In the “What I’ve Learned” podcast, Arianna sits down with people she loves and admires, in fields from music and technology to sports and business, to explore the lessons they’ve learned over the extraordinary past year about themselves, their lives, and what they truly value.
This week, Yale cognitive science professor Laurie Santos on why gratitude is a panacea, the importance of social connection, and how self-compassion can strengthen our relationships.
On why caring about our individual well-being can help create change :
“The structures around us can really affect our behavior and our happiness, but we have the power to affect those structures. I sometimes get into conversations with my students who really care about social justice and they’ll say, there’s so many problems in the world, why are we focusing on our individual happiness? Well, one reason is that we know that grateful people are more likely to engage with hard problems. People who are mentally healthy can withstand these challenging times. And so, worrying about your own mental health will give you the strength and the resilience to make those big changes that we all want to see in the world.”
On the importance of self-compassion: