Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. You're not going to believe what I did last night. I mean, just take a guess. What do you think I did last night? You're never going to guess this one. Well, last night, my husband Chris and I pitched a tent in our backyard. We grabbed a blow-up mattress, a couple of comforters, two pillows, and we slept out under the stars in our backyard here in Vermont. It was a full moon. It was absolutely incredible. We used to do this stuff all the time when we were first dating. We were constantly planning fun adventures and camping and doing cool things outside. We've been married now. My God, it's going to be 28 years this year. Holy smokes. In the other day, Chris turned to me and said, Hey, Mel, in a couple of nights, it's going to be a full moon. Weather looks good. You have any interest in sleeping outside in a tent? I was like, Oh, my God, yes. And so we did. In fact, we did it last night. Here I was this morning. After sleeping in the tent last night, I was having my coffee in the house.

If you're watching, you can probably tell based on the fact that I have greasy hair. I've pulled it back in a ponytail, and I'm wearing my red flannel that I looked like I was camping because I was. But here I am. We're out of the I'm standing in my kitchen, I got my mug of coffee in my hand, and I started to wonder, that was so fun. When did life get boring? Why don't I do this more often? And then it dawned on me. Mel, Maybe life isn't boring. Maybe you've gotten boring. I want you to really think about that. Maybe the reason why you're not having enough fun in your life or your relationship or work is because you've gotten a little a little too used to your routine, and that's made you a little boring. Well, today, that's what you and I are going to talk about with a neuroscientist from MIT and University College, London, who says, Habits and routines have a hidden cost. They can make your life feel boring, and she's here to tell you what to do about it. There are really fun ways that you can shake up your life, your work, your relationships, and even a really fun thing that research says you need to do to shake up your vacation.

So are you ready to shake things up? Good. Let's go. Hey, it's your friend Mel. I am so glad you're here with me today. It is always such an honor to spend some time together. I want to start by acknowledging you for taking the time to listen to something that is going to help you create a better life. I know our conversation today is going to do that. If you're a new listener, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast family. I'm so happy you're here with me. I love the topic that we're going to talk about, and I am a little groggy because, yes, I did sleep in a tent last night. I was telling you, my husband Chris and I, when we were first dating, and then we eventually got married and we had kids. When they were young, we used to go camping all the time. Not only to the national parks and out into the wilderness, but we would pitch a tent in the backyard hard when our kids were little, just on any given night, especially during those years when we didn't have a money to go away and take a trip.

Just a couple of days ago, we're standing in the kitchen, we're cooking dinner. Chris and I have been married for 28 years. We've been together for a long time. Chris turns to me out of the blue and he's like, Hey, Mel, you want to sleep outside? Just that one change to our normal routine created so much excitement and fun. I felt like I was dating him again. To put this in perspective, it's not like I'm in the wilderness. I mean, we pitch the tent like eight feet from our bedroom, for crying out loud. You could almost reach out and touch the house. If I had to get up and go to the bathroom during the night, I would have just walked into my house. But I felt a world away. Because just think about, what do you do on a normal night after work or school? Same old, same old, right? You cook dinner, you clean up, you watch something on TV, or you read a book, you go to bed. Boring. Instead, one small change, just eight feet From the outside of my house. Whole new world, whole new marriage. What small change. I was thinking this morning that you and I talk a lot about the topic of locking in a routine or Learning new habits and making them stick.

That's a really important topic when you want to change and learn something new. But today we're going to talk about something different, which is what do you do when you need to change a If you don't want to blow it up, you just want to mix it up. You know what I mean? A life or work or a relationship that's become just too routine. It's a little boring. When that happens, you got to do the opposite. You have to become really intentional about breaking the routine, about shaking things up, not in a way that breaks everything apart, but that makes them better. Think about a snow globe, right? You pick up a snow globe and you shake it. All of a sudden, all of that stuff that was inside gets just covered in all this shimmery little stuff. Then all the shimmery little stuff, that little shake, it eventually just drifts down to the bottom and the image appears and things go back to normal. That's This is exactly what I'm talking about, how to add that little shake into your life, into your relationship, into your work. I know you've experienced what I'm talking about when I say that things are a little boring, that life Nothing's really bad.

It just feels a little dull. The only thing that you have to look forward to is, Oh, my gosh, is there some surprise movie that's streaming tonight or that vacation that you can afford to take eight months from now? That's not a way to go through your life. So today, we're going to shake things up. We're going to shake it up in a really cool way because this is not just some light chit-chatty topic. There's a word that researchers have to describe this feeling when life gets a little dull, when things seem a little too boring, that feeling that the person that you're in a relationship with has lost their luster. It's this feeling that... I hate I hate to say it, but you're falling out of love with a life that you used to love. You might be silently quitting your job. The word to describe when life becomes too routine is habituation. Habituation affects everything, and it affects your enjoyment of every single aspect of your life. Habituation is the phenomenon of how when you get used to something, you tend not to enjoy it as much, whether that's your significant other. Or even, have you ever noticed the first day of vacation is always the best?

Then you start to get used to being away, and it's just not as fun as it was on the first day. Or the first bite of ice cream, way better than the rest of the cone. I mean, that doesn't keep me from eating the entire thing. But the question is, how can you enjoy the whole thing? How can you shake up your day-to-day life or your relationship or your work so you enjoy it more? There's a lot of research about why this is important and so many fun and simple things that you're going to learn to do today that will make the little and the big things in your life shimmer again. What I love about this topic, it's one of my favorite kinds of topics because it combines deep academic research with the tiny little things you can do that make a profound difference on your experience as you live your day-to-day life. Here with the groundbreaking science and the research to teach you how you can start seeing, feeling, and noticing all the shimmery cool things in your life again is Dr. Tali Sheret. Now, Dr. Sheret is a behavioral neuroscientist and the director of the Effective Brain Lab at University College, London.

Her research integrates neuroscience, behavioral economics, and psychology to study how emotion and behavior influences people's beliefs and decisions. She's also a professor at both University College London and MIT and the best-selling author of three books, including the new book, Look Again. This episode, I think you're going to love it because it's one of those profound conversations that will allow you to truly understand and connect the dots between why you've become bored with what used to give you excitement and meaning. More importantly, based on the research, how you can reignite the sparks of joy and happiness in your day-to-day life. Dr. Tali Sheret. Welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so excited to shake things up with you.

I am so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

What I'd love to do is dig into your really amazing research on habituation. You have uncovered this link between change and experiencing happiness and joy in your life. So many of us fear change, and yet what you're finding is that our ability to change and pushing ourselves to change and experience experiencing new things in our life is foundational to you enjoying your life and having moments of joy. Can you tell us about habituation?

Right. So habituation, it's really a fundamental process, our fundamental rule that governs how our brain works and every neuron in it. It's basically our tendency to respond less and less and less to things that are constant or that change very gradually or are frequent. For example, an easy example, you walk into a bakery, there's the smell smell of the baked goods and the cake. Studies show that within 20 minutes, you cannot detect the smell any longer. The olfactory neurons in your brain stop responding because the smell is constant around you. So very fast, they will actually stop and you won't be able to smell. You probably have this with perfume. When you first buy perfume and you put it on, it's really salient. Next day, a little bit less. For a day, a little bit less. A month goes by and you can't smell your own perfume.

It's so true.

Yeah. So that's habituation. Or you jump into a pool, it's really cold, but you tend to get used to it. After a few minutes, it's less cold. Just as you habituate to smells or to a temperature, you also habituate to more complicated things in your life or in society. For example, you get used to there's a new romance, right? It's really exciting, but all the time, it gets less exciting, right? You have less of a reaction, less of a physiological reaction, less of an emotional reaction. But you also get used to the bad stuff, breakup, right? There's less of a reaction to that. You get used to the view of the ocean, and you get used to pollution, too, meaning you're able to detect it less, you're able to see it even less. You get used to a new job, to a promotion. You react to that less, you habituate to that. You can habituate also to losing a job. Because of habituation, we might have some great things in our life, like a loving relationship or a comfortable home or interesting job, but they don't elicit as much joy on a daily basis as you'd expect them to.

Just because you're used to it?

Right. You don't notice them anymore. You could have a wonderful comfortable home, which when you first bought it, you were so excited and you really noticed everything. But now you're there every day. It doesn't elicit as much of a reaction. The same thing with a job. When you first got the job, you're like, Oh, you're just amazed that you could do what you could do. But now you're doing it every day. You're doing it right. So it has less. It doesn't mean the people don't appreciate it all, but less so over time. It's a similar thing for the bad stuff in life. There could be bad things around us, societal things like sexism or racism, or it could be cracks in your personal relationships or inefficiencies in the workplace. But if they've been there for a long time, we stop noticing them. We just get used to them and we stop. If we stop noticing them, we're less motivated to change.

How does this impact your happiness? Because it seems like it could have good and bad implications. I think it's really interesting that your brain itself is reacting to something that you're getting used to. It's not like you're some jerk that's just zoning out. It's that your brain, in your words, this is habituation. That you're becoming really familiar with your partner or with where you work or your neighborhood. How does this impact your happiness?

Well, it means that the good things around us can create less happiness on a daily basis. The stuff that's really good and everyone has some good stuff around us. Again, it could be a relationship, it could be a comfortable home, but those things don't elicit as much happiness. That has a negative impact on our happiness. However, On the flip side, if something bad happens, even if it's really, really bad, a loss of a loved one, we habituate to that as well, to the bad stuff in life, we habituate. It could be a good thing because we don't want to feel like a breakup. We don't want to feel that pain that you feel at the very beginning. You want to habituate, so then you can move forward. That's good.

That's very good.

But on the other hand, there could be some bad things that have been there for a long time, and they're in the background. Because of habituation, we don't really notice them. That's not great because then we are not motivated to change. It turns out if you do notice and you try to change and you're successful, well, that will enhance your well-being and your happiness.

Well, I think that's the thing that's super cool about your research is that there is a direct connection between the happiness and joy that you feel and the amount that you're willing to change. What is happening in your brain when you experience something new?

Right. Really, our brain, you can think about it as a front page of a newspaper. It cares about what's new, what just happened. It doesn't really care that much about the old. It makes sense if you think about it in an evolution way and your ability to adapt. When something new is happening, your brain needs to process because maybe you need to react. Maybe it's threatening. But after it's been there for a while and you're fine, well, we really need to keep our resources. The neurons need to be ready for the next new thing that's coming, so we're ready to react to that. New is what we are noticing the most and what we're acting to the most. Just to give you a fun example, I was working with a tourism company where they wanted to know what makes people happiest on vacation and when they're happiest on vacation. We went to the resorts and we surveyed people and we asked them, Hey, what was the best bit of the vacation? There was one One word that they repeated more than any other word, and it was first. The first view of the ocean, the first cocktail that I had, the first suncastle that I built, the first was new and exciting.

Now, the second view of the ocean, that was good, too, but it wasn't quite as good as a first, right? And the second cocktail was quite good, but it wasn't good as the first cocktail. And that's because of habituation, right? We feel less. And the other interesting thing was when we just looked at the data and we wanted to see when were they the happiest, We found that they were happy as 43 hours into a vacation. So 43 hours gave you time to unpack and really focus on the fun. But from that point on, fun started dwindling, right, over time because we habituated. You were still happy on day 8, 7, 6, and 5, but not as happy as you were 43 hours in because you have started to habituate to the environment, to the activities.

I am learning so much I feel empowered to try new strategies. I want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsors. While you're listening to our sponsors and they bring you this show at zero cost, I also want you to think, who in your life can you send this to? Go ahead and share this episode with someone that you love. Take a listen to our sponsors and do not go anywhere. Please, we have so many specific takeaways coming up that you're going to be thrilled that you stuck around learn, and we'll be waiting for you after a short break. Stay with us. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel, and we are here with the remarkable neuroscientist Dr. Tali Sheret. How do we apply this research around vacations to our own life?

I think it suggests that maybe we want to have more frequent vacations, but shorter ones. Instead of going away for a couple of weeks, you might actually go for a long weekend a few times. Now, sometimes it's not possible if you're going far. But what that means is you will have more of those 43-hour peaks. You will have more of those firsts. You know what else you will have? You will have the anticipation of the vacation. Because this is what I didn't tell you. I told you that the happiest time is 43 hours into the vacation, but I didn't actually tell you that the really, really happiest time is a day before vacation. There is a study that was conducted where people who were about to go on vacation were asked every day of the week before vacation how happy they were, every day of the vacation for a week how happy they were, and then every day when they came back after vacation how happy they were. It turns out that people are happiest before they even step on the plane. So the day before vacation, they're still in their office working on their computers, but in their mind, they're on vacation.

And in their mind, it's quite wonderful. When they go on vacation, it It's good, but it's not as good as it was in their mind the day before. The anticipation of good things is what really makes people happy. So if you have more vacations, you have more of those anticipations, and you have more of the afterglow as well.

Well, you know what? There's huge implications if you take this even out of the context of vacations and you just say, What are things that I look forward to? Whether it's a date on the calendar eight months from now where I'm going to get together with my favorite family members, or it is some day that I'm taking off of work to take a class, or it is some cool thing. It sounds dumb, but I'm going on a walk this weekend with my husband, and It is a guided walk looking for owls. This must mean I'm in my 50s, but I am so excited for this thing. I can see how even just being proactive about putting things in your calendar out in the future to look forward to is a way to hack happiness in your life now.

Absolutely. I call these anticipatory events. These are events that we have on our calendar. They haven't happened yet, But they're making you happy at the moment. In fact, this is why when you ask people about which is a favorite day of the week, people prefer Friday by far more than Sunday, because Friday brings with us the anticipation of everything that they had planned for the weekend, whether it is a hike to find owls or whatever it is. But Sunday, you might be out hiking and looking for owls, but you have the anxiety of the work week. Indeed, anticipation is something that's really, really important. Have that holiday booked, have that activity booked. It can be a night out. It could be a hike, very simple things. That makes us happy at the moment.

What's so interesting about this research that I really like is that you got no choice in this. Like your brain is literally filing away information based on your familiarity with it. 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, I'm also thinking, Oh, well, probably right around day 43 or week 43 is your dating somebody and you're wondering, why is this person no longer being proactive? Why is this person no longer seeming to make an effort? Why is this no longer feeling as exciting? Is that habituation?

Yeah. So habituation has a lot to do with this. In fact, if you listen to Esther Pareil, 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. Mary got both. 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 it back is you're dishabituating. What does dishabituating 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 a very, very first, but when you enter the bakery. But if there's a large enough break, then you dishabituate and you start responding. That's the first thing she found. We have actually... On the cover of our book, if you open it up, there's a little visual illusion, which is colors, clouds of colors, and a fixation point in the middle.

If If you fixate on that fixation point and you don't move your eyes at all, what happens is the colors suddenly become gray. If you do it really, really well, actually, it just becomes white. 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. The neurons at the beginning, they're active. They're like, Color, color, color. They're like, Well, color is not changing. I'm going to stop responding. 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. That's this habituation. Got you. The habituation is what came at the beginning, and then this habituation. That 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 I was like, Don't notice, don't respond, don't think. We leave for a bit, we come back, and now colors.

That's the first thing she found. 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. Again, this is a form of dishabituation. You're seeing your partner in a different way because they are in a in different circumstances. Now it's not the same old, same old. It's something new.

When does habituation pose the biggest, I think, threat to upsetting what might be otherwise a nice life? Because I could see how you getting used to your neighborhood, you getting used to your... I'll just take the example of a kitchen. Your kitchen is perfectly fine, and yet you probably spend a lot of time on social media looking at kitchens and thinking about kitchen renovation, and then you walk into another person's house, you're like, Oh, we should have a coffee bar. What if I did white cabinets? Now all of a sudden you're looking at your kitchen, which has been perfectly fine, and you no longer like it, you hate it. Does Does that situation make you start to reject or not like the things in your life, from relationships to your job, to your neighborhood, to your kitchen? Is that part of the problem with this if you don't realize it's going on?

Yeah, because it brings you less joy. As a result, you want something different. I think your example is great because there's two things here. One is it's something that you had before, which you thought was fantastic, the kitchen. You thought was fantastic before, but now is not that exciting, not that fun. 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. They life?Right. So two things. First is, you could probably take a break, okay? 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. Laurie Santos, who is a professor at Yale, suggests closing your eyes and imagining have a meeting while walking. It turns out that that enhances creativity.A research by a psychologist by the name of Kaylee Maine, she found that creativity will be boosted after making these changes, just changing your environment. Now, that being said, the creativity boost only lasts for six minutes. However, those six minutes can be quite crucial. That could be the time when you come up with this new idea, the new direction. In fact, if I think about all the times in my life when I had this really important idea, the creative solution, it was never when I was in front of my computer working and trying to think of a solution. It was mostly when I was somewhere else. 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. 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 changed my environment, and that changed something in the way that my brain was processing things, and the solution appeared, which was to be a really important breakthrough that will lead to a lot of what I did after that.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 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. 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.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. 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 I got it. If there were one change or one thing that you hope the person listening would do as a result of this conversation and all of the research, what is one action that somebody could take that you think would make a big difference in their life?One action that you could take that will make a big difference. I think it is try something new. Look, it might make no difference. It depends, right? But it might make a big difference. 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 don't know. I think that would not necessarily... It could change your life. It could That's the next thing you think it will change your life. But I think most likely what it may do, it would give you this joy of novelty, which then may create a habit of trying new things.I love that. I 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. I would love to give you the opportunity to just give them any parting words or some message from you.Sure. We end are the book that I wrote together with my co-op for Katz-Anne, saying we end that with a chapter that's called Experiments in Living. My parting words is experiment in living. 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. The idea is that if you do these experiments in living, try things in different different ways, try them in new ways. It could be you're 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.I love it. Well, Dr. Tauley Sheret, thank you so much for being here. I also wanted to thank you for spending time with us today. 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. Sheret's words to heart and start experimenting, start trying new things already. I'll talk to you in a few days. Is that good? Do you want to do it one more time? I think it was really good. What do you think? All right, let me start one more time. Let me do it one more time. Okay, you ready? Okay. Oh, that's right. And the best... Okay. And she's the best selling offer. Oh, my God. This is where the gas in the tank. I need my own magic wand. Come on, Mel. Okay. My lord. Okay, here we go. All right. Thank you.Thank you so much.Amazing. Super helpful. Wow. Okay. Oh, and one more thing. No, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.Stitcher.

life?

Right. So two things. First is, you could probably take a break, okay? 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. Laurie Santos, who is a professor at Yale, suggests closing your eyes and imagining have a meeting while walking. It turns out that that enhances creativity.A research by a psychologist by the name of Kaylee Maine, she found that creativity will be boosted after making these changes, just changing your environment. Now, that being said, the creativity boost only lasts for six minutes. However, those six minutes can be quite crucial. That could be the time when you come up with this new idea, the new direction. In fact, if I think about all the times in my life when I had this really important idea, the creative solution, it was never when I was in front of my computer working and trying to think of a solution. It was mostly when I was somewhere else. 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. 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 changed my environment, and that changed something in the way that my brain was processing things, and the solution appeared, which was to be a really important breakthrough that will lead to a lot of what I did after that.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 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. 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.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. 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 I got it. If there were one change or one thing that you hope the person listening would do as a result of this conversation and all of the research, what is one action that somebody could take that you think would make a big difference in their life?One action that you could take that will make a big difference. I think it is try something new. Look, it might make no difference. It depends, right? But it might make a big difference. 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 don't know. I think that would not necessarily... It could change your life. It could That's the next thing you think it will change your life. But I think most likely what it may do, it would give you this joy of novelty, which then may create a habit of trying new things.I love that. I 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. I would love to give you the opportunity to just give them any parting words or some message from you.Sure. We end are the book that I wrote together with my co-op for Katz-Anne, saying we end that with a chapter that's called Experiments in Living. My parting words is experiment in living. 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. The idea is that if you do these experiments in living, try things in different different ways, try them in new ways. It could be you're 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.I love it. Well, Dr. Tauley Sheret, thank you so much for being here. I also wanted to thank you for spending time with us today. 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. Sheret's words to heart and start experimenting, start trying new things already. I'll talk to you in a few days. Is that good? Do you want to do it one more time? I think it was really good. What do you think? All right, let me start one more time. Let me do it one more time. Okay, you ready? Okay. Oh, that's right. And the best... Okay. And she's the best selling offer. Oh, my God. This is where the gas in the tank. I need my own magic wand. Come on, Mel. Okay. My lord. Okay, here we go. All right. Thank you.Thank you so much.Amazing. Super helpful. Wow. Okay. Oh, and one more thing. No, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.Stitcher.

have a meeting while walking. It turns out that that enhances creativity.

A research by a psychologist by the name of Kaylee Maine, she found that creativity will be boosted after making these changes, just changing your environment. Now, that being said, the creativity boost only lasts for six minutes. However, those six minutes can be quite crucial. That could be the time when you come up with this new idea, the new direction. In fact, if I think about all the times in my life when I had this really important idea, the creative solution, it was never when I was in front of my computer working and trying to think of a solution. It was mostly when I was somewhere else. 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. 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 changed my environment, and that changed something in the way that my brain was processing things, and the solution appeared, which was to be a really important breakthrough that will lead to a lot of what I did after that.

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 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. 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.

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. 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 I got it. If there were one change or one thing that you hope the person listening would do as a result of this conversation and all of the research, what is one action that somebody could take that you think would make a big difference in their life?

One action that you could take that will make a big difference. I think it is try something new. Look, it might make no difference. It depends, right? But it might make a big difference. 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 don't know. I think that would not necessarily... It could change your life. It could That's the next thing you think it will change your life. But I think most likely what it may do, it would give you this joy of novelty, which then may create a habit of trying new things.

I love that. I 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. I would love to give you the opportunity to just give them any parting words or some message from you.

Sure. We end are the book that I wrote together with my co-op for Katz-Anne, saying we end that with a chapter that's called Experiments in Living. My parting words is experiment in living. 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. The idea is that if you do these experiments in living, try things in different different ways, try them in new ways. It could be you're 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.

I love it. Well, Dr. Tauley Sheret, thank you so much for being here. I also wanted to thank you for spending time with us today. 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. Sheret's words to heart and start experimenting, start trying new things already. I'll talk to you in a few days. Is that good? Do you want to do it one more time? I think it was really good. What do you think? All right, let me start one more time. Let me do it one more time. Okay, you ready? Okay. Oh, that's right. And the best... Okay. And she's the best selling offer. Oh, my God. This is where the gas in the tank. I need my own magic wand. Come on, Mel. Okay. My lord. Okay, here we go. All right. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Amazing. Super helpful. Wow. Okay. Oh, and one more thing. No, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.

Stitcher.