of having a holiday that goes swimmingly
across all those expectations. It's going to actually have its
like little bumps, and so inevitably we wind up kind
of fast forwarding to this time that we're forecasting is
going to be super perfect but might not be as
(08:37):
perfect as we think, And then we wind up having
missed out on the stuff we should have been enjoying
along the way.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
But when I was a kid, and I see this
in lots of young kids, it's what's the next present?
And I open it and I look at it and
I'm like thanks, and I throw it to the side,
and then what's the next present? Do you have any
advice for getting really excited kids to savor during the holidays?
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Well, in some ways, you're like asking the wrong person,
because when I was a kid, and even in my
family now, you get the presence and everybody just like
rips them open like you're in your own little me,
me me world. And when I first went to the
holidays at my in law's family, which you go to
my husband Mark in Iowa, they had this tradition that
was so incredibly foreign to me where they waited and
(09:21):
went around the room and everybody opened one present at
a time. And it was so funny to me how
like I was like ready to rip in and he
was kind of looking at you, like, Laurie, like Mom's
opening your present, just wait, and I'm like oh, And
it winds up being a very long procedure, which kind of,
you know, was really hard for my normal temporal discounting
where I kind of wanted to open my presence right away,
but they turn it into like a really day long
(09:43):
event and we kind of open present, so we talk
about each present and we go through. But for kids,
I think you need to get creative about the rituals
of this right and so that can be having something
that happens in between every present. Maybe people have to
comment on presents, you have to say one thing you're
grateful for in between every present, or you know, you
need to share a delight that you have at the
(10:04):
end of the day throughout the holiday season, and sometimes
you'll find that even when you're struggling to figure this
stuff out, if you give them a new tradition, especially
little kids, they sometimes really get into it. And for
many parents, I think seeing the holiday season through the
eyes of a kid, if you can help that kid
articulate the things that they're savoring, that can be so
good for your own positive emotion.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
But that's a really important point that I didn't think of,
because if you do it that way, and if you
reflect on it that way, that's the opportunity for the
savoring and for the gratitude.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Exactly and so I think whatever you can do to
sort of extend it out can be really powerful.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
It's interesting because when I look at many of the
traditional celebrations, they were usually multi day. In the Christian tradition,
there's Advent, you know, four weeks before when people come together,
do crafts together, pray together, eat together. And Hanukkah there
are eight days of families coming together, and Mule it's twelve.
(11:08):
I think they just give you more opportunities to savor.
And right now in the US, at least, we've kind
of made Christmas one day and it's the be all
and the end, all right, So if we're trying to
think this season about how to take more time to
save her, to not fall prey to the arrival fallacy,
(11:29):
what should we do?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
So one of my favorite suggestions, which I actually learned
from Liz Dunn, she's a professor at the University of
British Columbia. She actually suggested harnessing our pro social emotions
to save her more. One of the things she suggests
is to give your savoring as a gift to someone.
So what does she mean, Let's say it's a holiday event.
I'm making genderbread houses with my niece and it's messy.
(11:52):
I'm feeling a little frustrated. But if I was thinking
pro socially about what I would want to give my niece,
I would say, let me try to be fully present
and have a really good time. This is going to
turn into a fun memory that she's going to look
back at later. Right. In some ways, I'm not savoring
for me because it's going to help my journey in
the holiday season, I'm savoring for my niece, or you know,
a different holiday version. Sometimes family tensions can come off,
(12:15):
but it's like, you know what, I'm going to engage
in this holiday event with no tension. I'm just going
to shut all that off so that we can have
a good time. And that's the gift to my mom.
Even when savoring is hard for us, if we're setting
this up as a gift for somebody else, help.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
What that suggests in some ways is that presence is
a shared experience. And what we're learning more and more
from behavioral science is that experiences in some ways matter
more than material goods for happiness. Right.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, that's right, And I think this is something we
can really get wrong, especially in the holiday season. We
get obsessed with kind of giving a particular thing. But
what we know from a lot of the behavioral science
and happiness field, does material possessions just don't really increase
our happiness as much as we think, or definitely for
as long as we think, we'd be much better thinking
about gifts of experiences, whether that's something we literally give somebody,
(13:04):
you know, give somebody a gift card for going to
a cool new restaurant, or a gift hard to take
a course online, but it can also be the experiences
we give people during the holiday season when we're present
with them. One of the cool things about the holiday
season that we forget is it's one of the few
times of year that we kind of all are in
the same groove. People have time off for the major
(13:26):
holidays and New Years and so on. It's a time
that we can kind of like connect together even though
we're all busy, like we're all sort of going through
it together. And so I think it's really a time
where we can harness social connection to feel a little
bit healthier.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
But I want to get back to the gifts because
in some ways that is such a big part of
the holiday season. You know, you and I can talk
about this and people can say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
where's my present? For many people, as you said, this
can seem like one of the most stressful parts of
the holidays. I've got to get this from my kids,
I've got to get this from my coworkers, my great
aunt Jenny, she hates everything. What am I going to get?
Hur But in reality, you know, I think the reason
(14:05):
many of these traditions remind us to give gifts isn't
just to make other people happy, but to let us
realize that the act of giving itself brings us joy
and happiness. So what does the science of happiness tell
us about giving to other people, whether it's spending money
on them or giving them our time.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Well, the evidence here is super clear, which is that
doing for others is one of the fastest ways to
make ourselves happy. And I think this is something our
culture gets wrong a lot. It shifts a little bit
in the holiday season where it's the sort of season
of giving, but even in the season of giving, and
definitely for the rest of the year, it feels like
we're not in the season of giving, We're in the
season of self care or treating ourselves right.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Treat yourself in a time that you gave yourself to
break your head, trade yourself.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
I mean even in the holiday season, you can look
to these sort of self help books, which is like
how to get self care during the season of giving right,
it's all about us. So controlled for the amount of
income people have, people who donate more money to charity
or happier than those that tend to not do need
as much money to charity. Controlled for the amount of
free time people have, people who volunteer their time to
support others wind up being happier than those that keep
(15:16):
their time to themselves. And in studies where you force
people to do nice stuff for others, you wind up
finding that even forcing somebody to do nice things for
others makes them feel happier. One of my favorite of
these studies is based on some of the work of
Liz done She and Lara Acknin. They just walk up
to people on the street and hand them twenty bucks. Here,
I want you to spend this twenty bucks to do
something nice to treat yourself, that's one condition. Or here
(15:39):
I want you to spend these twenty bucks to do
something nice for somebody else. You could donate this money
to charity, you could buy something nice for a friend.
And what Liz finds is at the end of the
day and even later on when she surveys people, people
who spend the money on others are happier. Now, this
is an effect that really violates our intuitions. I think generally,
anything we can do that has a positive effect on
other people winds up increasing both their happiness and our
(16:03):
happiness more than we expect. Nick Epley, who's a professor
at the University of Chicago, has this great term for this.
He calls it under sociality or alternatively, he sometimes calls
it the pro sociality paradox. We kind of know that
doing nice stuff for others is going to be good,
but we completely underestimate how good it's going to feel
both for the other person. Nick has at least all
this evidence showing that, like if you predict, say how
(16:25):
good a compliment will feel to a stranger on the street,
or kind of you know, giving a like little gift
of coffee if you're the coffee shop buying the coffee,
you know, for the person behind you, we predict it's
gonna be good, but we consistently super underestimate how good
both for the other person but also for us. And
those biases are really problematic because if you think about
when do we make these decisions to do nice things
(16:46):
for other people, it's usually because we have a prediction
about them, right. You know, my brain has this little
mental calculator that's assessing, like, well, should I buy the
latte for myself or should I give the latte to
the person behind me? And if you're predicting like well,
for myself, it's going to feel great, You're usually going
to act on the basis of that false prediction. And
that's why I think these religious traditions can be so
(17:07):
helpful because they force to develop habits of doing that.
You know, you just kind of build in charity etched
into the belief system that you're working with, or they
allow us to form habits where we get some experience
with this, right, so we get practiced with it over time.
I mean, we can learn like, well, even though my
intuition says this, you know, last time I donated the
money to charity when I had a little extra and
I was feeling bad, it felt kind of nice. So
(17:29):
maybe I should do that again. And so I think
it's helpful to have these structures to help us.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
One thing that I learn is that the fifth night
of Hanukkah is focused on giving to others outside of
the family. And actually children are encouraged to give gifts too,
So it's not only that they're receiving, but whether they're
given money or they buy toys, they're encouraged to basically
give it to other people, other children and buy that
(17:56):
act they're basically less done study in some way exactly
and learning that. And again, right, here's where I think
we see some of the wisdom of these spiritual traditions
and these holidays that are all about giving. I think
part of it is sometimes you have to actually have
the experience to realize that that all the data we're
talking about actually is true and means something to you.
(18:20):
But it's not just money, right, it's giving of yourself, time, care,
reaching out, whatever it might be. Is it true that
engaging in service to others outside of the giving of
money has the same effect for sure?
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And I think when you see the phrase service to others,
it almost feels like, well, I got to pack my
bags and go to the soup kitchen for like ten hour.
You know, no a service to others can look like
texting a friend you haven't talked to in a while
and just saying, hey, thinking of you. It can be
giving a compliment to someone on the street. It can
be expressing gratitude to someone in your workplace who did
something really great. It can even be, and I think
(18:57):
this is super important to remember in the holiday season,
it can even be asking for help, because the act
of asking for help often let somebody do something nice
for you. One of my favorite examples of this is
think to the last time you're walking around and someone
asked you for directions, especially directions to somewhere you knew.
How did you feel about that. You're like, yes, I
get to do this nice thing. I get to show
(19:18):
my knowledge, like I'm helping this person. Like you got
asked for something, but you felt great. And that's typically true.
When people ask us for stuff, especially stuff that's pretty
easy for us to do, it winds up making us
feel really good. And so during the holiday season, when
you're feeling overwhelmed, think about the possibility of, like asking
a family member for help. It's such a simple action,
(19:40):
but it makes other people feel competent and gives them
the benefit of helping you, and then everybody kind of
winds up feeling happier. It kind of boosts the overall
pie of good cheer in the holiday season in ways
we don't anticipate.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
As Laurie said, every active giving doesn't have to be
a major project. In fact, when time is short, like
it often is at the holidays, finding simpler ways to
help others might be what makes those good deeds not
just more possible, but also more enjoyable. And that idea
of scaling down, of not being the person who's got
(20:39):
everything together and does everything perfectly can apply in other
ways too.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
We recently just talked to the writer Oliver Berkman for
my podcast, who has a really great new book on
the idea of imperfectionism, where what would it look like
to kind of do things a little bit less good
in ways that allow you to not feel so overwhelmed
so you can be present and happy during the season.
And he had this notion that I loved of scruffy hospitality,
(21:05):
where the ideas like if you go to the holiday
party and the cookies really done yet, and like everything's
kind of a little bit of a mess, and the
host is like, hey, can you kind of help frost
those little sugar cookies because I need some help. You
feel like you're seeing a vulnerable side of the people
you're interacting with, and you are comfortable. But you know,
sometimes you go to that holiday dinner party and it's
like perfect, It's got the kindles and everything set up,
(21:27):
and how do you interact if you're a guest there,
you kind of feel a little maybe on edge or
should I hit my shoes off? Like I put my
napkin in the right spot. If you go with the
scruffy version, you personally don't feel as overwhelmed when you're
running your own dinner parties and so on.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
You are absolutely I've had this experience with people I know,
and I've gone to these parties and not eve only
have I felt like, Okay, which fork do I use?
But I also feel like, oh my god, I can
never have them to my house. I can't reciprocate me
because I'll never be able to pull this off.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And I you know, and one of the things we
know from the work from the research is that you know,
social connection is such a huge part of our happiness,
but I think some of us shy away from social connection.
Especially during the holiday season where we feel like, you know,
maybe I don't have enough money for presents, or I
don't have you know, the time or the bandwidth to
decorate my house. We can get kind of messed up
about how much we have to do, and so I
(22:15):
think resetting those perfectionist expectations, giving yourself permission to do
it eighty five percent, eighty nine percent, just that permission
can be really powerful.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
This brings up the second point I wanted to talk
about about gift giving and getting. It's sometimes I get
a gift and I'm like, oh God, now I got
to get this person something, and I'm not proud of
that response, but it feels like an indebtedness, right. I'm
not feeling gratitude for it. I'm feeling like it's another responsibility.
And so the question that I have is how do
(22:48):
we cultivate more of a sense of gratitude and not like,
oh great, now I owe you something at the holiday season.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
It's interesting gratitude. It's a complicated, positive emotion, right, because
it makes me feel good that someone thought about me,
But it does have this kind of sense of indebtedness,
like I kind of want to give back and that
kind of motivation. And this is kind of the getting
to the pro social emotions that you've talked about. In
the kind of ways that gratitude motivates us to be
good people. It can be the little juice we need
(23:17):
to do that nice, good act to somebody else, which
winds up making us feel better. Right, And so one
of my favorite strategies for this is to commit to
being a good gift receiver. Sometimes we think that the
way to be a good gift receiver is to like
give materially the same kind of financial transaction back, right,
you know, if you get the socks, is like, well,
I have to get something equivalent for the socks to,
(23:38):
you know, Aunt Joline, who I didn't think was going
to get me anything. A different way we can be
a good gift receiver is to really verbally and clearly
express our gratitude about the gift. And I think best
expressions of gratitude are ones that are specific. So, oh,
my gosh, I really like these socks. They are a
particular color that goes with my suit. I can see
myself wearing them, So you're kind of simulating the specifics
(24:01):
of why that thing is really helpful. For you. But
even better way to be a good gift receiver is
to thank people not just at the moment where you
rip the present open, but when you're actually using them later.
So I've committed to trying to do this with gifts
that I've got. Like I have this wonderful Dutch oven
that my dad and my stepmom gave me at this
point many years ago. But Dutch ovens, you know, live on,
and there's moments when I, like, you know, I'm just
(24:22):
making some cast role or something, and I think this
is so cool that they gave me this gift, and
I'll just like a quick text of like I was
still using your Dutch ovens still around, I'm still enjoying it.
Another great thing gratitude can do is it can get
rid of what's called hetonic adaptation, which is like you
just kind of get used to stuff that it's good
stuff in your life, but you kind of stop noticing
that it was really awesome. Tage my Dutch oven, for example,
(24:44):
right when I'm thinking about, man, I'm so grateful that
my dad got me this thing. It makes the Dutch
oven kind of feel a little bit more exciting when
it could have just been this pot, you know. And
again it's just a boost for all of us and
a boost to the relatedness relationship, right, because that's what
the gifts are really about. It's not like well, financial
transaction and now I'm in dead and know the goal
is to create more of a connection, and ideally one
(25:05):
that lives, you know, past December twenty sixth too.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
And I think one thing that we learn from the
spiritual traditions is when they talk about gratitude, it's not
so much focused on the object, it's focused on the
effort and the cost to the person to do it.
Maybe they knit in be a hat, and maybe it's
a hideous hat, but they put their heart and soul
into that thing, right, And in some ways that means
(25:32):
more to me than a beautiful hat that somebody got
me at Macy's on their way out of the store
as an extra, you know, gift topper. And so I
totally agree that we need to thank them for it
and keep those relationships going. I think, you know, part
of what we need to do more is to appreciate
the intention behind the gift.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
And I think it can help if you try to
think about that intention in terms of their relatedness, right,
you know the hat that wasn't it, or maybe you
don't love the hat, you're not going to use the
hat like you can think back to like Derek moments
where you know that cousin was sitting there, you know,
knitting this wonderful thing for you, thinking about you enjoying it.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
I often talk about gratitude related to how it makes
us more virtuous people, more generous people. But what does
it do just for our health and happiness?
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Oh my gosh, it has so many positive effects that
are like kind of striking when you read the literature.
So individuals who are generally just you know, personality wise,
a little bit more grateful wind up sleeping better. There's
evidence from folks like Bob Emmon's lab that it can
reduce things like inflammation. How does gratitude reduce something like inflammation?
When you're more grateful, you're more future oriented, you need
(26:38):
a little bit healthier, you go to the gym a
little bit more. That by itself is going to reduce inflammation.
So has this cascade of tiny positive effects both physically
and I think mentally that allow us to engage in
the right behaviors and motivations that wind up making us
healthier and happier over time.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
So if for celebrating traditionally we're doing gratitude prayers during
Advent and Christmas, during the eight days of Hanukkah, if
we're kind of celebrating in a secular way, what are
the ways that you encourage people to cultivate gratitude.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
There's lots of secular gratitude practice does at work pretty well.
The simple act of writing in a gratitude journal every
day you know three to five things you're grateful for
that can wind up making you feel happier. If that
feels a little bit onerous, one of my favorite alternative
versions of that practice is something I've done with Catherine Price,
who's a journalist. She actually talks about developing a delight
(27:28):
practice where if you just see something delightful in the world,
you just text each other I saw this ridiculous thing.
Delight you know. The normal bias we have is a
negativity bias right where we're out seeking the tough stuff,
and I think in a holiday season where our expectations
are I that negativity bias can be on like you know,
high alert. But a gratitude practice or a delight practice
(27:49):
trains your attention to find the delightful things, and like religions,
it's ideal if you do it with somebody else. One
of the reasons religious traditions work so well is most
religious traditions aren't you know, you and your house all
by yourself, you know, engaging in something. It's doing something
with other people. Like if you're doing a delight practice
with other people, you got to find the delights because
you know they're going to take you three times with
delights and you're gonna feel like, oh man, gotta find something.
(28:12):
But then your attention is out there looking for the
good things in the world, looking for the nice stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
And I think back about the holidays that I did
throughout my life. Some of the ones that seemed most
rich and brought me the most joy involved doing the
traditional things for Christmas, and one of those was going
to Mass Christmas services. I was raised Catholic, I was
(28:48):
an ultra boy. I have none of those things now.
I'm a good old agnostic scientist, but I still like
going to those services with the majesty and the music.
And this got me thinking about your friend and mine.
Dak Or Keltner's work on awe, And it seems like
during these holidays, there are these times when you can
(29:10):
experience awe the art, the music, the beauty, even lighting
your first Christmas tree at home with your family. And
so what do we know about how those experiences of
awe affect happiness?
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Research shows that experiencing awe winds up having these very
important positive consequences. One of them is that it winds
up making us feel more socially connected. This is some
of my favorite of dak Or Keltner, who you mentioned work,
where he does these studies where he puts people in
a really awe inspiring situation. He doesn't use the Christmas
trees or the holidays. He brings people to these kind
of places like Yellowstone and where you can kind of
(29:45):
experience this sort of awe and nature. And he says, hey,
you look at this little map of you and your
community and show me how much overlap there is. Is
there kind of a lot of overlap or less overlap.
And what he finds is that people self report experiencing
a lot of overlap with their community, right, which is
kind of striking because they're again, they're not in front
of a Christmas tree with their family. They're looking out
(30:06):
at this vast landscape with nobody in it. They're feeling
really socially connected. And I think that's what aw does
in the holiday season too, right. One that Daker talks
about a lot is the sort of awe that we
get from moral actions. I think the holiday season is
one of the only times of the new cycle where
we can see people doing really wonderful good things in
the world. It's also a moment where we get off
(30:28):
from collective effervescence. You know, why does the music at
a church resonate with you if you don't believe any
of that stuff. It's because we're all kind of saying
it together. When you're in the middle of a Hallelujah chorus,
you know, you could be the biggest atheist in the world,
but something's pumping through your brain that's making you feel
really socially connected.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
The holidays are supposed to be a time for rest
and renewal, too, right. If we're going to be happy,
we need that downtime, that time to disconnect. And so
whether it's prayer or simple contemplation, these holidays build those
(31:07):
moments in And it's interesting because it's often around the
idea of candles and candle flames right, which is an
ancient technique for focusing the mind. So Christians focus on
candles that they light in the Advent wreath. Many Jewish
folks often focus on the candles and the menora. There's
even some Jewish traditions that emphasize focusing on the candles
(31:30):
of the manora as a way to meditate. And even
in the old celebration of Pagan Yule around the Solstice,
there was this idea of the Yule log. And I
don't know if you had this, because I grew up
in New York and New York there's something called the
Yulog TV show.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
This Christmas Eve when all the wonderful old traditions of
this special night, as so much in our hearts. WPIX
Television and one o two WPIX.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Channel eleven in New York on Christmas Eve would all
night show a picture of a log and a fire
and for those of us who didn't have fireplaces that
are we would sit there and we would look at it,
and it was soothing and it would lead to contemplation.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
We empt at all regular programming and commercial to bring
you the warmth, good cheer, and friendliness of a u
log fire accompanied by the most beautiful and familiar Christmas gals.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
I'm laughing at you, But actually, when I first moved
into the house that my husband and I lived in
New Haven, we bought the house because it had this
nice fireplace. But it turns out we didn't look into
the fireplace, and it turns out it's bricked off at
the top. It's just like a fake fireplace. And so
I actually bought like a little DVD of flaming fireplace
that you ali. I didn't know this was like an
old school thing. I thought it was DVD technology, but no.
(32:38):
But the reason we like looking at it is that
you get back from that you know, trafficky moment of
shopping and so on, and you look at the flame
and your breath kind of entrains to it. And working
on their breath is a really powerful way to hack
the relaxation system that we experience. You know, a lot
of the holiday season activates what's called our fighter flight,
our sympathetic nervous system, which is we're kind of on
(33:00):
high alert. We're incredibly vigilant, our hearts beating fester. What
we really want to do is to activate the kind
of sister system to our fighter flight, which is what's
called the rest are est or the parasympathetic nervous system.
And when you look at a flame and you're just
kind of watching it over time, your breath kind of
entrains to the slow movement of the flame. So I
think the fire is a really great way to do that,
(33:21):
and maybe one of the best ways to do it,
you know, in the holiday season. Plus, it's light when
you're on your intro. You talked about this is the
time that's dark and our serotonin's going down, and so
something that gives us light in a way that also
entrains our breath and gets us kind of a little
bit meditative. It's a super great practice, especially for secular folks.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
And you know, speaking of secular folks, it's true that
a lot of people celebrate holidays like Christmas, even if
they aren't very religious. It's more about Santa than the
birth of Jesus, right, But there's probably still ways they
can practice elements of the holidays to find that joy
connection and all the other good things we're talking about.
But that makes me wonder, is there a way that
(34:03):
we can create our own rituals and traditions, ones that
don't have anything to do with the existing holidays, but
still allow us to celebrate them in a way that
feels meaningful.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
This is the time when you can kind of create
these traditions and you'll be surprised at how many of
them kind of stick. My mom has one, and she
was very close to her godmother, who has now passed
a long time ago, and her godmother really enjoyed lobster.
It was her favorite thing. And so my mom, kind
of in honor of my godmother for the holidays, will
purchase a live lobster. My mom doesn't eat shellfish though,
(34:40):
so she doesn't like to eat the lobster. What she
does is she takes this live lobster to the beach
and she sort of releases the lobster to the beach.
And the idea is it's just, you know, it's a
way of kind of thinking about her godmother and sort
of giving back. It's very funny if you watch the ritual,
it's really fun for the lobsters because the lobster's kind
of get the little lobster clothing he's taken off, and
they're on the beach and they're like a little confused,
(35:00):
but they're like great and they just dive into the ocean.
One of the things I think we forget about rituals
is that, like Mom's case, you's buying and slapt there,
but like they don't have to cost any money, they
don't have to make sense, right, they can be kind
of dumb, like even sometimes absurd, and at least for
you know that a more atheist, secular person like me,
(35:21):
the kind of absurdity is sort of fun in rituals.
But these are the things we can we can embrace,
and I think especially if you feel frustrated by holiday traditions,
you maybe you're grieving the old holiday tradition. You're looking
for something. This is a spot where building new stuff
can feel really good. This is something we've done in
my own family. I have, you know, a family where
(35:42):
you know there's there's divorce, and there's lots of families
vying for our attention. And in the Christmas season, you
know there's there's somebody who's gonna get you on Christmas morning.
But it's really hard to be in all the places
on Christmas morning. And so our family has developed a
new tradition of celebrating around the Solstice, which is not
as busy a time. You know, flights are a little
bit cheaper, so everybody can get together. And it's like
(36:04):
we just developed all these dumb rituals of the Solstice,
these Solstice cake watch, some Carl Saga and these kinds
of things, and so it's like you just make stuff up,
but really it winds up feeling a lot better.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
But it's bringing you together. You're having those experiences of
gratitude and sharing. That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Like turn these things into rituals as though they were
sort of blessed by some religious authority, and you have
to do them every year, and those kinds of rituals
will wind up making you feel a lot better.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
The doing is the point. Listeners. Right now, as Laurie
and I are going to be leaving, it is cold
and dark in Boston, and I will say that I
can attest to this because my holiday season is already
feeling better because I have social connection with my good
(36:52):
friend Laurie, who I haven't seen in a while. I'm
incredibly grateful that she's so busy that she made time
to come on this and so thank you, Thanks Dave,
and happy holidays, Happy Holidays. That's it for season seven
of How God Works. If you enjoy today's episode, please
leave us some comments or stars wherever you listen. We'll
(37:14):
be back in the spring with new episodes that explore
more of life's big questions and what advice science and
spirituality has to offer. In the meantime, we'll be sharing
some special surprises as well as some of our favorite
episodes from the archives. For now, all of us here
are wishing you and yours a truly happy holiday season
and all the best for the coming year. How God
(37:44):
Works is hosted by Me Dave Disteno. This episode was
written by Josie Holtzman and Me. Our senior producer is
Josie Holtzman. Our producer is Sophie Eisenberg. Our associate producer
is Emmanuel Disarme executive producer is Genevieve's sponsoror. Merrit Jacob
is our mix engineer and composed our theme, which was
arranged by Chloe Disteno. The executive producer of perr X
(38:07):
Productions is Jocelyn Gonzalez. This podcast was also made possible
with support from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more
about the show and access episode transcripts. You can find
our website at how Good Works all one word dot org,
and for news and peaks at What's Coming. Feel free
to follow us on Instagram at how God Works pod
(38:29):
or me on exer Blue Sky at David Disteno
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