Transcript
A (0:00)
We go back to my great grandfather, Leroy Brooks, from Olathe, Kansas, born in 1862. I obviously didn't know him, but I can tell you one thing. He never came back from work. At the end of the day, he said, honey, I had a panic attack behind a mule today. I wouldn't have had to write the book called the Meaning of youf Finding Purpose in an age of emptiness 100 years ago, because that's the way life was, actually. But now, you know, people are buying the book because they say, what do I do? And the answer is live like Leroy, in a way. But that requires discipline, that requires focus.
B (0:34)
From LinkedIn News, I'm Jessi Hempel, and this is hello Monday. A few years ago, I wrote a book, maybe a lot of you remember, was the big dream of my life. And I remember that publication day came and publication day went, and I don't know exactly how I was supposed to feel about the whole thing, but I know how I did feel. Kind of blah, you know, empty. I mean, maybe you have felt this way about things that were really meaningful to you, at least outwardly. So the big successful moments, you think, isn't it supposed to feel a certain way? Arthur Brooks has a name for this. He calls it the meaning gap. It's that grand, gnawing space between how any of us think we should feel in our lives and how we actually feel now. I just love talking to Arthur about this kind of stuff because as a social scientist at Harvard, he literally studies why we feel the way we feel and what we can do to feel better. His new book is called the Meaning of youf Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. And he joined me in the studio recently to break down exactly what I'm talking about, how we can find purpose and close those meaning gaps. Now, this conversation is really cool. It was recorded live originally and broadcast to premium members from our New York studio. You're gonna hear some questions from the people who were there. And if you're a LinkedIn Premium member and you wanna hear even more of it, well, you can see the extended version at the link in our show notes. Okay, here's Arthur Brooks.
A (2:14)
This is something that's on everybody's mind in the LinkedIn universe, but actually in. In the world, this is what we want. We want our lives to have meaning and purpose and significance. And let's go look.
B (2:25)
We've always wanted that. But I contend that we are at a moment where it actually feels harder than it has in the past in quite a while. To name that meaning to feel connected to that meaning. Why do you think we find ourselves here?
A (2:37)
Well, this is a big question that I've been dealing with for the past five years. I teach at the Harvard Business School, so a lot of the people who are watching us today, if you're from hbs, hello, you could have been. You know, the culture, it's. This is about hustle and grind. And that's been getting more so over the past few decades, especially when the tip of the spear has been technological. It's a great thing that we're able to talk to each other and talk to a lot of our friends using cutting edge technology. And thank God for LinkedIn. That's actually created a lot of careers, to be sure. But when we mediate our relationships fundamentally through zoom screens and social media, it does something to the way that we use our brains. In point of fact, neuroscientists are showing that when most of your relationships are mediated through technology, that you're using the wrong side of your brain, that you to understand the meaning of your life. And that's a big problem.