The Dark Side of Self-Care: Why Hyper-Focus Is Making You Miserable

Summary

The Dan Buettner Podcast

Episode: The Dark Side of Self-Care: Why Hyper-Focus Is Making You Miserable

Host: Dan Buettner
Guest: Dr. Samantha Boardman, Psychiatrist and Positive Psychology Expert
Date: July 23, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this rich, thought-provoking episode, Dan Buettner and Dr. Samantha Boardman challenge common self-care and happiness advice echoed throughout social media and modern psychology. Drawing on Boardman’s expertise in psychiatry and positive psychology, the conversation unpacks how hyper-focus on the self and relentless rumination can make people less happy, and why connection, action, and generosity are fundamental to wellbeing. The episode is packed with practical takeaways, myths debunked, and memorable anecdotes focusing on relationships, friendship, failure, therapy, and how to cultivate true happiness.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Biggest Myth About Happiness (01:03)

• Self-focus is Overrated: Dr. Boardman highlights the pervasive myth that “happiness comes from within,” emphasizing that social media constantly recycles the idea that you need to “work on yourself” to be happy. She argues that this can be counterproductive:
  • “I think self focus has hijacked a lot of these avenues for happiness.” – Boardman (01:56)
• Relationships Drive Happiness: True happiness, according to Boardman, comes from the quality of our relationships, not endless self-exploration.

2. Rethinking Therapy: Moving Beyond Rumination (03:40, 06:48)

• From Pathology to Strengths: Boardman reflects on her training to “dial down misery” but notes she wasn’t initially taught to help patients find meaning, strength, or vitality.
• Rumination Trap: Merely talking about problems repeatedly is called “rumination,” which can make problems seem worse rather than better. Action is important.
  • “If you feel like you’ve had this conversation before ... then you’re ruminating.” – Boardman (07:05)
  • “What’s your plan? What are you gonna do about it?” – Boardman (07:31)

3. The Value of Agency and Action (05:08, 08:19)

• “The idea that happiness is all in your head. No, it's in the actions you take.” – Boardman (06:04)
• Over-pathologizing normal ups and downs leads to avoidance of necessary resilience-building stress.

4. Therapy Culture: The “Trauma Plot” & Agency (08:19)

• The cultural obsession with tracing problems to childhood trauma (the “trauma plot”) undermines present agency and growth.
  • “You are not who you were, you are like who you choose to be.” – Boardman (08:51)
• Endless focus on the past can paralyze people in grievance-collecting.

5. Reframing Failure (09:08–12:19)

• Normalize & Learn from Failure: Cultural aversion to failure leads to perfectionism and anxiety. Boardman advocates creating a “failure resume.”
  • “If you’re not failing, you’re not trying.” – Boardman (11:32)
  • “We should be so proud of those things where we failed.” – Boardman (10:49)

6. Humility, Curiosity, & Good Conversation (13:46–16:11; 20:15–23:14)

• Humility as a Happiness Tool: Drawing from Denmark’s “Jante Law,” Dan notes that humility builds stronger social bonds.
• The Power of Curiosity: Rather than focusing on yourself in conversation, ask meaningful questions to unlock connection.
  • “Everybody knows something you don’t. There’s no such thing as a boring person.” – Boardman (13:52)
• Active Listening: Practicing genuine curiosity and active listening strengthens connections, even with strangers.

7. Why Relationships Matter More Than Ever (28:11–32:05)

• Friendship is Fundamental: Both lament the decline of deep friendships, especially for adults and couples.
  • “If you don’t have other friends, I worry about this ... you need good friends.” – Boardman (29:07)
• Make real-life connections a non-negotiable commitment—calendaring walks or activities as you would any vital appointment.

8. Counterculture Happiness Wisdom (33:07–34:30)

• The expectation to be “happy all the time” is false and can erode wellbeing.
• Emotions are complex; embrace "emo-diversity"—it’s normal to feel multiple, even conflicting, emotions at once.

9. Environment Trumps Willpower (36:01–41:35)

• “Happiness does not come from within... most of our happiness comes from our environment.” – Buettner (36:01)
• Moving to a happier environment, even within the same country, can double happiness levels.
• Curate your social circle: add healthy, uplifting friends (Moai concept).

10. Giving Back: The Antidote to Anxiety & Depression (53:55–57:21)

• Other-Focus & Volunteering: The most effective antidote to anxiety is doing something for someone else.
  • “Do something for someone else.” – Boardman (53:55)
• Norway’s “Dugna” group volunteering and studies on “mattering” demonstrate the deep value of adding value to others’ lives.
  • “We’ve forgotten about the joy of adding value to somebody else’s life.” – Boardman (55:56)
• “Our happiness increases when we’re engaged in pro-social behaviors, especially in groups” – Buettner/Boardman (56:09–57:21)

11. Rethinking Treatment: When & How to Use Medication (58:31–66:11)

• Medication can be life-saving but should not be the first or only line of treatment.
• Assess and adjust lifestyle (sleep, movement, social connection, nutrition) as first steps.
• A Balanced Approach: Prescribe medication thoughtfully, revisit necessity often, and don’t see it as a life sentence.
  • “Lifestyle changes are as important as any pill I give you.” – Boardman (64:45)

12. The Limits of Therapy & The Problem of "Mining for Misery" (73:53–76:32)

• Therapy alone is not a guarantee for happiness—especially if it centers on endless self-focus and complaint.
• Shift from “How are you, really?” (an expectation of misery) to acknowledging strength, practicing gratitude, and focusing on others.
  • “Mining for misery is becoming our social common ground.” – Boardman (76:31)

13. Rapid-Fire Practical Takeaways (72:57–73:26)

• Dr. Boardman’s Three Tips for Happiness:
  1. “Do something for someone else.”
  2. “Invest in your relationships.”
  3. “Stop thinking, start doing.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Relationships v. Self-Focus:
  • “Happiness is a byproduct of a life well-lived. It’s in the actions you take.” – Boardman (06:04)
• On Failure:
  • “If you’re not failing, you’re not trying.” – Boardman (11:32)
• On Therapy & Agency:
  • “You are not who you were, you are like who you choose to be.” – Boardman (08:51)
• On Anxiety:
  • “The best thing you can do to relieve anxiety is do something for someone else.” – Boardman (53:55)
• On Environmental Influence:
  • “Moving to a happier environment can double your happiness within a year.” – Buettner (36:01)
• On Friends & Happiness:
  • “Your friends make your romantic relationship better in every way.” – Boardman (32:05)
• On Rethinking Misery as Social Currency:
  • “Mining for misery is becoming our common ground.” – Boardman (76:31)

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Timestamps for Key Sections

• Biggest Happiness Myth Busted: 01:03–02:32
• Rethinking Therapy & Rumination: 03:40–08:00
• The Agency Shift/Moving Away From the Trauma Plot: 08:19–09:08
• Learning from Failure / Failure Resume: 09:08–12:19
• Humility, Curiosity, & Connection: 13:46–16:11, 20:15–23:14
• Maintaining and Making Friends in Adulthood: 28:11–32:05
• Emotional Nuance & Myths: 34:30–35:43
• Environment and Happiness: 36:01–41:35
• Giving Back for Wellbeing: 53:55–57:21
• When (and When Not) to Medicate: 58:31–66:11
• Therapy’s Limits & Social “Mining for Misery”: 73:53–76:32
• Actionable Advice Wrap-Up: 72:57–73:26

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Conclusion

Dr. Samantha Boardman’s core message: Lasting happiness does not come from endless self-focus, self-improvement rituals, or from relying solely on therapy. Instead, it is built through genuine social connection, purposeful action, resilience, humility, and above all, focusing on others and nurturing relationships. The practical, research-backed wisdom in this episode serves as a reminder: the fundamental tools for a fulfilling life cost nothing but your attention and effort.

Dan’s summary:
“You have every remedy and drug available to you, but you prescribe fundamentally human, accessible-to-everybody pieces of advice. And I just love that. And by the way, marketers can’t sell you any of those. They’re free.” – Dan Buettner (73:26)

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For Further Learning:

• Read Dr. Boardman’s book: Everyday Vitality
• Subscribe to the Positive Prescription newsletter
• Explore Dan Buettner’s Blue Zones research

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For anyone struggling with anxiety or low mood: reach out to a professional, but don’t neglect the profound, scientifically grounded benefits of connection, giving, and action.

Transcript

[Dan Buettner]

Lemonade. The best thing you can do to relieve anxiety is what I would say,

[Samantha Boardman]

do something for someone else.

[Dan Buettner]

Love that.

[Samantha Boardman]

We should be so proud of those things where we failed. Like what did I fail at? Write it down. And then right next to that, what did I learn from it? One of the things that worries me the most is when I meet couples and they tell me, oh, the other person's my best friend.

[Dan Buettner]

I think, oh, I'm super excited for this episode because there's so much misinformation about happiness and what really drives it. And you are a board certified psychiatrist, the gold standard for the science of happiness. And also you have a degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, which is how we know each other. And I'm wondering what is the biggest piece of misinformation that is ricocheting around social media right now when it comes to happiness that actually doesn't deliver happiness?

[Samantha Boardman]

So this is what, you know, wakes me up at night and it's that well intended advice that happiness comes from within, that you need to work on yourself, discover yourself through, feel your feelings, talk about them endlessly, that that will help you figure out who you are. And this is distorted for many reasons. And I think every piece of evidence we have looking at research, you know, over the past 50 years is the quality of our life really depends on the quality of our relationships. And you don't have good relationships, you work at having a good relationship, right? Like with your friends, with your family. Relationships are a verb that you are, you know, actively contributing, you're engaging in them. And this idea that you have to work on yourself first before you do anything else, I think is taking us away from connection. And I've had patients who have gone to retreats and they've been not talking to anybody and trying to find themselves and discover themselves. And they are, you know, involved in these very self focused rituals and it's really taking them away from, you know, you know, just those micro moments of connections with other people. And I think self focus has hijacked a lot of these kind of avenues for happiness.

[Dan Buettner]

You in, in your book Everyday Vitality, which is phenomenal, you have this, you write about this stinging moment when you were with a patient. Do you remember that?

[Samantha Boardman]

Oh my goodness. A little bit shameful. Yes, very. Well, you know, I had gone to medical school, gone through psychiatry residency and in the process had gotten really, really good at misery. And I understood, you know, what made people miserable. And I was good at kind of dialing that down a little bit. Like I Could turn the volume down a bit, make you a little less unhappy, maybe reduce the conflict if you're feeling.

[Dan Buettner]

So people came in and complaining about how bad their life was. You would. You would. You wouldn't just say, oh, that's okay, no.

[Samantha Boardman]

And I was like, okay, let me. Let's figure out ways to make this a little less bad. And so I had this patient one day, and she definitely didn't qualify for. She wasn't fitting, like, checking the boxes to say that she had clinical depression, but she was not feeling great. It was a bit of that blah life that I think a lot of people can relate to. Like, just things were not sparkly for her at all anymore. And she said, you know what, Dr. Boardman? All we ever do is talk about what's wrong with me. Like, sometimes I'm even having a good day, and then I'm thinking, ugh, what am I gonna complain about? All we do is focus on the problems. And I was really taken aback because that's what I was trained to do. I was trained to focus on the problems, trained to focus on symptoms and signs and treatment and medication. But I had never really focused on what was right and what made life meaningful for her. What were her strengths? What did she feel strong about? And I ended up going back to school and studying applied positive psychology, where I heard words like resilience and optimism and post traumatic growth. These are not words that psychiatrists hear in their training at all. And it really transformed how I think about mental health, that it's not just about the absence of illness or symptoms or signs.

[Dan Buettner]

We are both students of Marty Seligman, who rather brilliantly realized that most of the psychiatry industry was about making mentally unwell people better. And he had the epiphany, why not just make normal or focus on making normal people happier? And you're at this perfect sort of crossroads. You're not only trained at making mentally ill people better, but you're also trained in making normal people even happier than they are. I think that's most of your focus. Is it one and the same, or are they two completely different pursuits?

[Samantha Boardman]

I'm not sure how Marty would answer that question, but there is, I think what we've done in the field of psychology and psychiatry is, I think, unintentionally made people who are having maybe, like, the normal, like, ups and downs of life. And we've pathologized it. We've decided that perfectly normal experiences are too stressful, that we can't handle them, and we slap names on These, you know, we've said to people who are just experiencing anxiety that they have an anxiety disorder. We've told people who are a little bit sad that they have, they have depression. And I think we're over pathologizing. And that's also leading to over catastrophizing of perfectly normal experiences, maybe driven by a little bit this need for perfectionism that everyone says, I just want to be happy. I want to be like, be happy all the time. And happiness is sort of a byproduct of a life well lived. Right. It's doing things in service of, you know, with your values, what's meaningful to you, social connection and what's. What we've removed, I think, from a lot of the conversations around mental health is a sense of agency. The idea that happiness is all in your head. No, it's in the actions you take.

[Dan Buettner]

Yes, you have control.

[Samantha Boardman]

Absolutely. The connections you make and how you participate so endlessly talking about what's wrong with you is probably not going to let you feel any better. And we have a word for that. It's called rumination. And when you ruminate, you know, you're just.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

It's.

[Samantha Boardman]

It comes from the Latin word ruminare, Right. And that means like when a cow is chewing its cud and it is like regurgitating, you're going over and over and over with it. And we tend to ruminate when things go wrong a little bit. And. But when we co. Ruminate with somebody else, it's almost like an invitation. And you might be doing that with a parent. Absolutely. And, you know, here's the, like the test for rumination. Like, if you feel like you've had this conversation before with your friend or your therapist, whoever, then you're ruminating. If it's Groundhog Day, you're ruminating. And so that's why I think this assumption that always talking about it is helpful. You really have to be careful about how you talk about things, you know, and if you're just saying the same thing over and over and over again. So, like, what I always invite patients to do is say, okay, what's your plan? What are you gonna do about it? Like, what's the action you're going to take? And another really helpful way to think about that is tell me about a time you were at your best. I think we're so focused right now on the past and past harm. And there's a lot of, like, grievance collecting and wound collecting. All the things that have gone wrong or where I've Been wronged.

[Dan Buettner]

I think there's a multi billion dollar therapy industry out there that gets you focused. Go back to your childhood and to look for that, that original wound that explains all your problems today. And is there value in that, in that sort of exercise or.

[Samantha Boardman]

I mean, apologies to Freud, but, you know. No, I don't think so. It's just this idea of like, the trauma plot is what I think we're seeing also in movies and on television. Like, we have these really, these shortcuts to explain, like, oh, Logan, Roy behaved this way because this bad thing happened to him. And that anybody's behavior can be sort of excused or explained by something that happened in the past. And what it's ignoring is agency. Like, you are not who you were, you are like who you choose to be.

[Dan Buettner]

Oh, I love that line.

[Samantha Boardman]

And so I think you're not who

[Dan Buettner]

you choose to be.

[Samantha Boardman]

That, like, kind of tapping into that agency and that sense of like, action, like, what are you gonna do about it? Is I think, a much more helpful thing to do than just endlessly ruminating or co. Ruminating with somebody about what's bothering you.

[Dan Buettner]

I think a cousin to that is this American obsession with winning. You know, we remember the name of the athlete who won the gold medal, but who remembers the athlete who took fourth place or a bronze medal even? So what's your attitude towards failure and how can we turn failure into actually a useful tool?

[Samantha Boardman]

Well, I think we've pathologized failure. Like we've decided is like culturally, that it's unacceptable. And we certainly have kids in schools avoiding failure. Teachers aren't alone to, you know, write on papers with red ink because it might be triggering to the child to have any criticism or the sad face.

[Dan Buettner]

That was on all of my mathematical assignments.

[Samantha Boardman]

I had plenty of those too. And the notion of failure, I think we've engineered it out of life. It was a bit of everybody gets a trophy. But I'm a huge fan of failure. And I think what it does is it builds. This is where you're kind of building that resilience muscle, right? And I that especially with kids, because we're seeing all these kids who are so terrified of failure and they're so perfect that they're afraid to try anything different. And I think as parents, we don't realize the pedestal that kids are putting us on. And there's some research out there that says it's like, we should create a failure resume. We should be so proud of those things where we failed. We should talk about it openly. Have a conversation. Like, even write. Have a list of, like, what did I fail at? Write it down. And then right next to that, what did I learn from this?

[Dan Buettner]

I love that, you know, I. On this podcast, I love to give people takeaways. So the idea of a failure resume, I just want to put a point on that. This idea is you actually keep track of your failures, but then think about it to see, well, what did I learn from. I think it's almost a cliche. We don't really learn much from our successes. And often our successes are a function of luck as much as they are anything we necessarily did but failure. Being a teacher and making sure that we pay attention to that teacher.

[Samantha Boardman]

And somebody I had met had said that her father used to ask her years ago when she would come home from school, what did you fail at today? And, you know, it's so the opposite of like, oh, what went well? And, you know, that kind of more rosy rainbows and unicorns conversation. Because her father's idea was, if you're not failing, you're not trying. And so I think when you embed that kind of failure and you talk about it, of all those times you messed up royally, you know, and professionally and personally, and just share that, and you make it part of the conversation, I think it's a lot easier then to sort of normalize it. And even in math class, in history class, or just for all of us as adults, just do stuff that kind of. You're. You're not just trying to excel at and be perfect at. I've got a new hobby now. I ride horses. And, I'm sorry, super mediocre at it. And I'm fine with that. Like, it's. There's something really liberating about not just

[Dan Buettner]

falling down your rump. Could actually be developmental.

[Samantha Boardman]

Exactly. At my age. Yes.

[Dan Buettner]

You know, I'm sort of connecting the dots here. I wrote a book for National Geographic called the Blue Zones of Happiness, where we found the statistically happiest places in the world. And at the time, Denmark was on the very top. We went to the happiest city in Denmark, a place called Ohus, and I discovered this notion that is pervasive there. They call Yonta Law, which essentially says, it's an unspoken rule that you're no better than anybody else. So don't come to the dinner table and tell me about how great you are or your accomplishment today, because you're going to be frowned upon. So what you get is this society of humble people where nobody brags Too much. And I think a byproduct is this society where people kind of look, look after each other. They're, they're not trying to get ahead. Like the sort of self actualization of America right now that we, we, we honor the best. It's not about how far you march ahead of everybody else, but rather how well you, you march with everybody else. And I'm getting an undertone of that and this notion of learning from failure and actually celebrating the failure as opposed to the success.

[Samantha Boardman]

And I think that point you make about humility is so critical and we've lost a lot of that.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Right.

[Samantha Boardman]

And I think it might also have to do something with like a sort of lack of curiosity and maybe a version of what you're saying at the dinner table. Would, you know, a friend of mine from the south would say you had to ask questions, you were never allowed to talk about yourself. And everybody knows something you don't. There's no such thing as a boring person. And I think when you switch sort of your mindset that if I'm not connecting here, what am I not asking? Like what is there some question here that could draw at something that they're an expert in that they're passionate about, that I could connect with them in some meaningful way?

[Dan Buettner]

You hit on a very important point there. I think if you can draw out of people what they're passionate about and get them talking about that they're going to like you. A people like to talk about themselves. But when you tap, when you, when you ask them enough questions so that you identify their passion and you dig down a little bit, you unleash, I think, this, this love almost, this wellspring of likability.

[Samantha Boardman]

Yeah. And you, you get to learn something too. Because I bet you go into every interaction thinking everybody knows something I don't. What can I learn from this person? Because they definitely have something to teach you. And I always find with myself, like it's a failure of mine and genuinely a failure if I cannot find something that we can connect on. And you know, there's this phenomenon in psychology called the correspondence effect that we judge ourselves by our intentions. You know, if I cut you off in traffic, it's because I'm late, you know, and I need to get somewhere. But if someone cuts me off, they're a jerk. And so we judge other people by their actions and ourselves by our thoughts. And I think once you start to sort of interesting, take a step back and realize, like, how am I judging this person in some way, like Am I not giving them the benefit of the doubt? Am I not asking them a question that could unlock that spark, you know, and that we could then really have this connection? And maybe we disagree politically or maybe we have different points of view, but I bet there's some common ground and, and you enter interactions with humility and curiosity and that intention of giving them the benefit of the doubt. And imagine reminding yourself people aren't just what they do, you know, sometimes it is what's going on in their head and we have no idea about it.

[Dan Buettner]

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[Samantha Boardman]

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[Dan Buettner]

over the past two decades, I've explored the happiest and longest lived places around the world, writing my books about blue zones. And every single one of those books requires me to travel. One of those books called the Blue Zone American Kitchen, required me to actually travel, do research, and cook. That's when Airbnb really came in handy. In New Orleans, we actually found an Airbnb with a giant kitchen. I invited chefs from throughout New Orleans to cook. We cooked all day long, and at night, I went up to the bedroom and went to sleep and had a comfortable night's sleep. That's why I list my space on Airbnb. It doesn't involve turning my life upside down, but rather, it's a smart, practical way to make use of my space while I'm away, rather than letting it sit empty. And at the same time, I make a little money. Indeed, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how [e-mail]/host. I've had the privilege of attending many great dinner parties with you, and you are so graceful. And I wonder if. If this comes naturally or you've learned it along the way, but I'm wondering if you could share with the rest of us your secret to a good conversation, because I think we kind of lose that in. In this world where we're connected by phones. We, we. We don't. We don't exercise that muscle, that face to face, that person you're sitting next to at dinner who you might not know. What's the secret of conducting a good conversation?

[Samantha Boardman]

Don't you think it's that, like, active listening piece? It's not just quietly listening, but it's actually like, digging in and asking questions. I was in a taxi recently, and a taxi driver, like, I was about to go into, like, my duolingo because I'm on a streak. And I was about to sort of do more of that, and I was in the Bahamas, and it was this long taxi ride, and I decided, you know what? Wait, I'd love to talk to this guy.

[Dan Buettner]

Oh, I love this.

[Samantha Boardman]

And we had the most incredible conversation. I got a full tour of the, you know, of Nassau. He showed me where the hospital was, where the president lives, where the ambassador lives, and the full history of this country. It was to the point that I was sad that the car ride was over. And we had this lovely conversation. I learned so much from Him. And it sort of brought me back to like that time where you used to, in those in between moments you used to talk to people.

[Dan Buettner]

That's right.

[Samantha Boardman]

And we've just forgotten. And it's so easy to put your

[Dan Buettner]

phone away increasingly, I think nobody talks to their Uber driver.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Nobody.

[Dan Buettner]

You get in and you go on your phone and it's this wonderful opportunity for a human interaction to learn something and to exercise that conversation muscle. And we just, we forget it, we lose it.

[Samantha Boardman]

We've entirely lost it. And it's. I know hairdressers feel this way, you know, manicure, but people who used to. That you used to spend time with, but maybe there wasn't a whole lot of time you spent there, but that you would connect and have a conversation. And there is some research too that just having a good conversation, it really is protective of your mental health with people you love. And that's not in a text message. And yes, it's fine over the phone, but this face to face interactions. And we also know that especially for anyone who are listeners who have kids, sometimes it's not face to face, it's driving, it's walking. It's those side by side conversations too, where that's where just those little doors open up and you can have these sort of connections that are unexpected. And I think it is part of listening and not immediately jumping into. Let me tell you about the time that happened to me and that that's where you hijack the conversation. And again, it's like the opposite of humility and you make it all about

[Dan Buettner]

you in your book Everyday Vital. Talk about an exercise you actually do with your own family, which I love, which is the rose and thorn at dinner. Can you.

[Samantha Boardman]

I'm actually very anti rose and thorns, I think, because you know why? Because it really like my kids, I used to try to do that and I'd read that Michelle Obama used to do this with her kids. And the Obamas would sit around the table at dinner and do this. And the idea being like, tell me about like the highlight of your day and then tell me what was the thorn. And my kids used to just roll their eyes and they'd be like, ugh, the worst part of my day is you asking me this question, you know, like, that's the thorn. And so I realized that these were just invitations to talk about themselves. And I wanted to what's a better

[Dan Buettner]

way to do it?

[Samantha Boardman]

I thought, ask each other questions, you know, like, ask each other questions. Let's talk about what's going on in the world.

[Dan Buettner]

You gotta think about them and what their day might have been like. Rather than a programmatic.

[Samantha Boardman]

Like, it just became so formulaic. And I felt like it kind of had lost the meaning in that sort of conversation. It was better to kind of have them talk to each other about it, have us ask each other questions, rather than the roses and thorns thing that actually kind of fell flat. And it was just an invitation to talk about me.

[Dan Buettner]

But, you know, I almost think people need these sort of rote exercises. You know, I have three wonderful kids, and we'll sit at the table and I'll ask, let's have some questions. And it's like yanking teeth, you know, they don't. Without the instructions, they don't necessarily intuit it. And I think that's a problem with a lot of young people these days because they're getting most of their interactions on their phone rather than, okay, now you're in front of real people. And not every interaction is going to necessarily deliver a dopamine hit.

[Samantha Boardman]

You know, One of the questions, though, that I think is going to be like, kind of just open people up is, you know, somebody, you know is having an issue, like, what advice would you give them? Because this is. It's. This is called self distancing. And it's a. You know, what we study in psychology and psychiatry is if I go to you and say, hey, Dan, I've got this problem, and I'm thinking this, that, or the other, and I can just sit and ruminate with you about what's going on with me. But you could say, hmm, how would you. What would you tell a friend who was having that same issue? And immediately it becomes, oh, well, you know, I tell a friend. It was just. I get some clarity when I'm not thinking about myself here. I get some clarity in it. And that immediately is like a conversation opener. I think it helps you tap into your strengths. Oh, well, maybe I learned something from somebody in the past. Here's maybe what they could do. Here's a way to think about it. Another question you could ask is, what would your future self think about this? Like, how would that look? How would a fly on the wall describe this? Because going back to this idea that I think these mental health conversations are so fixated on the individual and the interior world of theirs. It's actually when you lift out of yourself that you actually can find the clouds part a little bit. What would you tell a friend? What would your future self think? What would a fly on the wall think? And you you actually think about something much in a much clearer way. And I think that's also tapping into like our altruism. We're good at caring about others. And almost we've been so like, we've been told we have to focus on ourselves first before we can help anybody else. I entirely disagree. One of the most effective ways to deal with your anxiety or your stress, do something for someone else.

[Dan Buettner]

I totally, I agree 100%. There's in Minnesota, we have this, a Norwegian Buddhist and he has this line that we all have 99 problems. There's a bill we need to pay, the tire's low on air. I'm developing a new wrinkle. We all have 99 problems. If you list them out, you can spend all your effort getting rid of the top 10 problems. And by the time you solve those top 10 problems, there could be 10 new problems at the bottom. So rather, he says, than focusing on your 99 problems, you shift the focus to somebody else's problems and those 99 problems shrink in size in your mind. They become smaller and smaller the more you're focusing your efforts on somebody else. And I think we've kind of lost that. You've read Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone, which is such a great book, and it tracks how we've lost social connections since the 1960, largely because of suburbs and because of screens. And the membership in like Lions Clubs and Rotary clubs and bowling clubs have all diminished. And when you go to, I think the core of all happiness research, the best thing you can do to increase your own happiness is focus on your social relationships. And we're losing those. We've gone from three good friends to fewer than two good friends. And I think what the very first step is to give people ways to reconnect with others. Which leads to my next question, and you write about this too. How do you connect with people? How do you make new friendships at middle age? And it's not necessarily even a middle age. How does an 18 year old do it? Or you're over 30 now, right? Over 30. What advice do you for connecting in this age of.

[Samantha Boardman]

And life gets so busy. That sort of friendship is something that falls by the wayside, that people don't think of it as a priority, that it's not something that they have time for, especially men who, you know, lose that and women do as well. But it's why I think it has to be at the top of your priority list. And there may be friends over time who you don't have as much in common with. Or they've moved away, but, you know, you can't make new old friends. I always think, oh, yeah, yeah. And that there is something that wonderful, you know, when you come together again, like, you speak to him for a couple months, but then it's just so easy, and that connection is so delightful. But one of the things that worries me the most is when I meet couples and they tell me, oh, the other person's my best friend. Oh, yes. And I think, uh, oh, I'm worried about this because you need good friends, and good friends make your romantic relationship better as well.

[Dan Buettner]

This is a big insight.

[Samantha Boardman]

I think it's really worrisome to me, and I see it increasingly in young people because our lives have shrunk so much, you know, and you can spend an entire day or weekend really not interacting with anybody. And if you're in a couple that maybe you order in, you watch Netflix, you chill out, whatever it is. Like, you really can minimize your interactions with anybody. And to make sure you're maintaining, but also building new relationships. Caroline Weber is a new friend of mine, probably 15 years now old, but I'm so delighted. But, you know, it came to that moment of like, can we have a first date? Like, can we go out and have coffee? And making that initial effort, because it is effort, and we've told ourselves that we should live in this frictionless world and find what matters.

[Dan Buettner]

I want to put a placeholder because you told this great story about how meeting Carolyn Weber, who's this great author who wrote what Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution, great writer. You met her, you each. I don't know what the female version of a bromance was, but you immediately followed up with an email and said, is it too early to have our first date? And that's such a great sort of prescription or positive prescription, to borrow a term, that when you meet somebody you like, follow up and suggest a meeting in real life, don't just sit there and type emails or text each other. Let's go have coffee or let's take a walk together. And it just seems so kind of mundane. Nobody makes any money at that interaction, so you don't hear it marketed to you. But it's so powerful. And it's the core of not only human connection, it's the core of happiness. And I think you agree with me

[Samantha Boardman]

on that a hundred percent. And as you said, it's not transactional. It's purely for the joy of doing it. And, you know, we make. Our calendars are full of meetings and transactional situations. But what we're not doing is just having regular calendar meetings. So I actually walk one morning a week regularly with one friend of mine because I know if it's not there, I'm not going to be able to see her. And having, I think, scheduling even monthly or every six weeks or eight weeks, just having it on the calendar that I'm going to go see a Broadway show with a friend of mine every eight weeks. Like it's something we're going to do together and it's going to happen. And it's as important to me as a doctor's appointment, as important to me as teaching. Seeing patients like this is a priority and putting it front and center.

[Dan Buettner]

Yes. And it's calendared and you don't cancel that appointment before we leave. The relationship issue, though, I think it shocks people to hear that you're alarmed if somebody says, oh, my partner's my best friend. Does it alarm you because you worry they don't have other friends, or should you indeed find a best friend elsewhere outside of your relationship?

[Samantha Boardman]

Both, I think you. I worry that you don't have the support system of other friends because there's a lot of evidence that when there is conflict in your romantic relationship, having good friends can help you navigate that. And so that it's really essential to work on those relationships and not just drop, you know, your friends when you fall in love. And it's wonderful as that can be like that your friends will make your relationship, your romantic relationship, better in every way and be that voice of reason when you're frustrated or there's a conflict, whatever that is, they'll be there for you. And so making that a priority and cultivating relationships. And yes, it's great to have friends who are, you know, that you share friends, but it's also nice to have your own friends, that there's stuff you do with your friends and they do with their friends. And as I say, like, relationships are a verb and you really have to work at them. And I think even more, you need to work at your friendships when you're in a. Like when you're married or in a relationship.

[Dan Buettner]

Yes. I love this. There's so many counterintuitive gems. You've told us that failure is much better than success, at least at learning. You're telling us that your partner should maybe not be your best friend, and you're saying that you shouldn't go to your therapist and whine about your life, but you should switch the vocabulary to saying, why my life is Great. And it's so counterculture, I think.

[Samantha Boardman]

I think there's so many messages in psychology and psychiatry that are really distorting the way we're thinking about mental health. And another one would be that you really do need to be happy all the time. There is so much to be learned from stress and negative emotions and anxiety. These are data points, like, what are they telling you? Do you need to shift your behavior in some way? And I think we've started thinking about our emotional lives in a very all or nothing way. I'm happier, I'm sad, I'm calmer, I'm anxious. And we're sort of ignoring this nuance of emo diversity.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Right.

[Samantha Boardman]

This idea that I can be happy about something, but also frustrated and sad about other stuff. I can be anxious about something, but also grateful for others. We can have emotions that coexist, multiple emotions. And it's not just in this very narrow either or like, way of thinking about it.

[Dan Buettner]

What are some of the other big myths about happiness that we miss?

[Samantha Boardman]

I think this notion that all stress is bad is completely distorted. This idea that talking about it is helpful, not always. This idea that happiness comes from within, happiness comes from with that you need to work on your weaknesses all the time. When I think you should tap into your strengths, I think there's also a misconception about you are like your past defines you. I think your actions and your future will. So that's really what I'm interested in kind of tackling. Because I think this misinformation is making people feel worse about their mental health and that they think that any curveball is going to be permanently devastating. And what we've forgotten about here is we are resilient. It's our birthright to be resilient. It's something that we have within us. And I think that we're being told that this is something you're either really lucky or you have to work on all the time. But I think these conversations around mental health are undermining our mental health.

[Dan Buettner]

There's this great line by Isabel Allende. She's talking to an audience. She says, you Americans are deluded with this idea that you all deserve the pursuit of happiness. What you deserve is to suffer and learn from it.

[Samantha Boardman]

Oh, I love that.

[Dan Buettner]

It's kind of perfect. You don't learn a hell of a lot from happiness, but when. When life throws you a curveball, now there's your opportunity. Yeah, I love that you said this happiness does not come from within, and I totally agree with that. You know, my whole sort of blue zone thesis is that longevity and happiness come from without. And what I mean by that is that I argue that most of our happiness comes from our environment. And the. Even though I think there's a lot of positive psychology techniques that work, no journaling and practicing gratitude and savoring and so forth, I think of them a lot like a healthy diet. We start them with great intentions, but after about two or three months, we forget or we get busy or we run out of discipline to do it. And we know that if you follow unhappy people from places like Moldavia to Denmark or unhappy places in Africa or Southeast Asia to Canada, which is Both Denmark and Canada are very happy places. Within one year. These people don't change their gender, they don't change their psychological makeup, they don't change their education level much. They don't usually change their religion or their sexual orientation. Almost nothing changes about them. But in one year, they report often a doubling of their happiness. They report the happiness level of their adoptive home. And I don't know any positive psychology technique that can occasion a doubling of your happiness in one year.

[Samantha Boardman]

Wow.

[Dan Buettner]

But maybe you'll tell me what I think.

[Samantha Boardman]

There is this like, sort of illusion of self sufficiency, like, I can do everything by myself. I don't need anyone to help me. And I think that's one of the other myths right now. The sort of cultural sort of pressures that I can do it on my own. But this idea of how our situations can shift how we feel. And even in the most minute way that if I, you know, I receive a distressing email and I'm upset or something's bothering me, just the physical act of getting up from my chair, opening the door, looking out the window, just that physical act of even changing rooms. And again, like, I think this idea that, you know, is wrong is that like our thoughts define who we are, I think our behaviors do for ourselves. And it's called behavior activation, which is part of psychology is, you know, the actions that you take can really shape how you feel. So it might even be. It's very blue zones, like going outside, taking a walk. We all have nature deficit disorder. Changing your situation in a small way. I'm not talking about moving to Denmark and that might not be available for everybody or moving to Canada, but these small ways that you can change your situation and create opportunities to feel better. And it might just be putting the sneakers by the door before you go outside. Yes, this is all very blue zones, but make it easier to do the behaviors you want to engage in and a little harder to do those that you don't.

[Dan Buettner]

That's exactly right. I actually am more radical when I think about or when I suggest people changing their environments or shaping their surroundings. First of all, you think, well, I can't move to Denmark. And I looked this up. The average adult moves 11 times in their adult life. In their adult life. That's 11 opportunities to move from less happy places to happy place. What's a happy place? You're way more likely to be happy if you live in a walkable neighborhood. There's plenty of research on that. You're more likely to be happy if you're close to nature. If you have access to nature or parks, you're more likely to be happy if you live on a street with trees on them. You're more likely to be happy if you live in a place where you have easy access to healthy food. These are all very conscious decisions. And you decide to yourself what's most important to my family. And if health and happiness is most important, you do very well to strategically pick your next move. So it's a place that has these known features that will unconsciously nudge you into doing the healthy thing every day, all day long. And, you know, while I love the field of positive psychology, I just question its lasting power. Similarly, I'm a big fan of curating your social circle. In Okinawa, we call that a moai. And a lot of us just with inertia, we keep the old friends we had from high school or whatever or college or from work. And I think most of us, if we do internal inventory, that we've had the same friends for 10 years. And while I would never tell you to dump your unhappy and unhealthy friends, I will tell you. And we're mutual friends with Nicholas Kusakis, who's shown that what our friends do is measurably contagious. If our friends sit around and eat junk food, guess what we do when we're with them? If our friends sit around and bitch, or our friends are lonely or unhappy, measurably contagious. So not necessarily dump them, because they probably need a Samantha Boardman in their life to make them happier and healthier. But to proactively add a healthy or happy friend to that social network, to be that person that you met at a dinner party, to be the one that sends them an email right away, Is it too early to have our first date? That's the kind of stuff curating that. So. And friends are lasting that Social environment is something you can set up and it lasts for years or decades and it will have measurable influence on your happiness.

[Samantha Boardman]

Well, it's sort of like seek out people who elevate you and I think it engage you. And was it Aristotle who said there are three types of friendships that there was the kind where, you know, I do this for you, you do that for me was one kind. And the second kind was transactional, totally transactional, kind of the give and take. And then the other one was like the we have fun together. Like we like hanging out together and doing stuff. It's just fun. But the third type really was elevating and it was that like, I believe in your goodness and you believe in mine and the kind of the one that like sees your potential and is there for you in dark times, but also there is a tailwind during the good times. Who sees opportunities for you, who helps you take them and sort of sees this elevation quality. And I think to seek out that type of the transactional ones, the fun ones, fine. But I think the third type is the most sacred. And I think when we have core friends like that in our lives, that is the secret sauce of wellbeing.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Right?

[Samantha Boardman]

And especially if you live nearby one or you can, you know, they are down the block or within a walking distance, you can walk with them, there's nothing better.

[Dan Buettner]

What do you call that third class then?

[Samantha Boardman]

I think you just call them, I think the kind that makes you want to be a better person. I'm sure there's better word for that. But like that sort of elevation, friendship.

[Dan Buettner]

That's the kind of friend you are, Samantha.

[Samantha Boardman]

Oh, you are certainly that to me.

[Dan Buettner]

I think the key to happiness is everybody befriend Samantha Boardman. Or if you can't get to New York everyday, Vitality is available on Amazon or Positive Prescription, which is your great newsletter, by the way. I encourage people to get the paid version. But I wanna talk about an article that just came out and that is a study done on solutions to relationships relationship advices on Reddit. And I guess I'll let you talk about this very interesting revelation which seems to be the most common advice when a relationship isn't going well.

[Samantha Boardman]

Well, thank you for reading my substack. I'm so touched that you read it and just, you know, breaking news as well. So this was a study that was done looking at 15 years of advice on Reddit and just what kind of on these advice forums about relationships, people in their. In most like friendships, romantic ones, coworkers, Saying, seeking advice from fellow Reddit users. And what's fascinating is over the course of 15 years, there's been this uptick in just this bottom line of saying, leave, get rid of them, set boundaries, move on, dump them, it's over. And that, that has really been trending up. And what has been declining at the same time, not surprisingly, is any advice to communicate. Talk to them, be patient, give them some grace that's evaporating. And then at the same time, not surprisingly, is the advice. Maybe you need a therapist, maybe you need to talk to somebody. And that goes into this kind of psychiatry, psychology, industrial complex, this idea that talking to a professional is going to make things better. And I can talk about, bitch about

[Dan Buettner]

the relationship and then dump it.

[Samantha Boardman]

I can tell you a story. Years ago, I was, I met this man who had survived the Twin Towers. And he was there in the elevator when the second plane hit. And this fuel bomb ravaged him in the elevator. And he gets out, it opens at the sky lobby. And this is sort of the last thing he remembers, is walking through there, people staring at him, and he's burned all over his body. Somehow he makes it down the stairs, gets in an ambulance, ends up at New York Hospital. You know, nurse takes the ring off his finger and that's the last thing he remembers. He's in a coma. They put him in a medically induced coma for two months and he's in the burn unit. It's end of November when he wakes up, he's lost friends. He has no idea what's happened to the world though. And this very well meaning psychiatrist comes by and says, I think you might be a little depressed. Do you need some medication? Do you want to talk about it? And he said, if there are any psychiatrists in the room, and I literally want to dive under my chair. Let me tell you something. Sometimes people go through hell and they don't need to talk to strangers and they don't need to take medication. They need their friends, they need their family, they need their loved ones to support them. But with all due respect, I mean, he used four letter word off. And it was this really powerful moment because just sort of, it tackled what I thought that a talking is always helpful. There's actually lots of research that not talking can be more helpful for people or talking to your friends and family when you feel like it, not in a formal way. Also, this idea of debriefing after a trauma happens, the idea of going around a room and everyone talking about their trauma can actually further traumatize People. So that's been completely divided. And so. And I think this idea that actually sometimes your friends might be better than your therapist, you know, that we've forgotten. We used to turn. It goes back to bowling alone. Like, we used to turn to our neighbors, our family, our friends. They were our confidants. Like, that's where we felt comfortable. Now we're told that a stranger doesn't really know us, who's only gonna hear a certain slice of this story is better. And with all due respect, I think there is some not so great therapists out there who are just inviting people to talk about themselves. They fuel it, and they're inviting.

[Dan Buettner]

The situation picked up on that five. That wound when you were five years old. On our next session.

[Samantha Boardman]

And this new research that just came out that I was fascinated by because it was sort of validating. What I was concerned about is asking somebody to talk about their parents today can really distort their memories of them. And especially if you're having a bad day and, you know, we're invited to, like, talk about your past and what your mother was like, it might really color how you felt about her in the moment today. And so the idea that talking about our past is going to set us free is a conceit that I don't think is true. And this fixation on, you know, rehashing and diving into and it's like Freudian idea of let's talk about what happened to you is actually making a lot of people feel worse.

[Dan Buettner]

I want to pick up on two points here. This point about therapists and talking about negativity, especially in reference to our parents. But before we started talking about relationships and how now the common advice is pull the rip cord. What advice do you give to couples who are having a tough time

[Samantha Boardman]

obviously taking off the table? There are sometimes some truly toxic relationships that one should leave. And we're not talking about that. But this idea of, what can I learn from this? What is this person actually trying to tell me? This idea that what I'm taking is criticism is actually a way to open a door into a conversation that I'm feeling judged. But maybe this is somebody asking me a question that they're unable to articulate.

[Dan Buettner]

And maybe it is my fault after all.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yes.

[Samantha Boardman]

And that is there's so much finger pointing I think, these days. And we're totally like, it's never about me. It's always somebody else doing this. It's other people who are these irritants. And that I think we do have to look at ourselves sometimes. Like, what role am I playing in this? How am I not having this person feel hurt?

[Dan Buettner]

There's a great mnemonic advice. Every time I point a finger at somebody else, there's three more fingers pointing back at me.

[Samantha Boardman]

But we've lost sight of that. And I think even sometimes people come to therapy individually and they're just there to complain, and they want that validation. And like, you know What? Then use ChatGPT as your therapist. You know, because there's sometimes I think people don't want to be challenged and to look back at like, wait, what role am I playing in this?

[Dan Buettner]

Yes. All right, so now I want to come back to this therapist sort of modus operandi, which is to get you talking about your problems and especially with parents. I had. I went to therapy for a while and therapist was literally trying to do that, trying to get me go back and see where I was wounded as a child. And they kept pushing me and I go, wait a minute. My parents are great. In fact, you know, they were. I have this on. I had them on this podcast, Roger and Dolly Buhner. And they're fantastic. They're still alive and they're my greatest source of joy when I look back. Yes, you know, we were poor and they were tough on me, but I think that made me a more resilient adult and a more appreciative adult. I'm not perfect, believe it or not, but, you know, I credit them with most of the good qualities I have. But you look at this recent research, and the number of young women who report anxiety has tripled since 2000 in the last 25 years. And the number of people who say, I'm not too happy has doubled. How do you explain that, number one? And number two, what can we do about it?

[Samantha Boardman]

Couple things. I think the number of people saying they have anxiety has to do a little bit with. Called the inflation prevalence prevalence hypothesis. And this idea that.

[Dan Buettner]

Inflation prevalence hypothesis, I'm going to double score that.

[Samantha Boardman]

That in talking about mental health and kind of destigmatizing it and educating people in the language of mental health. And people are so fluent today in mental health that they just throw words around. They'll say, I'm anxious, I have an anxiety disorder. And I. People come to my office now with that saying, I have an anxiety disorder. And it's clear to me they don't. They have a reason to be anxious about something that's going on in their lives, but it's shifted their identity. They've incorporated this into their backpack of who they are. And so because they feel that they have an anxiety disorder, it's changed their self concept. They don't want to meet friends for a drink. They'll say no to an opportunity. They might, you know, be asked to have an interview somewhere and they'll say, well, I need to protect my anxiety disorder. They're over identifying with a fleeting emotion. They're letting something define them that is there and they're feeling it, but they're letting it become and subsume them. And this notion of, you know, I need to protect my mental health over this. And it's creating so much avoidance. And avoidance is such a recipe for unhappiness because it's avoiding those challenges, those opportunities, those social connections that I think are really slowly chipping away and eroding our happiness. And so I think that's a big contributor to this sort of this uptick in anxiety and what we're seeing in people who are less happy. But also with women, I mean, I think we can't help but talk about screens with that. The self comparison that kicks in when one's online and thinking, well, that's this person's perfect life and not mine. I think it takes 17 seconds for a young woman to feel badly about herself when she is looking like scrolling through Instagram like, I don't have that, but I wish I had that life, you know. And it's just this self comparison piece. Self comparison isn't always bad. It might, you know, if you're a runner, it's, you're gonna probably, if you're racing against someone, you're gonna try harder. If it's against somebody else or if you're trying to like, you know, if you're trying to compete in a way, self comparison can be wonderful for you. It's just, I think in the way where you're competing with such impossible standards, it's making people, especially young women, deeply unhappy. And we're seeing an uptick in self injurious behavior and things like that.

[Dan Buettner]

So if you had to generate the 141 character tweet on this, I'm too long winded. The best thing you can do to relieve anxiety is what

[Samantha Boardman]

I would say, do something for someone else.

[Dan Buettner]

Love that. I'm writing a book now on the parts of the world where people live the longest lives in full health. It's called the Blue Zones Evolution. And one of these places is in Norway. And in Norway, the healthcare system is set up so that you can choose a doctor for the long Run, and you can sort of date lots of doctors till you find the right one and then keep that doctor for decades. And research shows that if you keep the same doctor for decades, you actually get better outcomes. You're more likely to take his or her advice, you're more likely to follow through, the doctor's more likely to know you and make better prescriptions, et cetera. But in this area of Norway, if you show up with signs of depression, the doctor is not going to refer you to a specialist. The doctor is not going to give you a prescription for Prozac. The doctor is going to set up a meeting with a volunteer coordinator, and the volunteer coordinator is going to sit down with you to find out what your. What your passions are, what your values are, and then they're going to get you doing something called Dougna and. And Dugna in Norwegian, is group volunteering. And if you look at the depression levels and the anxiety of Norway, it is much lower than the United States. So I can't say with 100% certainty that Dugna is better than Prozac, but I'll bet it is.

[Samantha Boardman]

Oh, wow. I'll bet it is. And if you look at, like, Isaac Polotinsky's research on mattering and what that means, he said, of course we all want to feel that we are valued, but the other point, like the other piece of mattering, is feeling that you're adding value. And I think we've gotten so focused on the feeling valued part of mattering and that we've forgotten about the joy of adding value to somebody else's life. And that. That's what you're talking about.

[Dan Buettner]

Dugna.

[Samantha Boardman]

Dugna. I love that.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah. And it's group volunteer. It's not I. It's not I go by myself. It's I join a group of people and we go clean up a park or we go sing.

[Samantha Boardman]

So you've got the double benefit of doing this shared activity that you're doing with others and you're doing it, you know, for somebody else, and you're making a difference in the world. It reminds me of those, you know, New Year's resolution studies is when people make, you know, I'm going to make an individual change, you know, and it's, I'm going to stop smoking, I'm going to eat less, I'm going to go to the gym, versus I'm gonna go for a walk with a friend every week. I'm going to engage in something that's fun but that's social. I'm gonna Play pickleball. I'm going to do something that involves another person. You're much more likely to stick to it three months later, six months later, nine months later, and you're gonna have more fun along the way. And I think those kind of pro social activities. But when you're, you get the double whammy when you're doing something for somebody or something, some higher sort of, you know, power, and then you're also doing it with someone else. That's, that's perfect.

[Dan Buettner]

Our mutual friend John Hobbic, when he was the editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, he oversaw the social calendar which included concert and sporting events. But he also added giving back and actually listed these things that you could get involved with as a group. And he said it was a fantastic success. Of course it's gone by the wayside now, but I think it's such a brilliant idea.

[Samantha Boardman]

Love that. And you know, and we know with teenagers is when they give advice to other teenagers having a hard time, it helps the other teenagers, but it also helps them. Oh yeah, you know, so I think we've forgotten that kind of peer to peer kind of connection rather than like maybe you don't need that professional.

[Dan Buettner]

I love the idea of a 13 year old. You know, when I was in fourth

[Samantha Boardman]

grade, I learned well, it's so interesting. They had middle schoolers giving advice to younger students and I'll bet they listened. They listened and apparently it was, they were much more likely to listen to that advice than technically better advice coming from a teacher or a parent who's giving objectively better advice on study habits and when to do your homework. So the kids, the younger kids absorbed this information coming from a, you know, older peer. But then also the ones who were giving the advice, the advice givers were also much more likely to stick to the advice that they were giving, you know, because you sort of want to do like as you're saying. And so that they were much their, their study habits improved as well. And so I think when we become givers again, we feel better and we're actually much more likely to take positive actions in, you know, that are in sync with our values.

[Dan Buettner]

So I think we both agree that giving back or group volunteering is the best first line of prescription for people with anxiety or depression. But I mean, you're a board certified physician, you can prescribe drugs. When do you prescribe? When is it right to prescribe drugs for people? So people listening right now, what is the trigger that says, okay, I've read everyday vitality, I Read the positive prescription. I've looked at all the best advice on positive psychology. I'm still not getting over this. When do you turn to drugs and what drugs really work these days?

[Samantha Boardman]

I think one has to be very careful about that question. And if you look at the dsm, that's a dsm, the bible of psychiatry, this diagnostic manual of psychiatry that you look and you can see what sort of. There's a checklist. You can look at it online. I have it in the book of what if you qualify for a clinical diagnosis of depression and it's not just feeling a little bit down, there's many more sort of factors that contribute to that. And that might be mean that you are a candidate for an antidepressant. But that said, if you're not also including some lifestyle changes in the person's, you know, in their everyday existence, you know, asking questions like, how much are you sleeping? What are you eating? What is. Like, you know, when do you socialize? Like, getting a full picture of who this person is and that you're seeing a psychiatrist who's asking you those bigger questions. And the one thing I was taught in medical school how to do was put people on medication. I was never taught how to take them off.

[Dan Buettner]

Interesting.

[Samantha Boardman]

And so you learn how to put people on medicine. You really don't learn how to take them off of medication. And so when people go off of medication, either they run out of their prescription or they forget whatever that is. Sometimes they feel quite badly and they're assuming that that's their depression or anxiety coming back, but it can be, in fact, the withdrawal effects of the medication. So I think only now is my profession sort of waking up to this reality. And some people can taper off medications no problem, but some people have a really hard time when they've been on them for a really long time. And so I am very careful about when I put people on medication. It's not just something that you just prescribe and you're on it for the rest of your life. This is not giving insulin to a diabetic. And I used to ask people, and this is how I was trained, who were resistant to take medication, if you had diabetes, would you take insulin? And of course, you know, because I would make this equivalence, like this, this idea that it's exact same thing as a physical problem, and I was wrong entirely with that. And I think. And I've seen medication work tremendously. I've seen it save lives, but I've also seen it make people pretty miserable and have horrible side effects from it and have a really hard time getting off of it. So I think you really need to be attentive to it, not see it as a life sentence if you're going to do it and also be doing things that could help you feel better. And maybe you need medication to kind of give you that boost and that maybe then you'll start exercising. There was a study done at Duke several years ago where they asked people to take an antidepressant. Another group of people who had mild symptoms of depression. The other group of people were asked to walk on a treadmill, not even outside, for 30 minutes, three or four days a week. Both groups got better, but nine months later, the treadmill group still felt better, whereas the medication group was back to feeling worse again. So I think we forget how valuable a lot of the Blue Zones activities are actually integral to our mental health. It's movement, it's being outside, it's eating well, it's sleeping well, and it's so socializing. All those sort of seemingly external, you know, experiences that kind of seem, by the way, in a clinical world, oh, I had this problem. Give me a pill and I'll take it. I can't sleep. I need a medication. I'm feeling a little bit down. I need a medication. I think that this kind of quick fix, it's not just the, you know, the medical world that's kind of created this. I think we also have a very, you know, people who just want that quick fix as well. But if you're willing to, I think, speak to a really good psychiatrist who does have the experience and can say, like, this isn't a long term thing. Let's revisit this. Let's see how you feel and if this is helping you or not, and that the side effects, I just want to make sure that the side effects are not actually making you feel even worse.

[Dan Buettner]

So probably a third of the people or so listening to this have suffered depression, right? Or are depressed for sure. So if I come in and see you and say, you know, Dr. Boardman, I've been. I've been feeling blue and you check me out and you see I'm clinically depressed. What, what's going to be your algorithm? What, what is your. What are the steps you're going to take to try to treat me? What's the first line, second line, third line?

[Samantha Boardman]

It's so individual. So I don't have an algorithm per se. I want to know all about Dan Buhner then, like, I want to know. I mean, no, but I would want to know, like, and your lifestyle and that whole piece of your puzzle before I just say, here's a pill, I'll see you in six months. I really would want to know kind of what's going on with you and what are you doing actively to kind of protect and promote your mental health. Because I was really good at this kind of idea of pathogenesis, which is the study of disease and the treatment of disease, but not solutogenesis, which is the creation of health. And I would wanna focus on the solutogenesis piece. And to me, that would be as important as any pill I give you. And I would prescribe being outdoors. I would prescribe exercise. I would prescribe healthy eating, like, and make sure my patient's taking that as seriously as maybe the pill I would be prescribing.

[Dan Buettner]

So you would literally ask them to do this before you gave them a pill?

[Samantha Boardman]

I think it would depend on the severity of the situation and the individual and how they were feeling.

[Dan Buettner]

There was this huge book 20 years ago called Prozac Nation, which I think woke Americans up to serotonin uptake inhibitors. Is that the class of drugs that are most commonly used these days for depression?

[Samantha Boardman]

There's other families of drugs as well that are. Some of them are better tolerated. But it's still not perfect, and it's really imperfect the way we prescribe medication. And this idea that I've got an issue and somebody says, I've got an issue and I have a pill, let me fix that. I think I went into psychiatry with this. The bigger questions in mind, like, what is a life well lived? What is the meaning of people's lives? And so quickly, I was trained to just prescribe medication if somebody couldn't sleep, Here's a sleeping medication. If you're depressed, here's an antidepressant. If you're anxious, here's an anxiolytic. And I was blinded at the time to all of these other factors that contribute to how you're feeling. And so I think it's really important not to minimize the impact that some antidepressants and anxiolytics can have. But just to consider all of the factors that are contributing to what I'm seeing in front of me in my office.

[Dan Buettner]

Let's just make it nuts and bolts for a minute. I'm listening to this podcast right now, and I'm depressed. I know I'm depressed. What should I do?

[Samantha Boardman]

Genuinely, like, that's when you need a professional. You do need to speak to somebody who Is a board certified psychiatrist who

[Dan Buettner]

can explain to you not a psychologist, not a therapist.

[Samantha Boardman]

No, a psychiatrist. Because they're the ones who are gonna be able to. I'm a huge fan of psychologists too. But a psychiatrist is going to be able to evaluate you in that moment. And you might see a psychologist who refers you to a psychiatrist, which is also possible. But a psychiatrist is going to be the one, if you need medication, who's going to be the one to prescribe it. But make sure you ask the questions about how long do you think I'm gonna be on this medication for? Do you think it's going to be hard for me to taper off of this medication at the right time? How am I gonna know it's that right time? And what are the side effects that I'm going to be feeling on this?

[Dan Buettner]

Okay. Before I go to a psychiatrist, I think I'm depressed. You can go online and take these depression quizzes and see. Yep. Well, the number adds up. I'm probably depressed. What should I do before I go see a psychiatrist to try to self treat?

[Samantha Boardman]

Self treating can be problematic.

[Dan Buettner]

I don't mean, you know, getting a drug off the Internet, I mean that are likely to lessen my depression.

[Samantha Boardman]

Okay.

[Dan Buettner]

Or is there nothing? I go to psychiatrist, I think certainly

[Samantha Boardman]

make that phone call. I've always been so interested. People often will have a psychiatrist phone number that they will have gotten from a friend and it's in their pocket. And then kind of what is that moment that actually makes you pick up the phone and set up the appointment? And then sometimes people don't show up. But like what's going on then? And I think keeping a journal of what's going on because most of the time also like we can. There are these moments where we feel depressed. But are there points in the day where you're actually having a good time, where you feel good, where there's energy, where you're tapping into your strengths, that you're able to focus on your work or do something or you're not thinking about that. To have that kind of journal that you'd be able to share with that psychiatrist when you do meet with them about kind of this is how you know over the course of the day. Like these are my high points, these are my low points. This is when I'm feeling like I'm really like, you know, sort of treading through molasses and I can't come up for air. Like when are those moments versus like. And then actually on Saturday I had a really good Day. What did that day look like? I'm always really curious about any patient is, tell me about a good day. Tell me about something good that happened this morning.

[Dan Buettner]

Interesting.

[Samantha Boardman]

When people aren't unable to do that, I'm really worried. And also something we've lost in therapy, too, is like, our sense of humor. That this old psychiatrist once said to me, you know, that if your patient doesn't laugh at least three times in therapy, you're not doing any good, you're

[Dan Buettner]

not telling the right jokes.

[Samantha Boardman]

And he wasn't being flippant. Obviously, there are certain things one's not able to make light of. And it's not to minimize anybody's suffering and depression, but to also kind of find these pockets of lightness. And going back to this idea of emo diversity, how can you have even the sadness and happiness exist side by side? Can you laugh through tears? Can you find those little moments where there is something kind of silly or like amusing and that you can savor that? And so going back to this idea of what are you gonna say? Like, if you, you know, on a waitlist to see a psychiatrist, look for a moment at those lifestyle factors. Are there any things, changes that you could be making in some of those blue zones, domains around your sleeping? Because that's a huge thing we underestimate about how that affects your mental health. If you're not sleeping enough, if you're looking at your phone, your phone is by your bed at all times. How much are you spending on your screen? How much movement are you getting in each day? Just a little bit more movement in your day can make a huge difference. Spending some time in nature and what are you putting in your body? I mean, we know just a serving of fruit and vegetables each day can actually shift how you feel. I mean, that's a shift in. I think nutritional psychiatry is going to be very exciting.

[Dan Buettner]

Any chance that beans will be a big breakthrough in psychiatry?

[Samantha Boardman]

Beans? I thought you were never going to bring that up. No. Well, I think legumes, the beans you talk about. But yes. And they actually, what you eat affects how you feel. And I love this study that they had college students eat basically fast food, a diet of fast food for three days, essentially a long weekend. This is like a weekend you're misbehaving. And that how sluggish they felt that they couldn't concentrate, they were irritable. So much so that even their partners noticed. So it just. I think we really underestimate the power of what we're putting in our body. And how it affects how we're feeling.

[Dan Buettner]

We've had on the podcast Corey Richards, who is one of National Geographic's hottest photographers and we did a cover story on happiness together. And it turns out he was catastrophically depressed. He had some other mental issues going on and he was very candid about using psilocybin and other psychoactive self administered drugs to get better. Where do you land on ayahuasca and ketamine and psilocybin? As to before you go see a psychiatrist or I wouldn't recommend it before

[Samantha Boardman]

you go see a psychiatrist. I know of individual stories where it's been transformative and helped people with PTSD and untreatable depression and who've tried every medication, who even tried ect. I mean they've been through it all and it's changed their lives. I've also seen the opposite. And people who have. It's sort of unlocked more like some psychosis in their brain and they felt worse because of it. And they haven't had even that integration piece of it where they're doing it with somebody who's sort of shepherding them through it. So I would recommend this is wearing my psychiatry hat. See a psychiatrist first and then I think you can make those decisions and the jury's out. With these studies, every day one comes out favoring them, another one comes out saying it's not helping them that much. I just think right now it's one of the few things I learned to say in medical school was I don't know. And I don't think that's so great.

[Dan Buettner]

You're such a wonderful doctor. So summing things up, when it comes to getting more happiness or joy into your life, what would you say are the three most actionable tips people can take away from this conversation?

[Samantha Boardman]

Do something for someone else. Invest in your relationships. One of the things I always say is like it's a pet peeve of mine when people say love. You put the I in there. Like, don't forget the I. I love you. Own it, you know, and stop thinking, start doing. It's really like the actions you take, the connections you make and how you participate that you're going to be marshmocking all your life and that's a good thing. And your friends are your rocket ship. You know, stay connected.

[Dan Buettner]

I just love that you have every single remedy and drug available to you. You have arguably more education on happiness than anybody else in the world. And you give them these very fundamentally human, accessible to everybody pieces of advice. And I just love that. And by the way, marketers can't sell you any of those. They're free.

[Samantha Boardman]

Yeah, they are free.

[Dan Buettner]

All right, let's move on to do therapists actually make us happier?

[Samantha Boardman]

It's a great question. And the answer is no. You know, and actually, don't you see now on social media, like, people use

[Dan Buettner]

that, like, in therapy, don't make us happier. I wanna make that point.

[Samantha Boardman]

It's. If you are in therapy and you are talking about the same thing over and over again, and you're just fixating on what's wrong and you're complaining about the past and you're not thinking about the future, if you're just thinking about what's going on in your head and you're not talking about, like, the actions you can take to move forward, and if you're just focused on, like, sort of your interior life and not your connections and your relationships, that's probably not the best therapy to be in. And I just like this idea that, oh, therapy's the answer, I think is misguided. It's like how you're living is the answer to a lot of these questions. And these are, you know, these choices that you're making in an everyday way. And there's a question people want us to ask all the time is, you know, how are you? And then you're not supposed to say, how are you? Anymore. You're supposed to say, how are you really? Because the assumption is when you say, how are you? The answer is like, oh, fine. And that you're not really getting to the crux of it because the assumption is you're miserable. And if you're not acknowledging that you're miserable, then you're either in denial or there's something wrong with you. And I think just we're assuming pathology where maybe there isn't any there. And we're creating this expectation effect that if we're assuming everyone's miserable, that you know, and that they're. Everyone's vulnerable, that everyone's broken, that we're not. We're tiptoeing around them and we're sort of walking on eggshells and forgetting about their capacity and their potential to go off and do great things, not just for themselves, but for others. And we're inviting all of this self focus rather than having what I call, like an other orientation, an outer orientation.

[Dan Buettner]

So what do you say, first of all, what do you say to me instead of how are you? Or do you say how are you? And what's the best answer when somebody says, how Are you? To Samantha, who's a friend. What do you say back?

[Samantha Boardman]

Well, it's become almost like formulaic. And sometimes it's just to grease the wheels of a conversation like, how are you? I'm fine. And like it's maybe to me you wouldn't want to like dive into what's really going on with your life, but I don't know, maybe with your, you know, somebody you see every day or with John you would talk about what's going on that I don't need to pry out of you all the misery. And I think this mining for misery is happening.

[Dan Buettner]

Uh huh. Mining for misery.

[Samantha Boardman]

And it's becoming like our common ground. And the only way you can bond with someone is by sharing or even oversharing. And this vulnerability. Yes. And that is why can we only bond with people when we're just talking about ourselves at our worst? Can't we also not, you know, not in a bragging or humble bragging way, but also consider what we are like at our best? What were the strengths we used in those moments? How can we use them going forward to serve others and to sort of, you know, add value to the world?

[Dan Buettner]

I know this may sound fast out, but the best response to how are you? Comes from my brother Nick, my little brother. What does he say when you ask him how he is? He said it's the best day of my life. And you know what, when he says that I feel better and I know it's just kind of a rote answer, but it's so much better than, you know, I have a bowel obstruction or

[Samantha Boardman]

you know, yes, no, and that people almost feel guilty. I knew this woman whose daughter was in college and that they would in these dorm meetings talk about that and the kid felt guilty not having something to complain about, you know, that it was that she felt that if she couldn't talk about something terrible, that she was sort of maybe in denial about it or ignoring all the suffering in the world and not being able to look for the good and to see this is the best day of my life. I'm here. I'm alive.

[Dan Buettner]

Well, Samantha, today has been the best day of my life talking to you and I actually mean it. Thank you so much.

[Samantha Boardman]

Thank you.

[Dan Buettner]

Everyday vitality. If you haven't gotten, if you can't go see Samantha Boardman as a patient. Get the book, subscribe to Positive Prescription, get the paid version. And thank you so much for spreading your wisdom. And it's not only I know you personally, you live a rich, wonderful life. You're good to your friends, you have a wonderful family and you also have the education to give us advice that is underpinned by real research. And it is just a treasure chest. Thank you. And you've made me happier.

[Samantha Boardman]

Thank you for making all of us happier. Thank you, Dan.