Embracing Sadness in the Pursuit of Happiness

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• 00:06

  Pushkin.

• 00:11

  I try to be a fairly honest person, but there's one situation in which I'm often tempted to lie.

• 00:18

  It's when someone asks me that innocent question.

• 00:21

  How are you?

• 00:22

  My default answer feels pretty automatic.

• 00:25

  I'm fine.

• 00:26

  How are you?

• 00:27

  Now, don't get me wrong.

• 00:29

  A lot of the time I am fine, but there are also days when I'm really down about something.

• 00:34

  And when people try to check in on those days,

• 00:37

  my first instinct is to keep whatever sadness I'm going through to myself.

• 00:41

  Kind of like a stiff upper lip thing.

• 00:43

  Not mentioning it when we're feeling low seems like what we're supposed to do.

• 00:47

  But the science shows that when it comes to emotions like sadness,

• 00:50

  the reflex to put on a happy face is actually making us feel worse.

• 00:55

  Our silence about feeling blue also means that we're missing out on opportunities to make meaningful connections with the people around us,

• 01:01

  whether they're close friends or even total strangers.

• 01:04

  So in this episode in our series on difficult emotions,

• 01:07

  we'll say to heck with the stiff upper lip mantra, we're going to start talking about sadness.

• 01:13

  We'll find out what our everyday sorrows are trying to tell us,

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