Welcome to Joy Lab!: Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry: Hello, I am Henry Emmons, and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I am Aimee Prasek. Here at Joy Lab, we infuse science with soul to help you build your resilience and uncover your joy. Today we are talking, uh, more about our element of savoring. We're going to first talk about California psychics and then we'll dive into really surprising, but then when you think about it, a more very obvious strategy to boost savoring in your life. This is what happens when Henry lets me take the lead on an episode. It gets really weird.
Henry: Well, you got my attention, Aimee, and I'm okay with weirdness, so let's go for it.
Aimee: Yes. Okay, so here's how it started. I was up a little too late recently coming on the heels of our savoring and sleep episode. I was watching TV too late and this commercial came on from California psychics. I'm not trashing psychics here also, I think there are many ways of knowing, but the whole premise of the commercial was, and really the whole theme of their campaign, I think is what they call experiencing the joy of certainty. And it did not sit well with me. I think it's A- not true and B- impossible. Maybe the same things there. I don't actually think joy and certainty are correlated, and I think certainty is the only thing that I can a hundred percent be certain about, that it doesn't exist our natural world.
Henry: So my first take on this is that I agree with you. Certainty is not a pathway to joy in my book. One of our elements of joy, in fact is curiosity, which it seems to thrive on uncertainty or on you might call, not knowing.
And I'm a, I'm a fan of not knowing, so I am curious to see where you're go going with this.
Aimee: Okay, good. So I hope everybody listening is curious as well. As promised, now I'm going to highlight that super surprising, very obvious strategy to boost savoring, and it is related to the notion of the joy of certainty. So there's a study I want to highlight. It's from Gregory Quiodbach, Haase, and Piff. But first I want to quote a little summary from this article about the experience of uncertainty, and I think we can resonate here. Here it is
"Uncertainty is ubiquitous and typically unpleasant upending people's desires to view the world as ordered and controllable when the predictability of the social world is threatened. Chaos and uncertainty produce anxiety and distress. To mitigate these negative effects, people may engage in various emotion regulation and coping strategies, including pursuing material or social resources, enhancing certainty in social judgments, or even engaging in violent religious zealotry."
You can see why the California psychics decided joy of certainty might be a good idea.
Henry: Yeah. Well, when I listen to that description, I can begin to see the issue that you have with uncertainty. I still think there's a big difference between chaos, which is I think, really distressing and uncertainty, which might be distressing, but I, I wonder if it's just because we let it be distressing.
So, you know, the authors of that study, I think are describing how people might react to uncertainty by using some coping strategies that aren't actually very skillful. I'm kind of thinking back to the Buddhist concept that we have talked about here, that pain is unavoidable in life, but emotional suffering is avoidable. There's that difference between pain being the things that happen to us we have no control over, and then creating our own emotional suffering because of how we react to things. And again, that in that line of thinking, the problem is our attachment to things going a certain way that creates the suffering, not the thing itself.
So maybe I'm kind of digging a little too deep here, but in this case, it just seems that it's one's attachment to absolute certainty that is driving those behaviors that are in and of themselves are painful. And you know, maybe we'd be better off if we could learn to accept that life is uncertain, kind of like you were saying earlier, Aimee.
Aimee: Yeah. No, You're nailing it here. Henry, this is what I wanna get into.
Um, and the, the authors do note there is a difference between chaos and uncertainty. And when we're not aware, it can be hard to tell the difference as well. So there's a, there's a piece. But, so I want to get into this study. The, the piece I wanna highlight, this was a group of three studies, but I'm gonna focus on just this study number three, as they call it, which had 201 participants. So it was a good sized study. So the researchers had a stack of flyers and they had 'em in random order. And there were two different versions. So one had the words "life is unpredictable" written at the top, and then on the other one, uh, it was written "life is constant." Then the remaining content on the flyers was identical. Both versions had a picture of a rose and the phrase that said, stop and smell the roses. And so when the researchers saw somebody walking alone, they'd hand them a flyer. Now, 150 feet further down the street there was a little table with a bouquet of roses, and then both flyers were enlarged and framed sitting on each side of the roses. So if you received the flyer, it was pretty obvious that this table was related. Everything kind of tied up.
So the researchers were looking to see who stopped and smelled those roses. And if there was a meaningful difference based on which flyer those folks received. I'm gonna throw it out to those listening to you, Henry. What do you think? Did the life is unpredictable group stop more or did the life is constant group stop more or could have been equal? What do you think?
Henry: Wow. I'm gonna guess, and I do not know the study, I'm gonna guess that the people who stop more are the life is constant group. I am kind of seeing that idea that life is constant, that this is an invitation to savor the good things. Whereas if you believe that life is unpredictable, you, you might not feel as safe and secure so that you can't afford the time to stop. You gotta, you know, do something to protect yourself. So that's what I'm going for. It's, it's when you feel more safe and secure that you can, you're more likely to savor things.
Aimee: Okay. It's the exact opposite of what you just said, Henry,
Henry: Of course it is!
Aimee: So I know. That's why I love this!
Henry: Good one, Aimee.
Aimee: Thank you. That did work out well. So. Let me explain this. So people who had received the life is unpredictable flyer were two and a half times more likely to stop by that table and smell the roses. And this was true after the, they controlled for gender, age. And it does, it seems counter on its face. But there is something very human about this. It's an adaptive behavior we could say. So the researchers, to your point though, they did find a correlation between their uncertainty prompts and negative affects. So in other two studies as well. So they prompted this uncertainty stimulus and right away people would have sort of this automatic signal of discomfort you know, some anxiety. Then it seems like there's another signal that perks up with a little bit of time away from that initial reaction and that signal is to savor. And I think that happens because we don't wanna feel bad. And so we can reorient back to the present moment and soak in something good to sort of ease some of that discomfort.
So that's one reason, perhaps. Another, uh, I think is that we are really wired to do this and we can improve it with this practice of savoring. And even though savoring feels like a really individual experience it's actually more of a community practice. So like, just think of those types of peak moments in your life.
Maybe graduating high school, getting a job you wanted, building something with your hands. Rarely do we want to just sit back and savor it all alone. You know, we wanna have a bunch of people next to us, or that amazing sunset or a great movie. We wanna savor it even more by sharing it. Those thoughts rise up-
I wish my dad was here to see the sunset. Or I have to tell my friend about this movie. So we kind of savor it with, and so there wiring to savor and share good things, things that might also nourish others. It builds alliances, support structures. It strengthens everyone. And so I think a big reminder from this research or surprise, is that if we can be with uncertainty, if we can ride out that initial discomfort and not fall into what you noted earlier, Henry, that like attachment to absolute certainty and all the extremes and rigidity and dysfunction that it can cause. As noted in that quote I read. If we can ride that out using the skills we talk about here. Then we can let that next step happen, which is that wiring to come back to the present moment, to savor, and to connect with others. That's what I think.
Henry: Wow. This is good. I really like this, Aimee. And one of the things that I'm kind of struck with is you know, we, we have often said something to the effect that a little stress is a good thing. That we wouldn't want to live a really live a life without any stress. And I'm kind of thinking, you know, in a broader way that this is a good example of how we can make use, good use, of having some negative feelings or unpleasant feelings. In other words, let's not try to feel good all of the time. That's not necessarily the goal. But it, it's more to embrace all of it. Even to kind of make use of those occasional negative feelings. Let them prompt some sort of a positive action or behavior change. I often find this to be true for myself, that, you know, as long as it hasn't gone too far, if I'm feeling a little bit sad or out of sorts or maybe even a little anxious or something, I can parlay that into some sort of positive behavior. ' It sort of propels me to get out of it and I, there's some things I know that can help me to get out of it and I think it's a way of kind of making use of some of our emotions that, that might stimulate some really good behaviors on our part.
This is a cool study.
I like it.
Aimee: Yeah. I love that you're
Henry: Even though you did trick me.
Aimee: I know that worked out perfect. I wasn't sure.
Um, I think yeah, noting that When we can have awareness of that negative response that we can take that next step. And I think knowing or acknowledging the value of those, all of those emotions, right? This is not like a head in the sand response- savoring. It doesn't dismiss uncertainty. It acts with it. I think that's so cool. So then when we savor, we hold up the truth of uncertainty and we decide like amidst all of this, I have to savor to hold onto what's good. I think many of us can relate, to having someone close to us die, for example. And then that common feeling that arises at some point, that feeling of fragility. That life is short. That you just never know.
And I think, and that yearning that arises so often, the yearning to be more present then to be there for life, to savor it more. There's this quote from grief researcher Dr. Lucy Hone, and she says. "Don't let what you've lost, take away what you love." That to me is uncertainty and savoring like in perfect harmony.
And then, like you said, action can come from that place.
Henry: Yeah. And you know, I'm wondering if maybe the maybe intervention here, the handing out of the flyer, uh, that life is uncertain, it might have been a way that helped to raise people's awareness. To make them aware that they're feeling, that they're carrying that feeling of uncertainty.
You know? so being aware of some of our feelings that we don't always like is, again, it can be a good thing. We don't need to deny them or suppress them or try to create the opposite so we're always feeling something positive.
Aimee: Yeah, that, I mean, that's why, like you said, curiosity is one of our elements of joy. Intellectual humility is essential. And when we embrace that space, it creates so many more opportunities. You don't get stuck in that rigidity, it's related to a lot of positive outcomes of wellbeing.
So I, I hope savoring resonates with all of you listening here. Um, as a pessimist myself, this has been a super essential skill for me to train. I am pretty confident that 20 years ago, if I would've gotten that uncertainty flyer, anxiety would've risen up in me. Then I would've walked past those roses.
I would've crumpled up that paper, thrown in the recycling and gone about my day in rigidity and tension. It's surprisingly powerful, this practice of savoring. So, to close our time today, I wanna share some wisdom from the French poet Pierre de Ronsard here it is: "And sense what comes tomorrow, who can say? Live, pluck the roses of the world today."
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