Arthur Brooks - Harvard Professor & #1 NYT Bestselling Author | Why the Most Successful People Feel the Most Empty

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. 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. When we asked 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 functioned 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. 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. 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. Arthur, you spent six years studying meaning, and you say that this is the hardest book that you've ever written. Why is that? Because the meaning of life is the hardest question. You look for questions that you can answer. You can really get your mind around. 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 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. 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 saying, I feel like my life is meaningless. For years, I'm like, I can't deal with that. It's got to be something more specific. It has to be something that's a real research question, but I do the analysis. I do the interviews and they keep talking about meaning and meaning. I say, what if I wrote a book on the meaning of life and people say, yes, that's what I want. I just had to suck it up and you actually take it on. That's what I did. 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 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 does that actually reflect it in data? Are people more stressed out than ever before? Yes, but it actually started in about 2008-2009. What happened is it accelerated during COVID. 2008-2009, we started to see a real hockey stick. When we asked people, for example, for the longest time about depression and anxiety, it bumped along and bumped along all through the 1980s and 1990s and the 2000s, and then around 2008-2009 just took off and 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 the same. It's like, you know, about 15 to 20 percent of young adults would say, yeah, I feel like my life is meaningless forever and ever and ever until 2008-2009 that took off too. My life feels meaningless. That's really what happened. And of course, it got worse during 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? Is life for you meaningless? Do you notice that there's differences in different culture, societies, countries around the world, or is it just a universal? 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. The origin of it, however, is not a contagious virus on the contrary. It's a sociological or societal phenomenon, and we can get into that. Where does it actually manifest? Largely among young adults, and especially among young adults that are well-educated. 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, wow, what's happening here? You find that, for example, the people who didn't go to college are less likely to be depressed than anxious than people who did go to college. Why is that because this person is smart, pursuing education, obviously, on some sort of career path? 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 a 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. 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? Is there any other circumstance to dictate if this person is struggling? Yeah, I mean, not having a job is going to make you struggle no matter who you are, for sure. 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 follow 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 to 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. I work a lot of its 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, 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, 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. There's a story about Mark, who's a 32-year-old data analyst. It's the beginning of the book, 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... 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 mathematically trying 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 meditating 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 habituate itself to function about 250,000 years ago at the beginning of the place to sing. 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 have 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 our brains are the same as they were then. We're living 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 sing kind of brain environment, are the people who are most modern. And the most modern people are well-educated adults, 135, who don't remember the before times. So I'm in my really 60s. I remember the before times. You're 35, you're right on the edge. Yeah, I remember we didn't have a cell phone in high school. Yeah. I think I got my first blackberry when I was in grade 10 or 11, but... Well, the first time that you asked somebody out on a date, it was in real life and in person. How did you meet your partner? Well, that was on... That was on a dating app. But I had never been... So I hadn't really ever been a 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 DMed her. And then we ended up going out, so it all worked out. But I never really participated in dating app, hook up culture, swiping through 500 people and going on 500 dates. I've never really participated in it. That will lead you to depression anxiety, generally speaking. And that's kind of your 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, 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 is going to 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. 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, and meaning is on the right. And I would assume that this is an impossible thing to solve for as a simple like with with with job with 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. You understand, you understand exactly, you know, they 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 that the Miami dolphins get more points than New York Jets. That's actually all is almost the case. And we understand that 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'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, I'm just going to give you more and more due dads and more gadgets and more widgets and more apps and more ways to distract you and add it to 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 a missing something? Oh, well, I guess I'll get that app and maybe that will 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. Optionality is what's creating a lot of this. I'm assuming just endless options. Yeah, well, that's what that is is into distraction. Optionality is distraction. And why we would we want distraction is because we want to solve the problem of human boredom. The problem is a funny thing. We're we're built to be bored human homeless APNs are built to be bored. When we're bored, the default mode network and our brain illuminates and that's the 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 putting 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 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, because the phone isn't in there. And your default mode network turns on while you have the hot water coming onto your body and you're like, 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. 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. Well, there's no meaning at all. All it is is simple distractions. Sorry, 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. We could be, we could find our calling. If we weren't, if we were actually allowing ourselves to live the way and our brains, the 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, you know, 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, and it's, it's weirdly simple. You know, your grandfather, I don't know what he did for a living, but let's just say, you know, or your great grandfather, probably a farmer or something in Canada someplace, right? 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 at 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. How do we architect a life that actually gives us meaning? What's like, what are the steps? And, and obviously the people that you're interviewing, they're not living these steps. This is not the reality. No, 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 the baguials, I said almost always involves dopamine. Dopamine is a neuromodulator of learning, wanting, liking, and the reason it's in the human brain is so 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. You know, 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, it's maladapted to things like drugs and alcohol, you know, meth and slot machines and pornography and all the things that actually add dick people that are really horrible for their brains. And what have they done? We've, I mean, we're geniuses. We've found a way to actually use those things to add dick people and make money 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, but we'll do it. But people do it. And the reason is because their dopamine systems or 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, and most people have never done that. You know, before I get into the whole thing, I have a chapter on getting clean, which actually starts by getting pissed. You know, that this is one of the things that all addicts have in common. You know, nobody goes into a 12 step program for alcohol before they're like 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 what 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 get a bed at night. You don't look at it while you're eating, you know, 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. And 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 stated that they look at their phone over 205 times. Yeah, 205 times a day, the average American. Like every, it's a lot of times what's happening every time they look at their phone like like from like a neurological and neurochemical response. So this is just triggering dopamine all the time and it is truly an addiction. 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 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 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, you know, the 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, 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 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 you start shutting your phone off or not looking at it every second of the day and you know you're just not addicted to it anymore. What's happening in your brain now? Yeah, you're actually having the deeper thoughts and you're starting to get the satisfaction that you actually crave. You're starting to have the 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. Is it uncomfortable? Yeah, for sure. The first two weeks in particular. The first two weeks are like the monkeys on your back. You know, and the reason. You're an addict because you're... Because you're... 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. Well, you need a healthy relationship with it. 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. If you're eating, if you're really addicted to junk food, you can't stop eating. Don't leave any 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 actually harder than abstinence. Quick question. What's your go-to when you got 10 minutes before a meeting or a workout? For me, it just used to be whatever I could grab. 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But if somebody is, for example, trying to find meaning in all areas of their life, they've stopped with their phone. Are there other habits, other things that they do? That's what I get into in the rest of the book. So once you actually break away from the one thing that's crowding it out, I mean that 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 a lot of it. I'm not anti-tech at all. It just has to be in this 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 unhappy? 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 AI is an adjunct to your left brain. It's perfect for 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, or all of 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, chat GPT, why am I alive? And it's 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 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 a 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. Terrifying. Yeah. And that's exactly where a lot of people are going. A lot of people try to use chat GPT as their therapist. 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. Now, when I've heard an avatar of me giving advice, and at the very beginning, it's like, wow, it's literally my voice and it's 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. 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 wrong. And so we're going to try to do more. Yes. 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 thing. That's how heroin addicts work. That's tolerance and escalation. You've heard of this like AI psychosis. Yeah. That's right. But literally losing their mind while they're talking to AI to mice. And in the end, there are a lot of entrepreneurs in the valley who are saying that actually what we need is the perfect technology to solve this problem. Well, no dude. I mean, that's like that old Saturday at Live Sketch, more cowbell. You know, we will Ferrell's banging on the cowbell and ruining a song in the producer. 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. 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. 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 this 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, the War and a Keys area, the cortex from 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 you if I press you and say, okay, give me five reasons you're in love. I'm going to name like personality, physical traits, experiences with the person. And I can find somebody who fills all of those things that you're not in love with. And so those, 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 has the ability to answer these unbelievable questions. You know, people often say, human genius, 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 Coco the Gorilla. It was before your time. It was Coco the Gorilla was a Ugandan lowland gorilla that was raised in captivity and taught a thousand words in sign language. And everybody had that blurred the boundaries between humans and non-human animals. But it didn't because Coco never asked a single question. Coco answered questions, are you hungry? Yes, no. You know, do you want a banana? Yes, no. That's what Coco the Gorilla did, but Coco 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 is as 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. Why am I in love with my wife after 34, 43? 34, I got to go count, 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 recommend that people start groups of people of considering the questions that don't have answers. What happens when you sit with these questions? 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 brief description of what these actually mean? So this is kind of the meaning of meaning. You know, how do you define meaning, right? And which is very philosophical. But it's actually this is put together by a psychologist named Mike Steger at who's in Colorado. Mike Steger has, you know, his 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 and 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 a coherence theory, right? He was also a Christian. And he said, God has his hand in it. That's a coherence theory. Some people have, you know, the reason that people gravitate toward 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 theories is education and faith. Because it gives them a better sense of coherence. That's 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. It's, it's your, in sailing, it's called the rum line. Which is this line that you're going toward in your life. You got to 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 of 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. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 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 an effortable. It goes a little bit beyond your ability to be specific. But you got to have an answer and understanding of it. And the last is, why does my life matter? That's a significance. Why does my life matter into whom? You know, why does it matter? And if the answer is, it doesn't. Well, uh-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. 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. This is a smart question that we've never asked 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 it off a 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 to, so I know your relationship isn't so great. What have you been doing? It's like, I'm trying to kind of distract myself. And we've been kind of not talking about it and I go home and we watch television and we don't deal with our problems. And 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. And the same thing we talked about earlier about brainless technology is 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 it's going to hurt. Two of my kids are military. Two of my three kids are Marines. And both of them have gone through hard core training. One of them was an enlisted Marine and went through basic training. And then he became a sniper. And that's the hardest core training ever. It hurt. It was dangerous. It was brutal. 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 in the middle of it right now for her 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 the stuff. I'm like, I'm sorry, honey. And she's like, it's such a good mood. Because she's doing this hard thing that's incredibly rewarding. And that's what this promises. She's going to hurt. Yeah. And you're probably going to love it. People introduce themselves with what they do. What's wrong with that? Because that's a left brain answer to the who you are. To 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 my wife who's from Spain. 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 my wife is super deep. And so she would 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 when you go to Spain, you actually see this. I remember that we go to Spain all the time because we've been going back and forth for 35 years. And we go to these people's house. We'd never met them not that long ago a few months ago. You know, we sit down and 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 deeper go home. Yeah. Then you get to know the actual you do and some people can't handle it because they're not used to it because they've never done any of this work. 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, you know, how do you live from day to day? How do you spend your time? That's just not good enough. I mean, that's kind of a nice breaker in its way. But man, get to the why. Get to the why if 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. 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 I feel so abnormal. Yeah, yeah, for sure because you're just not in the meaning space. But as soon as you get into that, you know, and man, 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're you know, you're paying a hundred 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 would you watch on television? No, they're not going to wait. So like, what do you think of the weather? They don't care. They're going to go directly to the deeper questions of meaning that's what you're paying them to do. So why don't you have that in your ordinary relationships as well? When somebody wants to start asking why questions, where do they start? 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 whole. And this is a 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 I give 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 what is 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 are their understanding is inadequate, then it talks about what do you need to do? And when somebody starts to actually understand their why their meaning in life on the other side of these exercises, what do you see with people? You see that 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 stopped 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 that with the bread and circuses of ordinary life. Their life changes. And by the way, they become a pain to their friends. If you do this, you do this. You might wind up in different relationships. But relationships that serve who you are. You'll like what happens to your life, but your friends might not like what happens to your life. Well, no, because I like you, like you probably, how many people did you interview lots? I mean, I've been interviewing hundreds and hundreds of people over the course of the past seven years. 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 just increasing at an exponential rate. So obviously the majority of people on this planet are not asking themselves these questions. Yeah. And there's a selection bias for the people coming to me that people take my classes at Harvard for a reason. You know, the people who've got this stuff figured out and they're not like, I'm not going to, they're not going to go take the happiness science class at the business school that the people. And again, it's very oversubscribed class. I got a 400 on the 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 tickers just do in great. I mean, you go because there's a problem. And so people are behind the line of scrimmage. And, and then of course what I really want is to get to everybody who can get down the field, even a third good shape. Indeed is a success story partner. 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 sponsor jobs. I'd get people who fit that description. 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network what I love about it is a skip all the theory and they just tell you what's actually working today so demand Gen marketing content linked in at 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 the meaning resistors because I feel like that would be the majority of people why are people resisting meaning because it life is easier when you don't deal with these questions that life is just easier we're lazy again what are we doing we're when people are resisting thinking 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 there's my life actually 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'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 I life would be so much better if I were still a junkie I'm no nobody ever said that right and so when you do the work it's unbelievably rewarding but getting started is really hard I mentioned aporia so my understanding of aporia is asking these unanswerable questions yeah that's an ancient thing of the ancient philosophy usually as thought 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 you know the in the early Christian like the Benedictines they were 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 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 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 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 Coins which are riddles and that's a poor yeah that's this whole set of questions they don't have answers so you'll see 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 here's a classic one of these the novice monk is walking down a trail by himself and he a master monk is approaching him in the coming of the direction and the 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 no it's so good how do you a poor yeah a poor yeah a poor yeah a poor yeah okay that's how you pronounce it yeah a poor yeah so this is one is not a word that we use today right definitely not a word that we need up in our lives now the other five practices you mentioned romance transcendence calling beauty and suffering as like the other five those are the other five things that open up the right hand side of your brain 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 rudimentary level transcendence calling beauty and suffering 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 reinvision or or or look at these four practices differently so that they can also open up the right side and lead to more meaning 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 right so a sort of transcendence and transcendence is like this big word that can 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 whether the technology is super hustle economy the homoeconomicist 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 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 over-stuffed burrito like I did that last night like but everybody I mean the whole 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 this too much time in the me self and to actually become a happier person you need to be in the eye self which is looking out and especially looking up to transcend yourself so paradoxically for you to understand the way of your life you need to get smaller and make the universe larger I was going to say because I don't want people to interpret these exercises as completely self-serving no no on contrary and this is the funny thing you know I've had a long relationship with 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 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 so 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 or 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 the effect that it actually has on their lives and what it does is just kicks you into the right side of your brain 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 and that's normally what it's podcast they're listening and reading this book and they're like how do I use these tools to make my life better yes the meaning of your life and so they're reading it as the meaning of my life 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 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 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 that's right and the more you focus on your love for other people this is the reason you're successful as you have love for others when you bring your service in a spirit of love what do these people need what I need then it succeeds it succeeds because you've been actually been able to get out of a hall of mirrors and by the way you find meaning yes actually 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 every chapter has really really practical exercises for getting started on this and again that's a very left brain protocol way to do it but you got to get started in some particular way yeah what about calling so calling is 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 finding 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 is 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 people pay me for that's what the hustle culture and that's why college students in modern life they tend to be quite unhappy and they tend to be suffering more from this from this psychogenic epidemic that other people because they're taught they're not taught there's this great Japanese concept called eki guy have you ever heard about this? I was just going to ask you if this is helpful or hurtful to follow a concept like that it's a good thing to do because it takes 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 that is that eki guy 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 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 what 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 they can but they feel like I'm just wasting my education if I do something I said no I hear this go the lot I hear that I of course hear this a lot and for a lot of people and look let's go back to the place to see we got place to see brains man I mean that's that's really important that 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 cool aid of our society that says that you know man if you're not out there hustling and you know grinding and bring in a big paycheck and then you've wasted your your fancy education at Princeton and so shame on you 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 it's and well meaning too that's what's difficult it's yeah I'm sure if you listen to a hustle culture or some you know 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 they just want the best for you they also may have not done this work so they could also assume that their world view is the world view that's correct and they want and they impart that on you and then you adopt that world view 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 in your 50 years old and you just been living someone else's life dream job whatever and that's the that's the curse of the striver and it's actually I talk about this a little bit of the book because I 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 wanted and I admire the fact that they want to do the most with their lives that's great is 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 the way that their childhood looks to speak your point is that they're 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 and in the period of highest synaptic plasticity when your brains are under development they learn that if I get first chair in the orchestra if I make the picture in the baseball team if I bring home straight eyes 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'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 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 four way of thinking for a lot of strivers and strivers have a very hard time listening to advice they do they especially have a hard time listening to advice that they need they'll listen to advice that that sounds right in the modern culture like here's some advice on how you validate strongly for sure I mean it's also this this this you know my side bias which people are prone to all the time when it's like they 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 a worldly reward 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 things they should work on 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 to press or we've been talking about you know forming stable families this week and class can I tell you about my parents and my relationship with my parents and that's where the real work is done let's talk about beauty so beauty is nature art or moral beauty explain because that's a that's an abstract concept of definition so what does beauty mean and how do we do beauty incorrectly 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 travel as 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 an 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 four to seven minutes a day on average contrast and ramp or great grandpa that was he was like you know he was behind the mule right they spend four to seven hours a day hours a day behind the screen and so anything that is a as 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 you know 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 the whole point is that when you're 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 our 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 in touch with reality but what that really means is my I'm too much on the left hand side of my brain and I really don't like it and I'm very very comfortable without explaining the neuro biology 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 and then exposing yourself rigorously to nature I mean like seriously like dose but as if you are and I'm prescribing it right now in your show that means your next vacation should be a nature vacation your your weekend activities should be should be nature activities fundamentally more hiking more skiing more sitting outside right and by the way if you say well nature vacation thank you you know you know professor money bags no I mean you have to take a pup tent and go to your backyard and 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 caramazov 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 different parts of the brain it actually doesn't get different 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 it they they create what's what's that you know there's a great social psychologist named Rhett Deesner he he's an Idaho and he does work on on moral elevation and moral elevation is this feeling of warmth in your chest and what that is is this vestigial sensation that actually comes from these right hemispheric experiences the last practice would be suffering yes a hard one so what is suffering mean suffering well suffering is we move we intuitively move away from yeah we do we do because you know this is we're evolved to avoid suffering suffering is the intense experience of negative emotions there's only four negative emotions basic motion emotions fear anger discussed and sadness and we're reversed 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 are both mediated in the limbic system by the amygdala that is something that can and might and will hurt you and discussed is a signal that there's a pathogen that could poison you and hurt you which is why we're disgusted by things that you know 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 gonna 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 like it's like having no skin you'd be and 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 of 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 the what we do in modern life what the therapeutic colossus has done in our society alongside the therapist 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 they just came to college and I'm really lonely and I'm anxious about my classes they're gonna 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 so 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 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 and we have basically now that you go through these it makes a lot of sense why we feel the way that suffering that we shouldn't be that we shouldn't be enduring or is 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 went for that job and I didn't get it that's what we should be suffering about so the meaning of your life finding purpose in an age of emptiness that's going to be out available when the show drops everywhere you can get books where else do you want to send people they want to consume your content podcast everywhere else 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 at Arthur Brooks dot com a lot of the content is free there 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 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 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 it's nice to take something that seems so out of touch and sort of make it a little bit more figure outable that's why I avoided reading 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 to you know me to and all of us really and once we understand this that you know 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 but we have to do on purpose then life really starts to change if people read this book and they can only take away one lesson the most important idea what you want to leave them with happiness is is based on meaning and meaning is based on love you don't know what to do go love someone and it doesn't really matter how you feel the love is to will the good of another person to go act in kindness to act in goodness and actually do something is a pure act of love toward somebody 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 to happiness is love