Lori Santos, a cognitive scientist at Yale University, is studying the most popular course in university history, psychology and good life at the university. One of her central messages – in the chapter, and on the podcast she inspired – is, when it comes to happiness, we have some agencies. “The data raises that there is a lot that we can do to change our behaviors and patterns of thinking in order to feel a little happiness,” she said. Santos recently joined us to talk about some of his favorite books that provide useful tools to enhance our positive feelings. Her comments were edited and intensified.
Stumbling
Written by Dan Gilbert
Gilbert is looking for the ways we are bad in predicting what will make us happy, and what might harm us. Prospection is a great power that humans enjoy, but it is a kind of experimental version. One of our methodological mistakes is that we are constantly estimating the effects – capacity and duration – that our circumstances will show us. This is what Gilbert indicates that it has an effect. Take disintegration, for example: you often think it will be the end of the world, but it does not affect you as much as you expect.
This is associated with another large vision of the book: We have what Gilbert calls the psychological immunity system. There are mechanisms that make us feel better when we face pathogens, such as rejection and disappointment. Understanding our biases will not make it go away, but it can be useful – by giving you confidence to bear more risks.
Fun power
By Catherine Price
How many of us feel as if we were suffering, just do the same old, the same old? Even when we finally have some free time, we do not really enjoy things. We may do something easy, like passing through Tiktok, but this often leaves us and feels all. Prices are offered for fun, which you know specifically as three features: communication, flow and fun.
If you are considering times in your life when you have more fun, you are likely to be with someone, because pleasure is social. It is also important to be present. If you enjoy, you usually don’t feel you have to pick up your phone. Finally, pleasure should be rewarding by nature – you do not do this for your CV. PRICE makes a nice issue that the involvement of fun makes us happier, healthier and less tense.
Persian Book
Written by Ross Jay
Gay, a poet, made a decision that he would write an article every day for a year about something happier. Its hardware ranges from the eighties to purple flowers that open in the spring. Some of its stolen parties are partially due to the structures of racism and inequality, such as the gestures that blacks share with each other in the areas where they are the only people colored. We are able to find joy in such places is a beautiful feeling. Gay people did not need to write a book of trouble because research shows that our natural tendency towards negativity. He had to train on his brain to notice good small things over time, and thus, he showed that it was possible to re -focus your attention.
Stolen challenge
Written by William B. Irvin
Routines often get bad rap music. There is a common belief that they did not face many feelings, but they were actually lovers 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 interact with conditions outside your control.
Irvine suggests approaching life like a game, as if the bad things that happen to you are actually challenges designed by “wonderful gods”. Do this requires sharing the habits that protect you. One example is a negative perception, which requires imagining all the terrible things that can happen to you in order to put the context of everything you are going through. This can help you respond to obstacles with humor and flexibility.
Four thousand weeks
Written by Oliver Burkelman
We are constantly trying to control ourselves in the future to be the one who rests, but it is important to think that we will get everything out of our paintings. Burkeman is all about radical acceptance: we will not have enough time, because we are dead. There is a lot of good psychological evidence of death strength. Thinking about death allows you to taste what matters. This framework gets rid of emotions like guilt. If it is impossible to do everything, you will not feel guilty when you say no or specialize. You just honor your human restrictions.
It also does a beautiful job that talks about the date of time and how to measure productivity. Just the idea of saving time, and referring to it as something we can navigate, is a crazy idea. This is not just how to do time. When you adopt the limits of time, you will be better.
