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- [00:00]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
You're living in the matrix. You're simulating love, sex, progress. But the one thing you can't simulate is the meaning of your life. You can be an independent person. You cannot be a sheep. And that's the first step in actually taking back your autonomy in a world that doesn't want you to be independent.
- [00:16]
Podcast Host
Dr. Arthur Books is the happiness scientist billionaires call when their success stops working. He's a Harvard professor, a bestselling author. If you want to break your phone addiction, learn how to turn risk into adventure and how high performers can rebuild meaning. Instead of chasing emptiness. Today's episode is for you.
- [00:31]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Your brain isn't working. Working right. You're frittering away your time and not feeling good about it because your brain has been captured by algorithms. That's a weird thing when you think about it, is the more we try to eliminate our boredom, the more boring our life gets.
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Podcast Host
Can you tell us what is a resume or a eulogy achievement?
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
Your resume virtues are your instrumental goals. I don't like this, but I'm getting to make a lot of money. That's why people actually stay in jobs that they actually hate. Your eulogy virtues, which is what you'd want people to say at your funeral, those are the ultimate goals, not the intermediate goals.
- [01:02]
Podcast Host
What is the biggest lie we tell ourselves that stops us from achieving the
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Pharmaceutical Advertiser
life that we want?
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah, there is a big lie, and that is.
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Podcast Host
Okay. I want to start with a quote from your book, which thank you for the advanced copy. It's amazing. And I actually read the entire thing, so did David. I know a lot of times people, people bring people on and then don't actually follow the people that they are
- [01:25]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
talking to on podcast feed into ChatGPT. Exactly.
- [01:29]
Podcast Host
But there's a quote that I loved and it's to find the meaning of your life requires thinking and living differently from how you've been trained by school, work, media, entertainment, culture. And to find the meaning of your life, you have to pay attentions to the aspects of your life You've been trained to ignore the dark side of your consciousness. I thought that was so interesting. So what happens if you never discover the meaning in your life at the
- [01:53]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
most obvious level, you'll become depressed and anxious. Depression has increased by about a factor of three for people under 30, anxiety by about a factor of two. The explanation for this is that we're using our brains wrong. And so that's the most obvious effect of this, is that we become depressed, anxious and lonely and self harming and we fall for every kind of moral panic and every kind of cultural fad that comes along because we think it's actually going to give us meaning, and it won't because we're in the wrong side of our brain. So anytime that you're getting your questions answered and your cultural references from TikTok, you're not on the right side. You're not on the right side of your brain, and this is not going to give you what you need. And you're going to follow these false lures again and again and again. That's the biggest problem. The underlying problem from all of that is because you're not getting what your heart desires, what you were built to understand, which is the meaning of your life. You're not going to develop the relationships that you need with your friends, with your family. You're less and less likely to develop a lifelong pair bond, which is what Homo sapiens are built for. We're built for pair bond mating. All of the nonsense about, I don't know, polyamory. They're coming, right? That's all nonsense.
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Podcast Host
It's all over, Austin.
- [03:08]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
And again, I mean, look, no judgment. Different strokes. But look, I'm a behavioral scientist, and the truth of the matter is that we are built for pair bond mating. And the way that you understand the deep chemistry with another person is the fusion of the right hemispheres of your brain. And if you and your. And your pair bond or have those right hemispheres turned off, who knows what's going to happen? So all of these things, you're very much less likely to develop a relationship with the divine. You won't. You won't actually pursue a spiritual life, and that's exactly what we're seeing.
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Podcast Host
You have, like, three big questions that you think we have to ask ourselves to find the meaning of life.
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah.
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Podcast Host
What are those?
- [03:46]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Well, the first question you have to ask is, you know, where do you find it? And the answer is not like the beach or even the church or even Italy. It's the right side of your brain. So you need to understand the science is the most important thing. Then the second thing to do is to really open up the right side of your brain. And that really comes from these questions. And people ask me all the time about AI and happiness. The most popular question that I get these days is AI and happiness. And the answer to that question is, AI can make you happier, but it probably won't. The reason is because when you use AI as an adjunct to the left side of your brain to answer what and how to Mechanical and technical questions. You can free up more time to spend in your relationships in real life. But if you use it as an adjunct to the right side of your brain for love and happiness, you will become more miserable because it doesn't work. If you use AI as your therapist or your lover or your friend, it will leave you feeling empty, depressed and anxious. That's the bottom line. So the way that you need to here's how to think about it. Get back to your Is about asking deep questions. Questions of meaning can't be asked to AI. This is the test. If you can ask a question and put it into a Google search bar and get an answer that's meaningful to you or that has significance to you, it's not a true meaning question of life. That's a left side question. Only left side questions. If you take a real like imagine this cardiac why am I alive for? What would I give my life? Ask ChatGPT that you'll get hilarious stuff. You get stuff that's like. ChatGPT is spitballing about why you would give your life. Well, many people say it's not meaningful to you. And you know, it can pass the Turing test and kind of fool you a little bit, but not really. So think about all the questions in your life that. That you just can't Google. Those are the meaning questions. And the really big ones come in kind of three categories. This is the way to start looking into the right, the deep right to find the really deep meaning that we have in life. Number one is why do things happen the way they do in my life? And there are lots of ways. Science, faith, conspiracy theories. I mean, then why am I doing these things that I'm doing every day? Why am I doing these things? That's your purpose. And for this is really important for your philosophy because one of the great parts of how you talk about happiness is progress. We're built for progress. We're not built for arrival. We're built for progress toward goals, right? But that requires understanding goals, understanding direction, etc. And that's why am I doing what I'm doing? And the last one is why does my life matter and to whom? Those are deep meaning questions. And so I encourage my students and everybody I meet to think deeply, to get a mastermind around these types of questions. Because then the aperture starts opening and then you start getting interested in these right hemisphere behaviors, the things in your life that you do that don't have answers that you can articulate, that don't have problems that you could actually solve. See, like your marriage, you can't solve that. You can only live it, and that's why you love your marriage.
- [07:03]
Podcast Host
That's a great point. I've been thinking a lot about risk lately. It comes up again and again on the podcast because what I found in the people that we tried to help when it comes to building or buying businesses is they really cannot progress without risk. And there's a lot of people today that want to de risk everything. And I'm not so sure that a de risk life is a good one. And so I'm wondering, what does the research tell us about the kind of risk you have to take to. To build a meaningful life?
- [07:32]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah, the first way to actually improve your life is to turn uncertainty into risk. Risk is where you, you, you can describe the possibilities, you can assign probabilities, and so you can manage contingencies. That's the reason that everybody gets happy, happier after they buy insurance, because insurance does exactly that. Insurance is a happiness business. It feels like Brussels sprouts. It's actually, it's actually ice cream. Nobody buys a life insurance policy that doesn't get happier when they do it. And the reason is because they said, like, I might die. These actuaries, they have numbers on when I might die, and if I do, my family's not left in poverty. And so that turns it into risk. And risk is way, way, way better. And then the important, the next step into actually making it into a really good part of your life, a meaningful part of your life, is actually to start reframing risk as adventure. That's the important thing to do. It's like, this is so. This is so exciting and, and, you know, thinking about, you know, what might happen and what the. You know, what would you do if these particular things happened? And sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's bad. Because a lot of things, for example, people start businesses with you. I mean, this is what you're. You're enabling entrepreneurship for people who wouldn't have these opportunities, which is why it's so important what you're doing. But the, and what the risk really is is there's. There's an upside and there's a downside. I mean, you might go broke and you might get rich and you might just make a living, and you might be doing something else in five years. And that adventure is sort of the adventure of life because that's a model of really, really good living on how that works. And you need to apply that same entrepreneurial mindset that goes from uncertainty to risk, to adventure in every part of your life. That's not just your business. It's not just opening laundromats or running vending machines. The kinds of businesses that people actually wind up loving and that you help people do, which is super important. It's also who you marry and where you live and whether you get an education and how you raise your kids. All of those things go from uncertainty to risk to adventure. And if you're living the adventurous lifestyle, then you're treating your life as a startup. You're not treating your business as a startup, you're treating your life as a startup. And that's the right way to live.
- [09:44]
Podcast Host
That's so good. I had this. One of my favorite economists of all time. His name is Brian Westbury, and he's at a company called First Trust I used to work at. And like, we took him down to Latin America when I used to run a business down there. And he went down to Patagonia and went rafting down a river and fishing. He's a big fisherman, kind of an older guy. And all of a sudden, you know, Patagonia is pretty crazy weather. And so the weather kind of gets crazy. The storm clouds roll in and it's not looking so good. And so Brian's trying to communicate with the, you know, driver at the boat and he's yelling at him in Spanish. Brian doesn't speak Spanish. And, you know, Brian's like, are we gonna drown? You know, it's freezing. This is glacial runoff. What are we doing? And the boat captain looks back at Brian and kind of perfect English says, do you want to know the difference between an adventure and a disaster? And Brian's like, what? And he says, attitude. And Brian must have told this story 400 times. And every time he told it, I chuckled. And I thought about how sometimes, like the fishermen, the coal miners, the farmers, they have the best one liners because it is so true.
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
Right?
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Podcast Host
Like, if you go broke in business, will you die? Well, probably not.
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
No.
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Podcast Host
You know, and so what is really the difference?
- [10:55]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Right, right.
- [10:56]
Podcast Host
And I like that categorization a lot.
- [10:58]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
It's really important. And, you know, it's. I work a lot with my students on this because they're super afraid of failure. They're, they're. And it's funny because everybody has a death fear, by the way, and your death fear is probably not your physical death. Only 20% of people really have a significant fear of their physical death. That's called thanatophobia. It's that actual diagnosable malady, but 80% of us don't have that. But you'd still have a death fear, which is the threat to who you are in your own mind. And if you're a striver, if you're an achiever, if you're a winner, you're going to be afraid of failure. You just are. And if you've never gotten to be in school, right, and if you're super success, addicted to, and if you actually go through life not as a human being, but as a human doing, then, then fear of failure is gonna, is gonna haunt you. It's gonna hunt you, as a matter of fact. And those are the people that I've actually, that show up in my classes because I teach MBA students at Harvard. I mean they're, they've never, like there's no bees in their background, right. And so the result of it is I have to make them actually take them through an exercise on how to deal with this, on how to such that they can actually live the adventure that is risk. Because the adventure that is risk requires that you take a serious chance on failure. Because otherwise there's no stakes. Otherwise at six I win and half a dozen you lose. It's not real and there's no real upside of anything. So I have to take them through that. And it's actually a Buddhist death meditation that I take them through. There's the Theravada, Buddhist monks, Thailand and Vietnam and Sri Lanka. They have something called the Maranasati meditation which they'll contemplate pictures of corpses in various states of decay. And it's a nine step meditation. So a body that has just died, a body that has just started to decay, a body where the skin was bloated and blue, a body that, where the skin is peeling back at the end, it's just a bunch of bones or dust where the bones were. And you had the monks stand in front of the pictures and say, that is me. And they contemplate and say, that is me. And only when they become familiar with the inevitability of their death can they fully be alive. Death gives them life, failure gives you success. And so familiarity with your own failure only gives you the possibility of success. That's really what we're talking about. So I take my students through a nine part meditation on their own professional failure. Starting with, I just failed a class at Harvard, I'm falling behind my classmates, I'm not getting interviews. I don't think I'm going to get the job that I want. I don't Think I'm going to get any job after I graduate, I'm moving back in with mom. And there's this one step where they always cry. Step seven where I think my parents feel sorry for me. All that's awful because that's the worst for a success addict. Especially the very special, very junior, very special boy, very special girl who really never got attention and affection except when she got first chair in the orchestra or she got all straight as on the report card. And she learned that all love is earned. Love isn't earned. Love is a grace freely given. But if your parents doing their best, they reward you for being special, then you'll go through life like that and you will develop these pathologies and you will never be free.
- [14:36]
Podcast Host
So in practice, have you done the death meditation?
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
Oh, yeah.
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Podcast Host
You've done it?
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
Oh, yeah, for sure.
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Podcast Host
Did you cry at one of the steps?
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
No, I mean the death meditation with respect to success and failure.
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Podcast Host
Well, both of them.
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah. Never on the physical death meditation. That one. Because that one is like, that's not my problem. In its way, I'm sort of afraid of different things. I am horribly afraid of it, of failure. I'm horribly naturally afraid of failure. I'm afraid of not being loved. I'm afraid of losing my mind because my stock and trade is the stuff that's going on inside my head. And I have a lot of. A lot of early onset dimension in my family. So these are the fears that I have. And so those are the things that I have to look straight into where I have to design the maranasati meditation. And everybody watching us. Look, these are slackers. Don't watch you.
- [15:25]
Podcast Host
That's very true.
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
This is the striver cast.
- [15:26]
Podcast Host
People are amazing.
- [15:27]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah, totally. But that means that they have fears of their own sense of self which probably will revolve around their own performance. And that's the exercise that's worth doing.
- [15:39]
Podcast Host
Oh my God.
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
It's hard for me still, but I still do it.
- [15:41]
Podcast Host
So do you ask yourself multiple questions? Then you ask yourself nine questions, kind of like all the way down to almost. You feel yourself crying about the thing that you might be most scared about. Is that the process.
- [15:51]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
It's not questions. It's. It's putting myself in the position of these things actually happening.
- [15:56]
Podcast Host
Yeah. So you're kind of like visualizing it.
- [15:58]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah, you're visualizing the worst possible thing. It's funny because the visualization exercise is based on manifestation. All those goofy self improvement techniques. It's manifest something really beautiful. No, no, no, no. No, no. That's for amateurs. Fine. Do it if you want, because that will change your behavior in a positive way. It's not going to change the universe. It's going to change you, which is how manifestation actually works. But also manifest the worst possible thing, because you need to to master that. You need to master your fears. You must. And the only way that you can do that is through exposure. If you're afraid of flying, you need to go see airplanes and then go get on an airplane.
- [16:35]
Podcast Host
So do you think most people actually meditate? Wrong.
- [16:38]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah, I think. Well, it's funny because I've talked about this. I've worked for the last 12 years with a Dalai Lama, and you and I've talked about this before, and we have a close relationship. He's been good to me, and I love him for lots of reasons. He's really helped my life in a lot of ways. And one time he said something that was kind of negative about Americans who meditate. And I said, you, Holiness, why did you say that? Because he's not a negative person. On the contrary, he's completely full of compassion and love. He's a Bodhisattva. He has a Buddha nature. It's extraordinary. I've never met anybody like this. And he said, no, the problem is that Westerners meditate because they want the benefits of meditation. And you only will get the benefits of meditation when you stop trying to get the benefits of meditation. And I said, tell me more. He said, americans, when they meditate, is because they want to feel better. And the goal of meditation is the rest of the world feeling better. You meditate so the rest of the world can feel better. You're meditating for them. And that's a very metaphysical thing. It's a very transcendent thing, is the way that that works. And that's a lot of how we do things wrong in general. This is how people who start small businesses, they do when they're trying to lift up everybody and everything. When something is motivated by love of others, it becomes transcendent and it becomes more successful. It's the same point.
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Podcast Host
It's such a good point, actually. It's literally. I was just thinking about this today. Like, if you actually want to change your life, stop trying so hard to change your life. If you actually want to make a ton of money, stop trying to make so much money. Instead, like, try to go make somebody else money. Yeah, like, that's the way you make money in business.
- [18:14]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
You're in my business. Look, we're in the Business of spreading ideas.
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Podcast Host
Yeah.
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
And we know tons of people. You and I both know tons of. You know more than people than I do. Because you're so successful at influencing culture and you've been a pioneer in a lot of this, which is fantastic. But you know a lot of people who really would like the level of popularity, millions and millions of followers on social media and they want that. The reason they can't get that to a certain because we have a million ways to discern when somebody is not doing it for love of others. The motivation has to be other focused. That's a sense of transcendence about what you're doing, which is a key element of success.
- [18:51]
Podcast Host
Yeah. It's so fascinating. It's very timely. I'm thinking about that right now with team even like David knows for this podcast. Like, you know, when I'm thinking about who is, you know, you know what's crazy? Somebody. One of our podcasts the other day was a million listens across platforms. Another one was 6 million listens across platform platforms. Yeah. And that's including short form content and stuff. Not like straight up listening to the whole podcast. That'd be great. We're not there yet anyway.
- [19:15]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
There aren't that many that are getting those numbers.
- [19:18]
Podcast Host
But at that point I basically thought, oh my God, that is, you know, if that's 6 million people listening or if it's 6 million hours, that is so many hours of somebody's life. This thing better be fucking fantastic, otherwise what a travesty. And we should shut it down. And so like every time somebody asks to be on the pod or like once or we've had to kill some episodes because they weren't good enough, I'm like, I know that sucks, but 6 million people are going to waste the most precious thing they have if this thing is bad.
- [19:47]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
They trust you. They trust you to be a steward of their time and energy and attention and affection. That's what they're trusting you to do. And that's a big responsibility. It's not like, hey, let the market decide. I mean, you're a gatekeeper into their attention and energy. And that's a covenant.
- [20:03]
Podcast Host
Actually, that's actually one of the reasons why I started a newsletter is because I didn't want just social posts that were there a second and then gone forever. And it made me think about Beehive and why I think the best newsletter writers I know have already switched to it. Because there is this difference between publishing and building. You know, most platforms let you do the former Beehive is engineered for the latter, for things that last and leave something behind. You know, the analytics show you exactly what's resonating engagement tiers, revenue attribution by post, what's converting casual readers into paying subscribers. You can stop guessing. The ad network actually brings sponsors directly to you and just released on demand ads, which gives you access to countless ad opportunities. So you can have all things sales, reporting, invoicing handled. Because in order to keep writing things that matter, you need to earn money. That's why they have paid subscription boosts, referral programs, all native, all inside one dashboard, all working while you write. So if you're publishing a newsletter on a platform with thin analytics, limited monetization, and growth tools that are just an afterthought, you're not going to build something that lasts. You're going to maintain something that decays at best. Beehive newsletters actually grow 2.75x faster than the industry average. And that infrastructure is what helps people write things that stand the test of time. So if you want to switch to Beehive today like I do, because I use it, use code. Cody 30 for 30% off your first three months at B E-E-H-I-I-V.com Cody, one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about that I've been obsessing on lately is like, so you know, you know, if you want to lose weight, you should probably eat less, work out more. You know, if you want to make more money, you could maybe work a little bit harder, increase your skill stack. Like it's not that complicated in many ways. It may be hard, but it's like kind of simple. What do you think is the biggest reason why or like what is the biggest lie we tell ourselves that stops us from achieving the life that we want?
- [22:10]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah, there is a big lie, and that is that suffering is bad. That's the big lie. People are trying to eliminate and avoid suffering. It's what it comes down to, and only when you understand that suffering is your teacher and suffering is sacred. Now, they could be dysregulated, but the truth of the matter is that there's a very interesting math about this that the, that the Zen Buddhists like to use. In Japan, suffering equals your pain multiplied by the resistance to the pain. Pain multiplied by resistance. Now think about that. When we think back to our high school math, suffering is going to go up. When pain goes up or when resistance to it goes up, you can make your suffering go down by trying to get Rid of your pain. But it's much better if you get rid of your resistance. That's a really important concept because, you know, when you're starting to open a business or you're going to college or your relationship is struggling, you, you know, you can try to avoid the pain somehow by working less and by sleeping in and by avoiding your partner. That's pain avoidance. Or you can lower your resistance by trying to understand it, to engage it, to learn from it, and grow from it. That's what it comes down to. The number one lie that holds people back is an unwillingness to suffer because of a misunderstanding of the nature of suffering. That's a super important thing. And we've miscategorized all suffering as a malady. And if you go to campus counseling at my university and you say, I'm sad and anxious, I'm sad and anxious, they're going to say, well, we got to fix that. If you come to my office hours and say, I'm sad and anxious, I'm saying, well, you know what? You're a student at Harvard. If you weren't sad and anxious, you need therapy because you're doing a hard thing. Congratulations. Now it can be dysregulated. There is a medical. There are many medical issues with this. There's, you know, the. We know more and more about the neuromodulators involved in clinical depression and anxiety. We understand that better. But for the most part, suffering is part of life. Negative emotions are the system that created in the limbic system of the brain that tell you that there's a threat. And those threats are translated into negative emotions, and they get your attention. You behave appropriately. Negative experiences help you learn and grow. And that's just evidence that you're alive because you're going to have Cody. You're going to have a negative interaction with somebody today, and it might be somebody you work with, and it might be somebody on the phone or it might be your husband, or maybe all three. And that's how you learn and grow if you allow yourself.
- [24:33]
Podcast Host
So good. Now I want to talk about suffering in a different way. Do you think that high performers suffer more from a lack of meaning of life? And if so, why?
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah, and the answer is it really. It very much depends on that, but they often do. So many high performers are driven in an unhealthy way. Now, this is not necessarily the case. There's not a necessity to be driven in the wrong kind of way to be a high performer, but it does mean that you have to Every striver has to be alert, vigilant toward workaholism, success, addiction, and kind of the self objectification that goes into that. And I know a lot of people, and it really does start with the pathology we talked about a minute ago, where their childhood is all about achievement and they learn in their little brains, which are highly, synaptically plastic, that all love is earned. And so they're looking to earn love the rest of their life. And you have to stop trying to earn love. That's a really, really big error in life. That's one of the big errors of life. As a matter of fact, if you're trying to earn your partner's love as a woman, most likely you're going to be trying to alter your appearance into your 70s. It's a big mistake. And if you're a man, you're going to be, you know, trying to get the admiration of your wife for worldly accomplishments to the extent that you're marginalizing her and not giving her the attention and energy and affection that she needs. And this is why couples break up as they're trying to ear each other's love a lot of the time. This is not the only reason they break up, but it's a big reason that couples break up and why workaholism destroys marriages for these reasons. It's a really important thing. And so I talk an awful lot about that. But that's a really important thing for people to keep in mind. Because strivers, success addicted individuals, they're driven by a pathology and they can't quit. You actually have to be a well balanced person to be a super striver and a really happy person. And, you know, the truth of the matter is that that's possibly a minority of strivers. I've met some who do it really, really well. And in my research I'm trying to be that guy.
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Podcast Host
I think we all are.
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
But I'm trying to be like. But it's hard because, you know, it's like I, you know, and when I'm weak, then I'm. I'm really afraid of failure and I'm really driven by worldly rewards as opposed to the rewards that matter. And I'm trying to be special rather than happy. That's really what all very successful, unhappy people have in common is they will expend their happiness in search of specialness.
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Podcast Host
So what do you do practically to stop that?
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Dr. Arthur Brooks
Knowledge is power, number one. Knowledge is power is really, really important. Second, is that the one barrier against that, the one your bulwark against this is your relationships. And there's, you know, there's family relationships, but really has a lot to do with your romantic partnership. It's just why it's so that's why marriage is the most important part of your startup, the most important thing that you do, that's your most important acquisition.
- [27:29]
Podcast Host
That's true.
- [27:31]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
It's really, really important. And then third is, I strongly recommend that everybody watching us do spiritual work because you need a relationship with the metaphysical. For me, it's. I'm a Catholic. I mean, it's like. Which, you know, the Catholic Church is like Starbucks. It's a franchise system. It's very uniform. It's a really way to get it done right. For me, I'm not going to say that my path is the only path for everybody. And I'm not actually talking about the metaphysical questions of what's true and what's not true. I have views about that too. But everybody needs to actually experience transcendence. We need love. That's what we need. And if you're not. If you feel like your love is earned and you go through life like that, you're going to have a bitter existence. And you need to experience the grace of pure love from people who love you for. Truly, actually love you for who you are. That's the bulwark against these pathologies.
- [28:25]
Podcast Host
You know, if we were to take this about marriage a little bit, and we've been talking a lot about marriage lately, and I think it's for the same reason I'm increasingly realizing, you know, in business and life, none of it matters if you don't have somebody to love. And marriage is such a beautiful challenge that I feel very privileged to be trying to live through, not solve for. So what is the secret that you found to a happy relationship or marriage?
- [28:54]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah, there's sort of two levels to that. At the earthly level is deep friendship. The secret to a happy marriage is deep friendship. And that's one of the reasons that you find that there's sort of. Psychologists talk about romantic love in two phases. Passionate and companionate. And companionate love is the goal after three to five years in a relationship, which is like, I told that to one of my kids and he's like, dad, that's not hot. I got a companion at love. Sounds like, you know, not hot. Like Grandma and grandpa sitting on the porch in their rocking chairs, you know, and which, by the way, isn't half bad.
- [29:31]
Podcast Host
But when you're young, it feels like it sounds like giving up.
- [29:33]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah, it does. And it turns out the companion love is pretty hot, right? But the important thing is that the vehicular language of your marriage is deep friendship. And one of the reasons that couples that are super in love and then a year later hate each other is because they never got to friendship. They never culminated. They never consummated their relationship in terms of the real consummation, which is the friendship. And so that's the goal is how that works. And there's a whole neurochemical process of bonding to each other in love. And the last phase of which is a deep level of oxytocin release, which is the neuropeptide in the brain of bonding. And that's the basis of your deep friendship. I mean, it's the deep friendship that you have at a level even with your children, with your parents, and certainly with your partner and with your closest friends. And that's what you need at the deepest level with the person who knows you the best is what it comes down to. Then at the more metaphysical level with relationships that you find that the relationships that do the best and last the longest with the greatest amount of happiness is they feel divine. And that's one of the reasons that the happiest marriage is one of the characteristics is that the partners get more religious across the decades together, they get more religious together, right? And maybe they're Buddhists, and maybe they're Catholics, and maybe they're Jews. Maybe they're something, but they're getting more religious. They're more interested in this because they have this sense, this divine fusion. You know, they say marriage is one flesh. And people sort of think of that in the sexual context. That's the least of it. That's the sort of. The least intimate. The most intimate thing that you could do with your partner is pray together. Most partners, even religious partners, don't pray in front of each other. It's too embarrassing. And the reason is because that opens up the right hemisphere of their brains together. The fusion one flesh is the fusion of the right hemispheres of their brain. And that's when their relationship becomes like those old, you know, the nuclear subs where you couldn't launch the. You couldn't launch the missiles until two guys had two keys that they put it in.
- [31:33]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I've seen those movies.
- [31:34]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah. And that's what the divine nature of marriage feels like. Like to the most successful couples is two keys. Two keys to the divine. You turn yours, I turn mine, and our marriage has become an antenna to God.
- [31:47]
Podcast Host
Wow, that's so beautiful. I Mean, I think it was. Who was it? Was it. Maybe it was Nietzsche who said, like, marriage is one long conversation.
- [31:59]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah, that was Nietzsche. Yeah. And Nietzsche, by the way, he proposed to the same woman over and over and over again and got shot down again and again and again.
- [32:07]
Podcast Host
Did he ever win?
- [32:08]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
No. And she said no forever. She was just using him.
- [32:12]
Podcast Host
Wow. So it was one long, singular conversation.
- [32:15]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
It was just one long begging session for Nietzsche because he was hopelessly in love with this woman that he was in his social circle and hung out with. And she was like a sophisticate and also a philosopher and really smart. And he kept. Will you marry me? No. Well, now, will you marry me? No. And by the. You know, in his 40s, he was in an insane asylum.
- [32:33]
Podcast Host
Wow.
- [32:33]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah. I mean, there are probably good reasons to not marry Nietzsche.
- [32:36]
Podcast Host
Yeah, definitely. Having read most of his stuff. But there are these moments of brilliance. Maybe that's why we all think that, like, tortured poets and philosophers and artists, they have, like, Bukowski, a crazy man, depending on what I had. You listen to him, you'd be like, wow, that's one of your favorites.
- [32:51]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
I know.
- [32:51]
Podcast Host
But then you read some lines and they.
- [32:53]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
It's sublime.
- [32:54]
Podcast Host
It's sublime.
- [32:55]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Sublime. It's sublime. The problem is that it's hard to live with those people a lot of the time. Living with Schopenhauer, like, my theory of rational pessimism, it's like, oh, man, I'm just trying to buy Christmas presents here, you know?
- [33:08]
Podcast Host
It's very, very true. Yeah. I don't think nihilists or existentialists would probably be good companions either.
- [33:14]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Not fun. Yeah.
- [33:15]
Podcast Host
I was wondering if somebody's listening right now, and maybe they're not in the relationship already, you know, they don't. They're like, okay, sounds great. Sign me up. I'd love all of that. But look at the world out here. It seems impossible, and I feel a little lost. And, you know, all the things you hear. Women these days are X, men these days are Y. We kind of have this compete. Competition of the sexes. Like, what would you tell somebody? What could they practically do if they feel a bit hopeless, but they want
- [33:40]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
to find love, live like the person you want to become and look for the person that you want to be with for the rest of your life, that that's what you do. I mean, the whole problem is that we compromise with respect to who we are and we compromise with respect to the people that we date and. And potentially mate with with. That's the problem is what it comes down to have standards and then go to the place where people have the same standards as you. That's one of the reasons that dating apps. Dating apps are getting better, as a matter of fact, because some of them don't have time and app as the goal. Some dating apps are getting better for its time in person is the goal. And that's really good. That's what it comes down to. But the truth of the matter is that meeting in person is critically important around shared ideas and values. So one of the things when people come to me in office hours and they say, so how do I meet professor? I want to audition for the role of husband, but where's the audition? And I say, were you raised in a religion? A lot of times they'll be like, yeah, but I don't practice my religion. I don't care. Go back. I don't believe it. I don't care. That's not the point. The point is not what you believe right now. People get religion all wrong by the way they think you have to, especially in the current generation. You have to feel something, and then you'll believe something and then you'll practice something. That's exactly backwards when it comes to religion. First practice, then believe, and occasionally feel. That's how religion is supposed to work. And so if you're looking for a goal of meeting somebody who's got conceivably values and aspirations that are similar to yours, somebody with whom you want to have your joint startup with, which, by the way, the best marriages are startups. They're not mergers, they're certainly not acquisitions or hostile takeovers. The best marriages are startups. And you want to go someplace where somebody has the same startup mentality as you. Even if you're a little unsure about these underlying values, that's perfectly fine. That's a really important way to do it.
- [35:33]
Podcast Host
You know, it's fascinating because my husband and I have gotten more religious together over the years.
- [35:39]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Good sign.
- [35:40]
Podcast Host
And when we go to church here in Austin, we go to two. We go to Austin Ridge and Red Rocks. And you can just tell on these people's faces. They're, like, young, they're happy, they're curious. I'm sure there's moments of depression and anxiety and whatever, but I think faith does a really incredible job of pulling you out of one of the things you talk about a lot, which is like interrupting the doom loop. And so I have it here. I liked one of the quotes in your book where you talk about if you find yourself stuck in the distractions of modern life while feeling bereft of deep meaning. Before doing anything else, you need to get unstuck to intro to interrupt the doom loop that requires declaring your independence by rebelling against the herd thinking that is creating the quiet desperation of millions, refusing to be just another statistic in the scourge of depression and anxiety and defying the economic forces that productized and monetize every moment of your attention.
- [36:35]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
I'm kind of a libertarian. So are you.
- [36:41]
Podcast Host
Well, yeah, like to like, it's probably why I like you. What is the meaning of this doom loop?
- [36:46]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
So we have absolutely been productized, you know, in so many ways. I mean in so many ways that people don't quite realize. When you hate somebody for political reasons, you're the product. You're somebody's product. Somebody's making money, somebody's getting clicks, somebody's getting attention or just getting their jollies. When you hate your neighbor or your sister in law because she votes differently than you, that's like, that's an example of productization of actually what's happening to us. When you spent, when you fritter away three hours looking at YouTube shorts, I got nothing against YouTube shorts. I have tons of YouTube shorts. But when you're frittering away your time and not feeling good about it, the reason is because your brain has been captured by algorithms is what it comes down to. Productization is a major problem because we're getting better and better and better at it. Before you had to go to a casino and get stuck behind a slot machine. It's like, I shouldn't have done 23 hours on this slot machine or something. But now it's as close as the screen in your pocket. When we're where the dopaminergic pathways have been really captured by the way that these technologies work when we're getting better and better at eliminating boredom because people hate boredom. But boredom is incredibly important for finding the meaning of your life. And we're doing it because that's actually putting money in people's pockets and popularity for people who just want your. They crave your attention. They feed off your attention. The first step in that is not just just going to a detox program. The first step is what every addict does, which is they say, enough, I'm tired of being subjugated to this. You and I know a lot of people who are in recovery. And one of the things that. What was the day when you said I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore I'm not going to put up with this anymore. I'm being subjugated to this addiction. I'm being used by this dealer and I'm part of a culture that doesn't love me and I'm not going to do it anymore. So the first point is rebellion is the spirit of the rebel is what it comes down to. It's so interesting because I've worked with college students forever and I say, get rid of your social media account. See how that feels. And it's like I feel alive. Not just because I'm not stuck on the social media, but because I'm a walking middle finger. I'm standing up to the man is how they feel. That's a very beautiful thing. So I have a whole section in this book about how to be a rebel. And it really gets back to my. I have a favorite philosopher, which is Ralph Waldo Emerson. And there's one essay that he wrote that everybody watching us needs to read. It's called self reliance. And you can find it in 100 places on the Internet, probably a million places on the Internet. And self reliance is this declaration of independence on how you can be an independent person, how you cannot be a sheep. And that's the first step at actually taking back your autonomy in a world that doesn't want you to be independent.
- [39:33]
Podcast Host
You know, I was thinking about it today. The woman who is now the youngest billionaire in the world.
- [39:39]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Who's that?
- [39:40]
Podcast Host
One of the founders of a company called Kalshi K A L S H I. I'm not sure how to pronounce it. And I pretty much have a point of never talking badly about entrepreneurs because I think it's an incredibly hard game and anybody building is better than somebody bur it down. And so like, I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, but it is a, it is a predictions market, which is a fancy way of saying what gambling. And
- [40:08]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
I've heard of this. I've heard about. So you can, you can bet on anything.
- [40:12]
Podcast Host
You can bet on anything.
- [40:13]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
You can bet on anything. It's offshore. Right.
- [40:15]
Podcast Host
I'm not even sure if it has, I don't know the legal ramifications, but I know that it was invested in by all the big players.
- [40:21]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Right.
- [40:21]
Podcast Host
And we have a venture capital fund. And I just think that we have to be more of a society that doesn't hate each other.
- [40:28]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah.
- [40:29]
Podcast Host
Like if, if you're that talented, where you can build a billion dollar business, should we be building it on gambling? You know, should you be going and building the next dating app that's vying for screen time, the next social media app that's vying for more attention. Or should we actually, you know, be pushing back against this idea of us becoming the, you know, milk cow sort of proverbially plugged into the milk machine? And so I thought this, this doom loop was so important because the epidemic of our attention seems to be awful. And the research that you have even shocked me. Like, just how bad do you think this epidemic of phone addiction is? And it's worse.
- [41:13]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
The average person checks their phone 205 times a day. The average kid in America under 12 spends between four and seven minutes a day in nature. Between four and seven hours a day on screens. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's insane. And here's basically what it comes down to. If this is anybody watching us, you're living in the Matrix. You're living in a simulation, a simulation of a real life where you're simulating love, maybe you're simulating sex. You're simulating progress with respect to games, you're simulating friendship on social media. You're simulating interaction at work on your zoom screen. If this is how you're doing your job. And there's a lot you can simulate, but the one thing you can't simulate is the meaning of your life. You can't simulate it. You can pass the Turing test. So it feels like it. You have the feeling of knowing, but your brain won't. Your brain says no. And you'll wonder, you know, I have so many friends and I need more friends. And you'll binge on the simulation and get more depressed and more anxious all along the way. So the whole point is kind of like in that famous movie the Matrix, where Keanu Reeves is Neo and he says, I'm going to with a small band of rebels. They break out of the Matrix and try to destroy the machine. Not because it's not pleasant. On the contrary. It's the year 2199. Everybody thinks it's 1999 because they're living in these pods and having their energy sapped by an artificial intelligence. It came true. The Matrix came true. And a lot of people watching us are in it. And you got to break out of the Matrix if you're going to live a real life. Because only a real life is a life that has real meaning. It's funny because people say, so. How is it so different in the past? Here's the difference. Your grandparents, the Sanchez, where did they live? Your Grandparents live.
- [43:10]
Podcast Host
Well, we moved here and lived in Texas. Oh, no, that's wrong. I'm in Texas now, in Arizona. So they moved to Miami, a little mining town. They were miners from Spain.
- [43:19]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Okay, Miners from Spain. And Sanchez means that they were. They're from somewhere from the Castilian heartland.
- [43:24]
Podcast Host
That's right. Yeah.
- [43:25]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
And that's a great Castilian. That's a. That's a venerable Castilian surname.
- [43:30]
Podcast Host
Well, thanks.
- [43:31]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
And there's one thing that Grandpa Sanchez never said. Honey, I had a panic attack behind the mule today because it wasn't a thing because the hypo, the hypothalamic pituitary axis, adrenal axis, the HPA axis, was not going to be suddenly, suddenly lit up by the vicissitudes of his life. He was just like working the mind. His life was pretty boring and it had a lot of things that weren't great about it. But his brain was working the way it was supposed to work. The left side was doing how and what and the right side was doing Y. And that's why he didn't have the problem. That's why there was no matrix.
- [44:12]
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- [45:39]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Exclusions apply.
- [45:40]
Home Depot Advertiser
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- [45:42]
Podcast Host
Fascinating. Yeah, I mean, we just went back there not too long ago to it's called Miami or Globe Arizona. And you know, it was fascinating watching what that town looked like. One is they were actually miners. They're copper miners. And so he would go and show me kind of what I think is called a slag pile, which is sort of all the runoff from the copper mine. And at the end of the slag pile was a little river that ran through it and a bunch of trees where they would collect walnuts that they ate from Arizona, which is not really a great idea to collect and eat walnuts and river water at the end of a slag pile from a copper mine, which is like little heavy metal in that.
- [46:20]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah.
- [46:21]
Podcast Host
And. And so a lot of him and his family got cancer because, you know, it was spread everywhere. And at the end each day, at the end of the day, they had a light show. But the light show was actually just that. The, the runoff was actually, you know, it had some like, whatever component in it that would make it light up. And so they wanted you to go inside. They do a siren. Well, they thought that was sort of the announcement of the light show, but really you were supposed to go inside and sort of not be there for
- [46:48]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
this portion of the. The radiation.
- [46:51]
Podcast Host
Exactly. And so anyway, but when I went back and saw with him where he grew up, which was kind of a little shack on the side of a hill and where he used to get the tortillas, which was in another little shack on the side of the hill, what was fascinating to me is what you said he never once said life was really hard. It was really difficult. We were barely scraping by. But when I looked at that place, I thought, holy hell, somebody inhabited it. Somebody lived there. And yet it was funny. He did this survey with me before he kind of. Now he has dementia, and so he's not quite with us. But before he really fell prey to that we did a little happiness survey. And the happiness it was at the time, it was something silly like I was looking up. I had done one online on accident, and it had told me, you have ADHD and you should get pills. And I thought, this is hysterical. I seem pretty fine. Like, maybe I'm distracted, but I don't think I need pills for it. Life's pretty good. So we're gonna. We're gonna skip that. I think I'm doing okay. And so I gave it to him and my grandma and a few other things, and they scored like two to three levels higher than my cousins and my cousins, which were his happiness and happiness. My cousins are a little bit younger than me and were, you know, grew up quite well. You know, cars, when they hit 16, college degrees, all of the things. And so I thought a bit about that. And, you know, your research is fascinating because they had everything at their fingertips, every game, every, you know, activity. And my grandpa was probably bored a lot. And you talk about this idea that boredom is actually critical for meaning and maybe happiness. Can you talk about that a little bit?
- [48:35]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah. So there's research, there's great research on boredom. And it's absolutely true. Here's the thing to keep in mind. Your grandfather, no doubt was bored a lot, but he would never. I bet you've never heard him say, you know, the problem with growing up in the shack, it was boring. He never said that his childhood was boring. But your cousins, they feel bored a lot, even though they have every device in the world to eliminate their boredom. That's a weird thing when you think about it, is the more we try to eliminate our boredom, the more boring our life gets. And the reason is because the things that we're actually doing to eliminate the normal boredom in life, what it gives us is a pathological kind of boredom. That's, you know, when you're scrolling social media, that's unbelievably boring. Your brain isn't working right. Your brain, it's painful and stressful for you to be doing that. Whereas when you're actually bored, like sitting on the train or in the car and looking out the window of the car, then what happens is your brain starts to use a set of structures called the default mode network. The default mode network is the way your brain is supposed to work. And one of the big things that you think about is the meaning of your life.
- [49:39]
Podcast Host
Life.
- [49:40]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
You start to consider the meaning of your life. That's why proper boredom is one of the protocols for finding more meaning in your Life. That's why you need time. That's one of the things that I recommend, for example, is work out without devices. Work out without headphones. Now people are listening, going, what I can't do. But that why you're distracting yourself from. Because you think your workout is boring. That's the point. You know, everybody watching us, they have their best ideas. In the shower, right? Why? Because your phone's not in there. That's why. And what happens, you get in the shower and it's kind of warm and you're kind of. And then your default mode network goes and it kind of turns on a little bit and you have these weird thoughts that. Creative thoughts and, and linked up with different things that have happened. You say, oh right, do that in the gym or take an hour long shower if you want. Right. If that's your thing you get. You'll look kind of wrinkly but you know, really clean commute without your, without even the radio commute like in silence. And have these periods of proper boredom of appropriate board. It's funny because it's not comfortable. We don't like it. We naturally have an aversion to it. And my colleague Dan Gilbert at Harvard, he's at the psychology department, He's a visionary psychologist. He's done these boredom experiments where they. Have you heard about these experiments?
- [50:58]
Podcast Host
Only one because of you.
- [50:59]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah. So they, and these, these, they, they bring these call the students into the lab because they'll do anything for 20 bucks. And they have to sit in a room alone with nothing on the walls and nothing to do and nothing to look at for 15 minutes. They can only do one thing. They have a key fob. And if they press the button on the key fob they self administer a painful electric shock. That's all they can do. It's like boredom or a shock. So a quarter of the women shock themselves and 2/3 of the dudes because men and women, right? 2/3 of the guys would prefer to shock themselves painfully. One guy shocked himself a 90 times in 15 minutes. Had to be thrown out of the experiment for being a sick and twisted freak. So it's like that's, that's not what we're looking for, sir. And he's going to win in life or who knows, it's going to be in jail. But this is a really important thing. So we have an aversion to boredom, but we need the right kind of boredom. And if we actually use our devices to distract ourselves, we get the wrong kind of boredom and no meaning no growth. And we get the pathologies that we're talking about.
- [52:09]
Podcast Host
You know, everybody says things like boredom is good and don't be so distracted.
- [52:15]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Right.
- [52:16]
Podcast Host
But I think the fascinating part about your research is once you start to practice it and do it, so I hope, you know, if you're listening, you attempt to do one thing like go to the gym and not use devices, which quite honestly I thought, thought, that sounds awful. And I like Arthur a lot, but I'm not going to do that.
- [52:33]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Try it one day a week.
- [52:34]
Podcast Host
Well, I started doing it about six months ago. And the reason why this is like a little tmi, but apparently it's for a lot of women. And like modern day humans, we have rib flares. Have you heard about this? So essentially, because we have one, we do this a lot. So we're sitting a lot and we're short breathers. We don't take long, deep breaths. We're like kind of, you know, anxious and end up breathing not through our whole diaphragm. And so because of this, all of this kind of gets like compressed and then our ribs kind of like flare out because we're not breathing properly.
- [53:06]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Interesting.
- [53:06]
Podcast Host
And so once you breathe properly, you kind of reframe your ribs and you're stacked as opposed to like a lot of women are kind of flared out. And so anyway, I got a trainer and the trainer started helping me think about how to work out. And basically what she said is that she sees most of the injuries that go wrong in working out are because people have headphones, they're not paying attention to what they're doing. And the reason that working out is good in a lot of different ways, right? Like somatic regulation. And it's that our body actually needs to release some of these stress hormones. Like animals shake like this, right? And she goes, so when working out, we're actually not releasing it. We're like doing a movement without any muscle mind connection actually at all. And we've lost a lot of body awareness. And she goes, half the reason women come to her today, her specialty is getting them to recognize when a muscle is or is not firing, which is fascinating if you think about it. We're so out of of touch with our bodies that we don't even know if one part of it is functioning or not because we're completely distracted non stop. And so now that I start working out and I do not listen to headphones, I don't listen to anything in the gym now, except if I'm on like a run or the bike or something. I might. My body's completely changed. My composition has changed. I'm not working out harder, I'm not lifting more. I'm not doing anything differently except breathing right. And paying attention.
- [54:24]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
How's it affecting your mood management?
- [54:26]
Podcast Host
Oh, completely different.
- [54:27]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
It's completely different.
- [54:28]
Podcast Host
And I don't hate going to the gym. Actually. It's counterintuitive. You would think, no, working out is terrible. You're going to hate. It hurts. And it'd be better if I could distract myself with the podcast. Then it'll be fine. But actually, what has happened is the complete opposite to me.
- [54:42]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
No, it's. And that's, that's the paradox of all these things. You know, the more that you try to wipe out your. Try to wipe out your boredom, the more bored you get, the more. And see, it's one of the things that, you know, people in podcasts are great. You have one, I have one. You know, and there's a lot of information and it's really provided a learning opportunity for people who wouldn't, who wouldn't learn things otherwise. You know, I, you know, I have a kid who doesn't like to read, for example. He knows everything in the world because of the Internet. That's, that's terrific. But the truth is, when you're using it to distract yourself, you will become more bored. And what you'll find. How do you know this? You'll know this because you're like, I don't know what to listen to in the gym. These podcasts that I have are all so boring. Now, if you actually listen to the podcast on purpose to learn something, it wouldn't be boring. But when you're using it to distract yourself, it's unbelievably boring. Isn't that ironic? And that's because our boredom is all screwed up. It's all upside down. We need to be bored more like your grandpa.
- [55:41]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I want to end on this. You speak a lot about resume achievements and eulogy achievements. And one, I guess I want to start with. You encourage people to quit soul sucking jobs and that there's a telltale sign that someone is lying to themselves about why they're staying. And I think some of it has to do with this resume versus eulogy. Can you tell us first what is a resume or a eulogy achievement? And then why do people stay in soul sucking jobs?
- [56:16]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
So resume versus eulogy virtues. This is a term that was originated by David Brooks, my friend, no relation to me, but an old friend of mine who he writes for The New York Times. And he wrote a book called the Road to Character. And in the Road to Character, he talks about your resume virtues, which is what you do to be more impressive to people while you're alive, and your eulogy virtues, which is what you'd want people to say at your funeral. And he suggests that people actually write their eulogies. Not the eulogy that you think you're going to get, but the one that you want to get. And that does not include had 5 million lifetime miles on Delta. Right. That's not, you know, nobody's going to. You don't want your kids saying that because that means your kid didn't have a relationship with you is what it comes down to. If somebody's listing your professional achievements at your funeral, it means they didn't really know you and they weren't close to you. And that's a really important thing. So the eulogy, achievements and virtues are all about love and relationships. That's really what they're about. And that requires that you actually think beyond the world's rewards. The world's rewards are money, power, pleasure, and fame. Those are the four. Those are the four things that you're always trying to get, but those are only if you're going to be happy, intermediate goals. They're instrumental goals. What you really want to get to is faith, family, friendship, and meaning through what you do to earn your daily bread. Faith, family, friends, and meaningful work. Those are the ultimate goals, not the intermediate goals. Now you can be happy with tons of money. I think it's great that people go to work and start businesses and make a fortune. That's phenomenal. But if that's your primary goal, then you're going to suffer, you're going to have trouble. And fame, by the way, is the worst because fame is the only one of the goals that you can only ever be happy in spite of. And you have to. So most people who get famous, they become less happy because of the fact that fame, which is. But everybody wants it for evolutionary reasons. Okay? So that's the whole point to keep in mind, your eulogy virtues are the things that your ultimate goals, your resume virtues are your instrumental goals. Nothing wrong with them. But those are not your ultimate stopping points. And that's why people actually stay in jobs that they actually hate, because they think they're going to be happy with the resume virtues. They think you're going to be happy. So it's like, yeah, but I don't like this, but I'm going to make a lot of Money. And when I have a lot of money, I'm going to be having happier. Why? Well, I'll be able to do more stuff. I'll have more freedom in my life. I'll have the house that I always wanted. Deep down, it's. I'm going to be more lovable. I'm going to be a more lovable individual because I have a lot more dollars in my bank account, which is complete insanity. And people don't actually think to the end of it is the way that that worked. And I've seen this a million times. I had a friend, great friend, you know, because I've been privileged to work with some of the most successful people in the world in my career. You know, I teach at hbs, right? And he's talking. I asked him, because often when you study happiness, people treat you like a psychiatrist, I bet. And I said, what was the biggest misapprehension that you had about getting rich? Because he grew up lower middle class and he wound up with billions of dollars. It's a great American success story. I said, what is the biggest mistake that you made? What did you think it was going to be like? That it wasn't like. And he thought about it and he said, said, I thought if I got really rich, that my wife would love me. And I look at his hand and there's no ring. And I said, so? And he said, she didn't. That's an example, the eulogy. Virtue is a glowing. It's the description of the relationship of your marriage by your widow and the resume. Virtue is the money that you made along the way. And it was all about his resume, virtues, and the reason he did what he did, even though he didn't really. It's funny because, you know, Scott Galloway has this really funny line. He says that you always hear in your college graduation, do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. And the speech is always being given by a donor who started an aluminum smelting company. That's true, but that's the problem, right? And that's why people who are 22 years old, they'll be like, yeah, if I could have that, be filthy rich, like the aluminum smelter guy, then I would automatically be happy. And here's the truth that I tell my students, and this makes them panic, by the way. I say, Mother Nature tells you that if you're successful in worldly terms, happiness will come automatically. Here's the truth. You need to shoot for happiness, and then you will be successful. Enough. Now they panic because the one word enough, because enough isn't enough, because there's never enough. And that's the great goal in life, is having enough love in your life, that there is enough stuff. That's the goal.
- [61:11]
Podcast Host
That's so good. I think where I want to end is this. This book is. First of all, it's incredible. I've read every one of your books by now.
- [61:20]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Thank you.
- [61:20]
Podcast Host
We have. Multiple times. Well, thank you for writing them. It's a miserable job writing a book. I know this one took you five years.
- [61:24]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
I know it's like this one took me five years because the Meaning of Life.
- [61:28]
Podcast Host
We were joking beforehand about like, I was like, thank God, you know, you're not 20 anymore with, you know, very, very handsome gentlemen. But like, you know, not, not 20, age adjusted. Well, somebody actually was on the stage the other day with a man by the name of Billy Parks, who's amazing. And he goes, I looked at my photo the other day and I thought, that's a distinguished older gentleman. And I thought, that's a great. I like that.
- [61:52]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
I know. Well, what happens is every guy, I'm 61, I'm 31 in my head, and then I look in the mirror, I go for women.
- [62:00]
Podcast Host
We stay at 24. So it's like, it's only worse for us. But, but, you know, this book is so beautiful because I think a lot of times when, first of all, when you're younger, you don't understand any of this and it sounds ridiculous and you're like, shut up, I'll figure it out after I make the money and I get the girl and I get the abs and whatever. And so like, maybe if any of this breaks through to a younger version of me or you today, what a, what a blessing. And second, you know, I love that it comes from somebody with life experience. I was telling you last time I saw you, like, you had already had three life transitions that had probably been, you know, I don't know, maybe eight or nine years since I've followed you and only four or so since I've actually known you. Or three. And, and so you've experienced all of these things, not only having researched them, but having experienced them. And like, I think it's beautiful because my joke is always like, I'd love to have the confidence of a 25 year old life coach. And I just don't. Because I just don't think, I think that's comical at that point. And so I'm glad you wrote it. And so I guess What I want to give you is I have all these things we can end with. But if you got to talk to this person today that you're trying to reach with this book, who are you trying to reach? And, like, what do you want them to hear from our conversation today and
- [63:13]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
this book of yours, I'm speaking to the person who has everything in field nothing. The person who's a striver, who's done everything right, who's played by the rules, made some mistakes, but has been playing by the rules that has been promised everything and doesn't feel what they thought they would feel. That life is busy but feels empty and they don't know what's happening. And they're starting to wonder, is this all there is? Is this it? Am I going to be chasing my tail for the rest of my life? Is this all going in circles? Is it all nonsense? Or maybe do I just have to grind a little harder? Maybe I'll feel that thing if I have another million Instagram followers. Maybe. I wrote this book to say that there is an answer to that. There's an answer that's biological, because psychology is biology. It's not your fault. It's the simulation that you've been thrust into that's number one. And number two, the answer is right there. You can break out. I mean, this book has the six ways to break out of the simulation, the six things that you can actually do that look an awful lot like Grandpa Sanchez's life, but that are extraordinary today, that are rebellious today. And to everybody who's 28 years old starting to despair, you don't have to. There is a solution. There's an absolute solution. And I'm completely convinced that it can work for every single person watching us. Your life has meaning, and you can find it.
- [64:47]
Podcast Host
Arthur Paul Brooks, thank you so much.
- [64:49]
Dr. Arthur Brooks
Thank you. C. Morning run. Level it up. TikTok has pacing tips, breathing drills, recovery hacks from 5K to marathon. Real runners, real progress. Train smarter, not longer. Download TikTok now.