Arthur Brooks - Harvard Professor & Happiness Expert | Why Everything You Think About Success Is Wrong

What is happiness not? What do people get wrong about happiness? The number one reason that people aren't happier than they are is because they have the wrong definition. They think it's a feeling. It's not a feeling. It has emotions attached to it. Joy and happiness are not the same thing. Arthur Brooks, Arthur Brooks is a Harvard professor, best-selling author, and one of the world's leading experts on happiness and purpose. With decades of research into human behavior, leadership and fulfillment, he's helped millions reframe success and find meaning in their lives. We only have had the data and the neuroscience that can get behind it relatively recently. This is compounded by the fact that mother nature doesn't care if you're happy at all. So if you follow your impulses, you're going to feel miserable a lot of the time. The human brain says you want really four things. Money, power, pleasure, and honor. And this all comes from evolutionary proclivities. So the result of it is that you think, if I live up to those impulses, then I'm automatically going to be happy, but that's across circuit. His insights have shaped global conversations, from boardrooms to TED stages, and today he's here to share the science of living a better life. You can live the life that you want, but if your goal is the money, you'll never be happy. You actually have to work for the happiness while you do beautiful, big things. Happiness is love. If you don't know what to do, make the decision to love. Arthur, I'm really excited you're here. I want to kick this off in a sort of simple way, because you talk about happiness, you teach about happiness, but just in a very, very short sentence, what is happiness not? What do people get wrong about happiness? That's a smart question, because the number one reason that people aren't happier than they are is because they have the wrong definition. They think happiness is something that it's not. Specifically, they think it's a feeling when I ask my students on the first day of class, because after that, they know. But I lead them down kind of the primrose path. They say, what do you think you're studying? Kids, they're not kids, they're 28 years old, they're MBA students at Harvard. And I say, what do you think you're studying? What's happiness? And they say, whoa, I can't quite put it into words, but I know it when I feel it. Or it's how I feel when I'm with the people that I love. And I say, wrong. I mean, beautiful, but wrong. Happiness is not a feeling any more than the smell of your turkey is your Thanksgiving dinner. The smell of the turkey is evidence of dinner. It's not the same thing. The dinner is something very specific. I mean, maybe it's ingredients, maybe it's dishes, or maybe if you're a science nerd and a fitness nerd like me, it's protein carbohydrates and fat. That's what your Thanksgiving dinner is. That's not very poetic, but that's the truth. And happiness works the same way. It's not a feeling. It has emotions attached to it. Joy and happiness are not the same thing. Happiness is a discoverable, studyable phenomenon. It's a combination of not protein carbohydrates and fat, but rather enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. And each one of those things has a huge literature attached to it and is a big project in and of itself. So why do you think that people get it wrong so often? If all these smart, Harvard MBA students probably all have the same answer to your question, there's some sort of programming there. There's some sort of misunderstanding that's culturally accepted or just accepted in general. The reason is because mother nature doesn't care if you're happy. So for example, if we had a natural tendency to become happier, we'd put a lot more attention and effort into figuring out exactly what it is a studying it. Now, that said, there's a lot of us who are actually studying happiness. There's somebody at almost every major university on this topic. And happiness is the hot course at every good university these days, but that's recent. It's only in about the past 30 years. Before that, it was all psychoanalysts like Freud and Jung talking about how to not to be a completely miserable SOB. And before that, it was just that happiness 1.0 is Aristotle and company hypothesizing about it. We only have had the data in the neuroscience that can get behind it relatively recently. And this is compounded by the fact that mother nature doesn't care if you're happy at all. And so if you follow your impulses, you're going to feel miserable a lot of the time. You're going to survive and pass on your genes, but you're going to tend to do things that actually make you unhappy as opposed to happy. And so you might conclude, well, I guess I just don't get those feelings and call it a day and you don't need to do that. What is the, because I know that there's a variety of things you've studied about happiness when I was listening to one of your past podcasts, you're talking about the reverse bucket list. And I thought that was an interesting way to uncover what, because that kind of is the bucket list and achievement and hedonic treadmill and pursuing everything and anything, I think that's how again, we're talking about what, you know, layman just assuming what happiness is, even though they're incorrect, that's what they pursue. They pursue just more and more and more and more. So talk to me about, talk to me about where this idea for the reverse bucket list came from because I think it plays into this idea of what a lot of people think will give them happiness, but what doesn't actually give them happiness. Yeah. So I know my audience here. I know who I'm talking to. We're talking to strivers. We're talking disproportionately to people who are in the first half of their lives and they're ambitious and their hardworking is smart. And by the way, I completely admire that. I admire what you're doing. I admire what your audience is doing. Because the truth is, if it weren't for strivers and entrepreneur, we'd be living in caves. You know, if everybody was just kind of slackers goofing around waiting for somebody else to do the work, we wouldn't even have wheels and fire at this point. It was an entrepreneur who figured out the secret of fire and everybody listening to us is trying to figure out the next secret of fires. Now, and they think that if they actually get that breakthrough, if they get those resources, if they have the admiration of other people, if they get the recognition for the things that they're doing, then they'll automatically be happy. That's across circuit in the human brain. The human brain says you want really four things, money, power, pleasure, and honor, which is the admiration of other people. And this all comes from evolutionary proclivities. You know, in our ancient environment, you need more resources and you need to feel good. Those are proxies for passing on your genes and for surviving another day and getting sufficient calories. That's why modern humans who have the same brains and the same genes as people did 250,000 years ago that they want, they don't want more flints and animal skins in their cave. They want a Ferrari, but it amounts to the same thing. You're more likely to get mates with a Ferrari. You're more likely to get, you know, to show that you have sufficient resources to support a family if you have whatever. I mean, everybody understands exactly what I'm talking about here. So the result of it is that you think, if I live up to those impulses, then I'm automatically going to be happy, but that's across circuit. Happiness doesn't come from just serving your animal impulses. Doing the things that will make you happier, that's the divine part of humanity. That's living up to your moral aspirations, not giving into your animal impulses is the way that that works. And so to do that, you have to be very, very conscious and strivers more than anybody else. One of the things I find with strivers is that they believe that if they get more money, power, pleasure and fame, then they'll automatically be happy. And what I have to explain, and I'm going to tell you this, I'm going to say the sentence that actually works, and it's going to make you feel insecure when I say that because of one word, okay? So listen for the one words got. If you shoot for happiness by understanding how you get that instead, then you'll be successful enough. What's the word? No, the bummed you out. And not only strivers hear that, by the way, slackers are like, awesome, awesome. So tell me how to be happier, professor. Like, no, the problem for strivers is that word enough because there is no such thing. And the second the reason that strivers are resistant to the happiness science, it's not like going to believe it. They're resistant. They do believe it. They're resistant to it is because if they embrace the concept of enough, they've given up and they won't be hungry. And I'm here to tell you, no, it's actually not true. You can live the life that you want. You can be you can discover the next big thing. You can be unbelievably successful. But if your goal is the money, you'll never be happy. If your goal is the power, you'll never be happy. You actually have to work for the happiness while you do beautiful big things. And so that's sort of my apostolate. That's my mission. It's to spray these ideas because it's me too, man. I'm a lot older than you, but I'm a classic striver doing this and that my whole life. Number one, baby, you know, I've got my idols just like everybody else. You know, so I've been able to, you know, do a lot, but happiness was hard because I got this wrong and awful lot. So you asked a specific question about the reverse bucket list. This is an example of how to stand up to mother nature so that you can be both successful and happy. Your brain tells you that you'll get satisfaction in life if you have more more what more all of it, money, power, pleasure, honor, admiration, Instagram followers, whatever your thing is, right? But the truth of the matter is that your satisfaction is all the things that you have divided by all the things that you want. And the most successful people, the cases of entrepreneurs, for example, that amaze us the most or you see somebody who's making billions of dollars and they don't own a house. Have you ever noticed that? Okay, when they own six houses, you're like, yeah, cool. But one of them is like, yeah, of course, I rent a place. What do I want a house for? You're like, that's dude, that dude is awesome. And it scratches you in just the right way because that person doesn't just have more, but also wants less, that's the secret. You got to work the denominator. Haves divided by wants, work the denominator of these worldly things, which will free you up to do the most amazing magic that you could ever dream of. So I like that formula. And if we detach ourselves from all these worldly things, how do we, how do we not lose our ambition? How do we not lose our, because I think for a lot of people, let me, let me rephrase, I think for a lot of people that are kind of similar to myself and to you, even though you've done a lot of work, so you've detached yourself at some point in your life, your identity was tied up in your achievement. And I think that, and I think that it's very common for people to say, if you're going to build a business, you have to do it for reasons other than money. And people can buy into that because nobody, no, no, no, you know, entrepreneur thought leaders saying, hey, go build a business just to make money. Even though we all want to make money at the beginning, I think everybody sort of says, okay, you got to build it for other reasons. But then the other reasons are achievement are whatever it is. Like you mentioned a few different reasons why we build. But if our identity is wrapped up in this thing, how do we unwrap it? How do we decouple our identity from it? Yeah, so there's a couple of different things to think about. To begin with, entrepreneurs actually aren't very materialistic as a rule. You find that government employees, I've got the data on this, government employees tend to be more inquisitive and possession and money oriented than entrepreneurs including successful entrepreneurs. For most entrepreneurs, money is points on the board, it's just a way to measure how things are going. And so you could be making $5 million a year, $10 million a year. And it's going great. And the next year, you're in $7 million a year. After earning 10, you're like, that'll like it. And you're way over your needs. You're way, way, the reason you didn't like it is because the points were going in the wrong direction, which is an indicator that maybe you're not creating the value that you thought you created. Pay attention to the value more is the whole thing. Now, that's the first thing to think about. I'm actually not that worried about entrepreneurs and strivers taking my message. And probably people are watching us right now going, yeah, I totally agree, less wants, fewer wants. I want to be like that. So how the real question is not why is it so hard, but how do you do that? And the way to do that is to recognize that you probably have one idol that is your best scoreboard. And that scoreboard will start controlling you the longer you do it, the more the less you you pay attention to it. So even though there's, I bet you there's nobody watching us today who's a serious entrepreneur and ambitious person who truly cares about getting a boat. It's like, I mean, you'll get a boat because you can afford to have a boat and somebody convinces you that a boat is kind of fun, but you won't go out on it very much because what you really care about is your work. And then the boat will bother you because it's just like sitting there in Lake Havasu or something like that. And like the boat, you know, it's fine. The entrepreneur, I know they have the boat, they actually turn it into a business somehow and they use it to rent it else. Totally, totally. Let's make it into a lucrative asset. You know, let's make a generative at the end of the day. But there is something that is your favorite way of measuring how much value you're creating. And it's always one of three, maybe four things. Now, this comes from the work of Aristotle, believe it or not, Aristotle, who has a, as a philosopher, was way ahead of his time scientifically. I mean, he was just, he was actually doing natural science, not just behavioral science that was incredible. And all of it was brought to sort of semi-modern audiences in the middle ages. Most notably by Thomas Aquinas in 1265 wrote this book called Sumith Theology. I know you were raised Catholic. And so, you know, you kind of have this, have this reference. He's a great Catholic saint. But he's more than anything else for everybody. He's, he is the philosopher of the middle ages. And Aquinas, he, out of Aristotle, he said that human beings are all beguiled, which is to say that they have an idol in one of four things. And they are money, power, pleasure, and fame. I've mentioned them before. But everybody has their one specific metric, their one specific idol that they fall prey to. So everybody watching us here, especially if you're under 40, even more if you're under 30, if you know your specific idol, you'll recognize when you're falling prey to it, you'll avoid it, and you'll be much happier and more successful. So the way that I do this with my 28 year old MBA students is we have a game called What's My Idol to figure out which one it is. You want, you want to play Scott? Let's play. Let's play. Okay. You're, you're good sport here. So everybody in, in radio land, give a hand to Scott for playing What's My Idol in front? Okay. Okay. So what we're going to do here is we're going to look at those four idols. And I'm not going to ask you which one beguiles you the most. I'm going to ask you which one beguiles you the least and you don't care about. And we're going to start taking them away until we're left with the one that is most problematic. Now, now, or most attractive, I should say. Now, when we take one away, it doesn't mean you don't have it. So if you take away money, for example, it doesn't mean you're poor. It just means you're the most average person, totally average. Now, strivers don't want to be average. But if it's not your idol, you don't care is what it comes down to. Okay. Now, we all like all of them, but let's let's let's let's let's play. So let's think about it. Money is you everywhere. No money is. We all know money can do. We all kind of know money can't do. Power means influence over other people. You want to do stuff? It happens. It doesn't mean you're a maniac. It doesn't mean you're president of the United States. It doesn't mean you're a dictator. It means you have the ability to snap your fingers and things get done. Pleasure is really, really feeling good. It includes comfort, the comfort that some people really like that. And and and then and then fame. This is this is a little tricky. I mean, that that doesn't necessarily mean like internet famous, Kardashian famous. It means the right people respect you and admire you. Right. And so it might be you're admired by lots and lots of strangers. It might be like in my profession, I'm a professor, you walk into the room and everybody's like, oh, there's Arthur Brooks. He's the guy who's the guy who wrote that that little known book on, you know, tropical animal husbandry in 2003. They got referred to 14 times by the right people. It doesn't matter. You got your version of this, whatever it works. A fame, you know, is being admired by the right people. Okay. All right. So thinking about Scott's life. I think I already know by the way. Okay. Well, which one do you kick out? Because this is going to be illustrative for the audience. And I want everybody in in in radio land and podcast land to be playing along. So which one do you kick out? So the one the one that I immediately kick out. I can I kick out two or no? Well, we're going to go next to number two. So I think I think pleasure. I kick out first. And the reason why I kick out is because I feel uncomfortable and I feel like I'm not doing enough or I'm wasting my life away. If I'm not building, if I'm not working, even even in, you know, in my my hobbies are, you know, busting my ass in the gym. Like if I don't have a good workout, I feel like it's not a good day. So I don't love comfort. Okay. Comfort and pleasure. We kicked out. That means you got three left, which is money, power and fame, which is next. I think I would kick out money. And the reasoning is because the second I make money, I just spend it on business. I just spend it on building. I don't buy my I don't like buying myself anything. I think it's a waste of money. I don't I mean, I don't spend money on luxury really anything. If my if my better half didn't ask me to go on vacation, I probably just stay home and figure out how to put another 20 K into a new way to advertise the podcast or hire somebody new or try. So I just the money goes right back into the business. Okay. So you'd get rich. So you're perfectly willing. I mean, you're a podcaster and you're well known. So that's an extreme statement because to say that that means that the the being known part of doing this show, presumably you go to an airport and people recognize you. And it's like no more, no more of that. Yeah, but I think no more of people being like Scott's got clarity. He's got some gay man. Yeah, but it doesn't matter because you have to think about why I do this, right? So I don't I don't do this to be recognized. I do this because I get fulfillment when I see, so it's this started, you know, when I was very young, I used to coach tennis and I used to see somebody who used to come to me as a student and they learn a couple things and they'd improved dramatically over the course of a summer. And that to me was one of the most fulfilling transformations you could ever see in somebody. And why I started this podcast was to teach my younger self a few things that would hopefully make life easier. So I think that if the things that we speak about on this show actually impact people, it's great to feel recognized at the airport, but like at the end of the day, who gives a shit? Like if you change somebody's life, then that means I'm doing the good I'm doing the right work. Not just I could be known for a million different things. I could I could start a, you know, like a prank YouTube channel. I could do a whole bunch of different things that would get me known, but I feel like I'm not like contributing any value to the world. Got it. Got it. Okay. So what we've established is not that power is bad because power is not bad. When used for good, power is unbelievably helpful and virtuous. The problem in our lives when it comes to happiness is when we pursue influence for the sake of having the influence. And that's the temptation because what it means is the influence that you actually have is a way that you're going to be marking your success. And then you're going to start managing to the metric, which is what people always do. And when you manage to the metric, that will become the goal. And when that becomes the goal, you start to get unhappy. And that's what you got to keep your eye on. That's what you have to keep. And so, you know, somebody says, I'm going to buy your business and make you CEO and they'll be like, you're going to have 600 employees and you're going to like, holy cow. I'm going to be able to do anything I want because and that in and of itself will be seductive. That in and of itself will be guyle you. And that's the problem. And that's what all strivers need to be paying attention to. For me, number one, I kick out his power. I don't want it. Your number, your number one is my number four. I'm a college professor for a reason. I don't want anybody to have power over me and I don't want to have power over anybody else. I was a CEO for 11 years. And the thing that bummed me out is when people called me boss. It felt passive aggressive to me. I'm like radically non-hierarchical. Right? And that's just my values. It's just kind of how I see the world. I hated it. So it's easy for me to kick that one out. Well, you do have that's what's so ironic about this because you do have really don't have influence. The way that I've set it up is I have I have a non-hierarchical situation in my life except in so far as that, you know, I have, well, I don't even have kids that do what I say because my kids are grown up, you know, and they didn't do what I said when they were, you know, adolescents either. So, you know, and God knows my wife doesn't. So, you know, it's so I pretty much, I mean, we all have influence. We all have influence. People do a lot of what we say if we're if we're if we're if we're somewhat well known for public figures. But that's not my goal, man. And and money at this point, it's kind of a nice way to figure out if things are going well in my business. But, but you know, not so much either. And then pleasure, you know, like I'm in the gym every day too, you know, I'm getting 180 grams of carbohydrates. I have protein at day two and and and and cutting carbohydrates, even though I love sweets. I go a long time without feeling good. But having people recognize what I do, that's my idol. You know, this, the applause, that's my idol. I do 150 speeches a year outside of the university. I'm traveling constantly. I want people to appreciate the fact that I do this work. And that's my weakness. And look, I'm 61 years old. I can I can say it openly and not feel so crummy about it anymore and certainly not feel ashamed. And wanting to be recognized is not a vice. It's not a bad thing. It's when it becomes my goal in life and the measure of my worth as a person. So you so the so the lesson is you have to know like these can all be okay things. But just don't do just don't do what you're doing in pursuit of these exclusively. Probably all of them all of them in power when you have influence over other people and wield it for their good and go to society. Money, you can do amazing things with money with the admiration of other people. Look, when people admire you, they'll do what you do. And if your life actually enriches theirs and they act in a way that's more virtuous, more loving, more moral, more ethical because they admire you. That's great. And pleasure. It's great. That's how babies are made. I'm pro baby. But the whole point is don't let it get out of control with people who aren't her. Yeah. Well, the thing is these these these these these idols, they can they can actually they can multiply your life or they can completely destroy it. That's what so that's what's so difficult. The people that's what I think hard people to understand, right? They these idols don't have to be a bad thing. But how do people draw the line as to how much idle versus how little. And I think that that's what people screw up quite often. Is it your goal? Is it an intermediary goal to get something to something bigger, something better, something more beautiful, something more other focused, or is it your primary goal? That's the way to assess it. Is it your primary goal? Net suite is a success story partner. Now, what does the future hole for business? If you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers, bull market, bear market, rates will rise, rates will fall. Honestly, I just wish somebody would invent a crystal ball. But until then over 41,000 businesses have future proof their business with net suite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid dynamic platform. 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But how does conquest play into happiness? Because a conquest is not one of the idols you mentioned, but it's something that people actively pursue all the time. Yeah. Well, what it is is a goal orientation is characteristic of a striver. And it's really, really important because a goal orientation, that's the essence of purpose. And purpose is part of the meaning of life. Meaning of life has sort of three parts to it. The coherence, why things happen the way they do, the significance, why your life matters to others, and purpose, which is your goals and direction. Goals mean that you have an end point, something you're trying to achieve. And that's the essence of conquest. That's the essence of what you're actually talking about. And that's incredibly important. The reason is because we need to make progress. We need to make, that's the reason by the way that all diets work. Every diet works. You've done that. You've been involved in natural bodybuilding. So you know, perfectly that you can make the scale go down in lots and lots and lots of different ways. The problem is when you hit your goal, because once you hit your goal, that your reward is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life. Congratulations. That's the same reason that Olympic gold medalists, they tend to fall into a depression in the month after they win their gold medal, because they got there. It's terrible hitting your goal, because you realize that the goal per se was not that satisfying. It was having the gold, making progress toward it that really, really mattered. And so what I talk about all the time is nothing wrong in goals, but you have to hold them lightly. Don't become attached to the goal. Have an intention, a strong intention and a value creating process for getting there and enjoy that process. The saddest thing I ever see are people who believe that if they finally achieve this thing, then their life is going to be Shangri-La and they hate every minute of getting there. It's awful. It's awful to actually see that and I see that constantly. I see people in my profession, they're working to get their PhDs and they're not interested in what they're studying. But they think that once they get their PhD, their life is going to be so much better and they get the PhD and they're like, oh, yeah, I remember when I was a young professor, I was trying to get tenure, which is like your big professional goal when you're a young academic. And I'm like, it's going to be so great. And I thought about it in the permanent contract and I'm going to feel so good. And I got there in the day. I got my tenure letter. My wife and I went on to dinner to celebrate. And all we talked about was the fact that one of our kids who was really young had bitten another kid in school that day. And that was like it. That was like it. And by the way, a happy ending of that story, he grew up and became a scout sniper in the US Marine Corps. So, you know, turns out that the violent ones do good for America. I think that this idea of moving your own goalposts or hedonic treadmill or whatever you want to call it, how do we get off that treadmill so that we don't constantly keep setting new, setting new goals and forgetting what we've accomplished? Yeah. So the goal or the formula, the Buddhist somehow very nice formula for this solves this problem. It doesn't solve the problem. What it is is it's a way of living more than a hack. And by the way, when it comes to happiness, no hacks. Just like when it comes to permanent weight loss or more muscle mass or business success or loving your wife, no hacks. Only habits. No hacks. It's like habits, not hacks. That's the way to think about it, right? Because everybody wants this one thing and then the internet is all this one weird trick. And the trick. And it's like one little habit that involves changing your life forever. And that's all that's really what it's all about. So the Buddhists, the habit that they have in place for this is called intention without attachment. Have the intention. Understand the direction that you're going. Make sure that the direction itself and the journey itself are inherently meaningful. But don't be attached to the endpoint. Be like Christopher Columbus. He thought he was going to India, right? And he got to the Dominican Republic and thought, well, this is awesome too. The point is he had to have some sort of a straight line. That's called the rum line and sailing. You've got to have a rum line. Be able to chart your progress. You got to know where you're going. And wherever you get, that's where you get is the way that you actually think about it. Now, why is that possible? And the reason is because your your life that you're building, your ordinary life that you're building is so incredibly rich and meaningful that anything that you could possibly get from that goal as meritorious as it is, hails and comparison to your ordinary life. And it's really important for me. I mean, it's not the kind, you know, when I'm releasing a book, I wanted to open a number one of the New York Times bestseller list, right? But even if it does, that's nowhere near as awesome as my marriage. And it nowhere near as awesome. I live with with with my grandchildren. And it's like nowhere near as awesome as goofing off with my grandchildren. You know, I wouldn't give a month with my grandkids for a day on the best seller list. I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it when I think about it. And so the result is I've built an infrastructure on around my life on the basis of my faith, my family, my friendship. And how much I actually love doing the work. That's way, way, way better than the goal, even though I recognize, I must have a goal so that I can be directionful. I can have this kind of, I can have a goal orientation that makes progress possible. This is you spoken about, you know, having a calling before. This is sort of synonymous with that, right? Having a calling across your life. Because even if you look at your, your own life, you have killed off past versions of yourself several times. And I know you speak about reinventing yourself every, you know, seven to 12 years. When you started out, you were a French horn player in Barcelona, making 14 grand a year. And you've killed off several versions of yourself since then. Does that, is that the reason why calling is so important, so that you can kill off past versions of yourself past careers and then pursue something greater, something different or something more meaningful without, again, having your identity so wrapped up in who you are at the moment that it sort of paralyzes you from anything else. Yeah. And calling is really about the why of your life, not the what and how. The what and how we're going to change. The why of your life is the mission of your life. And that's what you're meant to do. And that's your calling. And that's bigger than your job. It's bigger than your current enterprise. It's bigger than the number in your bank account. That stuff is small potatoes in comparison. And so what I recommend that everybody do is to figure out what their life's mission is. I love that. Do you think that I think I, I think I know the answer, but I'm going to ask you anyways, do you think that people need a spirituality to find that calling or other other ways to find what you're put on this earth to do? Like, is there, is there a science method to, to emulate that walk that somebody could go on? Yeah. Yeah. And it does not require my faith. I mean, I love, I'm all my Catholic faith. I'm strong proponent of it. And again, I'm not talking about the metaphysics of what's cosmically true. It's beyond my pay grade for sure. But as a social scientist, I will tell you there's lots and lots of ways to get that peace and perspective. What you need to do is to transcend yourself so that the the signal to noise ratio is adequate that you can get knowledge is what it comes down to when it comes time to get that discernment. And most people need more discernment that they're currently getting. You need to turn down the noise so you can get more signal. And the way to do that is to transcend yourself. There's two versions of us because of this big prefrontal cortex in our brain that allows it's this, I mean, it has like the coolant of a super computer with 880 trillion transistors. There's nothing like it in the universe. AI is not going to come close. It's just not. And the result of it is this big brain that we've got is that we have we can we have consciousness, which means I know that I know and I know that I know that I know I'm aware of my awareness. It's this weird elliptical warp ability to know about my own existence. And so not only am I observing the world like my dog can, but I'm actually observing me all the time as well. That's amazing because it allows me to be the dominant species, the human beings, but it's also a torture because you're thinking about yourself all the time. And that's the noise and the signal to noise ratio that makes it impossible for you to listen to what you're supposed to do as opposed to thinking about what you want to do all the time. The way to get more signal and less noise, which is called the i-self, not the me-self, is to do something where you you purposely make yourself little and you make the universe large. That's one of the reasons that students at my university, they love astronomy 101. It's not because they want to be astronomers, but because they go into class on Thursdays and they're like, I'm like having a bad time with my girlfriend and and I come out and I'm like, I'm a speck on a speck on a speck. And it makes you understand, it gives you clarity. It gives you clarity. You're in the i-self. The signal is up in the noises down. You can get that through religious practice. You can get that from vipassana meditation. You can give that from, you know, our friend Ryan Holiday talks about studying the stoics. You can get it from studying the stoics. You can get it from listening to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. You can get it from walking before dawn in nature every day for an hour without devices. There's a lot of literature on that. Everything I'm talking about, I'm not just making this up. There's literature on each one of these particular techniques, but you have to transcend yourself and get small. Is that why, is that why when society moves more secular and there is no sort of institutional religion and people don't really know what to replace it with? Is that why there's depression, anxiety, mental health crisis? Is that correlated or no? Yes, as one of the reasons. So it's related to the fact that we, people don't know the meaning of their life. You can't know the meaning of your life. You can't know the why of your life when it's all noise, no signal. You won't know. You're going to be chasing all kind, you're going to, you're going to be watching stupid reels on TikTok. You're going to be wasting your life if you do that because you'll be distracted constantly is what comes down to. And you need something where you have a transcendence like that. Now that's not the only way. There's a whole bunch of things you need to get more meaning in your life. I have a book coming out next April, April of 2026 called the meaning of your life, finding purpose in an age of emptiness that talks about the neurological correlates of the sense of meaningless this that so many people feel. And what they used to do that gave them a sense of meaning in life and that in modern life, you don't do anymore. One of them is seeking transcendence. Another is looking for the calling in your work. We already talked about that. Another is finding beauty, which people just don't do now. I mean, it's really interesting. The research on music says that music is people like it, but it's objectively less beautiful than it's been in the past. People have spend less time in nature. You find that people, they don't understand suffering, which is one of the best ways to find meaning in your life is understanding suffering. They try to eliminate suffering. The whole therapy industrial complex is about I feel sad and anxious. I have to make it go away or I'm a broken defective person, which is completely false. Are you kidding me? It means you're a human being walking the face of the earth, falling in love. It's another way that people find meaning and people are doing that less than they've done in the past. And so there's a suite of techniques that actually will bring meaning into your life and the spirituality of your transcendence is one of them. And I don't want to maybe explain the difference between happiness and meaning, like finding the meaning of life, because to me, the two ideas almost seem interchangeable, but I think there is nuance to what one means versus the other. Yeah. So happiness has three parts to it, enjoyment, which is not feeling good. It really is a fully human experience of pleasure with people and memory around it. That's that you have to enjoy your life. The second is satisfaction, which is taking having getting a sense of joy in your accomplishments and your achievements after struggle. Struggle is a super important component of that. And the last part is meaning. So meaning is is a sub component. It's a macronutrient of happiness is the way that it works. You can go a long time, because you know, you're a very self-discipline guy, as am I, as is everybody who's watching us, because that's why they watch us, because they want they want the habits, right? And the habits are never easy. And so you know, so they can go a long time with that enjoyment and satisfaction, but you can't go 10 minutes without a sense of meaning of your life and actually can't yourself a happy person. But I think a lot of people, I think a lot of people aren't happy. That's the number one reason the data are clear that that's what's down in the current generation. So if you look at it, there's no change in enjoyment, there's no change in satisfaction, but, but meaning in life has tanked for people under 35 years old. And that's the number one reason for the increases in anxiety and depression. People say it's because of social media. People say it's because boomers wrecked everything or because houses are too expensive or income inequality or the environment or whatever your favorite thing of the week is, uh-uh, uh-uh. It's because meaning is getting harder to find because the practice is defined meaning are less and less present in the lives of young adults. Shipstation is a success story partner. You know what separates successful online businesses from literally everyone else? It's not just having great products. It's delivering an amazing shipping experience that keeps customers coming back. 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Be part of creating it. Visit inbound.com slash register to get your ticket today. This goes back to your point. Yes, you don't have to be spiritual or subscribe to like an institutionalized religion, but they did offer some framework for meaning. And now we don't have a blueprint or a playbook for that. And I'm I guess I'm curious, you comment on that if you want, but I think I'm more curious about sort of your journey because you also spent a lot of time studying Buddhism. And I think that, you know, you are probably better qualified than most to speak about spiritual non-spiritual religious or non-religious practices that lead to meaning in your life. So obviously there was some reason why you chose to study Buddhism. Is there something that it's figured out that a lot of people miss? Are there other things that help people find meaning? You mentioned like again, like walks, music, etc, etc. But again, you spent significant time studying it. So why was that? In the same reason that I studied philosophy or behavioral science or mathematics, it's because there's a lot to learn about the the way that life works that I didn't know. And the truth of the matter is that the Buddhists have been, I mean, it's unbelievable when you dig deep. Or the Hindus, for example, Hinduism is a it's not a it's not one religion. It's really a family of religions, but it's 6,000 years old. And so when you talk to, I have, you know, major significant Hindu teachers, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar as somebody that has really helped me a lot, Sri Notcher of Enkataraman in Tamil Nadu in southern India has really helped me enough a lot. But I've also spent the last 13 years working very closely with this holiness of Dalai Lama in Tibetan Buddhism. And I've sat with and learned the techniques of Tibetan Buddha's meditation at his monastery with his monks. And I've read a great deal and worked with him. We've actually co-authored and made a documentary film together as a matter of fact. And so I've learned from that friendship and seen him once or twice a year every year. And and so doing it's made me, by the way, has made me a much better Catholic because it's helped me to understand that how my path actually works in the context of universal ideas of what we're actually trying to do is human beings. Now again, I'm not going to make a pronouncement about, you know, who's metaphysically, cosmically correct on all these types of things because, you know, the truth is I don't know. And and I can't know that's the beauty of it is not knowing but doing something nonetheless and getting really, really great at it. It was the Dalai Lama himself who told me he said, I want you to be a better Catholic man. That's so interesting. Because he said, that's your path. That is your path. And and that's a beautiful thing. So yeah, no, I'm I'm up for everything. If you put it in front of me, I'm going to study it and try to pull the best from it. Why did he say because when you first met him, he said, hello old friend for the first time before ever even knowing you, why did he say that? Um, he's adept. He has knowledge beyond my understanding. He's believed by the Tibetan Buddhist to be able to satva, which is to say a living, a person with a living Buddha nature, somebody who has transcended samsara, which is the endless cycle of birth and death, but who chooses not to come back, who chooses to continue coming back as opposed to achieving nirvana for the good of other people to bring other people more to enlightenment. That's what a bodhisattva does. The great thing that we misunderstand about Buddhism in the West, there's so many Western Buddhists and the so-called Western Buddhists and the reason that they meditate is because they want to feel better. That's exactly wrong. The reason that you meditate is you want other people to feel better because you want to lift up other people because you want to create more enlightenment on earth. You want to become more effective in creating an ecosystem of peace and goodness and love and compassion around you. That's the reason to do it. And that's what he does as the most prominent living bodhisattva in the world. The reason of that is that he has a cute knowledge of who we are and seeing us for the true people that we are. When he said, hello old friend, he meant it. And from the very first moment, I felt like I was talking to somebody who's known me for centuries. That's a beautiful. I love that. It's absolutely beautiful. I have this thesis that is proven with no data whatsoever. But I do have a thesis that I think if people lived in optimal circumstances, meaning they didn't have to do anything else, they weren't worried about money or income or just surviving, I feel like most people would derive meaning from helping other people. I do genuinely believe that if you are given the opportunity to do that and you lean into it, I mean, for me, at least it's been probably one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done in my life is to help somebody else go through their own problems or their own struggles. I don't know if that's a universal feeling, but I think that if people are seeking meaning, I think not a hack, but a very quick way to have a little bit more meaning in your life is to give a little bit back to somebody who's struggling. I feel like that's a human, very, very, just human nature. I don't know. Yeah, no, no, I've actually, I did a lot of research on that early in my career. And what you find is that the number one way to reorient yourself to, to, to, you know, reset the breakers emotionally is to, is to get into the myself, the eye cell from the, from the me self, the fastest way to do that is to go help somebody, to go love somebody. That's one of the reasons, by the way, that family life is so magical, you know, and that's why people who have, you know, I know that you and your wife practice your religion. And, and the whole idea is that you're responsible, you're her guru. And she's your guru and your marriage is an antenna to the divine. It's like you feel God's love when she loves you. And she feels God's love when you love her, which means you have an incredible responsibility to go love her more. Do not deny her God's love, dude. And then by the way, and one of the number that it all ties together with the behavioral science, you know, if you want to raise kids who are happy, you know, the number one thing that you can do, Scott, to make your kids grow up to be happy people, love their mom, love their mom, have them see you loving their mom. That's the number one predictor of them having growing up and having successful relationships and happy marriages and being good to other people. It's like it's weirdly simple, but it comes down to loving others, not loving just loving yourself is what it comes down to. People say, yeah, you know, I live in the West and America, and I should be going and helping poor people. And that's great. Go help poor people. Give more money away. Do a mission trip if you want, but the poor that you have near you are your kids. They're the poorest ones that you have near you. They're the ones who actually don't have anything and they're defenseless without you. And taking care of your kids is so critically important. And the number one thing you can give your kids is love and values. Love and values, man. Don't mess it up. Don't neglect them and don't be gone all the time. And don't let them see you be a materialistic SOB. And don't let them see you get drunk or, you know, scream insults out of the car window at another driver. I mean, it's like, it's so weirdly simple. So one thing that I wasn't going to go here, but I think it's interesting just because we're sort of on the topic of relationship and spirituality. You mentioned that one of the most intimate things that people can do is pray together more intimate than sex. And it's even more uncomfortable because it's something that is, I don't know, just something that I think is not normalized praying together. I think that everybody knows with your spouse, you're going to have sex, you're going to make love. But to sit down and pray together, that's a really meaningful event. And a lot of people get uncomfortable with it. But I don't want people to hear that and say, well, listen, I'm not super religious. So how do I have that level of intimacy with my spouse? Because we don't, you know, we're not devout Muslims, Catholics, Christians, Jews, whatever. So I don't want to miss out on a huge part of life. So what do I do? Yeah. Meditate together, read poetry to each other, do something that's truly sublime, and it touches the soul. And where you bear your soul and she bears hers. That's what it comes down to. Now, it turns out that if you're religious as simple because there's that, you know, let's talk to God together. And I'm going to let you see me talking to God. That's very uncomfortable. That's really, really embarrassing for people to be sure. But to have something that is your link to the sublime that you share with another person and in that vulnerability, you're with that other person together, that's when it becomes a kind of a triad. That when it becomes not just doing the sublime, but the two of you together. And that's when your relationship can be an antenna to the sublime. That's that's how it works. So if you're not religious, it shouldn't stop you at all. You just got to find your thing. Three things are required for happiness, enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. What happens? Because you mentioned meetings at an all-time blow. So what happens if somebody goes through life with just satisfaction and enjoyment? What kind of person do you turn into? You'll feel empty. You'll be a person that has a profound sense of emptiness. You'll have a you'll always have the sense of the wanderer. Somebody who's looking for something more. And the result of it is that you can't have the kind of happiness, the kind of peace in your life that you actually need. And that's a huge problem. Now, I don't know. Has anybody ever completely failed to do so? I don't know because I don't have the data on that. You know, meaning is actually weirdly, it's the realm of philosophers, but behavioral scientists haven't touched it very much. So this book that I'm writing right now is looking for the absolute best data for the best scientific treatment that we can have in it. But it's hard. This is a hard thing to look at. But the bottom line is that when I'm looking at people right now, we're going day after day week, month, year after year without a sense of meaning in their lives. These are the these are the hungry ghosts. You know, the Tibetan Buddhists talk about the realm of how people come back. And the hungry ghost is kind of a hungry creature trying to satisfy an appetite that can never be met. One idea about happiness that is that we need unhappiness to be happy. So explain this paradox because if somebody's listening so far, they would say that, okay, I got I got satisfaction. I got enjoyment. I just got to find some meaning and I'm good. But that's not it. Or they assume that because they suffer from a lot of unhappiness that they can't have happiness. And and that's a misunderstanding. I mean, a big misunderstanding of the relationship between happiness and unhappiness. They're not opposites. We have a tendency to think that unhappiness is an absence of happiness or that happiness is an absence of unhappiness. That's wrong. And the reason is because the experience that we have, the feelings, the evidence of happiness and unhappiness are actually processed in different parts of the brain physically, different parts of the brain. We have gear in the limbic system of the brain dedicated to both positive and negative emotions. And they exist for different evolutionary reasons that there are only four negative emotions, fear, anger, disgust and sadness. They exist in every single person. And they exist because they're a defense system. You know, your sadness is a defense against you ruining relationships, getting kicked out of your tribal band and wandering the frozen tundra and dying alone. Sadness means I don't want to lose the people I love. You know, that's that's an advanced warning system against loss, disgust against pathogens, fear and anger against threats and the amygdala of the limbic system. And positive emotions work the same way. Interest and joy. They say that there's some opportunities and you should approach those opportunities. But that's what they're all for. And they're in different parts of the brain. And the result of them is that they're separable. The average person spends 41% of their day in a low grade positive state. They spend about 16% of their day in a more intense negative state. They spend 33% of their time in a mixed state, which is kind of positive, punctuated by negativity. And then about 10% of the time in a state that they can't classify. What that tells us is that we're going we're oscillating back and forth. We're going back and forth all day long. And it also tells us that you're not going to get unhappiness out of your life. You're going to have unhappy emotions and you're going to have unhappy experiences and that you have two choices. You can learn and grow from those things and appreciate them, which will make you happier or you can try to eradicate them by going to some therapist and saying, you know, I'm all screwed up because I'm feeling sad and anxious, which by the way, those can be medical problems when they're exaggerated and and and dysregulated. Don't get me wrong. Clinical depression is a real thing. I'm not making a lot of that. Anybody who suffers from it needs to go to the doctor for sure. But the idea that when you're sad and anxious that this primafasia evidence of defectiveness wrong. And by the way, who has the highest levels of negative emotion? Entrepreneurs. The strivers. They're called the mad scientists of business for a reason. They have very, very intense both positive and negative emotion and they learn and they grow from it and that winds up being part of the the the recipe for their greater happiness. Well, I think that also most entrepreneurs and just high achievers in general, there's a significant portion of that population is neurodivergent some degree. Yeah. And that can compound both ways. Yeah, totally. For whatever that whatever that means in a lot of cases, right? I mean, the truth is that there's so much that we don't know and that we put the neurodivergent label on. We know, for example, the people that are classified on the autism spectrum, they have unbelievably high levels of activity in the left hemisphere of the brain. And that makes them extremely good at a lot of technical tasks. You can say, okay, yeah, it's a disability. Oh, maybe it's a strength. People who have so of ADHD, for example, they're they have a hard time focusing on things that they think are boring. I mean, that's that's what characterizes the things that you and I are, you know, if you don't have that, you can do stuff that you think is boring. But people who have ADHD, like one of my kids, but when they find what they're really good at, they're better than the average in the population and focusing on that thing. So everybody listening to us, if you got a kid with ADHD, your job is to find the thing that that kid is really, really good at and likes and that kid will be a big success and a happy person. And those people, by the way, it's like, my kid is a sniper. Yes, you know, I'm boring. It is to be a sniper sitting in a bush. He's like, yeah, I was in a bush for five hours yesterday in the desert. It was 110 degrees. And I had a tarantula on my arm. And like, that sounds awful. He's like, it was awesome. It's so, but I think that that's that's the point, right? So I think that a lot of people that are highly ambitious, again, define neurodivergent, however, you want to define it. But if you're not aware of what makes you happy or what, what creates meaning in your life, there's a greater chance of unchecked unhappiness, because I think you can skew both ways to the extremes. And that's what people have to pay attention to, especially when you are like an ambitious person. Oh, yeah. And if you let people tell you that some weird thing about you is a disability, that can be a huge problem. If you go to the doctor, the doctor says you have fill in the blank, you know, problem, then you're going to become that problem to a very large extent. You know, the truth of the matter is we all have problems. We all have these these weird characteristics to us. And yet that in our in our weaknesses, we find our strength. This is a classic line from the Christian Bible. I mean, St. Paul says, in my weakness, I find my strength, the thorn in my side. He was probably talking about the fact that it was epileptic, as a matter of fact, and it's so doing he was able to connect with other people. He was, he was witness to the fact that he had, you know, he was physically frail. And this made his, his witness, his ministry better, but the same thing is true in your strength. You find your weakness because you're unable to connect with other people. I tell this all the time to my, you know, to my MBA students at Harvard, I say, you want to connect to other people's a leader, don't tell them you went to Harvard, because this is not, this is them connecting to anybody, except for like that, you know, the 14 people who went to Harvard. What would be what would be the single most, I don't know, thing activity event, whatever it is that can sabotage your happiness, you have to be careful of. And yeah, it was a single and most important thing that would sabotage your happiness. Oh, there's so many, there's so many things that you can do wrong. Because a lot of meaning is a quick way to, to be honest, yeah, it's not something that it's not a big mistake that you make. Yeah. So the biggest mistake that people actually make from day to day that sabotage is not their happiness, just their happiness, but also their success is the unwillingness or inability to manage their emotions. So the number one thing that I teach my MBA students is emotional self-management through management and the limbic system of the brain. The limbic system is the console that issue talked about it a minute ago. It creates emotions so that you have signals about what's going on around you. That's all emotions are is an advanced warning system that something is going on that you need to pay attention to. And if the emotion is negative, it means you need to avoid something. And if the emotion is positive, it means you need to approach something. That's it. There's no such thing as good feelings. There's no such thing as bad feelings. Bad feelings are more likely to keep you alive because they're a, they're a warning system of threat. Good feelings, so-called good feelings are an advanced warning system that there's berries on a bush or, you know, a potential mate. It's not urgent, right? Is what we see. When people don't understand that and they become prey to their emotions, they make all the mistakes in their life. They get into, they get into, they engage in acts of violence. They say things that they don't want to say. They're unable to show that they have proper emotional regulation so that they have opportunities. They make decisions that they later regret. That's the number one thing. And so the way to deal with this is a whole suite of techniques called metacognition where you move the experience of your emotions into your prefrontal cortex makes you the manager of yourself. And so doing it can dramatically increase your likelihood of making decisions that lead to happiness and then also lead to success. Do you have a website or socially want to send people to before I ask a couple more questions? Yeah, orthobricks.com. Orthobricks.com is where I have all my columns. It's you can follow me on social media, Instagram is Arthur C. Brooks got to put in that middle initial because there's probably some even more famous orthobricks who stole the handle before that. But then you can actually see a lot of the stuff that I'm working on. Have a lot of shorts up there and kind of give you flavor for whatever is on my mind these days. If people were going to pick up this book, you've touched on a lot of different stuff as it relates to happiness. If people were going to pick up this book and you wanted them to leave with one idea that would just radically change their life. The most important thing. What would that thing be? So this book is 33 chapters. That means short. That means they're short chapters. They're essays. It's meant to be read in about a month. So read the book over a month, read it, you know, one chapter a day so that you can actually think about it. Each one of the chapters has do these three things. But like remember this. Do that. Super practical. It's all super science-based. It's a very science-based book about how neuroscience the social science can help you do that. But here's the big idea about insights on work and life. Your life and everybody's going to understand this who's watching this show. That's why they watch this show. Your life is the startup. That's the whole point of the book. It's not, I mean, I don't know what you're doing. I mean, you're doing some business. That's great. Maybe you're setting up vending machines or opening laundromats or you can open a car wash or maybe you're starting, you're writing lines of code. Great. But that's not the startup. The real startup is you incorporated. And since it's an enterprise, an entrepreneurial enterprise, and you're the founder, you got to treat it as such. What does that mean? That means you got to be willing and able to take the right kind of risk for unusual rewards. And you got to know the nomination of the rewards. We're talking about this in this conversation. They're not money and power and feeling good and, you know, online platets and applause. No. It's love and happiness. Are you building a life that is a lifelong enterprise where the love and happiness that you seek is more and more abundantly yours or not? And if the answer is it's not, you're in the wrong line of work in the business of your life. The whole point of this book that will progressively pervade your consciousness is you read these things chapter by chapter by chapter is I'm the startup founder. I'm the entrepreneur. This is me incorporated. What does it actually mean for me to be a happiness and love billionaire? I hope by the end of the book. And I'm confident that people will know. I love it. Last thing I like to ask and you know what? I'm going to tailor this question just to happiness because next time we chat, it'll be about something different. But out of everything that you've ever learned about happiness, say you only have the ability to pass on one idea or one lesson to your kids because it's the most important idea. What would that lesson be in why? Happiness is love full stop. If you don't know what to do, make the decision to love. Love is not a feeling. Any more than happiness is a feeling. It's a commitment. It's an act. It's a positive decision. If you don't know what to do, go love. Love somebody. Love a stranger. Love a friend. Love your family. Love everybody through the way that you earn your daily bread. Love God. But when you love, you've been reflected your happiness. It's the one thing you need to know and the one thing in life that truly matters.