← Modern Wisdom
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- [00:00]
A
When it comes to well being.
- [00:01]
B
Yeah.
- [00:02]
A
What do you think contributes more psychological elements or physical elements? Because we experience our well being.
- [00:10]
B
Right.
- [00:10]
A
Psychologically.
- [00:11]
B
Right.
- [00:12]
A
And, but we experience everything psychologically, including our physical well being. When it comes to well being, what contributes more psychological or physical elements?
- [00:21]
B
The answer is yes, because psychology is biology. Fundamentally, psychology is biology.
- [00:27]
A
What's that mean?
- [00:28]
B
That means that you cannot disconnect from your brain. Now perhaps there's some external consciousness that people are experiencing, but the truth of the matter is that the functioning of the limbic system of your brain where you're having positive and negative emotions all day long, that's biology. That's a part of the brain that was evolved between 2 and 40 million years ago as an alert system to what's going on outside of you. You perceive things, threats and opportunities, you react, your brain reacts with negative and positive emotions which then give you a sense of being happy or unhappy at any particular time. And so that being the case, we should be very grateful for our negative emotions, but we also need to learn how to manage them. That's the great goal of life. That's the great goal of becoming a self managing self leading person. When you're in a state of suffering, to understand why that is, how it can be productive, what you can learn and how you can manage it such that it doesn't dysregulate, you ruin your complete quality of life.
- [01:25]
A
So if psychology is biology, should we just attack the biology?
- [01:28]
B
Well, the way that we attack the biology is by understanding the psychology and actually acting in a different way.
- [01:33]
A
It really does sound like the human centipede.
- [01:35]
B
Yeah, it really is. It really is. No, it's. No. My whole philosophy is sort of a self licking ice cream cone. Because no matter if you say biology, I say psychology.
- [01:43]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [01:44]
B
But, but the truth of the matter is that once, if you want to become a happier person, the first thing you need to understand is the science. Which is the reason that I teach the science of happiness to my students. I don't go in and teach woo woo and say, why don't we all try to manifest some sort of happiness? Like no, this is what's going on in your brain. When you're feeling sad. What's happening is that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex of your limbic system is highly alerted to the fact that you're perceiving a loss. And that loss in your life of a person or something that you love is a very normal reaction. In the ancestral environment where we lived in bands of 30 to 50 individuals to be rejected, to have a breakup, to have a schism with somebody else in your band meant that you were at a. A real risk of walking the frozen tundra and dying alone. You need to be really averse to that. That's why you feel grief. When you're disconnected from somebody that you love and you have a part of your brain that's evolved to make you feel that grief, and that's completely normal. That's the most normal thing that could possibly happen. And people find a lot of comfort in saying, oh, oh, there's nothing wrong with me. There's not something I need to cure. That's actually evidence that my brain is working the way that it should and I'm going to be okay.
- [02:58]
A
Do most people need more happiness or less unhappiness?
- [03:01]
B
Oh, such a good question. And the answer is it really depends on who you are. Okay, so let's back up a little bit. You made a very important distinction right now, which is that happiness and unhappiness are not opposites. They're not. People for the longest time thought that unhappiness was an absence of happiness.
- [03:18]
A
A single spectrum with happiness on one end.
- [03:21]
B
And it's not true. I mean, it's like darkness is the absence of light. But unhappiness is not the absence of happiness. On the contrary. Contrary. The emotions that are behind happiness and unhappiness. And again, happiness isn't emotions. Emotions are evidence of happiness, but they exist in different, they're produced in different parts of the brain for different reasons. And so the result of it is that you can be a very happy person and also a very unhappy person.
- [03:46]
A
Oh, wow, that's interesting.
- [03:47]
B
And that just means you're a high affect person. I have a test that I give. It's a, it's. It's a test of, of affect. And that is to see the intensity of your positive and negative emotions. A quarter of the population above average positive and above average negative.
- [04:02]
A
What's the rest of the split?
- [04:03]
B
The split is there's of the other four quadrants.
- [04:07]
A
So if 25% that. Where. What's the rest of the 75% constructed by.
- [04:12]
B
Oh, it's the other three profiles which is above average positive and below average negative, below average positive and below average negative and above average negative and below average positive.
- [04:23]
A
And that's evenly split.
- [04:24]
C
25.
- [04:24]
A
25.
- [04:24]
B
Yeah, because it's the medians, not the means.
- [04:26]
A
Right.
- [04:26]
B
And so it's by construction it's those quarters. Now that doesn't mean that it's not overrepresented among podcasters and entrepreneurs. You know, that's going to be 75% high. High. You're a very high affect guy. You're the mad scientist. That's what that quadrant is called. And so am I, by the way. I'm 95th percentile in positive emotion. I'm 90th percentile in negative emotion. And so what does that mean?
- [04:51]
A
It goes to show that it's not a single spectrum.
- [04:53]
B
Exactly right. And so. And I know a lot of people who are low, low. Those are called judges. Those are people who make really good surgeons. They make really good nuclear reactor managers. There are some people who are above average positive and below average negative. Those are the happiest people. Those are the cheerleaders. They have very intense positive emotion, a very weak negative emotion. They're great to be around. They make terrible bosses because they can't stand negativity and they can't give criticism.
- [05:19]
A
No bad vibes.
- [05:20]
B
No bad vibes, man. And then there's low, low. Right. I mean, sorry. There's high negative, low, positive. Those are the poets. And we know actually a lot about the neurobiology of the poetic temperament. As a matter of fact, we actually understand kind of what's going on in their brains. And they're the unhappiest, but they're unbelievably creative and romantic. And it's what we find. And the reason for that is there's this funny little part of the limbic system called the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex that makes you ruminate. That's your rumination organ, effectively. And so if you're a sad ruminator, which most people who have a little bit of depression, they ruminate a lot. That's the same part of your brain that you use when you're ruminating on a business plan or a poem or a symphony or on another person when you're falling in love, it's really, really active. And so that's why poets, they tend to be depressive, romantic and creative. It's the same part of the brain. Psychology is biology. But the whole point is, you ask what's more important to manage happiness or unhappiness. The answer is, what's the bigger challenge for you? So for you, you need to work more on your unhappiness because you're a mad scientist. Me too. You know, it's like happiness is really much more important to work on. If you're a poet or you're a judge, you need to lift that happiness as opposed to moderating Managing the unhappiness.
- [06:35]
A
Okay, what are the big movers for the judge or the poet compared with the mad scientist or the. What was the fourth one?
- [06:46]
B
The cheerleader?
- [06:47]
A
Cheerleader.
- [06:48]
B
Yeah.
- [06:48]
A
Yeah. Well, I guess the cheerleader's just the cheerleader.
- [06:50]
B
Cheerleader's doing great, except the cheerleader has weaknesses that the cheerleader doesn't recognize. Now I'm just resentful, you know, I'm just jealous. And, you know, I'm married to somebody who's more of a cheerleader than I am. And it's really interesting when you match these profiles because it turns out that certain marriages work better than others with respect to these temperaments. So people go to my website and they take this a lot with their partner, they take these tests a lot with their partner so they can find out what their temperament is, what their where their partners is. The best marriages for people who are really metacognitive, really in tune with their relationship are ones where they balance each other.
- [07:24]
A
Someone that's maybe a little bit less ruminative.
- [07:26]
B
Yeah. So if you're a, for example, if you're a judge, you do really well with a mad scientist. So a really high affect person can do really well with a low affect person. If it's two really high affect people, it's going to be daggers drawn. It's going to be trouble because you're going to spin each other up or bum each other out a lot. So you have to be really aware is kind of how this works. So. So the challenges are really different. Now, people who have high negative affect, they tend to manage their negative. Unless they have science, they know what they're doing, they tend to manage their negative affect in a destructive way. The most common way that high negative affect people manage their negative affect is drugs and alcohol because it's unbelievably effective. Alcohol in particular cuts the connection between the, the amygdala, which is the fear and anger part of the limbic system, and the prefrontal cortex. So you're all stressed out, but you don't know it. That's what alcohol does. So two martinis and you're like, life's okay. And so if you're an anxious person, that's why you got to be super careful with alcohol. And that's why CEOs have more alcohol problems than people who are unemployed.
- [08:29]
A
No way.
- [08:29]
B
Yeah. OECD data shows that highly successful, highly educated high earners, they have more trouble with alcohol than people on the other end of the spectrum.
- [08:37]
A
There was an interesting may have been One of yours? I don't think it was. I remember reading this really great article that explained some of the justifications for why drug use among children from wealthy families is higher than those from low income families. You might think, well, maybe it's because they've got the money to access it, but that's not right. Maybe it's because they go to these sort of like posh parties when they're in their teenage years and everybody else has got access and they think that the rules don't apply to them. And maybe a little bit. But the explanation that I thought was really, really great is that if you grow up as the child of somebody who has already set the bar incredibly high, the pressure that's on you to be able to beat your intergenerational competition theory is unreal. It also explains one of the reasons I thought this was such a great psychological explanation that I never heard of the higher rates of admission for children from wealthy families into prestigious higher education institutions. Maybe it's because of the prep, maybe it's because of the access. Maybe it's because of legacy admissions. Maybe it's because. Maybe it's because. Or maybe it's because they are so terrified of falling behind the standard that their parents set that they are prepared to drive themselves in a manner that somebody who doesn't have that degree of pressure over the top of them wouldn't.
- [10:04]
B
Yeah, fear of failure.
- [10:05]
A
I thought he's so. I thought that those two explanations were just so great.
- [10:08]
B
Yeah, that's right. And, and there's almost certain. So there's kind of two reasons. Most of the literature is on alcohol. Right. I mean, and in 20 years from now we'll have more literature on cannabis.
- [10:18]
A
For example, I think we can the rules of alcohol ported across onto cannabis relatively well. Yeah, yeah, same thing. Different.
- [10:25]
B
They're self, they're self medicating euphorics for the most part. There's kind of two kinds of people that get in trouble with alcohol. People who have trouble with boredom and people who have trouble with anxiety. So either you're a bored drunk or you're an anxious drunk. Those are the two problems that people have. And so the answer to these addiction problems are different in these two cases. If you're an alcoholic or you're drinking too much because you're bored, you need to crowd out the drinking by doing something interesting. That's why you take a kid who's drinking a lot and partying a lot in high school and make them do something unbelievably Hard, interesting. And they'll be like, I don't want to drink that much because drinking is not as good a party as whatever this thing is that I'm doing. Anxious drunks are a different problem, right? Because anxiety is so unbelievably, effectively dealt with by alcohol. It is so incredibly efficacious. And that means you need to deal with anxiety in a proper way. And drugs and alcohol are not the way to do it. Workaholism is a terrible way to deal with your anxiety if you have a high, if you have high negative affect, this high.
- [11:28]
A
What's workaholism's point of intervention? If the link between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex is being severed from alcohol, what is it that workaholism is doing at a biological level?
- [11:41]
B
Distraction. So the amygdala is funny. So with little kids, you're going to see this when you have your children that your 2 year old is going to be having a freak out because they're freaking out all the time. That's what two year olds do all the time because they have a completely dysregulated amygdala. And so they're fearful and angry and they get. You cut the crust off their little PB&J sandwich the wrong way and they totally freak out. That's because their amygdala lights up like a Christmas tree, right? The way that you get them to not freak out. And young parents never figure this out, right? They're going to be like, what? Use your words or something like this. No, no, no. Distract them. Because the amygdala is in charge of distraction actually affects the amygdala. Attention is something that highly implicates the amygdala. So if you change their attention, so you do a little two year old, you're like, oh, oh, oh. Do you see what I brought home from work today? I brought home something you really got to see. And you have to pull something out of your briefcase.
- [12:30]
A
Bullshit.
- [12:31]
B
Totally. Because they never figured.
- [12:33]
C
They're an idiot.
- [12:33]
B
But what happens is that you stop the activity, the amygdala that's leading to the freakout, and you put it in true attention. So that's basically what's going on. You're distracting yourself through workaholism through a reliable way to distract yourself. That's what it was about.
- [12:51]
C
That's so great.
- [12:51]
A
I remember my therapist last year said to me, pay attention to fleeting thoughts. There's this line that she. The whispers that sort of come. Rick Rubin would call them Whispers, these little transient little things, little bits of smoke. And if you're living in chaos. I'm about to go back on tour this week. I mean, got three shows in three states in four days.
- [13:13]
B
It's awesome, you know, you love it.
- [13:16]
A
It's great. I love the chaos. But if I've got something that I've been trying to hide in the fog for a while, oh, this fat piece of piss, I've got caught. I got lobby call at 9am, we're going to get on the flight, I'm going to go skiing in Salt Lake City. Then I got the sound check, I got a sound check, I got to do sound check. Then by the time we get there, someone brought a cake. Look at this cake. Isn't this nice? And then you just manana, manana, manana. And I think that this is why, like Chronic touring musicians have problems with, with alcohol. I had Aaron Gillespie from Under Oath here and he said, I'm not sure how many times, like hundreds, hundreds of times. He checked himself into the ER on tour because he was sure he was having a heart attack. It got to the point where he knew the exact tests that they needed to run on him to disprove his own fear because he had just been drinking, medicated. Yeah, he just kept going. Funny that you said that thing about the two year old as well. So Connor Beaton from Man Talks, who you need to meet. He's fucking fantastic. We did a pod recently and we're in the car, he was going to give me a left home. We're in the car and he's. I got to ring, I got to ring the kids first. Got a four year old, four and a bit year old and a one and a half year old and his wife gets on the phone and the one and a half year old sees him, smiles for about three seconds and then just screams and just starts screaming and spoke about it over breakfast this morning. And he was like, yeah, the one and a half year old, she's just at the stage now where she screams, she just screams.
- [14:44]
B
But he screams all the time.
- [14:45]
A
He said, the one thing that we can do if we need either of them to shut up and stop. If I come into the kitchen and I just have a moment with Vienna, my wife, if I pick her up and hug her, my son, 4 years old, just runs over and wants to get in between us, like in with us. And the one and a half year old just stops, stops and knocks.
- [15:04]
B
Just change the rhythm, just change the rhythm and reprogram the amygdala so cool. So that's unfortunately distracting yourself with work and man, I've been on tour since I was 19. I got the bug. I got it. I mean, I quit drinking when I was 38, a year older than you are now. I had to quit drinking. I mean, it was just not doing anything good for me. And it ends to. It goes to dark places in my family and the whole thing. But the workaholic tendency, I mean, that's the go to, man. That's the go to.
- [15:32]
A
Well, because it's publicly praised.
- [15:33]
B
Yeah. I mean, nobody ever said, dude, you drank an entire bottle of vodka last night, that was awesome. Nobody ever said that. Right. But you worked nine 16 hour days in a row and made a bunch of money. And people praise you for that, for that highly addictive, dangerous behavior. It's also a secondary addiction. The primary addiction is an addiction to success. And one of the things that I sort of specialize in, successful people and talking to and doing a lot. I mean, I teach at the Harvard Business School. These people are going to be the masters of the universe when it comes to business. And what I find is that the pathology actually of people who wind up workaholic, it starts when they're kids in this funny pattern. And you're going to be able to respond to this because my guess is that you've seen this maybe up close, I mean, friends, right?
- [16:23]
A
Maybe closer than you might think. Yeah.
- [16:26]
B
They get the attention and affection of adults when they do stuff, when they bring home a good report card, when they make the baseball team, when they make first chair in the orchestra, that's when they really get praise. And so they make the connection as children that love is something that's earned. Now love is a free gift, freely given. It's a grace. It's not a gift. Graces and gifts are different. But they learn that it's a gift that you get that's. Sorry, it's an earned thing. And so the result of that is that they wire their little brains. Their little prefrontal cortex is highly plastic. And they grow up thinking that they have to be special. This is what leads to the cult of specialness, which is a real pathology because that leads to a success addiction. And literally their brains don't actually get sufficient dopamine unless they're winning, unless they're having an outlandish experience, unless they're getting praised and they're admired by strangers. It's pathological, it's not normal at all. And most people don't actually suffer from this. But by the way, they become billionaires.
- [17:24]
C
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- [18:30]
A
Modern wisdom do they, do most people not suffer from this? Is habituation to success not something that's kind of in for everybody? Is that not the whole game of happiness, the habituation thing?
- [18:40]
B
Habituation is success. It depends on what success means. If success means it's really in these worldly terms of money, power, the admiration of strangers. It's very different than the success that people actually have in having a family life where your kids and your wife love you. And most people actually, they sense success along these ordinary lines. What that success addict? Most people, yeah, they really do. And, and it's possible. And it's funny when you look at, you know, surveys of public opinion, people really admire the most worldly, successful people, to be sure. And they, they think, well, wouldn't that be great? They look on social media and they think, wouldn't that be great? But that's not my life. And so I guess I'm just gonna go to the park and play with my kid. And they're pretty happy as a result of that. I mean, there's an old axiom in my business which is woe be to the man whose dreams come true. He will find he had the wrong dreams.
- [19:36]
A
Why?
- [19:36]
B
Because the dreams that come true, the dreams that come true that people praise you for, that people envy you for, are the worldly idols. The worldly idols. That's what aquinas talked about. The idols game of money, power, pleasure, and fame. Those are the four idols. And if you make them your instrument, those goals more than instrumentally, if you make these the ultimate goals of your life, you will find unhappiness. That's good modern social science, but it's as old as aquinas, who was lifting it from aristotle. Those are the. As a matter of fact, I have a game I play with my students called what's my idol? You want to play?
- [20:10]
A
Sure.
- [20:11]
B
Let's find out what Chris's idol is. Okay, now, the way that this game works is psychologically. You don't just say, pick one of the four. You eliminate the ones. That is not. That's how you get much better fidelity in anything like this. So aquinas suggested. And modern behavioral science validates the idea that we're attracted to four worldly things, and they won't make us happy, but our animal impulse is that we need more, more, more. This is the hedonic treadmill of more and more and more money or resources.
- [20:43]
A
Right?
- [20:43]
B
Power, which is influence over other people. It's not malevolent. It means that people do what you want them to do. You're the top dog. You're the king of the mambo. Number three is pleasure. And pleasure manifests in different ways. For some people, it's like feeling good. For some people, it's comfort. For some people, it's security. Like people who check their stock portfolio every day, they have a security idol, which is in that pleasure like that. It's the alleviation of discomfort. And last is honor. Not in serving with honor. It means honor as the honor of the world. That means fame, prestige, admiration of other people. Those are the four idols. And everybody has one in particular. And when you know what it is, you'll say, oh, yeah, that's why I always do the things that I regret later. This will be the source of your future regret. If you know, this gives you power. Okay? So money, power, pleasure, and honor. You have to get rid of one, which means that. Not that you don't have it. What it means is that you have the population average in it, which for a super striver is torture. Being normal. Who wants to be normal, Right? So one of the four you got to get rid of, and you got to go to normal population average, which in the United States, you know, is pretty freaking great. So which one do you get rid Of Chris.
- [21:59]
A
Money.
- [22:00]
B
Power.
- [22:01]
A
Power.
- [22:01]
B
Pleasure.
- [22:02]
A
Pleasure. Honor.
- [22:03]
B
Or fame? Fame or fame or the admiration of others. The, the, the adoration of the crowd.
- [22:10]
A
Power.
- [22:11]
B
Tell me why.
- [22:17]
A
I tend to not use it much. I tend to not try. I tend to not influence other people. Certainly not directly. I'm an only child. So solitude. A pretty small circle, right?
- [22:29]
B
You don't dream of being a big CEO?
- [22:32]
A
No, no, no, no, no.
- [22:34]
B
So I will make a prediction. You hate it when people have power over you.
- [22:38]
A
Yes, massively.
- [22:38]
B
Yeah, that's always the thing. Here's the interesting thing when you look at would be dictators. You know who they admire? Dictators. You always admire the people who have the idol that you have, who are successful in accumulating the idol that you have.
- [22:55]
A
Of course, because you see the currency more cleanly. Right.
- [22:58]
B
So if you see a politician in the UK or the United States and they admire dictators, look out. Look out. Don't vote for that person.
- [23:06]
A
You know what I heard? Put a pin in it for the second. Isabelle unraveled on substack. Fucking great. So wonderful. She just got engaged. She wrote this article, which I think is so true. She said extreme crushes are just misplaced ambition. Basically, we see in our deepest romantic crushes the ones that we do and don't date, traits that we wish that we had ourselves and that in the acceptance of us by this person that is us finally validating the lack that we feel we have had all along, we see in them, oh, they're so charismatic, they're so confident, they're so popular, they're so talented, they're so resilient, they're so whatever, peaceful, whatever it might be. And that's what I feel I don't have. So it's an interesting inversion of this idea here. But I, I, from what I can see, I think that that holds true too.
- [24:09]
B
Yeah. Because something that you think would complete you, they have something that you think would complete you. And if you can't get it yourself, then you're going to rent it in somebody else.
- [24:18]
A
What a wonderful way to put it. Okay, so I've gotten rid of power. I've got no power.
- [24:22]
B
Which means you have the normal amount of power.
- [24:23]
A
Yeah. Which is basically none.
- [24:25]
B
Yeah.
- [24:25]
A
Yeah.
- [24:25]
B
Well, I mean, everybody's got influence, you know, and you're gonna have children and you're gonna have power.
- [24:30]
A
As long as I can boss them around. Stop screaming, pick your mother up.
- [24:34]
B
Which won't work. So, okay, so you've got money, pleasure and honor. Which one do you get rid of next?
- [24:40]
C
Money.
- [24:41]
B
How do you know? Or I should say, why?
- [24:45]
A
I don't tend. I don't have a particularly lavish life. I don't have expensive tastes.
- [24:54]
B
Right.
- [24:55]
A
I've developed slightly expensive taste for flying in business class, if that counts, which I'm sure it's like the first thing that everybody that gets money goes to.
- [25:04]
B
Right.
- [25:05]
A
It's also a little bit better. It's. Yeah, well, it's, it's, it's the most immediate way to like spend your money in a better. But also it helps you. It's. It's like a very publicly acceptable way to spend.
- [25:19]
B
It's not a PJ.
- [25:20]
A
No, no. Fuck.
- [25:23]
B
PJ is 10x correct.
- [25:24]
A
No, no, no, no. I've never fucking. Scott Galloway. He's fucking cornered me at south by Southwest.
- [25:30]
C
He got me by.
- [25:31]
A
We went out for dinner and he got me by the collar. He'd had a couple of beers. He's like, chris, do you know what the only reason to get rich is? Private jet. It's the only reason to get rich. He's like, it's the only reason that you need money. He's like, after private jet, there's nothing. He's like, the only difference between you and any future is you in a private jet.
- [25:47]
B
That captain's such a giggle.
- [25:49]
A
I thought he was so. He's really cute, but he's kind of left leaning. Capital. I like his. I like the Venn diagram before he comes into line. But no, I've gotten rid of money.
- [25:58]
B
Yeah. Okay. And you probably, I mean, you've made plenty of money because you're successful. You've figured out that there's not that much fun you can have with it. It's not that great.
- [26:08]
A
No. I mean, there's two paths. I think that people who don't come from money. I did not come from any money. I grew up in the most working class town in the uk. That was the only title it had, was the widest high street in the UK and the highest teen pregnancy rating. And then it lost that.
- [26:29]
B
What town?
- [26:29]
A
Stockton. Stockton aunties. Yeah, it's northeast. It's just below Newcastle.
- [26:33]
B
And your same town as well. You went to university with Mike Thurston, right?
- [26:37]
A
I did, yeah. Newcastle. So he's from Leeds. He's from a little bit lower down than me, but yeah, two directions. One is I never had money. Wow. Like, look at all of this, like spare money that I've got. I really don't know kind of how to use it. And maybe someone will coach me, like how to make more of it or whatever. But like, I still have a bit of a puritanical work kind of ethic thing and like. Oh, like the Bill Perkins archetype. Right, The Daiwoods. You need to read Daiwa 0 like fucking 20 times and learn how to spend some money.
- [27:04]
B
Yeah.
- [27:05]
A
And then the other side, which is I never had money. Woo. And it's just like a roller coaster all the way down.
- [27:14]
B
That gets old.
- [27:15]
A
Yeah. Like, that's the NBA player.
- [27:17]
B
Yeah, that's right. And when you get married and have children, then that's, you know, then it's a different kettle of fish because then you start thinking about intergenerational wealth and how you're building your family and your philanthropy and all that kind of stuff. But I completely believe you that the next thing to go is money. Now it's of course more difficult because the two that are left, left for a reason, and that's pleasure and fame and. And fame can mean different things. You can mean fame in the eyes of the right people. So academics is like, I don't care about fame. Yes, you do. You want to walk into the room.
- [27:46]
A
Index. You're obsessed with your H index.
- [27:47]
B
That's Professor Williamson. He wrote the paper on, you know, the new string theory paper or something like that. Like, on what? Who cares? The point is that prestige is prestige, or the really kind of dysregulated one is adoration in the eyes of millions and millions of people on social media, which is a really just regulated, deranged version of it. Well, there's a real problem with it because fame is the only one of those that you can ever only be happy in spite of. You can be happy very easily with money. I can teach you how to be happy with a lot of money, but I can't teach you how to be happy with a lot of fame unless you do a lot of work. I mean, I know like my co author is Oprah Winfrey and she's very, very, very famous and she's extremely happy person, but the only reason is because she realizes soulfully that her acclaim is a gift such that she can help other people. That's the only reason. And it would be withdrawn immediately if she were to stop doing that. In her view, which is an incredibly healthy way to see it, which is why she's. Well, okay, comfort, or I should say pleasure. Your version of pleasure or fame? Which one do you get rid of?
- [28:53]
A
So we've done this before, but the last time I didn't hear you talk about security or comfort.
- [28:59]
B
Uhhuh.
- [29:00]
A
That's a big deal to me.
- [29:02]
B
Uhhuh.
- [29:03]
A
That's a huge deal.
- [29:04]
B
Partly because you grew up without money.
- [29:06]
A
The money thing was it wasn't like we had, like, poverty anxiety. It was more so I'm a pretty big feeler. And chaos doesn't agree with me. Like, intensity agrees with me, but complexity doesn't agree with me. Ambiguity and uncertainty really do not agree with me at all.
- [29:23]
B
Oh, yeah. So that's a good thing for us to work on. Actually, let's put a pin in that, because we need to come back because that means you're an anxious person. Anxiety is unfocused fear, and there's a way to fix that.
- [29:35]
A
Okay.
- [29:36]
B
There's a way to fix that without benzodiazepine drugs.
- [29:38]
A
Okay. Well, I imagine that lots of other people are feeling the same here. What would I say, given where I'm at right now? I would actually say that the next one that could go would be fame.
- [29:50]
B
Yeah.
- [29:51]
A
And that I would. I would keep myself with safety, comfort, security. I think that that would be top of the tree for me right now.
- [29:58]
B
Yeah. So that would mean that the. The acclaim that you actually get from what you do for a living right now would go to the population mean, which would mean that you'd have to do something else for a living.
- [30:09]
A
That would suck a lot.
- [30:10]
B
That would kind of suck, right?
- [30:11]
A
Yeah. But I would have 100 out of 100. Security, comfort. I don't know. I mean, maybe this is me speaking from my ivory tower. Maybe. What's changed?
- [30:20]
B
The guy with the top, you know, three podcasts or something in the world.
- [30:23]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the time that. By the time that this comes out, Spotify will have released 2025 wrapped, which is Modern Wisdom's eighth on the planet.
- [30:31]
B
Dude, that's unbelievable.
- [30:33]
A
I got the press release.
- [30:34]
B
That's sweet.
- [30:35]
A
Today. Yeah. It's fucking crazy. I'm on top of Jay Shetty, a position I've always wanted to be in. And actually, I'm the power bottom, just below Andrew Huberman. So I'm in a Jay Shetty, Andrew Huberman three way, which I imagine the Internet has just been waiting for.
- [30:51]
B
This is what the world's been hoping for. That's great. Congratulations.
- [30:55]
C
Thank you.
- [30:55]
B
That's a really wonderful thing. And the problem is that you're in a business that requires a claim, that requires fans, that requires followers. It requires people who recognize you and trust you. And so that kind of in. In a way to say I don't really care about it is not meaningful because you. You Actually, to do what you're able to do, it has to be something that's important.
- [31:14]
A
I think. Do you know what I think it is? If I was being completely honest, and I think maybe other people, as they've played along at home, may have felt the same thing. There's two worlds.
- [31:22]
C
There is.
- [31:23]
A
What is it that I functionally, what am I driven by right now and what do I want to be driven by? Like, what do I feel like my higher self? Like if I was being incongruence, if I was coherent, it's what you want.
- [31:37]
B
And what do you want to want? And so what do you want to want? Is a really important exercise.
- [31:42]
A
I adore that. You know the first ever essay that completely broke my brain, a guy called Kyle Eschenroder, it's no longer available. His website got hacked and taken over by some like one of those fishing porn websites, so you can't even see, but I've got the PDF saved and it's what do you want to want? And it was 20,000 word essay and it snapped me in half in like 2018. It was so phenomenal.
- [32:04]
B
So it's really, you know, I'll ask people to answer a bunch of questions for their effective mission statement for life, and then I'll have them write their ideal mission statement. And the difference between the two is what you want and what you want to want. And that's the essence, the Buddhist essence of right desire. Because what we want is right desire. The problem is not what you want. The problem is that your desires aren't right. You don't want the right things. For all of misery pretty much can be summed up in not wanting the right things. You don't need to do something differently, you need to want something differently. Correct. This is the point.
- [32:38]
A
Well, your wants. Kyle's argument was that your wants define your paths of least resistance.
- [32:42]
B
Yes.
- [32:43]
A
And if you can choose, if you can get yourself to want what you want to want, then you get to row with the tide.
- [32:50]
B
Right.
- [32:51]
A
As opposed to rowing against it.
- [32:52]
B
Yeah, that's right. And you know, the. When you work with, you know, couples that are having trouble with, with infidelity, for example, the problem isn't the infidelity, it's the desire for infidelity. That's really what it comes down to. And what you need to do is to actually engineer a different kind of desire. That's how you fix problems. That's how you fix problems in yourself and in your, and in your relationship. That's how you is, is really getting into the whole concept of what you want is making sure that what you want and what you want to want are congruent. That's a lifetime goal. So what we've established is that comfort is important to you or security is important to you, and that you've built a life, you've built a career that requires a lot of acclaim. And so these are the things to keep an eye on. These are always the things to keep an eye on. That you'll make decisions and cut corners because you're trying to feel more secure, and that you'll hang on doggedly to acclaim and never hold it lightly. You won't ever hold it lightly because this is an asset. The acclaim that you have is a really, really important asset professionally for you. But it's also kind of who you understand who you are. I mean, I know the story of this podcast. I mean, you didn't start with millions of listeners.
- [34:01]
A
No. It took 450 episodes to hit 250,000 subscribers. And I moved to America with like 250. And. Yeah, so the first half of the show was like 5% of the subscribers.
- [34:18]
B
Yeah.
- [34:19]
A
First half of the show. To the fledgling podcasters out there, if you're expecting quick success, it is not.
- [34:26]
B
It's a really important lesson.
- [34:27]
A
Took four years. Took four years and four.
- [34:28]
B
I remember hearing you early on, as a matter of fact. This is really good. This is going to be really good. And it turns out it was true.
- [34:35]
A
Yeah, well, game recognizes game, as they say.
- [34:38]
B
Yeah. So anyway, all this is really super important. Self knowledge. Because once you understand what beguiles you, you can manage yourself in a more effective way. Always a more effective way.
- [34:50]
C
We'll get back to talking in just one second. But first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem.
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A
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C
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A
Theirs are or what to do if something's off.
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C
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- [35:52]
A
The anxiety uncertainty thing, because it feels like that based on a lot of the people that I speak to. The hyper vigilance that people have from maybe an uncertain atmosphere growing up, maybe communication wasn't super transparent and they needed to be able to detect the micro movements of exactly what was going on and read into sentences. Maybe love was contingent on performance. Maybe their nervous system just didn't feel soothed. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. I think that that based on the conversations I have at the live shows as well, the people that come up and do the meet and greet or the questions that I get that, that are done at the Q and A's afterward, so many of them are basically around. I really struggle with the uncertainty of the future. Tolerating ambiguity, uncertainty, unpredictability feels like some weird personal curse.
- [36:44]
B
Yeah, so uncertainty is a problem. Risk isn't. By the way, risk and uncertainty are different and people use them interchangeably. Uncertainty means you don't know what might happen, so you can't assign probabilities, so you can't manage uncertainty contingencies. Risk is that you know what might happen so you can assign probabilities, so you can manage contingencies. That's the reason that people feel better when they buy insurance. Insurance is a happiness business. What it does is it converts uncertainty into risk and it no longer becomes a source of misery. That's why anybody who buys a life insurance policy feels better after they do it, because they've just turned their uncertainty into risk. Uncertainty is a source of fear and that stimulates the amygdala because the amygdala says it makes you hyper vigilant. And when there's a lot of uncertainty, you're more vigilant than you would have been otherwise. And that's a source of negative emotion. So you're feeling this constant sort of negative emotion.
- [37:35]
A
Why is vigilance a source of negative emotion?
- [37:37]
B
Because you're vigilant against threat. And it's the possibility of threat when you're uncertain. It's funny because, you know, there's all kinds of uncertainty that we don't worry about at all. Right. Uncertainty, like things might be great. You're not worried about that, Right. It's funny because, you know, I do a lot of stuff on waiting. Waiting is a funny thing. There's waiting. That's wonderful. That's like, I'm waiting for Christmas. And the reason that the Christmas lights go up in America after, after Halloween is because we want to savor the season longer, because we want to wait longer. And that's positive. There are certain things that might happen, it might not. And so we're anxious about it, but anxious in kind of a happy way, in an optimistic way. There are certain things that might go wrong and might be okay, but might be terrible. That's like tests from the doctor and that's real anxiety. And then there's the one that you know it's going to be bad. That's dread. And so there's a whole range suite of different uncertainties when it comes to waiting and uncertainty, for sure. So when people say, you know, I'm really worried about uncertainty, they're worried about threats. And threat vigilance is really part of human evolution. We've, you know, the species has survived because of threat vigilance in the way that we're vigilant in the face of uncertainty. The problem is it's really dysregulated. It doesn't work the way it's supposed to. We're supposed to be occasionally really fearful and then have a sudden burst. The HPA axis goes bonkers and we start running and climb a tree. But that's supposed to be occasional and super intense and not very frequent.
- [39:07]
A
How just on that, how likely do you think it is that the ancestral evolutionary zebras don't get ulcers? Explanation for it comes and it goes and you shake it off. Do you think that that was ancestrally accurate? You think that that was like.
- [39:25]
B
Yeah, I think it was. I don't think they didn't have Twitter and so they weren't, you know, sitting around going, I wonder if, wonder how that tweet did.
- [39:33]
A
I understand, I understand on that. But what about the chronic. That guy in the next cave keeps eyeing up my misses and that this has been going on for a long time. Male parental uncertainty, the fear of abandonment from an, of a male partner, from a new mother, that like those things are.
- [39:49]
B
Those things have always existed for sure.
- [39:51]
A
And would that not cause this sort of chronic stress?
- [39:53]
B
Not chronic stress in the same way. It was a much sort of simpler, under stimulated kind of environment where you could, I mean, when you live in bands of 30 to 50 individuals. It's a lot easier for you to have situational awareness. Now we live in an environment where you have no situational awareness because it's just too multidimensional what's going on all the time. Something can be happening and you won't know about it. All the time is really what it comes down to. So there's the big threats in, you know, 250,000 years ago, a neighboring band of Homo sapiens comes in, takes all your animal skins and flints and kills you. That's really, really scary. But then there's the smaller threats that you'd find where you're falling in the. And you're falling in the hierarchy in your band for some particular reason. Now it's everything all the time. Everything all the time is stimulating the amygdala and we're getting this little drip of cortisol and people get these panic attacks. It's not that long ago, by the way. I mean, I'll tell you what Grandpa Williamson never said to Grandma Williamson, I had a panic attack behind the mule today. No, it wasn't a thing. What drives a panic attack, it's a flooding of the HPA axis, is that the adrenal system goes bad, berserk. It becomes incredibly dysregulated. And you know when you have a lot of time without devices and you're doing a job that's relatively repetitive and your brain is working the way it's supposed to, so the default mode network is on. When the right hemisphere of your brain is properly activated, which is the part that questions mystery and meaning, the why questions in your life, you're not going to be freaking out all the time. And that's what people are doing is they're freaking out all the time because they're constantly distracted and they're over stimulated. That's what it comes down to.
- [41:43]
A
Is this an argument to chop wood and carry water more?
- [41:47]
B
Yeah, well, it's, it's an argument to live more like Grandpa Williamson, actually. It's an but which is not ordinary anymore. That's the problem. He didn't have to think about it, but we do.
- [41:57]
A
Grandpa Williamson did also. I think he went to the Falklands War. He went to. Caught some tropical disease in the Falklands War.
- [42:03]
B
So he fought in the Falklands War.
- [42:04]
A
I think it was the Falklands.
- [42:05]
B
Yeah. That's really.
- [42:06]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [42:07]
B
I mean, that's, I mean that was, that's a real source of meaning for these guys, is that they did these things, they did these hard things and he wasn't looking at his phone the whole time.
- [42:16]
A
No, that's, that's true.
- [42:17]
B
And he wasn't posting, you know, his Falklands war pictures to Instagram. I mean his life was in a way more simpler.
- [42:25]
A
I mean the pulsatile nature of life.
- [42:28]
B
Right.
- [42:28]
A
Is like real interesting to me.
- [42:30]
B
Yeah.
- [42:30]
A
And the sort of flattening and the, the, the spreading of the curve we've seen. There's a really great demographer dude, Stephen J. Shaw. He's the best on the. As far as I can see, he's the best on the planet for birth rate decline. The best on the planet.
- [42:42]
B
He's a demographer.
- [42:42]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean he's a self trained, but he's done it. He's been obsessed. He created the birth gap documentary. Brad Wilcox is also fantastic on this one. Lyman Stone, also fantastic.
- [42:52]
B
Nick Eberstadt.
- [42:53]
A
Yeah, yeah. Nicholas Eberstad and his wife as well, although she's a different piece. Marrying a fucking animal. Isn't it so fortunate we get to live in this time with all of these cool people coming up with great.
- [43:05]
B
It's unbelievable because you live in the ideal world and the ideal world is like an unbelievable sporgus board.
- [43:11]
A
Infinite. Anyway, he's got this idea about the flattening of the vitality curve. So in the past, if you were 21 and you met a 21 year old, the likelihood that they're ready to have kids right now is pretty high.
- [43:22]
B
Yeah.
- [43:22]
A
As you flatten this curve, you can imagine that there is of a ton left to right. There is a time and then height is what proportion of the entire population is ready to go at that time. You have both moved it rightward and you have flattened it down. And when you flatten it down it means that if you. The likelihood of you finding someone that is ready at the same time that you are ready is actually low. And as you know, in some of the research, if you stick about in a relationship with somebody for more than five, more than seven years and no kids have come along, it is really, really tough to hold that together. Because your ancestral programming, your, your brain says to you there is no world in which reliable contraception existed in paleo times. No kids have arrived. Maybe it's her, maybe it's me, but it's definitely one of us. And if we break up, if I just find the way that she used to sip her tea and I thought was cute now fucking horrendous. And drive me up the wall. I just feel like we just fell out of love. We're not really too sure. And people hate to hear this because the. We're enjoying ourselves, we're bonding, we're doing all the rest of it. Like I get it, I get it. But like there are. Psychology is biology. There are some physics of the system that are risky to roll the dice against. I'm not saying it can't be done. Many of my friends have, but more of my friends have it.
- [44:39]
B
I mean, you and I have talked about this a lot about the evolutionary of desire and about David Buss's stuff and about the fact that the king, he's the king of this. He's really great. You know, I don't even know him personally and I cite him constantly. I gotta meet him.
- [44:50]
C
We're in the city, we should have gone out.
- [44:52]
B
I know, we should, we should, we should anyway. But, but the whole point is that there's this, it's funny thing in relationships. There's this, they talk about the seven year itch. It's actually a five year itch in relationships where you're most likely to break up after five years. And actually that's a divorce rate. So that's after you get married. So and, and part of the reason for that is that the tension, the, the honeymoon is over and, and, and people get angry with each other and people start to have higher negative affect in the relationship. But that's when you start to, for example, cues and resource cues go from positive to negative. And so for example women, they tend to admire their husbands less if their husbands are not doing well. And it's five at the five year mark, they're starting to think cut my losses. Even if they don't know they're thinking that. And men, if there's fertility issues, as you suggest, around five years they start thinking try someone else. That's the big problem.
- [45:46]
A
Horrible when our ultimate motives clash up against the much more publicly acceptable sort of proximate motives of things like, oh well, you know, like we just didn't really feel the same way about each other. We didn't really. It's like I wasn't sure that he could provide for me and my family. Or I wasn't sure that her AMH level was actually where it needed to be in order to be able to keep this thing going.
- [46:10]
B
Yeah. And part of that is just because propaganda tells us that we're not biological creatures, that we don't have an evolutionary impulse behind us. And that's nonsense. The more that we actually understand how we're biologically wired, the more that we're actually able to stand up to our biology and live in our space of moral aspiration. The prefrontal cortex of the human brain is an incredible marvel. And it actually allows us. The fact that it's 30% of our brain by weight allows us to make decisions consciously that the dog can't. Your dog's prefrontal cortex is wafer thin. That's why all it has is animal impulses. We, on the other hand, have moral aspirations. But you're not going to get beyond your animal impulses into the space of your moral aspirations unless you understand those animal impulses. That's why I teach about the animal impulses, so that you know enough that you can reject them.
- [47:00]
A
Start from the bottom of the brain, stem up.
- [47:02]
B
Absolutely. I mean, the whole, you know, the fact that if you don't actually understand how you're wired and what your impulses make you want to do, you're unable to stand up to it and say, I choose to behave differently.
- [47:14]
C
Yeah.
- [47:15]
A
It's a weird blessing, but also a burden or an obligation perhaps, like you were obliged. If you want to capture all that is available up here. There's an entry price that you have to pay for this weird inheritance that you've got. This like, cosmic cognitive inheritance that you've been given. If you want to, if you want to make it work, you're going to have to.
- [47:41]
B
You can just live like your dog. You can have the same moral goals as a squirrel. And a lot of people do that.
- [47:46]
A
You know, Peterson had a great line about this. It was a live event of his in, like, 2018. Show had been going for six years. Someone stands up at the end like they do in my Q and A's, and he says, the depth of my consciousness causes me to suffer. Is it a blessing or a curse to feel everything so deeply? I was like, what a wonderful question. Give that guy a podcast.
- [48:07]
B
And what did Jordan say?
- [48:10]
A
Thought for a moment, said, the only way out is through you take more of the thing that poisons you until you turn it into a tonic that girdles the world around you. You can try and regress back into a more animalistic state. Said, it's too bloody late for that. It's too bloody late for that. And I thought it was such a very apocalyptic on brand, but I thought it was such a wonderful answer.
- [48:34]
B
Yeah, that's an ancient answer, actually. That's an ancient answer. Saint Irenaeus in the fourth century said, the glory of God is a man fully alive. That means a man who's suffering. You need to be fully alive because that is your teacher. It's interesting because you know, the Buddhists have this math where they say that suffering is pain multiplied by resistance. And you can go to the therapy industrial complex in the Western world today to try to lower your pain, or you can try to be fully alive and lower your resistance. In so doing, what happens is that the suffering ultimately declines because you've turned it into learning, you've turned it into generativity, you've turned it into growth. And that's what Jordan means by you gotta go through.
- [49:18]
C
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- [50:31]
A
Wisdom the only way out is through. I remember this Daniel Kahneman idea. I think it's so great. I wonder if you've ever used this analogy in your work. Imagine that you have a spring and on both ends you're pulling this spring and your goal is to get the midpoint of the spring to go in one direction. Now you can either apply more pull to one end or you can reduce more pull from the other. And the difference the Thing that I thought was so clever about it was that if your solution is to hit the gas rather than to take your foot off the brake. Yes, you move the center of the spring, but you have way more tension in the system. I thought that was. It stuck with me. I think that's such a fun.
- [51:15]
B
It's a nice analogy.
- [51:16]
A
Great analogy. Because as you pull more.
- [51:19]
C
Yes.
- [51:19]
A
You're overriding it and you are pulling it through, but there's so much more tension in the system.
- [51:24]
B
That's right.
- [51:24]
A
And you're having to work harder.
- [51:26]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why, you know, the, the Zen Buddhists, it's an attitude of non resistance. An attitude of non resistance. Look, when it comes to suffering in general, and this is a lot of what I write about now, and part of the reason is because the, the most important teacher of the meaning of your life is your suffering. It's the most important and one of the greatest ways for you to miss the meaning of your life is for you to try to avoid your suffering.
- [51:49]
A
Give me an example.
- [51:50]
B
So nobody ever said I really figured out what I was made of that week at the beach in Ibiza. Now they talked about when my mom died, when I almost lost my business, when I flunked out of college, when I got really sick, when I was truly scared and I made my way through it. When I understood, when I went through that suffering was my teacher about who I am as a person and the meaning of my life. What you find is that in large groups of people, you find that when you ask them to talk about the meaning of their life, they always talk about their terrible times, they always talk about their suffering. Always. That's the way it is. And if we have a culture that tries to get rid of pain, you have a culture that gets rid of meaning.
- [52:35]
A
It's not only get rid of pain, it's resist it. Right?
- [52:38]
B
Yeah. Well, it's more, more resistance is bad, just as getting is trying to lower pain is bad.
- [52:42]
A
Yes.
- [52:43]
B
So you have a culture of that. That's what the therapy culture really is. The therapy, their, their therapeutic culture is about getting rid of pain and, and not resisting anything, et cetera, et cetera. That's a really big problem. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, what that is, is that's, that's antithetical to finding the meaning of your life, to finding the significance, the purpose and coherence of your life. So what we need is we need a culture of the Spartan fife as, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, there's the best essay on this, by the way. You've read it. But everybody who watches modern wisdom needs to read Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841. It's like, read it tonight. It's an essay. It's like Ayn Rand, but not creepy.
- [53:29]
A
I liked what else I read recently. There's a. Is there a Rilke poem on the shortness of life?
- [53:35]
B
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [53:37]
A
Fucking.
- [53:38]
B
Fuck, yeah. Yeah.
- [53:38]
A
Talking about walking through some magic.
- [53:40]
B
But the whole point is we need a culture that, that, that embraces the inevitable suffering that is part of the human existence that says, you know. So I asked my students to repeat after me, my suffering is sacred. And like a really fun teacher. Right. And. And just have a little mantra at the beginning of the day, say, I'm truly grateful for the happy things and the fun things are going to happen this day, but I'm also grateful for the trouble I'm going to have, because therein lies my growth. Bring it on and have that. To face it, to face up to it, it's a really wonderful thing. It's actually one of the reasons that people get happier when they're older. People start to get happier in their 50s and 60s. And almost every. It's like I tell my students, because almost everybody's happy to. Happiness declines in their mid-30s and 40s. Yeah. But almost everybody from early 20s until about 50, their happiness declines. And they think it's going to go up because their success and money, et cetera, their dreams are going to come true. They are. The problem is that you're going to get less enjoyment and it's going to be trouble. Almost everybody gets happy. So I tell my students it's a good news, bad news story. So the bad news is that your happiness is declining. The good news is that I'm getting happier. Your 50s and 60s, almost everybody's happier. And part of that is because you start to understand suffering for the first time. You're like, oh, oh, I'm not going to be suffering about this tomorrow. So I'm going to get a head start feeling better today. You understand yourself. You understand the nature of the experience.
- [55:16]
A
It's the sort of transient, transitory nature of these things. This is a big sort of lesson for me that I really struggled earlier on. I still struggle with now, which was, this is going to be the way it is forever. And it causes you to not savor things that are good that are happening and overly fear things that are bad that are happening when the world's on top of you. It doesn't last for as long as you're worried about. And when you're on top of the world, it doesn't last for as long as you hope.
- [55:47]
B
Right? That's the hedonic treadmill. I mean, the fact that emotions are transient because emotions are not there to give you a good day. Emotions are there as a signal that there are threats and opportunities in the environment and that you need to avoid them or approach them. That's all your emotions are. They're just neurobiological signals to you. Negative emotions. Fear, anger, disgust and sadness. There's only four. And they're in response to four different threats. Thank God for those threats. They keep you alive. But when you understand them as particular signals, then you can metacognitively manage them by understanding them better. And that's one of the great. That's one of the reasons that people get remarkably less neurotic. It's one of the ways that that personality reliably changes as people get older. They become more agreeable, they become more conscientious, they don't become more open to experience, but they almost always get less neurotic because they have a better understanding of the fact that life is suffering.
- [56:41]
A
When it comes to negative experiences, what are the, what are the most reliable levers to lower negative feelings?
- [56:54]
B
So number the most reliable is anything that's metacognitive. It's understanding of negative emotion. That's really what it comes down to. So, okay, so there's two different questions here. Number one is what will actually help you with negative emotions? Number two is what is the technique in your life? And so the least productive ways are drugs and alcohol and workaholism like we talked about. And now it'll be mindless Internet use or something like that, which is sedation through distraction, sedation through distraction, et cetera, et cetera. Which kind of goes into those categories. The techniques that work really well and are extremely productive because they make you better through your suffering and actually alleviate a lot. And they're non resistant in their way. Number one is religious activity. And number two is picking up heavy things running around. So people ask me, do I get happier when I go to the gym? No, you get less unhappy if you have naturally low negative affect. If you're naturally a very low intensity unhappiness person, which is to say that you're a cheerleader or you're a judge, you're not gonna be able to stay in the gym because you're not gonna feel better. You're gonna be like, it just Hurts.
- [58:08]
A
So you're saying that as we look around the gym, the more jacked people are, the harder they find life generally.
- [58:13]
B
Yeah. That means they have high intensity neg effect. That's the reason you love the gym.
- [58:17]
A
They're being alleviated.
- [58:18]
B
Yeah. And you get lots and lots of. You get a lot of relief when you go to the gym of your. From your intense negative affect.
- [58:25]
A
So jacked guys are sad guys.
- [58:27]
B
Jacked guys are guys with issues. Jacked guys are guys with issues. If you're a 61 year old and you look like you go to the gym a lot, it means that you're. You should.
- [58:36]
A
Hey. Okay.
- [58:38]
B
But the other thing is religious activity. And religious activity is really, really important. That's part of. By the way, that's one of the reasons that I, that my own morning protocol starts with, number one. I get up at 4:34, 45 to 5, 45. In the gym every day. I have a gym in my house. Then I go to mass every day. I'm a Catholic, go to mass every day because it goes body and soul. Because I have a negative effect problem.
- [59:01]
A
You're saying that you're using church and religion as a performance enhancer for your happiness.
- [59:05]
B
That's right. And it's completely legal.
- [59:07]
A
Yeah. Wow. Okay, so take me through your. If you were to create an evidence based morning routine.
- [59:14]
B
Yeah.
- [59:15]
A
Maximizing well being, what would it look like?
- [59:17]
B
So I maximize both well being and productivity. So this is really, really important because I have. I'm in a creative profession. I gotta write, think, speak, teach. I gotta work every day on having creative output because I have a weekly column and I write books and I have to give talks, et cetera, et cetera.
- [59:34]
A
Your output's terrifying.
- [59:36]
B
And it's. And I have a podcast. I mean, it's like. And it takes a lot of work in this whole thing. So I need to be super productive. And that means my brain has to be optimized for that. And I want to alleviate high levels of negative effect. So number one is the Brahma Muhurta, which is in Sanskrit means the creator's time that has been around for 6,000 years. And the whole idea is if you get up before dawn, you've already won the day because that actually gives you better concentration, better focus, and better creativity. If you get up when the sun is warm, you've already lost the first battle. And now a lot of people are like, yeah, my chronotype, I'm a night owl. No, I used to think I was a night owl tool too. I Was actually just a musician who drank too much. Morning larks. The chronotype is probably 60% environmental, you know, only about 40% genetic. So everybody can be a morning lark. It's harder for some. I never get up without an alarm clock. Ever, ever, ever, ever. And year after year after year I still have to. I would sleep in if I could. But that's the first battle and that's really a big swinger in improving your negative.
- [60:41]
A
You've really started off with a difficult one that. Especially if you're in summer somewhere and you think, oh, that's 4:30.
- [60:47]
B
No, no. Of course if you're in Helsinki in July, you're not gonna be able to do it because no sleep. Yeah, that's right. You gotta get up. You gotta get up before you went to bed. So I mean your results may vary. You gotta figure out how to. I mean that you never make the perfect. The enemy of the goat it on this. The second part of that is what you do first thing. And that's substantial physical activity. Exercise is really important. So a lot of guys will write to me. 22 year old guys graduate from college, feel aimless, don't know what to do, feel really depressed. Living with mom. Whatever I say, okay, you don't have to go to the gym and pick up heavy things and do something insane like your routine. I recommend getting up a half hour before dawn and walking for an hour without devices outside. Walk not on the treadmill outside. Hear the crunch of the gravel under your feet. No devices. This will give you a sense of transcendence. It will wake up the right hemisphere of your brain, which is what you need for a sense of meaning and mysticism. It's great to listen to modern wisdom, but not during the walk. Right? And doing that while the sun comes up has special benefits. Huberman talks about that an awful lot. But it's very well studied that this is really important.
- [61:55]
A
Okay, so combine these two for me. If you're saying that it's great to pick up heavy things and some people like to pick up heavy things, but you're also saying it's great to be out on a walk outside.
- [62:03]
B
Like those are incompatible unless you're working out outside.
- [62:05]
A
I know, right?
- [62:06]
B
And, and that's great if you can actually do that if you've got an outdoor gym because you know you're lift.
- [62:11]
A
Atx, shout out lift ATX in Austin.
- [62:13]
B
Texas, Venice beach, whatever. Yeah, yeah. So, so, but, and so you got to make choices along those lines. I have a gym in my house, so I go downstairs to the basement from 4:45 to 5:45 every day. I get about, I take about one, one day off per month because of travel. So I'm on the road a lot. Then I clean up and I go to mass every day. And that's important to me. And these are my religious beliefs and, and by the way I go with my wife. We go to 6:30 mass every day when I'm home and I'm home about half the time. And here I'm in Austin, Texas. I'll go to mass tomorrow morning at 6:30. There's a church near my, my, there's. It's like being Catholic is great. It's like Starbucks. It's a complete franchise system. It's the same every place. There's one in every corner. It's unbelievable.
- [62:56]
A
Exactly what you're going to get.
- [62:57]
B
Yeah, exactly right. But that's important to me. But the whole point is not Catholicism. My path is not the only path. The point is transcendence. And transcendence by getting smaller and making the universe larger. For some people, vipassana meditation works really, really well. But that's getting soul in line with body first thing in the morning. And there's a lot of neuroscience research that talks about why that's so, so important. Because I'm driving toward high f, high well being and high productivity. Those are the twin goals. And doing this alignment really works, really helps a lot because by seven then you're, you're ready to. And I haven't taken any nutrition yet except for you know, 15 grams of creatine monohydrate and a, you know, electrolyte, some something salty and. Yeah, so I'm not getting any calories. That's when I apply the psychostimulant. That's when I apply the caffeine. Because you don't want to use caffeine to wake up, you want to use caffeine to focus. We all know about how the A2A adenosine cycle works in the brain. No doubt everybody in your show knows about this.
- [64:03]
A
I piped on about it. Look, I got a ton of shit because for a long time Element that's been a great partner on the show and I fucking love them.
- [64:09]
B
They're terrific.
- [64:10]
A
My big pitch was for the first 90 minutes of the day your adenosine system isn't what's in charge. Your adrenal system is. And salt acts on your adrenals more than it does if you want to about with cortisol and you want to like Increase that using caffeine. But so many people have a mid afternoon, early afternoon slump and then need to crank the caffeine lever again. But this is.
- [64:30]
B
They drank their caffeine too early, correct?
- [64:32]
A
Yeah, just. But just push. I, I'm telling you, New Year's resolution, push it back by two hours, by three hours and just see what happens. Especially if you're using something like new tonic as well, because the L theanine is going to smooth out. Or just take lthenine. You don't need to use new tonic. Take L theanine capsules with your morning coffee. And if you are really, really tired, you can go harder on the coffee. But the L theanine will smooth out the bitters. And then if you add 10 plus grams of creatine in I, you're in.
- [65:01]
B
Good shape because it's the, the creatine monohydrate. The newest research says it's neuroprotective. It's not just good for, you know, muscle protein synthesis. So it's a real, I mean, creatine is one of the most studied supplements. Super product, super product. And, and I take a multivitamin and I do all the stuff that you're. That sensible people do.
- [65:19]
A
Okay, so you're up before the sun.
- [65:20]
B
Yep, before the sun. Hard workout, which is 75 resistance, 25 zone two. And then I'm going to be active for the rest of the day. So I get another five miles of walking over the course of the day. The rest of the day, which is important. Go to mass, go to church, which is. Or my meditation.
- [65:36]
A
Five miles. Like 10,000.
- [65:37]
B
That's 10,000 steps. I just don't like saying 10,000 steps because it's so hackneyed, you know?
- [65:41]
A
Okay. You just got to do it differently.
- [65:43]
B
I got to be different. I got to be me. Anyway, so I come back from. Once we come back from church, that's when caffeine, that's when caffeine is entered into the picture. And I use about 350 milligrams of caffeine a day. It's usually.
- [65:55]
A
It's not a small amount.
- [65:56]
B
It's not a small amount. It's in one bolus. I grew up, I grew up in Seattle. Dude. I grew up near the only Starbucks in the world.
- [66:03]
A
Okay.
- [66:03]
B
Yeah. So I'm used to burnt coffee. For me, the best coffee is like hot water through charcoal briquettes. You know, it's like if you, if you made something called Indonesian Ashes, I would buy it anyway. So then, and then I take first protein take first protein. I try to get, get between 60 and 70 grams of protein first thing in the morning. And that means whey protein with, with Greek yogurt and berries and to get the micronutrients with the berries and the nuts in there. And that's all I've, that's the only nutrition I take until the middle of the day when I get another bolus of protein. But that Greek yogurt has a ton of tryptophan in it. And tryptophan is real good for mood management.
- [66:42]
A
What's your favorite brand of Greek yogurt for this?
- [66:44]
B
I like. Well, fage is great. Chobani is good. Chobani's level oicosis is nice.
- [66:50]
A
Okay, so there's no, it's not like there's something that you found that doesn't.
- [66:53]
B
Have the unflavored fat free Greek yogurt. It sounds joyless but you know when you put some delicious berries and nuts and it's the best thing, I think.
- [67:01]
A
We make some good protein powder in with it too.
- [67:03]
B
Yeah, for sure. And, and you spike it with protein powder, you get up to 70 grams of protein and that's a big bolus of protein. So you're getting the right, the amino acid that you need and all of that is really good for focus. And so I get four hours of an appropriate amount of dopamine in my prefrontal cortex equivalent. I would if I were taking Modafinil. I mean if I equivalent to taking an ADHD medication and you can't get four hours of. I mean if you're doing creative work, generally speaking, you can, you can expect two hours a day. You can extend that by about 100% if you design your, your protocol to, to make your brain chemistry work the right way. I'm happier and productive.
- [67:43]
C
A quick aside, you've probably heard experts like Dr. Rhonda Patrick talk about the benefits of omega 3s. They reduce.
- [67:49]
A
Hello omega 3s. There they are.
- [67:52]
C
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- [68:56]
A
This is the happier and productive thing is an interesting non trade off that you're making work. So it makes me think about varicocele surgery. So I'm going to bring this back. Wait, so most interventions that increase testosterone decrease fertility.
- [69:14]
B
Yeah.
- [69:14]
A
If you go on trt, if you start taking peds, your fertility reliably drops, sperm count goes down. Motility morphology also usually not too great. LH and fsh, like just super suppressed. But one of the few interventions that I know, which is varicocele surgery, which is to improve the blood flow to testicles, makes both go up. They see a mean change, I think 120 points on test, which is, you know, for a lot of guys now going to be between like 25 and maybe even like 50% or 40%, something like that. And you also see improvements in sperm count and motility.
- [69:58]
B
Basically makes your boys younger.
- [70:00]
A
Correct. It makes everything work a little bit better. If you've got varicosil, obviously. And it's, this is one of those few interventions where having a bit more of a global perspective. So for instance, it's one of the reasons that we designed the new tonic drink. It felt like when I was drinking energy drinks usually like I was borrowing health from tomorrow for today and I didn't want that. I wanted something that felt like, oh this is good. This is like compounding over time and this is contributing to better performance. And that's what you're talking about here too.
- [70:31]
B
Yes, that's exactly right. Yes, exactly right. You can turn back the clock in a lot of ways because you're doing think exercise. I mean Peter Attia talks about this a lot. Exercise is the single best medicine, the single best longevity drug you can get.
- [70:44]
A
What are you piecing your energy, your exercise routine around. What's that look like to you?
- [70:50]
B
So I've been. When I was in my late 30s, when I look fantastic, it looks great. Well, thank you, Chris. I appreciate that a lot. It was gonna. It was gonna come in here. It's like with a tank top or something, but nobody needs to see that. So. When I was in my late 30s, I changed my life up a lot. I quit drinking alcohol because I had to. It wasn't going no place good. And I recognized that if I didn't exercise, that the future I was going to be. I was going to be broken down because I just looked at a lot of people that were in my profession. I was an academic professor in those days, looking at a lot of people who are in their 60s, and it was grim. So I started doing what I do with everything else. I started studying it, studying the science of, you know, the exercise science, which when I'm my 30s, was way less advanced than what it is now. But we still knew a lot. You didn't have to get your science through muscle and fitness. There was. There were papers you could. On PubMed that you could actually understand what. What the, you know, the. The proper exercise protocols look like. But I did actually something that was more important than that. I started every place I was going. I'm starting to tour a lot as a. As a lecturer. And every time I was in a city, I would find the oldest iron gym I could find because that's where the old guys hang out. That's where the guys in the 70s hang out that are still kind of. They're still pretty shredded, and they're like, you know, and. And now. Now I'm one of those old guys, right? My wife says sleeping with me is like holding in a leather bag of ropes. Yeah, thanks. That's. That's nice. Anyways, a sack of ropes. That's exactly what ambition was. But anyway, I'd go to these old guys, I would say, give me advice. How do you not get hurt? How do you stay shredded? What do you eat? And I started just copying these old guys. I was just collecting data because I'm just.
- [72:37]
A
They're not necessarily the healthiest.
- [72:39]
B
They're not necessarily the healthiest. But that's why I wanted the oldest guys. That's why I didn't go for the youngest shredded guys. Because, you know, when you're 29 years old, you can look at the portrait of health and have, you know, you can have a right ventricular hyperplasia or something. Who knows you can get something as like hypertrophy of your, your ventricles because you're taking performance enhancing drugs. You can be on death's door when you're looks great, you look like, and you're unable to have children. But if you're 75 years old and you're still picking up heavy things in the gym, a lot of things are going right. That means your back doesn't hurt too much and your joints are pretty healthy and you're keeping proper muscle mass and you're keeping proper body fat. And what it did was it started me on a set of protocols that I've been adjusting and adjusting and adjusting. I'm still adjusting it, by the way. I mean, I'm down 15 pounds lighter than I was five years ago because I adjusted way up my protein content and my, in my exercise protocols. And what it comes down to is basically this. You need a proper balance of zone 2 cardio and resistance training. And the older you get, the less heroic you need to be under the, under the weights. And so I hate it. I don't want that. Right. I still want to do heavy squats and I can't do that anymore because I'm going to hurt myself is what it comes down to. But you can maintain a lot of muscle mass and so you can actually get rid of it. I can maintain sub 10 body fat fat and, and keep, and keep muscle mass.
- [74:03]
A
That's absolutely wild.
- [74:05]
B
And part of it is because genetics, because I'm thin. Right. But part of it is, I mean you can, you can do a lot just by having good protocols, by being a really, really disciplined person also helps. I don't drink alcohol.
- [74:14]
A
Well, it's not okay. So the alcohol thing's a big part. And what you're doing with a structure and a framework is you're trying to not rely on discipline, trying to just follow the, follow the program. I mean, if I could give one of the things that I did that was great. I did lots of things in my twenties that were ridiculous.
- [74:27]
B
Especially you're a club promoter in your 20th.
- [74:29]
A
I was, I, I, I spent a decade and a half sniffing random bags of unpronounceable white powder from dudes called Greg that were in the bathroom of some fucking like unpronounceable nightclub in the northeast of the uk.
- [74:46]
B
This should be fine.
- [74:48]
A
Well, I mean, I'm made of rubber and magic. What's it gonna do? That was my point with COVID When Covid came along, my main takeaway was that Covid should be scared of me. Not be me. Scared of COVID Like, if you get into his blood, he's like, what the fuck is inside of this? Like, get us. No way. No, thank you. I'm leaving. But the thing that I'm super happy with is that I started training in the gym. Meet Mike Thurston. He was one year younger than me. We trained at the center for Sporting Excellence in Newcastle University. And I have been four days a week, three days a week, on average, compliance, like, since I was 18 years old.
- [75:22]
B
It's so good.
- [75:23]
A
And the point is, if you are. If you are in your 20s, even if you're in your 30s, what you're doing is. It's kind of like an investment into a future bank account. It's about health now. It's. Forget that bit. Forget the A tier. You're not gonna fall over. You can pick your kids up when you're 70. That doesn't matter. What it means is that when you get to 37, or probably even 47, you can maintain a beach ready physique on two training sessions a week.
- [75:48]
B
Yeah.
- [75:48]
A
You can do less than everybody else and look better than everybody else and not have to work as hard. So it's all. And you look great now. Right. And it's good for your health and it's good for your mental and da, da, da, da. Like all of those things. But the main one that I can see is, is I am like an inheritor of that. I did.
- [76:07]
B
Yeah.
- [76:07]
A
And it means that now I just, I don't have to work as hard. And it's like, what every. It's this weird side effect that every gym bro didn't ever intend to be doing right. But realizes as they get a bit older. Ah, I just, I don't really need to train all that much. And look, I'm never going to be shredded as I was when I was 25, but I. I hold on pretty. Yeah.
- [76:27]
B
Yeah. And your wife doesn't go, ew when you take your shirt. But it's also, as you get older, you find that you want to do more days in the gym. And part of the reason for that is because of mood management. It's so incredibly effective as a means of mood management to pick up heavy things and run around. So I do seven days a week.
- [76:46]
A
How are you splitting the resistance? Training and cardio.
- [76:49]
B
Yeah. So it depends on the day and actually where I am or what I'm doing. So if I'm someplace where I'm going to be relatively sedentary, then I'll Do a lot more zone 2 to first thing in the morning. So I just plan it out according to that. If I'm in more pain for whatever reason because I'm stiff, I'll actually do more stretching. More yoga is what I'll do. So I apply it in particular ways. If I'm under an ordinary routine, then on the weekends when I'm actually walking a lot with my family, with my wife, then I'll actually do 100% will be resistance. I'll have a big pull day and a big push day, for example, for an hour of push and an hour of pull. And it's a lot. I mean it's a, it's a. But, but I'm not using the kind of weights and I'm not putting the. I'm not having the impact on my joints and I'm spreading things out enough that I'm actually not getting hurt recovering which is the great thing about being older.
- [77:37]
A
What's your favorite zone too?
- [77:38]
B
My favorite zone, I have an elliptical. I'm. I'm a weak man.
- [77:42]
A
It's just, you know, dude, honestly I, I did this at the start of the year in Mexico as we're on a trip in Mexico and just put the treadmill at 15 degrees.
- [77:52]
B
Yeah.
- [77:53]
A
Three miles an hour. And you will just hold. I mean people that way fitter than me probably would be fine. Would need to push it between 3 and 3.4, something like that. And you will just hold like 140, 150bpm.
- [78:05]
B
Yeah.
- [78:05]
A
And you can text, you can think you can.
- [78:07]
B
Yeah, no, it's good.
- [78:08]
A
Like dude. And I'm like oh my God, 45 minutes of that a couple of times a week.
- [78:12]
B
No, it's great. My, my daughter who I, we have treadmill too because you know, my, my, my, my kids are. 2 of my 3 kids are complete gym rats. I mean absolute gym rats. They're military.
- [78:21]
A
Good.
- [78:22]
B
And my daughter's a second lieutenant Marine Corps. Right now she's 4 foot 11, she's 100 pounds.
- [78:28]
A
She does show that the treadmill is not going to make it.
- [78:30]
B
Well, she'll put it up at 30 degrees or some crazy thing like just like practically it looks like it's straight up. And then she'll put on a pack that's 70 pounds on her 100 pound frame and, and go for an hour. She's animal. So that's, I mean that's hardcore. But then again, you know, she's 22 years old.
- [78:50]
A
Okay. Evening routine.
- [78:51]
B
So the evening routine is a little bit different because what you want is mood management and sleep. It's not mood management or productivity. You want mood management and sleep. And so that's a slightly different routine. And that routine starts at dinner. And one of the mistakes that a lot of people make is that they eat dinner too late. And you know, I lived in Spain for a long time. I've lived off and on in Spain for 35 years. And dude, dude, no. 10pm I'm sorry. I mean, it's like, oh, it's so great. And lifestyle, that's, that's unhealthy. I'm sorry. You know, it's like, lo siento mucho, pero no se po. It's like in Spain it's not good to do that. And so when we moved to the United States, that was a hard transition for my wife, who is from Barcelona.
- [79:30]
A
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I've always thought that one of the worst incompatibilities that you could have with somebody that you love. Loved was bedtimes. Yeah, you want to go to bed at 9 and they want to go to bed at 2. Yeah, that would be difficult to navigate. I hadn't accounted for the fact that somebody could want to eat dinner at 6 and somebody else could want to eat dinner at 10.
- [79:50]
B
Exactly right. And that was, that was, you know, we got through it, man. And we've married 34 years, but, but now we both eat at 6. And part of the reason is because, you know, we're in our 60s and so we actually need an evening protocol that actually works and we, and we have to get up early in the morning. She doesn't get up at 4:45, but she gets up at 6 o'. Clock. She sleeps more than I do. Do I need about six and a half hours of sleep? She needs closer to eight so to, to actually be, have her, her, you know, biology working the way it's supposed to be working. So it starts at 6:00'. Clock. And what that means is, you know, your last protein rich meal, really your last meal should be a couple, three hours before you go to sleep. For all sorts of reasons that Rhonda Patrick talks about a lot. A lot of people talk about that. Yeah, exactly right, exactly right. So, and, and it shouldn't be your, your heaviest meal. And there's a lot of things that go into that now, having never any caffeine with dinner, never drink any caffeine with dinner. I mean you can actually get away with it better when you're younger. But let me tell you, Chris, when you're when you're 61 like me. It's like, I just looked at this. This is so delicious. What you gave me has 120mg of caffeine in it. I'll be up like cleaning the garage tonight or something.
- [80:55]
A
The fact that you opened it in the same room as yourself is.
- [80:57]
B
I know, it's like I smelled that thing and I'm not sleeping tonight. But it's. You become way more. The metabolism of caffeine changes a lot with age and in almost everybody. So that's why benzodiazepine drugs. It's the same kind of thing that you have to titrate what you use for, you know, for going to sleep or waking up very differently as you get older. And a lot of people will have insomnia when they're older because they're drinking an afternoon coffee and they don't realize that that's what's happening. That's a really common thing. So no caffeine. I recommend no alcohol in the evenings for anybody. Even for people who can drink appropriately. Not doing that because that just messes up your sleep architecture. And the hardest one for me is sweets. I have a huge sweet tooth.
- [81:39]
A
Me too.
- [81:40]
B
All former drinkers all love sweets because you metabolize in the same way. And the result of it is that.
- [81:47]
A
I want it's sedative. The big chunk of sugar is the same. Like so good.
- [81:51]
B
It's so good, but it's just not good for your sleep architecture. Is the way that that works. Of the three sweets are a little less bad than the other two. Is what it comes down to then actually walking right after you eat is really important. And so we walk 30 to 40 minutes after dinner every night when I'm home and I'm home about half the time. So I get to do that. And that's really good for you because it actually the way that you. Your insulin response, your glucose, et cetera, et cetera. So just much better for your sleep and mood management later on and then getting to sleep. Actually going to bed. Going to bed is really important. And if you're sleeping with your partner, this is the best thing ever because you can actually work on your. Both your mood management and your relationship by going to bed early. But don't go to sleep early. The thing to do is to actually have about five minutes of hardcore oxytocin release by staring into each other's eyes in bed. This really, really, really works. Now this is more important for women. Women have about three times as Much oxytocin as men. That's why women need more eye contact than men. Men need more touch. Men need than women. Women need more eye contact than men. Hold hands while you stare into each other's eyes deeply for five, 10 minutes and you're having a real conversation. You can save most marriages, by the way by holding hands more and always looking at each other in the eyes when you talk. This will save most marriages. And I can add a couple more things in, like having more fun and praying together or something, but eye contact and touch is super important. A B t Always be touching. Always be touching is what it comes down to. And never be not looking at each other in the eyes when you're talking. That's in bed or out of bed, but in bed. That's a really good way to do it. Reading to your partner is an incredibly good way to work.
- [83:33]
C
Reading to your partner.
- [83:33]
A
Reading.
- [83:35]
B
Yeah. Or being read to. And there's a whole bunch of really interesting studies on this, but it's like, for me, it's like narcotics. If you read to me in a feminine Spanish accent in bed. Unbelievable. And so, you know, we've been reading psalms and love poetry and things we read to each other a lot at night is really what it comes down to. It's a really, really, really good thing.
- [83:58]
A
A nice bonding experience.
- [83:59]
B
Yeah. And then actually getting to bed on time. Getting to bed at a. At a reasonable time. And so you're managing your, you know, your blood sugars and your blood chemistry, your blood glucose, et cetera, through your activities, et cetera. And then you're doing what actually your brain needs, which is connection and relaxation in a really, really healthy way. And these are the protocols that when I'm home, at least we use pretty regularly. It's helped a lot because I'm an insomniac and so I need to be really rigorous about my sleep hygiene.
- [84:32]
A
Is there a risk of people over optimizing well being to the point of neurosis?
- [84:36]
B
Oh, for sure. And that's the reason that wearables can be a real curse for a lot of people. What do you use for wearables?
- [84:41]
A
Whoop.
- [84:42]
B
You use whoop. That's great. Those guys will Ahmed. It's a great company.
- [84:45]
A
Sat in that.
- [84:46]
B
He's a. It's. He's a. It's. That's. He's a terrific entrepreneur.
- [84:49]
C
Fantastic.
- [84:49]
A
It's fantastic at what they do, but I understand the health anxiety. Yeah.
- [84:53]
B
All right. Same thing. Yeah. And so you have to be real, real cognizant. Of that. And some people, like my, My wife doesn't use her wearable when she's in bed because she doesn't want to know how many minutes she slept and how many minutes she was awake and what her sleep score is. She doesn't want those data. Her life is better when she doesn't have those data. So you gotta figure out how much data you need me and not to gorge on it in such a way that you become really, really neurotic. Some people are. And so I have to be, you know, pretty careful about that. But what I find is that when I take, I take the, the, the, the, the cognition, the, the conscience, the consciousness out of everything, and I just turn it into what I do when I wake up in the morning, what I do before I go to bed at night, that my life is better because I'm able to use the cycles.
- [85:35]
A
Well, you've got a system two, System one, this. Right. You've got to go. Okay. And this is why, you know, when I first started the show, and it's one of the great things about having a ledger of proof of work of where you were at at what time.
- [85:50]
C
The first two or three years of.
- [85:51]
A
The show was me being a productivity bro. It was me talking about morning routines and Peter C. Brown make it stick, learning how to learn and Ebbinghaus forgetting curves and spaced repetition and Anki note cards and like fucking Evernote external brains. It was all that. Yeah, because you have to go through this sort of big, over, complicated. Is the solution over here or over there? Or is it this thing? And you go really hard and deep on this and then you move on to the health and fitness thing and then you move on to the, for me, the sort of relational thing. And then you move into the culture thing. And then my current era is like the emotions thing. It's like the emotional thing. I'm like trying to get below the neck.
- [86:30]
B
That's right.
- [86:31]
A
And the.
- [86:33]
B
But below the neck is still above the neck because psychology is biology.
- [86:36]
A
All right, all right, Professor. The realization is you're going to have to do a much more obsessive version of this first. You're going to have to do a very deliberate. Yeah, it's going to look super nerdy. It's going to be really clunky. You're probably going to hate it. Half the. That you do is going to fall away.
- [86:55]
B
Right.
- [86:56]
A
Because for you, the Persona just doesn't work. But mass may. Or mass just doesn't work. But what breathwork does. Yeah, whatever. Like you're gonna find your flavor of what it is, and that's gonna take time.
- [87:07]
B
Yeah.
- [87:08]
A
So I think that everybody needs to go through a productivity bro phase. And I was fortunate that I did basically five years of like this obscene morning routine. Maybe compared with yours, it's comparable, but like this big, you know, opulent, two and a half hour monstrosity, this cathedral of stuff that I would do. I'd get up and I'd walk, I'd come back and I'd sit down. Journal, journal. And then I would do breath work, and then I would meditate, and then I would read, and then I would do yin yoga, and then I would prep my food, and then I would go to the gym, and then I would come back and it'd be midday and I'd have got up at 7am and I'm like, well, I've done so.
- [87:45]
C
Like, all of the things I wanted to do.
- [87:46]
A
Have done. And that was me trying to reach escape velocity from the adult infant that sniffed around in bags of drugs for 15 years.
- [87:53]
B
Yeah, I got it. I got it completely. And. And you know that. That ultimately is not the solution. What that is is gaining information. That's not the solution. So as a matter of fact, when it comes to the person that you want to be, that's not a problem you can solve. That's a problem you can understand. There's two kinds of problems. There's the solvable problems and the understandable problems. There's the complicated problems of life and the complex problems of life. Complicated problems you can solve with enough brain power and enough discipline and enough computational horsepower. Enough information that's like a jet engine or making a toaster or, you know, that's actually figuring out how to put together a podcast. That's a complicated problem. Complex problems are super easy to understand, but they're impossible to solve. You can only live them. That's like a football game. It's very simple. One team has more goals than the other. But the reason that you care about it is because you can't solve it in advance. You can only live it in real time. Time. My marriage is the ultimate complex problem. I can't solve it. I'll never. Chris. I'll never solve it. My wife, before I came over, she said, I love you. She texted me. We text all the time. And when I finish this, she might be super pissed off at me. I don't know.
- [89:09]
A
Hope not.
- [89:10]
B
Well, I don't know. She's Spanish. And that's part of the complexity. But I mean, that's Why I love my marriage. That's why I love my cat and not my toaster. Because my toaster is complicated, my cat is complex. That's why all the things you really care about are complex. Your life, you. The Christmas is a complex problem. You start off as a bro trying to treat Christmas as a complicated problem. And what you do find at the end of the day is the complexity therein to understand it and actually live your life.
- [89:46]
A
Talking earlier on about the do people need more happiness, less unhappiness? What are the experiences in life that give people the most pain? What makes us miserable the fastest reliably.
- [89:58]
B
Is sadness is what is the hardest thing that people can actually bear.
- [90:04]
A
And what's sadness?
- [90:05]
B
Sadness is losing something or someone that you love. That's what reliably brings you the most pain, is loss.
- [90:13]
A
Is that grief?
- [90:14]
B
Yeah. Well, grief is an extreme form of sadness.
- [90:16]
A
Right.
- [90:17]
B
And you know, that's the, when, when somebody's removed from your life, that's the most pain that people actually go through. That's the negative emotion that's most intense. And part of the reason is because that is on his face, the most catastrophic of the occurrences. That's why you're the most averse to it. That's why you have the most pain from it. You know, there's this little place in your brain, this dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in your brain, that little thing in your limbic system that gives you what's called affective pain. Pain has two part sensory and effective. Sensory pain is really the stimulus from the nerve endings when you burn yourself on the stove or something that has to do with inflammation. Affective pain is where it hits your brain and you say I hate this, right? So there's ouch and I hate it. So when you physically hurt yourself, that's what happens.
- [91:02]
A
That's a good distinction. Yeah.
- [91:04]
B
And there's two parts and it's, you know, it's working in different parts of your brain. So brain, the pain has two parts. When you have mental pain like rejection or loss, that's only the affective component it. And that's worse. That's worse. Now interestingly, acetaminophen, which you Brits called paracetamol, I think that's Tylenol, that works on the affective component of pain, whereas as Advil, you know, ibuprofen, that works on the sensory component of pain, so that lowers inflammation. Non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs, they work on inflammation, whereas Tylenol works on the affective component. Tylenol actually doesn't make you feel less pain. It just makes you care less.
- [91:43]
A
Is that right?
- [91:44]
B
Yeah. That's why when you take Tylenol and ibuprofen, when you take acetaminophen and ibuprofen together, it's a potent thing. It works on the two parts of pain really effectively.
- [91:52]
A
How interesting.
- [91:53]
B
And it's actually that mix is better than opiates. That actually is more effective than opiate drugs in managing pain. But here's the point. When you're really, really, really sad and there's a study of college students who are in bad breakup and. And some of them get Tylenol and some of them don't, those who take Tylenol a course of Tylenol are about a third less heartbroken.
- [92:15]
A
No way.
- [92:16]
B
Yeah.
- [92:17]
A
Wow.
- [92:18]
B
Yeah.
- [92:18]
A
But did you not say earlier on that we want to embrace our suffering?
- [92:21]
B
Yeah.
- [92:21]
A
We want to feel ourselves.
- [92:22]
B
Of course. What you want to do is manage it and so that. So what you don't want to do is eradicate it. But there are times when it's good to manage it.
- [92:28]
A
How do you know when it's time to manage it and when it's time to.
- [92:31]
B
When you. When you. You want to know when it's there, but you don't want it to actually interfere with your ability to live your life. That's usually at the therapeutic line when they talk. And that's one of the reasons that over the counter analgesics are fine. But opiates are bad for most people. And one of the reasons that people will take opiates is because they're trying to use them as an analgesic against the pain of life. Just the pain of life. The pain of life. And that's a really dangerous business.
- [93:01]
A
Us. Why do breakups hurt so much?
- [93:03]
B
Because they're a signal to you that you're going to be cast out of your tribe and walk the savannah and die alone. It's that you're going to die alone. That's why breakups hurt so much. Because they say there'll never be anybody for me. I'm incapable of falling in love. You catastrophize because your brain wants you to avoid that. Your brain wants you to not break up. And so it's going to make you feel like this is the end of the world so that you won't break up. It's not the end of the world. But if you knew it wasn't the end of the world, you'd be like, whatever, whatevs. That's why you won't leave a crummy relationship because you're afraid. You're not afraid of the breakup. You're afraid of the pain from the breakup. You're not afraid of failing. You're afraid of how you'll feel about yourself if you fail. People are afraid of their emotions. They're not afraid of the catastrophes is what it comes down to. Because the emotions are so aversive and that's what they're evolved to do. So once you understand that and you say, look, this is a crummy relationship, this is an unhealthy relationship, this is not going anywhere 10 years from now, this is not going to be better than it is today. I've got to do that. And then with the knowledge this is going to hurt, but it's going to be temporary pain. And that's a normal biological process. You can handle it. That's how knowledge is power.
- [94:17]
A
What. What happens in the brain when you put off the breakup? When you end up in a relationship with the relationship with the break wake up.
- [94:26]
B
Yeah.
- [94:26]
A
And you're constantly ruminating and thinking and.
- [94:29]
B
Pushing off that you're not getting. You're actually. The inevitable is still inevitable. But you're just elongating the suffering that leads up to the inevitable. That's a problem. Now if you don't know. You don't know is what it comes down to. But if you're trying to just avoid doing something that's difficult, firing that employee, saying that difficult thing, facing up to the fact that the business is not going well, then you're just going to suffer and suffer and suffer and suffer and suffer about it. And then the inevitable is going to happen. Happen. That's why the band aid right off is usually the right approach.
- [95:00]
A
You know, what's the gold standard for how people should deal with a breakup?
- [95:07]
B
So the gold standard. And there's a. There's a bunch of interesting protocols that actually show up in the literature. The breakup protocol. There's a bunch of stuff to not do too. So there's two do's and there's two don'ts. Number one is take some Tylenol, perhaps. Why not? I mean it's. Don't obviously check with your physician. This is not medical advice on modern wisdom. But. But there are a lot of other things to do. One of the things that you find is that when people actually. They want to curl up and cocoon when they're in the midst of a breakup, actually having more fun is really important. Distraction is extremely important. Distraction is something that you enjoy with people that you love is a critically important thing. Go ride your bike with your friends, even though you don't want to. Doing that is a very effective way for you to actually start to heal. The second is to consider not the things that you're missing, but the things that you're not missing is actually focus in a relationship. In every relationship, you broke up for a reason, right? If you have a breakup, you broke up for a reason. Focusing on what was good about it is actually going to prolong the grief. Focusing on the reason that you broke up is really, really important because that actually aligns. That's metacognitive. It aligns your prefrontal cortex with your limbic system. Like, I broke up for a reason. Why did I break up? I broke up because this wasn't going to go anyplace. And here's the reason. It wasn't going to go anyplace. And focus on that. That, you know. So if you're. If, you know, for women, for example, they get into these relationships with these terrible dark triad guys, narcissistic, Machiavellian psychopaths, which is, you know, by the way, 7% of the population. And, you know, it's. It's your first husband, right? And focus on the. The reasons that you had to get away from that guy, not the reasons that you missed that guy. And last but not least, there's a really interesting study that actually talks about the effects of sad music. Music. It's like you wouldn't put on a marching band after you break up. Even you think that should improve my mood? The reason is that you don't. You're trying to. When you're sad, you're trying to understand your feelings. You're making a real effort to understand your emotions, and your emotions are very confusing to you in a period of high negative affect. And when you listen to sad music, sad music, literally, because it's. It expands, it stimulates the right hemisphere of the brain, where you process aesthetics, where you process beauty. It helps you to understand your emotions better than you did before. And understanding your emotions is part of the healing process.
- [97:32]
A
So some Louis Capaldi would be whatever.
- [97:35]
B
Your favorite sad song is, Right?
- [97:37]
A
Okay, so one thing that you said that was really interesting, this sort of odd duality that people are in when they go through a break of. Prior to the breakup, thinking about all of the reasons that they should break up, and then as soon as the breakup is done, thinking about all of the reasons about why they shouldn't have broken up.
- [97:52]
B
Exactly.
- [97:53]
A
What's the switch that seems to be happening in lots of people's brains there.
- [97:57]
B
When, you know, when switch such that they actually pull the trigger.
- [98:00]
A
No, the switch that prior to the thing, prior to the breakup, here are all of the things that are bad.
- [98:06]
B
Because we focus on losses. Because we're always focusing on losses.
- [98:09]
A
Focusing on losses when you're in it and focusing on losses when you're out.
- [98:12]
B
That's the negativity bias inherent in Homo sapiens. So we're always focusing on the negative because the negative emotions and attention to threat is what keeps us alive. Thinking about what's good doesn't keep us alive. That's nice to have. That's why you have literally more brain space dedicated to negative emotions than to positive emotions. So you're always looking for the bad side of whatever's going on. I mean, I found myself saying the other day, you know, first class in United Airlines has really gone downhill.
- [98:41]
A
It has. Was it transatlantic or domestic?
- [98:44]
B
It's all of it. But yeah, it was some domestic. It was like east coast to west coast.
- [98:48]
A
Yeah, that sucks. It sucks.
- [98:50]
B
Yeah. But I mean. I mean, I'm getting there in five and a half hours, for Pete's sake. But that's how we're wired. And so when you're in the relationship, you're focusing on the negative part of the relationship, and when you're out of the relationship, you're focusing on the negative part of not being in the relationship. Because we have a negativity bias, which can be overridden metacognitively. And so if you're in a relationship and it's till death do your part, you're going to have a lot of negativity. You're really going to have a lot of negativity. And the thing to do is to focus consciously and systematically and therapeutically on what's right about your marriage every single day and giving thanks for what's actually in your marriage. If you have to break up with your partner, and you do, then the thing to focus on is not what you're missing because that's the negative stimulus, but to be focusing on the reason that you did it and the fact that it was the right thing to do, and the things that actually giving you relief, like, I'm not screaming at somebody today. I'm not jealous about something today. I'm not wasting another year of my life in a relationship that's unproductive today. And so focusing consciously as opposed to focusing unconsciously on the negative, that's the reason we do that.
- [99:58]
A
Do you think the modern freedom has made happiness harder, not easier?
- [100:06]
B
Yeah, I do. I actually do. And I think that that's actually escalated a lot in the last 30 or 40 years as a matter of. And that's the evidence of that, is that in the UK and the United States, that happiness has declined since about 1990. It's been consistently declining. And part of the reason is we make just tons of errors. I don't think, you know, I'm not of the view that we have too much freedom or we have too much abundance or we have too much affluence. I think that what we have is a tendency. Well, we have kind of a climate and a weather problem with happiness. The climate is that in modern society, we've gotten away from things that we took for granted, which are faith, family, friends, and work. Those are the four habits of the happiest people. They're serious about their faith or life philosophy. If they're not religious, they have serious family life, they have close friends, and they pay attention to the meaning in their work. And all those things have been in decline for the past 30 years. The weather problems are screenshot hatred, political polarization, and Covid. Those are the three big storms of unhappiness that have come our way.
- [101:14]
A
Surprising that anybody's managed to make it through the last half decade.
- [101:18]
B
But, you know, we do. I mean, we're tough, man. People are really, really tough. And the way that we do it, by the way, is by having personal. By having personal protocols that fight against those tendencies, say, okay, yeah, I mean, that life is making it less likely for me to. To worship or practice the philosophy of life. I'm being distracted constantly by these doodads and googas and stupid nonsense on the Internet. No, I'm putting that down. I'm going to study the holy book or whatever it happens to be. Yeah, I mean, that life says that you're tied down, that you're losing your freedom if you get married and have kids. Wrong, get married and have kids. It's the secret of happiness for most people, most of them married to the.
- [101:58]
A
Right person, kids with the right person.
- [102:01]
B
For sure. For sure.
- [102:02]
A
But it's interesting to do it the wrong.
- [102:03]
B
Your show is, you know, the reason I've always. I always like your show. Because modern wisdom actually is ancient wisdom. That's the. That's the twist.
- [102:11]
A
But the thing that's been fascinating about it is the mismatch.
- [102:14]
B
Yeah.
- [102:14]
A
As you would say in evolutionary psychology, the mismatch principle, that a lot of the systems that were built to protect us or keep us effective ancestrally, are maladaptive in the modern environment that we.
- [102:27]
B
Or they're maladaptive did. Yes, a lot of the time.
- [102:30]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [102:31]
B
So it's, you know, there's, there's, there's nothing wrong with resource cues and fertility cues. The problem is the way that we melt. They're maladapted in modern culture and the extent to which we believe the, the propaganda, they don't exist.
- [102:42]
A
Do you ever look at Seth Stevens Davidowitz's work?
- [102:45]
B
Oh no.
- [102:45]
A
So he is a. Used to be a data scientist at Google. He wrote first book was everybody lies and then his next one was don't trust your gut.
- [102:54]
B
Oh yeah, I've seen that don't trust.
- [102:55]
A
Your gut is money. It is. So I can't believe that he managed to like he danced through a minefield of political incorrectness and just got away with it somehow. I don't know why. Maybe it's because of the way he presents. He presents as this sort of slightly nerdy, slightly Jewish guy, but he, he fucking crushed it with that book. And he highlighted what are the traits that people optimize for to click on and what are the traits that are actually reliable for who you'll click with. Right. What predicts long term relationship satisfaction and happiness versus what are the things that people tend to optimize for upfront. And the two are totally different. I mean he did some in that buck, dude. He did some really spicy. He did some stuff around sex and race and which ones are most preferred by each sex and race. He had one of those crossover troubles and he's t. He was like, hey, Asian guys and black women. Like, you guys have got a tough end of the deal at the moment because it seems like certain groups from that. And he's, I'm like, how did you.
- [103:56]
B
Get away with that?
- [103:56]
A
Fuck. Did you write this book and put this out there? And it just. People just said it's very interesting, isn't it? Have I met. Because it was in the middle. I think this came out in 2020. 2020 2021. Like this could not have been more in the bullseye of like exactly how.
- [104:10]
B
This apocalypse is upon us.
- [104:12]
A
Oh my gosh. Yeah. And you know, like real, real harsh, brusque insights.
- [104:18]
B
Here's how you do it. So here's how you do it. So I've been, you know, I've been in the business of saying thing, you know, unspeakable thing. Yeah. You can. If you use the truth as a weapon versus if you Use the truth as a gift. Do you bring the truth in love or do you bring the truth in hostility? Do you say these things about race and sex because you're trying to score a point, you're trying to make someone.
- [104:40]
A
Look silly, or you're trying to do.
- [104:42]
B
It because you love people and you want people to live better, happier lives. It's the motive. I mean, you can still get canceled with a pure motive, but the truth of the matter is that motive matters a lot. And people know your motive.
- [104:53]
A
Someone I watched this video online about comedians and they were talking about how. I can't remember, the comparison was between a couple of comedians. And they said about how one of them, you just didn't believe that he was doing it to be nice, that he was saying that thing because he kind of maybe had a secret axe to grind. And this other one, you go, yeah, I mean, it's kind of the same group that you're punching at or whatever. But it doesn't feel as. Just doesn't feel the same.
- [105:21]
C
It doesn't feel.
- [105:21]
B
We have a hundred ways to discern that. Hundred ways to discern that. We have so many ways below our level of consciousness to know whether somebody's friend or foe. And somebody can say the same thing. You can criticize somebody. I mean, if you criticize me right now, I'm going to take it as an expression of love. I'm going to take it as a way that you want me to be better, because I know you will. My good. To love, according to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, is to will the good of the other as of other. To will the good of the other as nothing about your feelings. Nonsense. If I will, Chris's good as Chris. And when you believe that I have love in my heart for you like that, I can say hard things. You're gonna be like, thanks, man. It's amazing, actually. And so that's what we need to work. This is the wanna want. This is the right desire if you have to. If we want to be interesting people in the world, we have to have right desire, which is love for everybody else. Else just be full of love. And then it's like. It's funny because St. Augustine, it's very biblical in its way. It's very Buddhist in its way, but it's very biblical in its way. So, you know, you got the Ten Commandments. And the young guy comes up to Jesus and he says, I got a lot to remember, Lord. Can you boil it down something I can remember? He says, yeah, I mean, there's really just, you know, love the Lord your God. God and love your neighbor as yourself, you know. And he said, okay, that's great. So St. Augustine was asked, you know, can you boil it down? St. Augustine said, Love and do what you will. So we're really good at the do what you will part, but we're really not good at the love part. So this is the important thing for everybody watching us and for us to live. We're going to do what we will, and that's great. I love living in a society in which we have all these opportunities to have conversations like this and get paid. It's insane. But if it's not based in love, it's bad. If it's not based in love, it's a problem. It's making life worse and you're going to get in trouble is what it comes down to. But if it's based in love, you can be pretty confident because people are going to know that.
- [107:28]
A
Heck yeah. Arthur Brooks, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, you're great. I love you to bits. Where should people go? What have you got going on at the moment?
- [107:34]
B
I got a big book coming out in March called the meaning of your life Finding purpose in an age of emptiness. We got to talk about that again.
- [107:43]
A
Can't wait.
- [107:44]
B
Me too. Thank you.
- [107:45]
A
Podcast? You've got a podcast?
- [107:46]
B
I got a podcast, yeah. Sorry. Office Hours with Arthur Brooks. It's brand new, it's doing really well.
- [107:51]
A
It's crushing.
- [107:52]
B
It's. It's super fun. I mean, it's like I'm. It's a lecture. It's not. It's. I'm. I'm talking about behavioral science and in front of a camera. It's cool.
- [108:01]
A
Unreal. Appreciate you, man. Until next time.
- [108:03]
B
Thank you.
- [108:06]
A
If you're wanting to read more, you probably want some good books to read that are going to be easy and enjoyable and not bore you and make you feel despondent at the fact that you can only get through half a page without bowing out. And that is why I made the Modern Wisdom Reading list, a list of 100 of the best books, the most interesting, impactful and entertaining that I've ever found, fiction and non fiction and there's real life stories and there's a description about why I like it and there's links to go and buy it. And it's completely free. Free. You can get it right now by going to ChrisWillX.com books that's ChrisWillX.com books.