Psychology & The Good Life - Insights from Yale’s Most Popular Course

• Perfectionism can be like an internal drill sergeant who is constantly yelling at you. 

• Procrastination and perfectionism are often intimately linked. You're worried you won't do a task well, or will struggle with it, so you avoid it. 

• Self-compassion and talking to yourself with kindness are much more likely to get you back on track than continuing to let the drill sergeant berate you. 

• Try saying something to yourself like: Hey, this is hard right now, but it's normal to struggle with getting started on big things. You've got this. 

How we talk to ourselves about stress is all-important, and this is another place where our inner voice can be a friend or an enemy. 

If we have something big coming up, and our self-talk is "This week is going to be terrible" that affects not just our thinking, but our body's physiological response. It spikes our stress hormones, and the event hasn't even happened yet. 

We can change the internal conversation, and reduce our actual stress levels. We could say, "This week is a busy one, and that is a good thing! The adrenaline will kick in to help, and we can do some great things this week."

• The beauty of our psychological systems is that even "faking it until you make it" works at some level.

• Your brain is still hearing those statements and internalizing them - especially if you say them out loud.

• And this turns down the hormones and stress reaction. 

One of the techniques that Laurie Santos suggests is a self-compassionate touch.

"Grab your shoulder, give it a stroke, and say "Hey, this is going to be okay." It seems so cheesy, but again, your mind is stupid. It doesn't know that it's not a caring friend or your mom coming to give you a hug. 

You can fake a lot of stuff with your brain, but physiologically, it will follow."

Giving yourself a caring touch and speaking compassionate words can help calm your nervous system and reset the stress response. 

• We assume that suppressing our emotions avoids pain, but that is only in the moment, and the long-term impact is much worse. 

• Santos uses a gas light metaphor - when the gas light comes on, there is the momentary pain of stopping to fill up, but that is better than ignoring it and running out of gas on the highway.

• Emotions work like this too. If we notice anxiety and allow it to move through us, then the undercurrent won't follow us, and spill out when we say something mean later on.

• Evidence suggests that parents can take stress and emotion home and have it come out at their kids later. 

We naturally set up expectations, and they affect how we view things, and can undermine our happiness. 

A famous study on Olympians found that their overall satisfaction with their medal was related to expectations and reference points.

A bronze medal winner tended to be happier because they felt lucky to be on the stand - they were only one place away from not being there.

In contrast, a silver medalist's comparison point was the gold, and they felt dissatisfied compared to that reference point. The wished they had gold, and tended to feel like they had missed out.