All The Stress And Happiness Tips In One

oHey Hubermanner, do you want to save time?

Here’s a collection of all the mental health tips from the podcast in one go.

These are not must-do protocols. These are reminders.

Happy activities. These are activities you can do in your time off. They’re like a workout class. Each is a different technique but they all improve health. These tools are the same for mental health.

1. Listen to music (music episode)

2. Social connection

   a. Deep connection: Go beyond surface-level talk and see where you have chemistry. Get physical touch.

   b. Shallow connection: Talk to the waiters, receptionists, and people in line. Make eye contact.

3. Pet pets (happiness episode)

4. Give without expecting back: Send gifts. Pay $5 for dessert which feels for 2 seconds or get it for a friend and make them feel good for an entire day? (gratitude episode)

5. Do fun things: Humans like being creative (creativity episode).

6. Meditate/do hypnosis: Open YouTube and try anything. (mediation and David Spiegel)

7. Journal: Write about the good and the bad. (Paul Conti episode)

8. Go outside (not just in the morning): Sun is good for mood. Imagine someone living his whole life outside versus the other living inside. Who is happier? (Light episode, pain tolerance).

9. Do something hard. The pleasure-pain balance. When you feel pain, it is followed by pleasure. (Anna Lembke episode)

10. Cold showers, exercise, light, etc.

Anti-happy activities. These are like the sugars and drugs for physical health. Better to be avoided.

1. Don't Keep All Your Options Open: It overwhelms you and makes you doubt yourself too much. Say no to stuff. (Happiness episode)

2. Don't Focus on Income: Studies showed that there’s no correlation between happiness and income after reaching $75k/year in the US. Probably less in other places. (Happiness episode)

3. Don't Use Social Media: Bad for eyes, bad for brain, bad for thoughts. (ADHD and Tim Ferriss episodes)

4. Don't Set High Expectations: If it’s too high, nothing will ever satisfy you. (Sugar episode)

5. Don't Follow the News: Not to sound like a grandpa but… I lived in warzones. Bombs blew up right next to my house.

6. Don't Repeat Too Much: You get dopamine from novelty. If you don’t like your job, it doesn’t mean you don’t like your job. You just got bored a bit. Change things up. (Dopamine episode)

7. Don't Compare Yourself to Others: (Adam Grant episode)

8. Don't Mind Wander: When your brain never shuts up. When you catch yourself overthinking, decide to think of one thing. (happiness episode)

9. Don't Be Around Bad People: “The worst thing for someone’s nervous system can sometimes be someone else’s nervous system.” (Lisa Feldman Barrett)

10. Don't Have Bad Sleep, Drugs, Alcohol, Addiction, etc.

How to deal with stress activities. These are protocols you can do when you are already feeling stressed. They play with your neurochemicals to change your state from negative to positive.

1. Pause. When the day is out of control. (Elissa Eppel episode)

2. When you’re done with something, take 2-4 minutes of nothing to transition between tasks (task switching AMA).

3. Dilate gaze: When your eyes relax, your brain relaxes. (Vision episode)

4. Physio sighs: Double inhale then exhale. (Stress episode)

5. Expect the stress so you accept it. Knowing when the stress will occur, makes it less stressful. (Robert Sapolsky episode)

6. Reframe the stress as fuel for performance (Alia Crum episode)

More (non-Huberman) insights.

1. Find the things you hate doing, and stop them. Sounds simple but we never do it. Do you get bothered by the city noise every day and complain about it? Get good headphones. Do you have a mental crisis every time you want to do a phone call? Get rid of friends :), kidding, look for ways to reach out online.

2. The happiest person on earth has unhappy moments. Why do you expect to be happy all the time? Bad days are expected. See it like the weather. There are sunny days and there are rainy days. We shouldn’t label rainy as ‘bad’. It just is. A bad day is not bad. It’s just part of the process.

3. It’s a repetition game. If you want to practice free throws, you just keep shooting. Same for your thoughts. You slowly replace the biases with good ones. Don’t beat yourself up in the process.

These pretty much sum up the podcast tips for happiness.

Btw, in case you didn’t know, Huberman has episodes about mental illnesses like Bipolar, Autism, Depression, and Addiction. And another section for emotional states like Fear, Trauma, Procrastination, etc.

You can also check out these places to learn more ideas.

• Happiness Lab Podcast: Laurie Santos, the Well-being expert at Yale, shares her insights and invites guests on specific topics.

• Hidden Brain Podcast: Fun psychology to listen to

• Julie Smith: A bit on the wishy-washy side but she has some good analogies and tips

• Science of Well-being Course. Great course but it takes a while. In summary: miswanting, hedonic adaptation, we’re bad at predicting things, time affluence (feeling you have enough time). Tools: social connection, sleep, exercise, gratitude, meditation, kindness.

I know these are a lot of ideas. You’re not expected to do all of them. Just use them when necessary. I try to not overwhelm you by keeping it one tip per day. This is your cheat sheet to refer back to.

And just so you don’t forget, Reader.

Act like the generative, purposeful version of you. Stay on the right track.