How To Make Your Life Exciting Again

Mel Robbins  (14:41):

What's so interesting about this research that I really like is that you got no choice in this. Your brain is literally filing away information based on your familiarity with it. And so what is the implication for your relationship? Because as I'm sitting here listening to you talk about the research on vacation, which I think we can all relate to, 

Dr. Tali Sharot (15:24):

Yeah. So habitation has a lot to do with this, right? And in fact, so if you listen to Esther Perel, the well-known relationship expert, she did surveys and research where she asked people, Hey, when were you most attracted to your partner? These are people who have been together for a while, married couples. And she found that they said two things. Either they said I was most attracted to my partner when I went away and came back. Maybe I was on a business trip, I was away for a weekend and I came back. Which makes perfect sense because what you're doing when you're leaving a situation and then coming back is you're habituating. What does this habituating mean? It means that you remove that thing, you stepped out of the bakery for 10 minutes, now you're coming back. Now your neurons are going to start responding maybe not as much as the very, very first that when you enter the bakery, but if there's a large enough break, then you dis habituate and you start responding. And that's the first thing she found. We have actually, so on the cover of our book, if you open it up, there's a little visual illusion, which is colors, clouds of colors,

 

(16:36):

And a fixation point in the middle.

 

(16:38):

And if you fixate on that fixation point and you don't move your eyes at all, what happens is the colors suddenly become gray. And if you do it really, really well, actually it just becomes white. And why does that happen? Because the input to every specific neuron, if you're not moving your eyes, doesn't change. It's the same, the same colors are getting to the same exact neurons. And so the neurons at the beginning, they're active, they're like color, color, color, but they're like, well, color's not changing. I'm going to stop responding. So now it's gray, and finally it's white. All you need to do is move your eyes like that, just move them for a second, and then the color immediately comes back because now different neurons are getting different signals and now they're reacting again.

 

Mel Robbins  (17:22):

So we're putting this up on the screen for everyone who's watching on YouTube right now. And you're going to start by simply staring at the black plus sign in the middle of the page. And Dr. Tali said, we got to do it for 30 seconds and just try to focus only on the black plus sign. And as you stare at the black plus sign, you're going to notice that the color fades away. It's crazy. But the second that you kind of adjust your eyes and look away for a second from the black, all the color comes rushing back. 

Dr. Tali Sharot (18:30):

So that's this habituation, right?

 

Mel Robbins  (18:32):

Gotcha.

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (18:32):

That kind of same principle. Of course, the actual neural mechanism is not exactly the same, but the principle is the same. Your partner has been there for a while, everything's the same. We kind of don't notice, don't respond, don't think we leave for a bit. We come back and now colors. So that's the first thing she found. And the second thing is related, which she found that people say they're most attracted to the partner when they're in a novel new situation. For example, the partner is talking to some strangers or the partner is on the stage doing something. And again, this is a form of habituation. You're seeing your partner in a different way because they are in a different circumstance. So now it's not the same old, same old, right?

 

Mel Robbins  (19:17):

Yeah,

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (19:17):

It's something new.

Dr. Tali Sharot (20:11):

Yeah, because it brings you less joy and as a result you want something different. And I think your example is great because there's two things here. One is it's something that you had before, which you fought was fantastic. The kitchen you fought was fantastic before, but now is not that exciting, not that fun. And also the other thing that nice that you said is like, well, I go to another person's house. I think their kitchen is great, and they probably come to yours. And for them they think like, oh, the kitchen is great. Or they think like, oh, she has a wonderful life. And it's potentially the case that you have the same thing, but you've had it the same for a while. And that's why we're looking for diversity or new things. And it's not all badge. I mean, again, it's like two sides of the coin. Maybe we don't need to redo our kitchen every couple of years, but that kind of need to progress, that's not necessarily just a bad thing that keeps us moving

 

Mel Robbins  (21:17):

Forward. Yes,

Mel Robbins  (21:22):

How do you balance it? Because I can think about an example where we all are chasing the next greatest thing. We're chasing something that looks better or something that's going to be this, and we're kind of going after that newness, thrill. And it's very clear that there's both the need to change, but there's also the fact that constantly chasing it and using an example of what, oh, well, their significant other does a lot of that, and my partner doesn't do that anymore. Is it making us unhappy to constantly seek the change or how do you balance it?

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (21:58):

Yeah, so I mean, it is definitely a balance, which is why I think it's important to kind of think about how do we get some joy back from what we have? And there's two ways to do that. And one of the ways is what we talked about, which is a break. You probably notice that if you go on a work thing for a couple of days or maybe even more, maybe three days or a week, and when you come back, it seems like everything has res sparkled, even your kitchen. Yes, I'd imagine that if you are away for enough time, you come back and the kitchen has sparkled, right? It suddenly does look

 

Mel Robbins  (22:40):

Great. So does

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (22:40):

Chris. And I think he looks at Chris is like, you're not so bad after all, and the home and everything else. It's definitely something that happens. In fact, we stole the word sparkled from Julia Roberts. So she has a quote where she says that her normal day is she gets up, she takes the kids to school, she comes back, she maybe goes on a bike ride, maybe with her husband, she has lunch, then it's time to pick them up and take them to their afterschool activities. And she says, well, if I'd done that every day for months and months and months, it would just be boring. But I don't because I go away to film or whatever she does. And then she comes back, and then it has sparkled, right? Yes. Sparkling, everything seems like she says, it seems like there's pixie dust on it.

 

Mel Robbins  (23:30):

Yes.

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (23:31):

And you can say, well, Julia Roberts is not the average human being, right? Correct. She's quite a privileged person. But I think she's talking here about something that we can relate to, which is if you take a little break and you come back, then your life looks a little bit right? You dissipate to some degree, maybe it doesn't last very long, but you can see things a little bit differently.

 

Mel Robbins  (23:53):

Istic. Do you have recommendations for how a person who's not leaving to go film a movie could do that if they're in a job that they go to all the time and they are in just this cycle of same person, same job, same neighborhood, same group of friends. How do you use this research to sparkle some pixie dust on your life?

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (24:15):

So two things. First is you could probably take a break to most people. They could still take a little break. You could still go away for a few days and come back. Now, let's say you can't do that. Lori Santos, who is a professor at Yale suggests closing your eyes and imagining your life without these things. Imagine your life without that wonderful kitchen. Imagine your life without the partner, without the job that you have. And then when you open your eyes again, 

Mel Robbins  (24:50):

I actually like that because I think the instinct is instead of closing your eyes and imagining your life without the person you're complaining about or without the kitchen that you have that is great and works fine and without the neighborhood you live in, that we instead look out instead of in, and we go, oh, well, I like the way that relationship over there works better. And I like the way that kitchen over there looks better. And then you bring it back to your life and pound on the people that are there, instead of taking a step to close your eyes and go, well, what would my life look like if they weren't here? Now obviously if you're happy, then you got to make some changes, but if you feel that little ache, then what do you do? You just open your eyes and sprinkle a little fairy dust on 'em. How does this impact our sex life?

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (25:49):

So again, if we go back to Esther Perez's research, her recommendations is breaks or novelty, putting

 

Mel Robbins  (25:59):

Yourself Well, a lot of us are already taken breaks, so that's not what

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (26:01):

Putting yourself, putting yourself, yeah, 

Mel Robbins  (26:10):

No, I meant a break from sex. There's a lot of us in the menopause years that are like, we need to get more adventurous. So either take a break in terms of,

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (26:20):

Or a novelty

 

Mel Robbins  (26:21):

Or introduce a novelty.

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (26:23):

And so the novelty is a really interesting thing because, okay, so I was talking about breaks before. And then the second thing you could do to spice up your relationship, but in general to spice up your life, is to introduce variety. So diversify. And I don't know that she necessarily is giving examples just about what's happening in the bedroom while you're in the bedroom, because I think her point is that if you do things in a way that's different outside, so once in a while when she said, oh, you see your partner on the stage, or you see them doing something that you've never seen that before, what her research suggests, that enhances attraction.

 

(27:09):

But I think the message of variety and novelty is important for our life in general. So people who have a more diverse life, they've maybe lived in different places, they work in different types of projects, they interact with different type of people, they tend to have a more psychologically rich life. So I think we could definitely do that. Whatever kind of life you have, you can actually shake things up a little bit. It can be something small. How do you commute to work? What route do you take to work? It could be small like that, or it could be like maybe take a course and it could be something online. So maybe you don't have the money to pay for a new, but take up a new skill or a new listen to a new podcast. So try to change things or maybe start talking to someone or befriend someone who's different from the normal kind of people that you tend to interact. Even their personality is not the type that you usually are interacting with. And by diversifying, we are doing a few things. We are disa habituating because now we have different inputs that we're not used to. We also, as we talked about before, putting ourself in a context of learning. And that's important. Learning is always good. We enjoy learning.

 

Mel Robbins  (28:28):

Well boost your happiness based on the research.

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (28:30):

Right? Exactly.

 

Mel Robbins  (28:31):

I have another question about the research, which is when does habituation and the fact that you're now used to your life feel the most overwhelming?

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (28:43):

So I think it is when things are not changing for a prolonged time, and we see that in our midlife. And so there's this interesting thing called the U shape of happiness. So happiness is quite high in kids and teenagers, and then it goes down, down, down and reaches rock bottom in your midlife, but then it starts going up again and actually remains quite high until the last couple of years of life. And again, this U shape is on average, so there's thousands of individuals, and we're looking for a trend and data from thousands of individuals. It doesn't mean that for every person, midlife will be the bottom part, and you'll be happy in the edges, but that's in general. And so why are people less happy in midlife? That could be many reasons, but one reason is it is the least amount of change.

Mel Robbins  (30:37):

That is so cool. You literally just explained the midlife crisis and the journey of happiness of the human beings through the lens of neuroscience and the fact that we assimilate to the experiences around us. That's so cool, Dr. Sharot, you do a ton of work with companies and team behavior. And so I was just curious, how can you keep your teams motivated and creative when this habituation creeps in at a job where it's kind of the same thing most days.

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (31:11):

So you want to induce, inject variety into their daily work as well. And so one thing that companies tend to do well, I dunno if they tend to do sometimes some companies, what they do is they take people and they rotate them through different divisions or get them to work on different types of projects with different types of people. And if you do that, then again, you're creating more change, more learning. This habituation, not only are they learning something from this new division, but then when they go back to their old division, now it's a break. So now they will see their division with new eyes, which means they might appreciate the good things that they kind of habituated to. They might see the bad things that weren't quite salient before because they've been for, and that's a good thing. If I see the bad things, I'm going to try to change them.

 

(32:00):

And so that will enhance out my wellbeing. But also, it turns out, it also enhances creativity. So it turns out if you change your environment, and it could be even really small changes, like I'm working in my office and now I'm going to work in a coffee shop, or I'm going to walk and maybe have a meeting while walking. It turns out that enhances creativity. So a research by a psychologist by the name of Kayley, Maine, she found that creativity will be boosted 

(33:03):

So for one example, I was in my office trying to solve this problem. I couldn't solve it. So I decided to go to the gym, left the office, walked to the gym. Gym was quite close. It took me less than six minutes to get there. But on the way is when I suddenly came up with a solution. And I don't know that I necessarily was consciously thinking about it, but I think I had this all the information in my mind, and then I just changed my environment. And that kind of changed something in the way that my brain was processing things and the solution appeared, which was to be a really important kind of breakthrough. That will lead to a lot of what I did after that. And if I think about it every single time, every single time when I had an idea, which would be like, oh, that would be my next book, or that would be my next research direction, or there's some problem that it was in that kind of situation, I was suddenly in a new place. Another one was, I was in a conference listening to these talks. They were super interesting. But then after the conference, I went, and this was in San Francisco, so I went to a vineyard and I was just sitting outside and having a little wine. And then suddenly the idea came based on the knowledge that I already had during the conference. But it was like being in this totally new different environment where the processing happened and the creative idea came about.

 

Mel Robbins  (34:20):

Well, I think a lot of people have the experience of either being out on a walk in the nature or on some vacation or away for the weekend. And that's where people tend to make big decisions and have these breakthroughs because you get a break from your life, which gives you much needed perspective about what's important or what you've always been thinking about. 

Dr. Tali Sharot (35:03):

One action that you could take that will make a big difference? I think it is try something new. And look, it might make no difference. It depends, but it might make a big difference. So try something new, whether it is, think about something that you want to learn, think about a new skill that you want to have, maybe somewhere that you want to visit. Just something, try a new dish to make. I dunno. I think that would not, it could change your life, right? It could be that of course you think will change your life, but I think most likely what it may do, it would give you this kind of joy of novelty, which then may create a habit of trying new things.

 

Mel Robbins  (35:54):

I love that. And I love to end my interviews with brilliant people like you by giving you an opportunity to just talk directly to the person that is listening. They might be driving a car or unloading the dishwasher or taking you on a walk with them. And I would love to give you the opportunity to just give them any parting words or some sort of message from you.

 

Dr. Tali Sharot (36:24):

Sure. So we end the book that I wrote together with my co-author, Kassan saying, we end that with a chapter that's called Experiments in Living. So my parting words is Experiment in Living. And the idea here is that you don't really know what's good for your life or for society without doing experiments. Just like in science, I don't know what the ground truth is until I do my experiments. And sometimes it's surprising. And so the idea is that if you do these experiments in living, try things in different ways, try them in new ways. It could be you are actually taking out some stuff from your life. Try to maybe see what happens if you go off social media for a few weeks, see how that impacts you. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't like it. Or maybe it's adding something to your life. Experiments in living allows you to try everything, or not everything, but more things to find out what are the optimal things for me and what doesn't really work.

 

Mel Robbins  (37:27):

I love it. Well, Dr. Tali Sharot, thank you so much for being here. And I also wanted to thank you for spending time with us today. And in case nobody tells you, I wanted to tell you that I love you. I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to not only create a better life, but to take Dr. Sharot's words to heart. Alrighty, I'll talk to you in a few days. I am so glad that you got to watch that conversation. Aren't you ready to shake things up? You going to go camping tonight? It was so amazing on how small changes are vital for your happiness. And if you love this episode, which of course you did, you are going to love what I'm going to tell you to watch next. But first, please hit subscribe and let me tell you why it is how you can tell me that you really loved this episode. And second, it supports me in bringing you world-class experts and new videos every single day. Okay, awesome. Thanks for subscribing. I really, really, really appreciate. I'm feeling you shaking things up over there. And since you love this episode, you're going to love this first episode that I did with Dr. Tali Sharot, where we talk about what you have wrong about motivation and how you can really motivate someone else or yourself to change any behavior. Check it out.