The continuation of Laurie Santos happiness

Laurie Santos, cognitive scientist of Yale, teaches the most popular course in history, psychology and good life of the university. One of his central messages – in the class, and on the podcast he inspired – is that, as far as happiness is concerned, we have an agency. “The data confirm that there are a lot to change our behavior and our models of reflection in order to feel a little happier,” she said. Santos recently joined us to talk about some of his favorite books that offer useful tools to stimulate our positive emotions. His comments were published and condensed.

Stammer

by Dan Gilbert

Gilbert is looking for the ways we are bad to predict what will make us happy and what could hurt us. Prospecting is an incredible power that humans have, but it’s a bit in beta. One of our systematic errors is that we constantly overestimate the effects – magnitude and duration – that our circumstances will have on us. This is what Gilbert calls impact bias. Break a break, for example: you often think it will be the end of the world, but that doesn’t affect you as much as you had.

This is linked to another great insight in the book: we have what Gilbert calls a psychological immune system. There are mechanisms in place that make us feel better when we face a pathogen, such as rejection and disappointment. Understanding our impact bias will not make it disappear, but it can always be useful – talk, by giving you the confidence necessary to take more risks.

The power of pleasure

By Catherine Price

How many of us have the impression of languishing, just doing the same old, the same old one? And, even when we finally have free time, we do not do things that are really fun. We could do something easy, like scrolling Tiktok, but it often leaves us disgusting. Price defenders for pleasure, which it specifically defines as having three characteristics: connection, flow and game.

If you think about the moments of your life when you have the most fun, you are probably with someone, because pleasure is social. It is also important to be present. If you have fun, you do not usually feel obliged to get your phone. Finally, the pleasure must be intrinsically rewarding – you do not do it for your curriculum vitae. The price makes a very pleasant case that has fun makes us happier, healthier and less stressed.

The Book of Delights

By gay ross

Gay, a poet, made the decision that he was going to write a test every day for a year on something that delighted him. Its delights range from the 80s group for purple flowers that flourish in the spring. Some of its delights exist in part because of the structures of racism and inequality, such as the leading of the blacks that black people share with each other in spaces where they are the only people of color. That we can find joy in such places is a beautiful feeling. Gay would not have needed to write a hassle book because research shows that our natural inclination is to negativity. He had to train his brain to notice good little things over time and, in doing so, he demonstrated that it was possible to refocus your attention.

The stoic challenge

By William B. Irvine

Stoics often get a bad blow. A common common idea is that they did not experience many emotions, but they were in fact great fans of emotions, especially emotions. Their basic principle was that there are two types of things in life: what you can control and what you cannot. What you can control is how you react to the circumstances out of your control.

Irvine suggests approaching life as a game, as if the bad things that happen to you are in fact challenges designed by the “stoic gods”. This forces you to engage in habits that protect you. An example is the negative visualization, which involves imagining all the terrible things that could happen to you in order to contextualize everything you live. This can help you react to obstacles with humor and resilience.

Four thousand weeks

By Oliver Burkeman

We are constantly trying to put our future to be those who rest, but it is an illusion of thinking that we are going to remove everything from our plates. Burkeman is a question of radical acceptance: we will never have enough time, because we are deadly. There are many good psychological proofs on the power of the salience of mortality. Thinking about death allows you to savor what matters. This framing gets rid of emotions such as guilt; If it is impossible to do everything, you don’t have to feel guilty when you say no or fail. You simply honor your human limitations.

It also does a good job by talking about the history of time and the way we measure productivity. The idea of ​​saving time, to refer it as something we can move, is a crazy notion. It’s just not that time works. When you kiss the limits of time, you will be better.