Harvard Professor's Guide To Achieving Real Happiness - Arthur Brooks

1. 0:00 – 5:23

   What We Get Wrong About Happiness

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      What do most people get wrong when they think about happiness?

   2. ABArthur Brooks0:04

      They think that they can be happy. And happiness is not a destination, it's a direction. One of the most important things that we've lost sight of, particularly in the current generation of young adults, is thinking that if you're unhappy for any particular reason, something's wrong, something's abnormal. And that's completely incorrect. We have negative emotions for a reason, th- they make us feel unhappy. The negative emotions are a signal that something's aversive outside of us, and that's not gonna change. We need sadness and anger and fear and disgust. Furthermore, we actually need negative experiences so that we can learn and grow. Happiness is a direction, and therefore we shouldn't be trying to attain happiness, we should be trying to attain happierness, which is obviously a neologism, but that gets the point across. That's, that's mistake number one.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:52

      What is an analogy that people can use to understand how happiness isn't a destination? We, we think of happiness as a thing.

   4. ABArthur Brooks1:00

      Right.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:00

      We think of happiness as a, a feeling, a state, an affect that we arrive at. Um, what's a, what- what's another way that you can explain this, uh, disquieting of what happiness is?

   6. ABArthur Brooks1:15

      Happiness, as we talk about it, is really a state compared to something else, and it's along a kind of a number line. We, we're, getting happier means happier than what, is what it comes down to. And it's a s- it's a, it's kind of an, it's a, a status in which we have these macronutrients more or less in equilibrium. You'll never be perfectly healthy, but you can be healthier. You, you're never going to eat a perfectly nutritious diet, but it can be more trici- n- n- more nutritious than yesterday. What's more nutritious than yesterday? Well, you have a good, for example, macronutrient balance to your diet. I'm a health and nutrition nerd, as are you, and, and we know that you, you gotta get your macros right. You have to have, be paying attention to your protein, carbohydrates, and fat, and have them more or less in balance and proportion and relative abundance. The same thing is true for your happiness. So, I start happiness discussions by saying, "There's three macronutrients for happiness, just like there's three macronutrients for food that you have to get right." They are enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Those are the three things to pursue, and everybody can get better at those three things. That's an analogy that people can actually, particularly people that would be wanting to improve themselves, that's why they're listening to Modern Wisdom, that they would actually help them understand the whole process.

   7. CWChris Williamson2:28

      What is the truth behind people who try to be happier make themselves less happy?

   8. ABArthur Brooks2:34

      (laughs) What they're trying to do is to feel good all the time. You know, back in the '60s, uh, you don't remember this, I barely remember this, the hippies used to say, "If it feels good, do it!" And I remember my dad hearing that and saying, "That's the end of America." (laughs) He was kinda right. The problem is that, that people still think that feeling good is, is, is the happiness state, and they're trying to feel good all the time, as opposed to having a, a tangible set of goals like, "I am going to enjoy my life in a better way that's more stable, and it's not just looking for pleasure. I am going to try to achieve things in my life with goals and direction that gives me adequate access to satisfaction. And I am going to do what it takes to find the meaning of my life, even if it hurts." Those are strategies that I, actually lead us to live, live a much better life with actually a lot more happiness.

   9. CWChris Williamson3:25

      Right. So what is the relationship between feelings and happiness then? Because presumably this, uh, conglomeration of different contributing macronutrients arrives us at a state of some kind.

   10. ABArthur Brooks3:38

       Right.

   11. CWChris Williamson3:38

       There is an outcome of some kind. If that isn't happiness, what is it?

   12. ABArthur Brooks3:44

       So feelings are evidence of happiness, like the smell of your dinner is evidence of dinner. What happens is if you're, you're, you're, you're achieving these states, adequate states of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning, you will get a better mood balance such that you're enjoying more joy and interest and, you know, a positive surprise, and you're, you're suffering less from avoidable levels of disgust and sadness and anger and fear. And that mood balance will be evidence that you're actually on the right track with the macronutrients that you're getting. In the same way, by the way, Chris, that you'll have a lot more energy if your macronutrients in your diet are, are actually on point.

   13. CWChris Williamson4:22

       Right. So in this way, is it advisable for people to sort of turn the bar stool upside down and think rather, "I'm not happy, that is a problem," to, "My current state is not one I would describe as happiness. That's an indicator that one of the three macronutrients is missing from my life diet"?

   14. ABArthur Brooks4:42

       That's right. And, and every single person I've ever met in my whole life, and I, perhaps besides the Dalai Lama, has, has issues in their macronutrient profile that can lead to progress. This is really good news, by the way. You know, one of the most deleterious things that we say to young adults today, and our kids, is, "You're perfect just the way you are." What could be more depressing than that? It's like, "I feel, I feel, uh, like, garbage, and you're telling me I'm perfect just the way I am. That means I can't make progress." The truth is, everybody can make progress, because I've never met a single human being that is perfect in enjoyment and satisfaction and meaning. And I have a whole set of protocols that will help people understand where they can make progress and where they need to make progress.

2. 5:23 – 14:02

   Current State of Modern Happiness

   1. CWChris Williamson5:23

      What is the current state of modern happiness? What does the research tell us? Because we're hearing stories, feelings of listlessness and hopelessness and disconnection and all the rest of it. What is the weather report for 2024 happiness?

   2. ABArthur Brooks5:40

      Well, like they always say in the, in the, uh, in the advertisements, "Your results may vary," right? Because you can be doing a lot right when society isn't. Unfortunately, society as we understand it, particularly in the OECD countries, in the Western industrialized countries, happiness is going in the wrong direction. And we actually understand why, but here are the basic data. Most of the Western countries, the industrialized nations, have been ticking about a half point down every year in the percentage of the population that says, "I am very happy about my life." So typically, you know, going back to, uh, the- the 1980s, 1990, in the United States, for example, um, about 35% of the population said, "I'm very happy about my life," about 15% said, "I'm not happy about my life," and the other half was, "I'm somewhat happy." That's kind of the- the general proportions, and there's better ways to measure it with greater granularity, but that gives you an idea of what's happening. You've been finding that that's ticking down so- such that, for the first time now, not happy is higher than very happy, and that's consistently happening now over the past few years. So that's been just this gradual decline. Now, some people are getting a lot happier, but society in general is seeing this, and this is largely being pulled down by certain demographics. You find young adults are less, way, way less happy than they used to be, especially young women, especially young women with very progressive political views. They're ex- uh, re- I mean, really, really declining. And there's one little subgroup, which is men my age. (laughs) That, and- and this has to, obviously this has to do with macroeconomic factors, et cetera, et cetera. So this is- these are interesting questions from a kind of a policy perspective, a sociological s- perspective, but more importantly, from a psychological and personal strategy perspective such that we can live better lives.

   3. CWChris Williamson7:24

      What do you lay the decline of happiness at the feet of psychologically?

   4. ABArthur Brooks7:29

      There's kind of climate factors and weather factors, and I don't mean that literally. That's a metaphor too. It's kinda like you and me dating as a metaphor. So the climate is the climate of faith, family, friendship, and work in this country. Those are the habits of the happiest people. There's tons of literature out there that give you 10,000 happiness habits. Okay. But they're all trivial compared to the big four, which is your faith or life philosophy, the- the why of your existence metaphysically that will make you small and the universe large. You must transcend yourself or you'll be stuck in the tedious psychodrama of- of Chris-ness. I mean, it's like, it's- it's great for a minute, but 24 hours a day, you're gonna lose your mind. You need to zoom out is the bottom line, and I've got a bunch of ways that you can do it. I have a folder full of ways that you can actually achieve this, which up to and including the faith of your youth, but not- not exclusively. Second is family life. Family life is critically important, and it's woefully neglected, and it's societally increasingly neglected as well, which- which is, uh, accounts for a lot of this decline. Friendship. Friendship is actually getting harder and harder to come by. We find that more people say, "Nobody knows me well." And last but not least, we have more of a dysfunctional relationship with work than we've had in the past. It's less like a vocation. It's less like a mission. Those are the climate factors. I know you're gonna wanna talk more about specifics in each one of those silos. Then there's the storms. The storms have been, have created downdrafts of happiness from which we have not recovered. In 2008 to 2010, it was screens, smartphones, social media, especially among young adults. This is- we understand the brain science on how this is incredibly deleterious to happiness. Second, starting at about 2014, across most OECD countries, but really in the United States and the UK, was the- was the culture war, was the incredibly polarizing ideological conflicts where malignantly narcissistic polit- political and media leaders were conscripting child soldiers into their culture war by saying, "If somebody disagrees with you politically, they're denying your right to exist," (laughs) "and you must hate them." Unbelievably terrible for happiness. And last but not least was the loneliness that came from the coronavirus epidemic. For young adults that were coming of age synaptically in the plasticity of their brains, they literally didn't learn how to make friends and- and have proper in-person love relationships, which is probably the worst thing that's happened to happiness in the last 100 years.

   5. CWChris Williamson9:54

      Why hasn't happiness been so robust that it's bounced back? What has locked in these losses in the market?

   6. ABArthur Brooks10:01

      Well, if you- if I could do one thing for somebody to make them happier, one thing, it's eye contact and touch. That's the one thing. Why? Because, you know, the neurophysiology is straightforward. You've talked about this on your show, that- that- that the neuropeptide of connection is oxytocin. It's intensely pleasurable. And- and again, we don't wanna be reductive ab- about the brain chemistry, but this is a really important thing for us to understand. We're a kin-based species. We know ours and ours know us, and we get pleasure from being close to our kin such that we are averse to walking the frozen tundra and dying alone. Okay, that- that natural impulse is actually guided in no small part by this neuropeptide that functions as a hormone in the human brain called oxytocin. We don't get it when we don't have eye contact and touch. How do you not get eye contact and touch? By con- conducting your friendships through an iPhone with social media, by going to school on Zoom, by never going into an office, man. I mean, it's- it's- it's crazy. Look, if I were in Austin, we'd be doing this in person 'cause it would be- it would be better, and it would be better because we'd have more eye contact, and 'cause we'd be getting more oxytocin over the course of this conversation. Young people who've never gotten that have wired their brains differently, and the result is it's not clear that they're ever gonna be able to recover from what we've done. Well, I mean, not... I mean, I don't- I don't mean to be, you know, catastrophic about it, but I'm not entirely convinced that this, that we're not losing a generation to oxytocin deficit and- and loneliness.

   7. CWChris Williamson11:32

      This, uh, is bad news predictably for the Lone Ranger sigma male...... guys out there who don't need friends and, "I'm gonna make it on my own and it's too hard to get out there and I- I- I'm just gonna retreat myself to my little digital cabin in the woods and not-"

   8. ABArthur Brooks11:53

      Yep.

   9. CWChris Williamson11:53

      "... spend any time together." Um, it's one of the reasons why I- I'm such a- a critic of cynicism on the internet that things won't get better and people who say that it can are the problem. Um, it is so... I mean, look, if you have managed to convince yourself that things aren't going to get better and you are robust in your thinking and it's not gonna change, all right, whatever. Like, I don't want you to leave society, but so be it. But it's fucking evil for you to convince other people of the same.

   10. ABArthur Brooks12:26

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson12:26

       Like for you- for you to somehow convince other people that, no, it's not, there's no point in trying to get into a relationship, there's no point in trying to have friends, there's no point in trying to contribute to society. All right. Well, I mean, look, all of those things will very reliably make you miserable and you're basically saying, "My philosophy is the one to follow."

   12. ABArthur Brooks12:46

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson12:46

       Despite the fact that we know the direction it's going to take you in.

   14. ABArthur Brooks12:48

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, let me- let me- let me make sure that I'm not- I'm not actually guilty of that (laughs) by saying that I'm worried about losing a generation. You can rewire your brain. The question is whether or not that you have the s- that society is- is giving us adequate opportunities to do so. And if it isn't, take those opportunities yourself. Nobody is permanently lost if they actually will- will, um, will- will do what actually needs to be done and adopt the attitudes that show that... For example, you're better off when you're around people. You need real friends. You'll be a lot happier, all the young men listening to Modern Wisdom, if you fall in love and get married and have children. You'll be happier. You'll be a lot happier! It's not true what the red pill community is telling you, that you'll be subjugated and miserable your whole life. I got the data. Trust me on this. This is the whole point. I'm worried about losing a generation precisely because the messages are coming out that these things are stupid and don't make sense. That's the wrong set of- of messages. I want to be transgressive and counter-cultural against the- the technology that's saying that you don't need to be in person and against the culture that's saying that not being around people is better than being with people.

   15. CWChris Williamson14:01

       Bravo.

3. 14:02 – 20:05

   Why Faith is Crucial to Happiness

   1. CWChris Williamson14:02

      Okay. Faith, family, friendships, contributing in terms of work.

   2. ABArthur Brooks14:07

      Right.

   3. CWChris Williamson14:08

      Faith, uh, I'm a non-religious person, non-believing person.

   4. ABArthur Brooks14:14

      Right.

   5. CWChris Williamson14:14

      Ma- many people listening will be. If they don't have a direct route to access faith, what are some of the highest return strategies they can do?

   6. ABArthur Brooks14:23

      So remember, the point isn't faith per se, it's transcendence. You need to do something that will make you small and the universe big. That's what the- that's what the science really says. And, you know, Mother Nature doesn't want you to do that. Mother Nature's like, "It's all about you. You are the star of your psychodrama." And why? Because, you know, that- that's, you know, evolutionarily it sort of makes sense that you'd be focusing on yourself all the time. But also, it's worth pointing out that Mother Nature doesn't care if you're happy. Mother Nature, uh, only cares that you survive and pass on your genes. And so therefore, happiness, that's- that's your problem and your business. That's the key thing for us to keep in mind. And- and so-

   7. CWChris Williamson15:04

      I think that just- just to interject there, I think that that realization that humans are not designed to achieve happiness, that that's a state which might be... It's- it's neither necessary nor sufficient for you to do what Mother Nature wanted you to do.

   8. ABArthur Brooks15:19

      No.

   9. CWChris Williamson15:19

      It was just, it was like a by-product of it. So realizing, you're not, it's not like you're swimming upstream, but that most of the set points and motivations, uh, that your system will try and push you toward are not going to be conducive to happiness. So when the question of why- why is it so hard to be happy or why is happiness in- in a big dearth in the modern world, it's like, well, it's been in a big dearth for a very long time. There is no reason for your system to try and encourage you to be happy in the first place.

   10. ABArthur Brooks15:48

       Yeah, that's right. And- and- and to speak in terms that you've often used in your show, that is to be managed by your limbic system as opposed to actually dr- drawing the experiences of your life into your prefrontal cortex, your, the C-suite of your brain where you're making decisions. That the divine path actually comes from being fully human. The animal path comes from not being fully human, that- that leaving these sensations in the emotional centers of the limbic system of your brain which say, "Do this 'cause you feel that." That's no way to live. That's a really important thing to keep in- in mind. Mother Nature says you're the star of your psychodrama. You wanna be happy, you have to leave that behind and the way to do that is to achieve transcendence from yourself. Here's a really good way to do that. You and I are, you know, one of y- your neighbor out there in Austin, Texas is- is Ryan Holiday, our mutual friend Ryan Holiday. He's great. He's the world's leading expert on the modern understanding of the stoic philosophers. He reads Seneca for fun, and Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and he's talking about what Cicero said. It's just amazing how he does that. Why? Because he actually wants to achieve transcendence by doing the hard things that come from the denial of the visceral pleasures that are embedded in the- in the impulses of the limbic system. That's really what stoicism is all about. That's the divine path and- of transcendence using pure philosophy. Many philosophies will do that. I don't recommend Nietzsche. That's what a lot of the, sort of the modern crowd is- is talking about, which leads to some of the problems that we were just discussing a minute ago. There are better paths. Some people will actually get this by getting out of their head in a meditative experience using nature. So one of the things that I recommend to a lot of young people today, a lot of young guys coming out of college will call me and say, "Ah, I feel lost. I thought I was gonna be so clear about my life when I got out of college and so what do I do, professor?" And one of the things that I often recommend is I'm not gonna, you know, tell them to go find some specific faith or sit in the mouth of the cave and talk to the guru or learn how to meditate immediately. What I say is get up an hour and a half before dawn. That's called a Brahma Muhurta in Sanskrit and that's, that means in Sanskrit the creator's time. That is a s- very special time as, for- for the development of your own brain because what you find is if you get up systematically before sunrise, you're going to be more focused, uh, you'll learn more quickly and your attention will be better throughout the course of the day. There's a lot of research that shows this. Get out of the house when it's nice and dark and cool a- and walk for an hour, be ambulatory for an hour, uh, and- and such that you're doing it as the sun is coming up by the end of your walk and you can hear the crunch of the gravel on the trail beneath your feet. You don't have your device. You're not... I mean, I- I- I strongly recommend listening to Modern Wisdom. Not then.That's not when you're listening to your podcast. You're listening to your heartbeat, you're listening to the birds, you're listening to the- the sound of the trail on your feet, et cetera, et cetera. This is a very good way to do it and there's a lot of science to back it up. This is not just romanticism. Another way to do this is to- is to actually, uh, stand in awe of great genius. I recommend learning about the fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach and listening with utter seriousness, for example, to his cantatas. He's got hundreds of them. They fell off his pen. Learn about that. You- it's just gonna- it's gonna blow your mind. You'll be small, trust me. You could start a vipassana meditation practice. Why not? Or I go to mass every day. You can practice your faith and- and by the way, Chris, I understand that you don't have a faith or, you know, a sense of this. You might after 40 and being open to the impulse to actually find the divine in your life, that's a critically important way to actually practice this as well, just the openness.

   11. CWChris Williamson19:28

       I went to my first American Bible Church service on Easter Sunday this year, and boy was that- that was an experience. There was a rock band, there was an LED wall, there was pyrotechnics. I pulled up behind a, uh, (clears throat) like super fast American muscle car that had God now as the number plate.

   12. ABArthur Brooks19:57

       Okay.

   13. CWChris Williamson19:57

       So (clears throat) I found that- I- it was very enjoyable and I can totally see why people do it. So I'm absolutely-

   14. ABArthur Brooks20:01

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson20:01

       ... open to- I'm open to the potential of that. All right, that's faith. Family.

4. 20:05 – 27:01

   The Importance of Family & Friends

   1. CWChris Williamson20:06

   2. ABArthur Brooks20:06

      Yeah. So this should be pretty obvious. Not everybody, by the way, has access to functional family relationships. I get it. And some people actually have to kind of assemble a family. But I'll tell you, it's a kind of a funny thing. I mean, I didn't quite understand this until later in life and part of the reason is because I had, at best, kind of a cordial relationship with my parents. It was- and there's nothing wrong, they were- they were good parents, but, you know, I was doing my thing. I was living in Europe through my 20s. I was- I was a professional musician. When you were, you know, throwing people out of bars, I was playing in a symphony orchestra, which is a different lifestyle but, you know, it bears certain similarities as well. You know, you're out late at night and you're far away from home and you're living your dream and the whole thing. And I can- I remember thinking in my 20s, "I should get to know my parents." My mother was an artist, my father was a mathematician. They were very interesting and intellectual and- and- and cultured people, and then they died. They just died young. Now, my father was pretty close to my age now and, uh, and it was too late and I thought, you know, "What does that mean? Does that set me back?" And it turns out that I could fix that because now I have adult children, I'm a grandfather at this point, and I talk to all of my kids every single day. I see my grands- I'm moving because my kids are moving and my grandchildren are gonna live in a different place and I'm not gonna commute to them, is what it comes down to. You must have family relationships or manufacture family relationships in your life and you must not have schism for stupidities, like differences of political opinion. The narcissists in politics will tell you to stop talking to people in your family because they, I don't know, voted for Trump or didn't vote for Trump or whatever the thing is. It's so idiotic that you would sacrifice your own happiness for somebody else's political cult. It's completely nutty, is the way that that works out. You need to have it, keep it, or make it, and make it a part of your life that you exercise every day.

   3. CWChris Williamson22:01

      All right. Friends.

   4. ABArthur Brooks22:03

      Friendship is- should be the easiest because we're all surrounded by people all day long and it turns out it's the hardest for a lot of people. I'm kind of a striver whisperer in my practice. I specialize in people that really want to make a lot with their lives, that are serious about the entrepreneurial venture of their own life. They're the startup entrepreneur of Me Inc. I really admire that and it's something that I teach. The problem with that is it's very easy to no longer have real friends. They have deal friends, but not real friends. And- and real and deal are different. Deal means-

   5. CWChris Williamson22:33

      What are deal friends?

   6. ABArthur Brooks22:34

      They're useful. They're very useful, right? And it's good to have people who are useful to you and it's good to be useful to others, don't get me wrong, but you need useless friends too. People who just love you.

   7. CWChris Williamson22:44

      (laughs)

   8. ABArthur Brooks22:44

      You need useless friends. I don't mean worthless friends. I have those too. You need people who- who are not useful to you and you're not useful to them. They just love you, Chris. And- and we have fewer and fewer of that. That's the reason that 60% of 60-year-old men today say their best friend is their wives and 30% of their wives say their best friend is their husband. (laughs) That's a- a- a sad story of unrequited love for men my age. It's really important to keep this in mind.

   9. CWChris Williamson23:12

      I- it- it's also because women seem to be able to hold on to, uh, that alloparenting adjacent group of close friends better than men do.

   10. ABArthur Brooks23:22

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson23:23

       I mean, this is one of the reasons why during, uh, divorces men have a worse time of it, uh, for many reasons, but one of them being that they often subjugate their friend group for their wife's friend group-

   12. ABArthur Brooks23:34

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson23:34

       ... and when the wife goes away, the friend group goes away.

   14. ABArthur Brooks23:37

       Yeah. Yeah. So for- in- in traditionally organized families, in- in- in past times in particular, when dad left and- and made a living outside the home at work, he would be cheating his family by hanging out with his friends, and- and so he didn't. And the result is that he lost his friendship chops over the years and got lonelier and lonelier and lonelier. Now you'd think it'd be much better. Now it's much worse 'cause everybody's doing that. Now everybody, men are doing that, women are doing that, and you find that women and men under 30 are now the loneliest cohort in our society and the more successful they are in their lives, the lonelier they tend to be in their lives. They're- they're more likely to say that nobody knows me well. The reason is real and deal, and you gotta do the work. I mean, for a lot of people, they haven't had close friendships since college or from high school, uh, and when they're, you know, 28 years old or now 35 years old or 45 years old and everybody's incredibly useful to them. Now, to be sure, the- the most successful marriages are the ones that are based on- on- on deep friendship. We call it companionate love, which sounds in- you know, distinctly not hot. I get it. But it's important because that's the- the closest friendship you're gonna have, but it's not enough.... you find that the happiest people, they have- they're very close friends with their spouse but they have one really close friend at least besides that. Introverts usually have one really close friend besides a spouse, extroverts have more like five. They don't have 20 because you don't have the time to maintain that but it's really important.

   15. CWChris Williamson25:02

       How often do we need to see our friends? How do we determine whether somebody is real or deal? What's the amount of time that we need to spend with them per week? Et cetera, et cetera.

   16. ABArthur Brooks25:11

       Yeah. There's lots of rules for that and, and again this falls into the year results may vary category but there's one thing that I do know when somebody says, "Oh yeah, no, no, I mean it's like, I have some real friends." Let's say think about your most real friend who's not your spouse. "Yeah, okay." When's the last time you talked to them? "I don't know, two months ago?" Not a real friend. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I mean it's like, you, i- if it's your real friend you keep up to date with your real friends. I have two guys that I talk to every week and they, one lives in San Francisco and one lives in Atlanta, I live in Boston. I see them in person. I saw one of them for breakfast yesterday in New York City. We take opportunities, with one of them we go on vacation together with our wives. That's the effort that you make because you, you want to see the people you love. You want to see them in person, you make the effort, you want to talk to them, you miss them, you actually miss them. If, if you don't miss the person, it doesn't kind of hurt your heart because you haven't talked to them in a while, in a week, it's not a real friend.

   17. CWChris Williamson26:05

       What's the difference between real and deal? How can someone tell? A lot of the time we feel like real friends are also impressive-

   18. ABArthur Brooks26:12

       Right.

   19. CWChris Williamson26:12

       ... if you're on the personal growth journey it's difficult to, uh, distinguish re- real and deal from real or deal.

   20. ABArthur Brooks26:18

       Yeah. The difference is that with a deal friend there's something from, there's this trans- there's a transaction that's happening that's more important than the emotion. Transaction trumps emotion. There's nothing wrong with that with people in your life by the way, it's not like you should fire all of your transactional friendships. No, because you'll wind up without a career to be sure, there, it's very good to help each other but if the emotion that you feel for the person is more important than the transaction you could undertake, okay that's good. In, in which case you can actually have deals with your real friends. But that's the key component and if for all of them it's like, I care a lot more about how the person is useful to me than the person's life, that's when you know.

   21. CWChris Williamson26:59

       Got you. Final one, work.

5. 27:01 – 35:43

   Finding Purpose in Your Work

   1. CWChris Williamson27:01

   2. ABArthur Brooks27:01

      Yeah. Work is, you know, people listening to us right now, um, they want an edge in their lives and I, and I understand that, and a way that they measure that edge frequently is, is, is in their, in their success. You know, I think I probably had first listened to you three years ago maybe is the first time I heard your show and I think you'd just passed, I don't know, 100,000 YouTube subscribers or something, that was a long time ago because you have a lot more than that right now, and I remember you like, "I can't believe it man," and, and your career was kind of blowing up. I remember thinking that because I was thinking, "Yeah this young guy is doing great (laughs) ," it's very inspirational. I love people who are in the hunt. I really, really love people who are in the hunt. The problem is that when it comes to work the hunt itself doesn't give you, doesn't give you the satisfaction that you're gonna desire. Mother Nature lies to you in many ways but, and we've talked about it before, but, but here's one of the biggest lies that Mother Nature gives you. If you're successful and making s- progress and money and power and the admiration of other people then you'll be happy. You get happiness for free. Success first, happiness second. So you don't have to worry about happiness you just have to be successful, money, power, admiration, maybe a little pleasure thrown in there along the way. Those are the worldly idols. By the way, Saint Thomas Aquinas, in paraphrasing Aristotle in the Summa Theologiae written in 1265 classified those as the world's idols. He was an excellent social scientist because it turns out that those are the intermediate goods, nothing wrong with those things by the way I'm not condemning those things, they're just incomplete for your happiness. If you, you have those as the goals you're in real trouble. Okay so what are the right goals from work? It's twofold. Number one, earn your success. That means create value with your life and work, in your life and the lives of other people and you have to be rewarded and acknowledged and recognized for the, the real value that you're creating. Tenure is nonsense, loyalty is nonsense, merit hard work and personal responsibility and you're rewarded and recognized for it and you believe it, that's earned success. That, by the way, that's why I'm a complete advocate for the free enterprise system not because like, you know, it's like rah, rah, rah capitalism, Adam Smith, no because it makes people happy when they're succeeding in a, in a, in a system that rewards merit and personal responsibility. It's not perfect but it's the only system we got that really does that, that's number one. Two, now I'm gonna sound like a Commie, service to others. Service to others. You need to actually beli- actually that's not communism that's capitalism too-

   3. CWChris Williamson29:32

      (laughs)

   4. ABArthur Brooks29:32

      ... I take it back. Service to others is incredibly, i- it's, it's, this will bring you joy to your work, you have to know that people need you. The essence of human dignity is about being needed, is like feeling like an asset in society. The essence of despair is feeling like a liability to be managed by your family, by the welfare system, by anybody else which is why it's so terrible to be in poverty because of the way that we treat people in poverty, we don't look at them as assets to develop which they should be because human beings are human beings with equal dignity. We treat them like, you know, liabilities to manage by the, by whatever system that they're talking about. To create value in the lives of other people to, to, to serve others means that they need you and that is the true secret to everything else. Now you get it like crazy because, you know, you don't have a gun to anybody's head to listen to Modern Wisdom, they're coming to you voluntarily and that is this affirmation, they need me, they like it, it's in the comments, thank you. My guess is you get 20 emails a day from people who say that that podcast really changed my thinking. They need you. Well everybody needs that, every single person needs that whether you're, you know, picking apples or-... you know, trying to, you know, running for Congress. You actually need that in your life. Those are the two, service to others and, and earning your success.

   5. CWChris Williamson30:54

      I had a, an essay that I wrote, uh, probably about a year ago now, I wanna read it to you, about the tension between success and happiness. One of the most tensions- one of the most common tensions I talk about at the moment is between the desire for success and the desire to feel like we're enough. Success is a strange thing. Presumably, we want success because we think a more successful life will bring us more happiness, meaning, and fulfillment. Here's the problem. We sacrifice the thing we want, happiness, for the thing which is supposed to get it, success. Failure can make you miserable, but I'm not sure that success will make you happy. One of the most common dynamics I see amongst high performers is this. Parents want their child to do well. Parents encourage their child to do well by praising when they succeed and criticizing when they fail. The child learns that praise and admiration is contingent on succeeding. This lesson metastasizes through early adulthood into, "I am only worthy of love, acceptance, and belonging if I succeed." Now, powered by an internal feeling of insufficiency, this person is driven to achieve many things. They're prepared to out-work, out-hustle, and out-suffer everyone else, because they're not just running toward a life that they want, they're running away from a life that they fear. Success and progress ameliorates the feelings of insufficiency. Therefore, success and progress becomes prioritized above everything else. Now, don't get me wrong. Many high performers genuinely love the work that they do, and many are driven by a well-balanced simple desire to maximize their time on this planet, rather than trying to fill a void inside of themselves. But if I was to place a bet, I'd guess that the majority of high performers are driven by fears of insufficiency rather than a holistic desire to be better. I think people who are high achievers, on average, are more miserable than the average person. So what does it mean that the people we admire most are the ones with the least admirable internal states? If the pursuit of success is in an effort to make us happy, and in the pursuit of success, we make ourselves miserable, why not just shortcut the entire process and just be happy? Is that even possible? Now, external accolades count for a lot, and I don't think that recanting all worldly possessions and retreating to a cave in the woods is an optimal strategy. Some degree of external material success is important to make us feel validated and satiate our desire for s-status and respect. But external success will not fill an internal void, and insufficiency adaptation is this. If your drive f- comes from a fear of insufficiency and you continue to disprove those fears with success in the real world, and yet the feeling of insufficiency persists, what makes you think that the answer to this problem is more success?

   6. ABArthur Brooks33:18

      Nice. Very astute. You're a natural social scientist.

   7. CWChris Williamson33:23

      Well-

   8. ABArthur Brooks33:23

      I admire it. And it's all true. Look, everything is. Like, there's a ton of science that backs all that up, but you don't need it. Everybody knows that, that look, if you go for the success to get the happiness, you're gonna get the success, because woe be unto you if you have the wrong dreams. Your dreams are gonna come true if you work hard on them, but you're not gonna get to the happiness. The right strategy is to shoot for greater happiness, and then you'll have enough success. Now, those words, for a guy like you, a strong like you, they give you a little chill, don't they? Because enough success doesn't sound right. No, no, man, I, I, I'm not doing this for enough success. I know tons of guys back in high school who have enough success. I don't want that. I wanna be, I wanna be special, Chris. I wanna be special. How many people with a success addiction, which is the fundamental brain-delivered underlying dopamine, uh, uh, uh, uh, moderated or mediated addiction, which lies behind workaholism, by the way, how many of those people have chosen specialness over happiness? That's what you're talking about. Any loser can cultivate all these relationships and all these friendships, but not every loser can work as hard as I do and become a Navy SEAL and do, you know, 50 pull-ups and, and have, you know, uh, 40 million Instagram follower... I don't know. You f- that's specialness. And, and by the way, Mother Nature's driving you once again. Mother Nature does not care if you're happy, but Mother Nature wants you to be special so that you'll be able to survive more easily by having a higher rank in the kin group and being able to pass on your genes because you'll be the alpha, but that's not what you want. That's actually not even what you want. You're gonna get enough food and you don't want 750 kids. (laughs) You, what you want is a really, really good life, and you're being driven by these ancient impulses. That's exactly what you're saying. And you've walked into a dopaminergic moderated... And I don't know why I actually had this thing come up on my screen right now.

   9. CWChris Williamson35:32

      It's fine. It's fine.

   10. ABArthur Brooks35:33

       It's, uh, why we, we, we walk into a, a, a, a success addiction that makes your brain look more or less like a methamphetamine addict's brain.

6. 35:43 – 43:49

   How to Manage Your Desires

   1. CWChris Williamson35:43

      How can people learn to unwind and detach themselves from their desire for success?

   2. ABArthur Brooks35:51

      You don't need to unwind your desire for success. You need to understand and manage your desire. That's what we need to do on all these things. You don't need to want different things. You need to manage your wants for these different things. Look-

   3. CWChris Williamson36:04

      What does that-

   4. ABArthur Brooks36:04

      ... I don't drink, I don't drink alcohol. I don't drink alcohol. And the reason I don't drink alcohol is because there's a lot of alcoholism in my family, and I drank way too much when I was your age. I drank a lot when I was your age. And so, I stopped, and I stopped a long time ago. I stopped over 20 years ago. I still want alcohol. I'm not gonna stop wanting alcohol. What I do is I manage my desire for alcohol through- vis-a-vis my behavior. That's what we need to do. Look, of course you're ambitious, of course you're driven for tremendous success. That's wonderful. But it can't...... manage you, that- that- that drive, that ambition, that- that- that intense visceral sense that- that you'll only be special if you have enough success, you can't let it manage you, is what it comes down to. Of course you have these desires. By the way, Chris, you're gonna get married at some point, and- and after you're married, you're gonna look at a- a woman and she's gonna be incredibly beautiful and you're gonna have a sense of natural human desire for her, and you're not gonna act on it. That's the same thing is true when- when you could work the 14th hour instead of spending the first hour with your kids, you're gonna make the decision to sublimate that desire and manage it.

   5. CWChris Williamson37:10

      Yeah, that's interesting. I remember David Buss told me this story, uh, that a reader sent in to him saying that his book had saved his marriage because this guy had been married for a while, maybe between five and 10 years, something like that, and he'd found himself being attracted to other women, and he took that attraction as some sort of sense that his existing relationship was wrong.

   6. ABArthur Brooks37:38

      Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson37:39

      "If I was fully, totally renaissance period besotted with my partner, I wouldn't have eyes for any other woman for the rest of time." And David explained that there is a very, very well embedded reward system that men get when they look at even a pair of rocks that slightly resemble boobs. Like, you are driven to just-

   8. ABArthur Brooks37:59

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson37:59

      ... like sexualize and look at anything, whether it's like, you know, geological or otherwise. And he said that sort of liberated me from this sense that I can't... the desire itself is wrong and that I must tell myself a story about it.

   10. ABArthur Brooks38:14

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson38:14

       And it feels a little bit to me like this, um, line that we have drawn between when I get enough success I will allow myself-

   12. ABArthur Brooks38:23

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson38:23

       ... to be happy or I will- I will have justified happiness, happiness will come as a byproduct a- a- along for the ride with success. That's kind of the same. Look, your desire to continue to chase this thing may not really cease all that much, but your choice about whether or not you do work the 14th hour today is one of those. And it's not just about, you know, it- it's kind of further upstream, I'm gonna guess. What you need to do is go further upstream than this and think about how many hours a day do I want to work, how much work do I need to put on my plate in order for me to need to work those number of hours, because otherwise what you're going to end up doing is failing at things that you've intended to do. Like if you-

   14. ABArthur Brooks39:01

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson39:01

       ... put 14 hours of work on your plate, like you kind of need to do it until you no longer need to do it, and that is a more sort of life design, uh, position.

   16. ABArthur Brooks39:11

       That's right. And the- the unfortunate fact is that you won't know how to do anything else once you become hopelessly addicted because these behavioral patterns feed on themselves, notwithstanding the fact that you're getting unhappier and unhappier. And f- furthermore, there's one other thing that's key- that's worth pointing out. If you were an- an- a, you know, an- an untreated alcoholic, nobody would say like, "Dude, last night you put away two bottles of vodka. That was impressive. I admire you for that." They'd be like, "Get some help, man. That was... It's pathetic." But if you work 14 hour days, they're gonna be like, "Man, you're gonna be the next Elon Musk." What do you admire about Elon Musk? He works all the time. He... And, you know, people will admire the fact that he says, "I haven't taken a day off since 2008," or something like that. We love workaholics in our culture. We love success addicts. We love people who are self-objectifiers. But let's- let's think about that a little bit. I mean, I bet when you were a kid, did you have a good relationship with your dad?

   17. CWChris Williamson40:12

       Yeah, not bad.

   18. ABArthur Brooks40:13

       And I bet that he said that you shouldn't objectify women, you shouldn't look at them and say that they're nothing more than sex objects or that- that you should treat them like real people, right? You know, why? Because you- you're a boy and you have an impulse to not do that for the- all the reasons that David Buss has- has made very clear on your show. Okay, well, you shouldn't objectify yourself either, Chris. And- and a self-objectifier is somebody who looks in the mirror and says, "That's a success machine." That's somebody... And, you know, th- these affirmations, it'd be like looking in the mirror and saying, "That's somebody who can say stay stoned all day." You- you wouldn't do that, that'd be pathetic, it'd be weird, and yet that's kind of the thing that we do with the self-objectification, which is downstream from success addiction, which actually is related to workaholism, which all these weird patterns of behavior that we establish often before... even before adolescence.

   19. CWChris Williamson41:03

       All right, let's get into the macronutrients, the component parts of happiness. We've got three to go through. What are they?

   20. ABArthur Brooks41:10

       Yeah. Enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. And they seem self-evident, but they're not. The- the... To be... I'll give you an example. Enjoyment sounds like pleasure, but it's completely different for all the reasons that we kind of discussed. Pleasure is a limbic phenomenon. Pleasure is a- is a- a- an... It- it's a set of signals in your limbic system saying that something is either really good for helping you survive to get calories or really good for getting mates and passing on your genes. That's really the... And- and we've become ingenious at in- in the laboratory creating new ways to get those sensations. So, you know, everything from gambling to pornography to methamphetamine to, um, fentanyl to alcohol, all these things do is they mimic different ways that in the Pleistocene before we had substances and these behaviors that we would get pleasure from something that actually helps us survive and pass on our genes. Unfortunately, all those things that I just mentioned are addictive and bad for you because, you know, what you're doing is you're artificially stimulating something you don't need to do and in a way that your- your body and brain are not accustomed to, and so they're incredibly unhealthy. A lot of guys, especially at your age, don't realize how dangerous pornography is for the brain, for example, but what it is is just it fires up that impulse to pass on your genes in an artificial way. Okay, so why do I bring that up? Because all those limbic searches for pleasure are different than enjoyment, which is fundamentally an experience in the prefrontal cortex of your brain. And you don't have to not have pleasure, by the way. I'm not... I'm- I'm Catholic. I'm not- I'm not a Puritan.And, and what you need is the source of pleasure plus people, plus memory, thus delivering the experience into your prefrontal cortex, which is part of happiness. So, I'll give you an example. I was doing work with a big beer company and we were talking about these ideas, and I said, "Look, associate your product with enjoyment, not pleasure." And they said, "What do you mean?" "Well, don't run a commercial of a dude alone in his apartment pounding a 12-pack." Why? Because that's the pursuit of pleasure, and everybody knows it's addictive and dangerous and irresponsible and pathetic. Do the ad where the guy is having a beer with his brother or his friends. You've taken beer, plus people, plus memory, and that equals enjoyment, and that's part of happiness. If you're doing something as pleasurable and, and it can be addictive and you're doing it alone, you're probably doing it wrong. That's where pornography comes in, that's where gambling by yourself comes in, that's where eating a whole cake by yourself comes in. That's where using, what, drinking alone comes in, all of these particular behaviors. And so that's an example of how the, the neuroscience of this can be intensely practical in helping you to lead a better life and change your habits.

7. 43:49 – 51:38

   The Pleasure of Reliving Memories

   1. ABArthur Brooks43:50

   2. CWChris Williamson43:50

      What else is there to say about the way to use pleasure, people, and memories? Is there something you should do to embed memories more effectively? Are there types of pleasures that seem to be better for happiness or not? Are there types of people, is there a way that you can reinforce this? Do I need an Ebbinghaus forgetting curve flashcard-

   3. ABArthur Brooks44:09

      (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson44:09

      ... Anki deck to be able to remember all of the shit that I did?

   5. ABArthur Brooks44:12

      I mean, hey man, let's make it. Let's make some money. So (clears throat) that's a g- I mean, see, you're such a natural entrepreneur. It's, it's unbelievable. You go right to product. It's great. Um, yeah, the people shouldn't be addicts. You know, it's not gonna be helpful to you if your community of people who help you enjoy things that are pleasurable are also drunks.

   6. CWChris Williamson44:30

      Mm.

   7. ABArthur Brooks44:30

      So, so it's obviously the case that you want people who are trying to enjoy each other's company as opposed to simply focusing on the, the source of the pleasure, the, the chemical or behavioral source of the pleasure. That's really important. And then actually-

   8. CWChris Williamson44:42

      Just to, just, ju- ju- just to interject there-

   9. ABArthur Brooks44:43

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson44:43

       ... I wonder whether, I wonder whether there's an analogy to be drawn between, um, let, let's say that, you know, a bunch of people in a crack den, all of whom are just smoking crack, and the only reason that they're there is to, like, be around other people that also do crack-

   11. ABArthur Brooks44:57

       Right.

   12. CWChris Williamson44:57

       ... That's just the environment that they, they exist in. I wonder whether there is kind of an equivalent, if you were to, let's say, be a, a professional athlete of some kind, training in a facility with a bunch of other individual athletes, but all of whom were only there because they also needed to use the facility individually-

   13. ABArthur Brooks45:17

       Right.

   14. CWChris Williamson45:17

       ... That they were there for the personal pursuit. Now, obviously, the pursuit of training versus the sort of direct pleasure that you get from taking drugs. But my point being that there's a lack of, uh, interaction between each of those individuals. They're very much siloed within their own experience of whatever the pleasure might be. Uh, y- y- you were at a, a gaming, a games, um, place where tons of people can play Call of Duty, but none of you are playing against each other, and none of you are speaking to each other, right?

   15. ABArthur Brooks45:46

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson45:47

       Like, you're with people, it's doing it in community, but it's not integrating with the people.

   17. ABArthur Brooks45:53

       Yeah, interaction is critically important. You're not with other people, you're not actually with other people if you're just in a crowd. I mean, you can feel unbelievably lonely walking down the street in New York City. You're technically all walking down the street in New York City. This is, uh, wi- with little kids, you'll see this when you have children, before they learn how to interact with each other, they do s- they do something called parallel play, where you'll bring two little kids, two little two-year-olds together and they'll be playing with blocks, but not together.

   18. CWChris Williamson46:20

       Mm-hmm.

   19. ABArthur Brooks46:20

       Parallel, like they won't even be looking at each other-

   20. CWChris Williamson46:22

       Mm-hmm.

   21. ABArthur Brooks46:22

       ... is the way that that works. That doesn't stimulate oxytocin. And so what, if you wanna get into the neurochemistry of what we're talking about here, it, you're, you're not gonna get the benefit of pleasure plus people, plus memory unless you're doing something that really stimulates oxytocin, which means intense interaction, eye contact, and ideally human touch as well.

   22. CWChris Williamson46:41

       Right. Okay, so this is an argument to, you know, s- give your friends a hug when they just win at a board game, to, like, reach up and high five.

   23. ABArthur Brooks46:49

       Heck yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson46:49

       I play a lot of Werewolves. Have you played Werewolves?

   25. ABArthur Brooks46:51

       No, I haven't. (laughs)

   26. CWChris Williamson46:52

       Okay, so Werewolves is like a, it's a role-playing card game where everybody in a circle is given a particular character. Some are good guys, some are bad guys, and you don't know who's who, and you have to bluff your way through the game, and certain people can be killed off.

   27. ABArthur Brooks47:06

       Oh, I've heard about this, yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson47:07

       Yeah, there's another game called Mafia, which is basically the same but with different characters. Uh, and I have observed people that have been married for 15 years with a completely straight face just lie to their partner about what their role is. "No, of course not." "Honey, I love you. I would li-" So we've had to make a rule that, like, what happens during Werewolves stays during Werewolves because the potential blast radius of sort of the loss of-

   29. ABArthur Brooks47:31

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson47:31

       ... The, the, the loss of certainty, um, also-
8. 51:38 – 1:01:48

   Optimising for Satisfaction

   1. ABArthur Brooks51:38

   2. CWChris Williamson51:38

      All right. Satisfaction.

   3. ABArthur Brooks51:40

      Yeah. Satisfaction's a weird one. So satisfaction is, you know, we talk about it all the time, you know, but we don't really define it. Satisfaction is the joy that you get after struggle. A- and this is the weird human mystery. Only humans want pain. We, only humans wanna sacrifice and struggle because then the rewards are sweeter. The more you struggle before, the more... And, and everybody kinda knows that's true, and yet we don't follow through on that very often. We're always looking for the easy way out. That's the reason that there's this kind of this call of the wild that people have when they listen to people like David Goggins or Jocko Willink because their whole... Or, or Rich Roll. You know, these are all mutual friends of ours, obviously, and, and it's like, the, the, the thing that's kinda calling from nature to people when they hear this and they find it so attractive is like, "Yeah, yeah, man, I need more pain. I need more pain in my life because then my life will be sweeter." And yet they're going through life trying to find the easiest way out. This is a real mystery. Actually, it's not, you know? The divine path requires struggle and the animal path wants convenience and ease and a complete lack of pain. It wants sort of an analgesic existence. So one of the things that we do is we try to teach our kids this. You know, when your kids are little, you say, "Don't eat before dinner." All parents say this. And the, and the kid is always like, "Why?" And you make up a bogus excuse, like, "It's bad for you, you know, and you're not gonna get your proper nutrients." That's all nonsense. You don't want your kid to eat before dinner because you want your kid to be suffering a little bit of hunger before dinner so they'll enjoy their dinner and be happier. That's what you actually want. But you can't quite articulate it, and you don't wanna tell the kid, "It's 'cause I want you to suffer." You want the kid to suffer. A- and so that's an important thing to keep in mind, and that's a real conundrum, and the, the more that we can understand that, the more that we can expose ourselves to suffering for the right reasons. You really should get up before you're ready and while it's still dark. It's best for you to do that. You should work out in the morning. It's a good thing to do. I, I mean, I get it, not everybody can do that. You should do these things that actually hurt and your day will be better and your life will be happier. That's the first mystery is, you know, trying to sort that out. The second mystery, however, is bigger in Satisfaction, which is that Mother Nature tells us that if we get that thing, like that millionth YouTube subscriber, you're gonna love that forever. How long did you enjoy that, like half an hour?

   4. CWChris Williamson54:10

      Five minutes.

   5. ABArthur Brooks54:11

      Yeah, that's pretty good. All right. Five minutes, right? And, but, but your brain told you the whole way that when you got that, it was gonna be awesome. You know? So, so Mick Jagger saying, "I can't get no satisfaction," that's wrong. You wouldn't try and try and try and try if you couldn't get no satisfaction. You can't keep no satisfaction. That's the real problem. And you try and you try and you try, and that's what, that, the reason for that is what neuroscientists call homeostasis, which of course you know about. And homeostasis is the tendency of any physiological system to go back to its baseline so you're ready for the next set of circumstances. It's true for your emotions. "It's awesome, it's awesome." Forget it. "I gotta go back so that I'm not distracted from the n- so I can stay in the hunt" is what it comes down to. Otherwise, I'd starve to death after I got food, you know, be like, "That was good enough," and then you die. And you, you don't want that. So that's the key thing. And when, the, the mystery is that really smart, sophisticated people never figure that out, and they conclude that they just didn't have enough, and this gets back to your success problem.This gets back to the success conundrum. It's like, yeah, I got that thing but I'm still not satisfied, so I guess I needed five million, I guess I needed 50 million. The first thing that a billionaire concludes is that he needed another billion. That's called a-

   6. CWChris Williamson55:26

      Have you seen, have you seen that study where when pretty much anybody is asked what level of wealth would you be satisfied with, it doesn't matter what level of wealth you're at, it tends to be almost ex- uh, e- exactly three times your current income?

   7. ABArthur Brooks55:40

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson55:40

      It's like, at about three times where I'm at now-

   9. ABArthur Brooks55:43

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson55:43

       ... that's, that's my-

   11. ABArthur Brooks55:44

       No. No.

   12. CWChris Williamson55:44

       ... sort of settling point. But it scales all the way up to a billion.

   13. ABArthur Brooks55:48

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And there are different studies that one, one of the studies ... I mean, some studies say it's 40%. Some studies say it's 300%. The bottom line is it's more, because that's what your brain is telling you, that the secret to satisfaction that endures is more. More what? More money, more power, more pleasure, more honor, more Instagram followers, more sexual partners, more, more. And, and the problem with that is that it doesn't recognize that there's a divine version of that that actually works. There's a wa- I did it again, I keep getting these weird effects on my camera-

   14. CWChris Williamson56:19

       (laughs)

   15. ABArthur Brooks56:20

       ... (laughs) that there is a way to hack this s- this, this neurophysiological matrix, this evolutionary matrix. And the way to think about this so that you're not subject to this, you can be free forever by the way, is by remembering that satisfaction that endures is actually a function of all the things you have divided by the things that you want. Haves divided by wants is the right-

   16. CWChris Williamson56:43

       Hmm.

   17. ABArthur Brooks56:44

       ... mental model for you to pursue. And that means, of course you have a have-more strategy. Of course you do. You also need a want-less strategy. You need to manage your wants just as much as you need to manage your haves. I realize that's very Buddhist, but it's actually in every spiritual and philosophical tradition. And so the way that I do that ... There're a couple of ways to do that. One, one way to think about that is to think about the metaphor. The metaphor of success for entrepreneurs is kinda like you're an artist and, and you're putting p- uh, uh, brush strokes on a canvas of your life. The right metaphor is, is at some point in your life at least is actually the sculptor, where you're chipping away the jade or the marble to find the true work of art within. And that means getting rid of the detritus, the part of the block of marble that's not the horse or the rider, so that you can find the horse and rider inside. And one way to do that that I often do is I, I, I, I used to have a bucket list. Everybody who listens to this podcast knows what a bucket list is. I have a reverse bucket list now, where I take my worldly cravings and desires and ambitions, which I still have, I'm turning 60 in two weeks, and I still have the, these dumb, you know, uh, these t- craven, trivial desires, I'm a weak, weak man. But I'm, I actually will write them down on my birthday and I will cross them out. Not because I'm not gonna get them, but because I want the management of those cravings and desires to be in my prefrontal cortex and not in my limbic system. And with a pencil in my hand.

   18. CWChris Williamson58:10

       Can you give us some examples of, of, of what you cross out?

   19. ABArthur Brooks58:13

       Yeah. So one of the things will be, for example, these worldly m- metrics of success in my particular industry that are trivial. So for you, it would be a certain number of, of YouTube subscribers. For me, it would be a certain number of sales of my latest book or, or prestige inside the university or whatever it happens to be. Now, and I realize, I know, uh, uh, you know, I, I, I authentically know, as do you, that these things are trivial, and yet we, we look at them as a marker of our own specialness and our own sense of accomplishment. When I write them down, I acknowledge that I have the desire. When I cross it out, I say, "I, I have the desire, but I will not be attached to this goal." That you're, you're, you're physically negating the attachment from the goal. That, I mean, of course the attachment on understanding, you know, dukkha is that concept, uh, the first noble truth of Buddhism that life is suffering because of dukkha, because of this sticky craving for the inadequate things. But it is not saying, "I'm not gonna do that, I'm not gonna get that." It's saying that, "I'm not gonna be attached to that." And it's incredible. This year on my birthday, by the way, I got a big one coming, man, with a zero. My attachment that's bothering me right now, I'm gonna admit it, I have too many political opinions. I really do. They're, they're weighing me down. They're, they're making it harder to have friends (laughs) than they should be. So I'm gonna write down my 10 strongest political opinions and I'm gonna cross 'em out. Not that I'm saying that I don't believe these things, but I'm not going to be attached to my rightness. That humility is gonna set me free, and that's a kind of a metaphor. Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Vietnamese Buddhist monk, he wrote that our, our greatest attachments are to our opinions. And that's, you know, triply true for me right now. So, man, I, I, I need freedom and, and I'm gonna get it by, by talking about the wants, not just the haves.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:00:09

       That practice, the exercise of writing down the things that you want and then crossing them out sounds great. Symbolically, lovely. The writing, the physical writing of something, lovely. Presumably, that's not just a master key that downstream from that... And yes, I'm still going to have it, but where are you going in your mind? Is there a practice which is more repeatable and robust that when your desire to correct somebody about their view on abortion arises, that y- uh, what, where are you going to there to-

   21. ABArthur Brooks1:00:39

       Well-

   22. CWChris Williamson1:00:40

       ... permanently be crossing it out?

   23. ABArthur Brooks1:00:42

       Y- what it does is it makes you remember the attachment in the moment of behavior. That's what that thing does. That's where the important thing is, because when it's in your prefrontal cortex, then it's not, then it's a behavior that is, that is manageable in, in the executive centers of your brain. And so, what will you do instead? When somebody sits down next to me and says something that I really just I don't believe about a- a- abortion and I think that, I think, "Mm, now I have my opportunity," 'cause my prefrontal cortex is managing it and I say, "Tell me why you think that?"... would you please tell me why you think that? A- a- and you listen to learn. It's an es- extraordinary thing. And by the way, you get smarter, and- and you're- you're wrong less often, and you get less embarrassed, and you lose fewer friends. A- a- and when you do that, the other person that you're talking to... I just gave a long lecture on the, on the, on the neuroscience of the absorption of messages in political communications today. I just gave that lecture today. And one of the things that you find is the more that you do that, the more people think that you're, that, that you're a very smart person who makes very good points, and that your point of view is actually quite persuasive.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:01:47

       It's a shocker how that

9. 1:01:48 – 1:10:59

   Being Seduced By the 4 Idols

   1. CWChris Williamson1:01:48

      happens. Can you, you m- mentioned earlier on something I've heard you talk about before to do with the common idols that, uh, people kind of get waylaid by. Can you just go through those?

   2. ABArthur Brooks1:01:58

      Yeah. Yeah, that was, we mentioned that just a minute ago, that was the Aquinas' four idols, money, power, pleasure, fame. Money, power, pleasure, fame. Now, Aquinas asserted... This is 1265, he didn't have data, but man, he was the best. And Aquinas said that everybody falls prey to one of these things more than anything else, that this is an exhaustive list of the things we care about the most. Now, money is pretty obvious, money or wealth, or, you know, uh, financial resources, anything that actually allows you to buy stuff and shows that you're a very important person, you know, th- these markers, these, um, medium of exchange and store of value. The second is pleasure, we've talked about it, and, or power. Power is, is the ability to control the behavior of others. And the last is actually a really kind of a, you know, a lot of people listening to us are like, "I don't care about fame, you know, I don't wanna be Instagram famous." But that's not it. It's really the prestige and the admiration of the right people. I mean, if- you can be completely screwed up if you were on the Disney Channel as a kid and what you want is the admiration of strangers, and there are literally people's brains who are wired like that because they got famous before they were (coughs) wh- while their brain was still in formation, and they'll be like somebody who got addicted to methamphetamine as a 14-year-old. They'll, they'll never be normal-

   3. CWChris Williamson1:03:10

      Mm-hmm.

   4. ABArthur Brooks1:03:11

      ... is what we actually know. Um, but, but most aren't like that, but they still want to be considered somebody for the people whose, whose opinions actually matter. Those are the four idols, and I play a game with my students, what's my idol? Because once you know your idol, you can actually control your behavior and manage yourself in a much more effective way. You have to know your weakness is the way that this works out, and a lot of people actually don't. So do you wanna play the game, Chris?

   5. CWChris Williamson1:03:35

      Hit me.

   6. ABArthur Brooks1:03:36

      You wanna play What's My Idol? Okay.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:03:38

      Damn right.

   8. ABArthur Brooks1:03:38

      The way to play What's My Idol is not for me to say, "Which, which of the four really controls you?" It's to say, "Which of the four do you not care about?" And start eliminating them, because then we're gonna wind up on the one that's really harder for you. So money, power, pleasure, honor. You gotta give away one. Which one are you gonna give away?

   9. CWChris Williamson1:04:01

      Power.

   10. ABArthur Brooks1:04:02

       How come?

   11. CWChris Williamson1:04:04

       I don't notice in myself a desire to really accumulate power of any kind.

   12. ABArthur Brooks1:04:11

       Okay, so I'm gonna make a prediction about you. You hate it when people have power over you.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:04:16

       Oh, yeah.

   14. ABArthur Brooks1:04:17

       That's it. People who hate having, pe- people having power over them are averse to having power over other people as well.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:04:24

       Mm.

   16. ABArthur Brooks1:04:24

       You're a non-hierarchical person. You're a non-hierarchical guy, right?

   17. CWChris Williamson1:04:29

       Yeah, yeah, the, the org structure of the business would suggest that as well, yeah.

   18. ABArthur Brooks1:04:33

       Yeah. That's- it's... And that's almost always the case. Okay, good. So now we've got money, pleasure, and fame, or honor, or prestige, admiration.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:04:42

       Mm. Uh-

   20. ABArthur Brooks1:04:42

       You gotta give another one away and it's harder now. What are you gonna give away next?

   21. CWChris Williamson1:04:45

       Um, money.

   22. ABArthur Brooks1:04:48

       Money. How come?

   23. CWChris Williamson1:04:51

       One of the, uh, of all of the different mental pathologies that I have, uh, materialism, uh, d- d- desire for sort of flashiness in terms of possessions is just not something that I have. I have a degree of scarcity mindset, um, which a abundance kind of ameliorates, but for me, it's just, it's- it's not something that I really think about very much.

   24. ABArthur Brooks1:05:14

       Did you grow up with nice things?

   25. CWChris Williamson1:05:16

       Mm, we were, like, lower working class, I think.

   26. ABArthur Brooks1:05:19

       Okay. Lower middle class, kind of like I grew up.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:05:21

       Lower working class.

   28. ABArthur Brooks1:05:22

       Oh, lower working class, okay-

   29. CWChris Williamson1:05:23

       Yeah.

   30. ABArthur Brooks1:05:23

       ... like, my wife grew up in Barcelona, so it was, you know, sometimes you paid the light bill and sometimes you didn't pay the light bill. Okay, we didn't grow up with nice things. This might be the case. Now, when it comes to this, there's a very interesting set of sociological theories that you can never be actually comfortable more than one and a half classes above that in which you were a child. So if you were, if you were kind of lower working class, that means that the tastes above upper middle class are gonna be like, "That stuff is boring, man." That's that, it's like, "You want me to collect art? Why would I spend my time collecting art? I wanna talk about stuff and ideas and things that actually excite me."
10. 1:10:59 – 1:23:16

    Why Meaning Impacts Happiness

    1. CWChris Williamson1:10:59

       final horseman of the apocalypse.

    2. ABArthur Brooks1:11:03

       Yeah. So this is the most important, meaning. I can go- because I'm very disciplined, I can go a long time without enjoyment and I can go a long time without satisfaction but I can't go 10 minutes without meaning and be a happy person and this is the biggest problem that we have among young adults today. I have all kinds of tests that I give people to see whether or not they have a proper sense of meaning in their life and I'm not judgmental about what that meaning is gonna be but I do know, I can tell people when they have a crisis of meaning and this is the biggest predictor of unhappiness for people in their 20s today. Now most people in their 20s are actually not in the- in the active pursuit of meaning whereas in about 1960 most people were in an active pursuit of meaning. That's a big generat- se- set of generational differences that we have and it's a big, one of the big, uh, the biggest explanations for the things that we talked about earlier which is the degradation of- of general societal happiness and particularly among the young. So meaning is actually kind of a combination of three things; it's coherence, why things happen the way they do. You have to have a- a theory of the case about why things happen. It doesn't mean it has to be right or it has to be mine but you have to be like, "This is why things happen." Yours tends to be very scientific about why things happen. Second, you have to have a sense of purpose. Purpose and meaning are not synonymous. Purpose is a subset of meaning that is direction and goals. Purpose is I'm going in a particular direction towards specific things, that's what it comes down to. And significance is the belief that your life matters so it's- it's coherence, purpose and significance. Now there's a test that I give my students and by the way, that I give my children, my kids are younger than you, my kids are in their tw- all three of my kids are in their 20s and all three of my kids had to answer these questions. I made them write a business plan when they were- when they were coming out of high school, you know, which is like a business plan for the enterprise of their lives for the next five years. I'm a B-school professor, I can do this and, uh, and I'm the venture capitalist so, you know, I deserve a business plan and, and the point was what are you gonna do to find the answers to two questions, the two meaning questions; why are you alive and for what are you willing to give your life joyfully at this hour? You need answers to those questions, you need to be alive for a reason and you need to be willing to stop being alive for a reason. Those are the meaning questions so...... what are your answers? Why do you believe you're alive? Why are you on Earth? A, a sperm and an egg is not the right answer, and a stork isn't either. (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson1:13:37

       (laughs) I think the thing that I often come back to when I ask myself this question is, uh, to understand myself and the world around me, I get so much joy. I'm at my best when I'm learning about things and engaging with ideas. Downstream from that, I can teach it to other people and do all of the rest of the stuff, but, um, maybe I'm revealing my sort of only child bona fides here, but so much of it is just me understanding myself and the world around me. Like, that's... it's been the single lineage trajectory throughout, uh, all of the good things that I've done.

Episode duration: 1:45:10