| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Generosity As Antidepressant
00:05:45
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| All right, so here is something interesting. | |
| So there's a study that just came out a couple of weeks ago. | |
| Generosity functions as an antidepressant. | |
| Depressed people were randomly assigned to give less than a penny a day to charity. | |
| Over the next two months, moods improved and depression declined. | |
| The more they gave, the better they felt. | |
| Even small acts of kindness elevate mental health. | |
| So, here's the abstract. | |
| Pro-social interventions grounded in social interactions have shown limited effectiveness in alleviating depressive symptoms, possibly because of the discomfort and unease that depressed individuals experience during such interactions. | |
| We developed and examined an innovative pro-social intervention, an online micro-charitable giving intervention, in which individuals voluntarily donated at least one Chinese cent, about 0.0014 of a dollar, daily. | |
| We conducted three pre-registered two-months randomized controlled trials with depressed individuals. | |
| Results showed that, compared with the waitlist group, the intervention group exhibited significantly greater improvements in both depressive symptoms and emotional positivity. | |
| Minus 0.19 to minus 0.46. | |
| Emotional positivity went DS 0.22 to 0.49. | |
| Big improvement, right? | |
| More than double. | |
| And that emotional positivity mediated the intervention's effect on the reduction of depressive symptoms. | |
| Exploratory analysis found a slightly larger intervention effect for generous donors than for minimal donors. | |
| This low-cost, easily accessible pro-social intervention holds potential for the prevention of depression. | |
| Now, doesn't that blow your mind? | |
| Just a little, little, little bit. | |
| I hate to be smuggins. | |
| I really do. | |
| My daughter will kill me. | |
| But... There's the link. | |
| Does that not blow your mind a little? | |
| That even tiny acts of generosity have significant effects in lifting depression. | |
| See, as I've sort of talked about for many years, the best way out of unhappiness, I'm not obviously going to use clinical terms because I'm not a clinician in any way, shape or form, but the most reliable and fastest way out of unhappiness is generosity. | |
| I mean, when I ask you to donate, I'm just offering you the chance to be happy. | |
| I mean, that's kind of true. | |
| And this is science. | |
| So generosity breaks the black pill of depression in some way. | |
| I mean, I think there's ways to sort of figure it out. | |
| Again, I'm no psychologist, so this is just amateur musings and ramblings not to be taken particularly seriously. | |
| But even a little bit of generosity says, okay, the world is something to be generous for. | |
| I'm going to be generous because that's a benevolent and positive attitude. | |
| I'm going to help other people. | |
| I'm going to do good things in the world and you feel happier yourself. | |
| And so one of the problems, I think, with depression is the self-absorption and the selfishness. | |
| I'm depressed. | |
| I'm unhappy. | |
| You grab at resources. | |
| You grab at happiness. | |
| You can pull other people down. | |
| Whereas if you break that cycle by being generous towards others, then you can be quite happy. | |
| Because a lot of people will say to me, Steph, how do you stay... | |
| I mean, I get this question every couple of shows. | |
| How do you stay positive? | |
| How do you stay optimistic? | |
| How do you stay happy? | |
| How do you stay happy? | |
| Well, I'm pretty generous and do a lot of good in the world. | |
| I mean, some of it in the show, some of it sort of private, but I'm pretty generous and do a lot of good in the world. | |
| I mean, people can talk to me for hours for free. | |
| No commercials, right? | |
| I put out my shows for free. | |
| My books are all free. | |
| You can get them for free with the exception of Art of the Argument. | |
| Artoftheargument.com. | |
| But yeah, so you can get my novels, books, nonfiction shows. | |
| No ads. | |
| Free. That's pretty generous. | |
| And good for philosophy, good for the world, and maketh me happy. | |
| So if you're unhappy, try to feel or try to figure out where you can be generous. | |
| If you're unhappy, try to figure out where you can be generous. | |
| If you're around a bunch of exploitive people, then generosity is going to be used to tear you in two and exploit you and holler you out and so on, right? | |
| But generosity, and I've made this case before, but I haven't made it for a while, so here we go again. | |
| Generosity is a great filter mechanism. | |
| In my dating, business, personal life, I've always had, since my early 20s, the same rule. | |
| Treat other people you can. | |
| Sorry. Treat other people the best you can the first time you meet them. | |
| After that, treat them as they treat you. | |
| So when I meet people, I'm generous. | |
| You could say to a fault, but it's not a fault, because I get to then find out if I'm generous back. | |
| One of the ways I got out of a lengthy relationship without much of a future was I was very generous to the woman, and then I asked for reciprocity, didn't get it, and I was out. | |
| Done. Gone. | |
| Done. So, on dates, yes, I will pay the first date. | |
| I will pay the first date. | |
| I'm not going to do something super expensive, but I will pay for the first date. | |
| And then I'll see, when I was single, I would see if the woman would be interested in reciprocity. | |
| Now, the reciprocity didn't necessarily mean she had to pay for the second date, but, you know, maybe she could make me dinner or something like that, right? | |
| So, I find if I'm generous with people and then I'm observant as to the reciprocity, things go well. | |
| Things go well. | |
| Be generous. | |
| And then be firm. | |
| Be generous and then be firm with a lack of reciprocity. | |
|
The Generosity That Led To Marriage
00:00:24
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| And the moment I met a woman who was as generous to me as I was to her, I married her within 11 months. | |
| All right. | |
| My father went half on my first car. | |
| I was working. | |
| The rule of my parents was, I could live there as long as I was either in school or working in saving. | |