Science-Based Tools for Increasing Happiness

**Andrew D. Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we're discussing happiness. We're going to discuss the science of happiness, because indeed, there are excellent laboratories that have worked for many decades to try and understand what is this thing that we call happiness, and what brings us happiness in the short and long term. In fact, we could probably point to happiness as one of the most sought after states or commodities or emotions, whatever you want to call it. Happiness is what many people are seeking in work, in relationships, and in general. And yet, most of us can't really define exactly what happiness is or means for us. We can point to certain experiences, we can try and describe our states of mind and body, but most people recognize the feeling when we have it. And we certainly recognize the feeling of not being happy, whether or not that means simply not being happy as the absence of happiness or all out depression. Now, one of the key problems in trying to understand happiness and indeed the science and psychology of happiness is that it does indeed involve other similar things, things like joy and gratitude and meaning. And indeed, many scientists and psychologists have argued for many, many decades about what happiness really is. We can come up with so-called operational definitions of happiness. Operational definitions are basically agreed upon terms or agreed upon definitions and conditions that will define something such as happiness, much in the same way that we can all probably come up with an operational definition of milk. But of course, milk can be cow's milk, it can be oat milk, it can be soy milk, et cetera, et cetera. So too, something like happiness can be micro divided and sliced and diced into as many things as we decide. Today, we are really going to focus on three main things. First, we are going to define happiness as a brain state and as a state of mind and body. We're going to take a look at what the science says about all of that. Second, we are going to talk about tools and practices for placing ourselves into states of happiness. And while for most of us, we think of happiness as something that only arrives through the acquisition of some goal or some thing external to us. And of course, that is true. There is also something called synthetic happiness or synthesized happiness, which turns out to be at least as powerful and perhaps even more powerful. I'll just say right off the bat that I'm not going to tell you that all you have to do is sit in a chair and imagine being happy in order to feel happy. Synthesized happiness actually involves some very concrete steps that have been defined by excellent labs in psychology. So we're going to talk about synthesized happiness as it relates to what you can do to obtain happy states more readily or more frequently. And then third, we're going to talk about some of the misconceptions or what I would call the contradictions of happiness research. And what I mean by that is most of you have probably heard about the general conditions for obtaining happiness. And they always seem to circle back to some of the same basic features of get great sleep, have great social connection, pursue meaning. Don't focus to any overextend on things like pursuing money because there are indeed these studies that show that the amount of money that people makes does not necessarily scale directly with happiness. We'll talk about those studies in some detail a little bit later. And while all of that literature is very powerful and informative, there is what I see as a contradiction, which is for instance, that for many of us, including myself, especially in the years when I was in graduate school and a postdoc, there were times in which pursuing and being involved in work and pursuing degrees and finding meaning in my vocation actually separated me from the opportunity to have quite as many social connections or quite as much sleep or quite as much exercise or even quite as much sunshine for that matter. So all of the things that we're told that we need in order to access happiness on a regular basis, oftentimes contradict with the pressures and the requirements of not just daily life, but in building a life that allows us to have the kind of resources that we need in order to have things like quality social connection and the time and opportunity to get regular exercise and great nutrition, et cetera, et cetera. So again, while this isn't necessarily a complaint with any of the research out of the fields of psychology on happiness, it is important that we acknowledge these contradictions that exist in the discussion around happiness, in particular, the popular discussions around the science of happiness. So today, what we are going to arrive at, what you will finish this episode with is a set of tools and a framework for understanding the pursuit of happiness in the short and long term, as it relates to the research from psychology, but also the neuroscience. And my goal today is really to try and place that all into a structured framework so that you can know where you are in your journey or the landscape around happiness and your pursuit of happiness. And what I won't tell you is that you need to abandon all goals in terms of pursuing money, career, et cetera, and simply focus on relationships. But we will talk about what constitutes an excellent social bond or even an excellent conversation. There's excellent research that points to the fact that even rather shallow connections, that is connections between people that you happen to just see in the hallway on a regular basis, not even requiring close bonds of any kind, can be built into close bonds that can deliver a tremendous amount of feeling and genuine social connection provided certain conditions are met. So today, again, is really about understanding the science of happiness, understanding the mechanisms underlying what we call happiness, and providing you a framework by which you can pursue and achieve happiness, not just as a long-term goal and not just as a day-to-day goal of little micro-exercises of gratitude, et cetera, but rather as a way to think about happiness as a state that you have control over, at least in terms of your ability to access what I would call the algorithms that enable us or open the opportunity to experience happiness. Now, before we begin today's episode, I'd like to talk about a very specific tool that applies, yes, to our pursuit of happiness, but actually to our pursuit of everything, including quality sleep and ongoing motivation, et cetera. I've talked many, many times before on this podcast and on other podcasts and on social media about the critical value of getting regular bright light, ideally sunlight in your eyes within the first hour of waking, or if the sun isn't out when you wake up in the morning, to turn on a lot of bright artificial lights and then get sunlight in your eyes for anywhere from five to 20 minutes depending on how cloudy it is, in the early part of the day. Absolutely outsized effects on mood and focus during the day and quality of sleep at night. Now, there's another sort of central tenet of getting great sleep and improving mood and focus throughout the day, and that's to avoid bright artificial light exposure to your eyes between the hours of about 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Now, leaving shift workers aside, and we have an entire episode devoted to shift work, most people are asleep at night and awake during the day, and you would be wise to avoid exposure of your eyes to bright artificial light between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. If you're going to use screens or artificial lights, dim them down as far as you can. Now, there are several studies that point to the fact that one of the major issues with getting bright light in your eyes between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. is that it has a negative impact on the so-called dopaminergic or dopamine circuits of the brain and body, which can enhance depression, that is, lead to ongoing lower mood and affect. So that's a reason to dim the lights or avoid bright lights between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. However, I and many others need to use artificial light in screens, sometimes even between the hours of 10 p.m. and midnight or even midnight to 3 a.m., depending on what's going on in my life or your life, that may include you as well. Now it turns out that there are powerful ways to offset some, not all, but some of the negative effects of viewing artificial lights between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. And one of the most powerful ways to do that is to simply adjust the overall brightness of your artificial lighting throughout the day and in the evening. So one of the issues nowadays that we're really facing is that people are simply not getting enough bright light in their eyes from sunlight or from other sources during the daytime, and they're getting far too much bright light in their eyes, largely from artificial sources, of course, in the evening and at night, not just from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., but also in the evening hours from 6 to 10 p.m. and so on and so forth. So a very simple yet powerful solution that's supported by peer-reviewed research in humans is to try and make your indoor working and or home environment during the day as bright as possible. Now, if you can achieve that through direct sunlight, terrific. If you can get outside a lot during the daytime, terrific, but many people simply cannot. But most people do have some windows in their environment. I realize some don't, but most people do. And as a consequence, most people are using rather dim artificial lighting indoors during the day, and then very bright artificial lighting indoors in the evening and at night. That's a problem. And if you think about it, logically you want to do the exact reverse. So it's been shown that if you simply increase the amount of bright artificial light that you were exposed to during the day, and remember this is not an excuse to not get your morning sunlight viewing. But in addition to that, to make your indoor artificial lights very bright, bright, bright, bright, bright throughout the day, and then much dimmer from the hours of 6 p.m. until bedtime. Or if you can't do that, then maybe as soon as you get home from about 8 p.m. until bedtime, and then dim them way, way down between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. or off entirely. That's going to be a far better pattern for your sleep-wake cycles, focus, mood, et cetera, than what most people do, which is to have a few windows in their indoor working environment during the day and keep the indoor lights rather dim at a time when they need more photons, more light energy. And then in the evening when they get home, because it's dark outside, they tend to turn the lights much brighter. You actually want to do the reverse. Now there's an even simpler solution, which is to get some bright sunlight in your eyes right around the time of sunset. It doesn't have to be exactly at sunset. It could be in the late afternoon and evening, but it's been shown now in studies on humans, and I'll provide a link to at least one of those studies, that by getting some bright light in your eyes, ideally from sunlight in the late afternoon and evening, and of course the timing will vary depending on time of year and where you were located on the planet, but facing the sun around sunset, you don't actually have to see the sun cross down below the horizon, but facing the sun around that time for anywhere from five to 10 minutes or even less, even two to five minutes, can adjust the sensitivity of neurons in your retina that communicate light information to the brain and make it such that in the evening, when you use artificial lights, they aren't going to have as much of a detrimental effect on your dopamine system and for impairing your sleep. Okay, so the idea is as much bright light, ideally from sunlight, but also from artificial sources, from the time you wake up in the morning until the evening, maybe around six or seven o'clock, maybe in the summer months a little bit later, and then really try and get as little bright light in your eyes as you can in the evening and nighttime hours. And ideally, you would also get some sunlight exposure right around the time of sunset or in the late afternoon. Go outside, take your sunglasses off. Don't try and do this through a windshield or through a window. It will not work. You have to get outside. If you're under an overhang, at least try and get some direct sunlight in your eyes at that time. And that will adjust the sensitivity of your retina, such that bright artificial lights or artificial lights of any kind that you're exposed to in the evening and in the late hours of the night, won't have as much of a detrimental effect. That said, if you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, try and keep the lights dim. Many people have asked whether or not, for instance, a nightlight or a flashlight is going to have as much of a negative effect. This is very straightforward. If you think about it, if you shine a light at something, you can see into your environment. If you've ever been camping or you've walked with a flashlight, you can see things around you that you wouldn't otherwise, of course. But if you were to shine that light in your eyes, it would be far brighter. So yes, of course, if you get up in the middle of the night and you can use your phone flashlight to illuminate the environment that you're in so that you can safely go to where you need to go and then back to bed, that's going to be far better than turning on the lights or of course shining light in your eyes, right? So the idea is bright, bright, bright in the morning and throughout the day and as dim and dark as possible at night. And that afternoon light viewing provides sort of what I call a Netflix inoculation that will allow you to adjust your retinal sensitivity and give you a little bit more flexibility in terms of allowing some nighttime light exposure without the detrimental effects. Now I realize today's episode is about happiness. It's not about sunlight or dopamine. And yet, as we'll talk about more in just a moment, if you're not optimizing your sleep and if you are using or being exposed to light rather at the wrong times of the day night cycle, that is going to make it very hard for the other sorts of practices that relate to happiness to have their full impact. So the backdrop, or I would say the kind of landscape of your chemicals and your hormones is powerfully controlled by not just the brightness of light, but the timing of light. And your exposure to light, in particular, your exposure to light to your eyes is something that you have a lot of control over. You don't have absolute control, but you have a lot of control over. And it's been proven that even these small steps, which are completely cost-free, they require just a few minutes of time, but no purchase of product or anything else can allow you to greatly adjust your neurochemistry and your hormones in the direction of better mood, better sleep and happiness. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools for the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Element. Element is an electrolyte drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of salt, magnesium and potassium, the so-called electrolytes, and no sugar. Now, salt, magnesium and potassium are critical to the function of all the cells in your body, in particular to the function of your nerve cells, also called neurons. In fact, in order for your neurons to function properly, all three electrolytes need to be present in the proper ratios. And we now know that even slight reductions in electrolyte concentrations or dehydration of the body can lead to deficits in cognitive and physical performance. LMNT contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of 1000 milligrams, that's one gram of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium. I typically drink LMNT first thing in the morning when I wake up in order to hydrate my body and make sure I have enough electrolytes. And while I do any kind of physical training and after physical training as well, especially if I've been sweating a lot, if you'd like to try LMNT, you can go to drink element. That's lmnt.com/huberman to claim a free element sample pack with your purchase. Again, that's drink element lmnt.com/huberman.