This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta.

The English poet William Wordsworth once wrote

that the world is too much with us.

He penned those words in 1807,

a time of growing industrialization in its country.

William Wordsworth felt that people were becoming detached from nature

and were too absorbed in, as he put it, getting and spending.

His critique still rings true.

We are surrounded today by more people, connected to more devices, and travel more often and widely.

From time to time, of course, we stop.

We take a hike in the mountains or spend an afternoon reading a book. We are transformed by a lovely piece of music or sit by a window listening to the rain.

These moments rejuvenate us. We tell ourselves I should do this more often and then we don't.

That's because the world constantly tells us that William Wordsworth was wrong, that getting and spending is the good life.

We should reach for that next ring, work that third job, go to that boisterous party after a long day at work. Work hard, play hard. You only

live once, right? Movies and TV shows depict people who sit on the sidelines who consciously step away from the crowds as standoffish and strange.

That figure sitting by a rain-spattered window, she looks lonely.

Today on the show, we explore the science of what we lose when we constantly engage in getting and spending.

And we'll examine the effects on our minds of a quieter, more reflective interior life.

How to make friends with yourself again? This week on Hidden Brain. The Researchers are people and like all of us they make assumptions.

Sometimes those assumptions are right, but often they're wrong. That's where the

data come in. If you track things carefully, you can start to see where your assumptions go wrong.

In early 2020, psychologist Netta Weinstein at the University of Reading in Britain

...