Finding Happiness, Success and Deep Purpose | Arthur Brooks

00:00:00.000 | The key thing is, you gotta be on the right curve.

00:00:03.060 | If you're 50 or 60 years old, you're like,

00:00:05.080 | "Ah, I'm struggling to keep up with the 30-year-olds."

00:00:07.960 | You're doomed, man, you're doomed.

00:00:10.080 | You're gonna feel horrible about yourself.

00:00:11.600 | You're gonna run circles around you.

00:00:13.440 | But here's what you need to do.

00:00:14.320 | You need to school them with your wisdom.

00:00:17.080 | This has so much potential for rockin' our world

00:00:20.280 | because we basically, you're on the first curve,

00:00:22.280 | and here's the thing.

00:00:23.120 | If you wanna be happy and successful,

00:00:24.160 | you gotta jump to the second curve.

00:00:26.520 | You gotta go from the Elon Musk to the Dalai Lama.

00:00:29.480 | You gotta go from the innovator to the instructor.

00:00:32.520 | You might change jobs, you might not,

00:00:34.120 | but you gotta retool your life

00:00:35.680 | and what you're paying attention to

00:00:36.520 | and what you're trying to do.

00:00:38.400 | That's the first big skill

00:00:40.520 | of people who get happier as they age.

00:00:43.040 | - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:00:46.200 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:00:49.440 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am so happy you're here,

00:00:51.920 | but there is always room for more happiness,

00:00:54.280 | and that's exactly what we're talking about today.

00:00:56.680 | I'm joined by Arthur Brooks,

00:00:58.480 | a social scientist who studies human happiness

00:01:01.120 | and teaches about it and leadership

00:01:03.120 | as a professor at Harvard.

00:01:04.720 | He's the best-selling author of 12 books,

00:01:07.240 | including his most recent

00:01:08.920 | and the topic of our conversation today,

00:01:11.160 | Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose

00:01:14.360 | in the Second Half of Life,

00:01:15.920 | which debuted last month at the number one spot

00:01:18.560 | on the New York Times bestseller list.

00:01:20.680 | He's also the creator of the popular

00:01:22.840 | How to Build a Life column in The Atlantic,

00:01:25.440 | and he previously served for 10 years

00:01:27.680 | as the president of the American Enterprise Institute,

00:01:30.680 | a think tank in DC,

00:01:32.280 | during which time he was named

00:01:33.800 | as Fortune Magazine's World 50 Greatest Leaders.

00:01:37.240 | Arthur is clearly a wealth of knowledge,

00:01:39.240 | and I am excited to chat with him

00:01:41.200 | about how we can all live more happier and fulfilling lives.

00:01:45.080 | We'll dig into the tactics and hacks you need

00:01:47.000 | to start putting these lessons into practice today,

00:01:49.840 | and hopefully also touch a bit on the links

00:01:51.820 | between money and happiness.

00:01:53.700 | There is a lot to cover, so let's jump in.

00:01:56.340 | (upbeat music)

00:01:58.920 | Arthur, thank you so much for being here.

00:02:03.680 | - Thanks for having me, I'm delighted.

00:02:05.280 | It's gonna be great.

00:02:06.560 | - You know, when I first read the title of this book,

00:02:08.240 | I thought, maybe this book is for my parents

00:02:10.920 | and it's not for me.

00:02:11.800 | Now, I've since learned that that's maybe not the case,

00:02:14.880 | but could you talk about who the book's for

00:02:17.400 | and how that's different

00:02:18.240 | from maybe the time of your life that it's about?

00:02:20.080 | - This is a book that basically says

00:02:21.760 | you don't have to leave your happiness up to chance

00:02:23.980 | as you get older.

00:02:25.120 | And there are people who are old who are gonna read it,

00:02:27.080 | and there are people who wanna get old,

00:02:28.400 | and there are people who are getting older,

00:02:29.640 | and that is 100% of the population.

00:02:31.640 | And a lot of people think,

00:02:32.720 | am I gonna be happy when I'm old?

00:02:33.980 | I don't know.

00:02:34.820 | Hope so, live right, hope for the best.

00:02:36.760 | And this book is basically a claim based on science

00:02:41.760 | and talking to the happiest people

00:02:44.560 | and the unhappiest people as they get older

00:02:46.440 | that we don't have to leave our happiness up to chance.

00:02:49.000 | You can build a happiness 401k.

00:02:51.200 | Now, we all know, and you know perfectly well,

00:02:53.640 | 'cause you do a lot of stuff in finance,

00:02:55.080 | that the sooner you start your savings,

00:02:56.940 | the better it's gonna look when you're older.

00:02:59.240 | So this is about happiness in the second half of life,

00:03:01.480 | but it's about starting to get happier

00:03:03.320 | in the first half of life.

00:03:04.820 | So this is for 25-year-olds, my students,

00:03:07.400 | and 45-year-olds, and 65-year-olds,

00:03:09.480 | and basically everybody.

00:03:11.480 | - I love that.

00:03:12.320 | I think we all want to be happy,

00:03:13.420 | but one thing I think it's important

00:03:15.240 | to get on the same page

00:03:16.800 | is how are we defining happiness in these conversations?

00:03:20.500 | Here and in the book.

00:03:21.860 | - Yeah, so a lot of when I,

00:03:23.220 | that's the first thing I ask my students.

00:03:24.400 | I have this MBA class that I teach

00:03:25.720 | at Harvard Business School.

00:03:26.560 | It's a really oversubscribed class

00:03:27.720 | called Leadership and Happiness.

00:03:29.200 | And the first day of class,

00:03:30.160 | I go around and say, "What's happiness?"

00:03:31.480 | And they start talking about their feelings.

00:03:32.960 | It's you feel the way you feel when dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.

00:03:36.400 | It's the feeling of whatever.

00:03:38.520 | That's not right.

00:03:39.800 | That's like saying that Thanksgiving dinner

00:03:41.440 | is the smell of the turkey.

00:03:43.120 | That's not the Thanksgiving dinner.

00:03:45.040 | That's evidence of the Thanksgiving dinner

00:03:46.800 | that you can perceive.

00:03:48.020 | Happy feelings are evidence of happiness.

00:03:50.760 | Happiness is something else.

00:03:51.880 | When I look at the social scientists

00:03:53.180 | and people who are happy and unhappy,

00:03:54.960 | happiness is a combination of three.

00:03:56.760 | You might say they're macronutrients.

00:03:58.700 | So food, as we all know,

00:04:00.000 | and all your listeners know,

00:04:00.920 | food can be defined in terms of three macronutrients,

00:04:03.600 | protein, carbohydrates, and fat.

00:04:05.380 | And you have to have them in balance and abundance

00:04:07.640 | if you're gonna feel good,

00:04:08.880 | if you're gonna have good health and feel good.

00:04:11.220 | Happiness has three macronutrients

00:04:13.360 | that you need in balance and abundance.

00:04:15.240 | You need enjoyment, you need satisfaction,

00:04:17.640 | and you need purpose.

00:04:19.040 | When I meet somebody who's not happy,

00:04:21.400 | I start looking diagnostically at these three things.

00:04:24.280 | And so the first practical takeaway

00:04:26.120 | that comes from all this theory

00:04:28.040 | is that if somebody's like,

00:04:28.960 | ah, my life isn't complete,

00:04:31.080 | some things are good, some things aren't,

00:04:32.360 | but I'm not really happy,

00:04:33.320 | it means there's a lack of balance in one of these things.

00:04:36.900 | Either you don't have enough enjoyment in your life,

00:04:39.120 | or you're actually not hitting goals,

00:04:41.040 | which means you don't have satisfaction,

00:04:42.840 | or you don't have a sense of purpose

00:04:44.760 | and direction in your life.

00:04:45.920 | It's one of those three things.

00:04:47.680 | And so that's the first place to start looking

00:04:49.880 | if you feel like you're not where you wanna be

00:04:51.620 | in terms of your happiness.

00:04:53.360 | - And is there some kind of easy way

00:04:55.200 | someone listening could say,

00:04:56.280 | well, which one is it?

00:04:57.240 | Like, is there like a quiz or a question

00:04:58.960 | you can ask yourself for each one of those things

00:05:01.000 | to figure out how you are on each one,

00:05:03.280 | maybe rate them?

00:05:04.360 | - Yeah, there actually are.

00:05:05.440 | And that's why I write my column in "The Atlantic"

00:05:07.160 | every Thursday morning,

00:05:08.040 | 'cause I'm digging into different aspects of that.

00:05:10.240 | And so the column in "The Atlantic"

00:05:11.480 | has got a whole bunch of quizzes.

00:05:12.920 | You know, you click on 'em, you can take 'em,

00:05:14.920 | or even people who are kind of into it,

00:05:16.760 | they wanna read a little bit of the underlying research.

00:05:18.880 | Sometimes I'll talk about it

00:05:19.920 | like the Greek philosophers did.

00:05:21.680 | So Epicurus said, "Happiness is all enjoyment."

00:05:24.460 | And the Stoics said, "Happiness is all virtue and meaning."

00:05:27.320 | And the truth is, we need to be both.

00:05:29.400 | And so I have a column about,

00:05:30.840 | are you more Epicurus or are you more Epictetus?

00:05:33.640 | And it says, and it actually has a quiz in there

00:05:36.560 | on how to do that.

00:05:37.400 | So my column on that is actually a good way

00:05:39.400 | to start to test yourself.

00:05:40.760 | - Okay, we'll link to the column

00:05:43.040 | and maybe some of those quizzes in the show notes.

00:05:45.320 | But one of the things I saw in the book

00:05:47.380 | when I was reading it that I thought was interesting

00:05:49.000 | was the reason why this shift

00:05:51.200 | from the beginning of your life

00:05:52.660 | to the second half of your life

00:05:53.800 | seemed to be somewhat linked

00:05:55.000 | to the type of intelligence we have

00:05:56.880 | and how that changes over time.

00:05:58.820 | And it's something that I think most people here

00:06:01.000 | probably haven't heard about.

00:06:02.080 | So you talked about fluid and crystallized intelligence.

00:06:04.920 | Can you walk through that for people who aren't familiar?

00:06:07.160 | - This book basically has the seven habits

00:06:10.120 | of people who get happier as they age.

00:06:12.360 | And one thing to keep in mind that's really important

00:06:14.280 | that I found over the course of my research

00:06:15.720 | is that there's a lot of similarity

00:06:19.140 | in the patterns of happiness

00:06:20.880 | over the first part of their life.

00:06:22.000 | So generally speaking, adults,

00:06:24.320 | they kind of all pack together.

00:06:26.480 | And the older you get, the more that people diverge.

00:06:29.560 | And so you see that people after about 65

00:06:31.760 | go into two groups.

00:06:32.660 | One gets happier and happier

00:06:34.120 | and the other gets less and less and less happy.

00:06:36.200 | And the group that's getting less happy, paradoxically,

00:06:38.800 | they tend to be the strivers

00:06:40.280 | who work the hardest early in their lives.

00:06:42.840 | So you gotta look at that, that's a big mystery.

00:06:44.400 | That doesn't mean it has to be that way.

00:06:46.040 | But we need skills.

00:06:47.200 | That's why I have the seven skills

00:06:49.000 | that the happiest people later in life have

00:06:51.720 | so that even if you are a striver, you're not doomed.

00:06:54.320 | You just have to adopt these skills and do the work

00:06:56.560 | is what it comes down to.

00:06:57.800 | Everybody who is getting the hacks needs the hacks.

00:07:00.680 | And these are the seven hacks for all intents and purposes.

00:07:02.760 | That's the book, in a nutshell, that's the book.

00:07:04.400 | Okay, now, what's the first skill?

00:07:07.400 | And the first skill is making sure

00:07:08.940 | that you've got, you're on the right success curve.

00:07:11.800 | A little bit of background on this.

00:07:13.380 | For about 100 years, psychologists have noticed

00:07:15.560 | that there's two types of geniuses.

00:07:17.600 | There's early bloomers, early people

00:07:20.240 | who have an early appearance in their genius,

00:07:22.440 | like child geniuses and young entrepreneurs.

00:07:25.720 | And then you've got the late bloomers.

00:07:27.800 | And so you think of that as like the Elon Musks

00:07:30.060 | and the Dalai Lamas.

00:07:31.400 | Those are the two types of geniuses out there.

00:07:33.240 | And one's really young and one's really old.

00:07:35.320 | For the longest time, they thought,

00:07:36.160 | well, two types of people.

00:07:37.700 | They got the people who do this kind of thing

00:07:39.000 | and people who do this type of thing.

00:07:40.480 | Well, later, we figured out everybody has both.

00:07:43.920 | So that doesn't mean that I'm gonna be Elon Musk

00:07:45.400 | or the Dalai Lama, but I have a lot of power

00:07:48.060 | to actually use my potential to the max.

00:07:51.600 | Early on, it's gonna be innovative capacity,

00:07:53.900 | processing speed, indefatigability,

00:07:56.720 | my ability to go, go, go, go.

00:07:59.160 | Later in life, it turns out that my abilities,

00:08:01.920 | they migrate toward my wisdom.

00:08:04.460 | My ability, not necessarily to work all night

00:08:07.340 | and solve problems that are brand new and innovative,

00:08:10.000 | but to take existing knowledge, understand what it means,

00:08:13.120 | combine ideas, and teach them.

00:08:15.520 | That's what you're really good at later in life.

00:08:18.080 | Now, the first type of genius is called fluid intelligence.

00:08:21.320 | It increases naturally all the way through your 20s

00:08:23.680 | and through your early 30s, and it starts to decline

00:08:25.900 | in your late 30s and goes down really fast in your 40s.

00:08:28.960 | That's the reason that people are less likely

00:08:30.960 | to come up with some weird, big, eye-popping innovation

00:08:34.680 | when they're 50, much, much less so than when they're 30.

00:08:37.400 | When you're 30, you're at maximum innovative capacity.

00:08:40.840 | In your 40s, you're crystallized intelligence.

00:08:43.400 | That's the second type, starts to increase,

00:08:45.680 | which means that you get more wisdom.

00:08:47.640 | You have more perspective.

00:08:48.680 | You know more.

00:08:49.560 | You have a good memory.

00:08:50.840 | Your memory actually improves in a lot of ways,

00:08:52.700 | believe it or not.

00:08:53.540 | You can't recall Joe Smith's name.

00:08:56.760 | Who was that guy?

00:08:57.760 | You forget that, but you remember all the important things

00:09:00.800 | and you can combine them.

00:09:02.080 | It's like you have a vast library

00:09:03.920 | and you know how to use it, as a matter of fact.

00:09:05.680 | One of the reasons that you forget stuff,

00:09:08.000 | short-term memory, when you're older

00:09:09.760 | is because your library is so big

00:09:11.620 | that it takes time to go get a piece of information.

00:09:14.120 | It's not degradation.

00:09:15.200 | It's just the size of the library, basically,

00:09:17.080 | that the filing system is dense.

00:09:19.320 | And so later on in life, this big library, people use it.

00:09:22.140 | They become better Scrabble players.

00:09:24.120 | They can actually be better at foreign languages,

00:09:26.180 | even though their vocabulary's no good.

00:09:29.280 | Their historians do half of their work, on average,

00:09:32.600 | after age 65, because it's pure, crystallized intelligence.

00:09:36.240 | It's this wisdom.

00:09:37.080 | They're teachers.

00:09:38.000 | And at my university, the best teachers,

00:09:40.840 | who get the best teaching evaluations,

00:09:42.280 | are uniformly over 70 years old.

00:09:45.400 | That's crystallized intelligence.

00:09:47.000 | So the key thing is, you gotta be on the right curve.

00:09:50.080 | If you're 50 or 60 years old, you're like,

00:09:52.080 | "Ah, I'm struggling to keep up with the 30-year-olds."

00:09:54.980 | You're doomed, man.

00:09:56.380 | You're doomed.

00:09:57.220 | You're gonna feel horrible about yourself.

00:09:58.600 | They're gonna run circles around you.

00:10:00.440 | But here's what you need to do.

00:10:01.360 | You need to school them with your wisdom.

00:10:04.120 | This has so much potential for rockin' our world,

00:10:07.320 | because we basically, you're on the first curve,

00:10:09.320 | and here's the thing.

00:10:10.160 | If you wanna be happy and successful,

00:10:11.220 | you gotta jump to the second curve.

00:10:13.560 | You gotta go from the Elon Musk to the Dalai Lama.

00:10:16.520 | You gotta go from the innovator to the instructor.

00:10:19.560 | You might change jobs, you might not,

00:10:21.160 | but you gotta retool your life

00:10:22.720 | and what you're paying attention to

00:10:23.760 | and what you're trying to do.

00:10:25.440 | That's the first big skill

00:10:27.560 | of people who get happier as they age.

00:10:30.560 | - And so if you're someone listening to this

00:10:32.160 | and you're like, "Okay, I'm in that late 20s,

00:10:34.040 | "early 30s part of my life.

00:10:36.800 | "I know I need to jump the curve eventually.

00:10:39.620 | "What does that jump look like?

00:10:40.880 | "How do I prepare for it?

00:10:42.260 | "What should I be doing with my time?"

00:10:44.000 | - So to begin with, the tell, the big tell, the hack,

00:10:47.680 | is that when you're starting to see the decline,

00:10:50.200 | you're gonna see it before anybody else does.

00:10:52.800 | So the big problem is if you deny it and rage against it,

00:10:56.120 | and then people are like, "I don't know.

00:10:57.400 | "Chris, he used to be a lot better than he is now.

00:10:59.540 | "I don't know, he's starting to miss a beat.

00:11:01.540 | "His questions used to be more lucid.

00:11:03.180 | "He was coming up with better ideas than the old days."

00:11:05.320 | You don't wanna be that, but you're gonna notice

00:11:07.400 | that if you're starting to burn out a little bit,

00:11:09.120 | you're starting to be a little less interested,

00:11:11.180 | you're a little less inclined to stay up 16 hours

00:11:14.340 | to write all that code than you used to be.

00:11:16.760 | The reason you want to do it less

00:11:18.800 | is because you're not as naturally good at it

00:11:21.300 | as you were before.

00:11:22.320 | That's your tell.

00:11:23.560 | Desire is not, I mean, ability is not the tell.

00:11:26.480 | Desire is always the tell.

00:11:28.800 | This is a thing that people don't quite understand.

00:11:30.880 | Your desire tells all always.

00:11:33.140 | What you like always indicates what your capacities are.

00:11:36.920 | And so when you're first starting,

00:11:37.760 | it's like, "I don't know, man."

00:11:39.680 | It's like this guy came to me with this great new

00:11:41.520 | startup idea, but I like, "Ah, I don't have a fire

00:11:43.720 | "in the belly anymore."

00:11:44.600 | That's good.

00:11:45.600 | That's a good sign.

00:11:46.840 | That means that you're actually in liminality.

00:11:49.200 | You're between the curves is actually what that means.

00:11:52.140 | Okay, so what do you need to do?

00:11:53.640 | You need to learn and you need to actually

00:11:55.640 | start combining knowledge.

00:11:56.800 | Instead of writing the book that has the big new

00:11:59.480 | mathematical treatise that nobody's ever come up

00:12:01.680 | with before, you write the book that combines

00:12:04.340 | everybody's best idea and says,

00:12:05.940 | "You know the story behind all this that's all together?"

00:12:08.500 | That's the different kind of thing

00:12:09.480 | that you're trying to do.

00:12:10.600 | Start learning about synthesis of things

00:12:13.740 | as opposed to the creation of brand new ideas.

00:12:17.280 | Synthesize things as opposed to inventing things.

00:12:20.760 | And that means different things in different professions.

00:12:22.520 | If you're a lawyer, that means what you should do

00:12:24.660 | is you should start running a team of young lawyers.

00:12:27.640 | You should actually find these unbelievably fluid,

00:12:30.520 | intelligent workhorses and link them together

00:12:33.720 | for their success.

00:12:34.780 | You should go from a cowboy to a team leader.

00:12:38.200 | That's a really good way to do it.

00:12:39.560 | If you're gonna be an entrepreneur,

00:12:40.920 | don't come up with a big innovation.

00:12:42.780 | Find people who can and make them successful.

00:12:45.160 | That's the reason that great athletes

00:12:47.640 | who are unbelievable early in their careers,

00:12:49.620 | they're really, really good as commentators on TV.

00:12:51.680 | It's not just because their knees have gone out.

00:12:54.060 | It's the same reason that entrepreneurs

00:12:56.080 | who are unbelievably successful can be graded VC later.

00:12:59.360 | Because what they are is actually teachers.

00:13:01.960 | They're finding the next big talent.

00:13:03.760 | They're cultivating the next big talent.

00:13:05.600 | And every profession has something like this.

00:13:07.840 | - Are there people that kind of are household names

00:13:12.380 | of whether they're famous writers or musicians

00:13:15.240 | that kind of have either done this well or poorly

00:13:18.280 | that kind of bring the example to life?

00:13:20.200 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:13:21.040 | Some are living and so I don't wanna talk about it,

00:13:22.640 | but some who have done it poorly.

00:13:24.080 | But there are a lot of historical figures

00:13:26.080 | that have done it poorly and well.

00:13:27.220 | And so in the book, for example,

00:13:28.360 | I talk about Charles Darwin.

00:13:29.940 | Charles Darwin is on everybody's list

00:13:31.440 | of greatest scientists.

00:13:32.600 | If you've got a list of five greatest scientists

00:13:34.160 | in the past 500 years and Charles Darwin

00:13:35.800 | is not on your list, you're not serious.

00:13:37.760 | I mean, he changed the way that we think

00:13:39.280 | with his theory of natural selection,

00:13:40.720 | the theory of evolution, unbelievable.

00:13:42.160 | Well, he came up with that at age 27

00:13:44.780 | when he came back from his around the world voyage

00:13:47.080 | on the Beagle collecting botanical and zoological samples.

00:13:50.420 | And he was the most, from his late 20s,

00:13:52.360 | he was already the most celebrated scientist in Europe.

00:13:54.920 | He was rich, he was, he was the king of the mambo, man.

00:13:57.560 | I mean, it was unbelievable.

00:13:58.960 | And he dined out on these theories for the next 30 years.

00:14:01.440 | He just developed them and he nurtured them

00:14:04.760 | and he used this big innovation.

00:14:07.040 | He was the equivalent of Mark Zuckerberg

00:14:09.320 | when he was 27 and then he was like

00:14:11.800 | the equivalent of Mark Zuckerberg

00:14:12.880 | developing the company over the next 30 years.

00:14:15.260 | Now, the problem was he got stuck

00:14:17.620 | when he was about 50 years old

00:14:18.980 | because he hadn't been a very motivated student.

00:14:20.880 | So he didn't learn very much math

00:14:22.240 | or statistics, he didn't learn German.

00:14:24.160 | And if you were gonna be a serious scientist,

00:14:25.600 | you needed to know German in the late 19th century.

00:14:28.000 | So what happened was that his own field

00:14:32.080 | passed him by mathematically.

00:14:33.920 | There's a Czech priest and scientist named Gregor Mendel

00:14:38.800 | who actually was more mathematically sophisticated

00:14:40.840 | and he invented the theory of genetics.

00:14:43.340 | And that's what Charles Darwin needed to progress

00:14:45.680 | in his own field and he couldn't understand it,

00:14:47.840 | couldn't read it and got stuck.

00:14:49.520 | And from the age of 50 until he died at 73,

00:14:51.840 | he never did very original work ever again.

00:14:53.880 | He wrote 11 more books but he hated them all.

00:14:56.040 | He's like, "Ugh, same old, same old, same old, same old."

00:14:58.800 | He's very depressed.

00:14:59.960 | He died feeling like a disappointment.

00:15:01.860 | Why?

00:15:02.700 | He was stuck on his first curve, Chris.

00:15:04.480 | He was on his fluid intelligence curve.

00:15:06.040 | He couldn't get off, he was like chained on it

00:15:07.760 | and he was like dragging him down to the basement.

00:15:10.440 | And so at the end of his life, he's like,

00:15:11.520 | "I don't have any motivation to do the things that I love.

00:15:14.120 | "I can't start a new project.

00:15:15.640 | "I don't know what's going on."

00:15:16.600 | He felt horrible about himself.

00:15:18.360 | Okay, so it doesn't have to be that way

00:15:19.720 | 'cause he could have jumped onto the second curve

00:15:21.120 | but he didn't know it existed or he didn't want to do that.

00:15:25.000 | That's the mistake.

00:15:26.180 | Okay, let's get a better case study

00:15:27.800 | of somebody who did it right.

00:15:29.320 | Johann Sebastian Bach,

00:15:30.800 | the greatest composer who ever lived.

00:15:32.400 | According to a lot of people, including me,

00:15:34.100 | I made the first 12 years of my career

00:15:35.840 | as a classical musician and Bach's my favorite composer.

00:15:38.880 | You know, he was unbelievable.

00:15:40.080 | He was the innovator of the High Baroque.

00:15:42.400 | He was inventing stuff that people just,

00:15:44.160 | mind-blowing stuff when he was in his 20s.

00:15:46.400 | He was, you know, princes were seeking him out

00:15:48.960 | to give him commissions.

00:15:50.240 | He was celebrated all over Germany.

00:15:52.520 | I mean, he was just unbelievable.

00:15:53.560 | He was so famous, he was so great.

00:15:55.740 | And then music passed him by.

00:15:58.520 | At the age of 50, about the age of 50, same as Darwin,

00:16:01.560 | his son, he had 20 kids by the way,

00:16:03.760 | so that guy was productive.

00:16:05.560 | His son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach,

00:16:07.880 | invented a new style of music called the classical style

00:16:10.720 | and Bach, the father, couldn't keep up.

00:16:12.800 | He's like, "I can't write in this style.

00:16:14.220 | "I don't know how to write in this style."

00:16:16.320 | He couldn't keep up because his fluid intelligence

00:16:18.980 | was too low for him actually to keep up

00:16:20.720 | with the innovations of the time.

00:16:22.560 | So what did he do?

00:16:23.400 | He retooled his career as a teacher.

00:16:25.640 | He turned from writing original pieces of music

00:16:28.680 | to writing textbooks about the High Baroque.

00:16:32.040 | He went from doing commissions

00:16:34.680 | for the greatest pieces of music

00:16:35.840 | to writing music for the church

00:16:37.260 | as part of his teaching responsibilities.

00:16:39.940 | And he became the most beloved teacher of his time.

00:16:42.560 | He actually went from, what was he doing?

00:16:44.120 | He was jumping onto his crystallized intelligence curve.

00:16:46.520 | He had a studio full of students who adored him.

00:16:49.520 | He was known as a truly great teacher.

00:16:52.000 | He was working on this textbook called the Art of Fugue,

00:16:54.680 | which is all this High Baroque stuff

00:16:56.600 | nobody wanted to listen to anymore.

00:16:58.280 | He literally died mid-measure

00:17:00.560 | while writing one of the fugues.

00:17:02.160 | Today, a hundred years later,

00:17:03.800 | a famous composer named Felix Mendelssohn

00:17:06.200 | found his manuscript.

00:17:07.880 | He's like, "Dude, you gotta hear this," to his friends.

00:17:10.960 | And they play it.

00:17:11.800 | They're like, "This is beautiful.

00:17:12.620 | "Today we play that textbook as a work of art."

00:17:15.560 | It'd be like reading a textbook like it's literature.

00:17:17.760 | That's how great it is.

00:17:18.980 | He didn't know that.

00:17:19.820 | He just thought he was writing it down for posterity

00:17:21.580 | because he became a great teacher.

00:17:23.240 | He died with his kids surrounding him

00:17:26.080 | and his students surrounding him

00:17:28.280 | and his grandkids surrounding him,

00:17:29.720 | and he died with love and happiness on his success curve.

00:17:34.040 | By the way, on his better success curve,

00:17:36.680 | because dying happy is a good way to die.

00:17:39.900 | - Yeah, so he definitely nailed skill number one.

00:17:43.600 | - And two.

00:17:45.440 | - Okay.

00:17:46.280 | - He nailed it, man.

00:17:47.100 | He nailed it.

00:17:47.940 | And he was a living proof that everybody's got both,

00:17:50.400 | but you gotta jump when it's time to jump.

00:17:52.240 | You gotta have faith that it exists,

00:17:54.400 | and you gotta have courage to make the change.

00:17:56.680 | - And then what?

00:17:58.480 | Well, you said you got a handful of these skills

00:18:01.440 | that you have to master.

00:18:02.280 | - Yeah.

00:18:03.100 | - What's next?

00:18:03.940 | - So the key thing, the skills you gotta master next

00:18:05.640 | are the things that make you not wanna jump

00:18:07.840 | and then the things that make it easier.

00:18:10.000 | So one of the key things you find about people

00:18:12.240 | who are really unhappy and actually can't get happier,

00:18:14.940 | they wind up going downward in their happiness

00:18:16.800 | and stuck on this fluid intelligence curve

00:18:18.560 | and thinking about the past and kind of pissed off

00:18:21.440 | because I'm not appreciated anymore

00:18:23.640 | and trying to hide their weaknesses and all that,

00:18:26.360 | they have a really bad and nasty addiction,

00:18:29.260 | which is something that a lot of people suffer from.

00:18:31.000 | It's a success addiction.

00:18:32.820 | Now, all addictions, they implicate a neuromodulator

00:18:37.200 | in the brain called dopamine.

00:18:38.600 | Most everybody who listens to this podcast

00:18:40.560 | knows about dopamine.

00:18:41.960 | Dopamine is the neurotransmitter of reward.

00:18:45.200 | It's of anticipation.

00:18:46.400 | It's like, I want it, I want it.

00:18:47.920 | This is what gets you addicted to alcohol

00:18:50.400 | or cigarettes or gambling or methamphetamine.

00:18:54.520 | It's the dopamine that makes you want it, want it, want it.

00:18:56.800 | It gives you a mild burst of satisfaction

00:18:59.060 | and then it goes away and you want it again,

00:19:00.720 | hit the lever again.

00:19:01.980 | We're like monkeys on cocaine,

00:19:04.600 | where we lose our sense of proportion.

00:19:06.300 | We lose our sense of inhibition.

00:19:07.760 | We hit the lever, hit the lever, hit the lever

00:19:09.560 | again and again and again.

00:19:10.880 | Addiction's bad because dopamine can chain us.

00:19:15.600 | The worst kind of addiction that I see

00:19:17.280 | for really, really successful people,

00:19:18.680 | I mean, some drink too much, some smoke.

00:19:20.920 | They shouldn't.

00:19:21.840 | They're not usually gambling addicts

00:19:23.560 | and most of them are not foolish enough

00:19:25.840 | to get addicted to really, really bad narcotics,

00:19:28.760 | but they're success addicts.

00:19:30.560 | You know what a lot of really,

00:19:31.680 | you know, the ambitious people you and I know,

00:19:33.840 | from a young age, their parents are like,

00:19:35.660 | you're special, you're a hard worker,

00:19:38.140 | you get A's, you always win.

00:19:40.420 | That's what their parents are telling them

00:19:41.600 | and they objectify their kids

00:19:43.040 | and the kids objectify themselves as homo economicus,

00:19:46.600 | as the victorious one, as the successful one

00:19:49.280 | and they get the cookie of success

00:19:50.880 | and they hit the lever, they get the promotion,

00:19:53.020 | they get the extra money, they get the adulation,

00:19:55.300 | they get the compliments and they love it.

00:19:58.300 | It gives, literally, it stimulates dopamine in their brain

00:20:00.800 | and so they hit the lever, hit the lever, hit the lever

00:20:02.860 | and when they're getting better

00:20:03.980 | on their fluid intelligence curve,

00:20:05.320 | man, it's like flying with terrifying speed.

00:20:08.760 | It's like the monkey in front of the lever

00:20:10.380 | hitting the lever again and again and again and again

00:20:12.640 | and then, when the hits come less frequently,

00:20:15.240 | it's misery, it's a dysphoria.

00:20:17.600 | It's literally a scarcity of dopamine in the brain

00:20:20.960 | and so they chase it, chase it, chase it, chase it

00:20:23.320 | and this is one of the things that distracts them

00:20:25.480 | from the evolution of their own strengths.

00:20:27.560 | It makes them unable.

00:20:28.640 | It's addiction makes them unable to pursue happiness.

00:20:33.000 | - And so what's the answer there?

00:20:34.080 | I think, you know, I live in Silicon Valley.

00:20:36.480 | So often, everyone's like, you know,

00:20:38.080 | you gotta find your purpose.

00:20:39.520 | Whatever you're working on, it could be bigger.

00:20:40.980 | You could be doing more.

00:20:42.400 | You know, I juxtapose that to most of the happy people

00:20:45.640 | or most of the people who I know

00:20:47.600 | who aren't obsessed with that

00:20:49.400 | seem much happier in their lives,

00:20:51.480 | yet it's still something that even knowing that,

00:20:54.480 | so many people chase.

00:20:55.680 | - Yeah, so that's, hustle culture is a cult

00:20:59.000 | and it's a cult called workism

00:21:01.240 | where your work is your identity,

00:21:02.640 | your work is your fulfillment,

00:21:04.000 | your work is your ego, your work is everything

00:21:06.220 | and your work is your pleasure

00:21:07.440 | because of your success addiction, you're hitting the lever.

00:21:10.000 | The main thing that we need to do

00:21:11.820 | is to establish what we call metacognition.

00:21:14.720 | Metacognition is very simple.

00:21:16.920 | The Buddhists always say when you have feelings and urges,

00:21:19.520 | you need to observe those feelings and urges.

00:21:21.960 | Now, literally what's going on neurophysiologically

00:21:25.080 | is that an urge or a feeling originates

00:21:27.500 | in the limbic system of the brain.

00:21:28.880 | That's the lizard brain.

00:21:30.120 | That's the back part of your brain

00:21:31.800 | that is stimulated automatically

00:21:34.960 | because of outside happenings.

00:21:37.720 | What you wanna do, you'll be managed by that.

00:21:40.480 | If you're reactive and you're simply hitting the lever,

00:21:43.620 | if you're a cocaine monkey, you're just a limbic creature.

00:21:46.920 | You're like my dog, Chucho.

00:21:48.760 | My dog, Chucho, he's like,

00:21:50.480 | he sees the cookie, eats the cookie.

00:21:52.080 | He's highly mindful.

00:21:53.880 | He's not paying any positive attention

00:21:56.360 | or spending any time thinking about anything.

00:21:58.160 | He's like, "Cookie, eat the cookie."

00:21:59.760 | That's how a lot of people are

00:22:00.700 | who are deeply, deeply workist in that cult.

00:22:03.840 | The way to defeat that is by simply journaling

00:22:07.680 | and thinking and putting time

00:22:09.480 | between your impulses and your actions.

00:22:11.440 | You know, the Buddhists always say

00:22:12.920 | the time between action and reaction

00:22:15.700 | is the humanity in what we do.

00:22:17.940 | It's the true humanness in what we do.

00:22:20.080 | What's really going on here is you're moving an urge

00:22:22.940 | from your limbic system of your brain

00:22:24.440 | to your prefrontal cortex.

00:22:26.120 | That's the human part of your brain,

00:22:27.400 | the big meaty lobes behind your forehead.

00:22:29.840 | Once it's there, you can manage it.

00:22:31.720 | To be metacognitive is to say,

00:22:33.500 | okay, I have the urge to be successful.

00:22:36.320 | I feel like I'm gonna be unhappy unless I'm successful,

00:22:39.560 | and yet I'm not happy.

00:22:41.080 | You need to start journaling.

00:22:42.600 | That's the bottom line.

00:22:43.440 | The reason, journaling, it sounds sort of wimpy

00:22:45.760 | and weak and kind of dumb and sentimental.

00:22:48.040 | No, no, no, no, no, no.

00:22:49.200 | This is highly neuroscientific.

00:22:51.800 | Journaling is the single best way

00:22:53.260 | to go from my dog Chucho to me, to my prefrontal cortex.

00:22:57.740 | It moves your urges into the front part of your brain,

00:23:00.620 | and then you can manage them.

00:23:02.680 | That's the single best technique

00:23:04.180 | for breaking these addictions,

00:23:05.380 | is thinking about them metacognitively.

00:23:07.360 | - So many people I know that are big advocates of journaling,

00:23:11.560 | you know, it becomes a thing where they are,

00:23:13.760 | okay, every day I wake up and I journal in the morning,

00:23:16.640 | and maybe I also journal in bed.

00:23:18.520 | Do you need to journal that often

00:23:20.080 | to benefit from journaling?

00:23:21.800 | - Different people need to figure out

00:23:22.960 | what their own rhythm of that is.

00:23:24.440 | I actually do recommend writing down

00:23:26.280 | a few thoughts every day.

00:23:27.820 | I don't think that actually spending

00:23:29.080 | half an hour in the morning, half an hour at noon,

00:23:30.760 | half an hour at night is probably

00:23:32.120 | a really great use of your time,

00:23:33.400 | unless you're trying to write your memoir,

00:23:35.040 | which would be like the most narcissistic

00:23:37.400 | millennial thing ever, right?

00:23:39.520 | It's almost like a cartoon of what everybody thinks.

00:23:43.580 | That's not what I'm talking about at all.

00:23:45.240 | I think it's really, really important, however,

00:23:47.160 | to make sure that you record what you're doing.

00:23:49.360 | Now, some people don't have to do this

00:23:50.880 | in terms of journaling.

00:23:51.960 | One of the great things about heavily,

00:23:53.960 | about very, very functioning romantic partnerships

00:23:56.920 | is that you can be jointly metacognitive,

00:23:59.160 | but you have to work every day

00:24:00.480 | to be talking about what's happening to you limbically,

00:24:03.600 | to discuss your feelings with each other,

00:24:05.360 | and to discuss, so, for example,

00:24:07.080 | when I'm feeling workist, and it's really my tendency,

00:24:10.560 | I mean, I've taken my career down to the studs four times.

00:24:13.760 | I'm on my fourth distinct career at this point,

00:24:17.140 | and so I know how to actually work a system,

00:24:19.320 | and I'm like, I mean, you're an entrepreneur.

00:24:20.800 | You actually know how success works, right?

00:24:23.320 | But left to my devices, I'm cocaine monkey all day long,

00:24:27.400 | and when I feel these, and I'm unhappy when I'm doing it,

00:24:30.920 | and I know enough about that

00:24:32.000 | because I'm a pretty metacognitive, pretty self-aware guy,

00:24:34.560 | I don't necessarily go and write in my journal.

00:24:36.320 | What I do is I go and I talk to my wife.

00:24:37.880 | I say, I got a problem.

00:24:39.320 | I'm doing this thing again,

00:24:40.660 | and we jointly metacognitively,

00:24:42.880 | we move it to the prefrontal cortex of my brain

00:24:45.280 | where I actually can manage it.

00:24:46.760 | So having a partner with whom you can discuss these things

00:24:49.360 | with confidence is arguably

00:24:51.040 | an even more effective way to do this.

00:24:53.000 | - So it's really, and it could be a partner,

00:24:56.780 | your wife or your husband.

00:24:58.160 | It could be a friend, I assume, or a mentor.

00:24:59.960 | - It has to be somebody close.

00:25:01.280 | It has to be somebody who actually understands you,

00:25:02.880 | who can do joint metacognition with you,

00:25:04.840 | which is to say they really want to understand

00:25:07.000 | what's happening to you limbically,

00:25:08.600 | and they wanna help you manage it as an executive.

00:25:12.400 | So they can actually function

00:25:13.560 | as the third lobe of your brain for you in those moments,

00:25:16.600 | and it has to be somebody who knows you deeply.

00:25:18.340 | It can't be your subordinate at work.

00:25:21.200 | That's not gonna work at all.

00:25:23.100 | - I wanna come back to some of these other skills

00:25:25.540 | that you can learn,

00:25:26.660 | but you said something interesting when it was,

00:25:28.660 | okay, you could go to your partner.

00:25:30.540 | There are things that I think

00:25:31.940 | often get construed with happiness,

00:25:34.440 | things like love or money.

00:25:37.900 | Are there components of happiness?

00:25:39.980 | I know you talked about

00:25:41.780 | enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose,

00:25:43.840 | but some of the common things I think people think of,

00:25:46.440 | I'm curious to get your perspective on them.

00:25:47.980 | So let's at least include love or romance and money,

00:25:51.820 | and maybe other common things people think

00:25:54.060 | are associated with happiness,

00:25:55.260 | and how do they fit into the picture?

00:25:56.980 | - So these things that people associate with them,

00:25:58.900 | sometimes they're idols and sometimes they're real.

00:26:01.140 | So here's the way to think about that

00:26:02.460 | is in a very practical way.

00:26:04.560 | There are four things that you want that are idols

00:26:07.740 | and that have a little bit of a divine quality to them.

00:26:11.420 | They attract you, they're magnetic.

00:26:13.820 | You know you want them,

00:26:15.740 | but they're not intrinsically satisfying.

00:26:18.180 | Those things are money, power, pleasure, and fame.

00:26:22.400 | Now, all those things are good.

00:26:24.460 | All those things can be really good,

00:26:25.840 | but only when you pursue them instrumentally

00:26:27.940 | towards something that's more important than those things.

00:26:30.620 | Money's great, but if you pursue it for its own sake,

00:26:33.100 | it will leave you frustrated and empty.

00:26:35.840 | Power is the same thing.

00:26:36.820 | You'll become a tyrant.

00:26:38.020 | Pleasure is incomplete because it's entirely limbic.

00:26:41.140 | It'll make you a little bit more animal.

00:26:42.740 | You need to actually combine it with elevation and morality

00:26:45.500 | and make it into enjoyment,

00:26:46.780 | which is one of the macronutrients of happiness.

00:26:48.780 | And fame is literally the only idol that we pursue

00:26:52.340 | that you can only ever be happy in spite of.

00:26:55.180 | Only ever in spite of.

00:26:56.660 | It's super dangerous,

00:26:58.140 | which is why social media is making us all so crazy today

00:27:01.500 | 'cause everybody can establish a little bit of local fame

00:27:03.700 | and they get a lot of dopamine by seeing likes

00:27:06.060 | and ugh, it's awful.

00:27:07.460 | Okay, so those are the evil four.

00:27:09.780 | And they're not evil if we use them appropriately.

00:27:12.220 | Like anything else, wine isn't evil

00:27:13.900 | until you become an alcoholic, et cetera.

00:27:16.820 | So these things create addiction

00:27:18.600 | and they're instrumentally, they can be okay,

00:27:20.140 | but intrinsically, they're the bad four.

00:27:21.780 | They're the idols.

00:27:22.740 | There's the good four.

00:27:23.980 | Now, here's what the four habits,

00:27:26.940 | let's call this the four accounts

00:27:28.380 | that you need to invest in every day

00:27:31.620 | if you wanna be among the happiest people.

00:27:33.740 | This is what they all have in common.

00:27:34.740 | There's 10,000 articles of the habits

00:27:36.380 | of the happiest people.

00:27:37.280 | I've boiled the ocean down to these basic four.

00:27:40.340 | So this is not the habits of how to grow old happier.

00:27:42.980 | Of all people, they all do these things every day.

00:27:46.020 | They practice their faith or life philosophy.

00:27:48.460 | You don't have to be religious.

00:27:49.660 | You just have something bigger than you

00:27:51.900 | that zooms you out on your own life.

00:27:54.620 | Why?

00:27:55.460 | Because your life is like the most boring sitcom ever

00:27:58.780 | with which you're obsessed.

00:28:00.580 | My job, my car, my money, my ugh.

00:28:03.100 | It's just so boring, right?

00:28:05.300 | And yet we're obsessed with it.

00:28:06.420 | You need relief, you need peace.

00:28:08.700 | Life philosophy or faith or spiritual practice

00:28:11.540 | gives you that uniquely.

00:28:12.940 | So it's meditation or prayer or studying the Stoics

00:28:16.180 | or whatever it happens to be.

00:28:17.740 | You gotta do your thing and you gotta do it seriously.

00:28:20.260 | Second is family.

00:28:21.300 | The ties that bind and don't break.

00:28:23.600 | Now these are the bonds that it's important

00:28:26.580 | that you not choose them but that you have them

00:28:28.900 | for your happiness.

00:28:29.740 | And God knows in many cases we wouldn't choose them,

00:28:31.820 | right, Chris?

00:28:32.660 | I mean, a lot of our listeners are like,

00:28:34.140 | yeah, I had a bad Thanksgiving without Marge

00:28:36.620 | who kept talking about Trump.

00:28:37.820 | You know, I got it, I got it, I got it.

00:28:39.220 | You know, it's like hate him or love him or whatever.

00:28:40.940 | It's awful.

00:28:41.780 | And a lot of people are having a lot of trouble

00:28:43.980 | with their families.

00:28:44.820 | One in six Americans is not talking to a family member

00:28:46.780 | because of politics today.

00:28:48.140 | It's a huge problem for happiness.

00:28:51.020 | - Wow.

00:28:51.860 | - I mean, unless it's a case of abuse,

00:28:53.820 | don't let that be you is the bottom line.

00:28:56.540 | The third is friendship.

00:28:57.740 | We have a major loneliness crisis in the United States.

00:29:00.660 | Vivek Murthy, our Surgeon General, he was on my show

00:29:03.820 | and he said that the biggest public health crisis

00:29:06.380 | in America today is loneliness.

00:29:07.960 | Not the coronavirus epidemic, not opioids,

00:29:10.500 | not guns, no, no, no, no, no.

00:29:12.260 | Loneliness.

00:29:13.420 | The average number of close friends

00:29:15.720 | that somebody 30 years old has has been cut in half

00:29:18.500 | in the past 20 years.

00:29:20.300 | About half of people under 30 say

00:29:22.180 | that no one knows them well.

00:29:23.580 | It's horrible for every aspect of happiness.

00:29:26.700 | And part of the reason for that is that

00:29:28.460 | everybody knows how to make deal friends,

00:29:30.740 | but we know less and less how to make real friends.

00:29:33.140 | And so in my book, I've got all of the sort of the details,

00:29:35.540 | you know, down to the basics on do this and do this

00:29:38.580 | and do this and do this.

00:29:39.420 | And the book talks about how to make real friends

00:29:42.060 | if you're incompetent because you've only had deal friends.

00:29:44.940 | And the last is work, is work.

00:29:47.180 | And work doesn't mean working hard all night long.

00:29:50.300 | It doesn't mean making tons of money.

00:29:51.860 | It doesn't mean having prestige.

00:29:52.980 | It means exactly two things, earning your success,

00:29:55.860 | meaning your skills meet your passions,

00:29:57.620 | and serving other people, the people who need you.

00:29:59.900 | If you earn your success and you're serving other people,

00:30:02.700 | I don't care if you're an electrician or a librarian

00:30:05.620 | or a podcast host or a Harvard professor,

00:30:08.320 | you will be happy from your work.

00:30:09.460 | And if you don't have those things,

00:30:10.940 | you won't be happy from your work.

00:30:12.420 | Faith, family, friends, and work are the big four

00:30:15.540 | are the things that we need to shoot for.

00:30:16.980 | And the things we need to avoid as intrinsics

00:30:19.340 | are money, power, pleasure, and fame.

00:30:21.180 | - There's a book called "Happy Money,"

00:30:23.840 | which talks about using money for happiness.

00:30:26.900 | And one of the interesting things they say is,

00:30:28.500 | you know, spending money on others

00:30:29.940 | is actually one of the five ways they identify,

00:30:32.660 | you know, can make you happy.

00:30:34.400 | That seems to fit a little bit in work,

00:30:36.000 | but is it important to share happiness,

00:30:39.140 | to spread happiness, to give happiness

00:30:41.060 | in order to be happy ourselves?

00:30:42.780 | - The way to get happier, there's an algorithm to it,

00:30:44.980 | believe it or not, to get happier.

00:30:46.700 | And this is, obviously, this is really down to brass tacks,

00:30:49.500 | but a lot of people wish they were happier, but they're not.

00:30:51.940 | They're just obsessing on their unhappiness.

00:30:54.100 | But like anything else, it's like, you gotta do the work.

00:30:56.660 | You know, if you said, "Hey, Chris," you're like,

00:30:57.980 | "Hey, man, I wish I knew more math."

00:30:59.460 | I was like, get a book, you know,

00:31:01.540 | that's, you don't wish you knew calculus,

00:31:03.300 | you study calculus.

00:31:04.680 | And the same thing is true with happiness

00:31:05.940 | or any other skill, it's an actual life skill.

00:31:08.420 | And there's three steps to it.

00:31:09.740 | You need to understand it by doing the work and study it,

00:31:12.900 | learn what the practices are.

00:31:14.260 | Now, you can do it by talking to your grandmother,

00:31:16.220 | or you can do it by reading my column,

00:31:17.940 | you can do it by lots and lots of ways,

00:31:19.500 | but you gotta do the work.

00:31:20.780 | The second is you gotta practice it, you gotta apply it.

00:31:23.300 | You can't read just a book about golf

00:31:25.100 | and become a better golfer.

00:31:26.060 | You gotta get out there and golf.

00:31:27.380 | And so you need to take the applications

00:31:29.180 | that all of us in this field are talking about

00:31:31.420 | and practice them in your life.

00:31:32.940 | Do your gratitude list, do your forgiveness exercise,

00:31:35.940 | do your happiness strategic plan.

00:31:37.900 | I have millions of exercises that I give to my students

00:31:41.260 | that I publish in my columns,

00:31:42.600 | but you gotta do the application,

00:31:44.300 | and then you gotta share it.

00:31:46.580 | This is the most beautiful thing of all, why?

00:31:47.980 | Because you gotta make it metacognitive.

00:31:49.980 | It's what we were talking about a minute ago.

00:31:51.620 | The best way to make something metacognitive

00:31:53.460 | is to teach it, why?

00:31:54.700 | Because you can't teach something limbically,

00:31:56.680 | you can only teach something

00:31:57.940 | from the executive center of your brain

00:31:59.360 | because you have to be able to articulate the idea.

00:32:02.020 | And so if you wanna get happier,

00:32:03.640 | you really have to understand it and manage it.

00:32:05.580 | And the best way to do it is to teach it.

00:32:07.800 | And teaching is just another form of sharing.

00:32:09.860 | So understand, apply, share.

00:32:13.120 | That's your happiness algorithm.

00:32:14.720 | - And is sharing more telling people

00:32:18.200 | about how they can be happy

00:32:19.680 | or trying to make people happy?

00:32:22.180 | - Well, ordinarily it's both,

00:32:23.780 | but I actually strongly recommend showing your cards.

00:32:26.680 | So one of the ways that my students,

00:32:28.600 | and I've got this class,

00:32:29.440 | I got 180 MBA students in my happiness class.

00:32:31.680 | And like 400 on the waiting list.

00:32:33.060 | I mean, it's like a lot of people

00:32:34.060 | wanna get into this class.

00:32:34.920 | And so I say one of the ways

00:32:36.160 | they can get final credit for the class,

00:32:37.520 | instead of writing the exam,

00:32:38.760 | they can set up their own happiness class

00:32:40.520 | for students who didn't get in.

00:32:42.400 | And so what do they do?

00:32:43.240 | They take my PowerPoint slides,

00:32:44.800 | they take my name off, they put their name on.

00:32:46.900 | They put together their own syllabus

00:32:48.240 | and they videotape the class

00:32:49.400 | as they turn the whole thing in.

00:32:51.140 | What am I doing?

00:32:52.680 | And they're becoming totally metacognitive

00:32:55.520 | in everything that we've talked about.

00:32:56.720 | They will never forget these technologies

00:32:58.800 | once they teach them.

00:32:59.880 | So here's the great thing about happiness.

00:33:01.200 | The most beautiful thing.

00:33:02.560 | People are listening to us

00:33:03.480 | and they're getting a whole bunch of stuff.

00:33:04.540 | Maybe they're gonna listen to us twice or three times

00:33:06.360 | and they're gonna take notes

00:33:07.200 | because we're covering so much material so fast.

00:33:10.800 | Enjoyment, satisfaction, pleasure,

00:33:12.180 | money, power, pleasure, honor,

00:33:13.560 | faith, family, friends, and work.

00:33:14.600 | I mean, it's like list, list, list, list, right?

00:33:16.920 | Write it all down, make your slides,

00:33:19.620 | discuss it at dinner.

00:33:20.880 | I mean, or talk about it and say,

00:33:22.320 | basically, I heard Chris Hutchins' podcast,

00:33:25.160 | which I love because it's a great podcast.

00:33:27.000 | And he had this guy who teaches at Harvard

00:33:29.240 | talking about the science of happiness.

00:33:30.960 | Here's the thing he said.

00:33:32.040 | I guarantee you, there will not be a peep.

00:33:34.720 | People are gonna be listening to you

00:33:36.160 | as if you were the Dalai Lama

00:33:38.080 | if you talk about this stuff

00:33:39.080 | 'cause everybody wants it, you know?

00:33:40.920 | It's great to be a happiness professor

00:33:42.360 | because it, you know,

00:33:43.400 | suffice it to say that it piques people's interest.

00:33:45.920 | - Yeah, I mean, I love episodes like this.

00:33:48.640 | Sometimes we talk about money

00:33:50.120 | and I know people aren't gonna go home

00:33:51.840 | and meet up with their friends at night

00:33:53.160 | and be like, so, you know, what's in your bank account?

00:33:56.260 | (laughing)

00:33:57.960 | You know, maybe some of our listeners

00:33:59.160 | are more excited about investing,

00:34:00.880 | but when it comes to the deeply personal side of money,

00:34:03.560 | it doesn't get spread.

00:34:04.400 | - I know, hey, a dinner conversation, blockchain.

00:34:06.600 | Yeah, ugh, shoot me.

00:34:08.520 | - Wow, you don't live in Silicon Valley.

00:34:09.960 | - I know, I know, I know.

00:34:11.360 | Hey, I'm a math guy too.

00:34:12.680 | So yeah, but still, I wanna be happy.

00:34:14.840 | - Yeah, so the other one that you just mentioned

00:34:18.160 | in the good for that I think I wanna spend a minute on

00:34:21.960 | is with faith.

00:34:22.800 | So you mentioned that it's not just organized religion,

00:34:26.000 | but I think so often someone might listen to this

00:34:29.080 | and think those two must be the same thing.

00:34:31.400 | It's not for me, I'm kind of scared of this,

00:34:33.920 | but I hear it and I'm like, gosh,

00:34:35.160 | you're telling me that the people that are the happiest

00:34:37.680 | have these four things.

00:34:38.960 | How does someone who's maybe organized religion

00:34:42.880 | isn't a part of their life,

00:34:44.040 | but wants to bring faith into their life

00:34:46.320 | in the happiness sense,

00:34:48.040 | how would someone get started with that?

00:34:49.640 | - There are lots and lots of ways to do that.

00:34:51.360 | And so the two ways that I recommend

00:34:52.920 | if you're uncomfortable with traditional religion

00:34:54.900 | and or prayer,

00:34:56.000 | I recommend that you start a secular meditation practice

00:34:58.800 | because meditation is highly concentrating.

00:35:00.800 | It actually will bring you to mindfulness

00:35:02.880 | and at the same time can zoom you out

00:35:04.800 | on the experience of your own life.

00:35:06.440 | So it's weirdly, it concentrates you

00:35:08.160 | on the experience of your own life

00:35:09.280 | and it zooms you out on the experience

00:35:10.660 | of your own life simultaneously.

00:35:11.880 | It's a very, very effective practice for doing that.

00:35:13.880 | And it's also extremely satisfying

00:35:15.520 | and it can help you to rebalance your hormone profile,

00:35:19.120 | all kinds of good stuff.

00:35:20.320 | I mean, all kinds of good physiology behind it.

00:35:22.840 | And the second thing is actually

00:35:24.160 | is reading a lot more big ideas.

00:35:27.660 | Like start with the Brothers Karamazov.

00:35:30.920 | Why?

00:35:33.100 | Because this is a study in human transcendence.

00:35:35.180 | That's really what it is.

00:35:36.580 | Read "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl.

00:35:39.100 | Read "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius."

00:35:41.940 | Read "The Miracle of Mindfulness" by Thich Nhat Hanh.

00:35:45.260 | All of these things are hugely available to us

00:35:48.500 | and they'll blow your mind.

00:35:50.920 | If you're doing half an hour a day

00:35:52.580 | of that deep wisdom reading,

00:35:54.620 | you just won't be the same.

00:35:56.140 | You won't be the same.

00:35:57.100 | Now, at some point, you might want to experiment

00:35:59.700 | with the religion of your youth

00:36:00.860 | because that stuff is unbelievable.

00:36:02.300 | I mean, it's like, it's so incredible.

00:36:04.200 | I'm a Catholic and, but you know,

00:36:05.620 | the Catholic philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas,

00:36:08.140 | he's the reason that we read Aristotle today.

00:36:10.900 | You read St. Thomas Aquinas, you're like,

00:36:12.180 | "Oh, before him, nobody read Aristotle.

00:36:14.740 | "Aristotle was lost."

00:36:16.500 | And he said, "No, no, no.

00:36:17.460 | "Hey guys, this is the best thing ever."

00:36:20.140 | And you understand Aristotle in this brand new way.

00:36:22.440 | Whether you're religious or not, Aquinas is incredible.

00:36:25.500 | Read the Confessions of St. Augustine.

00:36:27.820 | It's just amazing, a study in human psychology

00:36:31.580 | about the stirrings of the human heart.

00:36:33.660 | This stuff is so good.

00:36:34.580 | By the way, even if you're not,

00:36:36.020 | completely not religious at all, read the Bible.

00:36:38.860 | You're not actually a very cultured person

00:36:40.620 | if you've never read the Bible

00:36:41.500 | because it's the most culturally inflecting

00:36:44.620 | and impactful book ever written.

00:36:46.420 | So just to understand what's going on in society,

00:36:49.380 | it's a good idea to write,

00:36:50.540 | to read the most impactful book

00:36:51.780 | that's ever been read in society.

00:36:53.140 | Believe it or don't believe it,

00:36:54.260 | you can actually think that God was behind the writing of it

00:36:56.620 | or not behind the writing of it.

00:36:58.020 | It's just, your mind will be blown.

00:37:00.300 | It'll just be completely that,

00:37:02.260 | you'll experience day-to-day life

00:37:03.860 | in a completely different way.

00:37:05.300 | And that's really what it's all about

00:37:06.700 | because you need relief from the reality show

00:37:11.460 | of Chris Hutchins' life.

00:37:13.300 | - And does that mean that practicing faith

00:37:14.980 | could just be reading these deep ideas?

00:37:16.860 | Like that is actually a method for that.

00:37:19.500 | - Yeah, what I recommend is reading them,

00:37:20.940 | but reading them in a very, very deep way.

00:37:25.300 | So when I talk about reading something,

00:37:27.660 | some of the people listening to us are,

00:37:29.100 | I'm a really, really slow and very poor reader,

00:37:31.340 | but a lot of the people who are listening to us

00:37:33.340 | are really fast readers.

00:37:34.700 | My son, my oldest son is 23 years old.

00:37:37.180 | I mean, it's like he can read literally three times

00:37:39.180 | as fast as I can.

00:37:40.460 | Slow down and read two pages.

00:37:43.460 | Underline those two pages and take notes

00:37:46.020 | and then take 15 minutes and think deeply

00:37:48.900 | about what those ideas mean in the context

00:37:51.420 | of your day-to-day life.

00:37:53.020 | That's what the ancient philosophers called

00:37:55.380 | Lectio Divina, divine reading.

00:37:58.220 | In other words, it's to let the reading ideas

00:38:00.500 | seep into your soul.

00:38:02.180 | And it's a very powerful cognitive technique

00:38:05.340 | for reading in such a way

00:38:06.340 | that it really will change your perspective.

00:38:07.980 | So yeah, I just read "Man's Search for Meaning" today.

00:38:10.580 | It's like, no, you didn't.

00:38:11.980 | No, you didn't.

00:38:13.100 | It's like, I read the writings of Seneca this week.

00:38:18.140 | It's like, get out of here, you didn't.

00:38:21.140 | You read one page and then we'll talk

00:38:23.340 | because it's so full of wisdom.

00:38:25.420 | I wanna see the underlined.

00:38:26.780 | I wanna see the highlighting.

00:38:28.020 | I wanna see your notes.

00:38:29.420 | And then I want you to tell me what that actually did

00:38:31.540 | to change your way of thinking

00:38:32.940 | and your change your way of behaving today.

00:38:34.580 | That's Lectio Divina.

00:38:36.020 | - Wow.

00:38:38.100 | Yeah, it's not audible at 2X.

00:38:41.340 | - You know, that is so Silicon Valley, man.

00:38:43.180 | That is so absolutely true

00:38:44.980 | is that I'm reading to harvest information

00:38:47.900 | so that I can use it for money, power, pleasure, and fame.

00:38:51.580 | Hugely problematic.

00:38:53.540 | - We got way off track.

00:38:54.780 | And I think if we were to try to come back,

00:38:57.020 | the next thing that's kind of a skill

00:38:59.940 | that you would talk about

00:39:01.020 | would be about using the science of satisfaction.

00:39:03.580 | Am I bringing us to the right place?

00:39:05.020 | - Sure, absolutely.

00:39:05.860 | The science of satisfaction is some of these boys

00:39:08.060 | that ever rocked my world.

00:39:09.580 | The science of satisfaction really is back to dopamine.

00:39:12.740 | You know, it's the success addict

00:39:15.020 | is the one who keeps hitting the lever

00:39:16.460 | because they think they're gonna get satisfaction.

00:39:18.740 | And Mick Jagger sang, "I Don't Get No Satisfaction,"

00:39:21.500 | which is a super famous song.

00:39:22.860 | It's the third most popular rock and roll song of all time.

00:39:26.140 | It became a number one hit when I was one.

00:39:29.180 | And Mick Jagger is still singing it.

00:39:31.220 | And I'm not a spring chicken.

00:39:32.820 | I mean, it's unbelievable.

00:39:33.700 | So, and why is it?

00:39:35.820 | It's not a great song.

00:39:36.700 | The reason is because it has a message

00:39:38.140 | that people can really relate to.

00:39:39.300 | I try and I try and I try and consumer culture and sex

00:39:42.780 | and all that, but I can't get no satisfaction.

00:39:45.020 | The truth is you can get satisfaction,

00:39:46.980 | but you can't keep no satisfaction

00:39:49.620 | because dopamine won't let you.

00:39:51.220 | Here's the concept for the moment for, you know,

00:39:53.620 | every five minutes we cycle through

00:39:55.100 | some really heavy thing here on this.

00:39:56.500 | I love this conversation, by the way.

00:39:57.980 | You're, you know, you're fast, man.

00:40:00.180 | So the concept is homeostasis.

00:40:02.540 | Homeostasis is the natural tendency of the brain

00:40:06.420 | to return all physical and mental processes to equilibrium.

00:40:10.820 | So for example, you get on the treadmill in the morning

00:40:13.820 | and you're running and you're,

00:40:15.140 | to get your heart rate up to 160,

00:40:16.620 | you step off 15 minutes later,

00:40:17.980 | your heart rate is back down to what it's supposed to be,

00:40:20.420 | like 80 or 70 or whatever it happens to be.

00:40:22.540 | If it didn't, you'd die.

00:40:23.780 | Homeostasis returns you to baseline.

00:40:26.620 | It also returns you emotionally to baseline.

00:40:29.260 | Something really great happens to you.

00:40:30.860 | Your book is a bestseller, congratulations.

00:40:32.740 | One week from now, you're not gonna feel a thing.

00:40:35.020 | Why?

00:40:35.860 | Because you can't stay on that high forever, you'd die.

00:40:38.500 | You wouldn't, in ancient times, you'd be like,

00:40:40.780 | I found some tasty berries on a bush

00:40:42.740 | and I'm gonna be permanently happy

00:40:43.980 | while the saber-toothed tiger sneaks up behind you

00:40:45.820 | and eats you for lunch.

00:40:47.340 | You need to have emotions to guide your behavior,

00:40:49.860 | but you gotta go back to the baseline

00:40:51.100 | to be ready for the next set of circumstances.

00:40:53.440 | That's the reason you can't keep satisfaction in life.

00:40:56.740 | You hit the lever and you think it'll stay forever

00:40:59.260 | and it doesn't, it stays for a minute or a day

00:41:01.980 | or if it's something really, really great,

00:41:03.280 | a week or a month, you got into Harvard, congratulations.

00:41:05.740 | One month from now, you're gonna be bummed out

00:41:07.540 | 'cause your girlfriend broke up with you,

00:41:09.040 | whatever it happens to be.

00:41:10.380 | So the science of satisfaction says you can't keep it

00:41:13.620 | and so therefore, you shouldn't tie your bliss

00:41:15.940 | to the idea that you can by running

00:41:18.060 | from thing to thing to thing.

00:41:19.540 | And the happiest old people have got this figured out.

00:41:22.920 | The happiest old people are no longer chained

00:41:26.200 | to the happiness wheel.

00:41:27.420 | We call it the hedonic treadmill

00:41:29.680 | where you run and run and run.

00:41:30.600 | The thing is running against you

00:41:31.700 | and there's a little evil guy in the corner

00:41:33.080 | turning up the speed.

00:41:34.580 | And after a while, you're running out of fear

00:41:36.260 | because if you stop on a treadmill,

00:41:37.700 | boom, face plant, right?

00:41:39.780 | This is the very important thing that old people figure out

00:41:43.140 | and they step off the hedonic treadmill.

00:41:46.060 | - Is the hedonic treadmill similar to the concept

00:41:49.420 | of keeping up with the Joneses

00:41:50.820 | in kind of maybe our financial or cultural lives?

00:41:53.540 | - It's related.

00:41:54.380 | That's actually a phenomenon called social comparison

00:41:56.980 | and social comparison, you know,

00:41:58.580 | the great philosopher, President Theodore Roosevelt

00:42:01.740 | called social comparison, the thief of joy.

00:42:04.900 | Unambiguously, social comparison

00:42:07.220 | will wipe out your happiness.

00:42:08.700 | It will mow down your joy.

00:42:11.300 | That's the reason that social media is a misery machine.

00:42:14.820 | It gives you none of the stuff that you seek,

00:42:16.880 | which is, you know, affirmation,

00:42:18.900 | more than a little tiny moment on the hedonic treadmill,

00:42:21.860 | but it's based on social comparison

00:42:23.500 | and you're getting a fake version of somebody else's life,

00:42:26.220 | which you're comparing to the terrible version

00:42:28.060 | of your own life.

00:42:29.160 | Meanwhile, you're posting a fake version of your life.

00:42:31.820 | I mean, you don't post, hey, my wife just screamed at me.

00:42:35.180 | My kid just flunked math.

00:42:36.860 | You don't put that on social media, right?

00:42:38.580 | It's like, no, beautiful day, love being alive,

00:42:40.820 | going for a hike, seeing Paris, right?

00:42:44.180 | BS, that's not right.

00:42:46.060 | And so the result of it is it's all fake,

00:42:48.300 | fictional social comparison and it makes you miserable.

00:42:52.580 | So the hedonic treadmill is bad enough.

00:42:54.840 | Lard on social comparison on top of that

00:42:57.100 | and misery is in the future.

00:42:59.040 | - One of the things you just said,

00:43:00.040 | you said people when they're old that are the most happy

00:43:02.400 | have gotten off the treadmill.

00:43:04.160 | And I know you have a lot of opinions on bucket lists.

00:43:06.840 | So I wanna bring up something.

00:43:07.980 | I interviewed a guy named Ben Nemton a few months ago

00:43:10.980 | who has written a lot about bucket lists

00:43:12.980 | and his inspiration was talking or reading research

00:43:17.180 | of people who on their deathbed said one of their regrets

00:43:20.380 | was not living the life they wanted to.

00:43:22.660 | And he has through plenty of conversations

00:43:26.100 | kind of come to the conclusion that part of the reason

00:43:28.580 | people don't do the things they want

00:43:30.240 | is because they never take the time to write it down,

00:43:32.740 | write down how they wanna get there.

00:43:34.500 | And life just gets in the way

00:43:36.580 | so they don't do the things they care about.

00:43:38.140 | And so his answer was I think people should create a list,

00:43:41.900 | not just of bungee jump in New Zealand,

00:43:45.200 | but things in their life, in their relationships,

00:43:47.740 | in their family, with their health

00:43:49.380 | and write it down as a bucket list.

00:43:51.420 | And I know you have some strong opinions about bucket lists.

00:43:54.100 | So I'd love to hear your perspective on all that.

00:43:56.500 | - There's a lot that's right that you just said,

00:43:58.660 | but we have to be really careful.

00:44:00.180 | Bucket lists as we usually understand them

00:44:02.660 | are metastatically stupid and misery provoking.

00:44:06.100 | What are they usually?

00:44:07.100 | It's like, I wanna go on a hot air balloon.

00:44:10.180 | That's the average, by the way,

00:44:11.500 | that is the seventh most popular bucket list item

00:44:14.100 | in America today, hot air balloons.

00:44:15.860 | Who knew?

00:44:16.700 | Who cares?

00:44:17.520 | Hot air balloon, whatever, different strokes, right?

00:44:19.860 | But I wanna make a million dollars.

00:44:22.340 | I wanna publish a self-help book.

00:44:24.180 | I wanna, people have these,

00:44:25.820 | basically money, power, pleasure, honor bucket list items.

00:44:29.140 | Those are bad for you

00:44:30.700 | because what they do is they lower your satisfaction.

00:44:32.980 | They increase your attachment.

00:44:34.380 | They increase your craving and it grows around you

00:44:37.180 | like kudzu and it lowers your satisfaction.

00:44:39.860 | Here's the key thing to keep in mind, Chris.

00:44:41.820 | Your satisfaction is not a function of what you have.

00:44:45.460 | Your satisfaction is a function of what you have

00:44:47.900 | divided by what you want.

00:44:49.960 | Your have's divided by your wants.

00:44:52.260 | Don't have a have's management strategy

00:44:54.540 | with a bunch of trivial bucket list items.

00:44:57.760 | Have a wants management strategy

00:44:59.620 | of decreasing your worldly wants

00:45:01.920 | and your satisfaction will grow.

00:45:03.820 | That's the reverse bucket list.

00:45:05.920 | The reverse bucket list is to make it a list

00:45:08.240 | of all of the kind of tacky cravings.

00:45:11.040 | I want the admiration of these strangers

00:45:13.820 | and I want this kind of car

00:45:15.700 | and I want this glamorous vacation.

00:45:18.560 | Write it all down.

00:45:19.540 | Great, write it all down.

00:45:20.700 | And then say, I detach myself from this.

00:45:23.360 | I no longer care.

00:45:24.200 | I officially no longer care about this.

00:45:26.240 | The right thing in the bucket list

00:45:27.740 | that you're talking about

00:45:28.580 | that actually makes a lot of sense

00:45:30.220 | is making a list of the good four, money, power,

00:45:32.980 | I'm sorry, faith, family, friends, and work.

00:45:35.540 | Faith, family, friends, and work that serve other people.

00:45:38.420 | Make a bucket list of those things,

00:45:40.320 | of the love that I want to have,

00:45:41.540 | the relationship I want to have with my adult children,

00:45:43.700 | the relationship I want to establish with my parents

00:45:46.340 | and learn about them before they die.

00:45:48.100 | Those are family items, for example.

00:45:49.900 | The deep friendships that I want to migrate

00:45:52.640 | all my deal friends to real friends

00:45:55.540 | 'cause this is one of the great sources

00:45:57.060 | of unhappiness and loneliness,

00:45:58.780 | especially in Silicon Valley.

00:45:59.860 | It's like tons of deal friends, not so many real friends.

00:46:02.580 | That's a bucket list item is real friends.

00:46:04.820 | That's actually meritorious.

00:46:06.440 | It's actually seeing how I can do work

00:46:08.780 | that truly serves other people who need me.

00:46:11.400 | I want to go on a spiritual journey.

00:46:13.600 | That's a bucket list item that's really meritorious.

00:46:15.660 | So those are the things

00:46:16.580 | that actually should stay in the bucket

00:46:18.140 | and everything else should come right out.

00:46:20.780 | - So it's less about not having a bucket list

00:46:23.180 | and more about calling it down

00:46:24.380 | to the things that will matter.

00:46:26.060 | And then it sounds like you guys might,

00:46:27.620 | you and Ben at least would share

00:46:29.040 | that having them written down somewhere

00:46:31.180 | and talking about what you can do this week,

00:46:33.540 | this day to make progress towards them

00:46:35.900 | is a valuable exercise.

00:46:37.540 | It's just not a valuable exercise

00:46:39.100 | if there's 300 things that include all kinds of crazy,

00:46:42.180 | I guess, wants.

00:46:43.300 | - Yeah, yeah, no, sure.

00:46:44.140 | Bunchy jumping in the Mekong Delta.

00:46:46.460 | No, no.

00:46:48.280 | Getting to know my father better.

00:46:50.300 | Yes, yes.

00:46:51.860 | That's actually right.

00:46:52.740 | So I think that he and I would agree

00:46:54.100 | to a very, very large extent.

00:46:55.900 | A bucket list is not a bucket list is not a bucket list.

00:46:58.580 | If you're filling your life with unsatisfied trivialities,

00:47:02.560 | all that's gonna happen is you're gonna wind up

00:47:04.100 | being less satisfied and unhappier than you were before.

00:47:06.940 | - There's been a common conversation about experiences.

00:47:10.900 | Like money should buy experiences

00:47:12.300 | 'cause experiences is the way to fulfill yourself

00:47:14.940 | and be satisfied and be happy.

00:47:16.900 | But I think a little bit of what you just said

00:47:18.780 | contradicts that concept.

00:47:19.980 | - So there's a lot of research on this.

00:47:21.420 | And I have two colleagues at the Harvard Business School,

00:47:23.340 | Ashley Williams and Mike Norton.

00:47:24.620 | They're kind of the leading experts on how to buy happiness.

00:47:28.220 | And there's basically, you can classify it in different ways.

00:47:31.300 | Some people say five, some people say six.

00:47:32.740 | There's really four things you can do with happiness.

00:47:34.340 | You can buy stuff, you can buy time,

00:47:36.940 | you can buy experiences, and you can give it away.

00:47:39.700 | Those kind of the big four ways that you can use money.

00:47:42.440 | Now, what everybody wants to do for their satisfaction

00:47:44.900 | is they wanna buy stuff

00:47:45.840 | because they think that's the most tangible.

00:47:48.100 | But that's not right.

00:47:48.940 | Let me tell you a story.

00:47:49.760 | So I've been married 30 years.

00:47:51.980 | And 29 years ago, I was having this great big blowout,

00:47:55.580 | unbelievably bitter argument with my new wife.

00:47:59.260 | And we were arguing about

00:48:00.740 | how to celebrate our first wedding anniversary, ironically.

00:48:04.340 | And here was the deal.

00:48:05.260 | My wife's from Barcelona,

00:48:06.380 | and she's all about vacation and going to the beach.

00:48:09.140 | And I'm a thrifty, practical American.

00:48:10.940 | And we had zero money.

00:48:12.540 | And so I thought we should buy a couch

00:48:14.280 | to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

00:48:15.740 | It's like, okay, so this is the argument.

00:48:17.500 | We had to get borrowing $500.

00:48:19.860 | I don't think it's horrible 'cause we had no money.

00:48:21.260 | I was a musician and we were living in the States.

00:48:23.860 | We had just moved to the States from Spain,

00:48:26.100 | and she didn't speak English,

00:48:27.180 | and she was working a minimum wage job, and it was brutal.

00:48:30.020 | And so this is the argument.

00:48:30.940 | Beach, couch, beach, couch, beach, couch, right?

00:48:34.060 | And finally, we compromised and went to the beach.

00:48:37.220 | And that's why I've been married 30 years.

00:48:38.500 | But that's not my point.

00:48:39.780 | The key thing to remember

00:48:41.580 | is that we were talking about that a couple of years ago,

00:48:44.100 | and we got a couch.

00:48:45.460 | I mean, that was like seven couches ago or something.

00:48:48.340 | And I don't even remember the couch.

00:48:50.180 | But I can tell you everything we did on that beach vacation

00:48:52.700 | because we were in love and experiencing it together.

00:48:55.740 | Here's the main mistake that people make.

00:48:58.260 | They think that physical things are permanent

00:49:00.580 | and experiences are evanescent.

00:49:02.500 | It's exactly the opposite.

00:49:04.540 | If you experience something with somebody you love,

00:49:07.140 | it's permanent, it's permanent.

00:49:08.980 | But if you get a thing,

00:49:10.180 | you'll forget it and not care about it,

00:49:12.020 | and it'll be out on the curve of your emotions

00:49:15.960 | almost immediately.

00:49:17.260 | So here's the guide.

00:49:19.360 | Buying stuff seems permanent,

00:49:21.300 | and it will give you the satisfaction,

00:49:22.660 | and you're wrong, your brain is lying to you.

00:49:25.380 | And there's all kinds of evolutionary reasons

00:49:26.900 | why your brain is lying to you.

00:49:28.140 | You need to go to the other three,

00:49:30.140 | but you gotta do it in the right way.

00:49:31.980 | Buying experiences is great,

00:49:33.740 | but you have to do that with someone you love.

00:49:36.340 | You have to buy experiences

00:49:37.780 | and experience them with somebody that you love.

00:49:40.080 | Going with a, maybe the person that you love

00:49:42.300 | and you wanna know better is you, by the way.

00:49:44.020 | And if you really wanna go to the Cambodian temples

00:49:47.480 | by yourself because you're actually trying to get in touch

00:49:49.540 | with something spiritually,

00:49:50.860 | or you wanna go on a retreat in Southern India,

00:49:52.660 | which I have done, that's great, fantastic, right?

00:49:55.820 | But it has to be for a reason,

00:49:57.220 | and the reason has to do with experiences

00:49:59.140 | and improvement of a particular relationship.

00:50:02.260 | Second is buying time.

00:50:04.140 | Buying time means paying somebody

00:50:05.620 | to do something you don't wanna do.

00:50:07.060 | Now, not everybody listening to us can do that

00:50:08.620 | 'cause they don't have enough money.

00:50:09.720 | But if you can, why would you pay somebody

00:50:11.660 | to cut your yard so you have more time

00:50:13.340 | to do something you do want with someone you love?

00:50:16.400 | Once again, you see the common point that I'm making.

00:50:18.800 | If you do it so you can watch something stupid on Netflix,

00:50:22.120 | all you did is waste your time and your money,

00:50:24.680 | and that's not so great.

00:50:26.000 | The last is giving it away,

00:50:27.400 | but giving it away to a cause that you love

00:50:30.360 | and has to serve your values.

00:50:31.880 | Now, you see what I'm talking about here, Chris?

00:50:33.720 | It's love and then love and then love and then love

00:50:36.720 | is actually what we're talking about.

00:50:38.000 | If we wanna turn our,

00:50:39.760 | you wanna turn your money into happiness,

00:50:41.680 | it has to be based on love.

00:50:43.040 | - So I heard you say not to watch something on Netflix.

00:50:47.000 | Would it be fair to say unless you watch something

00:50:49.160 | on Netflix that's stupid with someone you love,

00:50:51.680 | then it's okay?

00:50:52.520 | - You got it, you're A+ student.

00:50:54.800 | - Fine, anything I'm not supposed to do,

00:50:58.600 | as long as I do it with someone I love,

00:50:59.960 | then I can get around it. - Yeah, if you're wasting

00:51:01.000 | your time, this is the reason that neglecting

00:51:03.880 | your loved ones while scrolling social media

00:51:06.060 | is such a terrible, terrible thing for your happiness

00:51:09.280 | because you're doing two things at once.

00:51:10.480 | Number one is you're numbing yourself

00:51:12.560 | with just a little shot of inadequate dopamine

00:51:15.600 | and your foregoing love.

00:51:18.800 | This is crazy, it's crazy plus crazy.

00:51:21.080 | - Yeah, and so that's an interesting point.

00:51:24.140 | We've talked a little bit here and there about technology.

00:51:28.320 | I have to assume that technology has made a lot

00:51:30.780 | of building happiness in our lives difficult

00:51:33.600 | because of distraction or social comparison.

00:51:37.040 | Is there anything it's done to make happiness easier?

00:51:39.560 | - Yeah, so here's the key thing about technology.

00:51:42.200 | It always over promises and under delivers.

00:51:44.280 | And I'm not a Luddite, on the contrary.

00:51:46.200 | I mean, I think this stuff is really great.

00:51:48.760 | What I am is a social scientist

00:51:50.480 | and a specialist in happiness.

00:51:52.760 | Anything that substitutes for love will make you unhappier.

00:51:56.200 | Anything that complements your love will make you happier.

00:51:59.520 | So, well, all of the technologies, what do they promise?

00:52:02.360 | Whether it's social media, whether it's Facebook

00:52:04.080 | or Tinder or whatever it happens to be,

00:52:06.300 | it promises you more love and that's why you want it.

00:52:09.640 | That's why you, I mean, it's like I'm gonna connect

00:52:11.440 | with people, I'm gonna get social contact,

00:52:13.900 | I'm gonna meet people, phenomenal.

00:52:15.720 | It looks really, really great.

00:52:16.960 | But almost inevitably, it actually crowds out

00:52:19.760 | true human experience, the experience of getting

00:52:23.160 | to know somebody, to share your heart with somebody.

00:52:25.980 | Now, there's a lot of neurophysiology to this.

00:52:28.160 | So, for example, there's a hormone, a neuropeptide

00:52:31.120 | that functions as a hormone in the brain called oxytocin.

00:52:34.240 | This is intensely pleasurable that we get in response

00:52:37.060 | to eye contact and touch with other people.

00:52:40.040 | When people are really, really lonely,

00:52:41.720 | they do exactly the opposite of what they should do.

00:52:44.080 | Instead of going someplace and talking to somebody

00:52:46.340 | in person, they scroll social media,

00:52:48.600 | which gives you no oxytocin and makes you lonelier.

00:52:51.920 | Social media is the junk food of social life

00:52:54.960 | and apps for dating, what they do is they crowd out

00:52:58.040 | the experience of meeting somebody de novo.

00:53:01.040 | They also have another big problem,

00:53:02.880 | which is that they don't give you enough complementarity

00:53:05.120 | with other people and they overload on compatibility.

00:53:08.120 | They make you so compatible, it's like you're dating

00:53:10.200 | your sibling, which is, how shall we say, not hot, right?

00:53:14.400 | And so, no wonder that it's like, I don't know,

00:53:16.280 | I can't find anybody I'm really attracted to.

00:53:17.880 | Well, no kidding, it's 'cause you're trying

00:53:19.120 | to date yourself, man.

00:53:20.300 | So, this is a problem with how technology works.

00:53:23.480 | So, here's the way to judge technology.

00:53:25.520 | Is it a complement to my relationships,

00:53:27.500 | my real in-person, human-loving relationships,

00:53:30.360 | or is it a substitute for those relationships?

00:53:32.600 | If it's the latter, it's bad for you.

00:53:34.840 | - I wanna jump to one other aspect of the book,

00:53:38.760 | and we're not gonna hit on all of the skills

00:53:40.400 | or tactics. - Yeah, yeah.

00:53:41.220 | We're having a great conversation.

00:53:42.060 | - I think that's okay, because you can go buy the book.

00:53:45.880 | Although, I will say, congratulations,

00:53:47.480 | not only did you hit the number one

00:53:49.080 | on the New York Times list.

00:53:50.840 | - Sold out on the end of day one.

00:53:53.360 | It's like my publisher's like, "I got great news

00:53:55.400 | and not great news."

00:53:56.720 | I said, "What's the great news?

00:53:57.720 | You're number one on Amazon.

00:53:58.800 | What's the not great news?"

00:53:59.720 | There's not a copy for sale in the whole country.

00:54:02.360 | - By the time you're hearing this,

00:54:03.680 | your sold-out book will hopefully

00:54:05.360 | have some copies available.

00:54:06.840 | I know the ebook's also available.

00:54:08.640 | So people can find that.

00:54:09.880 | But I wanna jump to one last section,

00:54:12.320 | turning weakness into strength.

00:54:13.720 | - Yeah, I know.

00:54:14.560 | That's a scary one, man.

00:54:15.380 | That's a scary one.

00:54:16.220 | But this is a skill that all happy, old people

00:54:18.880 | have in common that's really hard

00:54:20.740 | for young people to absorb.

00:54:21.920 | And once again, what's this book all about?

00:54:24.280 | This is the Happiness 401(k),

00:54:26.200 | meaning that these are the kinds of investments

00:54:28.320 | we need to start making at 25 or 45 or 65

00:54:31.280 | so that they'll pay off later.

00:54:32.640 | So it's very important to understand these things

00:54:34.680 | from the very beginning.

00:54:35.920 | Old people all know that what's really off-putting

00:54:39.460 | is saying that you don't have strengths

00:54:41.480 | and being defensive about your weaknesses.

00:54:44.040 | It's very off-putting.

00:54:45.360 | And we have a million ways to call BS on each other.

00:54:48.220 | It's like, what I could be wearing,

00:54:50.100 | it's like I could come and be wearing

00:54:51.980 | an obvious toupee right now.

00:54:54.320 | And I'd be like, "I think it looks pretty natural."

00:54:56.140 | And you'd be like, "That thing looks like a bird's nest.

00:54:58.640 | Are you kidding me?"

00:54:59.960 | And it would be ridiculous.

00:55:01.400 | And it would be a sign of defensiveness

00:55:05.160 | and insecurity, and that's the problem

00:55:07.660 | because life tells you if you've got a weakness,

00:55:09.560 | you should not share it.

00:55:10.840 | You should defend yourself against it.

00:55:12.800 | You should hide it, as a matter of fact.

00:55:14.960 | And that's actually a huge mistake.

00:55:16.720 | The reason is because what we need is human connection.

00:55:19.240 | And your weaknesses connect you with other people.

00:55:21.360 | We're all weak.

00:55:22.760 | You know, we all have feet of clay.

00:55:24.320 | It's all like, ugh, we're a bundle of problems.

00:55:26.800 | And you can't, we have meritorious things, too.

00:55:29.880 | I mean, you could, you have good things about you

00:55:32.280 | that people admire, and that's magnetic, too, to be sure.

00:55:35.000 | But if you really wanna relate to somebody,

00:55:36.800 | you say, like, "I'm Chris Hutchins,

00:55:38.680 | and I'm a man of the people.

00:55:40.200 | You can relate to me.

00:55:41.440 | I have a million listeners to my podcast."

00:55:44.120 | Like, that's not relatable.

00:55:46.120 | That isn't relatable at all.

00:55:47.800 | You gotta lead with the ways that you are like other people,

00:55:50.400 | and that's what old people do.

00:55:51.840 | It's so funny.

00:55:52.680 | You know, somebody gave me a piece of advice.

00:55:54.040 | You know, when I was, I was starting,

00:55:55.440 | I was after 50, and I came back to academia.

00:55:57.480 | I was an academic for a long time,

00:55:58.640 | and I was a CEO for 10 years of a think tank in D.C.,

00:56:01.880 | and I came back to academia three years ago,

00:56:03.740 | teaching at Harvard.

00:56:04.920 | And when I first got there, I said, you know,

00:56:06.440 | "I got a problem," which is, I'm 50,

00:56:09.280 | I was 55 at the time, and I said, you know,

00:56:10.840 | "I was a musician for a long time,

00:56:12.360 | and it really hurt my hearing,

00:56:13.840 | 'cause it's very loud playing in a symphony orchestra."

00:56:16.520 | And now, frankly, I'm not, I don't have hearing aids,

00:56:19.520 | but I'm getting a little deaf, quite frankly,

00:56:21.280 | and I'm in lecture, and these kids, they frickin' whisper.

00:56:24.960 | I mean, you can't hear a word they're saying,

00:56:26.640 | and so it's like, I'm like, "What? What?"

00:56:29.000 | And I said, and so I asked my colleague,

00:56:30.720 | one of my colleagues, like, "What do I do?"

00:56:32.440 | And he's like, "You say, 'Hey, I'm 57, I'm deaf, speak up,'

00:56:37.440 | and it's hilarious, they all laugh,

00:56:39.620 | and they can actually relate to you,

00:56:40.860 | and they like you better, and they speak louder."

00:56:43.960 | So you see what I'm saying, right?

00:56:45.460 | I mean, what's the connection?

00:56:46.840 | The connection is human frailty,

00:56:48.640 | and this is what we need to do.

00:56:50.180 | The most winsome people are non-defensive

00:56:52.920 | about their humanity.

00:56:54.260 | They're not hiding things.

00:56:56.000 | They know what they do well,

00:56:57.560 | and they know what they do poorly, and it's all good.

00:57:01.840 | - Yeah, you said in the book negative emotions

00:57:03.720 | make us more effective in our day-to-day activities.

00:57:06.520 | - Yeah, that's actually one of the interesting things

00:57:08.440 | in science that we find is that negative emotions,

00:57:11.680 | well, to begin with,

00:57:13.240 | without negative emotions and experiences, we don't learn,

00:57:16.240 | and when we don't learn, we don't find meaning and purpose.

00:57:18.440 | So when people are trying to go from happy feeling

00:57:20.840 | to happy feeling to happy feeling,

00:57:22.660 | and they're trying to force unhappiness out of their life,

00:57:25.560 | paradoxically, they're actually avoiding their happiness

00:57:28.220 | because they're not getting sufficient meaning and purpose.

00:57:30.840 | That doesn't mean we should go looking for suffering,

00:57:32.620 | but suffering's gonna find us,

00:57:34.520 | and we need to find ways to experience it

00:57:36.480 | and learn from it.

00:57:37.460 | - Is that an indirect argument

00:57:41.000 | against being kind of eternally optimistic?

00:57:43.720 | I know I'll share it's a common argument in our household.

00:57:49.480 | It's like circumstance arises.

00:57:51.400 | You could think of glass half full, glass half empty.

00:57:54.140 | My wife and I often take different sides of that,

00:57:56.200 | and it's a little frustrating,

00:57:57.320 | and I read that line about negative emotions,

00:58:00.080 | and I thought maybe sometimes

00:58:02.000 | you should take glass half empty.

00:58:03.200 | Maybe it's better, or am I misinterpreting?

00:58:06.120 | - Well, no, it's absolutely the case,

00:58:07.720 | and there's a big philosophical debate about this.

00:58:09.840 | So my great mentor and friend, Martin Seligman,

00:58:12.520 | he talks about rational optimism,

00:58:14.120 | but what he's really talking about is hope.

00:58:16.240 | People often use them synonymously,

00:58:18.340 | but optimism is really just a prediction

00:58:20.920 | that everything will be okay.

00:58:22.800 | Hope, there's nothing unrealistic about it.

00:58:27.440 | It's the idea that something can be done

00:58:29.380 | to improve the situation, and I can do it.

00:58:32.000 | It's hugely empowering.

00:58:33.320 | There's always a reason for hope.

00:58:34.760 | Hope is a theological virtue in Christianity and Judaism.

00:58:38.720 | I mean, hope is a good thing.

00:58:41.200 | It's a good way to be.

00:58:42.280 | It'll make you happier,

00:58:43.320 | and it's a virtuous way to be as well.

00:58:45.160 | There are lots of times when optimism is just unrealistic,

00:58:48.960 | and there are all kinds of reasons to not be unrealistic.

00:58:51.560 | It's like, yeah, the guy in the Titanic.

00:58:53.440 | All will be well.

00:58:54.840 | You know, that's not exactly the right way to be.

00:58:57.200 | It's better to be realistic, and to do what's appropriate,

00:59:00.940 | and to do so with hope.

00:59:01.980 | So that's the distinction that I would make.

00:59:04.180 | - Okay.

00:59:06.580 | All right, so I got a few rapid fire things

00:59:08.300 | before we wrap up.

00:59:10.220 | One is, I know you have talked in the past

00:59:13.300 | about how you had this amazing job.

00:59:14.820 | Many people would have coveted your job at AEI,

00:59:18.380 | the think tank,

00:59:19.340 | and then you kind of thought about happiness,

00:59:21.180 | and you decided to quit,

00:59:22.420 | and I think a circumstance I find a lot of people in,

00:59:25.820 | at least talking to people in their 20s and 30s,

00:59:28.920 | they're working a job, they don't love it,

00:59:31.080 | but they know that for some reason,

00:59:32.960 | sticking it out for a little bit of time,

00:59:35.120 | maybe not forever, will bring something.

00:59:38.040 | Whether it's they'll hit their bonus six months from now,

00:59:40.880 | and that'll give them some comfort

00:59:42.840 | with their financial situation,

00:59:44.480 | or they'll get that promotion.

00:59:46.520 | And I'm curious if you think,

00:59:48.240 | is the answer that sometimes, yes, that's the case,

00:59:50.800 | or is the answer always, you should probably cut bait

00:59:53.640 | as soon as you feel like it's not a good fit?

00:59:55.480 | - Well, it really depends on the circumstances.

00:59:57.280 | I know all kinds of cases

00:59:58.560 | where couples are not getting along,

01:00:00.920 | but they want their marriage to work.

01:00:03.480 | You need to think ahead about exactly

01:00:05.680 | what the circumstances are,

01:00:07.280 | and whether you know something can be fixed,

01:00:09.560 | and it's perfectly legitimate

01:00:11.720 | to suffer through circumstances you don't like in the moment

01:00:14.320 | because there's a greater prize.

01:00:16.080 | You know, the fidelity of your conjugal union

01:00:18.960 | is really important to you.

01:00:20.680 | It's also the case that quitting a job

01:00:23.280 | every time you don't like it

01:00:24.560 | is a lost opportunity for you to prosper.

01:00:26.760 | It's a lost opportunity for you to grow as well, too.

01:00:29.480 | The biggest mistake I see for young people,

01:00:31.320 | and this is a very practical thing that I tell my students,

01:00:33.940 | is if you quit a job, like your first job at a college,

01:00:37.500 | usually within 18 months, you're probably making an error

01:00:41.120 | because you're incapable of learning to like it

01:00:44.120 | when you change jobs and careers and cities

01:00:47.200 | all at the same time.

01:00:48.320 | That is the same cognitive and emotional impact

01:00:50.600 | as immediate family member dying.

01:00:52.920 | So what happens is people are like, "Congratulations,"

01:00:54.960 | but you're actually grieving

01:00:56.600 | because there's so much change in your life,

01:00:58.440 | and you tend to cross the cables in your mind,

01:01:01.520 | and you think that the change per se,

01:01:03.320 | the grief that you're feeling

01:01:04.400 | is because you made an incorrect decision.

01:01:07.120 | That's wrong.

01:01:08.240 | And so there are all kinds of ways to stay the course.

01:01:10.600 | Now, that doesn't mean that you should be like,

01:01:12.000 | "I hate this job, my life sucks,

01:01:14.000 | "but 25 years from now, I'm gonna get a pension,

01:01:16.200 | "so I'm gonna stick with it."

01:01:17.360 | That's an error.

01:01:18.480 | - You've lived in a lot of places.

01:01:21.400 | Normally, when someone's kind of calls a place home,

01:01:23.840 | and I know for you right now, that's Boston,

01:01:25.320 | I always say, "Someone listening, come into your city,

01:01:28.600 | "what's one place they should eat or grab a drink

01:01:31.720 | "or go do something?"

01:01:32.640 | Like those kind of three things that are atypical.

01:01:35.160 | I'll give you the freedom to pick anywhere you've lived

01:01:37.680 | and tell people, if they're going to that place,

01:01:40.520 | what's a kind of off the beaten recommendation

01:01:42.760 | for a meal, a drink, and something to do?

01:01:45.400 | - My favorite city in the world is Barcelona,

01:01:47.120 | which has been my second home for the past 35 years.

01:01:49.880 | That's where I got married,

01:01:50.760 | that's where I played in the symphony orchestra,

01:01:52.440 | and that's where my in-laws live,

01:01:54.320 | and I was always very close to my in-laws,

01:01:56.480 | I was closer to my mother-in-law

01:01:57.520 | than I was to my own mother.

01:01:58.760 | So I consider that my own home,

01:02:00.360 | and it's the city that I actually know best.

01:02:02.320 | So where are you gonna eat?

01:02:03.680 | Any place, it's Barcelona,

01:02:05.840 | it's one of the foodie capitals of the world.

01:02:08.160 | You go to a bar, and you eat some bar food,

01:02:11.000 | and you're gonna be like,

01:02:11.840 | "This is the best thing I've ever had."

01:02:12.960 | What are you gonna drink?

01:02:13.800 | I don't know, I don't drink at all, but live it up.

01:02:16.120 | That's all I can say, it's Barcelona.

01:02:18.000 | And what are you gonna see as a tourist?

01:02:19.840 | Oh man, throw a dart, the place is unbelievable.

01:02:23.360 | You can go to the Roman ruins,

01:02:24.560 | you can go to the Sagrada Familia,

01:02:25.960 | you can go to the ancient Romanesque churches,

01:02:28.880 | you can look at the Gothic cathedrals.

01:02:31.200 | Holy cow, it's just like a living, walking museum

01:02:35.480 | of everything from modernism all the way back

01:02:37.640 | to prehistoric times.

01:02:39.480 | And so go to Barcelona, everybody.

01:02:41.480 | If you haven't been to Barcelona yet,

01:02:43.360 | you're barely living.

01:02:44.800 | - I have been for only a few days,

01:02:46.840 | but it's on the list to go back.

01:02:48.800 | We have an au pair right now from Tarragona.

01:02:50.880 | - It's Catalonia.

01:02:51.720 | - Which is nearby, we talked about.

01:02:52.560 | - So you actually know the difference.

01:02:53.800 | I'm a Catalan speaker.

01:02:55.000 | I'm one of, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

01:02:56.880 | I'm one of the few American Catalan speakers.

01:02:58.680 | It's a different language than Spanish,

01:03:00.040 | and it's the most beautiful language in the world

01:03:01.880 | as far as I'm concerned.

01:03:03.080 | - It is also, for anyone listening who doesn't know that,

01:03:07.160 | it was a source of tension because we were in Barcelona

01:03:09.920 | and my wife spoke Spanish.

01:03:11.520 | And I was so frustrated 'cause I was like,

01:03:13.120 | "Why can't you communicate?"

01:03:14.600 | I spoke French, so when we were in Paris, I could help.

01:03:17.600 | "What is going on?"

01:03:18.920 | And she was like, "It's a different language."

01:03:20.680 | And I was too naive to understand that at the time.

01:03:23.160 | - Yeah, no, no, I know.

01:03:24.000 | I mean, Spanish is great,

01:03:24.840 | and everybody does speak Spanish in Barcelona,

01:03:26.720 | but Catalan is the deep, deep language over there.

01:03:29.400 | And it's a beautiful language for sure.

01:03:32.480 | - The last thing I'll put on this list

01:03:34.000 | is there's a story you opened the book with

01:03:36.600 | that I know in a lot of interviews you started with,

01:03:38.480 | but I figure we should end on it,

01:03:39.960 | which is your situation on an airplane

01:03:42.600 | that kind of inspired you to write the book.

01:03:44.240 | - The great thing about being a social scientist

01:03:45.840 | is that the world is my laboratory,

01:03:48.640 | and all the research is actually me-search.

01:03:51.120 | That's actually the dirty secret

01:03:52.480 | of being a happiness specialist.

01:03:54.200 | And every time I start on a brand new project,

01:03:56.320 | this was a seven-year project.

01:03:57.720 | I mean, this was an unusually long project.

01:04:00.160 | It usually comes 'cause I have an experience

01:04:01.680 | that really affects me,

01:04:02.520 | and that's actually where the story started.

01:04:04.400 | Eight years ago or so, I was on a night flight

01:04:07.240 | from LA to Dulles Airport in Washington, DC,

01:04:10.160 | and I heard a couple talking behind me on the plane.

01:04:12.400 | I could kind of hear 'em,

01:04:13.760 | and I could tell that there was,

01:04:14.800 | it sounded like a married couple, a man and a woman,

01:04:16.560 | and they sounded old.

01:04:18.120 | Their voices were elderly,

01:04:19.520 | and I couldn't quite make out the husband's words,

01:04:21.320 | but I can tell by his wife's comments

01:04:23.800 | that this was serious business.

01:04:25.520 | She was consoling him and saying,

01:04:26.880 | "Oh, it's not true that it would be better

01:04:28.400 | "if you were dead.

01:04:29.420 | "It's not true that people don't love you

01:04:31.100 | "and respect you, that everybody's forgotten you."

01:04:33.200 | It's like, this went on for 20 minutes,

01:04:34.840 | and it was just, it was brutal.

01:04:37.080 | So their flight finally ends,

01:04:38.520 | and they turn on the lights, and I'm kind of curious,

01:04:41.120 | and I'm thinking, you know, look,

01:04:42.480 | I'm a student of human behavior.

01:04:44.240 | This is probably somebody who's disappointed with his life

01:04:45.960 | 'cause he didn't live up to his own dreams,

01:04:48.040 | and I stood up and turned around,

01:04:49.560 | and it was one of the most famous men in the world.

01:04:51.320 | This is somebody who's achieved 10 times

01:04:53.800 | what I will in my life.

01:04:55.880 | I would die to be this guy, so it seems,

01:04:58.440 | and if I did, I'd dine out on my success

01:05:00.240 | for the rest of my life.

01:05:01.080 | His feats of heroism are decades in the past,

01:05:04.760 | but still, he's rich, he's famous, he's got it all.

01:05:07.360 | I thought, something's up here.

01:05:08.960 | This is no insurance policy.

01:05:10.440 | That what the world tells you, that you get successful,

01:05:12.640 | and you can bank it and enjoy it for the rest of your life,

01:05:16.120 | that's a lie.

01:05:17.360 | That's an obvious lie.

01:05:18.880 | So what's the deal?

01:05:20.080 | Is he an outlier, or is he typical?

01:05:22.760 | Are the strivers the ones who tend to suffer,

01:05:25.160 | or does he just have some mood disorder?

01:05:27.440 | And that's what started this investigation

01:05:29.960 | on what we can all do to invest

01:05:31.840 | in our happiness later in life.

01:05:33.320 | They came up with a lot of the stuff

01:05:34.520 | that we're talking about today,

01:05:35.680 | was that poor man on the plane,

01:05:37.920 | and I still look him up,

01:05:39.640 | and I pray for him, and I hope for the best.

01:05:42.880 | That's all I can say.

01:05:44.000 | - Well, I for one am fortunate you had that experience,

01:05:48.320 | because it led you to all this research,

01:05:50.040 | led you to the book.

01:05:51.320 | I think I'll be a happier person in the future because of it.

01:05:53.800 | So thank you.

01:05:55.080 | Where can anyone here, other than by the book,

01:05:58.720 | follow up with what you're doing and stay in touch?

01:06:01.240 | - So I have a column every week in "The Atlantic"

01:06:04.560 | called "How to Build a Life"

01:06:05.720 | every Thursday morning in "The Atlantic."

01:06:07.360 | So subscribe to "The Atlantic,"

01:06:08.840 | 'cause you'll get on the wrong side

01:06:10.520 | of the paywall real fast,

01:06:11.920 | 'cause it turns out they wanna make money.

01:06:14.000 | Capitalists!

01:06:15.080 | Anyway, it's every Thursday morning

01:06:16.520 | called "How to Build a Life."

01:06:17.440 | And if you wanna see just all the different essays,

01:06:19.240 | and books, and things that I write about happiness,

01:06:20.720 | and even learn about my classes at Harvard,

01:06:22.680 | if you go to arthurbrooks.com, all the information's there.

01:06:25.880 | - Perfect.

01:06:28.600 | We'll link to everything in the show notes,

01:06:29.960 | and thank you so much for being here.

01:06:31.240 | - Thank you, Chris.

01:06:32.080 | Thanks for what you're doing.

01:06:33.680 | You're making me happy, too.

01:06:34.920 | (upbeat music)

01:06:37.500 | (upbeat music)

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Finding Happiness, Success and Deep Purpose | Arthur Brooks | All the Hacks #47

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