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How to Be a Better Human

The science of happiness (w/ Laurie Santos)

How to Be a Better Human

TED

Self-improvement, Education

4.21.3K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The phrase “comparison is the thief of joy” might be the kind of cliche that makes you roll your eyes – and yet, it’s an idea that is, scientifically, pretty accurate. In today’s episode, psychologist Laurie Santos – a Yale professor and host of “The Happiness Lab” podcast – discusses some of the surprising evidence behind what does and doesn’t make us humans happy. Laurie also shares strategies on how to improve our well-being, discusses the irony behind “self-care”, and explains why happiness is often a journey not just within, but beyond, ourselves. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts

Transcript

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0:00.0

Ted Audio Collective.

0:02.0

Collective.

0:04.0

You're listening to How to Bea A better Human.

0:08.0

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.

0:10.0

I am your host Chris Duffy.

0:12.0

Here's a strange thing that I have noticed

0:13.9

about my own brain. Often the times that I feel the happiest are where I have a lot of

0:18.6

irons in the fire. There's all these possibilities and there's this sense that

0:22.0

exciting things might happen.

0:24.2

But the thing that's weird is that I often feel happier in that moment where the irons are in the

0:28.4

fire than when they actually come out and become a real thing. Right? Like, even if I have accomplished something

0:35.0

that feels really big and special

0:36.6

like we finished recording a season of this show

0:38.6

or I did a big live show and it went well,

0:41.0

I crash so hard that night or the next day as soon as I've done the thing

0:45.2

that I thought that I really wanted to do. It's like I have a happiness hangover.

0:49.5

I'm confused to be honest about why it is that accomplishing the things that I thought I wanted to

0:54.1

accomplish often don't make me feel very happy at all. In my experience, happiness is

1:00.5

kind of a slippery fish. When I try my hardest to grab a hold of happiness,

1:04.2

it just flops out of my fingers and slides away.

1:07.3

But when I ignore the fish and I focus on other things,

1:10.9

sometimes out of the corner of my eye, I see that, hey, that happiness fish is swimming

...

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