← Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Arthur Brooks - Harvard Professor & #1 NYT Bestselling Author | Why the Most Successful People Feel the Most Empty
01:11:21
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- [00:00]
Scott Clary
HubSpot is a success story, partner. Now think about listening to this podcast. Right now, you are probably multitasking. You are probably catching maybe 70 to 80% of what I'm saying. Now flip that and imagine catching only 20%. It's not a good use of your time. That'd be insane, right? But this is the reality for most businesses. Most businesses only use 20% of their data. That's like reading a book with 80% of the pages torn out. You are making decisions with a fraction of the picture. All the important details that get buried in the call logs and the emails and the transcripts and the chat messages, and it's just floating around doing nothing for you. Unless you use HubSpot. Their customer platform brings all that unstructured data together and turns it into insights that actually help you grow your business. Because when you know more, you grow more. And when you're running a business on a hundred percent of your data instead of 20, the decisions get a lot easier. Visit HubSpot.com to get the full picture.
- [00:56]
Arthur C. Brooks
Today your life feels really meaningless. You're going to be so uncomfortable. You're going to be distracting yourself from the discomfort of feeling like life is meaningless. And you're going to have to turn around and look at that and that's going to be kind of uncomfortable. But it's also super exciting.
- [01:08]
Scott Clary
What if everything you've been taught about success is actually making you miserable? Arthur C. Brooks has spent decades studying the science of happiness. Why high achievers reach the top and still feel empty.
- [01:20]
Arthur C. Brooks
When we ask people, do you feel like your life is meaningless? 15 to 20% of people would say, yeah, I feel like my life is meaningless. The human brain was designed to be function about 250,000 years ago, when humans started to live in bands of 30 to 50 individuals to be in communion with one another. That was how we were supposed to get our satisfaction. To find really the meaning of life,
- [01:40]
Scott Clary
he's dedicated his life to answering one question. What actually makes a life worth living? Today he's here to break down why chasing more will never be enough. And how to build a life that actually feels fulfilling.
- [01:53]
Arthur C. Brooks
When you're told to do nothing, you immediately start thinking about big questions. Questions of meaning. If technology is substituting for in person relationships, it's going to make you depressed. The same thing is true, by the way, for AI. It's perfect for how to and what questions. It's horrible for why questions. Happiness is based on meaning and meaning is based on love. You don't know what to do go love someone.
- [02:23]
Scott Clary
So, Arthur, you spent six years studying meaning and you say that this is the hardest book that you've ever written. Why is that?
- [02:28]
Arthur C. Brooks
Because the meaning of life is the hardest question. And you look for questions that you can answer that you can really get your mind around, like how fast is this company going to grow? How fast do I think it's going to grow on the basis of how it's performed? Those are closed ended questions. The ultimate open ended question is what is the meaning of life? It's insane. I mean, and yet I couldn't get away from it because I've been studying this, what we call a psychogenic epidemic. That means an epidemic, something that creates misery but doesn't have biological origin. And the psychogenic epidemic of depression and anxiety and loneliness, it's unambiguously related to the meaning of life. You find that the biggest predictor of being depressed and anxious, especially if you're a young adult, is being unable to articulate the meaning of your life or, or saying, I feel like my life is meaningless. So for years I'm like, I can't deal with that. That's, I can't deal with that. It's got to be something. Got to be something more specific. It has to be something that's a real research question. But you know, I do the analysis, I, I do the interviews and they keep talking about meaning and meaning and meaning. And I say, well, what if I wrote a book on the meaning of life? And people say, yes, that's what I want. And so I just had to suck it up and, and, and, and, and you actually take it on. And so that's what I did.
- [03:44]
Scott Clary
Do you feel like. Because just intuitively I feel like people are more stressed and anxious and seemingly have lost meaning in their life. Almost in like a post Covid world where everybody just seems like life is not as good as it used to be. I don't know if that's just intuitive or do you act. Is that actually reflected in data? Are people more stressed out than ever before?
- [04:06]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yes, but it actually started in about 2008, 2009. What happened is it accelerated during COVID So 2008, 2009, we started to see a real kind of a hockey stick. So for when we asked people, for example, I mean, for the longest time about depression and anxiety, it kind of bumped along and bumped along all through the 1980s and 1990s and the 2000s. And then around 2008, 2009 just took off. And then it accelerated even more during COVID you also find that, do you feel like your life is meaningless? This is a question that a bunch of different places have asked over the years. It's sort of the same. It's like, you know, about 15 to 20% of people of young adults would say, yeah, I feel like my life is meaningless forever and ever and ever. Until 2008, 2009, and that took off too. My life feels meaningless. That's really what happened. And of course, it got worse during
- [04:55]
Scott Clary
COVID So what is happening? Because you mentioned before, this is not a biological response. This is something that is cultural, societal. And when you interview people about, do you have meaning? Do you feel meaning? Like, is life for you meaningless? Do you notice that there's differences in different cultures, societies, countries around the world? Or is it just a universal.
- [05:18]
Arthur C. Brooks
It's. Well, so to begin with, my assumption that it was not biological when I started to do the research, it turns out that there are biological implications to this. There are. The origin of it, however, is not a contagious virus. On the contrary, it's a sociological or societal phenomenon. We can get into that. Where does it actually manifest? Largely among young adults, and especially among young adults that are well educated. Now, this is a weird thing. You see a psychogenic epidemic that's largely afflicting people under 30 or 35, and especially those people who went to college. That's a weird thing to say, oh, wow, what's happening here? You find that, for example, the people who didn't go to college are less likely to be depressed and anxious than people who did go to college.
- [06:06]
Scott Clary
So why is that this person is smart, pursuing education, obviously on. On some sort of career path.
- [06:12]
Arthur C. Brooks
There's something going on with our culture of high achievement, of strivers, of highly technologized citizens that's doing something to their brains that's making it harder for them to find the meaning of life. There's something about going to college and pursuing white collar jobs. To live in the hustle culture, to be spending your life on the screen, that's changing your brain. That's really what's going on here. And that's what I had to dig into. And that's what I found.
- [06:36]
Scott Clary
The person who is highly ambitious, somebody is pursuing secondary education. This is the person who is struggling the most. And is it somebody who has a job, is making money, hasn't found a job yet? Like, is there any other circumstances that dictate if this person is struggling?
- [06:54]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, I mean, not having a job is gonna make you struggle no matter who you are, for sure. You know, being unemployed, being alone, being lonely. Those are predictors of depression, anxiety, loneliness, self harm, no matter who you are under any circumstances, at any age. And those exacerbate what we're talking about. But all things equal, we're really talking about this part of the population that did everything right, that followed the rules. They're largely from families that gave them the best technology and they went to college and they studied what people are supposed to study in college, which is things that actually lead you getting jobs, and they get jobs out of college, they follow the rules and something is actually making their life feel really empty and bereft of purpose. And to feel like life isn't significant doesn't have any feeling to it. And it's funny because when you start doing the interviews of these young people, you see the data, they start dropping the same words over and over again. I don't feel like I know what I'm meant to do. I just work and work and work, or my life feels empty and meaningless. And here's the weird one that you keep finding that people say they describe their lives and it's kind of the same story again and again and again. You know, I work a lot of it's remote. You know, I date on apps, I'm on social media, which is where I have a lot of my friends. A lot of guys in particular will say, for fun, I do a lot of gaming. And then a lot of them will say, it's weird. It's like my life is a simulation. You know, I'm online all the time, I'm using technology all the time, I'm mediating my relationships through machines, I'm working super hard, but I'm not really with people in a real way. And so it feels like a simulation. And that turns out to be the key. That's where the penny drops. Because when your life is actually a simulation, you can simulate a lot, but you can't simulate the meaning of your life.
- [08:43]
Scott Clary
There's a story about mark, who's a 32 year old data analyst.
- [08:46]
Arthur C. Brooks
It's the beginning of the book.
- [08:47]
Scott Clary
Yeah, yeah. So he describes listening to podcasts as social pornography, basically simulating connection without real human contact. But there's other things in life that are sort of simulated, so fake rewards, empty accomplishments, therapeutic talk, curated experiences, all these things that don't feel real. I mean, even, like said simply, a lot of our experiences, even like if we're dating and we're swiping on apps, it just seems like it's.
- [09:13]
Arthur C. Brooks
You're Trying to solve the problem of romance as opposed to living the experience of romance. I mean, the way it's supposed to work is you meet somebody and then you figure out whether it's a match. That's the way the human brain is designed to work. It's not designed to work where you curate the experience through this technology mediated experience where you say I'm going to mathematically try to find the right person for me according to some particular algorithm. That sounds good on paper, but what I talk about in the book is what actually is going wrong, that that's actually at odds with, that's militating against how the human brain is designed to work. That's what we're living unnaturally is the way that this works. So the human brain was designed to be, to habit itself to function about 250,000 years ago at the beginning of the Pleistocene, that's when humans started to live in bands of 30 to 50 individuals. And it was entirely in person. We were a kin based society. We were made to be in communion with one another, to mate, to have children, to be in kin based groups, to eat together, to make direct eye contact. That was how we were supposed to get our satisfaction, to find well, really the meaning of life. And, and our brains are the same as they were then. We're living in an entirely different kind of milieu at this particular point. And the people who are most out of the natural environment, who are living most at odds with that, with that place to scene kind of brain environment, are the people who are most modern. And the most modern people are well educated adults under 35 who don't remember the before times. So I'm in my early 60s. I remember the before times. You're 35, you're right on the edge.
- [10:50]
Scott Clary
Yeah, I remember we didn't have a cell phone in high school. Yeah, I think I got my first Barry when I was in like grade 10 or 11. But.
- [10:57]
Arthur C. Brooks
Well, the first time that you asked somebody out on a date, it was in, in real life and in, in person. How did you meet your partner?
- [11:04]
Scott Clary
Well, that was on. That was on. That was on a dating app.
- [11:06]
Arthur C. Brooks
That was on a date.
- [11:07]
Scott Clary
But, but I had never been. So I hadn't really ever been part of this whole dating app culture. I was in a long term relationship, in a long term relationship with somebody that I'd met at work. And then I wasn't, I was single, but I wasn't really trying to date. And then I downloaded an app and then I saw her on it and then I Actually didn't even bother to swipe. I actually found her on Instagram and DM'd her. And then we ended up going out, so it all worked out. But I never. I never really participated in, like, dating app hookup culture. You know, swiping through 500 people and going on 500 dates. Like, I've never really participated in it.
- [11:44]
Arthur C. Brooks
That will lead you to depression and anxiety, generally speaking. Yeah, and that's kind of your. You're maximizing time in app as opposed to time in person. You don't do the work with individuals. You're trying to find the ideal individual according to the computer. And that's a big problem because that's not how the brain is actually designed. Now, the way that this actually works, you know, so I'm talking around the whole thing, what the computer does, what technology does. And by the way, our economy largely functions as a giant computer as well. It does. We're in a milieu of doing complicated things all the time. Doing, solving what and how to questions. Complicated things are important to be able to do. Now, what complicated means is that these are hard problems, but you can solve them. That is, all those problems are mediated in the left hemisphere of the brain. The left hemisphere is for complicated stuff. The tasks, efficiency, technology. The right side of the brain, the right hemisphere of the brain is dedicated to complex problems. And complex problems are easy to understand and impossible to solve. So romantic love is a complex problem. My marriage is unbelievably complex. I've been married 34 years, and I have no idea if my wife's gonna be pissed at me today. I don't know. I just don't know. And it's not because I have a crummy marriage. It's just because that's a complex thing. It's an adaptive. It's an unpredictable thing. And if you're trying to make it predictable, solvable, you're taking this complex thing like love, and you're forcing into the left side of your brain and making it complicated. And that's what modern life is doing. The. That's why life feels like a simulation, because we're taking all the complex relationships and mystery and meaning, all the dark consciousness and the things that we really care about, all the why questions, and we're turning them to what and how to questions. That's what the culture, the economy and technology are actually doing.
- [13:32]
Scott Clary
NOLA is a success story, partner. Now, here's something I used to do after every single meeting. Sit down for about 15 minutes trying to reconstruct what just happened? Who said what? What? We actually decided what I'm supposed to follow up on before next week. And when you're running calls all day and you have podcast guests and you have client check ins and you have team syncs, that adds up fast. You either spend half the meeting furiously typing and you miss the actual conversation, or you're present in the meeting, but then you're scrambling after. Neither is a good option. Granola completely changed that for me. It's an AI powered notepad that works through your device's audio so there's no bots joining your call, no awkward setup, nothing weird. It just runs quietly in the background while you take your rough notes like normal. And when the meeting is over, you get clean, structured notes. What was decided? Who owns what, what's next? Now, the first time I saw the output, I genuinely thought this is what my notes should look like. You get to actually be present in your meetings and you still walk away with everything documented. Try Granola for free for three months at granola AI/success. That's granola AI/success. Get your time back. Warby Parker is a success story partner Now. Buying glasses used to be one of those things that I just dreaded. You walk in somewhere, everything's overpriced, the styles are all outdated, and somehow you leave spending way more than you planned on frames that you're not even sure you like. I just wanted it to be simple. That's why I switched to Warby Parker. I'm never going back. The virtual try on alone sold me. You open your phone, you point the camera and you're seeing the frames on your face in real time. So there's no more guessing, there is no more hoping they look good when they show up. Prescription glasses start at 95 bucks. That's 95. And the quality is better than the stuff that I paid three, four, five times more for in store. They also do contacts, eye exams, sunglasses. Everything's in one place. And if you want to walk in somewhere, they've got over 300 stores. All Success Story podcast listeners get 15% off plus free shipping. When you buy two or more pairs of prescription glasses at warbyparker.com/success. That's 15 off when you buy two or more pairs at w a r b y parker.com success and tell them success story sent you upwork is a success story partner. Now. One of the biggest lessons I learned building businesses is that you don't have to do it all yourself. The fastest growing companies, they are not working harder they're delegating smarter. And that's where Upwork comes in. Upwork is a one stop platform to find, hire and pay expert freelancers across web and software development and data and analytics and marketing and business operations and more. We're talking over 125 categories of specialized talent. So wherever the skill gap is, you can fill it fast without weeks of recruiting or committing to a full time hire. You can browse profiles, review past work and get help scoping the role before you ever spend a dollar. And with business plus you get access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork. And with AI powered shortlisting that matches you to the right person in under six hours, contracts, payments, all handled in one place, it's free to sign up. Job posting is super easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to grow your business. That's up w o r k.com upwork.com
- [16:43]
Arthur C. Brooks
and meaning is on the right.
- [16:45]
Scott Clary
And I would assume that this is an impossible thing to solve for as a simple like with, with, with job, with love and partner, with all of these different, very complex things that we take into our life. It's impossible to ever solve simply because there is no answer. There's no answer to at the end of the day, should you be with this person versus that person because. Or the other 498 people? Because there's arguments that could be made for every single one of those people. And at the end of the day, one person could work and one person could not. And it just depends on how much effort you put into it.
- [17:21]
Arthur C. Brooks
You understand. You understand. Exactly. Exactly. And there's all kinds of. The things we care about in life are complex and unsolvable. What they are, you can only live them and understand them at an intuitive level. So I mean the reason that we like watching football games is because they're complex, they're super easy to understand. The Miami Dolphins get more points than the New York Jets. That's actually almost always the case. And we understand that Miami Dolphins win the game, but you can't simulate it. You can't actually solve it with a computer, with any amount of computing horsepower because it's a complex problem. That's why sports is wonderful. Sports is kind of like life. That's why we love sports actually, because it's a, it's, it, it, it's part of life. A part of the parts of life that we like the most. You know, you, you love Your cat, you don't love your toaster. Your toaster is complicated. Your cat is complex. It's very easy to understand what your cat wants, but you don't know what it's going to do because it's alive. All the living, mysterious things, all the why questions of your life, those are the things you care about the most. And the world says, no, no, no. I'm just going to give you more and more doodads and more gadgets and more widgets and more apps and more ways to distract you and addict you and push you away so you're never feeling bored. And the one thing you're not going to get is the one thing that you most want. And you're not going to be able to put your finger on it. It's like, what is it I'm missing? I'm missing something. Oh, well, I guess I'll get that app and maybe that'll solve the problem. Maybe I'll get this protocol and it will solve the problem. It won't. It won't because you're on the wrong side of your brain.
- [18:49]
Scott Clary
Optionality is what's creating a lot of this. I'm assuming just endless options.
- [18:54]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, well, that's what that is, is endless distraction. Optionality is dist. And why would we want distraction is because we want to solve the problem of human boredom. Boredom is a funny thing. We're built to be bored. Homo sapiens are built to be bored. When we're bored, the default mode network in our brain illuminates, and that's a set of structures in our brain, largely involving the parts of our brain that mediate meaning. And so when you're told. If you're put in an FMRI machine and you're told to do nothing, think about nothing, you can't, you immediately start thinking about big questions, questions of meaning, questions about the future in your life. But that's uncomfortable. Part of the reason is because Mother Nature doesn't care if you don't like it. I mean, you had no choice until relatively recently. But we solved the problem of boredom, which is the device in your pocket. And anybody who doesn't believe this, there's a couple of things to think about. When you're sitting at a light and it's going a long time, you always look at your phone because that becomes this uncomfortable. You don't want to go into the default mode network, but you need to. And then when you have to, weird things happen. Like, everybody gets their best, deepest ideas in the shower. It's because the phone isn't in there, and your default mode network turns on. Well, you have the hot water coming onto your body, and you're like, oh, oh, this is what I want to do today. And this is what we need more of. You know, we solved the boredom problem and got a much bigger problem, which is a sense of meaninglessness.
- [20:18]
Scott Clary
So now when we. When we refuse to have. So our boredom is filled with almost replacing the meaning that we've already found with potential new meaning. And this creates this. This horrific loop that we're always.
- [20:30]
Arthur C. Brooks
Well, there's no meaning at all. All it is is simple distraction.
- [20:32]
Scott Clary
So it could. It could be meaning if we weren't looking for something else. It could. It's like the person we're with that could be our person. The job that we have could be our job totally.
- [20:41]
Arthur C. Brooks
We could be. We could find our calling if we weren't. If we were actually allowing ourselves to live the way and. And our brains to function the way our brains are supposed to function. And so this winds up being the solution if, you know, people say, where do I go to find the meaning of my life? Italy? Church? The beach? No, the right side of your brain. How do I do it? This book talks about the six ways to get into the right side of your brain. And it's weirdly simple. Your grandfather, I don't know what he did for a living, but let's just say. Or your great grandfather, probably a farmer or something in Canada someplace, right? Yeah. And I promise you, he didn't come home to your great grandmother and say, honey, I had a panic attack behind the mule today because it wasn't a thing. His, you know, hypothalamic pituitary axis didn't get flooded for no apparent reason in the year 1890 because his brain was working the way it was supposed to work. His life was pretty boring. Good. And so the things that we need to do that are kind of extraordinary today, they look an awful lot like the way that people used to live in the past, but we got to do it on purpose now.
- [21:43]
Scott Clary
How do we architect a life that actually gives us meaning? What's. Like, what are the steps? And obviously, the people that you're interviewing, they're not living these steps. This is not the reality.
- [21:52]
Arthur C. Brooks
So almost nobody is. Almost nobody is. And you have to do it on purpose. The first thing you need to do is to get clean. And that means you got to. You got to. You got to break away from the things that are addicting you to constant distraction. And when I say Addicting, I mean that with respect to dopamine, I mean all craving and addiction desire to something that we hate, but, but that captivates us, that beguiles us. It almost always involves dopamine. Dopamine is a neuromodulator of learning, wanting, liking. And the reason it's in the human brain is so that you would learn how to do stuff that's rewarding to you and then do it automatically so you can learn new things and become more successful as a species. I went to that watering hole, I found some gazelles around it. Oh, that's awesome. I'm going to go back tomorrow to see if I can get another neurological reward for finding more gazelles. I mean the problem is that it's maladapted to things like drugs and alcohol, meth and slot machines and pornography and all the things that actually addict people that really horrible for their brains. And what have they done? We've, we've, I mean we're, we're, we're geniuses. We've found a way to actually use those things to addict people and make money. And, and, and technology is a perfect case in point. People are super addicted to their devices. I mean absolutely addicted to the nonsense. Nobody actually, I've never met somebody who says, I love scrolling for hours at a time. We all do it, but people do it. And the reason is because their dopamine systems are, are, have been hijacked into doing that. And so the first thing is to actually get clean is to actually figure out a way that you can take back your independence. And most people have never done that. So before I get into the whole thing, I have a chapter on getting clean, which actually starts by getting pissed. This is one of the things that all addicts have in common. Nobody goes into a 12 step program for alcohol before. They're really mad about actually what has happened in their life. They have to have a spirit of a rebel. So I talk about that, but then there's some techniques about how to. You're not going to get away, you're not going to throw your phone in the ocean. It's not going to. I'm not going to either. I mean I just use it all the time. But you actually can use it in a healthy way where you don't look at it when you first wake up in the morning, you don't use it for an hour before you go to bed at night, you don't look at it while you're eating, during meals, especially meals with the people that you Love. And just with some simple interventions that I have in this book, you can break the cycle of wanting, learning and liking. You can break the fundamental dopamine modulated addiction that we've got from it.
- [24:13]
Scott Clary
And it, it seems like you mentioned before, the solution to the meaning of life, one of the most complex questions is actually not that difficult at all. But the average American, so you, you stated that they look at their phone over 205 times.
- [24:27]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, 205 times a day. The average American.
- [24:28]
Scott Clary
Yeah, like every, it's a lot of times what's happening every time they look at their phone like, like from, like a neurological or neurochemical response. So this is just triggering dopamine all the time. And it is truly an addiction.
- [24:41]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah. So what's going on? Let's just say that you haven't looked at your phone in a while and you're having a, a flight of fancy. You know, you're, you're thinking about, you know, bigger things in life. You're starting to stimulate a little bit of right brain activity. Well, the dopamine. You'll get a little spike in dopamine when something reminds you of your phone and you'll grab for it and you'll grab the phone and boom, that, that thought is over, it's done. You're back on the left side of your brain. As you're doing that 205 times a day, you're kicking yourself over into the how and what, onto the Google side of your brain. And I got nothing against the Google side. It's just that you need the right side too. You need the mystery and meaning side of your brain. And so what's happening is you're just like getting kicked out of the part of your brain that you need again and again and again and again. And so that's what you need to do on purpose, is to have protocols in your life where you say, no. For the first hour of my day, I'm not looking at my device. For the last hour of the day, I'm not looking at my device. While I'm having dinner with my family, I'm not looking at my device. And those simple interventions go a really long way to starting the process when
- [25:38]
Scott Clary
you start shutting your phone off or not looking at it every second of the day. And you know, you're, you're just not addicted to it anymore. What's happening in your brain now?
- [25:47]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, you're actually having the deeper thoughts and you're starting to get the satisfaction that you actually craved. You're starting to have this sense of the meaning of your life that you haven't felt in a really long time. It can be extremely life changing. It's hard.
- [25:58]
Scott Clary
Is it uncomfortable?
- [25:59]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, for sure. The first two weeks in particular, the first two weeks are like the monkeys on your back, you know, and, and the reason you're an addict because you're seeing from your. Yeah, your dopamine is going to go look, look, look. And you're no, no, no. And that's the reason that you don't throw your phone away for the first two weeks. But besides, you can't do that. I mean most people you can't get on an airplane.
- [26:17]
Scott Clary
Well, you need a healthy relationship with.
- [26:19]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, it's more like, it's less like alcohol which you know, complete abstinence is the right. If you're drinking too much, you should stop drinking completely. It's more like carbohydrates where if you're eating, if you're really addicted to junk food, you can't stop eating. And we even eat less. But you need to eat in a healthier way. And that's by the way, that's a harder addiction problem to solve because moderate use is, is actually harder than abstinence.
- [26:41]
Scott Clary
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- [29:20]
Arthur C. Brooks
because that's the small screen. That's the thing, right?
- [29:22]
Scott Clary
But if somebody is for example, trying to find meaning in, in all areas of their life, they've stopped with their phone. Are there other habits, other things that they do?
- [29:31]
Arthur C. Brooks
That's where I, that's what I get into in the rest of the book. So once you actually break away from the one thing that's, that's crowding it out. I mean the, the big rule is this, if technology is substituting for in person relationships, it's going to make you depressed. If technology is complementing your in person relationships, it can be a nice thing for your life. So I'm not, I'm not a Luddite, I'm not anti tech at all. It just has to be in its proper place such that it can make our lives better and not make Our lives worse. The same thing is true, by the way, for AI. People ask me this all the time, will AI make us happier or unhappier? I'm a happiness specialist. So this is the typical thing, first hand up after every talk, right? And the answer is yes. Because if you're actually the. The. The AI is an adjunct to your left brain. It's perfect for how, how to and what questions. It's horrible for why questions it can't answer, mysterious why complex questions in your life. So think about it this way. All of the meaning questions, if you can, or all the questions in your life, if you can, ask AI and it will give you an answer that's useful to you. It's not a why question. It's not a meaning question at all. If you can put it into a Google search bar, it's a how and what question. It's not a real deep why of your life question, like, hey, hey, chatgpt, why am I alive? And it'll just, I mean, it's just not meaningful. And the reason is because that's a right brain question and your brain knows the difference. So the way to have AI make you happier is to use it to free up your time by doing more how to and what stuff, more left brain stuff. But then with the time, you got to use that time for more love in your life, for more real relationships, for more spiritual reflection, for all of the right brain stuff that you know we're about to talk about. That's really what it comes down to. On the other hand, if you're trying to use AI as your lover or therapist or friend, all the right brain stuff, your brain's going to know the difference and you're not going to like it. You're going to weirdly get lonelier and lonelier the more you have an AI friend.
- [31:25]
Scott Clary
It's horrifying.
- [31:26]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, and that's exactly where a lot of people are going. A lot of people try to use ChatGPT as their therapist and, and that's just not going to work. It won't work. It'll pass the touring test. It'll feel like something a therapist would actually say. I mean, I've heard a avatar of me giving advice and at the very beginning it's like, wow, it is literally my voice and is trained on a million words of me. And then I hear myself talking. In the first two answers, I'm like, that's pretty good. And then by the third answer, I'm like, that's not right. That isn't Right. Why not? I don't know. Because my brain knows. My brain knows it's not meaningful, what I'm saying.
- [32:05]
Scott Clary
It's horrifying because you are trained and you can understand it and you study this for a living. The average person is just going to feel like it's off and it's empty and it's wrong.
- [32:14]
Arthur C. Brooks
And so they're going to try to do it more.
- [32:15]
Scott Clary
Yes.
- [32:16]
Arthur C. Brooks
This is what people always do. They're like, I'm not getting that feeling I used to get from drinking a six pack. So I'm going to have two six packs. I'm not getting that feeling I get from looking at pornography. So I'm going to look at more extreme pornography. That's how addiction works, is that you try to get more and more and more into something to solve a problem. And the problem is that you're doing that for thing. That's how heroin addicts work. That's tolerance and escalation.
- [32:40]
Scott Clary
You've heard of this, like AI psychosis.
- [32:42]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, that's right.
- [32:43]
Scott Clary
Where people are quite literally losing their mind while they're talking to AI too much.
- [32:47]
Arthur C. Brooks
And you know, and there are a lot of entrepreneurs in, in the Valley who are saying that, that actually what we need is the perfect technology to solve this problem. Well, no, dude, I mean, that's like. That's like that old Saturday Night Live sketch, more cowbell. You know, Will Ferrell's banging on the cowbell and ruining a song and the producer of the song is saying, what we need is more cowbell. That's what trying to get more and more technology really is. You can't get to the right part of your brain by going farther and farther left.
- [33:13]
Scott Clary
So you say meaning has three components. Coherence, purpose, and significance. So this is after we've done the work. Shut off the phone. Now we're moving from left side to right side for the questions that need the right side. So what do you do? Because I think that for coherence, why do things happen the way they do in my life? Purpose. Why am I moving in this direction? Significance. Why does my life matter? I'm going to make the assumption that if somebody has been living in the left side of their brain for an extended period of time, they are going to try and answer these questions with like a definitive outcome. Right. And I feel like that's not the right way to do it.
- [33:50]
Arthur C. Brooks
That's right. And so, you know, really, really deep why? Questions in your life are things that you consider and you gain an understanding of that's kind of beyond your language. The language centers are in the left side of your brain for 97% of people about language centers or you know, the Broca's area and the Wernicke's area of the cortex or on the left side of the brain. But the things that you're trying to describe in depth, like, you know, you're in love, you're in love, right? And if I ask, if I press you to, okay, give me five reasons you're in love.
- [34:19]
Scott Clary
I'm going to name like personality, physical traits, experiences with the person, but, and
- [34:24]
Arthur C. Brooks
I can find somebody who fills all of those things that you're not in love with. And so in other words, axiomatically, that's not the reason. And so you are, we know you are because you are. And yet anything you say could apply to some other woman walking down the street or your third grade teacher maybe. And so it's not right. And so that's the problem with this whole idea that everything has to have a closed ended answer. That's not the way things work. Now, all major philosophies and religions practically, they're all based on questions, not answers. And here's a weird thing. We often think that the essence of human genius and humanity itself is the ability to answer these unbelievable questions. You know, people often say human genius, what is it? What is it? What makes humans human? We can answer any question that's wrong, that's actually wrong. Robots can answer questions way better than we can. What they can't do is ask interesting questions. There was this famous case of Koko the gorilla. That was before your time. Koko the gorilla was a Ugandan lowland gorilla that was raised in captivity and taught a thousand words in sign language. And everybody thought that blurred the boundaries between humans and non human animals. But it didn't because Koko never asked a single question. Koko answered questions. Are you hungry? Yes. No. Do you want a banana? Yes. No. That's what Koko the gorilla did. But Koko never asked a single question. There's never been any example of any species ever that ever asked a single question besides human beings. The essence of humanness is questions, especially questions that don't have answers. Which is why every religious tradition asks who am I? Why am I alive? What is God? These are these really super open ended questions that you can't answer. You can only understand that you can only live.
- [36:19]
Scott Clary
Why?
- [36:19]
Arthur C. Brooks
Why am I in love with my wife after 40, 34, 43, 34, I gotta get account 34 years. I mean I know, but I can't tell you. And that's the point. That's this complex. Right. Brain experience, and that's where we have to live. That's the beginning, is actually asking these questions. And, you know, sitting in it. I ask people. I recommend that people start groups of people of considering the questions that don't have answers.
- [36:45]
Scott Clary
What happens when you sit with these. Actually, before, I want to know what happens when you sit with these questions, but I just want to frame it for the audience first. Can you speak a little bit more about these three components, just so people understand it. So coherence, purpose, significance. Can you just a brief description of what these actually mean?
- [37:01]
Arthur C. Brooks
So this is kind of the meaning of meaning. You know, how do you define meaning? Right. And which is a very philosophical. But it's actually this is. This is put together by a psychologist named Mike Steger at. At who's in Colorado. Mike Steger has, you know, he's been studying this meaning question for a really long time. And he finds that psychologically there's sort of three components to meaning. They are what he calls coherence, which is, why do things happen the way that they do? You need a belief, an understanding of why things happen. Because if you're like, for no reason, that's going to be really hard on you. For meaning, like, for no reason, no reason. I'm not going to look into it. Things just happen randomly. It's just a big random walk, you know, and maybe your explanation is scientific. You know, my father was a biostatistician. He would say randomness is actually a property of the universe. And this was. This was a coherence theory.
- [37:51]
Scott Clary
Right.
- [37:51]
Arthur C. Brooks
He was also a Christian. He said God has his hand in it. That's a coherence theory. Some people have, you know, the reason that people gravitate towards conspiracy theories is they're looking for coherence because we hate coherence because life feels meaningless. The reason that people grab onto conspiracy theories is because they want meaning. It's actually a meaning play is what it comes down to. Right. The way that you solve conspiracy, conspiracy theories is education and faith because it gives them a better sense of coherence, is how this works. So that's the first component. Right. But that's not the only one. The next one is purpose. Purpose and meaning are not the same thing. Purpose is why you're doing what you're doing. It's goals and direction. It's the ability to make progress. In sailing, it's called the rum line, which is this line that you're going toward in your life, you gotta have it. Which is why one of the best ways you can give young people a sense of meaning in their life is to actually have them map out their life goals. That immediately gives them a sense of purpose. It puts them on a trajectory towards something. And again, you know, the answer to the question is, the why question is, why am I doing what I'm doing? If you have goals and direction, you have at least a sense and understanding of the answer to that question, right? I can't tell you exactly because I'm going to start a company that's going to go to ipo, yada, yada, yada, yada. I mean, you can try to left brain it like that, but more than anything else, you need that. Why am I doing what I'm doing? That, that, that's ineffable. It goes a little bit beyond your ability to be specific. But you got to have an answer, an understanding of it. And the last is, why does my life matter? That's significance. Why does my life matter and to whom? You know, why does it matter? And if the answer is it doesn't, well, oh, right. Which is why people find so much more meaning when they fall in love, when they have a relationship with God, when they have close friends. Because that's answering the significance question, why does my life matter? Because it's my friend. Because my friend loves me.
- [39:50]
Scott Clary
What happens when people start to explore these questions and they're not. So let me, let me go back. You mentioned that people have this meaning, this lack of meaning in their life, and that's creating all this stress and anxiety and depression and all these negative things. Is there no concern that after 35 years on this planet, when you start to explore these questions, you may not be happy with the answers that you come to and that may lead to. Or maybe in your research you find that it leads to temporary depression, anxiety, stress, loss, you know, like just hopelessness. Excuse me. But then long term, it can actually help you sort of course. Correct.
- [40:33]
Arthur C. Brooks
It's a smart question. Never asked me that before. And it's absolutely true. So if you tell me, like, my wife and I were on the rocks, man, and I'm going to give you advice because one of the things I talk about an awful lot is about how to get your relationship in order. I'm going to tell you to deal with it and it's going to hurt, right? And it's like, so, so what have you been. So I know your relationship isn't so great. What have you been doing? It's like trying to kind of distract myself and we've been kind of not talking about it and I go home and we, you know, we watch television and we don't deal with our problems. I'm like, if you want to get better, you got to look at it. You have to cope with it. If you tell me you drink too much, I'm going to say we're going to have to cope with it. You're going to have to deal with it. The same thing we talked about earlier about brainless technology use, you got to deal with it. And the first couple of weeks are going to be kind of hard. And the same thing is true. If your life feels really meaningless, you're not going to like it. You're going to be so uncomfortable. You're going to be distracting yourself from the discomfort of feeling like life is meaningless. And you're going to have to turn around and look at that and that's going to be kind of uncomfortable. But it's also super exciting. It's one of these things where it's like, I'm going to start off on this adventure and, and it's going to hurt. So it's funny, you know, two of my kids are military, two of my three kids are Marines and, and both of them have gone through hardcore training. You know, one of them was an enlisted Marine and went through basic training and then he became a sniper in the. And that's the hardest core training ever. It hurt, it was dangerous, it was brutal. And he loved it. And he loved it because it was the start of something really amazing. It was the start of something that was really worthwhile. My daughter did it later and she's, you know, she's in the middle of it right now for hardest core training as an officer. And you know, I see her every weekend because she lives kind of near us and officers get to go home. She's commissioned. And I'll be like, so what'd you do this week? And it's just horrible, the stuff that she's telling me. It's like, are you kidding me? Like, I slept outside and it was actually snowing and then I had to walk 12 miles with a 70 pound pack. She was 100 pounds, right? She's 4 foot 11 and she tells me this stuff and I'm like, I'm sorry, honey. And she's like in such a good mood because she's doing this hard thing that's incredibly rewarding and that's what this promises is Going to hurt. Yeah. And you're probably going to love it.
- [42:43]
Scott Clary
People introduce themselves with what they do. What's wrong with that?
- [42:48]
Arthur C. Brooks
Because that's a left brain answer to the who you are, the essence of who you are. Yeah, I know. It's basically what some people ask me. So what do you do? And that's an invitation for me to say, I'm a professor at Harvard University. And that's factually true and pretty morally insignificant. That tells you nothing about the why of who I am. And so if you're trying to get to know me, all you know is my job. And this is the currency. This is what. But my wife, who's from Spain, she. She complained that that's what Americans always do. Americans are very superficial in this way. They want to know, you know, they don't want to know your why. And so, and my wife is super deep. And so she would, you know, invite people over and just like dig in on these super deep questions. And you could see people getting incredibly uncomfortable at dinner in my house because it. And it's. When you go to Spain, you actually see this. I remember that we go to Spain all the time because, you know, or we've been going back and forth for 35 years and we go to this, these people's house. We'd never met them not that long ago, a few months ago, you know, we sit down and, you know, we're sitting around and laughing. And within five minutes, the hostess, she turns to all of us, about eight of us, she says, have any of you ever almost left your spouse? And we're like, gulp. And it's like, go deep or go home. Yeah, but that brings back.
- [44:06]
Scott Clary
Then you get to know the actual.
- [44:07]
Arthur C. Brooks
You do. And some people can't handle it because they're not used to it because they've
- [44:10]
Scott Clary
never done any of this work.
- [44:11]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, but those are why questions of your life. Those are really, really deep questions of your life. But it's like, what do you do? Or how do you live from day to day? How do you spend your time? That's just not good enough. I mean, okay, it's kind of an icebreaker in its way, but man, get to the why. Get to the why of somebody you want to get to meet. You know, why do you. Why do you feel the way that you do? Why do you do the things that you do? Why? You know, what motivates you at a deep kind of cosmic level? That's what I want to know.
- [44:38]
Scott Clary
So I feel like if somebody asks you a really deep Question, a really deep why question. And you have this adverse reaction to it. It's probably because you haven't asked yourself those questions ever before. That's why it feels so abnormal.
- [44:51]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Because you're just not in the meaning space. But as soon as you get into that, you know, and by the way, it might be because you're defending yourself, because you don't trust that person. You don't trust that person, but you don't go to. If you, if you're, you know, you're paying 100 bucks an hour for a therapist and you go and sit in your therapist's office, they're not going to ask you what questions the whole time. They're going to be like, so what do you do? What'd you do today? You know, what'd you have for lunch? You know, it's like, what'd you watch on television? No, they're not going to wait. Like, what do you think of the weather? They, they don't care. They're going to go directly to the deeper questions of meaning, and that's what you're paying them to do. So why don't you have that in your ordinary relationships as well?
- [45:25]
Scott Clary
When somebody wants to start asking why questions, where do they start?
- [45:29]
Arthur C. Brooks
They. Well, so every religion gives you the starting point, almost every philosophy. But not everybody has those tools, which is why I actually have a whole. And this is an assignment I have for my class. It's why I have a whole chapter on a good place to start. It's a curriculum on this, which are the big. The three big why questions. You know, why do you believe things happen the way they do? And then it gives you a rubric for figuring out your own beliefs. Why are you doing what you're doing? You know, why. Why are your priorities what your priorities are? And I give you exercises for figuring out the answers to get an understanding of that and why does your life matter? Which is a real hard one, because that's really digging into who loves you and whom do you love? And I have a whole way to forget for people to figure that one out as well. And by the way, if their answers or their understanding is inadequate, then it talks about what do you need to do? What do you need to do to fix it?
- [46:25]
Scott Clary
And when somebody starts to actually understand their, their why, their meaning in life on the other side of these exercises, what do you see with people?
- [46:32]
Arthur C. Brooks
You see the people, their life starts to open up. They start to question things they haven't ever questioned before. They start to act in a different way. They start to get new friends. They start to pay attention to things that they haven't paid attention to before, like many details that they had missed. And they stop paying attention to stupid nonsense. They become intolerant of trivialities in ways that they haven't before. They get bored really easily with things that are supposed to, with the bread and circuses of ordinary life. Their life changes. And by the way, they become a pain to their friends. You. If you do this, you do this, you might wind up in different relationships.
- [47:11]
Scott Clary
But relationships that serve who you are, you'll.
- [47:14]
Arthur C. Brooks
You'll like what happens to your life. But your friends might not like what happens to your life.
- [47:19]
Scott Clary
Well, no, because I like you. Like you, probably. If. How many people did you interview?
- [47:24]
Arthur C. Brooks
Lots. I mean, I've been interviewing hundreds and hundreds of people over the course of the past seven years.
- [47:27]
Scott Clary
And what's the balance? What's the percentage of people that never ask these questions versus do like you say that we're in this crisis where this, this, this lack of meaning is. Is just increasing at an exponential rate. So obviously the majority of people on this planet are not asking themselves these questions.
- [47:44]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah. And there's a selection bias for the people come to me that people take my classes at Harvard for a reason. You know, the people who've got this stuff figured out, you know, they're not like, I'm not gonna. They're not gonna go take the happiness science class at the business school. They're the people. And again, it's very oversubscribed class. They got a 400 on waiting list for this. And the reason is because it's such an endemic problem for sure. But then the people who reach out to me, which is every single day, people are reaching out to me. These are people who, they're not like, you know, I mean, you don't go to the cardiologist and say, you know, I think that old ticker's just doing great. I mean, you go, because there's a problem. And so people are behind the line of scrimmage. And then of course, what I really want is to get to everybody who can get down the field, even if they're in good shape.
- [48:24]
Scott Clary
Indeed is a success story partner. Now, if you're hiring, indeed is all you need. Let me give you an example. If I needed to hire a new editor for this show, I'd go to indeed and be super specific, not just can you edit audio. I'd say I need someone who's edited a conversational podcast for at Least three years, gets our style and knows our software. Someone who's done this before. And here's the thing with Indeed Sponsored Jobs, I'd get people who fit that description. I'm not digging through resumes from people who've edited one YouTube video. I'm getting actual podcast editors who know what they're doing. People who've worked on shows like ours and can prove it. That's what makes a difference. You get people who actually are what you're looking for. According to INDEED data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than non sponsored jobs. And people are finding quality hires right now. In the minute that I've been speaking to you, companies like yours have made 27 hires on Indeed. According to Indeed Data worldwide. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all the boxes. Less stress, less time, and more results. Now with Indeed Sponsor Jobs and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help you get your job the premium status it deserves. At indeed.comclary just go to indeed.com/clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Clary terms and conditions apply. Hiring do it the right way with indeed, HubSpot is a success story. Partner now if you're looking for a new podcast, one of my favorite shows right now is Demand Decoded. If you're in the B2B marketing space, you need to be listening to this. It's hosted by the team at Blend. They are a demand gen agency. They know what they're doing. They're also part of the HubSpot Podcast Network. What I love about it is they skip all the theory and they just tell you what's actually working today. So demand gen marketing content, LinkedIn, ads, attribution. They talk about real strategies that they are using that you can use today that are working. So if you're an entrepreneur, if you're building a business, if you're really selling anything to anyone, go search Demand Decoded. Wherever you get your podcast, there's people that resist the meaning crisis. They have what you call social antibodies. What's going on when somebody resists finding meaning? And there's a few different things I want to talk about. There's sort of six practices that people with meaningful lives share. I want to talk about Aporia. I want to talk about these meaning resistors. But I guess we could start. We could probably start with meaning resistors because I feel like that would be the majority of people. Why are people resisting meaning because life
- [50:45]
Arthur C. Brooks
is easier when you don't deal with these questions. That life is just easier because we're lazy again. What are we doing? We're. We're. When people are resisting digging into meaning, we're really resisting boredom. We're really resisting dealing with big questions. We're probably resisting questioning our relationships with people who are keeping us in the trivial space. We're probably resisting dealing with addictions. And that's a really, really hard thing to do. It's just. Don't rock the boat, man. Yeah. Am I. Is my life meaningful? No. Is my life actually in a. In a kind of a bad way, deeply tedious? Yeah. Do I want to change it? I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure because that. I don't know where that's going to lead me. There are a lot of people who are literally afraid to stop drinking. And I've talked to a lot of people. I've worked in the addiction space for years and years and years. And people who are deeply addicted, they're afraid to stop drinking or to take drugs because they don't know what's going to happen in their lives. They're going to lose their friends. They don't. They're not going to. They're not going to have fun anymore. They're going to have to deal with really big and uncomfortable problems. They think. And you know what? They're. Right now, there's nobody who gets off the junk, who says, you know, life would be so much better if I were still a junkie. No, nobody ever said that. Right. And so when you do the work, it's unbelievably rewarding, but getting started is really hard.
- [52:02]
Scott Clary
I mentioned aporia, so my understanding of aporia is asking these unanswerable questions.
- [52:07]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, yeah, that's. Yeah. And that's an ancient thing of the ancient philosophy. Usually it's a Greek word and the Greek philosophers would be. Is dealing with. Is sitting with unanswerable questions. Because they knew that that was going to put you into the space. And that's what all of the great in the early Christian, like the Benedictines, the Benedictine monks, if you wanted to become a Benedictine monk, they would ask you these questions that had no answers and see how you dealt with them. Because they wanted to know whether or not you were capable of going deep. I mean, they didn't know the neuroscience, but what they were basically saying is, let's see how healthy the right side of your brain is. Because if you want a real relationship with God, you better Have a good right hand side because the mystery and meaning is over there. And the way I'm going to test it is how you cope with these questions.
- [52:57]
Scott Clary
It's so interesting how we lose so much knowledge. Like all of these things that we investigate and research and know that are good for us. You're mentioning like these Benedictine monks knew that it was also good for us but we always forget. I don't know why that is.
- [53:13]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, well it's, you know, it's funny, there's, there's whole schools of the. And by the way, this is not just Western Zen Buddhism is based on koans which are riddles. And that's a poria, that's this whole set of questions that don't have answers. So you'll, the master monk will ask the novice what is the sound of one hand clapping? Go away and think about that because what it's doing is like it's exploding open. The right hand side of your brain is to cope with something like that and, or you know, the whole. Here's a classic one of these. A novice monk is walking down a trail by himself and a master monk is approaching him coming the other direction. And a novice monk says, where are you going? The master monk says I don't know. And the novice monk says why don't you know? And the master monk says because not knowing is the most intimate knowledge. Consider it's so good. How do you.
- [54:13]
Scott Clary
Aporia. Aporia.
- [54:14]
Arthur C. Brooks
Aporia. Yeah.
- [54:16]
Scott Clary
Okay. That's how you pronounce it. So this is one of which is
- [54:19]
Arthur C. Brooks
not a word that we use today. Right?
- [54:20]
Scott Clary
It's definitely not a word that I
- [54:21]
Arthur C. Brooks
know we need aporea in our lives.
- [54:23]
Scott Clary
Now the other five practices you mentioned romance, transcendence, calling beauty and suffering as like the other five.
- [54:31]
Arthur C. Brooks
Those are the other five things that open up the right hand side of your brain.
- [54:33]
Scott Clary
Okay, so we, we touched on romance and obviously you could probably do like five hours on every single one of these topics. But just so people understand them at sort of like a, a rudimentary level, Transcendence calling beauty and suffering.
- [54:49]
Arthur C. Brooks
Right.
- [54:50]
Scott Clary
Can you explain perhaps the, the wrong way we interpret these things now? Like the bad habit that we do across these four areas and then the way that we have to sort of re. Envision or, or, or look at these four practices differently so that they can also open up the right side and lead to more meaning.
- [55:10]
Arthur C. Brooks
What is the modern, what does modern life do that where you get this wrong and how does the old school way of living actually get help? You get it.
- [55:17]
Scott Clary
Right.
- [55:17]
Arthur C. Brooks
So let's start with transcendence. And, and transcendence is like this, this big word that could mean almost anything. But what it really means is to transcend yourself. Modern life is nothing but mirrors. It's a hall of mirrors. And you know, it's almost as if your house, all the walls were mirrors. And so no matter where you look, you're looking at yourself. That's really what the technologized super hustle economy, the homo economicus model of normal behavior, where I'm just a good economic engine, I'm an efficient animal. It's all about me, me, me, me. My accomplishments, you know, what I'm doing. It's like the whole idea of taking a picture of your lunch and putting it on social media is the most narcissistic thing. I want everybody to see that I'm eating an overstuffed burrito like I did that last night. But everybody. I mean, the whole point is this. The ultimate is the hall of mirrors of this. And the problem with that is what William James, the father of psychology, would call, that's too much time in the me self. And to actually become a happier person, you need to be in the I self, which is looking out and especially looking up to transcend yourself. So paradoxically, for you to understand the why of your life, you need to get smaller and make the universe larger.
- [56:27]
Scott Clary
I was going to say, because I don't want people to interpret these exercises as completely self serving.
- [56:32]
Arthur C. Brooks
No, no, on the contrary. And this is the funny thing, I've had a long relationship with the Dalai Lama, and I talk about the Dalai Lama in this book. I've been working with him for 12 years. I'm not a Tibetan Buddhist, I'm a Catholic. And he wants me to be a better Catholic. And it's a beautiful relationship and friendship that we have. And I asked him one time why he's so critical of Americans who practice Tibetan Buddhist meditation. He's not against it, but he's often very critical. And he says, because they don't understand the reason for meditation. I said, well, tell me more. He says, people meditate. Many Westerners meditate so they feel better. He said, the only reason you should meditate is so that others feel better. In other words, you should be meditating about love for the whole world. And in so doing you will have more love. But the motive has to be others. That's transcendence. That's the essence of transcendence. This is incredibly self serving, but only secondarily to the other, serving behavior to the worship of the divine and the service toward other people. That's what transcendence is all about. The way to get out of the hall of Mirrors is to actually, the easiest practices are serious study of philosophy or a practice of religion or spirituality, and serving other people in a real way, serving others just for them, loving them as them, is how that. And I talk a lot about how people do it and. And the effect that it actually has on their lives and what it does, it just kicks you into the right side of your brain.
- [57:54]
Scott Clary
I love that. And it's also something that is so contradictory to how most people operate today. Everything is, what do I get out of this? How do I get something that serves me out of this?
- [58:02]
Arthur C. Brooks
And that's when they listen to this podcast. Yeah.
- [58:04]
Scott Clary
They're listening to and reading this book and they're like, how do I use these tools to make my life better?
- [58:09]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yes, the meaning of your life. And so they're reading it as the meaning of my life. Right. And so the whole point that I'm trying to get in this chapter is the way that you're going to find the meaning of your life is helping other people find the meaning of their lives. It's interesting, right? Yeah. And that's really what my work is all about. I want happiness teachers. My job is to not create just happier people. I want people to become happiness teachers.
- [58:31]
Scott Clary
You find that when I mean, like, I feel that we have that same sort of goal, just differently. Like, I have interviews, and yes, it's a business for me, for sure. But at the end of the day, if I can give as much value as I possibly can, then the business works out for me.
- [58:45]
Arthur C. Brooks
That's right. And the more you focus on your love for other people, this is the reason you're successful, is you have love for others. When you bring your service in a spirit of love, what do these people need? What do they need? Then it succeeds. It succeeds because you've actually been able to get out of the hall of Mirrors. And by the way, you find meaning.
- [59:05]
Scott Clary
Yes, actually.
- [59:06]
Arthur C. Brooks
So that's really how it works. And then, of course, it requires practices, because that's the reason I wrote the book, because people are like, okay, that's a great theory, Professor. Thank you very much. But how do I do it? And so every chapter has really, really practical exercises for getting started on this.
- [59:23]
Scott Clary
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- [62:14]
Arthur C. Brooks
And again, that's a very left brain protocol way to do it, but you got to get started in some particular way.
- [62:19]
Scott Clary
Yeah. What about calling? So calling is.
- [62:21]
Arthur C. Brooks
Calling is what you're meant to do, usually through work, but it's really through productive activity. And so for a lot of people who stay home taking care of their kids, that's calling. It's figuring out what you're actually, you feel like you're meant to do. And it has everything to do with sort of feeling like you're earning your success, creating value and serving other people once again. It's, you know, what does the world actually need for me to do that I can do really well where I earn my success and I'm needed. That's really what it comes down to. And most people don't really ask those questions like what am I really good at and people will pay me for. That's what the hustle culture. And that's why college students in modern life, they tend to be quite unhappy. They. And they tend to be suffering more from this, from this psychogenic epidemic than other people because they're taught, you know, they're not taught. There's this great Japanese concept called ikigai. Have you ever heard about this?
- [63:11]
Scott Clary
I was just gonna ask you if this is helpful or hurtful to follow a concept like that.
- [63:16]
Arthur C. Brooks
It's a, It's a good thing to do because it takes the con. The con, the, the limited concept of what I'm good at and what the world will pay me for, to also what I love and what the world needs is what it comes. And there's that ikigai concept of those four. The convergence in the Venn diagram of those four worlds. You know, the world will pay me to do this, and I'm good at this, but also the world needs this, and also I love it. That's magic when you're actually in the middle of that. And what we need is actually those last two, you know, what the world needs and, you know, and what I, what I feel inherently and sort of spiritually rewarded by doing. And the way to figure this out, I mean, a lot of young people are listening to you because they follow your work. Okay, yeah, great.
- [63:56]
Scott Clary
What?
- [63:57]
Arthur C. Brooks
How? How, How? The answer is, number one, don't be propagandized. Don't be forced into something. And number two, experiment a lot. Experiment a lot. And you know, I talk to lots and lots of my students, and deep down, what is going to give them a sense of meaning is taking care of their families. And, and they can, but they feel like I'm just wasting my education if I do something like that.
- [64:20]
Scott Clary
No, I hear this a lot. I hear that. I, of course, hear this a lot.
- [64:23]
Arthur C. Brooks
And for a lot of people. And look, let's go back to the Pleistocene. We got Pleistocene brains, man. I mean, that's really important that, you know, taking care of your children, you know, and taking care of your family, taking care of your kin, that is a super divine calling. That's a deeply meaningful calling. And to say that's what I'm going to spend the next six or seven years primarily spending my time doing when my kids are little, that's a great thing to do. That's a wonderful thing to do. That's a meaningful thing to do. And a lot of the reason that people don't do it is because they've kind of drunk the Kool Aid of our society that says that, you know, man, if you're not out there hustling and, you know, grinding and bringing in a big paycheck, then, then you've wasted your. Your fancy education at Princeton and so shame on you.
- [65:07]
Scott Clary
It's also, it's not just society is propagandizing these ideas. It could be your parents, it could be your peers, it could be a guidance counselor in school and well meaning, too. That's what's difficult. Yeah. I'm sure if you listen to hustle culture or some BS entrepreneur telling you to work 150 hours a week on Instagram, you can kind of understand that that may not be the healthiest advice. But people that are close to you that mean well, that just want the best for you, they also may have not done this work. So they could also assume that their worldview is the worldview. That's correct. And they impart that on you, and then you adopt that even from a young age, and then you grow up and you never sort of have any of these meaningful conversations with yourself. And then now you wake up and you're 50 years old and you've just been living someone else's life. Dream job, whatever.
- [65:56]
Arthur C. Brooks
And that's the. That's the curse of the striver. And it's actually, I talk about this a little bit in the book because I kind of specialize in strivers. I'm the striver whisperer. And, you know, a lot of people are watching your show is because they're strivers and they want, they want, they wanted. And I admire the fact that they want to do the most with their lives. That's great. It's incredibly meritorious. But there's a real dark side to that, which is that people who are strivers and who are kind of addicted to success, usually the way that their childhood looks to speak to your point, is that they only get attention and affection when they do things. And, you know, love is funny because love is a free gift, freely given. Love is a grace. Love isn't. You can't earn actual love. But they learn. They wire their brains in a period of highest synaptic plasticity when their brains are under development. They learn that if I get first chair in the orchestra, if I make the pitcher on the baseball team, if I bring home straight A's on the report card, if I get into an Ivy League college, then they'll love me. And what that. In wiring your brain, what that does is it sets you on a pattern of success, addiction, later workaholism that will drive your relationships away from you. You. You're not a human doing, you're a human being. And so I have to really help people with that addiction a lot of the time. And calling is one of the ways to do that. You know, helping people into really what they're meant to do is an. Is an important step. And actually getting clean on that is, you know, and that's not. That's not a. That's a forward way of thinking for a lot of strivers.
- [67:25]
Scott Clary
And strivers have a very hard time listening to advice.
- [67:28]
Arthur C. Brooks
They do. They especially have a hard time listening to advice that they need. They'll listen to advice that sounds right in modern culture, like, here's some advice on how you can validate strong belief system. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But it's also my side bias, which people are prone to all the time, where it's like, they'll listen to advice on how they can make more money. They'll listen to advice on how they can be more successful. They'll listen to advice on how to make personal sacrifices if it's good for worldly rewards, money, power, admiration of other people. They don't want to listen to advice Very much on hard things, about how they can actually know God and fall in love and, you know, that the
- [68:04]
Scott Clary
things they should work on.
- [68:05]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah. Although it's funny, because once they trust you, once they trust that you love them and have their best interests at heart, then that's really what they do want to hear about. At the end of the day, that's what most of the reason that I call my podcast Office Hours is because office hours is where the magic gets done when you're. When you're. When you're a teacher. That's when people come in and say, you know, we've been impressed, or we've been talking about, you know, forming stable families. This week in class, can I tell you about my parents and my relationship with my parents? And that's where the real work gets done.
- [68:34]
Scott Clary
Let's talk about beauty. So beauty is nature, art, or moral beauty? Explain, because that's a. That's an abstract concept without a definition. So what does beauty mean? And how do we do beauty incorrectly?
- [68:46]
Arthur C. Brooks
So the way that we do beauty incorrectly is by mediating it with devices. You know, if you're seeing nature primarily through your phone as opposed to traveling. Yeah, it's like, yeah, I see all these beautiful mountains on Instagram, on other people's feeds. Sorry, that's a. That's a. That's a completely inadequate substitute. So the average child today, the average child under 12, spends between four and seven minutes a day in nature, in actual nature. I mean, they might go out and, you know, walk to the bus or something like that, but, you know, actually in nature, 47 minutes a day on average.
- [69:16]
Scott Clary
Contrast to my grandpa, great grandpa that was all day.
- [69:19]
Arthur C. Brooks
He was like, you know, he was behind the mule.
- [69:22]
Scott Clary
Right.
- [69:22]
Arthur C. Brooks
They spend four to seven hours a day, Hours a day behind the screen. And so anything that is a simulation of beauty actually isn't beauty. And again, I'm not saying that there's nothing that your computer can do that's not beautiful. There are all kinds of really interesting forms of art, of music, of the things that people are doing. I write my books on a computer. To be sure, if I were a poet, I would probably be writing on a computer, doing that. And that's somehow technologically mediated. But. But the whole point is that when you're simulating beauty that already existed through technology, you're getting at best, a shadow of what it actually is. So the three things that neurologically will give you right hand hemisphere experiences and open up the understanding of meaning, give you experiences of meaning, are natural beauty as you kids say these days, touching grass, right? That's the reason, by the way, if you're behind the screen too much, that expression touching grass means it's like I got to get back and touch with reality. But what that really means is I'm too much on the left hand side of my brain and I really don't like it. And I'm very, very uncomfortable without explaining the neurobiology. And so I'm going to go outside and like fresh air and see the sun and all that, maybe literally touch the grass, take off my shoes or whatever. That. What that's going to do is something I can't quite explain. Well, now we know what it is, right? And then exposing yourself rigorously to nature, I mean like seriously, like dose as if you were. And I'm prescribing it right now on your show, that means your next vacation should be a nature vacation. Your weekend activities should be nature activities, fundamentally more hiking, more skiing, more sitting outside.
- [71:06]
Scott Clary
Right?
- [71:06]
Arthur C. Brooks
And by the way, if you say, well, nature vacation. Thank you. You know, Professor Moneybags, no, you have to take a pup tent and go to your backyard and just spend more time. You need to spend more time outside. Artistic beauty, same thing, same thing. Music, art, poetry, literature, real book with real paper, real pages. This vacation, you know, go someplace outside in your pup tent and read the Brothers Karamazov. Go read Dostoevsky. Go read the Russian existentialist, man, your life's gonna, it's gonna blow your mind. And last but not least is moral beauty. By the way, physical beauty, as in, as a sexual attraction through physical beauty doesn't do it. Different parts of the brain.
- [71:43]
Scott Clary
Different parts of the brain.
- [71:44]
Arthur C. Brooks
Different parts of the brain. It actually doesn't.
- [71:45]
Scott Clary
You have to seek out different.
- [71:46]
Arthur C. Brooks
So staring at pictures of beautiful girls for you is not going to get it done. So your girlfriend is going to be pleased that I mentioned this. But. But moral beauty, where you're actually seeing incredible acts of self service, they have a huge. They create what's, what's the. There's a great social psychologist named Rhett Deisner. He's in Idaho and he does work on moral elevation. And moral elevation is this feeling of warmth, warmth in your chest. And what that is is this vestigial sensation that actually comes from these right hemispheric experiences.
- [72:18]
Scott Clary
The last practice would be suffering.
- [72:20]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, it's a hard one.
- [72:21]
Scott Clary
So what does suffering mean?
- [72:23]
Arthur C. Brooks
Suffering?
- [72:23]
Scott Clary
Well, suffering is we intuitively move away from.
- [72:26]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yeah, we do, we do. Because, you know, this is. We're evolved to avoid suffering Suffering is the intense experience of negative emotion. There's only four negative emotions, basic motion emotions, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. And we're averse to all of them because these are signals of threats, different kinds of threats. Sadness is a signal that you're losing something or someone that you love. Anger and fear are both mediated in the limbic system by the amygdala. That is something that can and might and will hurt you. And disgust is a signal that there's a pathogen that could poison you and hurt you, which is why we're disgusted by things that smell bad or look rotten or look dead or whatever they happen to be. And those are natural defenses against threats that tell us, move away, avoid. Right? But you can't avoid them. You can't avoid pain in life. You can't avoid suffering. You're going to have negative emotions. You have those negative emotions because the stimuli are inevitable. And if you didn't have those negative emotions, you'd be dead. You'd have no. Like. It's like having no skin. You'd have an infection within seconds and you'd be dead within a day. You need these particular defenses, and they have to be negative and uncomfortable for a reason. Furthermore, your negative experiences are your teacher, and there's a lot of research on this. When you have negative experiences, that's how you learn and grow. And. And that's an important thing to keep in mind. Now, what we do in modern life, what the therapeutic colossus has done in our society alongside the therapized. You know, social media culture has said that. That. That suffering is something to be avoided, is to be alleviated and avoided because it's suffering means that something's wrong. If you go to your campus counseling center and say, I don't know, man, it's like, I'm really sad and anxious. I'm sad about, you know, not having enough friends. And I'm. Because I just came to college and I'm really lonely and I'm anxious about my classes, they're going to say, well, we got to solve this problem. It's like if you go to college and you're living away from your family for the first time, and it's a hard college, and you're not sad and anxious. You need therapy because you're exposing yourself to something hard for a reason, and you're like, basically, you know, I'm doing something wrong because when I go to the. When I go to the gym and lift weights, it kind of hurts. So I guess I'm doing something no, no, that's the point. That's the point. And we need to get much more accommodating to this in our lives and to say, bring it on, bring it on. I'm going to learn and grow. Because that's your teacher. That's your teacher about the why of life when you're suffering now, again, it can be exaggerated. Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of these super anti therapy guys. That's not what I'm talking about at all. But normal suffering is normal life.
- [75:02]
Scott Clary
And we have. Basically, now that you go through these, it makes a lot of sense why we feel the way that we feel. Because we have sterilized our life of almost all of these things.
- [75:12]
Arthur C. Brooks
Yes.
- [75:13]
Scott Clary
So that there is no. There's no unanswerable questions and deep thinking. There's no romance. There's no transcendence. There's no calling. There's no beauty. There's no suffering at all.
- [75:22]
Arthur C. Brooks
And, well, the truth is ironically, that the more we try to alleviate suffering, the more we suffer.
- [75:28]
Scott Clary
That is ironic.
- [75:28]
Arthur C. Brooks
It is ironic, isn't it? You know, and so that the suffering that we shouldn't be, that we shouldn't be enduring is the, the anxiety and depression and loneliness that actually come from spending all day online. We should be suffering because somebody just broke up with us. We should be suffering because we're really, really searching for God and it's hard. We should be suffering because I, I went for that job and I didn't get it. That's what we should be suffering about.
- [75:54]
Scott Clary
So the meaning of your life finding purpose in an age of emptiness, that's going to be out available when this show drops everywhere you can get books. Where else do you want to send people if they want to consume your content? Podcast everywhere else.
- [76:06]
Arthur C. Brooks
So I have a podcast called Office Hours with Arthur Brooks. And everything that I write and everything I'm doing, all the surveys that I do in my reading lists and all the tests that people can take about how much meaning they have in their lives. That's available on my website@arthurbrooks.com a lot of the content is free. There are also workshops that people can actually take and kind of get started on this and they can figure out how to. That they can. It'll direct them to my weekly column. And there's. There's always more to learn.
- [76:31]
Scott Clary
I'm excited. I'm excited for this. I'm excited for the, the impact it will have on people because as you walk through, as you walk through sort of these Ideas I can understand why so many people are, are just lost. And I, I appreciate you putting in the work because I have these conversations almost like at an anecdotal, theoretical level with a lot of people, a lot of smart people trying to figure out why. Why do the people I work with just seem like they have no like enjoyment of life anymore? Why do I feel so empty and alone inside, but nobody can put a finger on it? And I think that, that it's nice to take something that seems so out of touch and sort of make it a little bit more figureoutable.
- [77:14]
Arthur C. Brooks
That's why I avoided writing this book for a long time, was because it was going to be so hard to do. But once I got into it, I said, oh, oh, oh, and me too, you know, me too and all of us really. And once we understand this, that living in a new old fashioned way, so it's not just some super, super technical neuroscience idea. It really is living in a particular way and we can all do it it, but we have to do it on purpose, then life really starts to change.
- [77:40]
Scott Clary
If people read this book and they can only take away one lesson, the most important idea, what do you want to leave them with?
- [77:46]
Arthur C. Brooks
Happiness is, is, is based on meaning. And meaning is based on love. If you don't know what to do, go love someone and, and it doesn't really matter how you feel. To love is to will the good of another person, to go act in kindness, to act in goodness and to actually do something as a pure act of love towards somebody else else. You'll find a meaning in what you're doing in that moment and that'll change your life in a small way and who knows, maybe a big way too. Happiness is love.