Science-Based Tools for Increasing Happiness - Huberman Lab  ## Metadata - Author: **Huberman Lab** - Full Title: Science-Based Tools for Increasing Happiness - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/c96f21fe-20df-439c-a1e5-e6e52c18a8bd ## Highlights - Avoid Bright Artificial Lights Between 10 p.m. And 4 a.m Summary: CNN.com's John Sutter talks about the importance of getting regular bright light in your eyes. He says it can have outsized effects on mood and focus during the day, as well as quality of sleep at night. Another central tenet is to avoid bright artificial light exposure to your eyes from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., he says. Transcript: Speaker 1 Now before we begin today's episode, I'd like to talk about a very specific tool that applies yes to our pursuit of happiness, but actually to our pursuit of everything, including quality Sleep and ongoing motivation, etc. I've talked many, many times before on this podcast and on other podcasts and on social media about the critical value of getting regular bright light, ideally sunlight in your eyes Within the first hour of waking, or if the sun isn't out when you wake up in the morning to turn on a lot of bright artificial lights and then get sunlight in your eyes for anywhere from five To 20 minutes, depending on how cloudy it is in the early part of the day, absolutely outsized effects on mood and focus during the day and quality of sleep at night. Now there's another sort of central tenant of getting great sleep and improving mood and focus throughout the day and that's to avoid bright artificial light exposure to your eyes Between the hours of about 10 p.m. To 4 ([Time 0:06:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7f4c8cef-298f-493c-b233-fa929ffc4f0a)) - Tags: #health - Measure happiness with numbers rather than language Summary: It doesn't mean that we cannot have a strong data-driven conversation about happiness and what brings us to a state of happiness, but it's very important to understand that language is not an ideal, it may be even a deficient tool in terms of describing our emotions and our states of mind and body. Transcript: Speaker 1 Episode. It doesn't mean that we cannot have a strong data driven conversation about happiness and what brings us to a state of happiness but it's very important to understand that language Is not an ideal and maybe even a deficient tool in terms of describing our emotions and our states of mind and body. Now ([Time 0:20:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9a8d5564-3b40-4265-b1a8-253d2fb899b1)) - Tags: #health - The Effects of Trauma on Happiness Summary: There are other things that you could imagine would relate to a lack of happiness. For instance, a major trauma, physical or emotional trauma. That could include the loss of a major relationship,. A death of a close to one, being the victim of a violent crime and things of that sort. And yet, it's been argued...that if you wait about a year or so, sometimes even as short as three months after a trauma, people's self reported levels of happiness are not significantly lower than they were prior to the trauma. Transcript: Speaker 1 Of health. And of course, there are other things that you could imagine would relate to a lack of happiness. For instance, a major trauma, physical or emotional trauma, that could include the loss of a major relationship, a death of a close to one being the victim of a violent crime and things Of that sort. And yet it's been argued, in fact, strongly argued that when you look at people's levels of happiness after a trauma, that if you wait about a year or so, sometimes as even as short as three Months after a trauma, that people's self reported levels of happiness are not significantly lower than they were prior to the trauma. Now, I very much want to highlight underlying and bold ([Time 0:54:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b460ce22-6e6c-4cb4-8d68-fd695b1e5225)) - Tags: #health - Synthetic Happiness Summary: Synthetic happiness has to do with some really important larger principles about the way that our emotional system and the reward systems of our brain really function. Things like the hedonics set point, for instance, or the dopamine system of anticipation of rewards versus receiving words. And this goes back to a theme I've discussed a few times before in this podcast. Transcript: Speaker 1 Of the great gifts that they've supplied us in the form of data is that there really are things that we can all do and think and access to allow ourselves to so-called synthesize happiness. Now this notion of synthesizing happiness or synthetic happiness is sometimes called can sometimes ruffle people's feathers a bit because people immediately flip to the idea that, Oh, you're just going to tell me to be grateful for what I have or to just navel gaze or just to imagine that I'm happy. But that's really not what synthetic happiness is about at all. Synthetic happiness actually has to do with some really important larger principles about the way that our emotional system and the way that the reward systems of our brain really Function. And they point to important concepts that we're going to now discuss, things like the hedonic set point, for instance, or the dopamine system of anticipation of rewards versus receiving Words. Just as a brief insight into that, our anticipation of something positive oftentimes leads to greater increases in the sorts of neurochemicals that support a state of happiness and Well-being than the actual acquisition of the thing that we're trying to obtain. And this goes back to a theme I've discussed a few times before in this podcast. ([Time 1:06:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/870594dc-b275-4954-b53a-6068f771c682)) - Tags: #health