We’re wrong about what makes us happy with Dan Gilbert

We’re wrong about what makes us happy with Dan Gilbert

Released Tuesday, 8th April 2025
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We’re wrong about what makes us happy with Dan Gilbert

We’re wrong about what makes us happy with Dan Gilbert

We’re wrong about what makes us happy with Dan Gilbert

We’re wrong about what makes us happy with Dan Gilbert

Tuesday, 8th April 2025
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for $1,000 off. When I think

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about the things I value in

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the world, if you take them

2:00

away from me, I will be

2:02

utterly devastated forever. The devastated part

2:04

is right, the forever part is

2:06

wrong. Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant.

2:09

Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast

2:11

on the science of what makes

2:13

us tick with the TED Audio

2:15

Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist, and

2:17

I'm taking you inside the minds

2:19

of fascinating people to explore new

2:21

thoughts and new ways of thinking.

2:23

My guest today is Dan Gilbert.

2:25

He's a Harvard psychologist and the

2:28

best-selling author of Stumbling on Happiness.

2:30

He's given three popular TED Talks

2:32

and hosted the award-winning PBS show,

2:34

This Emotional Life. His research suggests

2:36

that we're not very good at

2:38

predicting what will make us happy.

2:40

The best data suggests that, as

2:42

my father would have said, happiness

2:44

increases when the kids leave home

2:47

and the dog dies. So how

2:49

do we get better at finding

2:51

happiness? I wanted to ask Dan

2:53

what he's discovered. I

2:58

have to ask you because I've

3:00

never asked you about this before.

3:02

Are you the only Harvard professor

3:04

who dropped out of high school? You

3:06

know, it's funny when I first

3:08

came to Harvard 1996, the Harvard Gazette

3:11

always runs a little puff piece on

3:13

new professors. And my lack of

3:15

a high school diploma came up and

3:17

I said to the journalist, I

3:19

guess I'm probably the only professor at

3:22

Harvard without a high school diploma. I

3:24

promptly received emails from several other

3:26

professors at Harvard who did not have

3:29

high school diplomas, some of whom

3:31

became good friends, one of whom went

3:33

on to win the Nobel Prize in

3:35

economics. So no, my friend, there

3:37

are more people without high school diplomas

3:40

at Harvard than at the post

3:42

office where you really have to have

3:44

one. Wow. I had no idea. So

3:46

tell me the backstory. How did

3:48

you end up dropping out of high

3:51

school? It's not really complicated. Like

3:53

if you don't go, they look for

3:55

you and eventually if they can't find

3:57

you, they give... up. My father

3:59

was a professor, molecular biologist, my mother

4:02

was an artist, and this is

4:04

the early 70s, which, you know, is

4:06

really still the 1960s. And so I

4:08

started reading Eastern Philosophy and decided

4:10

that my teachers in high school didn't

4:13

know anything that I wanted to

4:15

know. And so I just decided I

4:17

would stop going. And I started hitchhiking

4:19

around the country and playing music

4:21

and meeting other people. I just, you

4:24

know, I began a life that

4:26

wasn't the life that my parents were

4:28

hoping for. Clearly. Yes. Going high school

4:30

is hard. Dropping out really is

4:32

very easy. How long did the dropout

4:35

last before you decided you wanted

4:37

to reenter formal education? It was a

4:39

couple of years and in that interim

4:41

I got married I had a

4:43

child I became a science fiction writer

4:46

and started writing and selling my

4:48

stories and publishing and one day I

4:50

went down to a local community college

4:52

because they had advertised that there

4:54

was a writers workshop that you could

4:57

join and I thought that would

4:59

be a great thing and when I

5:01

got there The woman at the desk

5:04

said no I'm sorry it's closed

5:06

it's full already but it had been

5:08

a long bus ride I said

5:10

well what else is open and she

5:12

looked on the list and luckily for

5:15

me introduction to psychology was not

5:17

popular it still had a spot so

5:19

I said oh that might be

5:21

fun sign me up for this course

5:23

and the dominoes all fell from there

5:26

I fell in love with what

5:28

I was learning and very shortly thereafter

5:30

found out I could go to

5:32

a real university if I just took

5:34

a test called the GED. And I

5:37

did, then made the transition from

5:39

writing fiction to writing nonfiction, which actually

5:41

isn't nearly as big a jump

5:43

as most people think. Not if you

5:45

write like Dan Gilbert. That's kind of

5:48

you to say, thanks. So tell

5:50

me now that you're a psychologist, are

5:52

you happier than you were writing

5:54

sci-fi? I think I loved writing science

5:56

when I was doing that. than this,

5:59

the answers clearly know, for many

6:01

reasons, one of which is I don't

6:03

think I had a particular talent

6:05

for writing fiction. I think most people

6:07

inside our field and probably outside it

6:10

too, know you best for your

6:12

work on effective forecasting and all the

6:14

mistakes we make when we try

6:16

to predict what's going to make us

6:18

happy or feel good in the future.

6:21

When did you get interested in

6:23

the fundamental questions of happiness? Like almost

6:25

everything in my life, it's just

6:27

a dumb accident. I just stumbled on

6:29

it. Were you drunk? I have never

6:32

needed drugs in order to stumble.

6:34

I have a natural propensity for turning

6:36

the wrong way and walking into

6:38

doors and falling through windows. In 1992,

6:41

I went out for lunch with a

6:43

friend of mine. I wasn't studying

6:45

anything vaguely related to affective forecasting or

6:47

happiness or decision making. I studied

6:49

how people made... judgments about each other,

6:52

like my mentor had in graduate school.

6:54

I hadn't seen this friend in

6:56

a year and he said, how are

6:58

things going? And I said, how

7:00

are things going with you? He said,

7:03

actually, things have been going terribly. My

7:05

uncle died. My girlfriend and I

7:07

broke up. I had my papers rejected.

7:09

I went, wow, how are you

7:11

doing? He said, actually, I'm doing pretty

7:14

well. How about you, Dan? Well, it

7:16

turned out I had the same

7:18

story and had been a terrible year

7:20

for me. All sorts of bad

7:22

things had happened. I was getting a

7:25

divorce. My son had dropped out of

7:27

high school. And I was actually

7:29

doing okay. And my friend looked at

7:31

me and he said, do you

7:33

think we could have ever predicted that

7:36

when all these things happened to us,

7:38

we would still be fine. And

7:40

I realized that for me, the answer

7:42

was no. So I ran back

7:44

to my office after that lunch. I

7:47

typed up notes on the conversation, which

7:49

is how I know. I'm not

7:51

inventing this story to tell you. I

7:53

still have the piece of paper

7:55

that... Wow. And I wrote the question,

7:58

do people know what will make them

8:00

happy? how happy it will make

8:02

them and how long that happiness will

8:05

last. I thought truly psychologists have

8:07

a good answer to this. It's a

8:09

fundamentally important question. I couldn't find

8:11

a good answer. So I called my

8:13

friend and collaborator Tim Wilson. I said,

8:15

hey, maybe we had to do a

8:17

study on this. Fast forward 30 years.

8:19

We published, I don't know, 75

8:21

papers with hundreds of studies on

8:23

this topic, all because of one

8:25

stupid lunch with bad Chinese food.

8:28

It's a great case for going

8:30

to lunch. There's so many demonstrations

8:33

of these affective forecasting failures. If

8:35

you were to choose your top

8:37

three, what are your favorites? Certainly,

8:40

one of the mistakes that's caught

8:42

my attention the most is her

8:44

inability to imagine adaptation.

8:46

My friend Danny Kahneman used to say,

8:49

when you ask somebody how they would

8:51

feel if they were blind, they imagine

8:53

going blind. But the day you lose

8:56

your eyesight. probably a very very bad

8:58

day. But it's not like all the

9:00

hundreds and thousands of days that will

9:03

follow because human beings are remarkably adaptive.

9:05

They adapt to almost any new situation.

9:07

And yet when we look forward, if

9:10

I say, how would you feel if

9:12

you lost your children, if you lost

9:14

your legs, if you lost your eyesight,

9:16

if you lost your wife, what you

9:19

imagine as a calamity. And you are

9:21

right to imagine it. That is what's

9:23

going to happen at first. But if

9:25

you are like most people, the data

9:27

say. you're going to get used to

9:29

it. And most people who go through

9:32

traumatic events, even the most traumatic events,

9:34

adapt, come back to their baseline

9:36

of happiness. Now to me, that

9:38

was mind-blowing. And so Tim and

9:40

I did quite a few studies

9:42

trying to understand why and when

9:44

this happens and with what effect.

9:46

So that would probably be my

9:48

number one nomination for an effective

9:50

forecasting error, believing that if you

9:52

get knocked down, you will not

9:54

get up again. You almost surely will.

9:57

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episodes, without the ads. The

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verdict is murder on these days.

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Let's go to a lightning ground. One

25:48

sentence or one word reaction. Oh my

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God, you're telling a professor to answer

25:53

in one sentence? I have faith in

25:55

you. Doesn't the Geneva Convention prohibit this?

25:57

Okay, go ahead. What's the worst career

26:00

advice you've ever gotten? Follow your heart.

26:02

Why is that bad advice? Because a

26:04

successful career is the intersection of your

26:07

passion and your talent. If I had

26:09

followed my heart, I'd be a

26:11

very bad guitar player right now. I

26:13

mean, no, be realistic. Satisfaction is going

26:16

to come from doing something really well

26:18

that you love. And it might be

26:20

the fifth thing on your love list

26:23

is what you're actually good at. How

26:25

about the best life advice? My father

26:27

was a professor, and when I became

26:30

a professor, he was a scientist, molecular

26:32

biologist. He said to me. You

26:34

will think for your entire career that

26:36

your research matters most. And then you

26:39

will get old and realize it was

26:41

the students. And I think there's deeper

26:43

advice in there, which is you may

26:46

think all the things you're up to

26:48

in your life are what matter most.

26:50

But in the end, it was the

26:53

people you touched and connected with. My

26:55

dad gave me very sage advice.

26:57

I had to get very old before

26:59

I really heard it. It makes me

27:02

think about Vonnegut. and play a piano

27:04

in the line that if it weren't

27:07

for the people, the damn people, the

27:09

world would be an engineer's paradise. I'd

27:11

forgotten that. That's beautiful. Those engineers clearly

27:14

miss this lesson. All right, what's something

27:16

you've rethought lately? I've been rethinking for

27:18

the last couple of years the

27:20

model of scientific publishing in the world.

27:23

I used... to participate in it, and

27:25

now I see it as an obscenity

27:27

that needs to be destroyed, brought down

27:30

an empire that needs to lay in

27:32

ruins. So having gone from, boy, I

27:34

hope I can find a publisher to

27:37

let's kill them all, I would say

27:39

that's a rethinking. Big time. Can you

27:41

give us a taste of your

27:43

vision for how it might work differently?

27:46

Well, sure. I mean, if we're out

27:48

of the lightning around and wanting to

27:50

just chat again, I can say that

27:53

my latest project, as you know, has

27:55

been to produce a major reference work

27:57

in our field, social psychology, that's free

28:00

and accessible to anyone with an internet

28:02

connection. You know, for four centuries, publishers

28:04

have been cellists. science needs publishers,

28:06

like modern music needs AM radio. It

28:09

doesn't whatsoever. They were doing something we

28:11

couldn't do ourselves. They were printing our

28:13

ideas and words on paper and distributing

28:16

them out throughout the land. We don't

28:18

need them anymore. Modern science needs publishers,

28:20

like modern music needs AM radio. It

28:23

doesn't whatsoever. The only reason that AM

28:25

radio went away and publishers haven't is

28:27

there a multi-billion dollar business that

28:29

does not want to go gently into

28:32

that good night. But everyone listening should

28:34

know. You are taxpayers, you are paying

28:36

for scientific research to be done, and

28:39

then you can't even read about it

28:41

without paying. Why? Why can't you read

28:43

about the research that you funded? Answer?

28:46

It's owned by Scientific Publishers. I just

28:48

think the world would be better if

28:50

everybody had access to the information

28:52

that science offers, but it's being held

28:55

hostage by people who are making money.

28:57

I'm in full agreement with you on

28:59

this Dan, and the solution that publishers

29:02

are trying right now is offensive. I

29:04

think the most recent article I had

29:06

accepted. There's a little box I could

29:09

check right before we finalized the publication

29:11

saying, if you want this to be

29:13

open access, please pay $3,500. Well,

29:15

you got away for 3,500, but I

29:18

published a two-page article in Nature and

29:20

it was $11,000. $11,000 to make it

29:22

free. But there's a very easy way

29:25

to get around it. We just publish

29:27

without them. And that's what we're doing

29:29

now with the Handbook of Social Psychology.

29:32

It's just a demonstration project that it

29:34

can be done. By the way, we're

29:36

talking about scientific publishing. Everything I'm

29:38

saying is not true of Barbara King

29:41

Solver and her publisher, or the publishers

29:43

who... publish your books, Adam, they are

29:45

doing it. an important service for you

29:48

and they deserve to be paid. They're

29:50

finding audiences, they're sending pay, but scientists

29:52

don't need any of that. You've had

29:55

a lot of time to reflect on

29:57

stumbling on happiness. Is there something you've

29:59

changed your mind about since you

30:01

published it? Thankfully, I don't know of

30:04

anything in it that requires revision, but

30:06

many things could certainly use addition. What

30:08

would be your biggest expansion? Well, I

30:11

think we knew very little about... How

30:13

to solve the problems that Stumbling Unhappiness

30:15

identifies. Stumbling Unhappiness basically is an indictment

30:18

of your imagination. It says, you're going

30:20

to try to close your eyes and

30:22

think about the future, and you're

30:24

going to be prone to a bunch

30:27

of errors. I'll spend my whole book

30:29

telling you what they are and why

30:31

they matter. And the very end, it

30:34

says, is there anything we can do

30:36

about it? And I think we now

30:38

know the answer, and it's a paradoxical

30:41

answer. The answer is yes. There's actually

30:43

a pretty good way to make predictions

30:45

about what will make you happy,

30:47

and the paradox is, people don't like

30:50

this method at all. It's a method

30:52

that we call surrogation, and it just

30:54

means using other people as surrogates. If

30:57

I want to know how happy I'm

30:59

going to be if I go to

31:01

law school, what I really ought to

31:04

do the best data I can get

31:06

is to find out how happy people

31:08

who went to law school are.

31:10

I mean, a lot of them would

31:13

be good, but even some of them

31:15

would probably be better than my own

31:17

imagination. But we've shown in experiments that

31:20

when you give people this opportunity, if

31:22

they just shake their heads and go,

31:24

what do you mean? Those people aren't

31:27

me. Knowing people are remarkably similar in

31:29

what makes them happy and unhappy. Nobody

31:31

says I'd rather be hit by

31:33

a two-by-four than have a weekend in

31:36

Paris. Nobody would rather eat cardboard than

31:38

chocolate. We're very similar in our hadonic

31:40

reactions to things. So other people's reactions

31:43

to events you're only imagining are a

31:45

very good guide to your own reaction.

31:47

I'm going to have to fight you

31:50

a little bit on this stand because

31:52

it wanders into the realm of organ.

31:54

psychological psychology and I'm thinking about

31:56

now over half a century of evidence

31:59

that vocational interests differ significantly between people

32:01

and that the kind of work that

32:03

would make me happy might make you

32:06

miserable. Particularly if I as an introverted,

32:08

agreeable, highly conscientious person happen to love

32:10

a little bit of teaching and a

32:13

lot of thinking and writing and you

32:15

have the opposite traits and that job

32:17

sounds like a death sentence for

32:19

you. So at minimum. Shouldn't you go

32:22

out and find people with similar interests

32:24

and taste to yours? Well, that would

32:26

be preferable. But my contention is, even

32:29

a randomly selected other person will be

32:31

better than your own imagination. Remember, I

32:33

never said that other people's experiences are

32:36

a perfect guide to your own. I

32:38

just said they're better than the alternative.

32:40

Right? Winston Churchill's wonderful line that

32:42

democracy is the worst form of government

32:45

except for the others. Well, surrogation is

32:47

a terrible way to predict your future,

32:49

except for the other way, which is

32:52

to use your own imagination. So we

32:54

showed in a series of experiments, for

32:56

example, that people could improve the accuracy

32:59

of their affective forecasts by listening to

33:01

one randomly selected stranger. On average. Imagine

33:03

how much you could improve if

33:05

they weren't randomly selected. They were selected

33:08

to be like you in many important

33:10

ways. And if it was more than

33:12

one stranger, it was 10 or 12

33:15

people. I think that also suggests that

33:17

the questions you ask really matter. So

33:19

I might not go to that stranger

33:22

and ask how happy you are you

33:24

in this work. I might be more

33:26

inclined to ask, tell me the

33:29

highlights and the low lights, and then

33:31

see how those map on to what

33:33

I'm looking for. Well, yes, you really

33:36

identified one of the rubs here, which

33:38

is, okay, I'm convinced by this Gilbert

33:40

and Wilson paper that says I should

33:43

use other people's past experience as a

33:45

guide to my future experience. How can

33:47

I find out about their past experience?

33:50

And unfortunately, you often... have to

33:52

ask them. And really, unfortunately, they often

33:54

can't tell you accurately. So how about

33:56

parenthood? You're thinking, I'm trying to decide

33:59

if I should have children. I don't

34:01

know if they would make me happy.

34:03

And so you go to some parents

34:06

and you go to children, make you

34:08

happy, and parents will say, oh, of

34:10

course they do. They're the best thing

34:13

about life. They make me happier

34:15

than anything else. We know, from tons

34:17

of data, that those parents are wrong.

34:19

that children in fact have a small

34:22

but negative impact on the happiness of

34:24

their parents. But their parents don't know

34:26

it. So simply asking them that question,

34:29

do your children make you happy is

34:31

the wrong way to find out if

34:33

their children make them happy. What's the

34:36

right way? The way that economists

34:38

and psychologists do it, which is just

34:40

to go up to people with children

34:42

and go, hi, how happy are you

34:45

right now? If you go up to

34:47

a thousand people with and without children,

34:49

I assure you, the average response you

34:52

get from the non-parents will be either

34:54

equal to or slightly higher than the

34:56

average response you get from the parents.

34:59

And those data tell you something

35:01

about parenthood and happiness. There may be

35:03

many reasons that have children, but making

35:05

yourself more happy in the moment is

35:08

not one of them. Yeah, which I

35:10

think also tracks with the evidence on

35:12

spikes in happiness when people become empty

35:15

nesters. Say more. Well, I'm just thinking

35:17

about if kids make you happy, then

35:19

kids leaving your house permanently should be

35:22

a source of misery. And I

35:24

feel sad when I think about our

35:26

kids leaving. In fact, I've already started

35:28

to tell our oldest teenager that I'm

35:31

disappointed in her preemptively for choosing to

35:33

leave. But I also know from the

35:35

research that when the last child leaves

35:38

the house, on average parents get happier,

35:40

don't they? Yeah, the only symptom of

35:42

emptiness syndrome is nonstop. smiling. I mean,

35:45

as far as we can tell, you

35:47

still will have those children. You will

35:49

still be their dad and they

35:51

will continue to give you joy and

35:54

maybe even a greater ratio of joy

35:56

to worry once they're living their lives

35:58

as successful adults. Then they do when

36:01

they're kids who are whining, you know,

36:03

are we there yet? How come she

36:05

got more? So it's not exactly a

36:08

fair comparison, but you're exactly right. What's

36:10

the question you have for me? Do

36:12

you ever worry that with all

36:14

of your outwardward facing? activities, all the

36:17

public exposure from podcast, television, etc. that

36:19

you could be in danger of losing

36:21

some part of yourself that I assume

36:24

for you is very valuable and very

36:26

important, and it's that part of you

36:28

that is a scientist. that sits and

36:31

carefully goes through data and does work

36:33

and discovers new facts. I asked this

36:35

only because I've had some experience

36:37

doing outward facing things. And as I

36:40

did those things, I often had to

36:42

remind myself how to remain me and

36:44

not become a chameleon that was responding

36:47

to applause. It's very hard. It's a

36:49

very addictive thing. It's an extremely important

36:51

question. And... I think I worried about

36:54

it a lot in the first few

36:56

years of this public-facing role. And now

36:58

I reflect on it a lot,

37:00

but it doesn't come with anxiety like

37:03

it used to. It felt like I

37:05

was going through a portal, and I

37:07

didn't know what was on the other

37:10

side. Am I still going to be

37:12

able to get back if I want,

37:14

was the thing that I worried about.

37:17

I guess I've been doing this for

37:19

a dozen years now. What I've discovered

37:21

is what gives me the most

37:23

joy is teaching and teaching and teaching

37:26

of that. So without the time in

37:28

the classroom, without the deep immersion and

37:30

data, I wouldn't have anything to say.

37:33

And so I'm constantly going back to

37:35

that well, both to serve the external

37:37

facing work that I do, but more

37:40

importantly, to feed what energizes me. And

37:42

I've repeated that pattern enough that it's

37:44

clearly my revealed preference. It makes

37:46

my day when someone tells me to

37:49

stop stringing citations in my random sentences

37:51

in a keynote or in an interview

37:53

or even in a podcast for that

37:56

matter because it's just so my impulse.

37:58

It's the way I think it's the

38:00

way I love to learn. And so

38:03

I think I've grown comfortable with the

38:05

fact that it's just it's too wired

38:07

into me to ever lose sight

38:09

of it. We both know as scientists

38:12

and researchers and university professors. that the

38:14

kind of outward-facing things we've done raise

38:16

eyebrows among many colleagues. It's just their

38:19

impression was, once you're on television and

38:21

you're on camera and you're doing these

38:23

sorts of things, you can't possibly be

38:26

a serious scientist anymore. You're saying that's

38:28

not true, and I know you're right.

38:30

Do you worry about the fact

38:32

that in the academy, the perception is

38:35

often you can't do both of these

38:37

things? A lot of our colleagues who

38:39

do brilliant research are now... entering the

38:42

public domain. And I've watched a lot

38:44

of people who 10 years ago might

38:46

have looked down their nose on us

38:49

as sellouts, writing books and giving their

38:51

work and sharing it. And so I

38:53

think the norms in our field

38:55

have changed a little bit. It's really

38:58

a generational shift. People my age still

39:00

arch in eyebrow. It's like, you did

39:02

a PBS show, I don't really know.

39:05

But people your age just say, oh,

39:07

well, they say, what's PBS. But you

39:09

did a TV show marvelous. Can I

39:12

do one too? That would be fun.

39:14

And I do, you know, I think

39:16

your answer is right. I see

39:18

all of these as an extension of

39:21

teaching. I always love teaching. And in

39:23

2004, this little conference called TED said,

39:25

would you like to come give a

39:28

talk? We're thinking maybe we'll videotape them

39:30

and put them on the internet. to

39:32

which I think I responded, how do

39:35

you put videos on the internet? And

39:37

I said, oh, we think it's coming.

39:39

So what I learned when that

39:41

went on the internet and lots and

39:44

lots of people watched it was that

39:46

the world is my classroom and I

39:48

could give psychology away to a much

39:51

much bigger audience. So that's how I

39:53

seal. all of these efforts. And probably

39:56

like you, I turn down lots of

39:58

opportunities to do things, might be kind

40:00

of fun and sexy, but don't feel

40:03

like they're true to the mission

40:05

of giving science away to the world.

40:07

Dan, before I let you go, I

40:09

have to ask, you've done research on

40:12

ending conversations. Yes. How do I wrap

40:14

this thing up? What do most of

40:16

us do wrong in light of your

40:19

data? Well, most conversations don't have a

40:21

natural termination point and the people in

40:23

them usually like each other and they

40:26

don't want to offend the other

40:28

person by saying, I'm now tired of

40:30

talking with you. And so in our

40:32

research, what we found is conversations actually

40:35

go on. Oftentimes, much longer than either

40:37

of the people in them wants them

40:39

to. And when I say that, everybody

40:42

shakes their head and they remember those

40:44

conversations. But what we also found is

40:46

because we can't be honest with each

40:49

other about when we want to

40:51

end, many conversations end long before either

40:53

person wants them to. They go on

40:55

too short. Saving grace doesn't seem to

40:58

matter that much to people's happiness. Conversations

41:00

go on too long. They end a

41:02

little too early. What we find is

41:05

everybody leaves them pretty much happier than

41:07

they were before. Well, then I'm going

41:09

to resist the temptation to ask you

41:12

how we can get in sync

41:14

on that. Not necessary. Better that we

41:16

should all go away with the illusion

41:18

that our conversation lasted exactly the right

41:21

amount of time, if not for us,

41:23

than for the other person we were

41:25

talking to. Well, I think on that

41:28

note, it's been too short for me,

41:30

but I'll assume that it was the

41:32

right length for you. Too short for

41:35

me as well, let's do it.

41:37

Let's do it again. My

41:40

main takeaway from Dan is that

41:43

the impact of negative events rarely

41:45

lasts as long as we expect.

41:47

The changes in our lives matter,

41:50

but how we adapt matters more.

41:52

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam

41:54

Grant. The show is part of

41:57

the TED Audio Collective, and this

41:59

episode was produced in mixed... by

42:01

Cosmic Standard. Our producers are Hannah

42:04

Kingsley Ma and Asia Simpson. Our

42:06

editor is Alejandro Salazar. Our fact

42:08

checkers Paul Durbin, original music by

42:11

Hansdale Sue and Allison Layton Brown.

42:13

Our team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob

42:15

Winnick, Samiah Adams, Roxanne High Lash,

42:18

Banban Chang, Julia Dickerson, and Whitney

42:20

Pennington Rogers. Be

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