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Tim FerrissTim Ferriss

How to Be Happy — Arthur C. Brooks Interview

Brought to you by: Wealthfront high-yield savings account https://wealthfront.com/tim Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating https://eightsleep.com/Tim AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement https://drinkag1.com/tim Resources from this episode: https://tim.blog/2023/09/11/arthur-c-brooks/ Build the Life You Want: https://www.amazon.com/Build-Life-You-Want-Science/dp/0593545400/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 Arthur C. Brooks (@arthurbrooks) is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Public and Nonprofit Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness. He is also a columnist at The Atlantic, where he writes the popular “How to Build a Life” column. Brooks is the author of 13 books, including the 2022 #1 New York Times bestseller From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life and his newest Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier with co-author Oprah Winfrey. He speaks to audiences all around the world about human happiness and works to raise well-being within private companies, universities, public agencies, and community organizations. Please enjoy! [00:00] Intro [00:45] The reverse bucket list. [06:55] Intention without attachment. [08:48] Writing Thích Nhất Hạnh’s obituary. [11:35] Buddhist views through a Catholic lens. [14:52] Blood occlusion training and physical fitness over 40. [18:42] Arthur’s semi-mystical teenage experiences in Mexico. [25:10] Arthur’s academic dad on complex vs. complicated. [28:25] Happiness hygiene for genetically baseline gloominess. [31:08] Happiness and unhappiness: hand in hand. [34:22] Being effective with one’s affects. [37:53] The three macronutrients of happiness. [45:21] Identifying (and learning to live with) our idols. [58:02] Secularly securing transcendent perspective. [1:04:50] Money doesn’t buy happiness — it lowers unhappiness. [1:09:46] Tithing and adoption. [1:13:23] How Arthur and his wife met, and how their values aligned over time. [1:20:39] Advice for seeking love in the modern world. [1:28:17] Death meditation. [1:38:33] Finding personal purpose and meaning. [1:53:06] Four fundamental micronutrients of happiness. [1:56:11] Translating a need for change into action. [2:03:41] Aristotle’s secrets to happiness. [2:08:31] Real friends help us put the kibosh on self-deception. [2:16:08] Reflecting on the repercussions of living for the mirror’s approval. [2:19:49] Collaborating with Oprah on Build the Life You Want. [2:25:21] The point Arthur hopes people don’t miss in Build the Life You Want. [2:29:09] Reading recommendation: The Noonday Demon. [2:30:46] Exposure therapy: making pain part of one’s medicine. [2:35:49] A practical way to be grateful for life’s bad things. [2:38:54] Parting thoughts. Tim Ferriss is one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and an early-stage tech investor/advisor in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ other companies. He is also the author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers: The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors. The Observer and other media have named him “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, which has exceeded 900 million downloads and been selected for “Best of Apple Podcasts” three years running. Sign up for "5-Bullet Friday" (Tim's free weekly email newsletter): https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-yt/ Follow the Tim Ferriss Podcast: https://tim.blog/podcast/ Visit the Tim Ferriss Blog: https://tim.blog/ Follow Tim Ferriss on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tferriss/ Follow Tim Ferriss on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timferriss/ Like Tim Ferriss on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/

Tim FerrisshostArthur C. Brooksguest
Sep 13, 20232h 42mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:45

    Intro

    1. TF

      [upbeat music] Arthur, so nice to have you here. Thanks for joining.

    2. AB

      Thank you, Tim. It's great to be with you. I've been looking forward to this.

    3. TF

      Me too. Me-

    4. AB

      I feel like we've been looking forward to meeting and, and it's-

    5. TF

      [laughs]

    6. AB

      ... we've been warming up for this for a long time.

    7. TF

      We have.

    8. AB

      We have so many friends in common.

    9. TF

      We have a lot of friends in common. I have read your prior work, From Strength to Strength. Excellent book, recommended to me by Peter Attia. People may know him as Dr. Peter Attia.

    10. AB

      Mm.

    11. TF

      Good friend. Proud Texan also now. [laughs]

    12. AB

      [laughs] Where all the cool kids live.

    13. TF

      Where all the-

    14. AB

      Austin, Texas.

    15. TF

      Where all the cool kids are.

    16. AB

      [laughs]

    17. TF

      And

  2. 0:45 – 6:55

    The reverse bucket list.

    1. TF

      I have more questions than we will have time, but I'm hoping to really explore broadly, and I wanted to start with something [laughs] that I thought would pique the interest of many people listening-

    2. AB

      Mm

    3. TF

      ... and that is the reverse bucket list. Is this something you still do, and what does it entail?

    4. AB

      Yeah. The reverse bucket list is something I do. Oh, boy, do I ever do it, and it took me too long to figure this one out. When I was 50... I'm 59 years old. When I was 50, I found my bucket list from when I was 40. You know, it was a classic thing. You know, my, my birthday, I would make a list of my desires-

    5. TF

      Mm

    6. AB

      ... my ambitions, and I would, you know, imagine myself, visualize myself consuming or experiencing these things, and it would fire me up and make me, well, kind of feel like a loser, quite frankly-

    7. TF

      [laughs]

    8. AB

      ... because it was, it was, it was lowering my sense of satisfaction, I subsequently found out. And I looked at that list from when I was 40, and I checked everything off that list, and I was less happy-

    9. TF

      [laughs] Oh, no

    10. AB

      ... at 50 than I was at 40. I'm a social scientist, so I thought to myself, "Obviously I'm doing something wrong. What am I doing wrong?" And, and basically, this is the problem. This is a neurophysiological problem and a psychological problem all rolled into one handy package. I was making the mistake of thinking that my satisfaction would come by having more. And the truth of the matter is that lasting and stable satisfaction, which doesn't wear off in, like, a minute, comes when you understand that your satisfaction is your haves divided by your wants. Haves divided by wants. That's the model. So, you know, it's like I'll slow down because I know people watching are like, "I'm gonna write that down." Haves divided by wants. You can increase your satisfaction temporarily and inefficiently by having more or permanently and securely by wanting less. I thought to myself, "Hmm, so what does that mean?" And the answer to that, what does that mean, is I need a reverse bucket list. Not that I'm not gonna get nice things in my life, but by... I'm gonna be consciously detached from them by going through the exercise of writing them down and crossing them out. So on my birthday now, my 59th birthday a couple of months ago, I wrote down all my ridiculous ambitions and desires of money or whatever, power, ambition-

    11. TF

      Mm-hmm

    12. AB

      ... admiration.

    13. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    14. AB

      All these things that I want from other people, that we all want because we're human and Mother Nature wires us to, to accumulate the rewards that'll help us survive and pass on our genes. I get it. I know how evolutionary psychology works. And I know that these things are going to occur to me as natural goals, but I do not want to be owned by them. I want to manage them. I don't want them to be like phantasms in my limbic system managing me. I want to move the experience of these ambitions to my prefrontal cortex, which is my executive manager, the bumper of tissue right behind the, my forehead. And the way that you do that is by looking at each one of these ambitions and saying, "Maybe I get it, and maybe I don't, but I'm gonna cross it out as an attachment." And I'm telling you, Tim, I'm free.

    15. TF

      And so you find that to work, the exercise-

    16. AB

      Oh, it works. It works. It works. It... It does, not because you don't care about it, but because you're not attached to it in the same way. You've made the decision to have it not be a, a rootless desire, a ghost in your head. You've made it into something that you will consciously manage by literally experiencing that ambition in a different part of your brain.

    17. TF

      So you go through this exercise. So you write down whatever it is, receive such and such an honor.

    18. AB

      Right.

    19. TF

      Sell s- so many copies of book X.

    20. AB

      Right.

    21. TF

      What- whatever these are.

    22. AB

      All the stuff that guys like you and me do.

    23. TF

      Right. And then [laughs] you [laughs] have 37-inch arms in, in your case, possibly.

    24. AB

      [laughs]

    25. TF

      You're incredibly fit. I'm not hitting on you. I'm just saying-

    26. AB

      [laughs]

    27. TF

      ... I aspire to.

    28. AB

      You're a beautiful man too, Tim. [laughs]

    29. TF

      [laughs] Well, we go to the same stylist for our haircuts.

    30. AB

      [laughs]

  3. 6:55 – 8:48

    Intention without attachment.

    1. TF

      [laughs]

    2. AB

      But if you're super attached to it, then you're gonna freak out when something throws you off.

    3. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    4. AB

      Furthermore, you're not gonna recognize the fact that it is the voyage itself that is the adventure of life, not actually reaching the particular destination, whether it's the original one or one that turns out to be better or worse or wherever you wind up. And that's the way you gotta live your life, so it's intention without attachment. Now, there's another thing that I was thinking about this year because, um, Thích Nhất Hạnh died. You know, the great-

    5. TF

      I did

    6. AB

      ... Vietnamese Buddhist monk, and I wrote his obituary in the Washington Post, actually.

    7. TF

      Wow.

    8. AB

      It was a, it was a really interesting experience 'cause I talked about all, what he's taught all of us.

    9. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    10. AB

      And Thích Nhất Hạnh said, and it always had an impact on me, but I, I reflected on it upon his death, that one of the greatest attachments that people have in modern life is to their views and opinions. That's a real attachment. It can be as, as dangerous as your attachment to money or power. Why? Because people treat their, their opinions as if they were gold, uh, uh, they're jewels, you know? Get between me and my political opinions, man, I'll cancel you. I'll get you fired. I'll denounce you on social media. Who knows? Maybe I'll be violent. I mean, life is crazy these days.

    11. TF

      Yeah.

    12. AB

      And so I looked at it and I thought, "Am I weighed down by attachment to my views, to my political views?" So I wrote down five of my strongest political views and I crossed them out.

    13. TF

      Hmm. This was after writing the obituary?

    14. AB

      Yeah.

    15. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    16. AB

      It was on my reverse bucket list when I turned 59. And I said, "Look, it's not that I don't have these views."

    17. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    18. AB

      "I just don't have these, the attachment to these views. Look, man, I need more friends." [laughs] "And strong political opinions is not gonna get me there. It's not gonna get me there. Love is gonna get me there. Tolerance is gonna get me there. A sense of curiosity about other people is gonna get me there, and strong political opinions is gonna put me in the wrong direction, so man, dead. The attachment, dead."

  4. 8:48 – 11:35

    Writing Thích Nhất Hạnh’s obituary.

    1. TF

      Mm-hmm. So maybe this is a little too granular, but I'm curious. Thích Nhất Hạnh, this is a legendary figure. I would be very intimidated by the, the task of writing an obituary for such a person. I've read numbers of his books, been very influenced by his thinking. How do you go about deciding what goes into an obituary for someone like that? Or for anyone, for that matter, but in this particular case.

    2. AB

      The Germans talk about doing a f- so- something called a festschrift.

    3. TF

      Okay.

    4. AB

      It's a word that means kind of this en- encomium. It's a, a celebration of the work of somebody. And what you always start when you do one of these things, it's, uh, you know, typical sort of European intellectual deal, is you look at the things that they said and did that had the most impact and that was most meaningful to them in the same way. Now, I didn't know Thích Nhất Hạnh. I've worked very closely with the Dalai Lama in the, in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, but the Theravada Buddhist tradition, I've never penetrated personally, and so I didn't know Thích Nhất Hạnh. But I do know the, the, the things that he said and taught that really changed the way that Westerners think, and so that's what I wanted to talk about. Not what did he do that changed Theravada Buddhism. I'm not a Theravada Buddhist.

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. AB

      I don't, I'm not equipped to write that, but I can talk about the way he changed me as a Catholic. I can talk about how he changed me as a public policy person, m- because I was reading Thích Nhất Hạnh when I was running a think tank in Washington, DC.

    7. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    8. AB

      How he influenced me as a happiness professor at Harvard. That's the stuff that I really wanted to focus on. And what, that was the idea of attachment and detachment. That was the, the, the idea of the illusion of individuality. I mean, these are concepts that people didn't think about. He also was really behind the whole mindfulness revolution in the West.

    9. TF

      Hmm.

    10. AB

      He starts off The Miracle of Mindfulness, that famous book, big bestseller, with this simple description of washing the dishes, and he says, "When you're washing the dishes, you should be thinking about washing the dishes, because if you don't think about washing the dishes, you're not really there washing the dishes, are you?" And he persuades you with this kind of hypnotic prose to remember that if you don't think about washing the dishes, but you're thinking about doing something at work tomorrow or you're thinking about something that happened yesterday, that you're living in the future or the past and you've missed your life.

    11. TF

      Yeah, or if you're thinking about eating the juicy peach, which is a story, may not have been in that book, that I remember him telling, but it was paired with the washing of the dishes.

    12. AB

      Right.

    13. TF

      So he said, "If you're thinking about the peach while you're washing the dishes, when you're eating the peach, you'll probably be thinking of something else-

    14. AB

      Exactly right

    15. TF

      ... as well."

    16. AB

      And then what you're doing is you're, while you're doing this, you're planning for a future existence that's better than now, and when you reach it, it will be a phantasm as well. It will be nothing more than a, a mythical past while you're thinking about a, a new future-

    17. TF

      Right

    18. AB

      ... that doesn't quite exist, and you've missed your

  5. 11:35 – 14:52

    Buddhist views through a Catholic lens.

    1. AB

      whole life.

    2. TF

      How did he change you or influence you as a Catholic?

    3. AB

      It's an interesting... And the Dalai Lama too, by the way. I mean, a lot of Buddhist thinking has been incredibly helpful to me to, to understand exactly what I'm, what I'm trying to do as a person when I'm centering myself in prayer. So for example, Catholics, traditional Catholics, they generally pray what's called the rosary, and the rosary is a set of beads that you pray repetitive prayers. It's about a thousand-year-old Catholic meditation. I do it every day. And I noticed that I was having a hard time focusing. I was having a hard time understanding what I was trying to do for myself, for this offering. I didn't know how to make it fruitful in its way. I didn't know, exactly know what the point was. And studying the work of Thích Nhất Hạnh and also studying at the Dalai Lama's monastery in Dharamsala, India, sitting in meditation and studying meditation techniques with the Tibetan Buddhist monks, I actually learned what I was supposed to be doing as a Catholic praying my rosary.

    4. TF

      Hm.

    5. AB

      How I actually could center my prayer and make it deeply worshipful in a meaningful way. And perhaps God wanted me to learn that from my Buddhist sisters and brothers.

    6. TF

      This is gonna be adjacent to this conversation-

    7. AB

      Yeah

    8. TF

      ... this topic, but I'm curious. Do you believe that... And we can always cut this, but I'm very curious.

    9. AB

      [laughs]

    10. TF

      Do you believe that direct transmission in some of these lines, which is very important in certain schools of, we could call it mindfulness, but-

    11. AB

      Right

    12. TF

      ... that that is a real phenomenon, or at least, uh, I suppose it's undeniably important in the tradition, but the idea that sitting with someone in meditation with them, there are teachings that are sort of directly transmitted. What is your thought on that, if you have one?

    13. AB

      I don't know the answer to that. I do know that you can deeply be in communion with somebody and really intimately. And, and my wife, Esther, and I, we actually, we teach young couples that are engaged.

    14. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    15. AB

      She teaches the theological part. I, I teach the social science.

    16. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    17. AB

      You know, because I'm just a, you know, I'm a total wonk.

    18. TF

      [laughs]

    19. AB

      And what we do tell them is that according to the best science and, and our experience and common sense, that one of the most intimate things that you can do with your partner or spouse is pray together. It's super intimate. I know couples that have been married for 25 years that will have sex together but won't pray together because it's too embarrassing to pray together.

    20. TF

      [laughs]

    21. AB

      Because praying together is just too intimate.

    22. TF

      Mm.

    23. AB

      They don't know how to do it. It's embarrassing to them. Imagine, you'll get naked in front of somebody else, but you won't pray in front of them, and that's because it's such a deeply intimate thing. Okay. So when you cross the boundary of the greatest intimacy with another person, there's gonna be some transmission.

    24. TF

      Yeah.

    25. AB

      There's gonna be something, and it's gonna... The idea of direct transmission rings true to me because of the nature and intensity, the intimacy that comes from that experience.

    26. TF

      So we're gonna take a hard left for a second.

    27. AB

      Okay.

    28. TF

      Then we're gonna come back to a through line, which I am tracking, because [laughs] it's just what is top of mind for me. And then we're gonna come back to possible mystical/semi-mystical experiences in Mexico. So I'm giving you an idea-

    29. AB

      All right. I can't wait

    30. TF

      ... of where my head-

  6. 14:52 – 18:42

    Blood occlusion training and physical fitness over 40.

    1. AB

      [laughs]

    2. TF

      [laughs] The invitation is now formal.

    3. AB

      [laughs]

    4. TF

      But first, for those who are not watching this video, I mean, you are incredibly physically fit, and I know that you have some very deliberate, consistent practices, including weight training-

    5. AB

      Yeah

    6. TF

      ... and so on. Blood occlusion training.

    7. AB

      Yeah.

    8. TF

      Are you still using cuffs?

    9. AB

      I do, yeah, and I recommend it for anybody over 40.

    10. TF

      Could you explain what this is and why you recommend it?

    11. AB

      So occlusion training, what it effectively does is it, it's not a tourniquet, but what it is, it's a band around your arms and/or legs so that when you're lifting, you actually will get a much greater as, you know, in the vernacular, the burn-

    12. TF

      Mm-hmm

    13. AB

      ... from resistance training with lower weight. Now, the reason I recommend this very strongly is because the research suggests that it's very good for both strength and hypertrophy at lower weight levels, so it saves your joints, but gives you results.

    14. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    15. AB

      And that's what you need to do when you're over 40, save the joints.

    16. TF

      Yeah. And I, I really strongly encourage people to check this out. I've done some of it.

    17. AB

      Yeah.

    18. TF

      And to say that it increases the burn or the pump [laughs] is certainly true.

    19. AB

      You gotta love pain.

    20. TF

      You... Yeah, I would s- exactly.

    21. AB

      [laughs] You gotta love pain.

    22. TF

      I would s- I would say start conservative-

    23. AB

      [laughs]

    24. TF

      ... because you might feel weak dialing back the weights, but just wait.

    25. AB

      It hurts.

    26. TF

      And just-

    27. AB

      It hurts. It hurts

    28. TF

      ... just give it a bit.

    29. AB

      It really does. And you then, but then you learn to love the pain. [laughs]

    30. TF

      Yeah. And you can travel with...

  7. 18:42 – 25:10

    Arthur’s semi-mystical teenage experiences in Mexico.

    1. AB

      it's not, that's for sure.

    2. TF

      Yeah.

    3. AB

      Yeah.

    4. TF

      Could you please describe your experience, I think it was as a teenager.

    5. AB

      Mm.

    6. TF

      Was it as a teenager?

    7. AB

      Mm-hmm.

    8. TF

      In Mexico.

    9. AB

      Oh, yeah. The... It was not out in the woods with a shaman and ayahuasca.

    10. TF

      [laughs]

    11. AB

      [laughs] So when I was 15, I was on a, on a band trip. I used to be a, a musician, and I started as a kid. I was a real serious musician, and I wound up being a professional musician from when I was 19 until I was 31.

    12. TF

      So it was French horn?

    13. AB

      Yeah, I was a French horn player, a classical French horn player all the way through my 20s. I, I didn't go to college till I was 30, but it was my gap decade.

    14. TF

      Mm-hmm [laughs]

    15. AB

      And, and when I was-

    16. TF

      I need one of those.

    17. AB

      Yeah.

    18. TF

      I'm too late. [laughs]

    19. AB

      [laughs] And when I was 15 years old, I was on this trip with a group, with a, you know, with a profess- not a professional. It was a, like, an amateur concert band, but, you know, doing a, a tour through Mexico and, and we were doing a lot of tourism. And one of the tourist activities was to go to the Shrine of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Now, this is a famous place for Catholics because it's one of the great pilgrimage sites of the world. In Catholic teaching, this is where the Spanish explorers came to Mexico, and having a horrible time, you know, because their marketing was all goofed up for the Catholic Church.

    20. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    21. AB

      I mean, convert or die is not a very compelling pitch-

    22. TF

      [laughs]

    23. AB

      ... it turns out, you know? And racist and, you know, everything that you possibly could want. What happens then is this m- weirdly miraculous thing for Catholics and, and, and, and fellow travelers. I mean, just it was a mystical experience. So there was a, a peasant man by the name of Juan Diego who's outso- on a hill outside of Mexico City, and, and has an, sees an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So he, on his poncho, is imprinted the Blessed Virgin Mary's image-

    24. TF

      Mm-hmm

    25. AB

      ... on his tilma. He takes it back to-

    26. TF

      Tilma is a, is a textile?

    27. AB

      A tilma. Uh, yeah. It's like, well, it's, it's sort of a poncho.

    28. TF

      Right.

    29. AB

      It's, the tilma is what they would wear.

    30. TF

      Mm-hmm.

  8. 25:10 – 28:25

    Arthur’s academic dad on complex vs. complicated.

    1. TF

      your case. I'd like to talk about your dad.

    2. AB

      Yeah.

    3. TF

      So who was your father? What was he like, and how did his life end?

    4. AB

      My dad was a mathematician. He had a PhD in biostatistics. He was a lifelong college professor, most of it at a small Christian college in Seattle called Seattle Pacific University. He was born to missionary parents, evangelical missionary parents. He was born in the Navajo Nation in, in New Mexico, where my grandfather ran a mission school, actually. And then my grandfather went on to become the dean of a very famous college outside Chicago called Wheaton College, where all of our family members had gone. My aunt went there in the '40s and dated Billy Graham in college-

    5. TF

      [laughs] Wow

    6. AB

      ... as it turns out. Yeah, yeah. So and then my dad, you know, went on to another Christian college, to the college where he ultimately taught, and he was just absolutely in love with the beauty of mathematics. As kids, you know, my mother was an artist. My mother was a painter. My dad was a mathematician. And, you know, and a- around the dinner table, we would talk about art and we would talk about math. Those are the things. My father would pose math problems to us. He would say, "Okay. Okay, boys," me and my brother, "Imagine all of the, all of the integers between one and 100," 1, 2, 3, 4, okay. "Add them all together. What's the result?" And we'd be like, "I don't know. I need a piece of paper." He'd say, "No, you don't. Think of another way. Think of another way." The solution, by the way, is 1 plus 100 equals 101, and 2 plus 99 equals 101, and 3 plus 98 equals 101, and there are 51 of those, which makes 51 combinations of 101.

    7. TF

      Got it. And so that's how you do it.

    8. AB

      5,050. That's what we would do. That's what, that's what my father would do.

    9. TF

      You're like, "Dad, I'm just trying to eat my macaroni and cheese." [laughs]

    10. AB

      I know. I'm just trying to eat my macaroni and cheese. And then he would say something like, "See, isn't that beautiful? Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that evidence of God?" [laughs]

    11. TF

      That's what he or-

    12. AB

      Oh, yeah

    13. TF

      ... your mom would say?

    14. AB

      My, my-

    15. TF

      That's what he would say?

    16. AB

      My dad would say.

    17. TF

      The elegance of that.

    18. AB

      My dad believed not that what we know is what we should pay attention to, but the, to marvel at what we can do and still not know anything.

    19. TF

      Hm.

    20. AB

      So my father would explain, this has had a big impact on me-

    21. TF

      Mm-hmm

    22. AB

      ... that there's two kinds of problems in life. There's complicated problems and there's complex problems. It's a mathematical difference, but the technique doesn't matter. Complicated problems are all the things you can solve with computational horsepower and, and tech.

    23. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    24. AB

      Complex problems are super easy to understand, but you can never solve them, like who's gonna win between the Patriots and the Dolphins?

    25. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    26. AB

      I know what winning looks like. It's more points on the scoreboard, but I have no idea, and that's why it's beautiful to watch the game, and you don't want to simulate it on the computer because it'll be inaccurate. Love is complex. A jet engine is complicated. A cat is complex. A toaster is complicated. And he said, two kinds of problems. And this, he said, as a basic math problem, the reason that we're always unsatisfied in life is because we, we have complex problems. We want love, and all we have is complicated solutions that the world is offering us, like, you know, computers and the internet and social media and blah, blah, blah, blah, and you'll never be satisfied 'cause it's the wrong kind of solution for the wrong kind of problem.

    27. TF

      So that seems like a tremendously valuable

  9. 28:25 – 31:08

    Happiness hygiene for genetically baseline gloominess.

    1. TF

      insight.

    2. AB

      Yeah.

    3. TF

      Would you describe your father as a happy man?

    4. AB

      No. My father was a gloomy man, and no doubt that had a lot to do with genetics because 50% of our, our emotional baseline is genetic. We know this from identical twin studies, where twins are born and separated at birth into separate families. This is not an experiment that social scientists have done because that would be horribly unethical. But f-

    5. TF

      Three Identical Strangers shows how-

    6. AB

      Yeah

    7. TF

      ... that turns out.

    8. AB

      Yeah. Well, yeah. And-

    9. TF

      If you want to watch a bru- brutal doc.

    10. AB

      Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. That's a great documentary.

    11. TF

      It is great.

    12. AB

      But 50% of your baseline mood, your tendency toward, you know, ebullience or gloominess, is sitting in your, in your DNA, and the result of that is you need... This is the reason, Tim, that I came to the happiness field, because I saw my grandfather, who was a wonderful man and gloomy, and my father, who was brilliant and, and, and a lovely person and an excellent, ethical, kind man who was gloomy, and I said, "No more, man. No more. I'm gonna live on the other 50%. I am not gonna be governed by that 50% that, that made my father an unhappy man." And so he died young, 66, you know? I mean, he had cancer, and they gave him 10 or 15 years or more, and he died in two.

    13. TF

      Hm.

    14. AB

      And as a statistician, he explained it. He was a biostatistician by his graduate degree. And I said, "Dad, it's terrible luck." And he said, "Look, there's gotta be people on that side of the curve, too." [laughs]

    15. TF

      [laughs]

    16. AB

      But he had a good sense of humor.

    17. TF

      Yeah.

    18. AB

      But the whole point was he wasn't prepared to fight for life because he, he didn't have the, the hygiene for his own happiness.

    19. TF

      Hm.

    20. AB

      And that example set me on the path to learn about this and to share these ideas, and it has transformed my life. I'm grateful to my father, and I will be for the rest of my life, for the example that he gave me and the lesson he taught me. even through his unhappiness.

    21. TF

      Hi, everyone. Tim here. Pardon the interruption. Just a quick announcement. The recording studio had a small glitch, so the audio for the next two or so minutes is not perfect, but we correct it quickly. Please bear with us. Thank you for understanding, and now back to the conversation. What were some decisions you made or things you began doing or stopped doing after your father's death?

    22. AB

      I started exercising. There is a little vanity to it, but not that much. The whole point of the matter is this is one of the single best ways to manage your negative affect, is to be in the gym for an hour a day.

    23. TF

      Yeah. And there's a- it's a bit dated probably, but there's a book called Spark, which also goes into sort of a lot of the, like, BDNF and a lot of the circuitry and biochemical reasons for exercise for this explicit

  10. 31:08 – 34:22

    Happiness and unhappiness: hand in hand.

    1. TF

      purpose.

    2. AB

      When I'm working with students, I put them through a battery of tests to look at whether the bigger challenge in their life is happiness or unhappiness. The world is really scarce in the definitions that it gives us, and, and there's a big mistake that almost everybody makes about happiness, which is... There's a lot of mistakes. Number one, that it's the absence of unhappiness. Number two, that it's a feeling. Both of those are wrong. Number three is that we can get it. [laughs] So we can approach happiness, but we can't get there because we actually need unhappiness, and unhappiness and happiness are not opposites and can coexist. So there's a lot to unpack there.

    3. TF

      Yeah, there's a lot to unpack.

    4. AB

      So to begin with, happiness and unhappiness, in terms of moods, are largely processed in different hemispheres of the brain. A lot of neuroscientists believe that unhappy cognitions and emotions are largely dominated by activity in the right side of the brain, and the way that we know this, there's a terrific neuroscientist at University of Wisconsin, Richard Davidson, and he's done work that shows that, that the left side of the musculature on your face is more active when you're unhappy, when you're experiencing negative emotions, anger, fear, disgust, sadness. And it's actually funny, when you have... When my kids were little, I would notice that, you know, when they fall down, you get a moment where you don't know what's gonna happen next. Are they gonna laugh and keep playing, or are they gonna... you gonna get the waterworks, right? And the way, the tell on that, because it's usually five or six seconds because the, the wiring in their brain is actually not complete-

    5. TF

      It's a work in progress [laughs]

    6. AB

      So one of the tests that I administer to my students, and, and I put in my new book as a matter of fact, 'cause it's so important for me and for understanding ourselves, is called the Positive Affect Negative Affect series, PANAS, P-A-N-A-S. It's on my website and it's, it's easy to find. And I didn't create it. It's been psychometrically validated a bunch of times. A great test. And what it does is it helps you figure out if you're high positive, high negative, or low positive, low negative, and there's four combinations. It's a two-by-two matrix. You can be a high positive affect person and a high negative affect person. That's a high affect person, who's got a lot of strong moods about everything. That's the mad scientist. That's the mad scientist profile. That's me. I'm at the 85th percentile in happy affect, and I'm at the 85th percentile in negative affect.

    7. TF

      So the highs are high and the lows are low.

    8. AB

      Right. So I don't have a happiness problem. I have an unhappiness problem-

    9. TF

      Yeah

    10. AB

      ... is what it comes down... Another, it's not a problem, because unhappiness is really important. You won't be happy if you get rid of your unhappiness because you gotta be fully alive to get happier. But you do need to manage yourself. Some people are really high positive and really low negative. Those are the cheerleaders. Those people can't stay in the gym. Why? Because they don't feel better when they go to the gym because their negative affect is already in the cellar. The third is high negative and low positive. That's the poet, and the po- nobody wants to be a poet, but the truth is that the, the part of the brain called the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is highly active for people who are sad and people who are creative.

    11. TF

      Mm.

    12. AB

      That's the reason when I say poet, you don't think about somebody who's skipping down the street.

    13. TF

      [laughs]

    14. AB

      Right? You think of a creative person-

    15. TF

      Light his sheets with a cigarette and a beret.

    16. AB

      Yes, exactly right. [laughs] Exactly right. You're in a French cafe-

    17. TF

      [laughs]

    18. AB

      ... you know, thinking nihilistic thoughts and, and writing poetry. So that's the poetic disposition. And the last is low low. So you, you could be perfectly happy or unhappy, but you have low affect levels. That's called the judge, the

  11. 34:22 – 37:53

    Being effective with one’s affects.

    1. AB

      sober judge.

    2. TF

      I wish it were otherwise, but I would put high confidence that I am right down the beret-wearing way. How would you advise someone, and I know this won't apply to everybody listening-

    3. AB

      Yeah

    4. TF

      ... but just by way of a working example, what does someone do with... What are their options for how to act upon that?

    5. AB

      Okay, so the, if you know that you're a poet, this is an affect level. It doesn't mean that you're cosmically happy or unhappy. It just means that you're, these, this is your natural disposition.

    6. TF

      Oh, right. And-

    7. AB

      So this is important, right?

    8. TF

      Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

    9. AB

      So it also means that you need to manage two levers. You need to manage your happiness levels up, and you need to manage your unhappiness levels, not to zero. There's nothing wrong with unhappiness. But you need to, you need to mute them. You need to... You don't need to numb them. You need to manage them.

    10. TF

      And could you, and I may have already missed the plot, but just define those two, because I think a lot of people, myself maybe included, would think if you remove unhappiness by default-

    11. AB

      Yeah

    12. TF

      ... since it's unhappiness, they seem to be antonyms, so you remove one, you have more of the other.

    13. AB

      Yeah, yeah.

    14. TF

      So how should we think about these two?

    15. AB

      Yeah, yeah. That's a very good question. And, and by the way, the answer is not obvious. As a matter of fact, psychologists until about 50 years ago really believed that unhappiness was the, was the absence of happiness.

    16. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    17. AB

      But it's not true, because we actually find that the, the basic negative and positive emotions are coming from different parts of the limbic system and can coexist.

    18. TF

      I see. So if you're thinking about it, you can think about it then sort of neuroanatomically as opposed to semantically with the words.

    19. AB

      Yeah, yeah. And as a matter of fact, I-

    20. TF

      It's kind of like, not to dumb it down too hard, but it's like if your left hand performed X types of tasks and your right hand performed Y type of tasks, it's like, okay, you can sort of decide what ratio-

    21. AB

      Right

    22. TF

      ... you're aiming for.

    23. AB

      And your negative emotions are much more intense than your positive emotions. This has evolved to keep you alive.

    24. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    25. AB

      Positive emotions are kind of nice to have. Negative emotions are signals or alarms that something might kill you.

    26. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    27. AB

      You know, a, a sweet smile from somebody across the room is very pleasant, but a frowning face might be somebody who wants to murder you, and so therefore we've evolved to pay attention. This is called the negativity bias that we have. We also have mixed states that we go through all day long. You ask people in surveys what they're feeling at any given moment, so you'll, you'll say, you know, in five-minute increments, "What are you feeling, positive or negative?" You'll find that about 90% of the time people can tell you how they're feeling.

    28. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    29. AB

      And 40% of the time for the average person, it's really pure positive emotions at a low level. It's you're idle is most of the time. It's, "Life's okay. It's kind of sunny today," whatever, whatever. All good. About- 16% of the time is r- pure negative emotion, and that usually means something's happening that you don't like. Now, 33% of the time you've got both. And usually the way that this looks in people's lives is that you're in your positive idle, but something's intruding. So there's something bugging you that you don't always remember. And you know, you know, we go through life and, you know, on a certain day it's like, "Yeah, it's all good. Oh yeah, that thing."

    30. TF

      [laughs]

  12. 37:53 – 45:21

    The three macronutrients of happiness.

    1. AB

      Yeah

    2. TF

      ... in different ways?

    3. AB

      The happiness side is what I spend a lot more time on, because it's just so interesting on how we can pull the happiness lever. It starts by actually a good definition, which is not feelings. Feelings are evidence of happiness. And thank God happiness isn't a feeling. Can you imagine going through life chasing a feeling?

    4. TF

      Yeah.

    5. AB

      That's awful. It's like, "If it feels good, do it," or some... Or, or, "If it feels bad, make it stop." It's a terrible life strategy.

    6. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    7. AB

      Happiness and its feelings are associated with three tangible phenomena in our lives that we can actually understand and manage: enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Those are the three things that we need in balance and abundance. Think of these as the macronutrients of happiness, the protein, carbohydrates, and fat of happiness. If you don't have protein, and carbohydrates, and fat in balance and abundance, all kinds of weird things are gonna happen to you. You're not gonna be as healthy as you should be, and you won't feel good. Same thing is true. You need to enjoy your life, you need to get satisfaction from your accomplishments, and you need to have a deep sense of meaning. And each one of these is a big challenge. When I meet somebody, through a series of, of structured questions I can figure out if there's a problem along one of these macronutrient dimensions. And, and it turns out that it's, there's some very easy interventions that we can make across all three, and I'll give you an example. The first one is enjoyment. And people, I say, "Do you enjoy your life?" And they'll think about their little pleasures. I say, "That's not it." Pleasure is not a secret to happiness. Pleasure is the fast road to obsessive compulsive activity and an addiction. Why? Because all pleasure is is a phenomenon from the limbic system of your brain saying, "Do more of that thing," 'cause you're more likely to survive and pass on your genes if you get those calories, if you have that sex, whatever it happens to be. The way that you can actually turn that into a source of happiness is by mixing in two ingredients with your pleasure: people and memory. Never do something that gives you pleasure alone. That's the rule of thumb. If you're doing it alone, there's a problem. So Anheuser-Busch does a beer ad. They never have in the beer ad-

    8. TF

      [laughs] A guy drinking in his closet.

    9. AB

      Yeah-

    10. TF

      Listening

    11. AB

      ... a guy pounding a 12-pack in his apartment alone.

    12. TF

      Listening to pod flow. [laughs]

    13. AB

      You know? Why? Because that's, that's pleasure, and that actually leads to addiction, and it's problematic. They always have an ad of a guy cracking a beer with his buddies, people, and doing something he's gonna remember, memory. That's the secret to it. So I'll take a, a, a survey of people's habits. Now, this is the reason that pornography's a big problem, right? You're not consuming it in public with friends to make a memory, for God's sake.

    14. TF

      Very rarely. [laughs]

    15. AB

      It's just some sort of weird... That's a pretty weird thing to do, right? And that's one of the reasons. And I mean, it hits the dopamine lever. I mean, they all are neurophysiologically similar phenomena. They hit dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine over and over and over again, and they ruin your life because they become addictive. They become monomaniacal, and they're not the secret to happiness. If you're at 3:00 in the morning in Vegas pulling the lever on the slot machine by yourself, I'm, you know, that's not the secret to happiness to anybody I know. And I've never heard somebody say, "You know, you know what gives my life happiness? Methamphetamine." Never been said, right? And the reason for that is because these are drugs... People say drugs of abuse. No, no, these are drugs of pleasure.

    16. TF

      Mm.

    17. AB

      Let's not lie about it. They give you pleasure. And pleasure alone without memory is a problem. This is a very practical example of how we can use the science and turn it into a, a set of guideposts for our life.

    18. TF

      Mm-hmm. And so you have enjoyment, which you clarified.

    19. AB

      Satisfaction-

    20. TF

      Satisfaction

    21. AB

      ... and meaning are next.

    22. TF

      So it's re- yes. How would you make satisfaction granular? Because I think about satisfaction, I'm like, "Hmm, I might conflate being satisfied with doing, say, a large project with some form of meaning." I, I can see how I might get my wires crossed.

    23. AB

      Right.

    24. TF

      So-

    25. AB

      Right

    26. TF

      ... how should we think about these two in your framework?

    27. AB

      Satisfaction is achieving something with struggle.

    28. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    29. AB

      It really is that project that you're talking about, which it will give you meaning as well. The project per se can actually cross the boundaries across the macronutrients, just like, uh, something that you eat has one, m- more than one macronutrient.

    30. TF

      Mm-hmm.

  13. 45:21 – 58:02

    Identifying (and learning to live with) our idols.

    1. AB

      path.

    2. TF

      We are gonna come back to meaning. I wanna just take a sidebar on reducing wants-

    3. AB

      Right

    4. TF

      ... for a second-

    5. AB

      Sure

    6. TF

      ... and talk about exercises that you've had your students do in your classes.

    7. AB

      Mm-hmm.

    8. TF

      And I'm, I'm pulling this from memory, so I may not get the wording spot on, but identifying their idols. Am I-

    9. AB

      Mm-hmm. Yeah

    10. TF

      ... getting this right? So if, if you could expand on what that looks like.

    11. AB

      Yeah. We have a game. I have a game show in my class at Harvard-

    12. TF

      What?

    13. AB

      ... called What's My Idol?

    14. TF

      [laughs]

    15. AB

      Now, this pl- You can tell how old I am. When I was a really little kid, there was a game show on TV called What's My Line?

    16. TF

      Yeah. [laughs]

    17. AB

      Like it, and-

    18. TF

      Yeah, sure.

    19. AB

      Your viewers can Google it.

    20. TF

      Mm-hmm. [laughs]

    21. AB

      I'm sure there's some black and white grainy footage of it or something from, you know, when I was in, the '70s or even back. [laughs] What's My Idol is actually based on the insight of a, you know, a medieval philosopher, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Theologian, but really a philosopher in the Neoplatonic tradition. Aquinas is responsible for introducing Aristotle to the modern world. Up until that point, nobody read Aristotle. It was all Plato, Aristotle's teacher. Uh, Saint Thomas Aquinas, he said, "No, no, no, no, no, guys, read this one. This is the one." Right? And he interpreted Aristotle for the modern world. It was the same thing more or less that Averroes was doing for the Muslim world and that Maimonides was doing for the Jewish world because they were coexisting in southern Spain in this, this intellectual soup-

    22. TF

      Mm-hmm

    23. AB

      ... that's hard for us to understand today. It was so deep what was going on. So St- Saint Thomas Aquinas was an unbelievably adroit social scientist.

    24. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    25. AB

      He was also, by the way-

    26. TF

      Phenomenally impressive figure. I mean, for people who aren't familiar, just go read the Wikipedia entry and a few other things.

    27. AB

      Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, and-

    28. TF

      It'll blow your mind

    29. AB

      ... and, and his magisterial work was the Summa Theologiae, which is just... And the way that he does it, by the way, is just, it's a master class in the way that we should be thinking about big topics today, which is by saying, by starting the topic with the best objection, right? Here's the question. Here's the supposition. What's the best objection? Here's how I meet that objection. What's the second-best objection? Here's how I meet the object- The whole book is written this way. It's unbelievable. And in the section on human happiness, which he pulls from Aristotle, who claims, without any need for proof, that this is what we all want-

    30. TF

      [laughs]

  14. 58:02 – 1:04:50

    Secularly securing transcendent perspective.

    1. TF

      What would you say to people who are perhaps secular, not necessarily militant atheists-

    2. AB

      Right

    3. TF

      ... who I think recognize, as I do, in some ways I am deeply, just to layer on my sins here, envious of people who have strong religious conviction. I recognize the value.

    4. AB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. TF

      And from a, at least in the sort of monotheistic Judeo-Christian traditions, I, I don't think I'm likely to join one of the bands. But-

    6. AB

      I'll work on you. [laughs]

    7. TF

      [laughs] So I recognize we can go do some, some blood occlusion training, and you can just- [laughs]

    8. AB

      And then we'll say a rosary together, man.

    9. TF

      In between, in between s- [laughs] right, in between reps.

    10. AB

      [laughs]

    11. TF

      Just lay, lay the prayer on thick. So what would you suggest to me or someone who recognizes the value? I do not have a counterargument-

    12. AB

      Yeah

    13. TF

      ... but I'm not sure how to embrace that.

    14. AB

      There are alternatives. So I, I mean, I can tell you as a Catholic that that's my thing, but I can tell you as a social scientist that it's not the only thing that will actually bring the same neurophysiological and psychological benefits. What we need is a sense of the transcendent that makes us small.

    15. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    16. AB

      That's what we need. Why? Because we need perspective and peace. I mean, Tim, you're gonna go through all day. It's like my podcast, and, you know, it's my commute-

    17. TF

      Me, me, my, I, I, I

    18. AB

      ... and my lunch and my money and my friends and my mom and my me, me. It's so... Man, it's just so... It's like watching the same episode every single night of Better Call Saul-

    19. TF

      Yeah. Well, it's-

    20. AB

      ... for the rest of your life.

    21. TF

      It's like having the seagulls from Finding Nemo in your head.

    22. AB

      Yeah, yeah.

    23. TF

      Mine, mine. Mine, mine, mine.

    24. AB

      Mine, mine, mine. I mean, it's just, it's the worst, and so you have to find a way to get peace. What we really need is to put ourselves in perspective. Now, most people are afraid to be little, are really afraid to be insignificant. Perspective requires that we see reality, and we get smaller, and we stand in awe of the universe and what it can bring. There's lots of ways to do that.

    25. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    26. AB

      Meditation practices are very good for that. Prayer is very good for that. Religion, on, on most traditional circumstances, is very good for that, but walking in nature without devices before dawn for an hour is incredibly good for that, for all sorts of reasons, and this is extremely well-validated in the social science literature.

    27. TF

      How important is the timing on that?

    28. AB

      Well, it's good because you start the day that way-

    29. TF

      I see. Right

    30. AB

      ... and it's the programming of it. And by the way, the experience of seeing the sunrise is incredibly awe-inspiring. Plus, it's quiet and cool.

  15. 1:04:50 – 1:09:46

    Money doesn’t buy happiness — it lowers unhappiness.

    1. TF

      [laughs] So I'm curious, for you personally, having thought about this deeply, having tracked a lot of things also, what are some of the best uses of money that you have found personally? What types of things? Are there any concrete examples that you can give?

    2. AB

      Yeah. So we rolled through that fast just a second ago, but it turns out there's a ton of research on this. My, my colleague Mike Norton and my colleagues, Mike Norton and Ashley Whillans at the Harvard Business School, they've done this exhaustive research on how to buy happiness. How to buy happiness.

    3. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    4. AB

      Right? Okay. And it's not... Mother Nature says get more stuff. Why? Because satisfaction comes from having more. What's the strategy for life? More. Mother Nature tells you that. She l- she lies. She lies. Lies and lies and laughs at you. That's not the strategy. You need to buy enough, but no possession will do anything beyond bring you out of misery. That's the reason that the studies, you know, the famous Kahneman and Deaton study from Princeton shows that happiness flattens out after $75,000 a year. And, you know, Matt Killingsworth at Penn actually reran the data and finds that it's higher, but it still flattens out.

    5. TF

      Inflation adjusted, but still.

    6. AB

      Yeah, if in- inflation adjusted or, you know, your results may vary or whatever it is. But the whole point is you just don't get happier and happier and happier as millions... The reason, by the way, that we think that is an illusion that comes from our experience. Most people have less than they perceive that they need when they're young, and the result of it is that they, a lot of people, and a lot of people listening to us, they suffer a lack of, you know, meeting some basic needs. You know, when I was 19 to 25, I was too poor for six years to go to the dentist. For six years. Now, of course, I don't think I ever went a day without cigarettes, so I guess it was priorities. But-

    7. TF

      [laughs]

    8. AB

      [laughs] But the point is that when I was-

    9. TF

      Breakfast of champions.

    10. AB

      Uh, yeah, man. Yeah. Beard, cigarettes, pizza. You know, I was living on the, I was living in Washington Heights in those days. And when I was 25, I took a job in the Barcelona Orchestra, and I moved to Barcelona. I had benefits. I had bennies, man.

    11. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    12. AB

      And I went to the dentist, and he filled s- you know, seven cava- or 10 cavities.

    13. TF

      [laughs]

    14. AB

      And I felt a lot better, and I thought, "Money does buy happiness." No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

    15. TF

      [laughs]

    16. AB

      Money lowers unhappiness when you move out of deprivation. That's it. And so what happens is I made the mental link between getting money and feeling better, and people do that, and they chase that feeling for the rest of their life.

    17. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    18. AB

      They actually... 'Cause you're, you're doing sums in your head of well-being as happiness and unhappiness and all that. You can't tell the difference when you're just, you know, rolling through your life.

    19. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    20. AB

      And early on, you felt a lot better. That's all you know, when you had more money, and so you want that feeling, and you chase the feeling. You chase the high. You chase the early hits.

    21. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    22. AB

      It's like drugs, like any other drugs in this way. So that doesn't work.

    23. TF

      Yeah.

    24. AB

      But there are three ways you can buy happiness, according to Whillans and Norton, my colleagues at HBS. You can- Buy experiences. This is critically important because what do experiences that, where you buy happiness really have in common? You add money, which is sort of like pleasure, but the really important parts are the people and the memory.

    25. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    26. AB

      People and memory. People and memory are always part of experiences. Okay, now sometimes you want to do things alone, but generally speaking, the greatest happiness comes because it enhances love in your life.

    27. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    28. AB

      The best way to improve love in your life, if you want your love life with your partner to get better, go away together. Go away together. That's always the west- best way to do it, or stay home together, but turn off the phone.

    29. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    30. AB

      In other words, get an experience with the person that you love. That's a great way to spend money because it will reliably, unless you waste it, do something stupid like, "I'm gonna have a bender in Vegas," and, and then, you know, have... You know, get blackout drunk and sit in front of the slot machine. That's not the secret.

  16. 1:09:46 – 1:13:23

    Tithing and adoption.

    1. AB

      got.

    2. TF

      So we don't have to tread into these waters, but I think it would be very helpful for people, and I'm very curious. I'm happy to reciprocate also.

    3. AB

      Yeah, yeah.

    4. TF

      Where have you landed for where to give your own money?

    5. AB

      I give money to things that I really care about that I think have an impact on people's lives in a big way, and a lot of what I do is I give to education, to people who are at the margins of society. So I give a lot to primary and secondary education, specifically to Catholic primary and secondary education because I think it is d- it's really, really well done.

    6. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    7. AB

      And it's an option that a lot of people don't have access to because it costs money.

    8. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    9. AB

      So a lot of what I do, probably 75% of what I give away, and I give away 10% of my income.

    10. TF

      Good for you.

    11. AB

      Yeah, because, you know, it's, it's not that hard to do. You just have to pay attention to it.

    12. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    13. AB

      And then there's structures, you know, so you get a charitable giving account-

    14. TF

      Do you think of that as a tithe, or-

    15. AB

      Yeah, I do think of it as a tithe, but I really think of it as a privilege.

    16. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    17. AB

      I think of it a lot less as a duty and a lot more as a privilege. My wife and I, we just look forward to it. And then, you know, we have a process in our family of, you know, "Should we give money to this? Should we give money to that?" Usually, we give something, kind of a big bolus one year and then, and then smaller gifts to things that are ongoing sources of support that we really believe in.

    18. TF

      How do you decide what to give to?

    19. AB

      Well, we know the people and we do the work, right? So it's not just anybody, we get a letter in the mail and we respond with a big check. It's like, "Huh, that seems worthy." No, we actually do the work, and part of it is because I teach... One of the classes I teach at Harvard is on nonprofit management, and so I have a, you know, kind of a strong background in, you know, whether it's a reputable cause and what to look for and to measuring the effectiveness of an organization. So I do the work. I do the background work. I, you know, I see what kind of overhead rates that they're using, how they're using their money. A lot has to do with if I like the mission. Sometimes if it's gonna be a substantial amount of money, I get to know the people-

    20. TF

      Mm-hmm

    21. AB

      ... and the organization. And, and it has to be something that I think is gonna change people's lives for the better. Now, I've actually changed my view on this a little bit because early on, we'd write a lot of little checks, lots and lots and lots of little checks to great organizations. And then I found that you can have a lot more effect on your own well-being, and again, this is kind of selfish, but in your own well-being by concentrating on turning the whole dial in one person's life, that you can really-

    22. TF

      I agree.

    23. AB

      So I mean, really... And, and there's an old Talmudic phrase from the Book of Sanhedrin that says, "In every man is the whole world."

    24. TF

      Hmm.

    25. AB

      Right? In other words, turn the dial for one person, you've turned the dial for all of humanity because it's really had an impact. And I remember telling my wife about that. I was like, "Yeah, like I'm finding out these data that when you really help one person instead of a little bit for a lot really anonymously, you can, you can get all these benefits." She's like... This is years ago. This is maybe 20 years ago now. And she's like, "Why don't we adopt a baby?" And I'm like, "It's only a book, man." [laughs] But we did.

    26. TF

      Hmm.

    27. AB

      We actually did. It was totally life-changing.

    28. TF

      Okay, so hold on.

    29. AB

      Totally life-changing.

    30. TF

      So I think I missed the hook.

  17. 1:13:23 – 1:20:39

    How Arthur and his wife met, and how their values aligned over time.

    1. AB

      and dreams at night.

    2. TF

      If you're able to, can you tell me more about your wife and how you guys met? Because I know a little bit of the background, but how did that, how did that happen since I'm back on the playing field-

    3. AB

      You're back on the playing field

    4. TF

      ... as a wife now? Mm-hmm.

    5. AB

      One of the things that I teach my students at HBS is that I would never- Invest in the firm of an entrepreneur who's unwilling to give her or his heart away because that's the single most risky entrepreneurial thing that you can do, putting every bit of capital at risk. If you're not willing to give your heart away, I'm not gonna put my money in your fund.

    6. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    7. AB

      Now-

    8. TF

      And that takes the form of-

    9. AB

      Risk, man

    10. TF

      ... loving someone wholeheartedly.

    11. AB

      Giving your heart away.

    12. TF

      Okay.

    13. AB

      Giving your heart away. So, and the reason I believe this is because, you know, I've always had this sense that part of the journey of life is just, like, getting in it.

    14. TF

      Yeah.

    15. AB

      Getting in it. And you know, entrepreneurs talk a lot about putting capital at risk and talking about money. How boring. The real capital of the enterprise, the startup of Tim Ferriss's life, 'cause this is the ultimate enterprise. I mean, the enterprise is not the podcast, and the books, and the company, and the... That- that's not it. Those are manifestations of Tim Ferriss, Inc.

    16. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    17. AB

      Of you.

    18. TF

      Yeah.

    19. AB

      The enterprise is you, and the currency of you is not money, it's love and happiness.

    20. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    21. AB

      That's your currency. So how are you gonna put that at risk for explosive, tectonic, inflecting returns? What are you gonna do to put it at risk?

    22. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    23. AB

      That's the question, right?

    24. TF

      Yeah.

    25. AB

      And the answers are really tricky, but the one answer that's not right is, don't put it at risk. Don't put it at risk.

    26. TF

      Right. So I, I'm with you. Now, there are myriad ways that if you were to sort of take off your flak jacket and just walk into [laughs]

    27. AB

      Yeah

    28. TF

      ... oncoming traffic with, like, emotional oncoming traffic with someone who you meet on a dating app who you meet within five minutes and they're cuckoo bananas, that could turn out poorly, right?

    29. AB

      Of course. That's just Vegas.

    30. TF

      Right.

  18. 1:20:39 – 1:28:17

    Advice for seeking love in the modern world.

    1. TF

      [laughs] Okay. So you prayed and she fasted? [laughs]

    2. AB

      And you're like, "No food." [laughs]

    3. TF

      [laughs]

    4. AB

      That's right. Hey, well, put the rosaries on and-

    5. TF

      I just got shredded. [laughs]

    6. AB

      [laughs]

    7. TF

      All right. Thoughts on how to find a partner.

    8. AB

      Yeah, no, I think about this an awful lot because this is the number one topic in my Science of Happiness class at HBS that they want to know about. And I say-

    9. TF

      It's gotta be. It's gotta be

    10. AB

      ... Oh, for sure. For sure, absolutely, because, you know, not only is it something that we all want, that everybody wants, it's something that's getting harder.

    11. TF

      Yeah, all the traditional scaffolding is gone, unless you, perhaps you're part of, say, a Jewish community where-

    12. AB

      Yeah

    13. TF

      ... that type of yenta-like matchmaking is a very esteemed-

    14. AB

      Yeah

    15. TF

      ... role.

    16. AB

      But even then, the modern world is encroaching on that. And, you know, if you look at the comparison between in the '80s, when I was in my 20s, or the '90s, when you were in your 20s. Sorry, I didn't mean to shock you with that, you know, observation.

    17. TF

      No, that's okay.

    18. AB

      Yeah, I know.

    19. TF

      Yeah.

    20. AB

      It's much, much, much harder.

    21. TF

      I have the ring of Frodo, so I'm not planning on aging anymore from this point forward.

    22. AB

      [laughs]

    23. TF

      Side note, you should look at photos of him now and 20 years ago. They're the same, the actor. Anyway.

    24. AB

      Yeah. Not me, though.

    25. TF

      For those conspiracy theorists out there.

    26. AB

      I mean, back then when I was in the Barcelona Symphony, I had this hair. It was a, it was like a great civilization.

    27. TF

      It's like the locks of Samson?

    28. AB

      I was unbelievable.

    29. TF

      [laughs]

    30. AB

      And, and so I, you know, then I started going bald and getting more and more bald. And my brother, my older brother, he's very judgmental about me. He's funny, he loves me, but he says, "You deserve it because of the life you've led." [laughs]

  19. 1:28:17 – 1:38:33

    Death meditation.

    1. TF

      Also, I have a promise I made to listeners that I have not fulfilled, which is your personal examples for using money for experiences-

    2. AB

      Right

    3. TF

      ... time.

    4. AB

      Right.

    5. TF

      Whatever comes to mind.

    6. AB

      Right.

    7. TF

      So we'll get to that, but before that, death meditation.

    8. AB

      Yeah.

    9. TF

      Could, [laughs] could you-

    10. AB

      Mm-hmm

    11. TF

      ... please describe your death meditation and why you have a death meditation?

    12. AB

      Most people watching us are not afraid of death, not pathologically afraid of death. And only about 20% of the population is pathologically afraid of death, and I bet you that it's less than 1% of Tim Ferriss followers.

    13. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    14. AB

      Because people watching this are in control of their lives, and they understand the contours of their lives, and they're, you know, they're, they're looking at the truth of their lives. But they have a f- death fear. The death fear isn't physical death. And this is a problem. For some people, it's irrelevance. For some people, it's being forgotten. For a lot of your listeners, it's failure, just straight-on failure. Because they're strivers, they're achievers. Everybody has a death fear, and what is it? It's an ego threat. It's a threat to who you see as yourself. If Tim Ferriss' Tim Ferriss-ness is threatened, that will provoke a panic in you-

    15. TF

      Mm-hmm

    16. AB

      ... because that's the ultimate death of who you see yourself.

    17. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    18. AB

      The way to get over that, and by the way, you have to get over that. We all have to get over that, or we won't be fully alive until we actually face the death that really matters to us. This is an insight that actually comes from the Theravada Buddhists across the southern tier of, of Asia, from Thailand and Myanmar to Vietnam and parts of Malaysia, and the Therava- and Sri Lanka in particular. So the Theravada Buddhist monasteries, often you'll go in and you'll see photos of cadavers in different states of decomposition. Super, super macabre. I mean, and you're like, "What are these dudes all about here?" And what they do is that usually there will be nine, nine states of decomposition, photos, bodies decomposing, falling apart, bones, bloated corpses. And they stand in front of each one and they say, "That is me." And then they move to the next one after contemplating and saying, "And that is me." And what are they doing? They're familiarizing themselves with the truth of their future such that they can be liberated from any fear of physical death. Only then can they be fully alive. That's a, that's an important insight from, from Theravada Buddhism. That's a m- that's a, that's a meditation called maranasati.

    19. TF

      Maranasati.

    20. AB

      Mara- the maranasati death meditation.

    21. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    22. AB

      Now, when I read that, I thought it was interesting, but I thought it's a good thing to do because, you know, I shouldn't be making all of these decisions about when I'm old and when I'm retired and, you know, when I die and what's gonna happen and call the lawyer and all that. I, I wanna be free from all that stuff by, by understanding that life and death are in, in a very real way an illusion, particularly because I believe in eternal life.

    23. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    24. AB

      But I have a death fear.

    25. TF

      Oh, yeah.

    26. AB

      Mm-hmm. You know what I'm afraid of? You know my death fear?

    27. TF

      Who's gonna take care of your cats? [laughs]

    28. AB

      No, I don't know. [laughs]

    29. TF

      [laughs] That's good, man.

    30. AB

      Who's gonna take care of my dog, Chucho? [laughs]

  20. 1:38:33 – 1:53:06

    Finding personal purpose and meaning.

    1. TF

      Meaning. How should we think about meaning?

    2. AB

      Meaning's a hard one.

    3. TF

      [laughs]

    4. AB

      Meaning's the hard one. I mean, look, I mean, enjoyment's no joke, and, and satisfaction takes work, but meaning eludes some people their entire lives because they don't know what they're looking for. They're fumbling around for something. They don't, they don't know exactly what it is, and a lot of people s- they deeply s- suspect that it doesn't exist, that it doesn't actually exist. And you look at a lot of 20th century and 19th century philosophers, and they say it, it doesn't exist. I mean, there's sort of three schools of thought about meaning. There's the ancient Greeks and Romans and, and the Christians and the Jews and the Muslims, and they all, it's all kind of based on meaning in the following way: essence precedes existence, meaning you have meaning in life that precedes your actual life, and your job is to find it and live up to it, but it's already out there. You just need to go looking for it.

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. AB

      Right? In the 19th and 20th centuries, that was relaxed with two major schools of philosophical thought, nihilism and existentialism. Existentialism, you know, Sartre and, and, and even to a certain extent Kierkegaard would say that existence precedes essence. In other words, y- you're born, and there is no meaning until you create it.

    7. TF

      Tabula rasa. Good luck, kid.

    8. AB

      Yeah. Good luck. Go make it, and if it's no good, it's on you, man. And by the way, Sartre, he has a very empowering, a very muscular philosophy because he says you have to live up to the responsibility of creating your essence and living according to it.

    9. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    10. AB

      It's sort of Freudian in its way. And then there's, of course, there's Nietzsche, our old pal Friedrich.

    11. TF

      [laughs]

    12. AB

      You know, a lot of young men love Nietzsche because, by the way, it's unbelievably beautiful prose, a gorgeous writer, including in English. You don't have to go, like, learn German to read it, but, you know, The Gay Science, which is his, one of his most famous texts where he said, "God is dead, and we killed him."

    13. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    14. AB

      You know, it, it's just, it lands, right? But his whole point is existence is real, but essence is a figment of your imagination, so don't even try to find it. That's nihilism, right? We're, we're struggling with these schools of thought, and, and we all suspect, it doesn't matter how religious you are, you know, it doesn't matter what your b- uh, your wiring actually happens to be. You kind of wonder if maybe Nietzsche and Sartre were right.

    15. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    16. AB

      So you go in search of it, and it turns out, "I wanna go find the meaning of life," is too big a question. You'll never find it by, you know, sitting at the mouth of the guru's cave or, or with the ayahuasca shaman saying, "I just wanna find meaning in life." You need to boil it down to really sub-questions, which are all about coherence. Why do things happen the way they do? I wanna have a... I need to believe something about why things happen the way they do. It doesn't have to be religious.

    17. TF

      Mm.

    18. AB

      It can be completely secular. It might even be nihilistic. You need a purpose. You need to answer a purpose question, which is what's the purpose of my life, and what direction am I going? What's the goal of my life? What's the end point of my life? And the last is significance, which is why does it matter that I'm alive? Now, I have a test-

    19. TF

      Mm-hmm

    20. AB

      ... to see if somebody has a, a meaning crisis in their life. It's really just two questions, and to pass the test, you need incredibly true, honest, and compelling answers. There's no right answers. There's only wrong answers or no answers. So you wanna take the test?

    21. TF

      Sure. Why not? [laughs]

    22. AB

      It's go time. [laughs]

    23. TF

      [laughs]

    24. AB

      Question number one. This is-

    25. TF

      On again

    26. AB

      ... punishment for all the ayahuasca I've done.

    27. TF

      [laughs] Go for it.

    28. AB

      I didn't say this, there's something wrong with that. I'm just saying that's not-

    29. TF

      [laughs]

    30. AB

      [laughs] It's, it's, it's, uh... What, what did we say? It's necessary but not sufficient-

  21. 1:53:06 – 1:56:11

    Four fundamental micronutrients of happiness.

    1. TF

      And so I [laughs] ...

    2. AB

      [laughs]

    3. TF

      So we already talked about death meditation. We talked about your experience in Mexico. And in Build the Life You Want, obviously we're not gonna go into all the micronutrients of each of the legs on the stool per se, but I'm curious whether it's meaning or one of the others, maybe meaning, but doesn't have to be, could you give some, uh, examples of some of those, I, I don't wanna say antecedents, but micronutrients.

    4. AB

      Right.

    5. TF

      The cast of characters and ingredients that are important for sort of healthy functioning.

    6. AB

      For sure. For sure. And you can break them up in as variegated ways you want. You could make 20,000 of them. But really there's four that we should be thinking about. So there's four fundamental micronutrients, and I make it more varied than that. I've got 19 because, because they're really about love and relationships.

    7. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    8. AB

      That's really what it's all about. And the big four are your search for the divine or your spiritual journey or your philosophical, you know, your faith, whatever that happens to be, religious or not. Your love for something bigger than you so you can stand in awe. It's your family relationships. This is the most mystical kinds of love that we get because we didn't choose the loves.

    9. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    10. AB

      They were chosen for us. And sometimes we're like, "Yeah, I wouldn't have chosen that."

    11. TF

      [laughs]

    12. AB

      Friendship. You know, in friendship when I'm talking about that, I talk a lot about loneliness because, especially strivers, hardworking people, a lot of people watching us, they're, they have a lot of people around them, but what they have is deal friends but not real friends.

    13. TF

      [laughs]

    14. AB

      Your deal friends are super useful to you. Your real friends are useless. Cosmically, beautifully useless. And so I go into a lot of detail with my students about how to build useless friendships.

    15. TF

      [laughs]

    16. AB

      Not worthless. That's different. I've got those, too. And last but not least, it's loving everybody as expressed through your work, and that means serving others with your work. Your work should be a service profession no matter what you're doing. And so faith, family, friends, and work. And then there's, you know, it, we branch out from there. You know, when I'm talking about family, I'm talking about different branches of family that I'm trying to make sure I'm working on. When I'm talking about, you know, my marriage is critically important, it gets one of the absolute highest scores in importance, not always in terms of quality because I'm not the best husband. But, but in terms of importance for sure, and that's because that's the apex of two of those columns, both family and friendship. My best friend and also the, the adopted member of my family is my wife. And so therefore my marriage is really at the top of those two pillars, and so I'm thinking about that a lot. So I break it up into subcategories, but they all go into those silos of faith, family, friends, and work. Work that serves. Work that's meaningful, right? Earn my success. And then I say, "Okay, well, you know, what does it mean to earn my success? What does it mean to serve others? How do I know?" Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I start, you know, getting down to brass tacks. I start putting numbers on it. And if the numbers aren't... If I'm going backwards in a particular year. I do it n- my birthday and my off-birthday, by the way.

    17. TF

      Your off-birthday?

    18. AB

      Yeah, yeah, my six-month birthday.

    19. TF

      [laughs]

    20. AB

      November 21st.

    21. TF

      Got it. [laughs]

    22. AB

      My birthday's May 21st.

    23. TF

      Yeah, well that's convenient.

    24. AB

      So November 21st I get it, too.

    25. TF

      You got, you got Thanksgiving week.

    26. AB

      Yeah, I've got Thanksgiving week. And so it gives me, you know, a chance to actually think about these things in, in some detail to be sure. And then I've got it, you know, I've got the data going back to about the year 1999.

    27. TF

      Hmm.

    28. AB

      I've got it going forward. And the system has gotten

  22. 1:56:11 – 2:03:41

    Translating a need for change into action.

    1. AB

      better along the way and changed some of the-

    2. TF

      What are the most important changes you've made to the system would you say?

    3. AB

      Yeah. The most important change, the single most important change I made to the system was the recognition that I knew a lot about happiness but wasn't happy.

    4. TF

      Hmm.

    5. AB

      Because I was studying it, but I wasn't doing it.

    6. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    7. AB

      The biggest change to the system was using my knowledge to change my habits. That was number one far and away, right? It's one thing, I was giving people all this, all this advice about friendships and about having a good marriage and all that, and like- I was looking at my life and I wasn't living these things. I was just like everybody else, you know, waking up going, "Sure f- hope I feel happy today." It was pathetic. It was pathetic.

    8. TF

      [laughs]

    9. AB

      It was like, it was like a, a drug and alcohol counselor getting up and, you know, taking a bunch of bong hits and having a six-pack.

    10. TF

      Yeah.

    11. AB

      That's what it was. It was craziness. And by the way, it was my wife who finally clued me. She's like, "You have a PhD, right? What are you using it for exactly?"

    12. TF

      [laughs] I mean, you're like, "Your English has come a long way." [laughs]

    13. AB

      You're killing me, sweetheart. You're killing me. But, you know, I'm, I'm writing academic journal articles that 14 people read so I can get promotion and tenure. It was ridiculous.

    14. TF

      So how did you... I imagine even if you're not necessarily walking the walk as much as you would like, you believe in what you are sharing, so it wasn't necessarily a conviction issue.

    15. AB

      Right.

    16. TF

      So how do you then translate it to action? Are you just like, "You know what? If it's not in the calendar, it's not real. Let me commit to things that I block out-

    17. AB

      Yeah

    18. TF

      ... so that they are unavoidable in a sense?"

    19. AB

      Yeah.

    20. TF

      How did you convert it?

    21. AB

      Well, I started by doing habits and practices that were very, very specific. I mean, extremely specific. As specific as the stuff in the, you know, the 4-Hour Body specific.

    22. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    23. AB

      And I was writing stuff down. I had whole notebooks of protocols and things that I was trying. I was trying things on myself based on science, and when it worked, I would keep it and I would write it down, I would practice it. Turns out that wasn't good enough because it's very easy to have... You know, 'cause that was too hacky.

    24. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    25. AB

      You know, that wasn't really habits. To ingrain a habit, you gotta do one more step, which is that you gotta teach it.

    26. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    27. AB

      The reason I'm a happiness professor is because I wanna lash myself to the mast and I wanna be completely committed.

    28. TF

      [laughs]

    29. AB

      Because look, I mean, if I'm doing something that's clearly at odds with what I'm teaching-

    30. TF

      Mm-hmm

  23. 2:03:41 – 2:08:31

    Aristotle’s secrets to happiness.

    1. TF

      it. One facet that I really appreciate of your work and your writing is that you s- you straddle the very old and the very new.

    2. AB

      Yeah. [laughs]

    3. TF

      And, uh, you mentioned Aquinas earlier. Again, everybody read a few pages at least on Wikipedia about Aquinas. And then Aristotle.

    4. AB

      Yeah.

    5. TF

      And one of your popular columns is about Aristotle's 10 secrets to happiness.

    6. AB

      Mm.

    7. TF

      I wonder if any... I do have them in front of me.

    8. AB

      Yeah, 'cause I can't remember them.

    9. TF

      Yeah, I was just gonna say-

    10. AB

      It's a problem making weekly copy, you know?

    11. TF

      Yeah. Well, let me... I, how about this, how about I read through?

    12. AB

      Yeah.

    13. TF

      And then I would love for you to pick out one or two perhaps that have been particularly impactful-

    14. AB

      Yeah

    15. TF

      ... for you or for your readers.

    16. AB

      Right.

    17. TF

      Here we go. Name your fears and face them. Two, know your appetites and control them. Three, be neither a cheapskate nor a spendthrift. Four, give as generously as you can. Five, focus more on the transcendent, disregard the trivial. Six, true strength is a controlled temper. Seven, never lie, especially to yourself. Eight, stop struggling for your fair share. Nine, forgive others and forbear their weaknesses. 10, define your morality, live up to it, even in private. And I wanna take one off the table.

    18. AB

      Sure.

    19. TF

      Which is the last one-

    20. AB

      Mm

    21. TF

      ... 'cause there's a, there's a recency bias here with, since we've been talking, I think, fairly extensively about that. But-

    22. AB

      Yeah. Those are... There we go. So start with number seven.

    23. TF

      All right.

    24. AB

      Never lie.

    25. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    26. AB

      Be impeccable with your word-

    27. TF

      Mm

    28. AB

      ... especially with you.

    29. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    30. AB

      Now, I know a lot of people who are pretty honest.

  24. 2:08:31 – 2:16:08

    Real friends help us put the kibosh on self-deception.

    1. TF

      Yeah. So I have a, a question about that, and it also makes me think about some of the scientists I respect most, like Richard Feynman-

    2. AB

      Yeah

    3. TF

      ... who [laughs] says you must not fool yourself and you're the easiest person to fool.

    4. AB

      Well, for sure. And a lot of people say 'cause I'm religion, religious-

    5. TF

      Yeah

    6. AB

      ... that I'm fooling myself, right?

    7. TF

      So this, well, this leads not to a religion-specific question, but rather just to a fine slicing, which is-

    8. AB

      Right

    9. TF

      ... sometimes- And I'm going off the cuff, so this isn't gonna be polished, but we lie to ourselves in the sense that we have a story about ourselves or the world-

    10. AB

      Right

    11. TF

      ... that we know isn't quite true.

    12. AB

      Mm-hmm.

    13. TF

      But we repeat it enough because we want it to be true.

    14. AB

      Yeah.

    15. TF

      Then there are times when we lie to ourselves, but we are, we are in the delusion, right? Like, it is because we have a lack of awareness or who knows, right? There, there are any number of factors that have fed into this belief, which is simply not accurate for whatever, for whatever reason. So how do you catch, how do you catch yourself? Like, are there... Could you give examples, hypothetical or otherwise, of... 'Cause I think most people would say, "I don't wanna lie to myself."

    16. AB

      Right.

    17. TF

      But when it comes down to actually catching those, catching those self-lies, that-

    18. AB

      Right

    19. TF

      ... self-deception in the, in the butterfly net so you can do something with them-

    20. AB

      Right

    21. TF

      ... how do you, how do you do that?

    22. AB

      Well, you commit yourself to being uncomfortable, for one thing.

    23. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    24. AB

      So there's a couple of different ways to do that. Number one is you, you seek outside counsel.

    25. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    26. AB

      You ask people who really know you well, you ask them to be committed to telling you the absolute truth, and then you ask them incredibly hard questions about yourself.

    27. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    28. AB

      Right? And you should have friends that can do that for you. This is one of the ways that you can do it. Your friends really have to be able to tell you the tr- most... Being a good friend usually means telling you convenient lies.

    29. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    30. AB

      That's not the right criterion for your closest friends, your real friends. Your real friends who should be like, "Buddy, I don't think you're being straightforward with that right now." See, this is, I'm making... I'm doing a fake Atlanta accent-

  25. 2:16:08 – 2:19:49

    Reflecting on the repercussions of living for the mirror’s approval.

    1. TF

      Very brief side note, just to give people a Scooby Snack. Mirrors, reflections, what are your thoughts?

    2. AB

      Get rid of them. All of them.

    3. TF

      Tell me more.

    4. AB

      So I work with a guy. He's fantastic. He actually is a... He's re- really, really helpful for me. I've recommended him to, to you because he does incredible body work.

    5. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. AB

      Physical therapy is fantastic. And, you know, he was a fitness model.

    7. TF

      Yeah.

    8. AB

      There's almost nothing you can do that's unhealthier, worse for your mental health than being a fitness model-

    9. TF

      [laughs]

    10. AB

      ... or a fitness influencer. Why? Because you're just looking in the mirror all day long, and your, your physical appearance is that on which you will be judged. It's very emotionally warping.

    11. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    12. AB

      And he hated it. He hated it. He hated it. He was unhappy. He never ate what he wanted for 10 years. You know, and, and the truth of the matter is, as we all know, you look great if your body fat is under 10%, but you feel crummy and you want everybody in the world to die.

    13. TF

      [laughs]

    14. AB

      [laughs] It can be really, really hard on you. And he said, "But after a while, you know, there's a reason that 35% of people who lose a lot of weight, when they get to their goal, they keep going, and a quarter of them develop an eating disorder."

    15. TF

      Hmm.

    16. AB

      The reason is because you, you can't stop when you're looking in the mirror all the time. You can't stop. You can't stop. You don't know how to stop. So he had the presence of mind. He's an adept. He's a spiritual adept. He got rid of all of his mirrors and showered in the dark for a year.

    17. TF

      [laughs]

    18. AB

      He got rid of all of the mirrors in his house.

    19. TF

      The showering in the dark [laughs] I need maybe an extra-

    20. AB

      Well, because he can't see your abs. [laughs]

    21. TF

      [laughs] I don't have that problem.

    22. AB

      But, I mean-

    23. TF

      But, yeah, I get it. [laughs]

    24. AB

      He got washboard abs and you're looking at it and you're going, "Yeah, man. Yeah."

    25. TF

      Yeah, yeah.

    26. AB

      Bye-bye.

    27. TF

      Watching the water cascade off your 12-pack like rocks in a waterfall.

    28. AB

      I know. And, and the truth of the matter is that, that-

    29. TF

      I hate when that happens. [laughs]

    30. AB

      ... extreme-

  26. 2:19:49 – 2:25:21

    Collaborating with Oprah on Build the Life You Want.

    1. AB

      [laughs]

    2. TF

      So why did you write this book, and how did it come to be? I know you have this long history with thinking about these catalyzing events and tracking and, I don't want to say pursuing, but analyzing-

    3. AB

      Yeah

    4. TF

      ... thinking deeply about happiness. So why, why now, and what do you hope that it will accomplish?

    5. AB

      So this new book is the most bread-and-butter book I've ever written about the science of happiness.

    6. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    7. AB

      It's two parts. Part one is how to manage your emotions so they don't manage you. Part two is, once you've got that down, now you can actually build your life and not be distracted and frittering away your time with stupid things.

    8. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    9. AB

      Those are the two parts of the book, and it's as deep a dive as I've ever actually written publicly about neuroscience. It was actually vetted by my, my colleague at Harvard, Josh Greene, who's one of the most distinguished neuroscientists in the world, just to make sure, because I'm a social scientist, so I gotta be careful-

    10. TF

      Yeah

    11. AB

      ... you know, getting into the biology side of this thing, you know? I know enough to be dangerous, to be sure, but I, I have to be very careful about that.

    12. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    13. AB

      So I realized... And by the way, this project was instigated to do a bread-and-butter owner's manual on you and your happiness. That's what it is.

    14. TF

      Mm-hmm.

    15. AB

      It's an owner's manual on your happiness. It wasn't my idea. It was Oprah Winfrey's idea.

    16. TF

      [laughs] So you, you occupy some rarefied air. [laughs] So from the Dalai Lama, how does... Does... Do you just bump into her on the subway?

    17. AB

      Yeah. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Her Holiness Oprah Winfrey.

    18. TF

      Right.

    19. AB

      Yes, exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's... You know, when Oprah Winfrey calls, it's like-

    20. TF

      [laughs] Right. But- Yeah, I mean, I'm guessing she didn't get your phone number on Zoom info. Like how, how did this happen?

    21. AB

      Yeah. [laughs] She calls and I'm like, "Yeah, and I'm Batman."

    22. TF

      [laughs]

    23. AB

      "No, really, who is this?"

    24. TF

      [laughs]

    25. AB

      "No. Hi, it's Oprah calling again."

    26. TF

      [laughs]

    27. AB

      "Your company has been verified by Dun & Bradstreet."

    28. TF

      [laughs]

    29. AB

      Oh, wait a minute. Anyway.

    30. TF

      [laughs]

Episode duration: 2:42:54

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