How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos

Here are 20 science-based strategies for achieving true happiness, as revealed by Dr. Laurie Santos on the Huberman Lab podcast.

1. Two dimensions of happiness

Happiness has two distinct dimensions: being happy "in" your life and being happy "with" your life. Being happy in your life refers to emotional experiences—having positive emotions and fewer negative ones as you go through daily activities. Being happy with your life is more cognitive—it's about how you think your life is going overall, whether you have purpose and satisfaction with your life circumstances.

These dimensions can sometimes disconnect. For example, some wealthy people might experience pleasure and positive emotions daily (happy in their life) yet still report feeling dissatisfied when reflecting on their life as a whole. This distinction helps explain why someone can have all the external trappings of a good life yet still feel unhappy.

2. External rewards can undermine intrinsic joy

Our society often transforms intrinsically rewarding activities into extrinsic reward-seeking behaviors, which can diminish enjoyment. For example, someone who loves running might start tracking their running stats with a device, shifting focus from the intrinsic joy of running to the external metrics. This process can make previously enjoyable activities feel like obligations.

This phenomenon extends to childhood play. Young children naturally engage in play for intrinsic enjoyment, but increasingly structured activities and focus on achievement metrics can convert this into extrinsic reward-seeking. This transformation often reduces enjoyment and can negatively impact happiness, as we begin chasing external validation rather than internal satisfaction.

3. Money affects happiness differently at various income levels

Research shows that money significantly impacts happiness only up to a certain threshold. Below this threshold (around $75,000 in 2010 dollars, perhaps $100,000-$125,000 today), increases in income correlate linearly with increased happiness. Above this threshold, additional income produces minimal happiness gains.

This pattern occurs because basic needs and security concerns are met at the threshold amount. Beyond this point, other factors like social connection, time affluence, and health become more important for happiness than additional wealth. The diminishing returns of wealth explain why very wealthy people aren't proportionally happier than moderately comfortable people.

4. Social connection is crucial for happiness

Social connection stands out as one of the strongest predictors of happiness. Research shows that time spent with friends, family members, or just being physically around other people significantly correlates with happiness levels. Contrary to what many people predict, even brief social interactions with strangers often leave people feeling better than they anticipated.

This social connection benefit applies to both introverts and extroverts, though introverts tend to underestimate how good social interaction will make them feel. The phenomenon of "undersociality" describes how we consistently undervalue the happiness benefits of connecting with others, leading us to socialize less than would be optimal for our wellbeing. Even small interactions like chatting with a barista or calling a friend can provide significant happiness boosts.

5. Real-time interaction provides better connection than asynchronous communication

The quality of social connection matters as much as the quantity. In-person or real-time interactions (like video calls or phone conversations) provide substantially better social nourishment than text messages or social media. Research shows that even having your phone present during an interaction reduces smiling and engagement by about 30%.

Our brains evolved for real-time, face-to-face connection, and modern digital substitutions don't activate the same neural circuits. Text-based communication lacks the rich sensory experience of seeing faces and hearing voices that our social brains crave. This explains why scrolling through social media can leave us feeling more disconnected despite the illusion of social activity.

6. Presence enhances happiness

Being fully present in the moment rather than distracted significantly increases happiness. Research demonstrates that people perform substantially better on tests when their phones are in another room versus nearby. This happens because part of our cognitive resources gets devoted to resisting the distraction of our devices, even when we're not actively using them.

Practicing presence means engaging fully with your current experience, whether that's a conversation, a meal, or a beautiful view. Devices compromise presence by offering what Dr. Santos calls "a wheelbarrow of interesting content" that constantly pulls at our attention. Learning to be more present by putting away devices and focusing on sensory experiences can dramatically improve both performance and happiness.

7. Delight practices may work better than gratitude practices

While gratitude practices have well-established benefits for happiness, "delight practices" may be more accessible and enjoyable for many people. Rather than formally listing things you're "grateful for," you simply notice and appreciate small sources of delight throughout your day—a cute dog, a delicious coffee, or beautiful flowers.

Delight practices work by training your attention to spot positive experiences rather than fixating on negative ones. This counteracts our evolutionary negativity bias, which makes us naturally attuned to potential threats and problems. By intentionally looking for delights, you can gradually retrain your brain to notice more positive aspects of your environment, creating an ongoing source of small happiness boosts throughout your day.

8. Hedonic adaptation means we quickly get used to both good and bad circumstances

Humans quickly adapt to both positive and negative changes in their lives, a phenomenon known as hedonic adaptation. When something good happens, like winning the lottery, there's an initial happiness spike that gradually returns to baseline. Similarly, people who experience negative events like becoming disabled often return to their happiness baseline within about a year.

Hedonic adaptation has a double edge: it prevents both extremely positive and extremely negative events from permanently affecting our happiness. This explains why achieving long-desired goals often brings less lasting joy than anticipated. Understanding hedonic adaptation helps us set more realistic expectations about what will bring lasting happiness and what won't.

9. Scarcity engineers happiness by counteracting hedonic adaptation

One way to overcome hedonic adaptation is to intentionally introduce scarcity into positive experiences. If you have something pleasurable every day, you'll quickly habituate to it. By spacing out positive experiences or making them less frequent, you can maintain their impact and prevent adaptation.

This concept explains why vacation experiences often feel more special than everyday pleasures. By deliberately limiting some pleasurable experiences rather than indulging in them constantly, you can enhance their impact when you do experience them. This strategy works for material pleasures as well as experiences, helping to combat the diminishing returns that hedonic adaptation typically produces.

10. Negative visualization can boost appreciation

The ancient Stoic practice of negative visualization—briefly imagining losing valuable aspects of your life—can powerfully boost happiness by enhancing appreciation. By imagining life without your health, relationships, or basic comforts, you can break through hedonic adaptation and renew your appreciation for what you have.

This practice doesn't require dwelling on negative scenarios; even a brief mental exercise imagining the absence of something you value can reset your appreciation. This explains why temporarily losing something (like misplacing your phone) often makes you value it more when you find it. Negative visualization provides this renewed appreciation without requiring actual loss.

11. Contrast enhances emotional experiences

Our brains process emotions through contrast, just as our visual system processes light against darkness. This principle explains why happiness often feels more intense when it follows a period of difficulty or discomfort. The contrast between emotional states amplifies the experience of the positive state.

This contrast principle applies across many domains. Cold plunges feel good partly because of the contrast with normal temperature. A hot shower feels better after being cold. Even in storytelling and entertainment, we enjoy dramatic arcs with difficulty and triumph more than constant positivity. Understanding this contrast principle helps explain why pursuing constant happiness may be counterproductive.

12. Time affluence is as important as financial affluence

The subjective sense of having enough time—"time affluence"—impacts happiness as much as financial resources. Research shows that feeling "time famished" creates as large a hit to wellbeing as being unemployed. Even small pockets of free time, when used intentionally, can significantly boost happiness.

Many people experience what researchers call "time confetti"—small fragments of free time throughout the day that often get wasted on low-value activities like checking email or scrolling social media. By using these small time fragments more intentionally for meaningful activities, exercise, or brief social connections, people can increase their sense of time affluence and boost overall happiness.

13. Doing kind things for others boosts happiness more than self-care

Research consistently shows that spending time or money on others produces more happiness than spending the same resources on yourself. In controlled experiments, people randomly assigned to spend money on others report greater happiness than those assigned to spend the same amount on themselves.

This finding contradicts popular "self-care" advice that emphasizes treating yourself. Happy people tend to be other-oriented—they volunteer more, donate more to charity, and focus more on helping others than less happy people. This connection works bidirectionally: helping others makes you happier, and being happier makes you more likely to help others.

14. The journey matters more than the destination for happiness

The "arrival fallacy" is the mistaken belief that achieving a specific goal will bring lasting happiness. Due to hedonic adaptation, reaching even long-desired goals typically provides only temporary happiness before becoming the new normal. A more sustainable approach focuses on finding meaning and enjoyment in the journey itself.

This journey mindset means appreciating the process of working toward goals rather than fixating on outcomes. It means finding value in learning, growing, and experiencing the day-to-day aspects of pursuing your aims. This approach protects against the disappointment that often follows achievement and helps maintain engagement and motivation throughout the pursuit.

15. The bronze medal effect demonstrates the power of reference points

Olympic bronze medalists often appear happier than silver medalists despite objectively worse performance. Silver medalists compare themselves to gold (what they just missed), while bronze medalists compare themselves to fourth place (not medaling at all). This demonstrates how reference points powerfully shape satisfaction.

Our satisfaction depends less on absolute outcomes and more on the comparison points we use. We can hack this tendency by intentionally choosing helpful reference points—looking for the "bronze lining" rather than the silver lining. This means comparing your situation to less fortunate alternatives rather than focusing on how things could be slightly better.

16. Human brains are uniquely designed for counterfactual thinking

Humans differ from other animals in our capacity for counterfactual thinking—imagining scenarios that don't currently exist. This ability allows us to create fiction, plan for the future, empathize with others' experiences, and imagine alternative versions of our lives. While powerful, this capacity can also undermine happiness when misused.

Our counterfactual thinking enables remarkable creativity and problem-solving but can lead to excessive rumination about how things could be better or what might go wrong. Animals like dogs, with limited prefrontal cortex development, may experience more present-moment happiness because they lack this capacity for simulation and rumination. Learning to direct our counterfactual thinking productively is key to happiness.

17. Pets contribute to happiness through multiple mechanisms

Pet ownership correlates with greater happiness for several science-backed reasons. Pets provide direct social connection and companionship while also facilitating human connections (like conversations with other dog owners). They encourage healthy behaviors like walking and physical activity, and they promote presence by drawing attention to the moment.

Pets also help people practice caregiving and experience unconditional positive regard, both of which boost wellbeing. The contrast between dog and cat preferences may relate to different emotional needs—dogs typically offer more unconditional acceptance, while cats maintain more independence. These different relationship styles appeal to different personality types.

18. Different cultures promote different happiness norms

Cultural differences significantly impact happiness. Scandinavian countries like Denmark consistently rank highest in global happiness measures, partly due to cultural practices that prioritize social connection, work-life balance, and appreciation of small pleasures (like the concept of "hygge"). These cultures often have different attitudes toward ambition and achievement than places like the United States.

American culture emphasizes individual achievement and continual striving, which can undermine happiness by creating constant pressure and comparison. Some cultures view ambition more negatively, focusing instead on collective wellbeing and moderation. These cultural differences suggest that reshaping cultural norms around success and satisfaction could significantly impact population-level happiness.

19. Happiness requires different approaches across three time scales

Happiness exists across three distinct time scales requiring different approaches. The shortest time scale involves immediate sensory experiences—things that feel good in the moment. The intermediate time scale involves the stories we tell about our lives and recent events. The longest time scale concerns meaning, purpose, and the overall arc of our lives.

A comprehensive approach to happiness addresses all three time scales. Sensory pleasures provide immediate boosts but require contrast and novelty to maintain impact. Life stories benefit from choosing positive interpretations and helpful reference points. Meaning develops through alignment with personal values and strengths over the long term. Each time scale influences the others, creating an integrated experience of wellbeing.

20. Using signature strengths increases purpose and meaning

Finding ways to employ your "signature strengths"—core values and capabilities that feel authentic to you—significantly increases sense of purpose and happiness. Research by positive psychologists has identified 24 universal character strengths, including creativity, bravery, kindness, and love of learning. Each person has a unique profile of these strengths that feels most natural and energizing.

Finding ways to incorporate your signature strengths into both work and leisure activities can transform mundane experiences into meaningful ones. Even people in seemingly routine jobs can craft their work to incorporate personal strengths. Hospital janitors who incorporated strengths like humor or creativity into their work reported experiencing their jobs as meaningful callings rather than just employment. Similar principles apply to relationships and leisure activities.