The Happiness Expert: Single Friends Will Keep You Single & Obesity Is Contagious!

Arthur Brooks 0:00 I take the same test year by year, and I am 60% happier than I was five years ago because I finally cracked the code. Okay, so- Arthur Brooks.

Steven Bartlett 0:08 The world renowned social scientist.

Arthur Brooks 0:10 Harvard professor.

Steven Bartlett 0:11 Best-selling author.

Arthur Brooks 0:12 Who teaches people how to live a better, happier life. I've studied the science of happiness, and I found that most of what society tells us is wrong. And we will go into all of this. For example, they found that happiness is about 50% genetic. Introverts tend to have more long-term happiness, and happiness is a mind virus. It will transmit from one person to another person to another person.

Steven Bartlett 0:32 Really?

Arthur Brooks 0:32 Yeah. They were looking at the trajectory of people's lives, measuring everything for many years, and they found obesity is contagious. When your friends get divorced, you're more likely to get divorced. But also when your friends get happy, you're more likely to get happy. The problem is happiness has been in decline since about 1990. One of the reasons is that we need struggle and suffering for us to actually get the joy that we seek. But we know that, for example, 95% of diets fail. It is the most unsuccessful industry in the world because the arrival fallacy that when I actually get rid of the belly fat, then I'm actually gonna have a more wonderful life. That's actually not true. You actually get more satisfaction from the progress.

Steven Bartlett 1:08 Okay, so if not a weight number or a financial number, what's a better, more realistic goal to set that has more chance of success to being happier?

Arthur Brooks 1:16 There are goals that actually do lead to the happiest life, and the more you have, the better off you are. The four goals that really matter are...

Steven Bartlett 1:27 Quick one. This is really, really fascinating to me. On the back end of our YouTube channel, it says that 69.9% of you that watch this channel frequently over the lifetime of this channel haven't yet hit the subscribe button. I just wanted to ask you a favor. It helps this channel so much if you choose to su- subscribe. Helps us scale the guests, helps us scale the production, and it makes the show bigger. So if I could ask you for one favor, if you've watched the show before and you've enjoyed it and you like this episode that you're currently watching, could you please hit the subscribe button. Thank you so much, and I will repay that gesture by making sure that everything we do here gets better and better and better and better. That is a promise I'm willing to make you. Do we have a deal? Arthur.

Arthur Brooks 2:12 Steve.

Steven Bartlett 2:13 What do you do?

Arthur Brooks 2:15 I am dedicated to lifting people up and bringing them together using the science and ideas around human happiness.

Steven Bartlett 2:24 Where do you teach?

Arthur Brooks 2:25 I teach at Harvard University.

Steven Bartlett 2:27 Are you a professor of happiness?

Arthur Brooks 2:29 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 2:30 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 2:30 I'm a professor of leadership technically at the Harvard Kennedy School of the Harvard Business School, but my area is leadership and happiness. So I've studied the, the science of happiness, which is a huge growing field, multidimensional field across social psychology and neuroscience, behavioral economics, philosophy for a long time. And what I try to do is I bring it to future leaders in politics and policy, and especially business, and help them understand themselves as happiness teachers so they can be happier and they can be more successful and bring more happiness to the people they lead.

Steven Bartlett 3:04 What is the state of happiness? Can you quan- can we quantify that? Where we are in terms of our... Are we getting happier as a people or-

Arthur Brooks 3:10 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 3:10 ... more unhappy as a people?

Arthur Brooks 3:11 We can and we can't. So the United Nations and a lot of other places try to see the happiest country. You've seen those data a lot.

Steven Bartlett 3:18 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 3:18 The happiest countries, it's always Denmark. It's always the Nordic countries. Um, you can't do that. Uh, and that's like... The way that that happens is they go to 100 countries and they, they survey 1,000 people in each of the 100 countries and say, "How do you evaluate your life?" That's like asking people in every country how much you like the music in your country. And on the basis of the highest rankings internally, you say who has the best music. It doesn't really make sense. It's, you know, it's bad methodology. You can look at the average wellbeing across a population where people are having more or less the same experience. So I, I... Inside countries, inside communities, over time, I'm, I'm willing to look at that. And that shows that in most of the OECD countries, including the United States and UK, our countries, um, happiness has been in decline since about 1990.

Steven Bartlett 4:07 Since about 1990?

Arthur Brooks 4:08 Yeah. Is that when you were born?

Steven Bartlett 4:11 Yeah, '92.

Arthur Brooks 4:12 (laughs) It's not you.

Steven Bartlett 4:14 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 4:14 It's us. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 4:17 Wh- what is, um... I always think when people commit their lives largely to a topic, that, that must have very personal roots with the individual.

Arthur Brooks 4:24 Yeah. Sure.

Steven Bartlett 4:25 What are your personal roots with the subject of happiness?

Arthur Brooks 4:27 It's hard for me. It's hard for me. I'm not a naturally happy person. I'm way below average in happiness. And at least 50% of that is genetic, by the way. So there's a lot of research looking at identical twins. There's a whole database of identical twins born between the mid-1930s and 1960s that were adopted into separate families at birth, then reunited as adults. This was not an experiment that was cooked up by some, you know, diabolical Harvard, you know, social scientist like me. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 4:56 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 4:56 It was, it happened naturally, just sort of over the course of events. And when they were reunited, they were given personality tests. You can see some of these meetings where they were reunited on, on YouTube and they're, they're wonderful. They're joyful and funny. You find that you have an identical twin you didn't know about and it's like finding all these commonalities. But of course, there's always a bunch of social scientists, you know, with, with clipboards, you know, annoying them, like me, you know, taking data. And so the personality tests all show that between 40 and 80% of your personality is genetic and the rest is environmental and experiential and circumstantial. But 80%, up to 80%, that's a lot. And that means your openness to experience, your conscientiousness as a person, your extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and, and happiness is about 50% genetic. Your mother literally made you unhappy, Steve.

Steven Bartlett 5:50 I'm, I'm-

Arthur Brooks 5:51 Or happy. Your results may vary.

Steven Bartlett 5:52 Was your household a happy place?

Arthur Brooks 5:57 It was a complicated place, but it wasn't terrible because my parents were good parents and they loved each other and they loved us. But my relationship, by the time I was a young adult, was...... cordial because they were busy with their issues (laughs) . And, you know, this is one of the things that I talk about with a lot of people, nobody has a perfect childhood. And a lot of people are troubled by their childhood and they feel doomed to repeat the circumstances of their childhoods, but they're not. You can rewrite your own past history by looking back at what happened and deciding to change certain variables in the way that you're going to live your adult life. So Steve, you're gonna get married and you're gonna have children, and then you need to look at your own childhood and say, "What are the things that I want to be the same and what are the things that I want to be different?" I'm designing my life right now on th- not just on the basis of the things that went right, but on the basis of the things that went wrong. You know, I wasn't close to my parents. They never lived close to me. My children, who are now grown up, never had a, an intense experience or relationship with any of their grandparents. Their, one side lived in Barcelona, the other side lived in Seattle. We were, you know, in New York and Washington DC and (laughs) a- and, and so now, no. No, I'm gonna live near my kids and I'm a grandfather now. Um, all three of my adult kids are hearing from me every day on FaceTime, whether they want to or not (laughs) .

Steven Bartlett 7:18 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 7:18 I see my grandson as much as I can. Next week I turned down a whole bunch of work because I, I get to babysit my, my grandson.

Steven Bartlett 7:25 Is there any s- research that proves

Steven Bartlett 7:28 people who have hope in their lives have greater chances of survival, whether it's with, when they're suffering with, you know, illnesses or... I often think about this sort of stereotype that when someone retires-

Arthur Brooks 7:38 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 7:38 ... or when they stop working-

Arthur Brooks 7:41 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 7:41 ... or when their partner dies in old age, they might be, both of them might be 90 years old when one of the partners dies, it seems that the, the remaining, the surviving partner has months left sometimes, it's eerie.

Arthur Brooks 7:52 That's mostly true. The, the one that's not true (laughs) ... Here's, uh, this is depressing how, um, you know, that statistic, which is that if the husband dies, the wife is gonna be fine.

Steven Bartlett 8:02 Really?

Arthur Brooks 8:02 Yeah. Widows are way happier than widowers. I told that to my wife and she's like, "Huh."

Steven Bartlett 8:08 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 8:08 (laughs) Um, w- widowers do really poorly, generally. Men do very poorly and part of the reason is because, ugh, these data are disputed but more or less they're, they're directionally correct. 60% of 60-year-old men say their best friend is their wife, 30% of their wives say their best friend is their husband.

Steven Bartlett 8:26 Hmm.

Arthur Brooks 8:27 Women have more relationships. They have closer, deeper love relationships with non-related kin and with the adult children typically than, than the, than the husband does. The husband's most intense companionate relationship typically is with the wife. And that's why th- that's an asymmetric stat.

Steven Bartlett 8:44 Mm.

Arthur Brooks 8:44 I mean that's what the data say but yeah, for sure. I mean, back to the main point, hope is super critical.

Steven Bartlett 8:49 On illness.

Arthur Brooks 8:50 On everything. I mean, hope actually affects all sorts of physiological processes and we know that when people lose hope, they give up and when they give up, they don't take care of themselves. They don't do what they need to do. They don't exercise like they should. They don't ... They're not as active. They're not talking to other people. Their minds are not stimulated. They don't eat right. They might use substances in ways that they shouldn't and all of those things compound, and so just at the physiological level you'd see that you'd be, you'd have degradation when there is no hope. And when you're 90, you can't afford it. Actually, I'm 59, I can't afford it either and neither can you at 31.

Steven Bartlett 9:27 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 9:27 We all need hope. This is huge. To the extent that you can actually bring hope to people by showing them they can do something as an agent in their own future, that's just giving them a longer, better, more successful life. Th- that's, that's what I wanna do with my work. You know, 'cause I've seen so much. I mean, si- since I've actually dedicated myself to this, I have very good protocols for measuring my own wellbeing and I don't game the numbers. I mean, I have... There, there's macronutrients to your happiness. You have to take the different elements. It's not a single measure thing. And there are micronutrients that you can aggregate up to it and I follow this, um, very carefully month by month by month, semester by semester, year by year, and I take the same tests as my students do every year, and I am 60% happier than I was five years ago because of my work.

Steven Bartlett 10:19 Because of the work that you've done on yourself

Steven Bartlett 10:21 or because of your work as a-

Arthur Brooks 10:22 Both because here's the deal, if you wanna be happier you need to understand the science, you need to apply it to your life, you need to share it with others 'cause you won't remember it and hold yourself accountable unless you're teaching it. That's why I teach people to be happiness teachers.

Steven Bartlett 10:36 Interesting.

Arthur Brooks 10:36 Yeah. Yeah. So, so my guess is... How long you been doing the podcast? Two years?

Steven Bartlett 10:42 We launched on YouTube three years ago.

Arthur Brooks 10:43 Yeah. It's, uh, it's probably having a big effect on your life.

Steven Bartlett 10:47 Huge.

Arthur Brooks 10:48 Because you're talking about these ideas and my guess is that you're, in your private life, you're talking about the ideas that you learned with other people-

Steven Bartlett 10:56 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 10:56 ... and every time you share these ideas, you imprint them not just sort of, they're not just limbic phantasms, they become... You use them with the executive centers of your brain. Well, the more that you learn, the more you talk about what you learn, the better off you get. You're only talking about things that empower people and lift them up and make their lives better. These are the topics of what you do, right? Because you want people to be happier and more successful. That's the point of the show, right?

Steven Bartlett 11:19 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 11:20 And that's how you're getting happier and more successful.

Steven Bartlett 11:23 Is there research that shows this point of agency correlates to happiness and survival?

Arthur Brooks 11:29 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 11:29 Like longevity?

Arthur Brooks 11:30 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 11:30 And so agency essentially means that the belief that you have control over your life and your future in essence.

Arthur Brooks 11:35 Yeah, and that you're, there are things that you can do so that you're not helpless. Helplessness is the problem. This, this gets back to the work of Marty Seligman in the, in the late '60s and 19- early 1970s. He's the father of positive psychology. He created the whole field of positive psychology. He's a great mentor and hero to me. He's done so much for me and, and intellectually and in my career and as, as a friend and just as a person. And when he was doing his early work, he was doing animal studies and work on human beings to take away their agency. So he would do things like people would be, you know, putting nickels into a slot machine and they would figure out along the way that it didn't matter if they pulled the handle or not, that they were getting the same outcomes.... that he took away just little tiny bits of agency. He had dogs in boxes where the- they would shock the floors of the boxes. This is hard to get through internal review boards now- (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 12:21 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 12:21 ... but they would, 'cause it seems cruel, it wasn't big shocks, but the whole point was that the dogs would, you know, step off the parts of the floor that were shocking them, but when they couldn't do that anymore, they would just like lie down and whimper on the shocking floor. They would give up. This is called learned helplessness. People will learn their helplessness when they realize that, when they, when they, or they figure out, or they conclude, or they're told by politicians and media and activists and everybody else, that there's nothing that they can do and they're a victim. When you take on the identity of victim, you learn your helplessness. And that will degrade your quality of life, make you less successful, less happy, and a lot of studies say that you'll, you won't even live as long.

Steven Bartlett 13:04 This point of agency

Steven Bartlett 13:05 is so interesting. I, um, I had someone on the show, at the very beginning of the show, and he said that he basically crowdsources his book, a guy called Mo Gawdat, you might-

Arthur Brooks 13:13 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 13:13 ... know the guy. Says he crowdsources his book and he gets 500 people to re-read-

Arthur Brooks 13:17 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 13:17 ... to read his book before it comes out. And he goes, "When we got down to the part in my book about personal responsibility," he goes, "8% of people drop off the Google document."

Arthur Brooks 13:24 Yeah. Sure.

Steven Bartlett 13:25 'Cause they don't want to read it.

Arthur Brooks 13:26 Uh-huh. Yeah, no, that's the spinach. This, the, this, and- and it's interesting because I have this column that comes out every Thursday morning in The Atlantic, 12 or 1,300 words on the science of happiness, and about once every two or three months, I have a spinach column which says, "You want to be happy? Be humble. You want to be happy? Change your mind. You want to be happy? Don't tell somebody that if they disagree with you that they're stupid and evil. Listen. Listen more than you talk." You know, just what your grandmother told you, right? About how to be a successful person. But it's all about humanity, about humility, but these are hard things in a society where all of our biases are "I'm right, you're wrong. I don't want to listen, la la la la la, if it goes against my- my whatever ideological biases that I happen to have." And I'll write a spinach column and those are the ones that get way less re- (laughs) way fewer readers.

Steven Bartlett 14:17 Do you know what's interesting? I was, as you were speaking, I was thinking that nobody thinks they're a victim. They can spot victimhood in other people-

Arthur Brooks 14:25 Huh.

Steven Bartlett 14:25 ... very successfully, but there's no one listening to this right now that would say, "I am a victim." (laughs) So how does one know-

Arthur Brooks 14:32 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 14:32 ... (laughs) if they're a victim?

Arthur Brooks 14:33 Well, I mean, a lot of people will say, "I am a victim of these institutional biases."

Steven Bartlett 14:39 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 14:39 A lot of people will s- a lot of people really will say that. I mean, they- they will say that, "I'm a victim of capitalism."

Steven Bartlett 14:45 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 14:45 Or, "I'm a victim of powerful people. I'm a victim of- of conspiracies that are hap- the- the deep state." Whatever it happens to be. A lot of people really will talk about it in that particular way, and that's sort of the problem. Now, of course, we're all victims of something.

Steven Bartlett 14:59 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 15:00 But we all have tons of power, and the really interesting thing in life is to show people the levels of power that they have, the levers of power that they have, that don't start with trying to change the outside world, that start with the inside of their heads. That's what I'm dedicated to doing is showing people that the hope that they should have comes from the- the leverage they have over their circumstances, which starts with what they thought they had the least control over, their emotions, their happiness, their wellbeing, the love that they experience because the commitments that they make. If you really want to have power, start with managing yourself, not trying to manage the outside world.

Steven Bartlett 15:37 Is happiness a choice?

Arthur Brooks 15:39 Happiness is unattainable because it's a direction, not a destination.

Steven Bartlett 15:44 Is being happier a choice?

Arthur Brooks 15:45 Yes. Being happier is a choice on the basis of the commitment that you are going to make in your life and in your relationships, in the way that you manage yourself, absolutely.

Steven Bartlett 15:54 Do you think there is a starting point to being happier?

Arthur Brooks 15:57 Yeah, it actually starts with a, starts with, uh, recognizing that most of what society tells us about happiness is wrong.

Steven Bartlett 16:03 What's wrong?

Arthur Brooks 16:04 It's not a feeling. Happiness is not a feeling. On my first day of class, I have, you know, two sections of 90 MBA students at the Harvard Business School, and they're- they're taking this happiness, science of happiness seminar. I've got 400 on the waiting list. There's an illegal Zoom link they think I don't know about, right?

Steven Bartlett 16:19 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 16:19 (laughs) It's the happiness class. It's super fun, I love it. I love my students, they're terrific. And the f- I cold called on them the first day by saying, you know, "What's happiness?" Like, "Pick one, two, three, ten. What's happiness?" They always say, "It's the feeling I get when I'm with the people that I love." Or, "It's how I feel when I'm doing what I enjoy." Feelings, feelings, feelings, feelings. I say, "Wrong." The biggest barrier to actually getting happier is believing that happiness is a feeling. It's not. It's, happiness is evidence, or feelings are evidence of happiness, like the smell of dinner is evidence of dinner. That's how to understand feelings. Now, feelings are really, really important. Your affect, your mood is critically important. But happiness is something a lot more tangible. You start getting happier, the beginning of happiness, of bi- of getting happier because true happiness is not the goal because you have to have negative emotions. Negative emotions keep you alive. Negative experiences make you learn and grow. So you don't want pure happiness this side of heaven. Hmm. Dangerous. You'd be dead quickly without a lot of unhappiness. But getting happier starts with this understanding that really what it is is the pursuit of three things, enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Those are the three macronutrients. So you and I are nutrition nerds, right? And what we all know, and I've heard people say on your show, is that most people get insufficient protein. And when you come to America, everybody eats way too many highly glycemic carbohydrates, right? Happiness is the same thing. We get the macronutrient profile wrong. We need more enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. We kn- we have to know how to get them in- in efficient and healthy ways.... and we need them in balance.

Steven Bartlett 18:03 Can you define enjoyment, satisfaction,

Steven Bartlett 18:05 and meaning for me? What do-

Arthur Brooks 18:06 Yeah. See, this is the problem, because a lot of people think they know what these things are, but they aren't. But this is the adventure, because once you kind of get into the details of this, then you've got real strategies for getting happier. The definition provides strategy. So let's start with enjoyment.

Steven Bartlett 18:19 Okay.

Arthur Brooks 18:20 Most people think it's the same as pleasure, but that's wrong. Pleasure is a limbic phenomenon. Now of course, you know this because you've had, we've had plenty of guests who have talked about the limbic system of the brain. That's the console of tissue deep inside the brain that's been evolving over the past 40 million years. It takes signals from the brain stem and other parts, rudimentary structures in the brain, it takes those signals about what's going on in the outside. In the limbic system, it translates them into information. All your emotions are is information. There's no such thing as good and bad feelings. Bad feelings, good feel- No. They're all good. They might be maladapted, but, but the point is positive and negative emotions keep you alive. You need especially the negative emotions. I talk about negative emotions all the time because they, survival is critical.

Steven Bartlett 19:07 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 19:07 And so anger and sadness and fear and disgust, which are the big four negative emotions, these have kept you alive thousands and thousands and thousands of times. Really important. That information there then is relayed onto the neocortex of the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, the bumper of tissue right behind your forehead, where you can figure out, "What are these emotions? What do they mean? And how am I gonna react according to them?" Now, a lot of times these signals are all goofed up and, and we're, we're very reactive, which means that we're not letting our prefrontal cortex catch up with our limbic system, and that's a lot of the work that I do. But back to enjoyment. Enjoyment is not the same as pleasure, because pleasure is limbic. It's nothing more than a signal or the ventral striatum, the reward center of your brain is getting tapped in the limbic system, saying, "That thing is gonna be good for survival and passing on your genes. That's why it feels good. Go do it."

Steven Bartlett 19:59 Sex and sugar.

Arthur Brooks 20:00 Sex and

Arthur Brooks 20:01 sugar.

Steven Bartlett 20:01 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 20:01 Sex and sugar, and a lot ... And gambling, uh, which social media has a lot in common with slot machines and all these little things that get back to your primordial evolutionary past. I know you love the evolutionary biology and psychology, because this gives us so much information about who we are today. Look at the place to see and see yourself, kind of. And, and all of these things that give us pleasure, it's because they, they went back to survival and propagation of the species. So importantly, all those pleasure-filled things, if you pursue them, you're just sitting in your limbic system, and modern technology and society will engorge these things into incredibly unhealthy practices. So you get, you know, we have natural endorphins that make us feel good and, and help us when we actually get hurt so that we can get back to our cave, and of course, we've chemically altered them into fentanyl, which feels great until you die.

Steven Bartlett 20:51 Fentanyl is not a big thing in the UK, but it's a huge thing here.

Arthur Brooks 20:53 Huge. I mean, we have 100,000 drug overdose deaths every year in the United States, mostly because of fentanyl. It's unbelievable. But that, but we have other versions of that. You know, we can have stochastic experiences, you know, things that, that, that happen occasionally and give us a reward when we, when something happens, um, not in predictably, but unpredictably. Uh, um, and so we make slot machines, and they give us all this, that, you know, tap into that, that brain chemistry. Or we wanna propagate the species and so we turn it into pornography, which is unbelievably powerful and dangerous for the brain, because it captures the brain and destroys relationships along the way. It's just fentanyl in its way, but all of these things are just pleasure, pleasure, ple- Anything that can be addictive, which pleasure-filled things typically can, if you, if you do them compulsively over and over and over again, it will make you less happy. But here's ... Now, when people ask me, "So does that mean I should never drink alcohol, I should never gamble?" No, no, no, no. You need to add two things to turn 'em into enjoyment. You need to add people and memory. Because if you add people and memory to something, then you're moving the experience into your prefrontal cortex. That's when it's fully human. That's when it's not an animal experience, it's a human experience, and that is a very important part of your happiness. And so the big question is if something's addictive, if you're doing it alone, you're probably doing it wrong.

Steven Bartlett 22:17 What about sex?

Arthur Brooks 22:18 That's pornography and masturbation is alone. And that's not good for you, is the whole point. That's ... I mean, again, reasonable people disagree, and some people would be like, "What's this guy talking about?" But the whole point is that, that the data on pornography are that it captures the brain, and ultimately it doesn't, on average, lead to happier lives, because it truncates the reproductive experience at the level of pleasure and doesn't take it all the way to enjoyment.

Steven Bartlett 22:44 Hmm. Interesting.

Arthur Brooks 22:46 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 22:47 Do ... Have you, have you studied porn much as a subject?

Arthur Brooks 22:49 It, sort of everybody in my field winds up there. It's not something that I focus that much on 'cause, you know, it's, focusing on the research on pornography makes you look a little creepy at age 59. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 23:03 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 23:03 (laughs) It's not a good look.

Steven Bartlett 23:03 How to explain it to your wife. Yeah. (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 23:04 It's like, "So, so, so what do you study?" It's like, "Yeah." (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 23:07 (laughs) Interesting. So people and memory turn

Steven Bartlett 23:10 pleasure into ...

Arthur Brooks 23:11 Enjoyment.

Steven Bartlett 23:12 To enjoyment.

Arthur Brooks 23:12 That's right. So alcohol, add people and memory. You know, the Anheuser-Busch corporation doesn't put out advertisements of, you know, a dude alone in his apartment pounding a 12-pack.

Steven Bartlett 23:23 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 23:25 That's how a lot of people use the product.

Steven Bartlett 23:26 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 23:27 But that's, everybody knows that's an irresponsible, dangerous thing to do that can lead to alcoholism. What they show is the same guy with his brothers and friends, you know, clinking bottles together, having a great time. That is pleasure, alcohol, plus people, plus memory equals enjoyment, and that leads to happiness, because they wanna join their brand to happiness, not just to pure pleasure, and certainly not to addiction.

Steven Bartlett 23:48 Same with like Coca-Cola. All the Coca-Cola ads are like the World Cup with your friends-

Arthur Brooks 23:52 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 23:52 ... and in summer with your friends and outside.

Arthur Brooks 23:54 Yeah. And that's actually less addictive. I mean, there are certain ... You know, the sugar and, and caffeine are certainly addictive. They don't have the same properties of, of brain capture in the same way for sure, because they don't, they don't stimulate as much dopamine.... as, as, uh, you know, something like alcohol does and, and so th- they're less likely to make you really addicted. But the whole point is that they're ... It, it does give you a little bit of pleasure, but it makes you way happier if you get to enjoyment and you only get that when you're doing it with people.

Steven Bartlett 24:20 Satisfaction.

Arthur Brooks 24:21 Satisfaction is the joy you get after struggle. You're an entrepreneur, you understand this one really well. You're good at deferring your gratification. All entrepreneurs are good... Successful entrepreneurs are good at deferring gratification, which means I'm gonna do this hard thing and it's gonna get big payoff, and that payoff is gonna be sweet. That's satisfaction. The... A, a really funny thing about humans is that we need struggle and suffering for us to actually get the joy that we seek, and that's a really important part of our happiness. So you find that people who are better at deferring their gratification get more satisfaction and they're happier. There's a lot of... Remember, you've heard about the marshmallow experiment?

Steven Bartlett 24:59 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 24:59 And, you know, people have debunked it, but they actually haven't. So the marshmallow experiment was taking place... It took place in the late '60s where Walter Mischel was a psychologist at Stanford out in Palo Alto. He had a, a, you know, a little, uh, a laboratory setup where he would come in and sit down on one side of a table and there was a kid on the other side of the table between four and eight years old, and in front of the kid was a marshmallow. And so he says to the kid, "Do you want the marshmallow?" The kid's like, "Yeah. Yeah." He says, "I tell you what, I have to go take a phone call in the back here, but when I come back, if the marshmallow's still there, I'll give you another one. Can you wait?" Every kid's like, "Yeah, totally, totally, totally worth it." He comes back five minutes later or so, 80% of the kids had eaten the marshmallow, 20% of the kids hadn't. Now, that's a lot. 80% of the kids could not defer their gratification. So the real question is, who's the 20%? It's Steve Bartlett. That, these are the people that went on to do distinguished things. They did better in school. They got better grades. They went on to have more job success. They had better relationships. That's what they found, that the most successful kids... Now, th- that, what people fight about now is why, whether it's nature or nurture, it's probably 50/50. Like everything else in life, it's both nature and nurture. But the bigger point is good things come to those who wait. And when you wait, you suffer, and you need that suffering as part of the basic satisfying experience. Now, the bigger problem with satisfaction is that Mother Nature has a big lie at the end of it. Mother Nature says, "If you get it, you're gonna love it forever."

Steven Bartlett 26:31 Mmm.

Arthur Brooks 26:32 And that's not true. See, the- the- the brain, the brain works emotionally and physically in, um, an environment of homeostasis. Homeostasis means that you always return to your baseline physiologically and emotionally because you can't stay in a s- in a, in, in an unusual physiological state. Unusual states are a reaction. You need to be ready to react. And so, you know, you step off the treadmill, your heart is elevated, your heart goes back to where it was so you're not dead in a week. The same thing is true for you emotionally. Something really good or bad happens to you, you think it's gonna last forever so that you have an incentive to avoid or approach the thing, but it doesn't last forever, does it? That's the problem. We actually think that if I get that billion dollars, it's gonna be really great, and the first thing that somebody who has a billion dollars says to her or himself is, "I guess I needed another billion," because of homeostasis. And that puts you on something called the hedonic treadmill, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more. So that's the great conundrum of the striver, is that there's never enough, never enough, never enough. I deal with people all day long. I really specialize in people who are incredibly successful but not happy. And a lot of what I do is s- explain one simple equation that both explains that, but also gives you the solution, which is that your satisfaction doesn't come from all the things that you have. So have more is not the right strategy. Satisfaction is all the things you have divided by the things that you want, haves divided by wants. Successful people need to manage their wants even more than they need to manage their haves. They need to want less, and that's a whole kettle of fish. That's spirituality, that's discipline, that's fitness, that's diet, that's a whole lot of things that go into that, and that will help you actually get enduring satisfaction despite-

Steven Bartlett 28:30 Sounds like a contradiction though, doesn't it?

Arthur Brooks 28:31 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 28:32 It sounds like a contradiction to... That the striving and the struggle is gonna make me happy-

Arthur Brooks 28:36 Right.

Steven Bartlett 28:36 ... but I should want less.

Arthur Brooks 28:37 Yeah. What people actually who crack this code and, and a lot of, you know, Eastern traditions actually get into this, is not that striving is bad, but that striving in itself has an- has a, uh, a reward to it, that you ... that the process... And what you find out along the way is that what you wanted was not arrival, what you wanted was progress, and then you start to get the reward from the progress itself. There's a funny thing in the, in the research on dieting. We all know that it's the most expensive, unsuccessful industry in the world, right? 95% of diets fail, which means within a year, people have gained back all the weight that they've lost. But they're successful insofar as that almost everybody loses weight when they go on a diet. Here's the thing about diets. Every day you're willing to forego the food you like in exchange for the reward, which is the scale going down. When you hit your goal, it's gonna be so great. It's gonna be so great. You know what the reward is though? You never again get to eat the things that you like for the rest of your life. Congratulations.

Steven Bartlett 29:37 Once you've got there. Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 29:37 That's why you fail. And the arrival fallacy, which is an identifiable phenomenon in my field, is that it's gonna be sweet when I get to the goal. It isn't. What you're gonna have is homeostasis when you get to your goal, frustration and disappointment. Therefore, you need to want less, you need to think about th- about... L- less about wanting these arrival experiences and get more satisfaction from the progress, from the journey. That's really what it comes down to. And people who crack that code over the course of self-discipline, self-understanding, self-management, they can actually experience remarkably higher satisfaction. The Dalai Lama, I've been working with the Dalai Lama closely for the past 11 years, and I asked him this question.... "How can I get lasting satisfaction?" And he said, "You need to want what you have, not to have what you want." And that's what it comes down to. It's the management of my wants, not my haves.

Steven Bartlett 30:33 Hmm. On that point, uh, we're at the time of year now where so many people are thinking about diets.

Arthur Brooks 30:41 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 30:42 You mentioned that there. So for those people that are approaching that moment and they're, you know, they're gonna be setting their goals and stuff and all those kinds of things, what is a better goal to set, if not a weight number or a financial number or whatever? What's a better, more realistic, um, goal to set that has more chance of success?

Arthur Brooks 30:57 Yeah. Uh, it has to, it's- it's interesting because there are certain things that we can accumulate that won't homeostatically return us to the baseline, that won't throw us onto this hedonic treadmill over and over and over again. Those goals are the goals that actually do lead to the happiest life and the more you have, the better off you are. Or more actually is better. But they don't fall into the categories of money, power, pleasure and fame, which are the typical kinda goals that we get or related goals, like weight loss or, you know, whatever it happens to be. The four goals that really matter are faith, family, friendship, and work that serves others. Those are the four really great and transcendent goals that we can have. Now, there's nothing wrong with money or power or pleasure or fame. There's nothing wrong with those things, but only as intermediate goals to make it easier for us to pursue and accumulate deeper faith or philosophical life. I'm not talking about traditional religious faith necessarily. Better family relationships, which are very mystical, um, poorly understood, even in neuroscience in a lot of ways. Friendship, deep friendship, which is hard for a lot of people, especially successful people, and work that where you earn your success and serve other people. That's what it comes down to. So those are the right New Year's goals that we need. You know, this year, what am I gonna do? What am, how am I- how am I gonna grow closer to the divine? How am I gonna do that? This year what am I gonna do to draw closer to my family and to have a- a more intimate relationship with my family? How am I gonna have deeper friendships this year? And how am I gonna take my work and find it more meaningful and satisfying on the basis of serving other people? How am I gonna do that?

Steven Bartlett 32:34 What is m- uh, uh, t-

Arthur Brooks 32:36 We haven't gotten to meaning yet.

Steven Bartlett 32:37 Yeah. We haven't got to meaning yet. You said the word there, but- but I wanna make sure I close off on this point about a better goal, because there's still gonna be a huge group of people-

Arthur Brooks 32:43 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 32:44 ... that go, "Listen, I get it, love it-"

Arthur Brooks 32:45 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 32:45 "... I believe it-"

Arthur Brooks 32:46 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 32:46 "... but I hate this belly fat."

Arthur Brooks 32:48 Yeah. I got it.

Steven Bartlett 32:48 And this belly fat yo-yos every year.

Arthur Brooks 32:50 No, I get it.

Steven Bartlett 32:51 So I'm just saying-

Arthur Brooks 32:51 So those are intermediate goals and there's nothing wrong with those things. The problem is where they become satisfying and self-destructive is when that's the final goal, because by the time you get there, you think, "Why?"

Steven Bartlett 33:01 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 33:02 "Why? That wasn't as meaningful as I thought. That wasn't as good as I thought." That's the arrival fallacy that when I actually get rid of the belly fat, then I'm actually gonna have somehow a more wonderful life. That's actually not true. The reason that you're doing that is because you wanna live longer with your spouse and see your, and- and, you know, dandle your 11 grandchildren on your knee. That's the reason you wanna do this, because you need to do it for some intrinsic reason, as opposed to an extrinsic reason having to do with, "People will love me more." I mean, it's amazing to me, 'cause I, you know, I'm, I do a lot of, you know, wellness and fitness and stuff as it interacts with happiness. I w- I work with a lot of people who are very big in the longevity community because I have sort of the happiness consult, the science of the happiness consult that I put into those things. And- and so I meet a lot of people that are really into the fitness part and- and the, what- what a lot of guys will tell me is that they'll have these fitness goals, like, "I'm gonna put on 15 pounds of muscle this year and I'm gonna get rid of all my belly fat and the whole thing." And- and by e- if they stick to it, by September or October, what they're finding is that, you know, they're not getting any more attention or compliments from women, but a lot of dudes are going, "Looking good, dude." (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 34:09 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 34:09 And they're like, "That's not what I wanted." (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 34:12 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 34:13 And part of the reason is because the arrival fallacy is you build up this image of what will actually come from the- the satisfa- the satisfaction that will come from hitting these intermediate goals. These aren't the right final goals. You gotta have the right final goals and then set some intermediate goals along the way, but not... Let's not kid ourselves. And when you think carefully about that, that losing your last five pounds of belly fat, so you can see your lower abs, which by the way is not necessarily that healthy- (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 34:41 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 34:41 ... (laughs) is going to materially improve your life and your relationships. It's not. Just isn't.

Steven Bartlett 34:46 What's a better end goal then as

Steven Bartlett 34:48 it relates to fitness? Would it be something more centered on health?

Arthur Brooks 34:51 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 34:51 Or self esteem?

Arthur Brooks 34:51 It is. It's something that's actually s- sustainable and having to do with health, also with happiness is the way that this works. So I work out 60 minutes a day. It's not because I'm vain. Look, I'm s- I got a face for radio, Steve. I mean, it's like-

Steven Bartlett 35:03 You look good. I don't know what you're talking about.

Arthur Brooks 35:03 Yeah. I know, but it's, uh, age adjusted, I look good. You know, this is the key.

Steven Bartlett 35:07 I think you look good, period. And I'm not-

Arthur Brooks 35:08 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 35:08 ... you know-

Arthur Brooks 35:09 And-

Steven Bartlett 35:09 ... I've got a girlfriend, but-

Arthur Brooks 35:10 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 35:11 ... credit where credit's due.

Arthur Brooks 35:12 (laughs) The, thank you, Steve. I appreciate that. But, uh, s- you made my week. See, this was my goal. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 35:19 (laughs) Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 35:21 But the reason that I do this is because I find that for me, that working out as much as I can is much harder than working out every day. Working out every day is much easier than working out as often as I can.

Steven Bartlett 35:33 (laughs) Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 35:33 Right?

Steven Bartlett 35:33 Amen. (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 35:34 Yeah. And practicing my religion every day is much easier than practicing my religion when it- when it comes naturally to me or when I find it convenient. Eating healthily is much easier when I do it every day. And so the result of that is that I find that with those particular routines, I program those things into my life and I'm a much happier guy. Look, it lowers my cortisol levels, which are naturally very high. I'm a very anxious person. Um, and- and I understand anxiety, I understand the cortisol production, I understand how to manage it, and- and this is one of my management techniques. Thing about fitness to understand is when I say it makes you happier, it actually doesn't. It lowers your unhappiness. Happiness and unhappiness largely... The experiences of happiness and unhappiness, which is to say posi- positive and negative affect, they're produced in different parts of the limbic system.... so you can both be very high happiness and very high unhappiness. I have tests for that, that I put my students through. You're probably somebody who experiences both very high positive affect and very high negative affect. We've only met, but my guess is that you're a mad scientist. That's the profile. And so what that means is you've got two strategies. You want to keep your positive affect high, and you want to manage your negative affect. And one of the best ways to manage your negative affect is physical exercise, vigorous physical exercise. Today, today for me was leg day. I hate leg day, but I feel pretty good right now. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 36:56 Okay, that makes sense. I, I've got an answer there f- that, that I, that I'm super clear on. Um, I should be aiming at the end goal of happiness ultimately, even if it r- the intermediary goals are things like belly fat and these short-term things that are measurements of my progress towards the bigger goal. And the real key here is consistency.

Arthur Brooks 37:14 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 37:14 I, I, this was the big unlock for my whole fitness thing, 'cause I was that person, which will be 90% of people listening now, that made the goal every year that I was gonna go t- you know, change my life every year.

Arthur Brooks 37:23 Right.

Steven Bartlett 37:23 Never worked.

Arthur Brooks 37:24 Right.

Steven Bartlett 37:25 Because I'm- I was aiming at getting a six-pack for summer, so when I arrived-

Arthur Brooks 37:29 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 37:29 ... with a six-pack-

Arthur Brooks 37:30 And it worked.

Steven Bartlett 37:31 All summer.

Arthur Brooks 37:31 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 37:31 It was great. I looked great. I got... I actually got... I think I got a, a couple of compliments, which was nice. However, the minute summer finished or the six-pack arrived, I could not find, for the life of me, the motivation.

Arthur Brooks 37:42 No.

Steven Bartlett 37:43 So I'd go into winter, and I'd become like a-

Arthur Brooks 37:44 There's no willpower. There can, there can-

Steven Bartlett 37:45 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 37:46 Like, you cannot muscle these things out unless they become a part of your life.

Steven Bartlett 37:50 Consistency, d- making my goal consistency and so-

Arthur Brooks 37:53 Habits, habits.

Steven Bartlett 37:54 ... w- was the big unlock for me.

Arthur Brooks 37:55 For sure.

Steven Bartlett 37:56 Because then, okay, the goal becomes, uh, "If I go to the gym every day, if I make that part of my habits, I'm gonna be healthier, happier, better at my job." Fucking is there anything more important? Is that less important than a six-pack? And that f- m- mindset shift changed my life.

Arthur Brooks 38:11 For sure.

Steven Bartlett 38:12 Meaning then.

Steven Bartlett 38:13 Meaning was the last of the three.

Arthur Brooks 38:14 Yeah. Meaning is the why of your life. This is the hardest for most people, especially young adults. This is really, really hard. So meaning is, is really a combination of three things. It's coherence, purpose, and significance. Coherence is things happen for a reason, and so a meaning in your life means you gotta have a theory about why things happen. Like, that's one damn thing after another. I mean, you gotta have some concept of why things happen. Purpose is my life has direction and has goals. That's what purpose really is. I'm going in this direction toward these things without getting stuck on the arrival fallacy. And the last but not least is significance, which is, it would matter if I weren't here. I'm significant. Those are the three parts of meaning in people's lives according to, you know, philosophers and social psychologists. So there's, uh, there's a test that I give my students that kind of encompass these, these three ideas so you can remember 'em into two questions, and you have a meaning crisis if you actually don't have answers to these questions that you believe. And there's no right answers. You just gotta have your answers. You wanna play?

Steven Bartlett 39:18 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 39:18 Here's the quiz. Question number one, why are you alive? You can answer that in terms of who created you or what you're on earth to do, or both.

Steven Bartlett 39:30 Yeah. Okay. So why am I alive? That's something that I get to answer every single day. I get to define that by what I chose to do this morning when I woke up.

Arthur Brooks 39:38 What was it?

Steven Bartlett 39:39 I went to the gym.

Arthur Brooks 39:40 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 39:40 I w- I was on the running machine-

Arthur Brooks 39:41 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 39:41 ... 'cause I know I've got a, um, not gonna be able to today, and then I came here and had this conversation with you.

Arthur Brooks 39:46 Yeah. But why are you, why are you doing this conversation with me, Steve?

Steven Bartlett 39:50 The ikigai theory comes to mind when you ask that, which is, it's incredibly selfish. I learned tr- a tremendous amount already just from this conversation.

Arthur Brooks 39:58 Uh-huh.

Steven Bartlett 39:58 And I know that it pays, um, pays it forward to other people who are gonna, gonna learn from it as well, and that makes it feel worthwhile.

Arthur Brooks 40:05 So you said two things, fun and service.

Steven Bartlett 40:07 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 40:08 Right? Which is more important to you? Transcendentally, which is more important to you?

Steven Bartlett 40:13 It's the service part.

Arthur Brooks 40:15 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 40:15 I'd say.

Arthur Brooks 40:15 Okay, good. We're getting someplace.

Steven Bartlett 40:16 'Cause that gives me all my, that gives me all my-

Arthur Brooks 40:18 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 40:19 ... worth, right?

Arthur Brooks 40:19 But the more you focus on that, the better it gets.

Steven Bartlett 40:22 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 40:22 Now we uncovered that. So now thinking about that, you put the order of operations into the podcast and say did it, does it serve?

Steven Bartlett 40:29 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 40:30 Is that guest gonna serve? Is this question gonna serve? Is this show gonna serve? Is this sponsor-

Steven Bartlett 40:36 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 40:36 ... gonna serve the people who are watching this podcast?

Steven Bartlett 40:39 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 40:39 Then suddenly meaning starts to go pop. It starts to really sprout out of the soil because you, we got to that. If it's like, is it fun? Yeah. Good. So look. My, my whole... I have a company and that, that, that rides alongside what I do academically, and everybody that works with me, we have an order of operations and the order of operations are these are the four goals, but they have to be in this order. You just told me that the order of operations is serve other people and have fun-

Steven Bartlett 41:05 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 41:06 ... for your work. That's what you basically said.

Steven Bartlett 41:08 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 41:08 It's probably more like lift people up and have an adventure.

Steven Bartlett 41:12 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 41:12 That's probably a, a, a int- intellectual adventure, right?

Steven Bartlett 41:16 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 41:16 But the order of operations has to be right. If you're having fun more than you're serving other people, you're not gonna find your sense of meaning based on that first question. So you see, you see where we're going with that, right?

Steven Bartlett 41:27 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 41:27 So the second question is harder. For what are you willing to die today?

Steven Bartlett 41:31 There's a couple of people in my life that I'd die for.

Arthur Brooks 41:33 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 41:33 I'd die for my romantic partner.

Arthur Brooks 41:35 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 41:35 I'd die for my brothers and sisters, any of them.

Arthur Brooks 41:38 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 41:40 Interestingly, I don't know if I'd die for my parents, which is interesting.

Arthur Brooks 41:44 Would you die for an idea? Would you die for your country?

Steven Bartlett 41:50 I would die... When you say for my country, do you mean to save the country?

Arthur Brooks 41:55 I don't know. I mean, if you were called to, even if it were ridiculous, even if you thought w- it were ridiculous, would you die because you love your country?

Steven Bartlett 42:06 It depends what you mean by that.

Arthur Brooks 42:07 Uh-huh.

Steven Bartlett 42:08 What's the cost if I di-

Arthur Brooks 42:08 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 42:09 What's the cost if I stay alive?

Arthur Brooks 42:10 No, I know.

Steven Bartlett 42:10 You know what I mean?

Arthur Brooks 42:10 And I... And it's, it... Everything is context-specific-

Steven Bartlett 42:13 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 42:13 ... to a certain extent. But, uh, really what I'm, I'm trying to see is what's your, what's your kind of reaction is to this, you know, to see what the... There are good things in there.

Steven Bartlett 42:24 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 42:24 You are willing to die for your girlfriend.

Steven Bartlett 42:26 Yeah, and my brothers and sisters.

Arthur Brooks 42:27 You are willing to die for your brothers and sisters.

Steven Bartlett 42:28 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 42:28 ... Mom and dad?" And it's like, uh, there's- the jury's kind of like-

Steven Bartlett 42:31 I just do. (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 42:31 "Does your mom listen to this podcast?" (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 42:32 They do. But I'm just being honest, because I think, I think... I don't know why I said that, but I just, I, I don't-

Arthur Brooks 42:38 No, no, no, for sure. This is good. This is really important, right?

Steven Bartlett 42:41 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 42:41 This is worth thinking about, right?

Steven Bartlett 42:43 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 42:43 Now, the worst answer is, "I don't know," or nothing.

Steven Bartlett 42:47 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 42:48 Those are the worst answers. And that doesn't mean that's a problem. On the contrary, it's a huge opportunity, huge entrepreneurial opportunity to realize you don't have answers-

Steven Bartlett 42:55 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 42:55 ... to these questions, because you don't have to go to, you know, get your PhD in philosophy. You don't have to sit at the mouth of the cave with a guru some place in the Himalayas. You need to look for your answers to these questions. That's it. That's the quest. That's the vision quest. So, and when you see somebody find these things, like a lot of young adults have... They're nowhere near you, where you are on your journey. You're solid, Steve. I mean, this is good stuff. But I meet a lot of people, like, "Why am I alive? 'Cause a egg met a sperm."

Steven Bartlett 43:26 Really?

Arthur Brooks 43:26 Yeah. "And what are you willing to die for?" "Nothing, really," or, "I don't know," right? A lot of people. And then they uncover that they don't have a why, is what it comes down to.

Steven Bartlett 43:36 Repeat the questions again.

Arthur Brooks 43:38 Why are you alive, and for what are you willing to die this very day? There's no wrong answers.

Steven Bartlett 43:46 I have so many young

Steven Bartlett 43:48 kids in particular messaging me on Instagram with the same question, which is... I think society, Instagram quotes, all of that stuff, has told them that they need to find their purpose. And it seems that they're in hunt of their purpose-

Arthur Brooks 43:59 Right.

Steven Bartlett 43:59 ... like it's some Easter egg. Um, a- and you think about that phrase itself, "find your purpose," it comes loaded with two assumptions. Find, which means you've got to go search for it. And purpose, which is a singular word-

Arthur Brooks 44:10 Right.

Steven Bartlett 44:10 ... means there's one of them somewhere. And the unhappiness that I sense because they are unable to find this Easter egg somewhere that they've been searching for causes them to feel all kinds of inadequacy. What do you say to that?

Arthur Brooks 44:25 Yeah, well part of it is because that's the, what we call in, in business the go-find-a-rock theory of leadership, where the, the CEO says to an employee, "Go get me a rock." "Wait, what?" "Go get me a rock." "Okay." So you go outside and you bring a rock back in, and the boss says, "Wrong rock." That's not helpful, right? That's go find your purpose. That's the go-find-a-rock theory of leadership. It's like, "What rock? How... Where do I look?"

Steven Bartlett 44:51 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 44:51 "The world is full of rocks." That's why you need to be a lot more specific in figuring out deeply why you believe you're walking the earth, why you actually are alive, besides just the mechanical, you know, explanation for what we understand in, you know, 10th grade biology. The real why, the deep why you're alive. And, and think really, I mean if with push came to shove, I would die for this. I actually would die for this thing. That's when you understand what your deepest values are. That's when you can actually write your mission statement. That's what it comes down to. And that's where... how people actually find as opposed to just platitudes on the internet of go find your purpose, as if... I mean, I, I spent a lot of time in Dharamsala, in, in the Himalayan foothills. This is where the Dalai Lama lives, in, in, um, in northern India. And, uh, well, I mean, and Dharamsala was a little village until the Dalai Lama went there about 1960 when he was exiled from China, when he was kicked out of Tibet. And now it's not a metropolis, but there's tons of people there. And there's a l- I mean, a lot of Westerners there. They're seekers. I'm a seeker, man.

Steven Bartlett 45:56 Mm. Gosh, yeah.

Arthur Brooks 45:57 Yeah, I'm a seeker-

Steven Bartlett 45:58 I'm thought as well.

Arthur Brooks 45:58 ... and so I'm gonna go to a place where I feel like there's a, a lot of positive spiritual energy. And don't get me wrong, I mean, I've, you know... I've studied meditation with the Dalai Lama's Tibetan Buddhist monks. I mean, it's like I'm, I'm a much better Catholic on the basis of this.

Steven Bartlett 46:13 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 46:13 I feel like I'm a, I'm a, I'm a deeper Christian on the basis of this. But the idea of just going some place and, and, and randomly looking, uh, uh, hoping that your purpose just hunts you down is misguided. You have to have a much better, more specific sense of what you're looking for. And these things, coherence, significance, and purpose as part of meaning are the way to do it. And those two questions are a good way at least to get started.

Steven Bartlett 46:39 There's gonna be a huge gr- you know, group of people that are listening to this and thinking, "Do you know what? I don't have anything that I would die for, and I don't really know why I'm alive."

Arthur Brooks 46:48 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 46:49 "And that's just made me feel like-"

Arthur Brooks 46:50 That's hugely good news. It's incredibly good news, because that's the basis of your adventure is to find those things. 'Cause in point of fact, there are things out there. You just don't know them yet, and you haven't been looking for them. You've been... Who knows what you've been looking for? Like, maybe you've been looking for what I like, right?

Steven Bartlett 47:07 Why is that wrong?

Arthur Brooks 47:08 There's nothing wrong, but it's just not gonna find... it's not gonna be the secret of finding your meaning. You know, what I enjoy is a different pillar of happiness. A lot of people will say, "If I figure out what I enjoy, then I'll find my meaning." No, those are different... there's a different... You're over on that branch of the tree. You're trying to get over on this branch of the tree, different questions.

Steven Bartlett 47:24 So I'm that person. Say I'm that person now, and I don't have answers to either. You tell me it's, that's a great place to be 'cause it means the start of my adventure.

Arthur Brooks 47:31 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 47:31 What do I do? Put my shoes on and leave the house? What, what...

Arthur Brooks 47:35 Jo- so there's a, a lot of different protocols you can actually start de- depending on where, where you are in your life. One of the things that I actually recommend is reading more. Not reading garbage and dumb stuff, not even reading the news. I put people on a protocol of 15 minutes a day of, of, of real reading. Actually, there's a three-part plan. You wanna hear the three-part plan to actually start figuring out the answers to these questions?

Steven Bartlett 47:55 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 47:56 You don't have to answer the questions directly, but number one is start thinking to yourself, "What do I think is right and wrong? What are my moral principles? What are my moral non-negotiables?"

Steven Bartlett 48:08 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 48:09 That's the moral basis of living. It's the foundation of actually figuring out the answers to your questions.

Steven Bartlett 48:14 So for me, that might be, I think, like free speech is important, for example.

Arthur Brooks 48:17 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 48:18 Um...

Arthur Brooks 48:19 Treating people with dignity.

Steven Bartlett 48:20 ... equality. Cool, right?

Arthur Brooks 48:21 Yeah. And, and this is gonna change over the course of your life too. So, you know, you're 28 years younger than me.

Steven Bartlett 48:26 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 48:26 When you're my age, it's gonna be different. And, and saying to yourself, "That's good."I wanna change. I wanna change. I wanna change. And that means that one of your non-negotiables is moral flexibility (laughs) -

Steven Bartlett 48:36 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 48:36 ... perhaps. Really important that you're able to evolve.

Steven Bartlett 48:39 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 48:39 Right? The world doesn't want you to evolve. The world wants you to be rigid because you're a better soldier in the culture war, when you're not able to say, "Huh, what I thought actually probably isn't right. Huh, weird." Right? Okay, so, so that's, that's number one is the moral foundations and thinking about that r- ... You know, I, I ask my students to take out a piece of paper and write, start writing things down that they think. "Here are the things that I actually think are right and wrong. Here are the basis of the w- way that I wanna live." Now, this is a very Jungian idea. Carl Jung said that the basis of happiness is figuring out what you believe and acting according to it, living according to it, that the basis of unhappiness is living not in accord with your own morals.

Steven Bartlett 49:19 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 49:20 In other words, I believe these things are right and wrong, and I'm systematically violating them. There is, it's so incredibly empowering when I talk to a young woman or man, and I say, for example, "What do you think is a decent way to treat a member of the opposite sex when you're on a date?" And they'll tell me, and I say, "Are you acting according to that?" And they're like, "No." I say, "That's why you're unhappy," according to Carl Jung, but also according to common sense. Once you know what that is and say, "I'm gonna start acting and living according to my own principles," your life starts to change.

Steven Bartlett 49:50 Why is that? So say someone right now is, for example, cheating on their partner.

Arthur Brooks 49:54 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 49:54 But they know-

Arthur Brooks 49:55 And they're against cheating.

Steven Bartlett 49:56 They're against cheating. They know it's bad. They know that-

Arthur Brooks 49:57 'Cause everybody's against cheating, by the way.

Steven Bartlett 49:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah. The how do-

Arthur Brooks 49:59 Betraying of somebody you love. Everybody's against betraying somebody you love.

Steven Bartlett 50:02 Yeah, yeah.

Arthur Brooks 50:03 Right? That's actually natural law, if you believe there's any natural law.

Steven Bartlett 50:06 Why is, why, why is that making them unhappy?

Arthur Brooks 50:08 That's making them unhappy because that's doing violence to their own sense of propriety. You're hurting yourself. You know, the most ancient wisdom traditions and religious traditions, when they talk about sin, you know, in Islam and Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism, and name the religion, there's a concept of sin, right?

Steven Bartlett 50:26 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 50:26 Sin in almost every religious tradition is not offending God. It's hurting yourself. It's self-destructive behavior. You're doing something not in accord with the way that you want to live. And in so doing, you're weakening yourself. You're making it harder for you to understand, understand yourself as a good person, as a person of integrity, as an upright person, which we actually need. And, and again, there's a lot of, go back to the social psychology research on this, we need to see ourselves as good people.

Steven Bartlett 50:55 It goes back to your point as well about helplessness

Steven Bartlett 50:58 and agency. Because if I know that that is bad, but I can't seem to stop myself doing it-

Arthur Brooks 51:02 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 51:03 ... I'm telling myself that I'm low agency and I'm helpless.

Arthur Brooks 51:05 I'm a victim of my own sin.

Steven Bartlett 51:07 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 51:07 I'm a victim of my own weakness. I'm a victim of my own impulses. And so this is one of the reasons that people will be like, "I hate how I eat."

Steven Bartlett 51:16 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 51:17 What are they actually saying? They're not saying that, "I, I hate..." You know, I mean, like I, I'm a sugar fiend. I love, I just can't get enough of it.

Steven Bartlett 51:24 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 51:24 I don't drink alcohol, but I drink, I eat tons of sugar.

Steven Bartlett 51:26 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 51:26 I eat lots of sugar. I shouldn't do it. Now, it doesn't offend my sense of propriety, to be sure, right? But I could get to the point where I'm so unhealthy that I hate that about myself because I'm actually hurting myself, but I'm being controlled by my impulses. This getting in line with your own views and making a plan, and this is where the New Year's resolutions about taking off the weight actually m- makes sense, because it's not about the ab veins. It's about being morally consistent with your own view of the person that you want to be, is what this comes down. But you can't do it till you lay it out, until you actually put it in black and white. Write down your moral philosophy. I don't care how dumb it is. Write down your moral philosophy and say, make a plan to start living according to it. That's the base of the pyramid. There's two other parts, okay? The second part is a contemplative tradition, is contemplation. You need more contemplation so that you can experience transcendence. Now, there's a bunch of different ways to do this, right? Um, this is why everybody wants to do mindfulness meditation. That's all that is, is basically is sitting still without your phone and, and, and focusing on being alive. So, and there are a lot of ways to do it. There's informal ways to do it. My colleague Ellen Langer, have you had her on the show?

Steven Bartlett 52:41 No.

Arthur Brooks 52:42 Super interesting person. She actually was the one who brought the concept of mindfulness to the West about 30 years ago.

Steven Bartlett 52:48 Wow.

Arthur Brooks 52:48 She wrote a book called Mindfulness. She's a, she was the first woman tenured in the psychology department at Harvard.

Steven Bartlett 52:53 Wow.

Arthur Brooks 52:53 She's phenomenal. And she's just absolutely first rate. And, and she says that mindfulness is best practiced if you're sitting on the train by putting away your phone, putting your hands in your lap, and looking out the window.

Steven Bartlett 53:03 Can they listen to this podcast while they do that? Because-

Arthur Brooks 53:05 No. (laughs) You should listen to the podcast, but not during those periods.

Steven Bartlett 53:10 Okay.

Arthur Brooks 53:10 And start with five minutes of a, of, of just simple contemplation of life. Now, there are other ways to do it. Prayer is a really good way to do it too. Religious traditions are excellent at doing it. But people in a distracted world don't do that at all. You need to be in your head. You need to stop distracting yourself and systematically stop distracting yourself, because in your default mode network, you'll actually start to think about things that actually matter, including the things that are in the fundamental moral basis that you've, that you've started to formulate. You need contemplation.

Steven Bartlett 53:41 I was thinking about this last night. I, I don't know why I was thinking about this, but this is how weird I am. I was thinking about why I don't pray anymore-

Arthur Brooks 53:48 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 53:48 ... because I grew up in a Christian faith until the age of about 18. And we-

Arthur Brooks 53:53 Are you still a Christian?

Steven Bartlett 53:53 No.

Arthur Brooks 53:54 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 53:54 And every time we had dinner for my whole childhood, the family sit around the table, one of us would ha- would pray, and we'd just be- basically give thanks for things we're, you know, grateful for.

Arthur Brooks 54:04 Right.

Steven Bartlett 54:04 And I stopped praying because I no longer have the Christian faith. But, but I was thinking last night, it doesn't mean I need to give up the prayer, which is just an exercise in gratitude to be thankful for the nature of my life. And that would serve if ... And I don't have to pray to something. I can just pray for gratitude, right?

Arthur Brooks 54:20 Or you can contemplate.

Steven Bartlett 54:21 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 54:21 You can contemplate the source of your gratitude. So gratitude listing is a really important way for you to focus, uh, on the, the ... We're, we're resentful creatures because we have a negativity bias.

Steven Bartlett 54:31 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 54:31 We have a tendency to pay attention to the negative things in our lives disproportionately because that tendency-... serves us for survival.

Steven Bartlett 54:38 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 54:38 Ye- you know, you know, you pay attention to the worst thing that happened at the dinner, not the best thing that happened at the dinner, for a reason. I mean, it, we've evolved to the snap of the twig behind you does not make you think, "Oh, I be- that's my friend."

Steven Bartlett 54:49 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 54:51 So it, that- that's just how we've evolved. And the way to not that, let that become maladapted is for you to contemplate the sources of your gratitude, which are incredibly abundant. Now, the reason you stop praying is 'cause you don't believe there's anybody on the other end of the line.

Steven Bartlett 55:03 Listening, yeah.

Arthur Brooks 55:04 Yeah. You think that you're ... It's like the ghost phone in Japan after the, after the, the tsunami, the earthquake and tsunami. A guy set up a telephone booth that's not connected, where the phone is not connected, and 30,000 people have gone and picked up the phone (laughs) and talked to their dead relatives. That's the ghost phone.

Steven Bartlett 55:23 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 55:24 And, um, that's not satisfying for you with re- with respect to prayer because your kid version of religion was the reason you're doing it is 'cause you're talking to God. You've got a direct transmission mechanism to God, and now you don't think that's actually the case so you stop doing the contemplation.

Steven Bartlett 55:38 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 55:38 Right now. It's probably worth g- think- rethinking a- an adult version of your faith as opposed to being put off by the ... A lot of people are really put off by the kid version of their faith. It's like, "Really?"

Steven Bartlett 55:51 Yeah, like the building on fire and stuff.

Arthur Brooks 55:51 All the weird stuff it doesn't make like s- it doesn't make sense. But a- of m- most likely according to the data, you're gonna start becoming interested in your Christian faith again as you get older. It doesn't mean you're going to have the same faith that you had. On the contrary, you probably won't. But you'll start being all like, "You know, there's certain things I miss about that." And, and life actually is messy, and there is suffering that's hard to explain, but there's lots of things in life that are hard to explain, and maybe there's something in there that I didn't understand before. So openness to that. I'm not saying for sure, but I'm saying just be open to it. And then the very top is wisdom, and that requires reading or, or, you know, uh, the, the accumulation of knowledge. Not everybody's a big reader, and there's so many different ways to get good information at this point.

Steven Bartlett 56:36 Podcasts.

Arthur Brooks 56:36 Po- podcasts, for example. But the whole point is, is reading or, or acquiring information in the wisdom tradition. So, uh, you know, read the Stoic philosophers. Read the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. Read the Bhagavad Gita. Read the Quran. Read the Bible. Read, read, read. And start with 15 minutes a day of that kind of reading, which you can go years saying, "I wish I read," and you don't. Right? I mean, it's, it's crazy. We'll spend all this time scrolling Instagram when we can spend just 15 minutes a day reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and, and the Letters of Seneca. And they're incredibly enriching, right? It's like, whoa, boom, starting at 15 minutes a day. So do the work, what do I believe? Spend some time in contemplation and do the reading. Your life's about to change. That's the protocol. That's the Tibetan Buddhist protocol for actually finding f- starting to find meaning in your life. But it- I've, I've prescribed this to others and I've done it myself, and this really works. It helps you find o- on the path to the answers to those questions.

Steven Bartlett 57:44 Build the Life You Want.

Arthur Brooks 57:46 It's a book.

Steven Bartlett 57:47 It's a book sat in front of me here that, that has your name on it. And who's this? Oprah Winfrey.

Arthur Brooks 57:54 I like to give young authors a leg up. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 57:57 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 57:57 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 57:57 How did you ... So you co-wrote this book with Oprah?

Arthur Brooks 57:59 Yeah, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 58:00 How, how did you meet Oprah?

Arthur Brooks 58:02 She called me. Turns out she's a ... I know. It's, it's a ... She g- said, "This is Oprah Winfrey." And I'm like, "Yeah, and I'm Batman." I mean, it was Oprah Winfrey. It's the voice. She's iconic all over the world for sure. And it turns out that she was a regular reader of my column in The Atlantic on Thursday mornings, How to Build A Life, which is a different area of the science of happiness every week that I cover. And she read my last book, which is called From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. Right? So that was a book she read on the first day it came out and then went on her Super Soul podcast, and we were thick as thieves just immediately because we have the same goals is lift people up and bring 'em together in the spirit of happiness and love. She does it differently because she's not an academic. She has an incredible platform. I've never seen a platform like she has where, you know, she says one thing and people are like, "Oh, that's, that's a good thing to do." And you ... But she's always looking for ... It's interesting because she has the money and power and fame and she uses them. She's cracked the code. She uses them in service of other people, and that's her whole goal from the very beginning. She's never said anything to disabuse me of the idea that that's how she lives. And, uh, we started doing some i- some things together and some podcasts together, and she called up and she said, "You know, if I had my show still ..." She, for 25 years, she had this iconic show on television in the United States called The Oprah Winfrey Show, and millions and millions of people watched it every day. It went off the air in about 2014 or something. She says, "If I had my show, I'd have you on 30 times, and then you'd have your show." She said, "But I don't have the show anymore. So let's do kind of a version of that and let me host a book."

Steven Bartlett 59:40 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 59:40 And, and so we wrote the book together all, over last winter. In the winter of 2022, 2023. I went away to ... She lives in Montecito, California. I li- I went and got a house in San Clemente, California, and we, we structured the thing in, you know, at her place, and we went back and forth on the ... And it was just a blast. It was about, you know, how to manage yourself, and once you're able to manage your own feelings and emotions like a pro, then you'll no longer be distracted and you can focus on the things that actually matter for your life. And that's how you build your life.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:12 And you, you called me, um,

Steven Bartlett 1:00:15 a mad scientist earlier.

Arthur Brooks 1:00:16 I'd have to take the test. Did, did you take it?

Steven Bartlett 1:00:18 I think you, I think you nailed it.

Arthur Brooks 1:00:19 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:00:19 I think you nailed it. (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 1:00:22 Yeah, most likely, yeah. It's a-

Steven Bartlett 1:00:24 Which is a, which appears in your book, in the, the section about the unique, n- sort of unique mix of, um, happiness, unhappiness, and you talk about this PANAS score system. What are these categories and why did you call me a mad scientist?

Arthur Brooks 1:00:35 So the PANAS test is in the book, and it's actually on the website, um, at arthurbrooks.com where anybody can take it for free. It's a, it's a personality test based on the intensity of your positive and negative affect, AKA mood.Everybody's got more or less the same emotions. Everybody feels joy and interest, and surprise, and anger, and sadness, and disgust, and- and- and fear. But we have them in different intensities depending on who we are. And there's really four kinds of people with these different intensities. There are some people that have very high affect. High positive affect, they have r- high highs and high negative affect, low lows. These are mad scientists. It's a quarter of the population. Now, by construction, it's a quarter of the population because it's above average on both.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:22 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 1:01:22 Then there are people who are high highs and low lows. I mean, I should say that they have intense positive emotion but- but weak negative emotion, right? These are cheerleaders.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:34 Okay, so they have...

Arthur Brooks 1:01:36 They feel their positive affect very intensely and their negative affect very weakly.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:41 Oh, okay, so they're like always happy.

Arthur Brooks 1:01:43 They're not always happy, but they tend to- they tend to be in a better mood-

Steven Bartlett 1:01:47 Okay.

Arthur Brooks 1:01:47 ... and see the brighter side of things.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:49 I know what you mean. Right.

Arthur Brooks 1:01:49 They tend to downgrade threats and think everything is gonna be okay.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:54 Okay.

Arthur Brooks 1:01:55 That's a quarter of the population.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:56 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 1:01:56 And everybody wants to be that, by the way, but that's not necessarily the best way to be in. They don't make the best CEOs because they're- they have a hard time paying attention to threats, they don't want bad news, and they have a terrible time giving bad news or giving people bad evaluations. So working for a CEO who's a cheerleader is great for a minute, but then it starts to become very frustrating because you hear him telling the- a- the incompetent idiot in the cubicle next to you that- that she's doing an u- an unbelievably good job.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:21 Ah, okay, those types.

Arthur Brooks 1:02:22 Right? And so you, I mean, you- you gotta be realistic to be a good CEO. I mean, you're an entrepreneur. You know perfectly there's lots of threats out there. You've got to take 'em seriously.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:28 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Arthur Brooks 1:02:28 So then there are people who are high negative, low positive. These are poets. These are people who, generally speaking, there's a place in the limbic system called the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. That's the part that makes you a ruminator. Ruminators are people who, this part of the brain is- is- part of the brain is dedicated to making you go (mimics engine revving) on problems and negative things and regret, and that, "I can't believe that I said that thing. I feel so stupid for saying that thing. And what does she really think of me?" Et cetera, et cetera. It's also the part of the brain that you use when you're highly creative.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:01 Comedians? (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 1:03:02 Yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure. You know, I- I pal around with a guy named Rainn Wilson-

Steven Bartlett 1:03:06 Oh, yeah.

Arthur Brooks 1:03:06 ... who was in the American version of The Office. He played Dwight.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:08 Yes, yeah.

Arthur Brooks 1:03:08 And Rainn told me that comedians tend to be depressed, but the reason is because they find out that they're funny and they can substitute humor for sadness. It's a substitute emotion. It's called a metacognitive technique. We talk a lot about that in the book. So then, s- and poets are, they tend to be high ruminators, so high negative affect. They focus on a lot of negative things because of this hyper-developed part of their brains. (laughs) They also tend to be really creative, 'cause that's the same part of your brain that when you're working on a business plan or a symphony, and they also tend to be romantic because infatuation is ruminating on another person.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:44 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 1:03:45 That's kind of the r- poet profile, right? And then last but not least, there's low low, people who are low affect people. These are judges. These are people who, they- they're happy and unhappy, but they feel their moods less intensely than other people. And so they- they don't freak out, you know? These are really good surgeons. These are really good judges. They're very good secret service agents. You don't want somebody to cut you open and say, "Oh, my God." You- uh, you don't want your surgeon to be like that. And so there's a- a gift and a role for all four of these quadrants. Most great entrepreneurs are mad scientists 'cause they- they, the reason that they're entrepreneurs is 'cause they wanna feel things intensely because everything is intense, and they do everything intensely, right? You don't have that many people who are just like super chill. Like, "Yeah."

Steven Bartlett 1:04:33 (laughing) Yeah. Interesting.

Arthur Brooks 1:04:35 Yeah, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:36 That fits. It does fit.

Arthur Brooks 1:04:36 That's why, you know, you know, just having a deep conversation with you, you t- I could see that you have a lot of mad scientific characteristics to you. You feel things deeply. Is that fair?

Steven Bartlett 1:04:47 Mm-hmm. It is fair, yeah. I mean, I, that's the one I-

Steven Bartlett 1:04:49 I resonate with the most, and I do describe myself as being a bit intense.

Arthur Brooks 1:04:52 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:52 My team know me. I think I'm, I think I come across as a bit intense.

Arthur Brooks 1:04:54 What's your girlfriend?

Steven Bartlett 1:04:56 I'm gonna say that she is a ch- cheerleader.

Arthur Brooks 1:04:59 Ah, I'm married to a cheerleader.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:01 Oh, really?

Arthur Brooks 1:05:01 Yeah. And what you find is that cheerleaders, they can- they can have the best of times, but cheerleaders tend to be, struggle with the mad scientist.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:11 Yeah. (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 1:05:11 Right?

Steven Bartlett 1:05:12 Sure.

Arthur Brooks 1:05:12 It's like, like, "Why, like, everything is so great for you. Why are you gloomy?"

Steven Bartlett 1:05:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Arthur Brooks 1:05:16 You know? It's like, "Why can't you look on the bright side of things? Like-

Steven Bartlett 1:05:19 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 1:05:19 ... why are you grouchy all the time? What's wrong with you, Steve?"

Steven Bartlett 1:05:21 It's like, there's a spelling mistake on our- (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 1:05:23 I know. It's just-

Steven Bartlett 1:05:24 Like, why- why is that bothering you, like?

Arthur Brooks 1:05:26 Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. So that's- that's a classic thing. Everybody can be with everybody else, but the c- compliments are really important. The biggest mistake that people make in dating markets is they look for their- their op- they look for the- their- their doppelganger. They look for their clone. You shouldn't look for your clone. You should look for your compliment.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:42 Why?

Arthur Brooks 1:05:43 Because you'll be happier when you complete each other. That's when people who complete each other, you find that very happy marriages often happen between an introvert and an extrovert if they learn to appreciate each other. So it's not, you know, hammer and tongs all the time for the differences. But when people... For example, one of the reasons that dating apps are so unsuccessful for giving people, you know, satisfactory dating experiences, people have more and more and more choice, but they're more likely to say they're not satisfied with the people they're dating and not attracted to the people that they're dating. It's because they'll set up a dating profile saying, "I vote this way. I like this music. I live here. I like these things. I want somebody with these preferences." And they get somebody who's their sibling, which is-

Steven Bartlett 1:06:19 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 1:06:20 ... as my adult children will remind is, "Not hot."

Steven Bartlett 1:06:22 Yeah. (laughs) Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 1:06:24 Difference is hot.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:25 It's so true, because I never would've said I want someone that is spiritual, um, that is really involved in spirituality and believes in things that you just can't see. My girlfriend believes in all the chakras and these energies-

Arthur Brooks 1:06:37 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:37 ... and she'll re- and she just believes in it all. And it's funny because I never would've said that's what I wanted, but I absolutely love it.

Arthur Brooks 1:06:43 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:43 And that means that I actually, she's actually pulled me into her world.

Arthur Brooks 1:06:46 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:46 She's made me more spiritual. She's made me believe in things I never would've believed before-... and she's completing me in that regard.

Arthur Brooks 1:06:52 It's really great. It's really great. I mean, you crack the code in that way and finding all the ways that you're different and celebrating those particular differences is really key to a, to a good relationship, and not wishing the person were more like you. This is very important that this is a relationship killer, is that wishing that your partner were more like you is, is just a form of egotism.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:12 Everyone tries to change their partner though, don't they?

Arthur Brooks 1:07:14 Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting. It's like there's, there's the old axiom that women are frustrated because they thought they could change their husbands and they can't and, and, um, husbands are frustrated because they thought their wives would never change and they do.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:27 (laughs)

Arthur Brooks 1:07:27 I don't know. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:07:30 There is truth in that.

Arthur Brooks 1:07:30 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:31 Relationships and love. How important is this as a subject for happiness?

Arthur Brooks 1:07:35 It's the number one area of interest of my students.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:37 Really?

Arthur Brooks 1:07:38 My average student is 28 years old, so they're MBA students, they're master's students, they've all gone through college, they've gone to work, and they've come back to the Harvard Business School where you have to have some business experience to get the business master's degree. And this is the number one thing they want to talk about, they want to learn about. They want to learn about it scientifically. They want to learn about the neurochemical cascade of what's actually happening in your brain and at what point you can't control it anymore. We have a lot of case studies at the business school about, you know, CEOs who are dismissed for inappropriate relationships with subordinates.

Steven Bartlett 1:08:06 Mm-hmm.

Arthur Brooks 1:08:06 I mean, it's a classic theme. You know, it's, I... And, and the last line of the case study is always the CEO looking out the window of the train after being dismissed going, "I don't know what happened."

Steven Bartlett 1:08:16 Yeah.

Arthur Brooks 1:08:16 And so we look at brain scans and say, "This is what happened."

Steven Bartlett 1:08:19 And you can see it in the brain?

Arthur Brooks 1:08:20 Kind of.

Arthur Brooks 1:08:21 I mean that somebody who's really in love, uh, has brain activity that looks an awful lot like a methamphetamine addict's brain scan. I mean, your brain is... If you're at a certain point in the falling in love process, your brain is captured. So I mean, at the beginning when people meet, there's a, there's a hormonal, um, reaction with testosterone and estrogen, which are, you know, sex hormones, obviously. And you know, when people see somebody who's really attractive, that's why they, they want to look attractive because that's the, that's the ignition mechanism that typically happens. After that, you see a big, uh, increase in, in noradrenaline, AKA nor- um, epinephrine and dopamine levels. So you have anticipation of reward and euphoria. That's sort of the second line of things that tend to happen in this chemical cascade that's going on when you're falling in love. After that, you see a dip in serotonin, which is really interesting. So serotonin we think about as the, as the neuromodulator of, of peace and happiness, which is what a lot of the psychiatric drugs are trying to manipulate when, when they feel that it's an imbalance. So people who are clinically depressed will often get selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, meaning that you maintain a higher level of serotonin. And that's all really controversial still, I mean, because we don't really understand it very well, but we do know that when people are falling in love that they're more likely to be ruminative and infatuated. Remember that part of the brain, the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex that does rumination?

Steven Bartlett 1:09:40 Yup.

Arthur Brooks 1:09:40 It'll be more active when serotonin is low. And so serotonin will be low so you start ruminating on the other person. That's when the infatuation part of the relationship really kicks in. And then you get to the point of attachment, which is, which is invol- which involves oxytocin, which is a neuropeptide that functions as a hormone that makes you attached to the other person, very profoundly attached to the other person, as intensely pleasurable. So it's like... (makes sound effects) And the longer you let it go, the harder it is for your brain not to be really, really captured. You wouldn't go to a methamphetamine addict and say, "Why did you buy methamphetamine? That's illegal." They'll be like, "Duh, I'm an a- I'm an addict. I'm a junkie." It's the same thing as when somebody's sleeping with a subordinate.

Steven Bartlett 1:10:23 Are people that are in love and

Steven Bartlett 1:10:25 in relationships happier statistically?

Arthur Brooks 1:10:27 No, on the contrary, because being in love, especially in the early stages of being in love, is not associated with what we would associate with actual happiness. Because it has jealousy, tons of jealousy, which is, you know, the rumination part. When your serotonin levels are really low, it's hard for you to say, "Oh, it feels so great." You feel euphoric and you like it in its own way, but if you kept that, if you stayed in that stage, you'd go out of your mind and you'd be miserable because there's jealousy, there's surveillance behaviors are really common. And you know, there's no- nobody would say that when I'm surveilling my intimate partner, that's when I'm happiest. Nobody likes that, but, but people tend to do that because you're, there's, a lot of your brain is basically saying, "I'm trying to figure out if this is somebody who's going to betray me," back to evolution. Is this somebody who's going to wander off and raise somebody else's kids? Is this somebody who's going to be, when I don't know it, carrying somebody else's baby? Which is how men and women actually, they tend to express their sexual jealousy in those two... Interesting, there's a guy at, um, University of Texas at Austin that studies jealousy. The most jealousy provoking thing for men is an image of their intimate partner having sex with somebody else. For women, it's an image of their intimate partner saying, "I love you" to somebody else. And the reason is because traditionally or evolutionarily, women have to be worried that