Don't Worry, Be Happy Now: The Science and Philosophy of the Happiness Movement with Gretchen Rubin

this ucsd-tv program is presented by university of california television like what you learn visit our website or follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with the latest programs also make sure to check out and subscribe to our YouTube original channel you see TV prime available only on YouTube you [Music] you [Music] I am happy here to be here today with with Gretchen Rubin who is known to the world as the creator and author of a Happiness Project in a new book happier at home but she's been a longtime a writer on different topics she's a graduate of Yale and Yale Law School and was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal that's the official title right yes a Supreme Court clerk before he decided to pursue the path of writing and your specialty in the last few years has been you're really obviously touched a nerve is what it means to be happy we're going to discuss various aspect of that plenty of time for your questions I wanted to ask you a few scaling questions to begin with one concerns the ambitions of your project of your message for the world here's what I mean there are lots of people who objectively have tremendous reasons not to be happy they're poor they are disabled they're in misery they've had grievous losses they are imprisoned they're sick etc what is the reasonable range of happiness you're trying to bring to the world who are you really addressing with your with your life's work of these past few years well that raises a couple of interesting things one is that when you look all around the room most people say they're either pretty happy or very happy so most people are pretty happy and that's true in all different circumstances people are very adaptable and can be happy in circumstances where we would imagine ourselves to be unhappy um and within the range of happiness I think there's happiness unhappiness and depression and so depression I consider its own very serious urgent condition and that needs every tool that you can throw at it but is outside of the range of sort of happiness unhappiness I have a friend who said I'm a I'm a depressed person who's actually very happy and I knew exactly what she meant by that um but so within the ordinary happiness unhappiness when I started my project I was I was sort of concerned that people who were really in situations where they were very unhappy like they'd had some kind of catastrophe or some kind of you know really terrible challenge would almost find my approach flippant because it really is talking about these very ordinary types of things that you can do as part of your just regular day and and and it was really aimed for people who were in sort of ordinary circumstances and it's been interesting for me to hear from many people who are in what I would consider dire happiness circumstances saying that they find that these little things are helpful that sort of doing what you can as just part of your ordinary routine really can help you be as happy as you can be under your circumstances even when your circumstances are unhappy so I should ask here how many people are familiar with the approach to life that Gretchen has been laying out at our books nerve website so we may go through some of some of the basics one of the things I find most fascinating about your approach is how practical it is you have lists every Wednesday and you have you know tips to do things to each day is that an approach that comes naturally to you from the first time you emerge is it learning from Benjamin Franklin how did you end up with this kind of approach to people there's small steps making a difference in people's lives it is very much my approach and I love reading about radical happiness projects like Thoreau moving to Walden Pond or Elizabeth Gilbert moving to Italy India and Indonesia and and in there I sort of I you know it's very thrilling to read about that kind of thing but I knew that for myself you know I'm not adventurous I don't like to travel I I can rarely leave my neighborhood ate the same food every day um and and so I needed to find things that I could just do as very practical things very manageable things and and so that was really where my and I am a very Benjamin Franklin II kind of he's one of my patron saints and so I liked his you know let's make a chart and we'll write everything down and and check it off every day and yeah so that's definitely my bent and for the people here who have not yet fully lived your gospel I give them some examples of the sorts of modest changes that you found that people have told you have been most influential so I am NOT saying that this is the most significant change that you could make in your life to be happier by any means but the number one whenever I talk to people who have done have these projects I say well what have you done what worked for you and I hear about dozens and dozens and dozens but the one that people most often specifically mentioned as something that they've now do that boost their happiness is the resolution to make your bed this little tiny thing right I'm not saying it's it's it's clearly a very small thing but it's something it's like the gateway drug of a Happiness Project it seems to be the thing that gets people and I'm the kind of person who makes my bed in a hotel room on the day that I check out but so it is it's very small so getting enough sleep and enjoying good smells I'm now obsessed with the sense of smell and a thing that's had a huge influence on the atmosphere of our home was now our whole family - made the resolution to give warm greetings and farewells so that when somebody comes and goes instead of just grunting out a hollow from across the room people really get up and say hello and so something very small doesn't take a lot of time energy or money because nobody's got a lot of extra time energy or money but just making seeing these opportunities for small changes can sometimes really affect the quality of your day and if you if you hope that as soon as the session as soon as the whole conference is over you'll go to a to the Happiness Project website and see all the very the constantly refreshed stream of practical suggestions as you walk around the world as you see people looking sullen in an airport or in a train station or whatever what you observe any things you observe them doing you think oh if only I could correct the person and have him or her do X Y or Z what do you wish you were telling all of us as you observe us well I don't have the problem so much with people like in an airport but definitely with people that I meet and actually talk to I have to hold myself back from being a happiness bully because I just want to shake you like you've got to go to bed on time yes so sometimes I do see people doing things where a lot of times that also has to do with people making decisions which I feel like they're making for the wrong reasons like they're doing something because they think they should do it not because it's actually something that really rings true for them and or or going through motions that clearly aren't making them happy constantly cutting everything too short so but their entire day is frantic whereas I just keep thinking like if you could just start everything an hour earlier you're just your whole life would be simpler or people who won't unplug from the phone or you know are staying up until 2:00 in the morning cruising the internet and you just think gosh if you just go to bed you'd be so much happier um but yes I have to hold myself back because I I do I do get to ride too III know I know that nagging and and making pointed comments it's not going to make anybody happy I'll give you in my own case a success story a failure story and then a question the success story is back when I was in my mid-20s which as you'll guess was some time ago I realized how much stress was coming to my wife by worrying about making planes so I just decided always to get to the airport early then it just is a gigantic you know stress load yeah and the airports are horrible but you can sit there and read and do whatever else that's my success story my failure story is I am wired by my D and earth all heritage to have like a 26 hour clock I always stay up late and I always feel as if I'm having to get up too early yes you can tell me to change that I can't right so what would you what how are you fixed well you're exactly right it's there are larks and owls and and people really are in these categories and it is very hard wired so can you adjust your life to better reflect that to just say like I'm not going to go my day start to 10:00 or I don't know and it just not even pretty not in to try to why do you think I'm a writer very good that's there you go I don't have to get up yeah and without getting to detail about this my wife has exactly the on the time the same thing I'm the lark married to the owl the miracle is we have two children yeah leave it leave it there yeah here's here's my question the I was living out of the country for a number of years when I came back the most depressing observational phenomena was everybody looking at their hand no matter what else they were doing right you know raising their children walk across the street driving car always looking at the phones yeah can this habit be changed with this if you were the happiness czar to break us of the plugged-in addiction what would you do well I think it's a it's a big big challenge for people and that and and this this sense of constantly needing to connect and also feeling hunted by that you know you've got a cubicle in your pocket and you either should be working or could be working are you constantly have to be checking in and what I what I find is what works for a lot of people is to set boundaries so maybe from 6:00 to 9:00 so you're this family time so you just don't you just make that you put your your cell phone in an inconvenient drawer and so you don't do it or you use freedom or a similar kind of software program so you can't go online while you're working or a lot of people have a technology Sabbath where they take a day off and I have certain goals like that for myself where I don't use it like I never my phone never rings it's always on mute I don't I have no announcements because if you hear that announcement you ki mean you can't resist it's like I got an email what is it that you know um and and so so I think a lot of it has to do with mindfully not just falling into just a mindless responsiveness to it because you are like the rat in the cage that every once in a while gets a good palate so you just keep hitting that bar um and to really take take charge of it and to say well how can i how can I use it for all the great things that it can provide but but so that it doesn't shove out of the way other things that are just as important or more important because I think technology is a good servant and a bad master and so you just have to assert your domination and you can control it but you have to figure out what rules will work as it happens in the next issue of the Atlantic I have an interview with David Allen who may be the founder of getting things young yes it was talking about exactly the same phenomenon of the random positively yeah yeah emails intermittent reinforcement is is far more addictive than consistent reinforcement so the fact that every once in a while you get a great email is going to keep you going back more and more than if you every time when you've got a great email so yeah ask about a number of similarities and differences as the audience will observed you are a woman and my heart it's obvious and my observation is there are trends in you can find more men than women willing themselves to be chipper and and that chip earnest I associate more as a male than a female trait but you're the expert what are the differences between chip Rangers I have never examined chip earnest as what do you mean by that exactly well how about if we therefore look at happiness instead are there any interesting differences between how men and women approach this challenge or should approaches you know we you know it's interesting because there's a lot of research that's very focused on the difference between men and women and I myself do not focus on that because because to me the differences among individuals are more powerful and interesting than the differences between men and women and I feel and I feel like sometimes you can get sort of distracted by it you know and think like well because I'm a woman I feel like that it and men are always doing blah blah blah blah blah and then you lose the distinctions about how actual individuals are behaving which usually doesn't break down so clearly so I myself don't spend a lot of time focusing on that but it will say that one of the things that's very striking about the difference between men and women is that a secret and maybe the secret to happiness is strong relationships with other people and women tend to be more focused on that and and and see it as a higher priority to make to keep that going and so on it's just something for both men and women to think about which is how what are the things that you can do to make sure that the relationships in your life are strong and that you're increasing your so you know you're expanding your social bonds and that you're really keeping them going strong and as you travel around the world is there any significant difference in your audience between men and women well it's interesting I feel like you know it's hard to know because everything is so specific I feel like I've more women who come to events but then on my blog it's very it's very evenly split it seems like so so I and I don't overly I have I'm not that good with my statistics I should be like spending a lot more time thinking about my demographical information but I don't so one of the fascinating tests that you lay out on your site is whether self analysis whether you're the kind of person who's making other people happy or unhappy and what that tells you about whether you're the kind of people that someone that the kind of person other people avoid other people are drawn to would you tell the audience some of the tips about whether in looking at your oneself you can tell whether you're making other people happy or annoying them yet you picked a very dark a lot of us to focus on yes and this is a I was became very interested in the sect of like well would you know if you were the kind of person who is making other people unhappy and so there's a there's there's things that you can look for in the way people relate to you so for example if you enter a conversation does it tend to break up or if you or do other people act as your intermediaries like they say oh don't you don't have to have that you don't have to tell them I'll tell them for you so like you know your your son your son is like no I'll tell my wife don't you talk to her and and whether you know when was the last time someone we either gave or received a party or celebration yes know it but I encourage you to go to the site and find these checklists of whether you're the kind of person who is making other people happy happier sad another question on sort of the extending from the from the personal your your newest book a happier at home is about you know ways in which the dynamics of a family can work and I'd be curious both to hear about that and about beyond the families are there we're in this age of tremendous friction disagreement hostility we're in a political campaign four weeks from today where people seem not to be able to be happy about anything and the collectivity how do you tell us how you think about extending the lessons you have for individual happiness to larger units first the family and then if possible beyond the family to actual societies well with my happier at home project I was focused on the relationships that came together in my home which was in my case marriage and Parenthood but then but obviously that wouldn't be true for everyone everybody's home is different and they have different kind of relationships that that that that are coming to converging in home and again for the for the kinds of things I was looking and it really was about of loving attentive engagement which to your earlier point means not constantly being on your phone or giving warm greetings or farewells or having festive traditions or having pictures of people around or you know setting aside time for the things that are really important to you so for instance my older daughter I didn't have much time alone with my older daughter now because her schedule is so much more complicated my younger daughter I still had like I walked her to school in the morning but I didn't have that time with my older daughter so I set aside an afternoon a week because I was like this is an important value to me that I'm not getting in my life so how can I actually just figure out a way to have it and so now I have an afternoon a couple of hours every week which doesn't sound like much but it actually made a very big difference just in my relationship with my daughter there's no nagging there's no homework there's no errands we just do something fun together but then there but then you're right your home is always in the context of your neighborhood and whether that your neighborhood is sort of like the three blocks around your house or whether it's your entire country or the world and there is this sense that you you have to exist in a larger network and that's part of it and the sense of strife is interesting I mean it's funny about news I think there's a kind of I've really from what I've observed there's a kind of person who is very drawn to bad news now we're all drawn to bad news to some extent so that's called the negativity bias and it means that bad is stronger than good in our head so you remember a complaint or criticism better than a compliment and you remember bad news better than good news that's just the sort of human nature but there are certain people that are that are that are mesmerised and sort of have an insatiable desire for true crime natural disasters you know negative political story you know and they just go deep deep deep into it and they're very distressed by it so for people like that I think you have to draw a line between what is your obligation as the citizen of the world to be educated about what's happening and what are you just indulging your inclination to learn all the gory details and if those gory details are bringing you down to just say to yourself okay I know what I need to know to be a citizen of the world and I don't need to read about every little tragic story and the same thing with political things I mean I think if it's something where you're just getting very very agitated and worked up to no good it's not making you more likely to vote it's not making you more likely to get involved it's not making you take positive action you kind of have to say like I should know I need to know what I need to know but I don't need to just work myself into a frenzy if it's upsetting me sometimes people I mean a lot of people like being worked up into a frenzy especially about political stuff they get a huge kick out of it like you know it's a big it's it's it's it's interesting and engaging for them but then some people really get very distressed by it you know what is our country coming to and and and and and I just think there is a limit where beyond which it's not constructive unless it does motivate you to get involved because sometimes people get so worked up they're like I'm going to join I'm going to get involved I'm going to get out there and that's obviously good because we want people to be very engaged in political system but sometimes it's that's not what it is it's a kind of just it's just redundant and and and and not constructive two related political comments that I have found interesting or connected to what you're saying one is you mentioned how much more powerful complaints are than complimented cetera think for the moment of the psyche if somebody decides to run for public office including president whichever person wins this election will know and have to be at peace it with the fact that tens of millions of people hate him yeah I think that he's a yeah either you know whatever negative adjectives you have for either of these candidates and being able to endure that really separates people who are going to be politicians from from the rest of us the other point make is you talk about the how it's it's not healthy to be sort of consumed with upset and things going wrong the distinctive achievement of Fox News I think entirely apart from its political perspective is this air of constant outrage you know I think it's found a way to sort of cultivate that among a viewership in a way that hasn't been fully replicated on the other side but I think that's its particular invention and worse because people some people really do feed off of this yes and it's the tone of just every story and there's nothing else going wrong someplace in the world there's a constant supply of things yeah you have written you've written about how you deal with your children how you deal with your family do you have senses of as people go through life's arc as they get older as their children move away as they lose friends how do you have a sort of particular set of prescriptions for how to maintain happiness later into life well it's interesting I mean some people find it surprising but actually older people tend to be happier and and one of the theories about why this is is that is that when you're older you you know yourself and so you sort of accepted yourself and so you're not battling these kind of you know fundamental uneasiness with yours with who you really are and that also that you have a sense that time is precious and so you don't waste time on things that aren't important to you and that your life starts to reflect your values better because because you you you really you're spending your time on the activity and the people that are important to you instead of you know running around so so it's interesting like that life satisfaction goes up and I'll give you the chance to give for those who don't know it one of your most important mantras about the days or surely the days are long and the years are short it's connected to what you're just saying about preciousness of time right right well I think of everything that I wrote the that I've written about happiness this one phrase the days are long but the years are short is one that really resonates with people so this idea that sometimes you get up in the morning and you think but it's time I get back in bed like I can't even imagine all the things that have to happen and like it just seems like this this this this unending journey and then you know a year passes in a flash and you think wow what happened in March I have no recollection and I think it's a particularly poignant with parents where you feel like any one day can feel like the length of a Saturday afternoon can sometimes be daunting but then kindergarten is gone in a flash and so to write to really appreciate the moment and to appreciate the season of life that you're in as it's happening one reason why I've spent so much of my life moving from place to place you know is that somehow it makes the time more memorable or denser to and this is really I was yes absolutely one of the things that's that's that's kind of surprising is we have this idea that time flies when you're having fun but actually when when life is very when one day is very similar to the other they tend to just blur by and and you can't remember it you can't remember it and interestingly I was reading an interview with a monk saying how quickly time passed in a monastery because of this thing of everyday being the same and when you have a very unusual circumstance like especially something like living in a different country where there's so much new information coming to you that it's like you get double life and then one year feels like a whole episode a friend of mine said when he had a new baby he said one of the things I loved about it is that we felt like our life was speeding by and all of a sudden slowing down again because just everything that is so new about having a baby gay that sense of concentrated life but I think to eat the most replicable way to do this is to move to a foreign country because that's just you know very that there's just so much coming at you that you have to process that it is a very intense I'm glad to have official sanction yet what's been our policy yeah no I I never want to live it I don't even want to live for my neighborhood and I've been thinking what can I do in my own life to sort of do that because I also feel I want I want more concentrated life and so I need to find something shake myself up so I have that experience although on the no free lunch principle what is true is that it you know it lived a lot of different places and so you have a sort of longer a sense of a longer denser life but a series of intermittent deaths because you're leaving this parent you know you're not going to live in Malaysia anymore you live in Japan anymore cetera so it's but on net it's already I found it worthwhile right so in your own life what's been what are the main happiness challenges you still wrestle with oh the biggest obstacle to my happiness is myself for sure um I have a very irritable high-strung fly off the handle kind of temperament and many many many of my resolutions are aimed at making sure that I stay calm and light-hearted and don't behave way that doesn't reflect the way I want to behave so that's one of them another one is I'm a tremendous workaholic like I would just I would just work all the time I love to work and yet I know that there are other things that are important to me and that I have to make time for so I always am having to figure out ways to control that impulse and so I have a lot of paradoxical uh resolutions like force myself to wander and schedule time to play and thankfully I have resolution to kiss in the morning kiss at night with my husband so I actually of a kissing schedule um because you know if it's not on my calendar it doesn't happen and and and so and so that's that and then and and it is it is just making time for the things and then and then you know my four I have twelve personal Commandments my first personal commandment is to be Gretchen and naturally everybody should substitute their own name um but thank you I get rid of I about that quite a bit and but but always you know the mo I found that the more my life reflects my nature my values my interests the happier it is it feels simpler but also more rich and and yet it is so hard to be yourself and you think what could be more obvious than to be yourself because you just hang out with yourself all day long but this is one of those ancient precepts of happiness know thyself is on the temple of apollo at delphi and yet there's so much you know it's what you think you ought to be or what you wish you were or what other people think you want to be or what you assume is true of all of human nature and and you lose sight of what is actually true for you and then the more you mean i had a friend and she said so well Gretchen you know me I hate the outdoors I thought excellent you know go for it you hate the outdoors stay inside I mean she knew that about herself was bold I have two more questions that I'll ask the audience and by the audience one is I think the part of your overall life view that would be hardest for people like those watching online and then in the crowd today is to set bounds on busyness and ambition and work because we all could do more there's always another email you could answer another blah blah blah what have you found to be the effective message for people who are busy who have been successful in life because they are busy because they'll take on more work how do they break the cycle of pain one thing that's very helpful to remember just just as you're tapping into your ambitious side is think about it and think about the people that you know working the hardest is not the fastest way to get from A to B and just being the one that's always answering your emails that's not what makes people succeed so don't kid yourself about what the value is of what you're doing and the other thing is I think to really mindfully think through what you're doing and what's important to you because if you're like my work is important to me and my family is important to me and yet you make no time for your family then your life doesn't reflect your values and that ultimately is going to make you less happy and so to really sit down and think about like well what would I want my life to be not always just to be reacting but to say well how can i how can i crowd everything that I want into my day I don't like the term balance because balance to me suggests that like everything's very calmly and and with lots of room for everything and peacefully arranged and it's not my experience of life so I always think I'm going to crowd my life with the things I love and that means that things that I did I that I don't love have to fall away so sometimes you just have to decide yourself well it's not it's not a value for me so that's the stock it's not going to get done because other things were more important and so it always comes back to this idea of mindfulness and really deciding what do you want your life to look like and what do you want your life to consist of and your everyday life had better reflect that or it's not going to happen so if you think I want time for friends okay and how is that going to happen specifically how is that going to happen because just sort of telling yourself that you that you hold something dear you know it should be reflected in your how you spend your time how you spend your money what's in your house you know what where your relationships are now a friend of mine said to me ambitious people can't be happy and I don't agree with that but I think it's perhaps more challenging for people who are very ambitious my other question is in my observation which no doubt it is skew two of the great enemies of happiness are a sense of guilt and a sense of like resentment or you slighted yeah how do you have people cope with those two enemies of happiness one of the things people sometimes seem to think is that what I would say you should do what you should aim for is to be blissfully happy at 10:00 on the one-to-ten scale 24/7 and that would be a good life and I mean that's not it's certainly not possible and I don't think it would even be a good life but things like guilt and resentment or anger or boredom are really useful symbol signs because they're big flashing signs that something in your life isn't right so if you're feeling guilty it's because something you're doing something that doesn't reflect your values it's not in keeping with the way what you want to expect from yourself now so what are you going to do about it and if you're feeling resentful why are you feeling resentful and now sometimes you can you can do certain things like cultivating a sense of gratitude is a very easy way to drive out resentment because when you think of all the reasons that you have to be grateful to somebody you tend to feel less resentful so there's ways you can do it that way or you can change your behavior so that you don't feel guilty so actually I think these negative emotions are really really important to a happy life because they show you where you have opportunities to bring your life more into your values more into alignment with your values I have lots more questions but I'm going to give other people a chance so if you raise your hand a microphone will come to you and then while each person is asking a question the microphone will go to the next person so who so how about up here we'll start with this gentleman in the second row and then our microphone team will give microphones to others in the meantime yes thank you I Gregg Jabin from Dunmore I enjoyed the discussion I've got two related questions and the first one I'm not trying to be funny but what's the relationship between shopping or buying something and happiness and the second question is what's the value of anticipation you know the recent studies that show that the expectation going on that vacation actually is more enjoyable and brings more happiness than the actual vacation itself those are two very large questions and there is a tendency I think for people to totally dismiss the relationship between money possessions and happiness and to say less is more simplicity is everything stuff doesn't matter I don't care I'm not materialistic I don't want to buy stuff and keep stuff but I think the common experience of mankind is that possessions for most people do play a role in a happy life and for better or for worse shopping is a way that we engage with things that we love just the same way that reviewing things that we love or taking pictures of things that we admire or talking about them or collecting them it's a way of engaging with the world now again it's a good servant and a bad master and clearly there are people who who do it to an extreme that seems either socially reprehensible or uninteresting to hear about or you know I mean there's an extreme where it's negative but I do feel like sometimes there is a lack of emphasis on the role that they can play and there was this super interesting study that was done many many years ago like in the 70s I think by me high csikszentmihalyi whose name took me a long time to learn how to pronounce I'm Flo Fame and they did a study in London where they went to people and said what is special to you in your house and everybody in the household they would ask and they would talk about what was special to them and what was interesting is there were a few people who said things aren't important to me people are important to me and they said well that was very interesting except when they looked at the people they were the most isolated and lonely people and that people ten people who are highly engaged with other people tend to locate those feelings in possessions and so when you really look at people's possessions they're like this is the dining room table that I bought because I love to have people over and this is the rocking chair that was my grandmother's and this is the vase that I bought am I am I on my honeymoon and so you know objects are more than just objects and that they running out and buying a new pair of boots every afternoon that's not something that's going to make you happier but I think for I think wisely when you think about it about that possessions do have a role to play and the other one was anticipation anticipation there's four stages of happiness there's there's anticipating there's savoring there's expressing and there's another one I can't remember right now but um and so anticipation is and there's something called rosy prospection which is when you do anticipate things more then you actually have happiness in the moment and so one thing that's really helpful with if you're thinking about how to make your life happier is to think about how to plan ahead for things instead of impulsively going to a bookstore think oh on Saturday I'll go to the bookstore and then you have all the fun of looking forward to it and so anticipation really is is really is really really a sweet part of happiness where's the next microphone yes sorry my name is sue Rutledge from La Jolla and Washington DC I like very much your approach of happiness coming from living your own values and I've got an economics background it seems to me one could do an expected happiness impact evaluation of everything every decision is how high is what your happiness thing for the buck yeah exactly exactly and what I find is that the greatest happiness is not in receiving gifts from people but in making those gifts I wonder if you could talk about the relationship between giving and receiving as a happiness impact yes I mean I think your point is very well taken it and that one of the things about being mindful is actually thinking through like what is going to be the happiness impact of this and what's going to be the happiness impact of that so for instance back to this idea of possessions like if you're thinking should I buy a new chair or should I take a trip to see my college roommate the thing that is going to deepen a relationship that's the thing that's probably going to bring more happiness and so that's a way to think about trade-offs of time energy or money in a way to do that but what was the second just give giving versus rasoi yes well it's really important that that it turns out that giving support is just as important it happens or more important to have use than getting support and think about it like what do you remember more fondly like the birth the surprise party you threw for somebody else or the surprise party somebody threw for you it's like that get giving and feeling like you're contributing is so sweet and when I started trying because Miley background I was trying to understand like how do you broadly understand happiness like what's the framework and there's feeling good feeling bad feeling right and the atmosphere of growth and I didn't really understand the atmosphere of growth for a while but an atmosphere of growth is very much part of happiness and it's definitely like if you feel like you're helping or you're making something better or you're teaching somebody something or you're fixing something or you're you just making something better it's a huge engine of happiness and so this idea that you're that you are giving out is enormous ly satisfying to people and a huge driver of happiness next up down here yes hi Gretchen Paul Schwartz and part of the American dream project and I want to ask you about happiness at work and I've read everything from happiness at work is not possible to organizations that believe the more they invest in their employees happiness the better the organization is a is happiness at work possible in be what are some of the things that managers and leaders can do to improve the happiness of their workplace well I think happiness at work is possible and yes people who are happy at work are you know it's very even if only and for self-interested reasons like people are more productive and they they don't have burnout and absenteeism and all kinds of things there's all kinds of reasons why it makes business sense for people to be happy at work and certainly we want people to be happy at work because people spend so much of their time at work you know and there's a lot of things when when they look at people who say they're happy at work there's there's many elements that come up frig's for instance people who say they have at least one close friend at work tend to say that they're happier at work and people who say my boss cares about me and wants to see me advance this is not like the visionary boss at the top this is the per that is immediately above you and feeling like that person cares about you knows you and and wants to see you improve i'm interestingly like one of the things is like is there a sense of fun like are there birthday parties are there holiday celebrations are there goofy traditions or is it do you are there people able to laugh at themselves and see the funny set of situations and you know i clerked for justice O'Connor and and you know the Supreme Court is a very serious thoughtful quiet place and justice O'Connor is a very formidable personality and yet she did all these things to make our workplace kind of have this light element for instance she insisted that her clan I mean she insisted that her clerks do a Halloween pumpkin decorating display and she had high standards and so there we were and I remember thinking at the time is this really the highest and best use of our time as clerks to be doing a suffragette themed pumpkin and honor of a pope in honor of the X you know anniversary of the 19th amendment and but but it actually was really fun and when I look back on that time that's one of the highlights of it and it really did a lot to to give us a feeling of camaraderie and fun and that and that we weren't always nose to the grindstone and there willie was this opportunity to connect and to do entity and to have this this this more this goofier side so i think there definitely are a lot of things and interestingly it matters to a great degree that people feel like the company or the boss or whatever is trying it almost doesn't matter if it works it's like if you put in the ping-pong table and nobody wants to play ping-pong they still appreciate it they know you're trying you know well the thing playing table not so much but thank you you know I mean so so sometimes just like going through the gestures of doing this is also important to show that you that you care and that you value people's happiness and that you're trying to do what you can within the limits of the workplace to accommodate that so next up here hi Nancy's to tell Weiss I'm a reproductive endocrinologist and so I deal with a lot of hormones and so part of my philosophy is hormones make the world go around have you looked at the physiology of happiness and perhaps consider partnering up with Larry Smarr about monitoring let's have a meld monitoring your happiness level so that when you're in a zone that oh my gosh my happiness is getting depleted I think I'll remove myself from the situation or wow I'm getting close to someone who's making me happy or even going back memory lane where we can think ourselves happy if you work all happy stories but they're having some biofeedback for the physiology of happiness I'm a big believer in monitoring though I have to say Larry has taken it to depths that I have would not have not yet explored on you know that's really interesting I mean I feel like there's a lot to be done there's a lot of low-hanging fruit just with what's in your conscious mind so I haven't I haven't thought about but I agree that the that a huge and often overlooked aspect is what is happening with our body and and even if you don't can't get your sample of your blood taken you can say am i - hungry am I too cold did I not get enough sleep am I not getting enough exercise are my clothes too tight or my heels too high is the light at my desk too bright on because these things really will add to your sense of irritability or or feeling lethargic or feeling like everything's over it is too much trouble but it's I mean it's it's obviously a huge part of what's going on that we're not that we're not consciously aware of so it's really interesting so we have about five four more minutes time for a couple more questions if they are up there okay in the upper deck hi Brett Auerbach I had a question I read a kindle single I can't recall the author's name but you probably familiar with it the happy the happiness manifesto and he talks about trying to turn you touched on this before with regard to possessions turning the analysis of the gross national product gross domestic product into something more important in the sense that the gross national product takes into account you know the lakhs you pay to put on your door but it doesn't take into account the sort of somewhat immeasurable things that do make you happy the time with your daughter etc give any commentary on that you'll actually there's a lot of interest now sort of on the governmental level I'm trying to quantify it and I was talking to a guy who works at the UN about how they're trying to come up with some sort of standard of measurement that would be like GDP and think about that though across the world of coming coming up with a set of standard factors it's like it is very intellectually challenging but it's interesting that like there's there's a lot of interest now in trying to quantify and to take into account things that are that are that are that right now are not being so taken to to a hand so one of the one of the things that's really true is that you tend to manage what you measure and if you measure it you're it's much easier to know whether you're doing it or whether you're not doing it and so one of the things I do for my Happiness Project is I try to measure everything that is important to me because if I say to myself am i spending time with my daughter then I know if I'm doing it or not rather than just having being this loose this loose value and certainly on a governmental level the same thing like if we want people to have a sense of neighborliness how do we quantify that how do we judge that and how would we amplify it so it's a very it's a it's a really interesting and challenging thing that's being that's being worked on now next question is where is the microphone over here sorry yes yes I I wonder about people in post-retirement how they can maintain happiness best well one of the things this again back to is the same old thing strong social ties so people have strong social ties and strong social lives and feel you tend to be happier and people and back to this idea of giving people who feel like they're connected to the community and and and somehow in that way is also and in after retirement people who have liked who have interests and hobbies tend to do tend to have to feel happier and so so a lot of it is how socially engaged you are and how sort of intellectually engaged you are things that are interesting to you and health to you know time time for one more question if it's terse and I'll leave our microphone yes here we go I hope this isn't isn't too silly of a question but I wanted to go back to the making of the bed yeah first I was wondering if that's more on male versus female and then if you're married doesn't matter who makes the bed one of the things that has really struck me about happiness and it's kind of surprising is the degree to which for most people outer order contributes to inner calm and I and that is not a male-female thing and I and and sometimes people sort of assume but I mean in my judgment it really is a it's a personality thing and it doesn't divide on gender lines my own view about making the bed is the rule is last one out makes the bed you know it's like you know price you pay for for laying in so in my case my husband always almost always makes the bed but if he gets up first I make it so and yeah and and maybe there's a special value to being the one to make the bed but I think just having the bed made it's just it's like at the end of the day you walk in and it's just much more just much more of a serene environment plus you can find things more easily like how many times you make the ven you're like oh there's that thing that I was looking for my iPhone charger or whatever and that makes you happy too so um yeah it's I admit it sounds like a tiny tiny thing but it works I speak for all of us in saying we are much happier now for having heard this talk less please join the attack from Gretchen Rubin [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: University of California Television (UCTV)

Views: 113,297

Rating: 4.6630936 out of 5

Keywords: The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin, Happier at Home

Id: -3hWBREH4LI

Length: 49min 0sec (2940 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 30 2012