Winning the Lottery Could Ruin Your Life | The Happiness Lab Podcast

Key Takeaway

Your mind lies to you about what will make you happy. Research shows we're terrible at predicting our emotional futures—overestimating how good winning the lottery will feel and underestimating our ability to adapt to tragedy. The secret? Stop chasing the next milestone for happiness. Instead, focus on gratitude, exercise, and relationships—they deliver the same happiness boost as quadrupling your income, but without the golden handcuffs.

Episode Overview

Dr. Laurie Santos explores why we're terrible at predicting what will make us happy, examining how both windfalls like lottery winnings and tragedies like chronic illness affect our well-being far less than we expect. Through research by Nobel Prize winners and real-life stories, she reveals how our 'psychological immune system' helps us adapt to both good and bad events, suggesting that the pursuit of money and perfect circumstances is fundamentally misguided.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Winning the Lottery Could Ruin Your Life | The Happiness Lab Podcast from The Happiness Lab. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hey Happiness Lab listeners, welcome back to our Happiness Hot Take series. A whole season in which I call out the bad happiness advice that I so often hear on the internet. Today, we'll be going back to an episode from the very first season of the show to revisit the hot take that I get the most pushback about. The idea that more money doesn't necessarily make you happier, and it certainly doesn't guarantee a happy ending. But, that's okay, because as we'll learn in today's episode, happy endings are sort of overrated to begin with.

with. with. Here's this week's in case you missed it happiness hot take. I hope you enjoy it. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. These were the words uttered by Billy Bob Harrell, Jr. A man whose life had been unremarkable before a fateful event that ruined everything on June 28th, 1997. Before that worst thing ever event occurred, Billy Bob was a relatively happy, middle-aged Texan. He was a religious family man who cared deeply about his parents, his wife Barbara Jean, and their three children.

Billy Bob worked at the local Home Depot, stocking shelves with electrical equipment. It wasn't the most lucrative career, career, career, but Billy Bob and his wife found ways to make ends meet. His life, by all accounts, was relatively blessed. blessed. blessed. But, one hot summer evening, everything changed. changed. changed. Within months, his marriage had fallen apart. His beloved Barbara Jean filed for divorce. for divorce. for divorce. Billy Bob tried dating younger women, but still felt terrible. He lost almost 50 lb, making him look sickly and gaunt.

His children would later say that his personality completely changed. He switched from the happy dad they knew into a moody depressive. In May of 1999, less than 2 years after that incident, which I've not yet named, Billy Bob couldn't take it anymore. He locked himself in his master bedroom and took his own life. So, what was that worst thing ever occurrence? That awful event that destroyed Billy Bob's family and his entire life? entire life? entire life? It was this. Billy Bob won the Lotto Texas jackpot.

Good evening and welcome to the official Lotto Texas drawing. In a split second, he was $31 million richer. million richer. million richer. Now, that probably wasn't the kind of worst ever event you were imagining. When we think of tragedies, we imagine the death of a family member, some disfiguring car crash, or total financial ruin. What Billy Bob experienced is actually something many of us yearn for. He became a multi-millionaire overnight. He was suddenly rich beyond his wildest dreams. Wealthy enough to quit his job and to buy whatever he and his family needed for the rest of their lives.

But the wonderful fortune he literally prayed for is certainly didn't make him as happy as he expected. I bet you think that wouldn't be the case for you. Most of us are convinced that making tons of money would feel good. But as it turns out, we're probably wrong. And not just about money. Research shows that we suck at predicting what will make us happy, generally. generally. generally. Both when we're imagining how we'll feel when we get what we want, the good stuff like hitting the jackpot, getting the perfect job, being accepted to our dream school, school, school, but also when we envision some of the worst events a person could possibly endure.

endure. endure. Why are we so bad at making these predictions? predictions? predictions? What's going wrong? Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos. If you have an enemy, go buy them a lottery ticket.

Because on the off chance that they win, their life is going to be really messed up. up. up. I'm speaking with Clay Cockrell. He knows that the misery Billy Bob experienced after winning the lottery wasn't a one-off. Clay's a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. psychotherapist. psychotherapist. His business address is up near Columbus Circle in New York City. But more often than not, he can be found in Central Park or on the banks of the Hudson River. Hudson River. Hudson River. I do something unusual in that I walk with my clients instead of meeting in an office.

Walk and talk. I think better on my feet. my feet. my feet. His methods as a psychotherapist are novel, but Clay also works with a rather particular clientele. particular clientele. particular clientele. About 10 years ago, I started working with the super wealthy. People in the 1% of the 1%. Somehow my name got passed around this very small world as someone who doesn't bring judgment. So, if you're struggling with I can't find a place to park my yacht, I have no judgment about that. I'm going to help you.

Your problem is as real as someone else's. else's. else's. Clay finds that providing counsel to the richest of the rich generates a certain amount of hostility from the other 99.99% 99.99% 99.99% who think the mega wealthy have it pretty good. Being anxious about yacht parking doesn't play well with well, with most people, honestly. The general public, when they find out what I do, they don't have a lot of sympathy, because they bought into this idea that idea that idea that they have a certain amount of problems that are related to money, and they have this belief that if I have money, my problems will go away.

But when they find out that there's somebody out there that has a lot of money, and they still have problems, it busts that fantasy. So, this thing that they're working toward, I just need a little bit more money, it's going to solve my problems, it really challenges that belief system. Clay's right that most people believe they just need a little bit more income for their troubles to end. One study asked people, how much money would you really need to be happy? What's an income level that if you got it, you wouldn't need any more?

People who are currently earning $30,000 a year say they'd need 50K to be happier. Which makes sense. But do folks who actually earn 50K think that was all that's needed? Not really. Not really. Not really. People earning twice that much, $100,000, $100,000, $100,000, said they'd need a salary of 250K to truly be happy. This myth, more money equals happiness. So, I just got to get some more. I'll get there. I just got to get some more. We've all heard that money can't buy you happiness. happiness.

happiness. But is that really true? Two Nobel Prize-winning scientists, Danny Kahneman and Angus Deaton, teamed up to find out. They tested how annual salary in the US today affects three different measures of well-being. of well-being. of well-being. What did they find? Well, it turns out the income does affect well-being for people at lower salary levels. If you earn 10 or $20,000, then earning more will make you feel less stressed and happier. happier. happier. But that effect of income on well-being starts to level off, and it does so really quickly.

really quickly. really quickly. Based on their estimate, it is much better to earn 70,000 than 40,000. Life is a lot different, but it's not a a different from 70,000 to 150 or 250. Kahneman and Deaton found that once you're earning an annual income of $75,000, $75,000, $75,000, getting more doesn't help. You don't get less stressed or happier. Your well-being just flatlines. Even if you double or even quadruple your salary. your salary. your salary. That's what the data suggest, but it's definitely not what most of us believe.

Hey Happiness Lab listeners, this is Dr. Laurie Santos in 2026 coming to you live with an important research update. Back when we recorded this episode in 2019, the study I just described was the final word when it came to money and happiness. happiness. happiness. But as you probably know, science isn't stagnant. And in the years since we recorded this episode, there's been a few important updates. So I couldn't help but time travel in from the future to tell you about them. Update number one is, drum roll, inflation.

That $75,000 cutoff I mentioned, that was in 2010 dollars. Adjusting for inflation, the same cutoff in 2026 dollars would be more like 115,000 dollars, ish. Update number two is that there've been a few new papers on this connection between money and happiness. The first is a 2021 paper by Matt Killingsworth, which used a new and improved measure of people's well-being. One in which people were pinged at different times during the day and asked about their happiness in the moment. This new method prevents people from forgetting how they actually felt at different times, which is just better for answering how money really makes people feel.

What did Killingsworth find? Well, first his results showed the same thing that that Kahneman and Deaton study found before. People at incomes lower than $75,000 would definitely be happier if they got more money. But Killingsworth's new study also showed that there continues to be a connection between money and happiness even at higher incomes. But the effect he found is a really, really tiny. Ergo, more money after a certain level might make you a tiny bit happier, but definitely not as happy as you think. But more recently in 2023, there was an even cooler paper that tested the same question.

And that paper involved a tag team between Matt Killingsworth, the researcher I just mentioned who did the 2021 paper, and Danny Kahneman, the guy who did the original paper that Killingsworth had kind of shown was wrong. wrong. wrong. In research, this is what's known as an adversarial collaboration. Two people who disagree about a set of findings agree to come together to do one final paper that's going to resolve the disagreement for good. And that's what Kahneman and Killingsworth did. They went back to Kahneman's original data and broke it down by happy and not so happy people.

And what they found is pretty cool. All people at lower levels of income get happier as their income rises. But after a certain level, that slope looks different for happy and not so happy people. people. people. For not so happy people, more money after $100,000 has no effect on your happiness. happiness. happiness. But if you're already happy, then getting more money after $100,000 actually seems to make you a tiny bit happier. But even for these already happy people, the size of that effect is still really, really tiny.

So, what should we conclude from this new work? Well, if you're not so happy, then getting more money after $100,000 is probably not going to help. If you're already pretty happy, then getting lots more money might make you a teeny, teeny, tiny bit happier. And the emphasis should be on the teeny, teeny, tiny part. Because even quadrupling your income, the best you'll get is about five points on a 100-point happiness scale. happiness scale. happiness scale. This is about the same level of happiness boost that you could get by scribbling in a gratitude journal once a week or exercising an extra 20 minutes.

It's a super small effect for something as huge as quadrupling your income. So, does more money really make us happier? After a certain income level, the answer seems to be not really, and definitely not as much as we think. Okay, enough nerding out about new science. Back to our originally scheduled episode. scheduled episode. scheduled episode. When I first got out of grad school, I made $14,000 a year and I was, "Wow, this is amazing." So, you begin to think, "Okay, there's a correlation here. More money equals a better life." And that keeps working until you get to around 75, 80,000 dollars and your basic needs are met.

But, you've learned a lesson. More money incrementally is going to make you happier and your life easier. But, you start getting more and more money and it's money and more and more money and it's not working like it used to when I went from 14 to 35. I just need to work a little harder and get up to 250. Our intuition that more money equals more happiness means we don't realize the host of problems that come with being incredibly rich. But, Clay has seen these problems first hand in his many clients.

They struggle. They're not sleeping at night. They don't have good relationships. relationships. relationships. One of the most common problems Clay sees is guilt. The wealthy also buy into the idea that money brings happiness. That cognitive dissonance of being so rich, yet so sad, can pitch them into emotional turmoil. emotional turmoil. emotional turmoil. My life isn't perfect, but it should be. I shouldn't complain. I shouldn't seek psychotherapy to help me deal with my problems because I really shouldn't have them. them. them. And like Billy Bob Harrell after hitting the jackpot, the rich often struggle in their close relations.

It's hard to trust because they've been burned a lot. Particularly in romantic relationships. And then you get into prenuptial agreements and are you only getting into this relationship because I'm going to buy you nice things? Even casual friendships can be hard to maintain. maintain. maintain. They call it the 1% for a reason. There's not a lot of people out there that have this kind of money. So, a majority of the population, on a fundamental level, you're not going to be able to relate to. There's a a of isolation.

Are you being my friend because of my bank account? If we go out to lunch, am I just expected to pick up the tab? When you're talking about your weekend, I had this one client that got to be friends at the local gym, and that weekend he just happened to have taken his private jet to Paris to try out this new restaurant. So, how do you talk about that without it feel like you're rubbing your wealth in someone's face? But the biggest problem Clay sees is that the rich feel trapped.

For most problems we encounter in life, there are painful but culturally acceptable solutions. acceptable solutions. acceptable solutions. If you're in a bad relationship, you can pack your bags and leave. You hate your job? So, quit. But if you're loaded and miserable about it, it, it, you're not going to give it away. You're too attached to it. It gives too much freedom. So, you So, you're trapped. The The golden handcuffs. So, I have a lot of people who say, "I can't get rid of it because it's amazing.

It's great. But God, there's so much unhappiness and isolation and guilt that comes along with having this." Ironically, the rich then fall prey to the same bias we do. Maybe the problem isn't the money. Maybe it's just that they need a little bit more. more. more. I've worked with people who've had $50 million million million and they say, "Yeah, but I really [sighs] [sighs] [sighs] I can't do everything that I want. There's this wonderful painting that would really eat into my savings." This one guy had $500 million, but had a sense that once I hit that billion, billion, billion, that's when things really change.

And you think, you think, you think, "That's That's crazy. You have more money than you could possibly spend." possibly spend." possibly spend." But they're searching for happiness, and people don't believe me, and then I understand. It's hard It was hard for me to think that. But after living in this world, working with these people, I understand money is not going to buy you happiness. So, be careful what you wish for. Be careful what you wish for. That's a warning many of us have heard before. before.

before. But, it fits with a growing body of research showing that nearly every amazing thing in life, from tons of money to an amazing house to the perfect grades, grades, grades, those things simply won't make us as happy as we predict they will. Almost all of us believe that we would be happy if we could just get what we want and the only impediment to our happiness is that we can't always get what we want. This is Dan Gilbert. He wrote one of my favorite books on human psychology.

It's called Stumbling on Happiness. It turns out that when people get exactly what they want, they're not always happy. When they get the opposite of what they what they wanted, they often are. That's a little bit of a mystery. It's kind of mystery that attracts psychologists. attracts psychologists. attracts psychologists. This puzzle, as Dan's research over the last two decades has shown, stems from one of our most exceptional cognitive faculties, our unique ability to run mental simulations of the future. This is a brand new faculty that is wired into the human brain.

No other animal can do anything vaguely like it. No chimpanzee has ever thought about whether it's going to look good in a bathing suit when it retires. But, But, But, these brand new abilities are still in beta testing. In a sense, we have uh an ability you might call prospection 1.0 and uh it's still being worked on, so it's got bugs. One of the bugs in prospection 1.0, that ability we have to plan for the future, is that your brain can't simulate all the parts of a given event.

When you're imagining things unfolding over time, you can't imagine them unfolding in real time, can you? If you could, then somebody would say, "Imagine moving to Chicago." and you'd have to spend 4 months imagining moving to Chicago cuz that's how long it actually takes. So, one of the wonderful things about simulation is it gives you a quick sketch and then it runs it at hyper speed. But, that's also one of its flaws because a quick sketch often lacks important details and when things run at hyper speed, they run right over the details that often matter.

We miss the critical details of almost any good event we try to simulate. But let's look in more detail at the example we started with earlier, getting rich beyond our wildest dreams. What kinds of details do say lottery players miss when they think about winning all that cash? If you close your eyes and imagine winning the lottery, most of us imagine ourselves in a bathtub full of money or on a yacht or quitting our job, buying a big house, all the things we can get with money.

You're not thinking about all the things you're going to lose. It's very unlikely you're going to continue all the same social relationships you have with people who need money but don't have any. You're underestimating the number of people and relatives that will come out of the woodwork begging you to help them over and over. You'll fail to realize that the social groups to which you would now like to belong don't want to have anything to do with you cuz you got your money the wrong way, on and on and on.

None of that is in our mental simulation of the future. Dan has shown there's a nasty consequence to missing these important details. It means our emotional predictions of how these events will feel are way off track. Would you rather have a weekend in Paris or gum surgery is kind of a one-item IQ test and almost everybody gets that right. But what they don't realize is that the weekend in Paris won't be as good as they think it will be and the good feelings won't last as long as they expect.

The same is true, thankfully, for the gum surgery. These two mispredictions, being wrong about how intense an event will feel and how long we'll feel that way, is what Dan has christened impact bias. In one famous study, he asked young professors at the University of Texas to forecast how they'd feel when they got tenure, that permanent position that all new faculty crave. Dan tested people's predictions using a seven-point happiness scale. Most professors thought they'd be really happy if they got tenure, around a six out of seven on that scale.

But, how did professors actually feel when they heard good news? good news? good news? They reported only being a five out of seven. seven. seven. Dan also tested what happened to professors who got bad news. The ones who found out they didn't get tenure. They assumed they'd be a 3.4 out of seven on that happiness scale. But, in reality, actual professors who got denied tenure were only a 4.7 on average. average. average. They felt a whole point better than anyone expected. anyone expected. anyone expected. I see a similar misprediction all the time in my college students.

At Yale, students are convinced they'll be ecstatic if they get a good grade and are sure they'll feel devastated if they do badly. do badly. do badly. Psychologists have now seen the same pattern in many walks of life. Lovers predict they'll take a long time to recover from a sad breakup, but bounce back far quicker. Student drivers believe they'll be devastated if they fail to get their license, but aren't as sad walking out of the DMV empty-handed as they think. Same is true for job applicants who are passed over, and even patients guessing how they'll feel about a positive or negative HIV diagnosis.

Put simply, Put simply, Put simply, the good things won't be as good, the bad things won't be as bad as your mind leads you to believe. Dan has shown that this pattern stems from yet another way our minds lie to us. us. us. We don't notice that we have a tendency to get used to stuff. Even when something feels amazing at first, we can't enjoy it forever. This is a phenomenon that psychologists call hedonic adaptation. You can't be really, really happy endlessly all the time or your emotional system isn't doing its job.

It has to come back to baseline so it can once again guide you to the next good thing that you as an organism ought to be doing. doing. doing. Hedonic adaptation means that after a while, we tend to go back to a baseline level of emotional satisfaction. My students are happy for a while after getting a perfect grade, but after a day or so, they just go back to their usual set point level of happiness. The good and bad events don't move us up or down for as long as we think.

So, it's just a hard and fast truth that you can't stay at 10 forever and ever and ever. and ever. and ever. People mistakenly think they can. They think happiness is a place that if they could get to it, they could build a house and live there their entire lives. It's only a vacation destination. It's a place you can visit more and more often if you do the right things, and you can stay longer and longer, but you can't stay forever. This is an important thing to know because people often feel that if their happiness has come back to baseline after something wonderful has happened, something's wrong.

Why didn't this marriage, this child, this promotion give me the eternal happiness I was seeking? Because there is no such thing as eternal happiness. So, happily ever after is just not psychologically realizable. psychologically realizable. psychologically realizable. Happily ever after is only true if you have 3 minutes to live. But this process also has an important upside. We get used to all the bad stuff, too. That horrible breakup, the chronic illness, that worst job with the lower salary. salary. salary. As we hedonically adapt to these things, they gradually start to distress us less and less.

The problem is, we don't realize it. realize it. realize it. Despite the fact that 2 months prior, I was sitting in my bed crying my eyes out, like wishing I would die. It just shows that like life goes on. It's not the end of the world. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. Basically, I remember I was on Tinder. Cuz all these great stories start on Tinder. Tinder. Tinder. Rafaela Guns is telling me how she met the man of her dreams. It was just super beautiful beautiful guy.

Blue eyes, full lips. And how he changed her life forever. I really liked him. I was so into him. After chatting with him for a while on Tinder, Rafaela agreed to a first date. Something really low-key. The couple just walked around getting to know each other. They didn't even kiss. But things picked up after that. We were hanging out for hours and hours and we decided to go back up to my neighborhood neighborhood neighborhood so we could sit by the river, by the Hudson River, cuz it's like super pretty to just watch the sunset over there.

And we ended up having sex. And I thought I did everything right. Like I carried condoms around. In my mind, I was doing everything right. But Rafaela was about to hear the sort of news that nobody wants to hear. The next day, he sort of came down with what he thought was like a cold or something. He had like a sore throat and he was feeling very fatigued. And And And [sighs] [sighs] [sighs] then a couple days later I started coming down with the same thing.

Her beautiful boy with the blue eyes was the first to seek medical advice. He sent a text. I went to the doctor and they think all this might be a sign of herpes. And so like that was a weird text message. So I go into urgent care crying and I'm like, I need a herpes test. Rafaela got her official diagnosis soon after. after. after. Those first few days I remember I was just sitting in bed crying. You know, I like thought my life was over. I wanted to die.

It was the worst thing in the world. Like not only was I like physically uncomfortable, but how am I going to date someone? How's anyone going to love me? In addition to being in physical pain with red bumps on her genitals, she was also in emotional pain. Her dream guy dropped her in a flash. Yeah, he was like, "Oh, this changed my vibe on you." He was like very very distant. I thought like, "Okay, we both have this thing. Like we can go through it together and sort of like learn about it together and figure this out together." But he was very much sort of like in it for himself.

I I felt sort of of of I don't know if betrayed is the right word, but that's the word that's coming to my mind. Rafaela didn't only feel betrayed by the man who gave her herpes and disappeared. Her diagnosis also freaked out the people closest to her. She was like one of my oldest friends. But [snorts] then when I confided in her when I'm like sitting on my bed crying cuz I have all these itchy red bumps and um you know, the guy is ignoring me now.

Um changed. She was like, I just think you know, it'd be better for my own sanity if you used toilet seat covers when you were here and you know, if you used hand sanitizer a lot and this and that. So, that was really hurtful. I mean, this was one of your oldest friends. friends. friends. Yeah. This was someone I've known since we were in diapers. And she's not supporting you for what I It sounds like one of the most scary times in my life, yeah. That just sounds awful.

And that So, that was horrible. Let's take a second to predict how you would feel in Rafaela's situation. You contracted an incurable and highly stigmatized disease. Your romantic partner has ditched you and some of your oldest friends are shunning you because of what happened. Would you describe all of this overall as a good thing? As a positive change in your life? As a present from the universe? Because that's how Rafaela sees it. She even wrote an article for ravishly.com, which she titled Getting Herpes was a gift.

gift. gift. Some people were like, what the Like, how is this a gift? Like, almost angry. And like calling me like delusional, all these sorts of things. Like, how would you possibly think that's a gift? So, why is it a gift? It's a gift because I'm more knowledgeable. Um it's a gift because I've been able to write things, like that article that helps people. Rafaela says all the fallout from her diagnosis has given her insight into the people who really matter. It's a strong litmus test for those who are actually going to be there for her.

If a friend can't accept all of you, warts and all, pun intended, they're they're not really your friend. They're fair-weather friends, you know? But it also gave Rafaela a new filter for her dating life. It saved her time figuring out which guys were worth her time and which guys just didn't get it. He said some dumb about, "Oh, am I going to get it if I kiss you?" And I'm like, "No, it's on my vagina." Do you think, you know, would you change anything? Would you do it?

I mean, it sounds like you learned so much from this. Like, would you keep it? Would Would you do it over again? I'd keep it. First of all, as much of a dick as he was, he was really hot, really hot, and the sex was really good. So, I don't regret that. Secondly, Secondly, Secondly, it it helped me in my dating life, I feel. A few months after I was diagnosed, I met my current boyfriend, who we've been together for like 3 years, and I told him right away, and he was fine with it.

Um, so, that was nice to know. That's like, especially when you're when you contract something like herpes, you tend to think like, "Oh, my life's over. No one's ever going to want to sleep with me again. No one's ever going to want to date me again. I'm never going to get married, this and that." But it was fine. Like, there are people that have much, much worse problems than little [clears throat] red bumps. bumps. bumps. Getting herpes was much, much better than Rafaela might have predicted.

predicted. predicted. And that kind of adaptation to adversity is something Dan Gilbert has found over and over again. What we find consistently is that in the face of negative events, people don't feel as bad as they themselves expected to. to. to. Although we're pretty bad at predicting how we'll feel after a good event, like winning the lottery, Dan has observed we're worse at predicting how we'll feel after a bad event, losing a friend, failing to get a job, or even getting herpes. getting herpes. getting herpes.

Our impact bias is even bigger when we make predictions about negative life circumstances, because we're prone to overcome bad events more quickly than we think. think. think. One of the things we fail to do when we mentally simulate is we fail to consider adaptation. We are remarkably adaptive animal. We have been born and bred to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and soldier on when the going gets tough, we get going. get going. get going. Dan calls this capacity to overcome adversity our psychological immune system.

system. system. Just as our physical immune system kicks in when we get sick, our psychological immune system turns on when we're in mental distress. mental distress. mental distress. And our psychological immune system works really, really well. As soon as we start to feel bad, our mind deploys a whole host of mental defenses. If you've ever had a friend experience a breakup, you know at first they're really unhappy and then pretty quickly they get around to rationalizing, "Oh, she was never really right for me. This is really a chance for me to start my life over.

I don't think we had that much in common in the first place. She didn't like my mother." When you mentally simulate a breakup, you mentally simulate the anguish, but you never mentally simulate the rationalizations. rationalizations. rationalizations. What's amazing about all those rationalizations though, is that the happiness we get from rationalizing a bad event bad event bad event is just as real as the happiness we get from something objectively good. Well, there's no doubt that when people rationalize everybody around them feels that they found some sort of phony and substandard form of happiness.

I don't believe that for a minute. You know, the happiness you get when the person you love says yes to the marriage proposal isn't qualitatively different than the kind you produce for yourself when she says no. There's absolutely no data that I know of to suggest that it's an inferior form of happiness and indeed in some cases it can be more long-lasting. Raphael's misery about contracting herpes was very deep and very real. But her misery was also short-lived. But what about situations that are so horrible there's no way a person can carry on normally?

What about events so profound and so awful that they change our lives forever? forever? forever? After the break, we'll hear about the true power of our psychological immune system. system. system. How it can transform the most terrible incidents a human can endure into a form of joy we'd never expect? 19 years old, I'm in this Humvee. I'm thinking I'm going to die. It felt good to just kind of just close my eyes and just kind of let it happen. The Happiness Lab will return in a moment.

I joined as an infantryman because I wanted to wanted to wanted to I wanted to be in the action. J.R. Martinez had just finished high school in a small town in the South, the only son of a single mother from El Salvador. Salvador. Salvador. After graduation, he decided to enlist in the army. It was just after 9/11 and he had a few predictions about how things would go. You know, my thought process was 3 years. years. years. I would be in it, I would give back to this country, it would give me an opportunity to travel, to get more discipline, it would give me an opportunity to get money for college, and I remember one of my sergeants, you know, one day sitting down and talking to me and telling me that I needed to be prepared because we were going to be deploying sometime soon.

And my response to him was, "I'm not going anywhere yet. I just got out of basic training." basic training." basic training." Very naive of me and he was absolutely correct and right when the sense of where 2 months later I was on a plane with the rest of the unit heading over to the Middle East going to war. J.R. was part of the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was already a tough transition for a 19-year-old 19-year-old 19-year-old and within weeks, tragedy struck. Here we were, you know, a few days shy of a month of being in Iraq and escorting the convoy through a city called Karbala when the front left tire of the Humvee that I was driving ran over a roadside bomb.

The blast ripped through the entire truck and everything it was carrying. The ammo, spare fuel, and other explosives. It was a fireball. There was three other soldiers in the vehicle with me. They all got thrown out of the vehicle, but I was trapped inside. inside. inside. And within a matter of seconds, this Humvee was engulfed in flames and I was completely conscious. completely conscious. completely conscious. JR was pinned inside the burning truck for several minutes. He described screaming as he watched the skin on his hands melting.

Eventually, he was pulled from the vehicle, but the damage was done. In addition to broken ribs and a lacerated liver, he had third-degree burns over his entire body. And he'd been gulping flames into his lungs through the whole ordeal. He was immediately medevac'd, first to Europe, and then to the US Army Burn Center in San Antonio, Texas. I remember coming out of my medical induced coma induced coma induced coma uh 3 weeks later and my doctor essentially just kind of laying out you know, all the cards and saying this is the circumstance.

You can't feed yourself, you can't walk, you can't sit up, you can't go to the bathroom by yourself. They also told me that I would no longer be able to remain in the United States Army, which was incredibly difficult and challenging. When this happened, you were 19 and you spent like the next 3 years in I turned 20, 21, 22 in the hospital. That's amazing. And just to be clear, how much just to get 34% of my body was burned and majority of that was third degree.

So, it consisted of for the listeners that can't see me, it consisted of my head, my face, my arms, my hands, portion of my back, portion of my legs. There's no way to really fully describe the pain unless you've been through it. But, what's incredible about being a burn survivor, burn patient at the time, is that the part of your body that isn't burned still hurts because they usually use the areas of your body that are not scarred as skin to do skin grafts. And usually the a donor site is is more painful than the actual injury itself.

But, JR's physical pain was nothing compared to his emotional anguish. When he enlisted, he'd been something of a local heartthrob. You know, it's funny cuz growing up I always heard, you know, from like my mom's friends, you know, all these women, you know, would say, "Oh my god, he's so cute. He's so this. He's so that." And so I grew up just thinking like that's what I am. I'm, you know, no one ever said he has an amazing personality. He's funny. He's He's whatever, articulate. Nothing.

It was cute. cute. cute. And so suddenly [snorts] I look at myself and I'm like, that's not cute what I see in the mirror. It's not. It's not. It's not. And that person that I see, I do not recognize. I have no relationship with that individual. that individual. that individual. The old JR had died. And as you can imagine, imagine, imagine, I fell into a deep dark place of of of I was depressed. I was angry. I was a resentful. resentful. resentful. I was a victim in every sense of the word.

word. word. Deep burns and thick scars over his entire body. entire body. entire body. Dozens of surgeries and years of his young life wasted in the hospital. Plus the permanent loss of his good looks and his military career. Those are some of the most profound and tragic events a person can endure. But how does JR think about all these awful events today? I can tell you right now that what happened to me is a blessing. That's right. As a blessing. Considering the fact that I was trapped inside of a burning truck for 5 minutes, I'm fortunate to only have what I have.

I have a lot of friends and I know a lot of people that unfortunately have missing limbs or or you know, have are more scarred, you know, or disfigured, you know, so I in that sense I'm incredibly fortunate. incredibly fortunate. incredibly fortunate. It's so cool to hear you say that you're incredibly fortunate cuz again, I think people who just heard the story, you know, know, know, guys Humvee explodes, he spends, you know, a decent chunk of his 20s in the hospital having major major surgeries, lives with scars for the rest of his life, and then you're saying, "I'm fortunate.

Like I'm the lucky one." Yeah. Well, I am because you know, I I I I think about how I I'm blessed to have a second chance at life. I don't want to take this second chance for granted. for granted. for granted. And J.R. did take every opportunity that came his way. Being a badly injured vet opened doors that J.R. never dreamed of. He became a mentor for other burn victims, which led to a few lucrative speaking gigs. Telling his story so openly built up J.R.'s confidence.

So much so that when a friend casually mentioned that J.R. should try out for an acting job, he decided to go for it. I I became an actor on a soap opera All My Children and that led Dancing with the Stars to ask me to be on the show and then I acted in some other shows after that and I wrote a book about my life and my mother's life and my family's life and it became a New York Times best-seller. I mean, People magazine put me on the cover.

Because of these scars, I have this incredible ability to get people's attention. attention. attention. The 15 seconds of curiosity, right? Like who is that? What happened to him? Those 15 seconds of curiosity that people have, it's my job, mine, to take that 15 seconds and turn it into 30 seconds, into 45, into 60 seconds, into 5 minutes, 10 minutes, a lifetime of actual educated dialogue. This is who I am. Everything I thought I wanted in life, you know, I wanted to be a fresh professional football player and have fame and have all this money and be able to do all these things.

Like if I would have accomplished those things, would I be as happy as I am now? Would you change anything? Would you do it over differently? No, I wouldn't change anything. I I 100% mean that. But you wouldn't change like the explosion, the scars, the surgery. You'd keep all of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because Because Because the life I have, I mean, the beautiful wife and a beautiful daughter and the the beautiful life that I've created for myself. I mean, gosh, I mean, I'm blessed. With bad events, we often don't realize that some good can come out of them.

Dan Gilbert is unsurprised that people like JR see more positive than negatives, even in the worst of circumstances. He's seen it time and again in his work on hedonic adaptation. hedonic adaptation. hedonic adaptation. Startlingly, if you ask people who've lost a child, which is the single worst event that people can imagine experiencing, and indeed it is one of the worst events people can actually experience. If you ask people who've lost a child, they never say, "Gee, I'm glad that happened." But if you ask them to name the good and the bad things that have come from it, they tend to name more good than bad things.

Now, that's a very stunning fact. That we should just sit back and marvel at the possibility that the worst thing in the world could happen to us, and probably more good than bad will come out of it. There are awful events that will cause you to feel pain and hurt and loss, but we're fighters. When comes to shove, we are really resilient. The problem is we don't realize that. I think if you understand the power of the psychological immune system, our remarkable ability to rationalize in the face of adversity, it makes you braver.

You realize that you will make mistakes and it will be okay. I think there's a lesson there for all of us. After making this episode, I've become even more convinced about that lesson. Hedonic adaptation means the lows of life aren't going to be as awful as you imagine, just as the highs will be more temporary than you hope. As a psychologist, I already knew that winning the lottery and other great circumstances don't bring lasting happiness. lasting happiness. lasting happiness. But honestly, I often forget about the flip side.

flip side. flip side. So I'm going to make a conscious effort to be a bit braver, to stop worrying so much, to remember that I have a kind of emotional superpower. One that can get me through the worst of circumstances. circumstances. circumstances. And I hope you'll do the same. Because even though your mind might tell you otherwise, otherwise, otherwise, joy doesn't come from everything in life working out perfectly. It comes from adopting better habits and better behaviors. better behaviors. better behaviors. All strategies we'll be discussing in coming episodes of The Happiness Lab with me, Dr.

Laurie Santos. If you enjoyed the show, I'd be super grateful if you could spread the word by leaving a rating and a review. It really does help other listeners find us. And don't forget to tell your friends. If you want to learn more about the science you heard on the show, then check out our website happinesslab.fm. You can also sign up for our newsletter to get exclusive content. The Happiness Lab is co-written and produced by Ryan Dilley. The show is mixed and mastered by Evan Viola and edited by Julia Barton.

Fact checking by Joseph Friedman. And our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Mia Lobel, Carley Migliori, Heather Fain, Maggie Taylor, Maya Koenig, and Jacob Weisberg. The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Dr. Laurie Santos.