← Making Space with Hoda Kotb
Making Space with Hoda Kotb
Arthur C. Brooks on Building the Life You Want
00:42:05
Bestselling author, acclaimed public speaker, and Harvard Business School professor Arthur C. Brooks joins Hoda Kotb for an inspiring conversation on the science and practice of happiness. They discuss how to cultivate joy in everyday life, get unstuck during challenging times, and why happiness is not a final destination but a direction you can intentionally choose. In this conversation from March 2024, Brooks draws from his years of research into what makes life meaningful, insights that also shape his new book, The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life, out this week.
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- [00:02]
Arthur C. Brooks
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Hoda Kotb
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Arthur C. Brooks
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- [01:07]
Hoda Kotb
So often many of us find ourselves feeling stuck in our own thought patterns, our day to day routines and the in between moments of life. Well, my next guest is about to let us in on a secret that will change everything. You can get happier. That's right. Arthur C. Brooks is a best selling author, acclaimed public speaker professor at the Harvard School of Business where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness. An all around bright and brilliant human being, Arthur's work explores the art and science of getting happier and how to build the lives we want. Arthur believes that happiness is not a destination but a direction. And while life will always have ups and downs, the goal is to be able to wake up each morning grateful for the good and the bad. I couldn't wait to sit down with Arthur and soak in all the information he had to share. And let me tell you this, his words really stuck with me. The good news for all of us, greater happiness is possible. So let's get started right now. Hoda I'm Hoda Kotb. Welcome to my podcast Making Space. I'm so excited by the way that you're sitting here right now. Arthur, I adore you. We've had you on our show. I've read your books. From strength to strength. I'm into your whole vibe and I just wanna start off with this thing because I'm feeling like I'm in a dead sprint and a little depleted.
- [02:48]
Arthur C. Brooks
Are you?
- [02:49]
Hoda Kotb
And I feel like I'm a happy person.
- [02:50]
Arthur C. Brooks
I can tell that you are.
- [02:52]
Hoda Kotb
I feel like that's inside. But I do think that often we are trying to Accomplish goals. And we think at the end of a long day full of goal accomplishment, we'll be happy when we close our eyes. We've done a lot, but what. Let's just start with the happiness concept first.
- [03:08]
Arthur C. Brooks
Well, to begin with, that's a misconception that we have is called the arrival fallacy. Believe it or not, in my profession as a social scientist, we have a word. Well, we have a word for everything because somebody has to get tenure somehow. But the arrival fallacy is the idea that if I enjoy making progress towards something, when I hit that goal, it'll be pure bliss. And that's one of the great sources of disappointment in people's lives because you get to that particular goal and then, huh, Right. I got that number in my bank account, I got that car that I had saved up money for. I finally got to my wedding day. Whatever happens to be. And they feel sort to let down. And the reason is because we're made for progress. And so what we need to design our lives toward is intention with that attachment. One of the great sources of happiness is recognizing that we should have goals and we should make progress toward them. But you can't be attached to the goals per se. You have to have intention toward them and always be making progress in your life. That's why you get to whatever it happens to be, the bonus or the promotion or the raise or whatever you happen to get. Or, by the way, a number on a scale which a lot of people find that there's a weird thing, something like 30% of people that go on strange diets, like really restrictive diets, about 30% wind up with an eating disorder at the end. And the reason is because it goes down and that feels good. And it goes down and feels good. And they get to the goal and they're like, oh, so now my reward is I never get to eat what I like ever again for the rest of my life.
- [04:31]
Hoda Kotb
Right?
- [04:31]
Arthur C. Brooks
That's horrible. That's horrible. So they wind up with pathological behavior.
- [04:35]
Hoda Kotb
So how do you attain happiness? Or is it something you attain?
- [04:39]
Arthur C. Brooks
Well, you don't attain happiness because happiness is a direction, it's not a destination. That's what Oprah and I wrote about. We talked about happy. That's her word, you know.
- [04:46]
Hoda Kotb
Say it again.
- [04:47]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yes, happierness. So their goal is progress. And we can all make progress with knowledge and commitment and habit and love and sharing. We can all get happier. Every single person that's watching and listening to us right now can be happier. But you have to understand what you're trying to do and make some commitments is what it comes down to.
- [05:05]
Hoda Kotb
How much of it is just DNA. Like, I felt like my mom woke up sort of like, look at a beautiful day. And I'm like, I see clouds, but look down there, I see some sun. Like, she was that person. And I think, like, I sometimes feel about my children, when I'm happy, they're happy. And when I come home stressed, I can feel like I've just changed the temperature in the place. I mean, how much of it is just reflective of who you happen to be around?
- [05:32]
Arthur C. Brooks
Well, some of it. So basically, there's a metabolism for happiness. Just like there's a metabolism for what you eat and metabolism for calories depends on your genetics and your circumstances and your habits. Same thing is true for happiness. Now, I don't mean happiness really in the cosmic sense. I mean the mood balance, you know, how much positive and negative you're feeling at any particular time. And we all sit at a particular place and we sit at different places depending on the intensity of the emotions that we experience. And what you find is that mood balance. Where you wake up, where you tend to. That's about 50% genetic, it's about 25% circumstantial. And the rest is your habits.
- [06:09]
Hoda Kotb
Your habits is your habits.
- [06:10]
Arthur C. Brooks
The habits really are what matter the most. Because you can manage your genetics with good habits, but you gotta know your genetics and you can give yourself systematically better circumstances. You can get better luck, quite frankly, if you have good habits. Yeah, for sure. So this is the key to think about it so that if you have gloomy parents, I mean, then you're gonna be a little gloomier, but that means you have to pay more attention. It's kind of like if both your parents drink too much, you shouldn't drink alcohol, right? Because. And that's your habits that are intervening so that it's not 50% alcoholism, not 50% genetic. It can be 0% genetic if it's 100% habits, which is why you gotta know yourself and you gotta say, oh, why am I bummed? Well, maybe you have, you know, good old bummed out stock is what it comes down to. In which case you need to have better habits. And you can absolutely have better habits that will systematically raise your baseline circumstances are what's going on around you. But that doesn't matter as much as habits either.
- [07:03]
Hoda Kotb
I feel like sometimes, like when I bite into a piece of chocolate cake and I get that.
- [07:08]
Arthur C. Brooks
That feeling, the endorphin rush.
- [07:10]
Hoda Kotb
Oh, man, it's like pleasure, like to the max degree. And, you know, it doesn't last long, but I feel like there are a lot of those pleasurable things that I feel like if I do enough of those things during the course of the day, and I think I even do that with my kids. Not even, now that I mention it, it's like, oh, let's go get an ice cream. And then they have it. They're like, It's a great 15 minutes. And then after that, they go back to their usual state.
- [07:34]
Arthur C. Brooks
For sure, that has to happen. That's called homeostasis. Homeostasis means going back to your baseline and you have to. So if you elevate your mood from anything that you eat or drink or look at or experience, you gotta go back to your baseline so you're ready for the next thing. That's how Mother Nature design. Because you can't be sitting permanently thrilled about an ice cream cone. I mean, if that had happened, then our ancestors wouldn't have made it off the Pleistocene. It would have been a big problem. So the result is that trying to jump from thing to thing to thing to thing to stay permanently higher is a hugely misbegotten strategy toward life. It's a huge problem. There are little thrills. That's true. The whole point is to recognize that your life has ups and downs, that you're a full person, that you're not trying to eradicate your negative emotions, because quite frankly, you'd be dead if you did that. You need to be fully alive and learn how to make progress over time and be thankful for all the experiences that you have. So the goal is to be able to wake up in the morning and say, you know, I don't know what this day is going to bring, but I've decided I'm going to be thankful for the good and the bad. The good's going to be a thrill. The bad, I'm going to learn from it. And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful in advance for that, even though I know I'm not going to like it.
- [08:43]
Hoda Kotb
Yeah, most of I was. You know, I was thinking about moving. My kids and I are going to move somewhere to a new school. And I was reflecting on my life and how many times we moved. And I was. And I remember once my parents moved us to Nigeria. I was in fourth grade. I was horrified. Like, we get to this place. The language was different. Everybody seemed different. And it was hard. I moved again in sixth grade. It's so funny because the stories I tell now as an adult are the stories of how I endured or what I did to cope. Yet at the same time as I'm preparing my kids, I feel like I'm trying to protect them from things that they should probably be into.
- [09:21]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, no, it's. We have a hard time being honest with ourselves and our kids. And so we want to, we want to convince them somehow that it's going to be all good and no bad. And yet the truth is it's going to be both. 100% chance it's going to be both and it's going to be more bad than good at the beginning and then the ratio is going to change. And by the way, I talk about this with my students a lot. So my students are all in the market right now. I teach MBA students in a business school and they're, they're six months from now, they're all going to be in new cities, all in new jobs and they're mortified, they're so afraid because they know they're going to be lonely. I say that's true. That's absolutely true. So here's how you do it. Here's the strategy. When you move to a new place, pretend you've lived there for 10 years already. Just pretend like an Academy Award winning performance. And the way that you do that is like. So when I got there and I invited people over, as soon as my furniture arrived, I met some people and invited them over for dinner as if I had lived here for 10 years and they were the new people. I started a Bible study in the first month or a book club in the first month. I did that thing that you would do if you'd lived there for a long time. It's a complete game changer because you speed up the clock. The truth is, it's hard when you're at the very beginning. Your brain is a little bit out of whack, right?
- [10:29]
Hoda Kotb
Getting your sea legs.
- [10:30]
Arthur C. Brooks
Hormonally, you've actually changed. When you change your habitat, you go into a new cave, you move to a new cave. The new cave is not familiar, is the way that it works. And you expect it to be great because you moved for a reason. You move because you wanted to do it. And yet you feel a little bit of grief. If you change jobs and careers and homes all at once. It has the same mental impact as losing a member of your immediate family to death. And so you're literally feeling grief. There's a sense of loss that you're feeling part of the brain that's actually Illuminated that we can actually see in studies. The trouble is that, you know, it was a good thing. And so you have this dissonance. It's like I'm feeling grief, but everybody's congratulating me because I got this new job or something wonderful has happened to me. And you don't know how to cope with that.
- [11:14]
Hoda Kotb
So you have to understand, like a death, like a.
- [11:17]
Arthur C. Brooks
Like it's like. It's like feeling a death, but you don't understand why you feel so crummy when things are actually objectively.
- [11:21]
Hoda Kotb
You know what's funny? That's so funny you're saying all this because when I started out in this news business, I got my first job in Greenville, Mississippi, that lasted six months. And then I got a job in Moline, Illinois that lasted two years. And I moved to Fort Myers and to New Orleans and here.
- [11:35]
Arthur C. Brooks
Military. Yeah.
- [11:36]
Hoda Kotb
And each time I moved, I had a head game that I played. It wasn't this game which would have been a lot better. My game was I decided I was gonna fall in love with three things. I was gonna fall in love with a restaurant, with a friend, and meet a guy who I would love for that time, a temporary boyfriend. But I remembered saying, I'm falling in love. Like I decided I was gonna fall in love. And Greenville, Mississippi at that time was a very racially divided place. I mean, they sent me, by the way, they were offering up stories and they said, these are the four stories. One's the Rotary Club. And I go, I'll do the Rotary Club. Cause I was a one man band. They said, oh, you can't go. I said, why? I want to do it. No, no, no, you can't go.
- [12:20]
Arthur C. Brooks
Trust me, they won't.
- [12:21]
Hoda Kotb
And I said, I'm going to the Rotary Club. So I went to the Rotary Club and I tried to do interviews and no one would talk to me. And I didn't want to come back with nothing. So I took my mic, I planted it on the podium where whoever speaker was coming up was going to have to talk into that mic and. And I sat back and I watched them talking to my mic. And I came back with my stuff and my boss said, how was the Rotary Club? I said, it was great.
- [12:47]
Arthur C. Brooks
I got content.
- [12:48]
Hoda Kotb
You got something? Oh, yeah, yeah. I acted like it was a total nothing. But I think for me it was like, I try to tell my kids this. It's like sometimes you do get to choose happiness or unhappiness. You get to choose, you know, well.
- [13:01]
Arthur C. Brooks
You can act the way you Want to feel. That's a very famous principle in psychology called the as if principle. Act the way you want to feel, and then you will. And part of the reason is because you can fool your brain. So your brain says that I'm going to act happy when I feel happy. And it turns out if you act happy, then you will feel happy. Oh, there's a great technique, by the way, you can teach your girls.
- [13:19]
Hoda Kotb
What's that?
- [13:20]
Arthur C. Brooks
So there was a French physiologist in the late 19th century named Duchenne. And Duchenne had this idea. He wanted to know what smile is associated with true happiness. Because people smile in different ways, like, thanks for flying United. And, you know, it's not happiness per se. So he traveled all around the world, and he finds that there's one smile that's associated with true happiness. You have it. It's called the Duchenne smile. He named it after himself, which is awesome, right? And it doesn't involve the mouth. It involves two sets of muscles called the zygomatic major and orbicularis oculi muscles. It's the top of the cheeks, and it's the corner of the eyes. And so people who are 80 years old and have very pronounced crow's feet, they've been happy a lot. That's how you know, right? That's how you know. And that's why when you see, like, an old woman or man who's got these pronounced crow's feet out, makes you feel happy to look at them. Because it's. It's. Your mirror neurons are actually making you feel happy just by looking at that association. Okay, so what you want to do is simulate. And the way to do. The only way to do it is you put a pencil between your teeth, like, crosswise, horizontally, and grip with your molars and kind of bite down, not too hard. Don't hurt your teeth or break the pencil, but for, like, 20 seconds, and you'll feel happier for an hour.
- [14:30]
Hoda Kotb
Wait, what I don't understand.
- [14:31]
Arthur C. Brooks
Because you're running the causality backwards. And so what happens is that will scrunch up these muscles in the corner of your eye, and your brain says, oh, obviously, Hoda's happy.
- [14:42]
Hoda Kotb
Wait, for real?
- [14:43]
Arthur C. Brooks
For real. It actually works. There's a bunch of good studies on this, and it really works if you try it for yourself. So when you first get there, and your little girls are like, mama, I don't know anybody. Okay, get out the pencils, girls.
- [14:55]
Hoda Kotb
So they bite on the pencil, and.
- [14:56]
Arthur C. Brooks
It'S super funny, too. And you look in the mirror. You don't have to look in the mirror, but you look in the mirror, it's even funnier. And you're doing this, and it's coming out of your mouth this way, and all three are like. And you feel better.
- [15:08]
Hoda Kotb
You know what? I feel like A lot of our kids, since we're talking about kids for a second, are kind of becoming neurotic. I'm speaking of my own kids. And I feel like, you know, life is full of, you know, do you want the blueberries or the raspberries? And, you know, we were talking about how parenting used to be. We did what we were told, but often we stuffed our feelings down and felt terrible. Often, like, I remember, I wasn't allowed to stomp up the stairs.
- [15:32]
Arthur C. Brooks
No.
- [15:32]
Hoda Kotb
I would scream into a pillow when my parents. Because there was no yelling. You can't have this. You can't have that. So we stuffed it down. But acclimating in the real world was simple because I had. You know, I assumed that life was gonna be like that, so when it was better, I liked it. I just am concerned that the way we're kind of raising up this generation of kids, they're not really strong enough to navigate.
- [15:54]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah. Well, part of it is that we grew up in a time where the belief was that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. So our parents would expose us to resistance. They would expose us to these relatively hard things, understanding that that would make us more resilient. That would make us stronger. The main change thinking is that what doesn't kill you makes you weaker. And this is a big problem. And so the idea is, if something hurts your feelings, then that makes you weaker than it did before. That's exactly wrong. I mean, it's just tons of research and common sense. Yes.
- [16:22]
Hoda Kotb
Yes.
- [16:23]
Arthur C. Brooks
I mean, it's like everybody. Anybody who's, you know, over 50 years old is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But this is what schools are doing today, and it's a big mistake, and I understand that. I want to be tender and lovely to my kids, too. You know, my. You know, My kids are 25, 23, and 20, and my wife and I are sitting around at home talking about their feelings. It's like that. My parents had zero conversations about Arthur's feelings. It's like it never came up. Right. And so we catch ourselves, and sometimes my little girl, Marina, and she's adopted, like your daughters, and ever since she was little, because she had health problems and things, and so there was special Concerns and those kinds of things. And every time we catch ourselves. Do you think she's happy today? I'll text her and say, mom and I are talking about your feelings again. She's like, ha, ha, ha, ha ha. Because she knows how ridiculous that is.
- [17:07]
Hoda Kotb
When you have a daughter who had some special needs. Someone said to me, cause I have a daughter who has some special needs too. And they said, don't put your worry on her. And I'm not doing it on purpose.
- [17:19]
Arthur C. Brooks
But you're a mom.
- [17:20]
Hoda Kotb
I know. And I'm trying hard though, because I don't want. Cause I know how people look at me. I was diagnosed with breast cancer years ago. I know the look I got. I hated the look.
- [17:30]
Arthur C. Brooks
You don't wanna be a victim. You don't wanna be victim. People treat victims differently. And your parents treating you like a victim.
- [17:35]
Hoda Kotb
Right. That's what I'm trying to figure out. How to navig. I want to make sure she's good, but at the same time, 90% of the time, there's nothing to worry about.
- [17:44]
Arthur C. Brooks
Right. So here's the deal. Empowerment comes from admiration, not from pity.
- [17:48]
Hoda Kotb
Say that again.
- [17:49]
Arthur C. Brooks
Admiration, not pity, actually leads to empower empowerment. Nobody's empowered by pity. People are empowered by admiration. Victims are not admired, they're pitied. I mean, these are normal human emotions. These are the reactions that we have toward other people. And so the result is one of the greatest ways that we can take away the dignity from other people is to treat them like victims. And the worst way that people can take away their own dignity is to define their identity in terms of their victimhood. Now I get it. Bad things are happening and certain people are exposed to different. Life isn't fair. I totally get that. We gotta fight for that and help other people as much as we can. But pity and victimhood are the wrong route. If we believe in the equal dignity of all people, and it really starts with our kids, it's hard to do. It's actually hard to do. But you know, when you're. Can you imagine? It's like one of the things that I do with my students is they're often very afraid of failure. Because these are very high achieving students and they haven't failed. Right. And they're so afraid of it that they often won't take risk. They won't date sometimes cause they're too afraid of being rejected. They're very afraid of what's gonna happen in the job market or they won't take risk is the big problem. So I take Em. Through an exposure therapy that makes them imagine failing and doing it, they become well. So little by little by little, I think I make them spend two minutes on each stage. For the first is, I think that my fellow students are doing better than me. Where did that come from? Then the second is, I'm just not living up to the grades that I thought I was going to get, and I'm actually on academic probation. And the third is I'm going to graduate, but I'm not doing very well in the job market. I'm not getting the interviews I thought I would. And it proceeds to. And step six is, I think my parents feel sorry for me. And that's when they cry. Why? Cause they don't wanna be pitied by the people whose admiration they want most in life. And so this is a lesson for you and me as parents.
- [19:39]
Hoda Kotb
Yes.
- [19:40]
Arthur C. Brooks
How can we honestly admire our kids?
- [19:43]
Hoda Kotb
Yes. And let me tell you something. My littlest, she is so brave and strong. And I tell her that all the time. And I. Sometimes I do a whole thing, like, I am brave. I am. Like. She puts her hand on her heart and she knows she is. And today, in fact, she said, I couldn't believe this.
- [20:00]
Arthur C. Brooks
She's four.
- [20:01]
Hoda Kotb
And she said, I know I'm enough. This is what she said. I know I'm enough because my mom loves me.
- [20:09]
Arthur C. Brooks
How old is she? Four. Not bad.
- [20:10]
Hoda Kotb
I'm telling you, this girl is otherworldly. It's like from another. It's from another galaxy.
- [20:15]
Arthur C. Brooks
She was sent to you for a reason.
- [20:17]
Hoda Kotb
She was sent to me for a reason. Is that so crazy?
- [20:20]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I actually believe that. That we are. That our children choose us. Yeah. I mean, there's a real reason for this. And they come into our lives for a particular reason. It's funny because, you know, we always. We're such strivers, you know, trying to do all these amazing things, and we're seeking something better. Seeking something better. And the moment of liberty, the moment of freedom for us comes when we realize that we're sought. That's the moment by our friends, by God, for our kids. We're sought.
- [20:59]
Hoda Kotb
Okay. That's a lot.
- [21:01]
Arthur C. Brooks
That's a lot.
- [21:02]
Hoda Kotb
That was beautiful.
- [21:03]
Arthur C. Brooks
Oh, my God.
- [21:04]
Hoda Kotb
That's so true. I never thought of that.
- [21:06]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah.
- [21:07]
Hoda Kotb
Like, I've never thought of that.
- [21:08]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah.
- [21:09]
Hoda Kotb
Oh, my gosh. That's so beautiful.
- [21:12]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, I know. It's a game changer. It's a game changer for me. And it's so hard, too. Right Then I'm going out on the hunt again. I'm going out on the hunt again. Yeah, right.
- [21:19]
Hoda Kotb
Yeah. Oh my God. That's so beautiful. That's really something. Coming up, Arthur explains the spiritual aspect of happiness and why he believes many of us are afraid of stillness. Stay with us.
- [21:45]
Arthur C. Brooks
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Hoda Kotb
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Arthur C. Brooks
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Hoda Kotb
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Arthur C. Brooks
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- [22:16]
Hoda Kotb
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- [22:47]
Arthur C. Brooks
The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is coming to Hulu and hulu on Disney August 20th. In 2007, Amanda Knox was halfway around the world studying abroad in Italy. She had no idea her dream would.
- [23:00]
Hoda Kotb
Turn into a nightmare inspired by the.
- [23:03]
Arthur C. Brooks
Actual events of her wrongful conviction and 15 year fight for freedom. Watch the Hulu original series the Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox on August 20th. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers Terms apply.
- [23:23]
Hoda Kotb
The spirit part of happiness, the spiritual part of happiness, I think is so just important in every way. I know you go to Mass every day. I do wrote I think with CNBC or somewhere like you do you during that time. But that time is important whether you spend it at mass or in your own private translation.
- [23:42]
Arthur C. Brooks
You know, we live with this. Mother Nature says pay attention to the little psychodrama of your life. You know, my job, my career, my money, my me, me, me. It's so boring. So boring. And if you can transcend it to make yourself small, then if you can make the universe big and you small, you finally get peace. And you gotta have peace. Otherwise you'll just. It's like you're a ball in a pinball machine. Yes. And we set ourselves up for that, because we're so afraid of peace, we're so afraid of idleness, you know, we're afraid of the stillness because then what am I gonna see? What am I gonna realize if I'm that quiet?
- [24:18]
Hoda Kotb
What do you do in your. I know you go to mass and you listen, but what goes on inside of you during that, your private spiritual time?
- [24:26]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, so I wake up before dawn every day. I know you do too, because I have to.
- [24:33]
Hoda Kotb
You have a choice.
- [24:34]
Arthur C. Brooks
But you know, in the Hindu religion, in ancient Vedic wisdom, there's a term called Brahmaputra and. Brahmaputra. Brahmamutra. Excuse me. Which is the. It's called the Creator's time. It's an hour and a half before sunrise. And for the longest time, for thousands of years, the Hindus have said this is a time of sort of acute knowledge and attention. In other words, you're aware, you have still awareness. But what we found more recently is that when you can have calm awareness, that's when the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are both simultaneously engaged. It's very difficult to do this under any other circumstances. Early in the morning we can actually use that time. I get up very early, I exercise hard, I don't listen to neuroscience or something. I'm actually trying to engage with, you know, myself, what I can actually do. And then I, then I go to mass. And the reason is body and soul, body and soul. And so by the time the sun is coming up, I'm ready to go, I'm ready to go. I don't have my coffee until then at least. There's a lot of neuroscience on this too. Don't drink coffee within the first couple hours after you wake up. Oh, that'll prevent the crash in the afternoon, just as a practical matter. But also never use coffee to wake up. You should wake up to the world. Use coffee for focus. Okay, that's fine, but not for waking up. That's a really important thing.
- [25:53]
Hoda Kotb
Do you meditate or.
- [25:55]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, every night before I go to bed, my wife and I, we pray the rosary, which is an ancient thousand year old Catholic meditation. A repetitive meditation has exactly the same neurocognitive effects as vipassana meditation inside your.
- [26:08]
Hoda Kotb
Body when that happens.
- [26:09]
Arthur C. Brooks
And so the whole point is first thing in the morning when I go to mass. And this works in any religious tradition. I'm not going to say, I mean this is not a metaphysical point, this is just really a neuroscientific point that what happens is that you can turn your life over to. You can submit to the will. You can submit to the holy will. And to say every day, which I do, when I wake up and when I'm in mass, I say, thy will be done. And I trust you. I trust you because you're seeking me. And I gotta believe it in those particular moments. And then at the end of the day, too, it's like, I offered this up. Some of it I liked, and some of it I didn't. And my wife and I pray together. And that's, of course, the most intimate thing in partnerships is, you know, a lot of couples, they have a lot of intimacy, but they don't pray together.
- [27:01]
Hoda Kotb
That's interesting.
- [27:02]
Arthur C. Brooks
They don't meditate together because that's just a little weird. Yeah.
- [27:06]
Hoda Kotb
Do you think? What do you think? Cause I did think that prayer and meditation were sort of solo journeys. They're not.
- [27:11]
Arthur C. Brooks
Well, they don't have to be.
- [27:12]
Hoda Kotb
They don't have to be.
- [27:13]
Arthur C. Brooks
I write a lot about metacognition, which is the set of techniques where you understand your own thinking, where you're aware of yourself, where the most human part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, is actually paying attention to what's going on in the limbic system, which is the more animal part that creates your emotions. There's lots of ways to do that, journaling and therapy and all kinds of things like that. But one of the best ways to do that is prayer and meditation. And the most powerful way to do that is called joint metacognition, where you're with your daughter or you're with your partner, or you're with somebody that you really, really love, your very best friend has to be somebody super close to you. And you get kind of an amalgamated brain. And what you're doing is you're discussing very, very intimate things that are emanating from your limbic system. So what you find is that a couple that can be married for a long time, and they'll never really talk about what's happening with their emotions. They'll only talk about their reactions a lot of the time. But when sometimes you say, we're feeling this thing. What does this mean? And then you kind of wire your batteries together, and it's one plus one equals nine.
- [28:17]
Hoda Kotb
Oh, that's neat.
- [28:18]
Arthur C. Brooks
When you do this kind of thing, and it's an incredibly intimate way to do it. Now, you can do that intellectually, but my wife and I, we do that by praying together every night in the meditative prayer. Yeah.
- [28:27]
Hoda Kotb
So you have. You told me how you open your day and you close it and what happens in the. In between, what are you doing?
- [28:33]
Arthur C. Brooks
Some days are better than others. So it's a, you know, my life, like your life, is busy. And most of the people watching us are really, really busy people. Most busyness is really interesting. Most busyness is self imposed because we're so terrified of idleness. So there's a very interesting study that I've just been writing about. It's been blowing my mind. Let me tell you about it. It's an interesting new academic study that says that when you're too idle or too busy, you're less happy than you should be.
- [29:00]
Hoda Kotb
It'll create too idle or too busy.
- [29:01]
Arthur C. Brooks
Too idle or too busy, you're bored or you're crazy is what it comes down to. So then the question is, what's the sweet spot? How busy should you be? Turns out that on average, I mean, this is across the population. Right. I mean, your results may differ. As they say in the drug ads that it's about nine and a half hours of discretionary time in an average working day, total between waking up and going to bed. That's a lot. Most people have 1.8 hours of discretionary time. In other words, we're getting it wrong. And the reason is when you look at the studies that we're voluntarily making ourselves busier than we need to be and we fritter away the time that would be discretionary on dumb things. Things like what we have to do.
- [29:43]
Hoda Kotb
Tell me.
- [29:43]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah. Scrolling the emails we really don't have to answer or God forbid, scrolling social media and doing things that we don't really need to do.
- [29:51]
Hoda Kotb
Yes.
- [29:51]
Arthur C. Brooks
And so the reason for that is because we're way more afraid of idleness than we are of busyness. Way more afraid of. We're really, really afraid of stillness. Stillness is scary for a lot of people because you're just. It's like, it's like I am still. It's like just me there alone with Arthur. Yeah. What are we going to do? It's a kind of a tense relationship. So that's the key. So that's one of the other reason over the course of the day to find stillness. And so when I'm really in the zone in the middle of the day, I'll find serious time for prayer. I'll find some serious time for prayer. I don't always make it.
- [30:23]
Hoda Kotb
And how much time do you do? Section off for work? And how do you know when it's enough?
- [30:28]
Arthur C. Brooks
Well, my work, like your work, is based on ideas and so. And a lot of it's really creative. So I have to write. I mean, I have a column in the Atlantic and I'm writing books all the time. And you know, ideas are what I do. So I need uninterrupted time for actual deep creative work every day. And so I set. I set it up so my brain chemistry is optimized for the biggest focused period of creative work, which is when, for almost everybody's, the morning. You need the Brahma mutra.
- [30:54]
Hoda Kotb
Right.
- [30:55]
Arthur C. Brooks
And you need to actually have physical activity. You need something to set you up appropriately and then the soul, which is really important. That's one of the reasons I don't drink my caffeine until about 7. I get back from mass usually around 7:20 in the morning and the coffee machine is going right.
- [31:12]
Hoda Kotb
But I haven't.
- [31:13]
Arthur C. Brooks
I get up at 4:45, no coffee. So that's.
- [31:17]
Hoda Kotb
Your first cup isn't coming till then.
- [31:18]
Arthur C. Brooks
Exactly. Right. And then I hit that after doing all this. And I get three straight hours of actual concentration. So the caffeine is actually helping to bring dopamine into my prefrontal cortex, which is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's what we do in my profession. But basically what that means is that I'm getting the intense, the neurochemical focus that I need appropriate to the work that I'm doing. And that's when I. That's what. So between eight and.
- [31:40]
Hoda Kotb
Are you eating breakfast? Are you still.
- [31:41]
Arthur C. Brooks
A little bit, yeah. And I have a very high protein breakfast. 50 grams of protein, but relatively low calorie.
- [31:46]
Hoda Kotb
Okay.
- [31:47]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah. So that I'm clear. Because you eat a whole bunch of carbohydrates first thing in the morning and terrible.
- [31:52]
Hoda Kotb
Oh, I know the feeling. Do you do a cold plunge?
- [31:53]
Arthur C. Brooks
I don't do cold plunging. And part of the reason is because, well, you know, I'm turning 60 this year.
- [31:59]
Hoda Kotb
It's a good year.
- [32:01]
Arthur C. Brooks
But the other. I think there's a lot of research still to be done. Some people really, really like it. I'm a little concerned about spiking my stress hormones, my cortisol levels.
- [32:11]
Hoda Kotb
Yeah.
- [32:12]
Arthur C. Brooks
And it's not that I'm worried about premature aging, but I'm not sure I want to just think I'm jumping that day or two before I actually do that. Are you doing that?
- [32:20]
Hoda Kotb
I did it once. What's your day? And I did it for two and a half minutes. I did feel weirdly energized for a long. For like a couple of hours after it was more than coffee. So I was surprised that that was the feeling. I mean, I don't like cold anything. I don't like a cold shower. I like a hot shower. So when I did it, I did it with Jenna. We went downtown somewhere and sat in one for, like, two and a half minutes, and that was it. But it did give me. It gave me a lot. My heart was pounding. And the guy kept saying, just breathe through it.
- [32:49]
Arthur C. Brooks
Breathe through it.
- [32:50]
Hoda Kotb
But you're right about the spiking, because your body's like, what the hell are you doing to me right now?
- [32:54]
Arthur C. Brooks
Totally. The neuromodulator activity is very intense and very acute. And so dopamine goes through the roof for a good long time. Stress hormones are very high. And maybe it's fine. I mean, we're gonna know soon enough because everybody's doing it. And so there's gonna be a lot of research coming out on it soon enough. Ordinarily, what I do with a lot of these things, whether it's new way, new ways of thinking. I like to let studies age a little bit to make sure they're replicated and all that. And I don't want to do anything that seems a little fat. Not to say that it's faddish. I don't want us to get a million pieces of mail saying, you know, but you get the point. I'm waiting a little bit.
- [33:29]
Hoda Kotb
So just back to kids for just one second, because I think people listening really want something concrete that they can do with their kids when it comes to. Look, here's an example. I was at a birthday party. My youngest was the youngest at the party. It was for first graders. She's in pre K. It's at a big gymnastics things for grownups, like where Simone Biles would be. And the parents are all up in this pen. We can't see. We can't go down there, which is fine. Hope is, you know, is working on her strength. So I'm, you know, keyed into Hope. I see her clawing her way up the vault. The lady's not helping her. She falls down four times. I'm watching. My heart's like, boom, boom, boom, boom. She finally claws her way up. I see her standing on top of the vault, and I know that she doesn't like to jump. I'm watching her look around, and she flings herself into this big vat of all those squishy brick things. It was huge. And she gets buried underneath, and she claws her way out. I'm crying because she did it. I can't believe she did it.
- [34:25]
Arthur C. Brooks
And as I crying with happiness.
- [34:26]
Hoda Kotb
Yes, with happiness. I couldn't believe it. I was so overjoyed. And I thought to myself, had I been there.
- [34:32]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, you wouldn't have lied about it.
- [34:33]
Hoda Kotb
I bet you she wouldn't have done it. Because either I would have given her the. Oh or. And without meaning to or. Cause you know, I'm looking out for her. So I feel like sometimes we're trying so hard to protect. So all the kids came up to where the parents were and it was like, you want your water, baby? You want this? And everyone's swarming the kids. And I'm watching this in slow motion thinking like, this is a perfect example of what I'm doing wrong and witnessing it myself.
- [34:53]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, I know people do this a lot. And we can protect our kids better than we ever been able to before. And a lot of that's good. I mean, think about. We were just like rolling around in the back of a station wagon with the back window open in traffic.
- [35:10]
Hoda Kotb
People flicking cigarettes out there.
- [35:11]
Arthur C. Brooks
Oh, I know, the early 70s or the mid-70s. I was doing this 11 years. I was doing a paper route in my lower middle class neighborhood in Seattle. And it was a serial killer had been in that neighborhood. And I remember my mom, my mom was like, should we let Arthur. It was like 4:30 in the morning by myself. And my mom's like, should we let Arthur do this paper route? I mean, is it safe with these serial killers about? And my dad, he had a PhD in biostatistics, right? And my dad's like, well, you know, I've looked at the data and I've concluded that Arthur is not in a serial killer's core demographic. So I think we should let him keep the route. My mom's like, not buying it.
- [35:50]
Hoda Kotb
Not buying it.
- [35:50]
Arthur C. Brooks
I'm not buying it at all. And finally my dad, he's looking out for my interest because I had a lot of pocket money. That was awesome. So then he said, well, think about it this way. Even the weirdos have to sleep sometime. And they let me keep the route. They did? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was a different time. But now it's like, now we don't let our kids get anything. She might get a sliver, right? She might get a sliver.
- [36:10]
Hoda Kotb
Yeah.
- [36:11]
Arthur C. Brooks
So we went through this thing with my daughter. The same thing. I mean, it was. Was. I remember her jumping in the pit, by the way, and the bigger danger is the bacteria in the pit. Oh, I know, but that's not the point. How many Kids have been in that pit anyway, that she wanted to actually do gymnastics after she did that thing, and she did it, and she broke bones.
- [36:29]
Hoda Kotb
Oh, wow.
- [36:30]
Arthur C. Brooks
She was the Maryland State champ in three sports.
- [36:33]
Hoda Kotb
My gosh.
- [36:33]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah. Yeah. As a little kid, I mean, she's. I mean, she's little amazing, but she's super athletic and the whole thing.
- [36:39]
Hoda Kotb
Yeah. So tell me.
- [36:40]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, And. And that set her up to want to have adventures. And so here's the weird thing.
- [36:45]
Hoda Kotb
Wait, she's breaking her bones? Were you like, oh, well, just keep going, sweetie.
- [36:48]
Arthur C. Brooks
Well, yeah, I mean, it was. I didn't say drop out. I said, what do you want to do, honey? She said, I want to heal and get back in there. Okay. And that was very. I have to say, somewhere between my general inclination and my parents, rail to rail. So then it was interesting because that set her up to be kind of a. She's not a risk taker, but she wants adventures. Yes.
- [37:13]
Hoda Kotb
That's what we want.
- [37:14]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah. Yeah. And when she was 18, I said, what do you want for your 18th birthday? And she said, I want to go skydiving. I want to jump out of a plane. I'm like, I don't know. And then she said, with you. Oh, geez.
- [37:26]
Hoda Kotb
Did you do it?
- [37:27]
Arthur C. Brooks
We did it. On her 18th birthday, we did it.
- [37:29]
Hoda Kotb
Oh, my God, you're such a good dad.
- [37:31]
Arthur C. Brooks
It was so fun.
- [37:32]
Hoda Kotb
But how did you raise someone who wanted to do those things? Like, that's that in between part.
- [37:38]
Arthur C. Brooks
I don't know. I mean, some kids have a tendency to take more risk. I mean, she saw her older brother. Her older brother's a maniac, and he was a sniper in the Marine Corps, and he likes danger is the whole point. So she saw that, and she might wind up in the military herself, as a matter of fact, because she wants to outrank her brother. I think it's really what it comes down to. And some kids are more risk taking than others. But the whole point is that we shouldn't suppress their sense of adventure. And the best way for us to not suppress it is to jump in and take scary adventures ourselves, not risks, because we're adults and we actually have prudential judgment about these things. But to say, okay, does it make me a little nervous to do it for me, too? Let's do that. Yeah, I'll do that.
- [38:19]
Hoda Kotb
Oh, that's cool.
- [38:19]
Arthur C. Brooks
And do that and have the adventure ourselves and have the kids see us a little scared and doing it anyway. Because here's the thing. We don't want fearless kids we want courageous kids. Fearlessness is a pathology. Something like 26% of people don't feel fear sufficiently and they're terrible leaders. They will lead you into battle and you'll get shocked shot. These are the worst CEOs. They'll run your company out of business and you'll wind up going bankrupt. They're the worst fighter pilots. They take the worst risks. So 74% have normal sense of fear. Some are paralyzed by the fear, but some learn courage. What you want is a kid who feels the fear and does things that are productive and generative and positive anyway. And the best way that they learn that is by seeing us do it too.
- [39:03]
Hoda Kotb
I love it. Still ahead, Arthur shares the science behind navigating our next chapters and why he believes our best decades are still ahead of us. When we come back.
- [39:21]
Arthur C. Brooks
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Hoda Kotb
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Arthur C. Brooks
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Hoda Kotb
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Arthur C. Brooks
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- [39:52]
Hoda Kotb
At our X Bar. They believe in simple nutrition without the bs. That's why they said NO to artificial ingredients and yes to deliver intentional transparent nutrition. Try their original 12 gram protein bar, the Nut Butter and Oat Bar or Minis Rxbar. The proud sponsor of no BS. Use code RXBAR on RXBAR.com for 25% off. Subject to full terms and conditions and to change. Valid until September 30, 2025 and may not be combined with other offers. See rxbar.com for full details and limitations. At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more@capella.edu I love this conversation. Just real quick, just last. I know I could talk for an.
- [41:02]
Arthur C. Brooks
Hour, but I know. Me too.
- [41:04]
Hoda Kotb
I love your book From Strength to Strength. Thank you so many People have gobbled this book up. I have a couple of friends who are at that period right now where they're looking. And the book is essentially like when you're productive, you've been working for 30 years or 20 years, and when that chapter is over, what now? And I think it becomes, you know, some people think it's retirement and golf and boredom, but you have a whole other take on it. Will you just nutshell it?
- [41:30]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, for sure. So one of the things that is really hard for people is noticing they get better and better at what they do, especially real strivers. A lot of people watching us, they're watching this because they get news they can use from Hoda. I mean, look at your life. It's just monumentally. It's impactful. And they want to hear secrets from you and your guests. That's great. The problem is, as we go through our 20s and 30s, as we get better and better and better, we expect that to keep going for the rest of our lives. It doesn't. And part of the reason is that we have a very high level of what psychologists call fluid intelligence, which is our ability to crack problems by ourselves. Innovation, focus, working memory, better and better and better and better peaks at about 40, late 30s, early 40s. And then it starts to decline. And a lot of people are like, what's wrong with me? Then they burn out and they feel bad. But what's really going on is that you're going on to a second kind of intelligence. And if you don't know about it, it's going to be a problem. You're going to keep trying to do what you used to do. Well, the second kind of intelligence is called crystallized intelligence that doesn't rely on working memory, thank God. It's like, what's that guy's name? What's that guy's name? It doesn't require innovation in the same way. What it requires is pattern recognition, knowledge, wisdom, teaching ability that goes through your 40s and 50s and 60s and stays high in your 70s and 80s. And as long as God gives you your marbles, you're going to have this incredible walk from one curve to the other. Go from your innovator curve to your instructor curve. In every profession, you can do that. So if you're a hotshot lawyer, litigator when you're 30, you should be the managing partner when you're 60, finding new lawyers, training new lawyers, firing them up, coaching them. If you're. If you're, you know, almost any profession, if you're. If A startup entrepreneur at 35, you should be a venture capitalist at 65.
- [43:16]
Hoda Kotb
What do you do if you're like a teacher?
- [43:17]
Arthur C. Brooks
If you're a teacher, you can become a master teacher. Teaching teachers, you should become a mentor to new teachers because you use your crystallized intelligence. You don't have to innovate in some new way. You have to look at best practices, learn from the younger teachers who are doing it best. Be a coach. Just mentoring is so incredible. Young professors will come to me right out of graduate school. And now I used to be a young professor, now I'm the older guy. I'm at Harvard, so I'm still a spring chicken compared to you. And they'll say, what's the secret to getting good teaching evaluations? And the answer is, get old is the consolation of aging is that you're a much better teacher than you ever. And you're in a teaching profession, by the way. I mean, it's an incredible thing that. I mean, it's going to get better and better and better. Your best decades are in front of you because you're going to introduce new ideas, make them accessible, explain them, share them, and that's going to be your natural habitat.
- [44:12]
Hoda Kotb
I love everything you're saying. And lastly, before we go, this is called making space. And I feel like you've answered this, but let's pretend you just had one weird day where no one needed you. No one needed you, no one needed you. You didn't have one commitment. You were like, what's up with this day? So you did your morning routine, because that's how you do your. That's how you start your day. How would you spend the rest of the hours in your day?
- [44:37]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, for me, that would be about creating and learning, learning and creating, which is how personally, I believe that we're made in God's image. And God is creative, fundamentally creative. And each of us has an ability to be creative in our own way and to look for that sense of creation, which is the ultimate kind of adventure that we can have. And then using a day, it's not that nobody needs us, it's that nobody's demanding anything from us. And so to say to my Maker, what do you need of me today? What do you need of me today? And that's to look deepest within myself and do what I can uniquely do best and often offer it up. Offer it up for love, offer it up for the world, offer it up for the good of others and offer it up for the glory of God. That's how I would spend my day.
- [45:22]
Hoda Kotb
Okay. I need to. I need to. I need two Twinkies and to get under the covers.
- [45:26]
Arthur C. Brooks
Just call it a day.
- [45:28]
Hoda Kotb
Thank you, Arthur.
- [45:29]
Arthur C. Brooks
What a beautiful conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much.
- [45:35]
Hoda Kotb
Making Space with Hoda Kotb is produced by Allison Berger and Alexa Cassandra Slavecchia, along with Kate Saunders. Our associate audio engineer is Juliana Mastrolli. Our audio engineers are Bob Mallory and Katherine Anderson. Original music by John Estes. Bryson Barnes is our head of audio production. Missy Dunlop Parsons is our executive producer. Libby Liest is the executive vice president of Today and lifestyle at Capella University. Learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. Goals A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Eduardo.