--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. You're not going to believe what I did last night. I mean, just take a guess. What do you think I did last night? You're never going to guess this one.
--:-- Well, last night, my husband Chris and I pitched a tent in our backyard. We grabbed a blow-up mattress, a couple of comforters, two pillows, and we slept out under the stars in our backyard here in Vermont. It was a full moon. It was absolutely incredible.
--:-- And we used to do this kind of stuff all the time when we were first dating. I mean, we were constantly planning fun adventures and camping and doing cool things outside. And, you know, we've been married now—my God, it's going to be 28 years this year. Holy smokes.
--:-- And the other day, Chris turned to me and said, "Hey, Mel, in a couple nights, it's going to be a full moon. Weather looks good. Do you have any interest in sleeping outside in a tent?" I was like, "Oh my God, yes." And so we did. In fact, we did it last night.
--:-- And here I was this morning. After sleeping in the tent last night, I was having my coffee in the house. And if you're watching, you can probably tell based on the fact that I have greasy hair, I've pulled it back in a ponytail, and I'm wearing my red flannel that I look like I was camping—because I was.
--:-- But here I am, we're out of the tent. I'm standing in my kitchen. I got my mug of coffee in my hand and I started to wonder: That was so fun. When did life get boring? Why don't I do this more often?
--:-- And then it dawned on me: Mel, maybe life isn't boring. Maybe you've gotten boring.
--:-- I want you to really think about that. Maybe the reason why you're not having enough fun in your life or your relationship or work is because you've gotten a little too used to your routine. And that's made you a little boring.
--:-- Well, today, that's what you and I are going to talk about with a neuroscientist from MIT and University College London who says habits and routines have a hidden cost. They can make your life feel boring. And she's here to tell you what to do about it.
--:-- There are really fun ways that you can shake up your life, your work, your relationships, and even a really fun thing that research says you need to do to shake up your vacation. So are you ready to shake things up? Good, let's go.
--:-- [Theme music fades in and out]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel. I am so glad you're here with me today. It is always such an honor to spend some time together. And I want to start by acknowledging you for taking the time to listen to something that is going to help you create a better life. And I know our conversation today is going to do that.
--:-- If you're a new listener, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I'm so happy you're here with me. I love the topic that we're going to talk about. And I am a little groggy because, yes, I did sleep in a tent last night.
--:-- And I was telling you, my husband Chris and I, when we were first dating and then we eventually got married and we had kids and when they were young, we used to go camping all the time. Not only to the national parks and out into the wilderness, but we would pitch a tent in the backyard when our kids were little, just on any given night, especially during those years when we didn't have the money to go away and take a trip.
--:-- And just a couple days ago, we're standing in the kitchen, we're cooking dinner. Chris and I have been married for 28 years. We've been together for a long time. And Chris turns to me out of the blue and he's like, "Hey Mel, you want to sleep outside?" And just that one change to our normal routine created so much excitement and fun. I felt like I was dating him again.
--:-- And to put this in perspective, it's not like I'm in the wilderness. I mean, we pitched the tent like eight feet from our bedroom, for crying out loud. You could almost reach out and touch the house. If I had to get up and go to the bathroom during the night, I would have just walked into my house. But I felt a world away.
--:-- Because just think about what do you do on a normal night after work or school? Same old, same old, right? You cook dinner, you clean up, you watch something on TV or you read a book, you go to bed. Boring. Instead, one small change, just eight feet from the outside of my house, whole new world, whole new marriage. One small change.
--:-- You know, I was thinking this morning that you and I talk a lot about the topic of locking in a routine or learning new habits and making them stick. And that's a really important topic when you want to change and learn something new. But today we're going to talk about something different, which is: what do you do when you need to change a life? You don't want to blow it up. You just want to mix it up. You know what I mean? A life or work or relationship that's become just too routine. It's a little boring.
--:-- And when that happens, you got to do the opposite. You have to become really intentional about breaking the routine, about shaking things up—not in a way that breaks everything apart, but that makes them better.
--:-- Like think about a snow globe, right? You pick up a snow globe and you shake it. And all of a sudden, all of that stuff that was inside gets just covered in all this shimmery little stuff. And then all the shimmery little stuff, that little shake, it eventually just drifts down to the bottom and the image appears and things go back to normal. That's exactly what I'm talking about. How to add that little shake into your life, into your relationship, into your work.
--:-- And I know you've experienced what I'm talking about when I say that things are a little boring. That life, like nothing's really bad. It just feels a little dull, you know? Like the only thing that you have to look forward to is, "Oh my gosh, is there some surprise movie that's streaming tonight?" or that vacation that you can afford to take eight months from now. That's no way to go through your life.
--:-- So today, we're going to shake things up. And we're going to shake it up in a really cool way. Because this is not just some light chit-chatty topic. There's a word that researchers have to describe this feeling when life gets a little dull. When things seem a little too boring. That feeling that the person that you're in a relationship with has lost their luster. It's this feeling that, I hate to say it, but you're kind of falling out of love with a life that you used to love. You might be silently quitting your job.
--:-- The word to describe when life becomes too routine is habituation. And habituation affects everything. And it affects your enjoyment of every single aspect of your life. And habituation is the phenomenon of how when you get used to something, you tend not to enjoy it as much, whether that's your significant other or even—have you ever noticed the first day of vacation is always the best? And then you start to get used to being away and it's just not as fun as it was on the first day? Or the first bite of ice cream? Way better than the rest of the cone. I mean, that doesn't keep me from eating the entire thing. But the question is, how can you enjoy the whole thing? How can you shake up your day-to-day life or your relationship or your work so you enjoy it more?
--:-- And there's a lot of research about why this is important and so many fun and simple things that you're going to learn to do today that will make the little and the big things in your life shimmer again. And what I love about this topic, it's one of my favorite kinds of topics because it combines deep academic research with the tiny little things you can do that make a profound difference on your experience as you live your day-to-day life.
--:-- And here with the groundbreaking science and the research to teach you how you can start seeing, feeling, and noticing all the shimmery cool things in your life again is Dr. Tali Sharot.
--:-- Now, Dr. Sharot is a behavioral neuroscientist and the director of the Affective Brain Lab at University College London. Her research integrates neuroscience, behavioral economics, and psychology to study how emotion and behavior influences people's beliefs and decisions. She's also a professor at both University College London and MIT and the best-selling author of three books, including the new book, *Look Again*.
--:-- And this episode, I think you're going to love it because it's one of those profound conversations that will allow you to truly understand and connect the dots between why you've become bored with what used to give you excitement and meaning. And more importantly, based on the research, how you can reignite the sparks of joy and happiness in your day-to-day life.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited to shake things up with you.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: I am so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What I'd love to do is dig into your really amazing research on habituation. You have uncovered this link between change and experiencing happiness and joy in your life. And so many of us fear change. And yet what you're finding is that our ability to change and pushing ourselves to change and experiencing new things in our life is foundational to you enjoying your life and having moments of joy. So can you tell us about habituation?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Right. So habituation is really a fundamental process, a fundamental rule that governs how our brain works and every neuron in it. And it's basically our tendency to respond less and less and less to things that are constant or that change very gradually or are frequent.
--:-- So, for example, an easy example: you walk into a bakery. There's the smell of the baked goods and the cake. And studies show that within 20 minutes, you cannot detect the smell any longer. The olfactory neurons in your brain stop responding because the smell is constant around you. So very fast, they will actually stop and you won't be able to smell it. You probably have this with perfume. When you first buy perfume and you put it on, it's really salient. Next day, a little bit less. A month goes by and you can't smell your own perfume.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's so true.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: So that's habituation. Or you jump into a pool, it's really cold, but you tend to get used to it after a few minutes. It's less cold.
--:-- And just as you habituate to smells or to temperature, you also habituate to more complicated things in your life or in society. So, for example, you get used to a new romance. It's really exciting, but over time it gets less exciting. So you have less of a reaction, less of a physiological reaction, less of an emotional reaction.
--:-- But you also get used to the bad stuff. A breakup—there's less of a reaction to that. You get used to the view of the ocean, and you get used to pollution too, meaning you're less able to detect it, less able to see it even. You get used to a new job, to a promotion. You react to that less. You habituate to that. You can habituate also to losing a job.
--:-- And so because of habituation, we might have some great things in our life, like a loving relationship or a comfortable home or an interesting job, but they don't elicit as much joy on a daily basis as you'd expect them to.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Just because you're used to it?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Right. You don't notice them anymore. You could have a wonderful, comfortable home, which when you first bought it, you were so excited and you really kind of noticed everything. But now you're there every day, so it doesn't elicit as much of a reaction. The same thing with a job. When you first got the job, you were amazed that you could do what you could do. But now you're doing it every day, so it has less. It doesn't mean people don't appreciate it at all, but less so over time.
--:-- And it's a similar thing for the bad stuff in life. So there could be bad things around us, societal things like sexism or racism, or could be cracks in your personal relationships or inefficiencies in the workplace. But if they've been there for a long time, we stop noticing them. We just kind of get used to them. And if we stop noticing them, we're less motivated to change.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So how does this impact our happiness? Because it seems like it could have good and bad implications. And I think it's really interesting that your brain itself is reacting to something that you're getting used to. So it's not like you're some sort of jerk that's just zoning out. It's that your brain—in your words, this is habituation—that you're becoming really familiar with your partner or with where you work or your neighborhood. So how does this impact our happiness?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Well, it means that the good things around us can create less happiness on a daily basis. So the stuff that's really good—and everyone has some good stuff around us, again, it could be a relationship, it could be a comfortable home—but those things don't elicit as much happiness. So that has a negative impact on our happiness.
--:-- However, on the flip side, if something bad happens, even if it's really, really bad—a loss of a loved one—we habituate to that as well. We habituate to the bad stuff in life. And it could be a good thing because we don't want to feel a breakup. We don't want to feel that pain that you feel at the very beginning. You want to habituate so then you can move forward. So that's good. That's very good.
--:-- But on the other hand, there could be some bad things that have been there for a long time. And they're kind of in the background. And because of habituation, we don't really notice them. And that's not great because then we are not motivated to change. And it turns out if you do notice and you try to change and you're successful, well, that will enhance your wellbeing and your happiness.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I think that's the thing that's super cool about your research. There is a direct connection between the happiness and joy that you feel and the amount that you're willing to change. And what is happening in your brain when you experience something new?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Right. So really, our brain—you can think about it as a front page of a newspaper. It cares about what's new, what just happened. It doesn't really care that much about the old. And it makes sense if you think about it in an evolutionary kind of way and your ability to adapt. When something new is happening, your brain needs to process because maybe you need to react. Maybe it's threatening. But after it's been there for a while and you're fine, we really need to keep our resources. The neurons need to be ready for the next new thing that's coming. So we're ready to react to that. And so new is what we are noticing the most and what we're reacting to the most.
--:-- And just to give you a fun example, I was working with a tourism company where they wanted to know what makes people happiest on vacation and when they're happiest on vacation. So we went to the resorts and we surveyed people and we asked them, "Hey, what was the best bit of the vacation?" And there was one word that they repeated more than any other word. And it was "first." The first view of the ocean, the first cocktail that I had, the first sandcastle that I built. The first was new and exciting.
--:-- Now, the second view of the ocean, that was good too, but it wasn't quite as good as the first. And the second cocktail was quite good, but it wasn't as good as the first cocktail. And that's because of habituation. We feel less.
--:-- And the other interesting thing was when we just looked at the data and we wanted to see when were they the happiest, we found that they were happiest 43 hours into a vacation. So 43 hours gave you time to unpack and really focus on the fun. But from that point on, fun started dwindling over time because we habituated. You were still happy on day eight, seven, six, and five, but not as happy as you were 43 hours in, because you have started to habituate to the environment, to the activities.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I am learning so much. I feel empowered to try new strategies. And so I want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsors. And while you're listening to our sponsors and they bring you this show at zero cost, I also want you to think: who in your life can you send this to? So go ahead and share this episode with someone that you love. Take a listen to our sponsors and do not go anywhere. Please, we have so many specific takeaways coming up that you're going to be thrilled that you stuck around to learn. And we'll be waiting for you after a short break. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend Mel, and we are here with the remarkable neuroscientist, Dr. Tali Sharot. So how do we apply this research around vacations to our own life?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: So I think it suggests that maybe we want to have more frequent vacations, but shorter ones. So instead of going away for a couple of weeks, you might actually go for a long weekend a few times. Now, sometimes it's not possible if you're going far. But what that means is you will have more of those 43-hour peaks. You will have more of those firsts.
--:-- And you know what else you will have? You will have the anticipation of the vacation. Because this is what I didn't tell you. I told you that the happiest time is 43 hours into the vacation, but I didn't actually tell you that the really, really happiest time is a day before vacation.
--:-- So there is a study that was conducted where people who were about to go on vacation were asked every day of the week before vacation how happy they were, every day of the vacation for a week how happy they were, and then every day after they came back from vacation how happy they were. And it turns out that people are happiest before they even step on the plane. So the day before vacation, they're still in their office working on their computers, but in their mind, they're on vacation. And in their mind, it's quite wonderful. When they go on vacation, it is good, but it's not as good as it was in their mind the day before. The anticipation of good things is what really makes people happy. So if you have more vacations, you have more of those anticipations and you have more of the afterglow as well.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, you know what? There are huge implications if you take this even out of the context of vacations and you just say, what are things that I look forward to? Whether it's a date on the calendar eight months from now where I'm going to get together with my favorite family members, or it is some day that I'm taking off of work to take a class, or it is some cool thing. Like I'm going—it sounds kind of dumb, but I'm going on a walk this weekend with my husband and it is a guided walk looking for owls. This must mean I'm in my 50s, but I am so excited for this thing. And so I can see how even just being proactive about putting things in your calendar out in the future to look forward to is a way to hack happiness in your life now.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Absolutely. I call these anticipatory events. These are events that we have on our calendar. They haven't happened yet, but they're making you happy at the moment. And in fact, this is why when you ask people about which day is a favorite day of the week, people prefer Friday by far more than Sunday. Because Friday brings with it the anticipation of everything that they had planned for the weekend, whether it is a hike to find owls or whatever it is. But Sunday, you might be out hiking and looking for owls, but you have the anxiety of the work week. So indeed, anticipation is something that's really, really important. And so have that holiday booked, have that activity booked. It can be a night out. It could be a hike. Very simple things. And that makes us happy at the moment.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's so interesting about this research that I really like is that you got no choice in this. Your brain is literally filing away information based on your familiarity with it. And so what is the implication for your relationship? Because as I'm sitting here listening to you talk about the research on vacation, which I think we can all relate to, I'm also thinking, well, probably right around day 43 or week 43 as you're dating somebody and you're wondering, why is this person no longer being proactive? Why is this person no longer seeming to make an effort? Why is this no longer feeling as exciting? Is that habituation?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Yeah, so habituation has a lot to do with this. And in fact, if you listen to Esther Perel, the well-known relationship expert, she did surveys and research where she asked people, "Hey, when were you most attracted to your partner?" These are people who have been together for a while, married couples. And she found that they said two things.
--:-- Either they said, "I was most attracted to my partner when I went away and came back." Maybe I was on a business trip. I was away for a weekend and I came back. Which makes perfect sense because what you're doing when you're leaving a situation and then coming back is you're dishabituating.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What does dishabituating mean?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: It means that you remove that thing. You stepped out of the bakery for 10 minutes. Now you're coming back. Now your neurons are going to start responding. Maybe not as much as the very first time when you entered the bakery, but if there's a large enough break, then you dishabituate and you start responding.
--:-- And the first thing she found—we have actually, on the cover of our book, if you open it up, there's a little visual illusion. It's clouds of colors and a fixation point in the middle. And if you fixate on that fixation point and you don't move your eyes at all, what happens is the colors suddenly become gray. And if you do it really, really well, it just becomes white. And why does that happen? Because the input to every specific neuron, if you're not moving your eyes, doesn't change. It's the same. The same colors are getting to the same exact neurons. And so the neurons at the beginning, they're active. They're like, "Color, color, color." Then they're like, "Well, color's not changing. I'm going to stop responding." So now it's gray and finally it's white. All you need to do is move your eyes like that. Just move them for a second and then the color immediately comes back because now different neurons are getting different signals and now they're reacting again. So that's dishabituation.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Gotcha.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: The habituation is what came at the beginning and then dishabituation. And so that same kind of principle—the actual neural mechanism is not exactly the same, but the principle is the same. Your partner has been there for a while. Everything's the same. We kind of don't notice, don't respond, don't think. We leave for a bit, we come back, and now colors.
--:-- So that's the first thing she found. And the second thing is related, which she found that people say they're most attracted to the partner when they're in a novel new situation. For example, the partner is talking to some strangers or the partner is on the stage doing something. And again, this is a form of dishabituation. You're seeing your partner in a different way because they are in a different circumstance. So now it's not the same old, same old. It's something new.
--:-- Mel Robbins: When does habituation pose the biggest threat to upsetting what might be otherwise like a nice life? Because I could see how you getting used to your neighborhood, you getting used to your—I'll just take the example of a kitchen. Your kitchen's perfectly fine. And yet you probably spend a lot of time on social media looking at kitchens and thinking about a kitchen renovation. And then you walk into another person's house, you're like, "Oh, we should have a coffee bar. We should do—what if I did white cabinets?" And now all of a sudden you're looking at your kitchen, which has been perfectly fine, and you no longer like it. You kind of hate it.
--:-- And so does habituation make you start to reject or not like the things in your life from relationships to your job, to your neighborhood, to your kitchen? Is that part of the problem with this if you don't realize it's going on?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Yeah, because it brings you less joy. And as a result, you want something different. And I think your example is great because there's two things here. One is it's something that you had before, which you thought was fantastic. The kitchen you thought was fantastic before, but now is not that exciting, not that fun. And also the other thing that you said is, "I go to another person's house. I think their kitchen is great." And they probably come to yours and for them, they think, "Oh, the kitchen is great." Or they think, "Oh, she has a wonderful life." And it's potentially the case that you have the same thing, but you've had it the same for a while.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: And that's why we're looking for diversity or new things. And it's not all bad. I mean, again, it's like two sides of the coin. Okay, maybe we don't need to redo our kitchen every couple of years, but that kind of needs to progress. That's not necessarily just a bad thing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right. I mean, that keeps us moving forward.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But it's like a delicate balance. How do you balance it? Because I can think about an example where we all are chasing the next greatest thing. We're chasing something that looks better or something that's going to be this. And we're kind of going after that newness thrill. And it's very clear that there's both the need to change, but there's also the fact that constantly chasing it and using an example of what, "Oh, well, their significant other does a lot of that and my partner doesn't do that anymore." Is it making us unhappy to constantly seek the change, or how do you balance it?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Yeah, so it is definitely a balance, which is why I think it's important to think about how do we get some joy back from what we have. And there's two ways to do that. One of the ways is what we talked about, which is a little break. You probably noticed that if you go on a work thing for a couple of days or maybe even more, maybe three days or a week, and when you come back, it seems like everything has re-sparkled. Even your kitchen.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: I'd imagine that if you're away for enough time, you come back and the kitchen has re-sparkled. It suddenly does look great.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So does Chris. And I think he looks like not so bad after all. And the home and everything else.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: It's definitely something that happens. In fact, we stole the word "re-sparkled" from Julia Roberts. She has a quote where she says that her normal day is like she gets up, she takes the kids to school, she comes back, she maybe goes on a bike ride maybe with her husband, she has lunch, then it's time to pick them up and take them to their after-school activities. And she says, "Well, if I've done that every day for months and months and months, it would just be boring. But I don't, because I go away to film or whatever she does. And then she comes back and then it has re-sparkled."
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Everything seems like—she says it seems like there's pixie dust on it.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: And you can say, "Well, Julia Roberts is not the average human being. She's quite a privileged person." But I think she's talking here about something that we can relate to, which is if you take a little break and you come back, then your life looks a little bit different. You dishabituate to some degree. It doesn't maybe last very long, but you can see things a little bit differently.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Sharot, I am eating up every single word. And this right now feels like a great moment to take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our sponsors. Don't you love what you're learning from Dr. Sharot? And did you notice her last name? Sharot. So how about you share this episode with somebody that you love while you're listening to our sponsors. And don't go anywhere because Dr. Sharot has shown up here with brand new cutting edge research. We're going to be talking about that in a little bit. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend, Mel. We are here with Dr. Sharot. She is teaching us so much about the latest research on the connection between change and happiness and joy. Dr. Sharot, do you have recommendations for how a person who's not leaving to go film a movie could do that if they're in a job that they go to all the time and they are in just this cycle of same person, same job, same neighborhood, same group of friends? How do you use this research to re-sparkle some pixie dust on your life?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Right. So two things. First is you could probably take a break. Most people could still take a little break. You could still go away for a few days and come back. Now, let's say you can't do that. Lori Santos, who is a professor at Yale, suggests closing your eyes and imagining your life without these things.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Imagine your life without that wonderful kitchen. Imagine your life without the partner, without the job that you have. And then when you open your eyes again, things kind of resparkle a little bit. That's a good little exercise to do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I actually like that because I think the instinct is instead of closing your eyes and imagining your life without the person you're complaining about or without the kitchen that you have that is great and works fine, we instead look out instead of in. We go, "Oh, I like the way that relationship over there works better. And I like the way that kitchen over there looks better." Then you bring it back to your life and pound on the people that are there instead of taking a step to close your eyes and go, "What would my life look like if they weren't here?" Obviously, if you're happy, then you got to make some changes. But if you feel that little ache, then you just open your eyes and sprinkle a little fairy dust on it.
--:-- How does this impact our sex life? If we go back to Esther Perel's research, her recommendation is breaks or novelty, right?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: She means breaking away from that person for a little bit?
--:-- Mel Robbins: No, I meant like a break from sex. There's a lot of us in the menopause years that are like, we need to get more adventurous. So either take a break or introduce novelty. The novelty is a really interesting thing because I was talking about breaks before, and the second thing you could do to spice up your relationship, but in general to spice up your life, is to introduce variety. Diversify.
--:-- I don't know that she necessarily gives examples just about what's happening in the bedroom. I think her point is that if you do things in a way that's different outside, once in a while when you see your partner on the stage or you see them doing something that you've never seen before, her research suggests that that enhances attraction.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: But I think the message of variety and novelty is important for our life in general. People who have a more diverse life—they've maybe lived in different places, they work in different types of projects, they interact with different types of people—they tend to have a more psychologically rich life.
--:-- So I think we could definitely do that. Whatever kind of life you have, you can actually shake things up a little bit. It can be something small, like how do you commute to work? What route do you take to work? Or it could be like, maybe take a course. It could be something online. Maybe you don't have the money to pay for something new, but take up a new skill. Listen to a new podcast. Try to change things. Maybe start talking to someone or be friends with someone who is different from the normal kind of people that you tend to interact with. Their personality is not the type that you usually interact with.
--:-- By diversifying, we are doing a few things. We are dishabituating because now we have different inputs that we're not used to. We also, as we talked about before, put ourselves in a context of learning. And that's important. Learning is always good. We enjoy learning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What boosts your happiness based on the research?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Exactly. I have another question about the research, which is when does habituation and the fact that you're now used to your life feel the most overwhelming?
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think it is when things are not changing for a prolonged time, and we see that in our midlife. There's this interesting thing called the U-shape of happiness. Happiness is quite high in kids and teenagers. Then it goes down, down, down and reaches rock bottom in your midlife. But then it starts going up again and actually remains quite high until the last couple of years of life.
--:-- Again, this U-shape is on average, right? So it's thousands of individuals and we're looking for a trend. It doesn't mean that for every person midlife will be the bottom part and you'll be happy at the edges, but that's in general.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: So why are people less happy in midlife? There could be many reasons, but one reason is it is the least amount of change. If you think about it, when you're a kid, things are changing all the time. You're changing, you're growing, you're learning. It's the most amount of change. Then you're in your 20s, you're trying different things, trying different partners, trying different professions. Maybe you're in university or college. You're learning a lot.
--:-- Then comes midlife and things are kind of similar. Most people stay in the same place because maybe people have kids. You're mostly on average with the same partner. You may be at the top of your game professionally, but you're kind of maintaining. You're not looking up. You're not looking sideways. You're mostly just maintaining. So that's the least amount of learning, the least amount of change.
--:-- Now, counterintuitively, at an older age, once the kids get out of the house and maybe you're retired, in fact, you're starting to change again. Now you need to learn: How am I going to live my life? It's a totally different life now. And so it can seem like it will be overwhelming, and maybe it is at the beginning. But that causes people to start learning again.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That is so cool. You literally just explained the midlife crisis and the journey of happiness of the human beings through the lens of neuroscience and the fact that we assimilate to the experiences around us. That's so cool.
--:-- Dr. Sharot, you do a ton of work with companies and team behavior. How can you keep your teams motivated and creative when this habituation creeps in at a job where it's kind of the same thing most days?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: You want to inject variety into their daily work as well. One thing that companies tend to do is they take people and they rotate them through different divisions, or get them to work on different types of projects with different types of people. If you do that, you're creating more change, more learning, dishabituation. Not only are they learning something from this new division, but when they go back to their old division, now it's a break. So now they will see their division with new eyes, which means they might appreciate the good things that they kind of habituated to. They might see the bad things that weren't quite salient before. And that's a good thing because if I see the bad things, I'm going to try to change them. That will enhance my well-being.
--:-- But it also turns out it enhances creativity. If you change your environment—and it could be even really small changes, like I'm working in my office and now I'm going to work in a coffee shop, or I'm going to walk and maybe have a meeting while walking—it turns out that that enhances creativity.
--:-- Research by a psychologist named Kaylee Main found that creativity will be boosted after making these changes. Now, the creativity boost only lasts for six minutes. However, those six minutes can be quite crucial. That could be the time when you come up with this new idea, the new direction.
--:-- In fact, if I think about all the times in my life when I had a really important idea, the creative solution, it was never when I was in front of my computer working and trying to think of a solution. It was mostly when I was somewhere else.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Give me an example.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: For one example, I was in my office trying to solve this problem. I couldn't solve it. So I decided to go to the gym. Left the office, walked to the gym. Gym is quite close. It took me less than six minutes to get there. But on the way is when I suddenly came up with a solution. I don't know that I necessarily was consciously thinking about it, but I think I had this old information in my mind and then I just changed my environment. That changed something in the way that my brain was processing things, and the solution appeared. It was a really important breakthrough that led to a lot of what I did after that.
--:-- If I think about it, every single time when I had an idea—like "that would be my next book" or "that would be my next research direction"—it was in that kind of situation. I was suddenly in a new place.
--:-- Another one was I was in a conference listening to these talks. They were super interesting. But then after the conference, I went to a vineyard in San Francisco. I was just sitting outside and having a little wine. And then suddenly the idea came based on the knowledge that I already had during the conference. But it was being in this totally new, different environment where the processing happened and the creative idea came about.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think a lot of people have the experience of either being out on a walk in nature or on some vacation or away for the weekend. That's where people tend to make big decisions and have these breakthroughs because you get a break from your life, which gives you much needed perspective about what's important or what you've always been thinking about.
--:-- If there were one change or one thing that you hope the person listening would do as a result of this conversation and all of the research, what is one action that somebody could take that you think would make a big difference in their life?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: One action that you could take that will make a big difference? I think it is try something new. Look, it might make no difference. It depends. But it might make a big difference. So try something new. Think about something that you want to learn. Think about a new skill that you want to have. Maybe somewhere that you want to visit. Just something. Try a new dish to make. I think that could change your life. But most likely what it may do is give you this kind of joy of novelty, which then may create a habit of trying new things.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that. I love to end my interviews with brilliant people like you by giving you an opportunity to just talk directly to the person that is listening. They might be driving a car or unloading the dishwasher or taking you on a walk with them. I would love to give you the opportunity to just give them any parting words or some sort of message from you.
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: Sure. We end the book that I wrote together with my co-author, Cass Sunstein, with a chapter called "Experiments in Living." So my parting words are: experiment in living. The idea here is that you don't really know what's good for your life or for society without doing experiments. Just like in science, I don't know what the ground truth is until I do my experiments. And sometimes it's surprising.
--:-- The idea is that if you do these experiments in living, try things in different ways, try them in new ways. It could be you're actually taking out some stuff from your life. Try to see what happens if you go off social media for a few weeks. See how that impacts you. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't like it. Or maybe it's adding something to your life. Experiments in living allows you to try more things to find out what are the optimal things for me and what doesn't really work.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love it. Dr. Tali Sharot, thank you so much for being here. I also wanted to thank you for spending time with us today. And in case nobody tells you, I wanted to tell you that I love you. I believe in you and I believe in your ability to not only create a better life, but to take Dr. Sharot's words to heart and start experimenting, start trying new things.
--:-- Alrighty, I'll talk to you in a few days.
--:-- [Outtakes and retakes]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Is that good? Do I need to do it one more time?
--:-- Dr. Tali Sharot: I think it was really good.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What do you think? All right, let me start one more time. Let me do it one more time. Okay, you ready? Okay. Doctor, doc. Oh, wait, that's right. And the best. Okay. And she's the best-selling author. Oh, my God. This is where the gas in the tank. I need my own magic wand. Come on, Mel. Okay. Oh, my Lord. Okay, here we go. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. Amazing. Super helpful. Wow. Okay.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language that the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
