When we blow up our lives, we often tell ourselves we're seeking freedom or authenticity. But research suggests we may simply be running from discomfort — and that the new life we're chasing will eventually produce the same discomfort we were trying to escape.
We sometimes blow up our lives not because things are going badly, but because they're going too well — because we're afraid of what success might demand of us, or because we can't tolerate the tension of being so close to what we want.
Most people, when they feel the itch to blow up their lives, assume the discomfort is a signal that something is deeply wrong — that they need radical change. But sometimes the urge to flee is not a sign that your life needs to change; it's a sign that you need to change how you're living your life.
We think that making a big change will make us happy, but what we're really doing is escaping the discomfort of our current situation. And the new situation will eventually have its own discomforts, which we'll want to escape from as well.
People who blow up their lives often aren't doing something irrational — they're responding to a deep psychological need that their current life isn't meeting. The problem is that blowing up your life is a very blunt instrument for addressing that need.
I think, you know, I would call the 2010s maybe the doom and gloom era of climate change communication. And the thing is that it got people's attention. So I think the focus on kind of scaring people and talking about how, you know, awful everything was made people sit up and listen for a period of time. But the problem is doom and gloom messaging doesn't necessarily motivate action.
I was biking to work. It was a sunny autumn day. I was enjoying my bike ride, but I was also thinking about climate change, as you do. And I was thinking how it's kind of a bummer that my life's work on happiness had no bearing whatsoever on what I believe is the most important existential challenge of our time.
People who blow up their lives often don't realize that the discomfort they feel isn't a sign that something is wrong with their life — it's a sign that something is wrong with them. And if you blow up your life without addressing that underlying problem, you're going to find yourself in the same situation a few years later.
We often assume that people who don't speak up are simply withholding information. But research suggests something more surprising: many people who stay silent genuinely believe they have communicated — they think their feelings, intentions, or objections were obvious, even when they said nothing at all.
Most people, when they think about the failure to express our feelings, imagine that it's the recipient of that expression who benefits. But Epley's research suggests that the person who loses out most from our silence is ourselves. We are the ones left wondering whether the people in our lives know how much we care about them.
We don't just fail to say things because we're afraid of rejection or conflict. We also stay silent because we don't realize how much our words matter to other people. We consistently underestimate the power of our own voices.
Most of us think we know what our partners want, but research shows we're often wrong. We assume our partners' needs mirror our own, a bias psychologists call 'egocentric projection.' The result is that we give our partners what we would want, rather than what they actually need.
Psychobiologist Daisy Fancourt says engagement with the arts can help to regulate our emotions, build resilience, and support long-term well-being.
engagement with the arts can help to regulate our emotions, build resilience, and support long-term well-being.
Most of us think the key to a better relationship is finding the right partner. But Eli Finkel says the more important question is how to be the right partner — how to bring more of yourself to your relationship, and to cultivate the conditions that allow love to flourish.
Most of us think that being a good partner means being loving and kind and attentive. And those things matter. But researcher Shelly Gable has found that how you respond to your partner's good news may matter just as much as how you respond to their bad news — maybe even more.
Most people think the key to a good relationship is finding the right person. But research suggests that what matters more is being the right person — that the skills and habits we bring to our relationships matter enormously.
Most people think the key to a better relationship is finding the right partner. But research suggests that who you are in a relationship matters more than who your partner is — that the same person can experience very different relationships depending on the skills and outlook they bring to them.
Most people think the key to a better relationship is finding the right partner. But research suggests the more important question is whether you are the right partner — whether you have developed the skills and habits that help relationships thrive.
Most of us think about fairness in terms of outputs — who did more chores, who earned more money, who sacrificed more for the relationship. But researchers have found that what really matters to people is not the division of labor itself, but whether they feel seen and appreciated for what they contribute.
Most people think that being a good partner means being loving, supportive, and kind. But researcher Shelly Gable has found that how we respond to our partner's good news may matter even more than how we respond to their bad news.
When we feel hurt by a partner, we often assume they meant to hurt us. But John Gottman's research finds that in the vast majority of conflicts, partners are not trying to wound each other — they're trying to meet their own needs. The problem is that the strategies we use to meet those needs can inadvertently hurt the other person.
When we look at the people we love, how clearly do we really see them? This week, we talk with psychologist Edward LeMay about how our fears, desires, and insecurities can shape our perceptions of our partners — sometimes creating the very reality we expect.
Most people think of emotions as the opposite of rational thinking. But the truth is that our feelings are deeply intertwined with our ability to reason — and people who lose access to their emotions due to brain damage often become incapable of making even simple decisions.
Emotions, he came to realize, aren't the enemy of rational thought. They are part of rational thought. Emotions are an evolved system of wisdom — a shorthand that allows us to make quick decisions based on a wealth of past experience.
People assume that emotions get in the way of good thinking. But the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio found that patients with damage to the emotional centers of the brain didn't become more rational — they became worse at making decisions. Without feelings to guide them, they got lost in endless deliberation, unable to choose between options.
Emotions are not just feelings — they're a form of information. When you have a feeling, you're actually getting a signal about what's relevant, what's important, and what you might be missing. Suppressing that information comes at a cognitive cost.
We often think of emotions as the enemy of rational thought. But the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio found that people who had damage to the emotional centers of their brains didn't become better decision-makers — they became worse ones, unable to make even simple choices about what to eat for lunch or when to schedule an appointment.
Emotions are not the enemy of rational thinking. They are, in fact, essential to it. People who lose the ability to feel emotions due to brain damage often become terrible decision-makers, even when their logical reasoning remains intact.
Emotional intelligence is one of the most popular ideas in psychology. It's also a term that's widely misused and misunderstood.
Pain is not just a physical sensation — it's also an experience shaped by our expectations, beliefs, and emotions. When people expect to feel pain, they often feel more of it. And when they believe they're being helped, even a sugar pill can ease their suffering.
Most of us go through life thinking of ourselves as ordinary. We assume that our experiences, our feelings, our struggles are common — that what happens to us happens to everyone. But this assumption, however comforting, may be costing us dearly.
Most of us know that we're similar to others in many ways, and different from others in many ways. What psychologist Brian Little has found is that there is something that makes each of us truly unique — not just different from others in degree, but different from everyone else who has ever lived. That something is the particular combination of all our traits.
Most of us can point to experiences that made us who we are — a teacher who believed in us, a parent who didn't, a move to a new city that forced us to reinvent ourselves. But psychologists have found that we dramatically underestimate how much we will change in the future, even as we readily acknowledge how much we've changed in the past.
Most of us recognize that we were shaped by the circumstances of our births. But we rarely consider that all the people who matter to us were also shaped by their circumstances. We assume the people in our lives have freely chosen their values, beliefs, and behaviors, when in fact all of these were shaped by their experiences and the brains they happened to be born with.
Most of us feel we have an ordinary life. We are not famous, we have not discovered a cure for cancer or written a great novel. But the psychologist Brian Little argues this view is mistaken. Our lives are filled with what he calls 'personal projects' — the goals and pursuits that animate us and give meaning to our existence.
Most of us have encountered the idea of the bell curve. Average is the most common outcome. Very good or very bad outcomes are rarer. Extremely good or extremely bad outcomes are rarest of all. But Yadin Dudai says our emotional memories don't follow a bell curve — instead, they skew toward the extremes.
Most of us recognize that we're shaped by our upbringing and our culture. But researchers who study self-awareness say there's something even more fundamental at work: our failure to realize how different we are from other people. We think everyone sees the world the way we do — that our reactions, our values, our fears, and our hopes are simply the normal human response to life.
Most of us intuitively feel that our inner experiences are beyond the reach of others. But psychologists have found that when we actually test this idea, our emotions, thoughts, and feelings are often far more transparent to others than we imagine — and that other people's inner lives are far more similar to our own than we tend to assume.
Most of us have been taught to think about luck as something fleeting — a good parking spot, or finding a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk. But psychologists who study this topic say that some people are consistently luckier than others, and that luck is less about chance than it is about how you move through the world.
Most of us know that we're biased when it comes to our own performance — we tend to think we're better than we actually are. But here's the strange part: this bias doesn't just affect how we see ourselves. It also affects how we see other people. When we watch someone else do something, we unconsciously compare them to ourselves — and since we think we're pretty good, we use ourselves as the benchmark.
Most of us intuitively feel that we are above average in a variety of ways. We think we're smarter than average, more competent than average, more ethical than average. Psychologists have documented that people's assessments of themselves are, to put it charitably, often not well-calibrated.
Pain is not just a physical sensation — it's also a psychological experience. And that means the brain can sometimes be recruited to fight pain itself. Researchers have found that when people feel cared for or loved, when they feel a sense of meaning or purpose, or when they have a strong sense of control over their lives, they actually feel less pain.
Pain feels like a simple message from the body. If your elbow hurts, there must be something wrong with your elbow. If your back is painfully stiff, you need some work done on your back. But psychologist Rachel Zoffness says our minds play a much larger role in our experience of pain than many of us realize.
Doctors typically treat pain with medications that target the body. But what if we thought about pain the way we think about mental illness, as something that arises in the mind and the body at the same time? Research suggests that simply believing your treatment will help can actually change how much pain you experience — and this effect is not imaginary.
We all walk around with mental maps of how the world works — maps that tell us what's safe and what's dangerous, what's possible and what's not. The problem is that these maps were often drawn a long time ago, in circumstances that no longer exist. And we keep using old maps to navigate new terrain.
People who have a lot of awe in their lives tend to feel that they are part of something larger than themselves. And that sense of being part of something larger — whether it's a religion, a community, or the natural world — seems to be deeply connected to well-being.
People who have these experiences feel that they've encountered a reality that's even more real than the things we see and touch in everyday life. And what's especially interesting is that these experiences also appear to change people. They feel a greater sense of connection with others. They feel less fear about death.
People who have more spiritual experiences — that sense of oneness, of feeling connected to something larger than themselves — tend to have a thicker cortex in certain brain regions. And this is true even after you control for whether someone goes to church or synagogue or mosque, or whether they believe in God.
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