Your Instincts Know What You Want with Author Arthur Brooks | A Bit of Optimism Podcast

1. ABArthur Brooks0:00

   I've been looking at the basic neuroscience of these why questions that you've been grappling with for decades now, and there's all this correlation between how much you use your devices. So you use your devices to make your life really efficient, and you free up a whole lot of time, which you then waste by distracting yourself with devices on, on trivialities and nonsense.

2. SSSimon Sinek0:18

   [laughs]

3. ABArthur Brooks0:19

   Right? And it's like... And, and, and people are like, "I don't know."

4. SSSimon Sinek0:21

   The idea, the idea is thick.

5. ABArthur Brooks0:22

   I know. And it's like, well, well, it's, it's a self-licking ice cream cone, is kinda-

6. SSSimon Sinek0:26

   Yeah

7. ABArthur Brooks0:27

   ... kinda how the thing works. And not very surprisingly that, you know, happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. There's no evidence that people under 35 have lower levels of enjoyment and satisfaction, but meaning has cratered. Why?

8. SSSimon Sinek0:44

   [upbeat music] At some point in our lives, every single one of us has asked ourselves the question, "Can I be happier?" There are competing theories. Some people think we have to learn to be grateful for what we have. That's the secret to happiness. Others think we have to learn to change our lifestyle, our habits, or our routines, that that's the secret to happiness. Enter Arthur Brooks. Arthur would challenge both those theories. He has lived many lives and made some remarkable career changes, from French horn player to CEO of a think tank with no think tank or fundraising experience, to best-selling author. And through all the changes and challenges, he has learned exactly what it takes to be happy. In fact, his insights are so good he actually teaches them in one of the most popular classes at Harvard Business School, an entire class on happiness. Arthur is one of my favorite people to talk to. He's fun, he's whip-smart, he has a big heart, and whenever I'm done talking to him, I feel, well, happier. This is A Bit of Optimism. [upbeat music] I'll be, I'll be, I'll be totally honest with you, which is I use this podcast, um, simply as an excuse to hang out, hang out with you 'cause you're so busy. You're so busy, the only way I can get you on the phone is to schedule you for a podcast-

9. ABArthur Brooks2:17

   [laughs]

10. SSSimon Sinek2:17

    ... and then we get to chat and catch up.

11. ABArthur Brooks2:19

    That's the, that's why I always thought I was doing the podcast, is to get to you, to get into you, to wor- worm my way into your Google calendar.

12. SSSimon Sinek2:25

    You and I have known each other a very long time.

13. ABArthur Brooks2:28

    Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Years and years and years.

14. SSSimon Sinek2:29

    You, you were still at AEI back then. One of my favorite things about you is you practice what you preach, and I know that should be standard fare for people who are out there teaching or, or who are out there writing philosophies and theories about, you know, how to live life and, and et cetera. But you and I both know a lot of people who give talks and write books on living lifestyles that they don't live. But you do the things you talk about and write about. You do the things that you teach in your happiness class. You do the things in how you've reinvented your own career that you wrote about in, in your book. How have you reinvented your career this time?

15. ABArthur Brooks3:12

    You know, it's funny, and thank you by the way. It's like you're, you're doing the same thing, Simon. I've known you for years, and I mean, I, I read your books before I knew you. And Start With Why had a huge impact on me. It had a huge impact on me when I was still at AEI, and it was operative in, in helping me understand the trajectory of my own life as well. I had a real early-in-life major, major career change. And, uh, I mean, you know this, but not everybody listening to this is gonna, is gonna have any awareness of this. I was a classical French horn player from the time I was eight years old until I was 31. So I, I, for, for 23 years, that's all I did, and I went pro at 19-

16. SSSimon Sinek3:50

    Yeah

17. ABArthur Brooks3:50

    ... after a, you know, first run at college that didn't... I mean, I didn't want to go to college. I wanted to go pro, so I went pro at, at 19. And all the way through my 20s, um, I toured playing chamber music. I played two years with Ch- Charlie Byrd, the jazz guitar player. Then I played a bunch of seasons in the Barcelona Orchestra in Spain and, and then I tried to become a soloist unsuccessfully. And, and the whole point is that by the end of that, I had to do something else, and so I had to retool my own professional life. I had to reinvent myself, which I did in my 30s, my early 30s, and I f- I kind of figured out how to do it. I figured out how to go from becoming a classical French horn player to getting a PhD and becoming a behavioral scientist, and it was hard. That was a hard one. All the changes after that have been easier because I figured out how to funge the best from my past life into my next life, and this is something I talk about an awful lot with my students. My MBA students at Harvard, they're gonna have four distinctly different careers if they follow the norm, and that means that they're gonna have to understand that their career is not a straight line. I mean, you understand this. Careers are not a stair-step straight line for most people. They're more like a spiral where you have 7-to-12-year mini careers of your own imagination. And if you're too paralyzed by fear and you don't know how to reinvent yourself and you're not willing to go backwards in terms of money and power and prestige, you're screwed, man. You're screwed. You're not gonna be able to do it. I just got lucky. I had to, I had to change. [laughs] I, I-

18. SSSimon Sinek5:16

    Okay, so but this-

19. ABArthur Brooks5:17

    ... was not gonna do that

20. SSSimon Sinek5:17

    ... but this is, this is really, really important because your, your case is more exaggerated than most, right? To go from horn player to political scientist, pretty, uh-

21. ABArthur Brooks5:27

    Pretty big difference

22. SSSimon Sinek5:28

    ... wide delta. Pretty big difference.

23. ABArthur Brooks5:29

    Pretty big difference.

24. SSSimon Sinek5:30

    And most people's deltas won't be that big, which is why your case is really important because if, if you can do it, pretty much anybody else can do it. I think where people get stuck is they look at what their skill set is. So in your case, it'd be like, "I know how to play a horn." So they look to reapply a skill set, thinking that's reinvention. So reapplying a skill set of I... Instead of being a horn player in an orchestra or, you know, with a, with a jazz guitarist, maybe I, I don't know, maybe I can do ga- video game music, you know?

25. ABArthur Brooks5:57

    Yeah, yeah.

26. SSSimon Sinek5:57

    And it's, it's-

27. ABArthur Brooks5:58

    Yeah

28. SSSimon Sinek5:58

    ... the reapplication of skill which they mistake for reinventing themselves.

29. ABArthur Brooks6:02

    That's correct. There's... That, that the problem with that is, and there's a huge behavioral science literature on this that I didn't know until much laterTill I became a behavioral scientist and I started-- And I, and I could look retrospectively and understand that what had happened to me, and then look prospectively at what the next s- set of changes were gonna be. People have a tendency to say, "Okay, what, what have I already," as you suggest, "gained skill at and I, I-

30. SSSimon Sinek6:25

    Yeah

Episode duration: 55:54