Why do we keep chasing happiness in ways that don’t actually work?
On today’s episode, cognitive scientist and Yale professor Dr. Laurie Santos, creator of the most popular course in Yale’s 300-year history and host of The Happiness Lab joins Finding Mastery for a conversation about what the science of wellbeing actually says about how to live a good life.
Laurie opens with a sobering reality: right now, more than 40% of college students report being too depressed to function. More than 60% report overwhelming anxiety. She saw it living with students at Yale and it launched her on a mission to translate rigorous research into practical tools that genuinely help people live better. What she found surprised even her: the things we’re most convinced will make us happy, more money, more success, more achievement, don’t deliver the lasting boost we expect. And the things that actually work are far simpler than we realize.
In this conversation, we explore why our brains default to the comparisons that make us feel worse, how social connection is the most underrated predictor of wellbeing, and what it means to actually work with your emotions rather than fight them. Laurie also shares what the data says about happiness in the workplace, and why it may matter more to organizational performance than any other metric leaders are tracking.
In This Conversation, We Explore:
- Why achievement, money, and status don’t make us as happy as we predict, and why we keep pursuing them anyway
- How social comparison shapes our experience of success, and how to use that knowledge to your advantage
- Why social connection is the most evidence-backed path to wellbeing, for introverts and extroverts alike
- How to build emotional awareness without getting stuck in the feelings
- What happier workplaces actually look like, and the three questions that predict it better than salary
- Why the science of happiness is really the science of attention, mindset, and behavior
Everyone wants to live a good life. This is one of those rare conversations that might genuinely help you do it.
“A meaningful life is going to have some rich combination of all kinds of emotions, some of which are going to have positive elements and some of which are going to have negative elements.”
— Dr. Laurie Santos
Resources + Links
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