Speaker 1: Pushkin. We humans were already pretty complicated creatures, but living
Speaker 1: in the modern world has added a ton more complication
Speaker 1: to our lives. In past episodes of the Happiness Lab,
Speaker 1: we've looked at the effects of things like jobs, school grades, smartphones,
Speaker 1: and even alarm clocks on our wellbeing. These days, we
Speaker 1: have so much going on, so many things demanding our attention,
Speaker 1: and so many competing desires and emotions, that even if
Speaker 1: you know what you're supposed to be doing, it often
Speaker 1: feels like it's still hard to stay on track. It's
Speaker 1: a bit like being a charioteer holding the reins of
Speaker 1: too powerful but mismatched horses. You know you want to
Speaker 1: reach a happy place, but each of the steeds keeps
Speaker 1: going off in different directions. It's exhausting, but you'll only
Speaker 1: reach your desired destination if you can get the horses
Speaker 1: to work in harmony and pull together. Now, I know
Speaker 1: what you're thinking, chariots, wayward horses. What's that got to
Speaker 1: do with me navigating the modern world? Well. Even though
Speaker 1: the science of happiness is a relatively new academic field,
Speaker 1: most of the ideas underpinning all this research are far
Speaker 1: from recent thinkers philosophers and spiritual leaders stretching back thousands
Speaker 1: of years have figured out many important well being lessons
Speaker 1: that are not only hugely relevant for all of us today,
Speaker 1: but are backed up by the modern science. And that
Speaker 1: includes my seemingly weird metaphor about the chariot. And so
Speaker 1: in this many season of the Happiness Lab, I want
Speaker 1: to explore some of the well being concepts that the
Speaker 1: ancient philosophies and great religions got right old school tips
Speaker 1: that are borne out by the science, and ones that
Speaker 1: have personally helped me in my own quest to be
Speaker 1: happier too. So welcome to Happiness Lessons of the Ancients
Speaker 1: with me, Doctor Laurie Sanders Aristotle. He is absurd, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems fine. This is to Mark Gendler, Professor of
Speaker 1: philosoph in Cognitive Science at Yale University. One two, three, Okay,
Speaker 1: and the volume still looks okay on And also one
Speaker 1: of my oldest and dearest friends, does that work all right? Okay?
Speaker 1: Tomorrow and I talk pretty much every day, so it's
Speaker 1: a little bit weird to be recording one of our
Speaker 1: conversations for you all. And thanks to social distancing, we
Speaker 1: can't even meet in person right now. So Tomorrow is
Speaker 1: getting a crash course on how to use one of
Speaker 1: my spare recorders. Okay, let me give them another five.
Speaker 1: And she's taken to podcasting like a total pro. I
Speaker 1: am totally ready to go. Hello. Tomorrow also teaches a
Speaker 1: super popular class at Yale. It's called Philosophy and the
Speaker 1: Science of Human Nature. Her class looks way back in
Speaker 1: history to find philosophical solutions to the problems we all
Speaker 1: face today. The idea that the most interesting answer to
Speaker 1: the question that you're trying to ask would be given
Speaker 1: by somebody who happens to be on earth with you
Speaker 1: right now is a real mistake. Sometimes the most interesting
Speaker 1: answer is something that somebody gave two thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: or on a completely different continent, or in a completely
Speaker 1: different context. The story of the Chariot and the uncooperative
Speaker 1: horses is an analogy I find really useful when reason
Speaker 1: tells me I should be shooting for my happiness goals,
Speaker 1: but my desires, doubts, and emotions keep pulling me off course.
Speaker 1: It's a powerful analogy, and it comes from the work
Speaker 1: of ancient Greek philosophers. One of the areas to our
Speaker 1: teaches in her course, there was a period about twenty
Speaker 1: five hundred years ago in ancient Greece where a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of really smart people directed their attention to a
Speaker 1: set of really interesting and important questions, and society structured
Speaker 1: itself in such a way that those individuals were given
Speaker 1: the freedom and the leisure and the luxury to think
Speaker 1: about those questions as their profession. What they did for
Speaker 1: their job was think about what does it mean for
Speaker 1: human beings to flourish? And the community of individuals talking
Speaker 1: to one another about that question meant that they made
Speaker 1: more progress on it than other people have at other times.
Speaker 1: And so it's a great luxury to be able to
Speaker 1: help ourselves to their wisdom. So today we're going to
Speaker 1: focus in on one of the ancients who in my
Speaker 1: view is really considered sort of the father of positive psychology,
Speaker 1: this field of the science of well being, and that
Speaker 1: is Aristotle. So give us Aristotle one on one. Who
Speaker 1: was Aristotle and why was he so important? So Aristotle
Speaker 1: was a guy from the countryside. He didn't come from Athens,
Speaker 1: and his parents died when he was quite young, so
Speaker 1: he was an orphan. And when he was seventeen he
Speaker 1: was brought to Athens to study in Plato's academy, and
Speaker 1: he liked school so much that he stayed there as
Speaker 1: a student for another twenty years. And Aristotle was just
Speaker 1: one of the greatest polymath thinkers in the history of
Speaker 1: Western civilization. In addition to the work that he did
Speaker 1: in philosophy, he's the inventor of physics a field, of
Speaker 1: biology as a field. He was a great theorist of poetry,
Speaker 1: a great theorist of drama and theater. And one of
Speaker 1: the major activities that he undertook was to try to
Speaker 1: figure out what a well lived human life might look like.
Speaker 1: And so he came up with two concepts that I
Speaker 1: think are super important when we try to think about
Speaker 1: happiness in the modern day. And so one of these
Speaker 1: concepts was what he called you diamonia, Like what is
Speaker 1: you diamonia? Yes, So you diamonia has as its middle
Speaker 1: word the word diamond or spirit. And if you've read
Speaker 1: his Dark Materials books, which are a wonderful series of
Speaker 1: children's books, you'll notice that the spirit animal that people
Speaker 1: have in those books is called their diamond. So you
Speaker 1: daimonia is roughly spiritual, flourishing, spiritual, well being the thriving
Speaker 1: of what some traditions call the human soul, what you
Speaker 1: might call the human mind or human spirit. And so
Speaker 1: when we think of you, Diamondia, we think of sort
Speaker 1: of spiritual flourishing. But the way Aristotle thought of you, Diamondia,
Speaker 1: was a little bit different than we often think about
Speaker 1: happiness these days, right, Like, it wasn't really happiness in
Speaker 1: the moment, It was kind of a bigger, deeper, almost
Speaker 1: like moral happiness. Right. You might think of two distinct
Speaker 1: notions of happiness. There are many, but here are two.
Speaker 1: One is what we might call hedonistic happiness, the indulgence
Speaker 1: of shortlived pleasures, so the pleasures of eating or of sex,
Speaker 1: And that's an important part of what it is to
Speaker 1: be a human being, taking pleasure in the physical world
Speaker 1: around you. But Aristotle was interested in a richer and
Speaker 1: more robust, and more lasting notion of what happiness would be,
Speaker 1: not just shortlived hedonistic pleasure, long lived thriving. And he
Speaker 1: had a picture that there was a certain function for
Speaker 1: which human beings were ideally built. So just as the
Speaker 1: function of a knife is to cut well, and the
Speaker 1: function of a paperweight is to hold down papers, the
Speaker 1: function of a human being is to be able to
Speaker 1: express virtue and reason, that is, to participate in the
Speaker 1: things that are the highest form of the good in
Speaker 1: the world. And so you diamonia is a kind of
Speaker 1: thriving that involves spending as much of your time and
Speaker 1: as complete of your activity in a state where you
Speaker 1: are doing things that are good, that are virtuous, that
Speaker 1: are pleasurable to you because you have turned yourself into
Speaker 1: someone who takes pleasure in virtue, and so you diamonia,
Speaker 1: in contrast to hedonism, is a kind of lasting rather
Speaker 1: than short lived pleasure. And it's so cool that Aristotle
Speaker 1: came up with this so long ago, right, because this
Speaker 1: is what's being born out in a lot of the
Speaker 1: modern science of happiness, right. You know, on this podcast,
Speaker 1: we talk a lot about data suggesting that your circumstances
Speaker 1: don't necessarily make you happy. You know, you could be
Speaker 1: rich and have the opportunities to engage in all kinds
Speaker 1: of hedonistic pleasure, but a lot of folks self report
Speaker 1: that leaves them kind of empty, that they're kind of
Speaker 1: missing something. And so Aristotle was kind of on top
Speaker 1: of this, like you know, two thousand years ago, right, Well,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting that each era uses a particular mode
Speaker 1: of understanding as its best way of making sense of
Speaker 1: the world. And one of the things I try to
Speaker 1: teach in my course is that there's lots of methodologies
Speaker 1: to coming to the same insight. And so neuroscience gives
Speaker 1: us one way of looking at what is it for
Speaker 1: us to be in a state of happiness or harmony,
Speaker 1: and behavioral psychology gives us another way of testing and
Speaker 1: measuring that, and literary representations give us another way of
Speaker 1: identifying this. And the kind of work that Aristotle did,
Speaker 1: a speculative, systematic, philosophical exploration of what he observed in
Speaker 1: those around him, is a methodology that very often brings
Speaker 1: us to the same sorts of insights that we might
Speaker 1: get from literature or neuroscience or behavioral psychology. I think
Speaker 1: the fact that you need to do that kind of
Speaker 1: philosophical inquiry for these insights is important, right because another
Speaker 1: thing that comes up on this podcast is that we
Speaker 1: often have incorrect notions of the kinds of things that
Speaker 1: make us happy. Right when we do a super fast introspection,
Speaker 1: we can think, oh, I just want all the hedonistic
Speaker 1: pleasures and some good food and sects and nice stuff
Speaker 1: to watch on Netflix, but in fact, if you really
Speaker 1: do a deep dive, that seems to be not what works.
Speaker 1: I think the idea that the surface gives you one
Speaker 1: kind of information, but at assembling a lot of surface
Speaker 1: phenomena and then looking at what lies more deeply behind
Speaker 1: them gives you a deeper understanding is an incredibly important insight.
Speaker 1: And a lot of what the philosophical work that happened
Speaker 1: in ancient Athens twenty five hundred years ago does is
Speaker 1: to say, don't get deluded by this particular momentary sense.
Speaker 1: Look instead at how these things patterned together, and you
Speaker 1: will have a deeper understanding of what matters to human beings.
Speaker 1: And so Aristotle, using that same approach, came up with
Speaker 1: a different concept that I think is important for modern
Speaker 1: science and happiness, which is a kind of different thing
Speaker 1: that we get wrong, which is how our knowledge can
Speaker 1: help us and how we get to know about happiness.
Speaker 1: And this was his idea of phrensus. So what was
Speaker 1: this concept of phreness? So phrenesis is often translated as
Speaker 1: practical wisdom. To understand what that means, think about the
Speaker 1: contrast between what we sometimes call the theoretic and what
Speaker 1: we call the practical or the difference between knowing that
Speaker 1: something is a case and knowing how to do something. So,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to figure out how to do something
Speaker 1: like throw a baseball or play the piano, or respond
Speaker 1: in a calm and temperate fashion when you're under a
Speaker 1: situation of agitation, you can have a theoretical understanding of it.
Speaker 1: You can understand lots of things about the physics of baseballs,
Speaker 1: or about the acoustical properties of a piano, or you
Speaker 1: can read a therapy book and understand what it is
Speaker 1: when people respond calmly. That's theoretical wisdom. But the theoretical
Speaker 1: wisdom doesn't give you the capacity to engage in the
Speaker 1: action you want to engage in. In order to do that,
Speaker 1: you actually need what Aristotle would call practical wisdom, a
Speaker 1: kind of skill, the skill that comes from practicing the
Speaker 1: activity about which you want to make progress. And so
Speaker 1: Aristotle really thought that you diamonia isn't just kind of
Speaker 1: something that we're born with or something we can kind
Speaker 1: of get too theoretically. He really thought it was something
Speaker 1: that you get to in a skill based way. Right,
Speaker 1: So Aristotle thought the strategy by which we gain this
Speaker 1: kind of deeper thriving, the spiritual well being that you
Speaker 1: Diamonia is the strategy of making ourselves into the kind
Speaker 1: of people who are virtuous and who take pleasure in virtue.
Speaker 1: So it's a kind of self education project of building
Speaker 1: up in yourself the kind of soul you want to have.
Speaker 1: You make yourself into the person that you want to be,
Speaker 1: and Aristotle is really aware of the way in which
Speaker 1: that can be self reinforcing. You want yourself to become
Speaker 1: a particular kind of person, and you practice being that
Speaker 1: kind of person, and doing that kind of activity thereby
Speaker 1: becomes pleasurable to you. And this is something that's also
Speaker 1: really nicely borne out in the modern science. In one
Speaker 1: of our podcast episodes, I interviewed as scientists Sonya Lubermerski.
Speaker 1: In her book The How of Happiness, she has this
Speaker 1: wonderful quote that, you know, just as you learn a
Speaker 1: violin by playing it, or just as you kind of
Speaker 1: put a lot of work into raising a child, if
Speaker 1: you want to bump up your happiness levels, you actually
Speaker 1: have to put the work in. And that work isn't
Speaker 1: just kind of theoretical work, it's actually engaging with it
Speaker 1: in a real way and actually building up your happiness
Speaker 1: kind of like a skill set, like from the ground up.
Speaker 1: So the quote that you gave from Sonya Lubermersky is
Speaker 1: actually a direct reference to Aristotle, who famously says that
Speaker 1: we become builders by building, and we become harpists by
Speaker 1: playing the harp. And then he goes on to say
Speaker 1: that just as the way you learn to be a
Speaker 1: builder is by building, building us, and the way you
Speaker 1: learn to play the harp is by playing the harp,
Speaker 1: so too, says Aristotle, we become just by doing just actions,
Speaker 1: temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.
Speaker 1: That is the way that we come to have practical
Speaker 1: wisdom is by practicing the skill that we want to
Speaker 1: cultivate so that it becomes natural to us. And Aristotle
Speaker 1: also had good ideas about which particular kinds of actions
Speaker 1: we should want to practice, right like, what are the
Speaker 1: kinds of actions that will actually make us a virtuous
Speaker 1: and therefore spiritually happy person. When we get back from
Speaker 1: the break, we'll dive into that specific ways the Aristotle
Speaker 1: thought we could achieve happiness, And what we'll see is
Speaker 1: that he devoted two whole chapters to something you might
Speaker 1: not think is that important, the Happiness Lab. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. So people who listen to the podcast hear
Speaker 1: a lot about the kinds of things they can do
Speaker 1: to be happy that are borne out by modern science.
Speaker 1: When Aristotle thought about spiritual well being, this idea of eudaimonia,
Speaker 1: what are the kinds of things he thought we should
Speaker 1: be paying attention to, What are the sorts of actions
Speaker 1: he wanted us to engage with. So he was really
Speaker 1: interested in developing character that was what he called moderate
Speaker 1: in exactly the right ways. And he viewed the virtues
Speaker 1: that help us thrive as cases of behavior that are
Speaker 1: intermediate between two extremes. So it's easiest to think about
Speaker 1: this in the case of something like bravery, where you
Speaker 1: have an extreme of being a coward, you have an
Speaker 1: extreme of being reckless, and in between those two things
Speaker 1: is bravery, which Aristotle thinks of as the perfect moderate virtue.
Speaker 1: Or with regard to your character, you could be somber,
Speaker 1: or you could be a buffoon, or you could be
Speaker 1: somebody with a good sense of humor. And I love
Speaker 1: this idea of the middle way because you know it
Speaker 1: fits with some of the things that we talk about
Speaker 1: on the podcast, which is this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: you got to take baby steps towards the sorts of
Speaker 1: actions you want to engage in to become happier. Right,
Speaker 1: if I tell you that you know gratitude is really important,
Speaker 1: for example, you don't want to so double down on
Speaker 1: gratitude that you're stressing yourself out. So it's engaging in virtue,
Speaker 1: but almost in a moderate sort, baby step sort of way.
Speaker 1: And the nice thing about thinking of virtue as the
Speaker 1: middle way is that you always know what the next
Speaker 1: thing to do is. If you're aiming to be brave
Speaker 1: and you're a cowardly person, you don't have to get
Speaker 1: all the way over to bravery. You just have to
Speaker 1: take a small step towards bravery, and you're moving to
Speaker 1: the middle. So by giving us a center to move towards,
Speaker 1: we can make progress without being overwhelmed at the prospect
Speaker 1: of what it is that we need to change. We
Speaker 1: just need to change a little bit and then the
Speaker 1: next day a little bit more. And as Aristotle likes
Speaker 1: to point out, this becomes self reinforcing. He says, abstaining
Speaker 1: from pleasures makes us become temperate, and once we've become temperate,
Speaker 1: we're more capable of abstaining from pleasures. It's similar with bravery.
Speaker 1: Habituation in standing firm in frightening situations makes us brave,
Speaker 1: and once we've become brave, we're more capable of standing firm.
Speaker 1: So if you want to be a brave person, act
Speaker 1: the way a brave person acts, and you will manifest
Speaker 1: bravery and you will be reinforced in your experience about
Speaker 1: how pleasurable and possible it is for you to act bravely.
Speaker 1: So Aristotle talked a lot about different virtues, and that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons his book was really book not
Speaker 1: about happiness or eudaimonia, but it was a book about ethics. Right,
Speaker 1: So talk about this important book and why it was
Speaker 1: so powerful and Western thought. Sure, this is a book
Speaker 1: called the nicomickeon Ethics, and it's a book in which
Speaker 1: Aristotle tries to spell out what is it to live
Speaker 1: a virtuous life. But his notion of virtue is a
Speaker 1: really broad one. He means not just a life that
Speaker 1: is a moral life, but a life that for the
Speaker 1: individual brings them this eudaimonia, thriving and happiness and that
Speaker 1: for the society contributes to a society in which there's
Speaker 1: thriving and happiness. So this is a book about how
Speaker 1: to live well morally, how to live well happily, and
Speaker 1: how to live well in a way that is part
Speaker 1: of a harmonious society where all are in a position
Speaker 1: to thrive. And this is where I think the science
Speaker 1: really backs Aristotle up right, because one thing we know
Speaker 1: is even if you're just shooting for the happy life,
Speaker 1: the data really suggests that what you want to do
Speaker 1: is to live a moral life. You want to live
Speaker 1: a life where you're doing nice things for others. You
Speaker 1: want to live a life where you're really feeling connected
Speaker 1: to other people, where you're doing something that is a
Speaker 1: job that gives you a meaning. So in some sense,
Speaker 1: even if you were just shooting for the eudaimonia part,
Speaker 1: you'd get these other two parts as well. Right, It's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Aristotle thinks that human beings are creatures where
Speaker 1: it's possible to become someone in whom what gives you
Speaker 1: pleasure is causing other people to thrive and do well. So,
Speaker 1: for Aristotle, a healthy, thriving, virtuous individual is a person
Speaker 1: who takes pleasure in others also having lives that are
Speaker 1: filled with meaning. Who takes pleasure in being a situation
Speaker 1: where those around them are also doing well. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that Aristotle devoted two whole chapters
Speaker 1: in this important book to something that we might not
Speaker 1: think about when we think about virtue and ethics necessarily, right,
Speaker 1: So what were those two chapters about? Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: great question. So this book, which has ten chapters there
Speaker 1: were ten papyrus scrolls on which the book was written,
Speaker 1: devotes chapters eight and nine to the topic of friendship,
Speaker 1: and he thinks friendship is incredibly important throughout our entire lives.
Speaker 1: He says the young need friendship to keep them from error,
Speaker 1: the old need friendship to care for them and to
Speaker 1: support the actions that fail because of weakness, and those
Speaker 1: in their prime need friendship to do fine actions, for
Speaker 1: they are more capable of understanding and acting when two
Speaker 1: go together. And his idea of friendship was in part
Speaker 1: for a kind of you know, hedonistic pleasure. You know,
Speaker 1: you get some utility out of it, but he also
Speaker 1: thought that friends could affect our happiness in a deeper
Speaker 1: and more meaningful way as well. Actually, he distinguishes among
Speaker 1: three different kinds of friendship. There's a kind of friendship,
Speaker 1: a relatively shallow kind of friendship, which is friendship based
Speaker 1: on utility. I'm friends with you because I get something
Speaker 1: out of it, and your friends with me because you
Speaker 1: get something out of it. There's a second kind of friendship,
Speaker 1: which is a little bit richer, which is a friendship
Speaker 1: based on pleasure, where I enjoy your company and you
Speaker 1: enjoy my company. The kind of friendship that Aristotle is
Speaker 1: really interested in is a friendship that's based on mutual
Speaker 1: appreciation of one another's deep values. And whereas the first
Speaker 1: two kinds of friendship are accidental, they're limited in depth,
Speaker 1: they don't last a long time. A friendship that's based
Speaker 1: on a deep appreciation of how my being in your
Speaker 1: presence makes me a better person, and your being in
Speaker 1: my presence makes you a better person is a kind
Speaker 1: of friendship that's lasting, and it fits with Aristotle's general
Speaker 1: picture that what we want to do is to get
Speaker 1: ourselves into self reinforcing cycles where we're doing something that works,
Speaker 1: and because we're doing it and it works, we keep
Speaker 1: doing it. So Aristotle calls a friend a second self,
Speaker 1: and he thinks that one of the ways in which
Speaker 1: we can help ourselves cultivate practical wisdom is by finding
Speaker 1: friends who support us in that activity. So if I
Speaker 1: want to be brave, I say to you, my virtuous,
Speaker 1: deep friend, let's work on bravery together. And I reinforce
Speaker 1: your bravery, you reinforce my bravery. I get an extra
Speaker 1: self to help me remain committed to what I want
Speaker 1: to do, not just theoretically but practically, not just in
Speaker 1: my head, but also in my actions. And this too
Speaker 1: fits with a lot of what we know about the
Speaker 1: science of habits. Right. You know, when you're trying to
Speaker 1: stick to a new virtuous habit, or even just some
Speaker 1: habit that will improve your happiness, say you want to
Speaker 1: exercise more, you want to meditate, or right in your
Speaker 1: gratitude journal, one of the things you can do from
Speaker 1: the habit literature is to find social support. Right, you
Speaker 1: find a friend who's good at that, who you can
Speaker 1: kind of say, hey, I'm going to do this with you,
Speaker 1: and then you do that together. Which is funny to
Speaker 1: tell you, Tomar, because you are my exercise buddy, my
Speaker 1: hiking buddy, my yoga buddy. So Laurie Laurie is the person.
Speaker 1: In fact, when Laurie had a broken leg, I discovered
Speaker 1: that my second self had stopped hiking, and so my
Speaker 1: first self stopped hiking. So it was a great relief
Speaker 1: to me when your leg got strong enough again for
Speaker 1: us to walk together. But yes, this idea that one
Speaker 1: of the ways that you can stick to your commitments
Speaker 1: is to surround yourself by others who are also committed
Speaker 1: to those things. It's part of really every wisdom traditions.
Speaker 1: So in the Buddhist wisdom tradition, there's a notion that
Speaker 1: they call right association, that is, surround yourself by others
Speaker 1: who are also committed to this path towards spiritual enlightenment.
Speaker 1: And almost every religious tradition involves communal activity of a
Speaker 1: kind that says, put yourself in a setting where others
Speaker 1: are also trying to pursue that kind of spiritual transcendence.
Speaker 1: And in fact, that was actually the inspiration for one
Speaker 1: of the rewirements, these sort of happiness practices that I
Speaker 1: did with my class. One of the things I asked
Speaker 1: my students to do is to take what I call
Speaker 1: a strength date, where you hang out with a friend
Speaker 1: and you both try to pursue some virtue that you
Speaker 1: want to get better at, some strength that you want
Speaker 1: to enhance, but the idea is to do it with
Speaker 1: somebody else. And in fact, there's evidence for Marty Seliman's
Speaker 1: group that this act of doing a strength date with
Speaker 1: somebody can kind of give a nice boot to your
Speaker 1: well being. So you've been a scholar of Aristotle for
Speaker 1: some time now, have you been following the middle way
Speaker 1: using his insights to go after your own udaimonia? Pretty
Speaker 1: Much everything that Aristotle instructs us to do is a
Speaker 1: part of my own attempt at self improvement. The recognition
Speaker 1: that what I needed to do to change a bad
Speaker 1: habit was just to move a little bit towards a
Speaker 1: better version of it was an incredible relief to me
Speaker 1: as I found myself feeling overwhelmed by changes that I
Speaker 1: want to make, and the idea that in order to
Speaker 1: become somebody who had virtues that I wanted, all I
Speaker 1: had to do was start acting as if I already
Speaker 1: had those virtues was unbelievably liberating and transformative for me.
Speaker 1: We're about the friend part, and for almost every change
Speaker 1: that I wanted to make, the realization that I had
Speaker 1: a second self available to help me do that. Most
Speaker 1: often in things at home, that partner was my spouse
Speaker 1: or one of my children. But for the big changes
Speaker 1: that I wanted to make in my life, my friendship
Speaker 1: actually with you, Laurie, was one of the factors that
Speaker 1: really enabled me to make those changes. And I feel
Speaker 1: like the combination of Aristotle's wisdom from twenty five hundred
Speaker 1: years ago and your friendship from one and a half
Speaker 1: decades has been the key to allowing me to thrive
Speaker 1: and flourish. Well. That is sweet to hear you say,
Speaker 1: and right back after you, because I feel like when
Speaker 1: I think about the people who are pleasurable friends or
Speaker 1: friends of utility versus the ones that are real friends
Speaker 1: of meeting, friends that get me towards for two, you
Speaker 1: are right up there too. So yeah, thank you, And
Speaker 1: I just I mean, I hadn't realized it really has
Speaker 1: been fifteen years. That's disturbing that it makes sense. The
Speaker 1: things Tomorrow has taught me about Aristotle have helped me
Speaker 1: a ton in my own quest to be happier and
Speaker 1: more virtuous, things like the need to take action to
Speaker 1: become the person you want to be and the fact
Speaker 1: that all those tiny baby steps matter a lot. But
Speaker 1: of course one episode isn't going to be enough to
Speaker 1: explore everything the ancient Greeks thought about achieving happiness. So
Speaker 1: I hope you'll join me and tomorrow again next time
Speaker 1: when we introduce you to a different Greek thinker, Plato
Speaker 1: and his advice for how you can control that horse
Speaker 1: drawn chariot I keep talking about. If you've enjoyed the show,
Speaker 1: I'd be super grateful if you could spread the word
Speaker 1: by leaving a rating interview. It really does help other
Speaker 1: listeners find us, and don't forget to tell your friends.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley.
Speaker 1: The show was mastered by Evan Viola, and our original
Speaker 1: music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to the
Speaker 1: entire Pushkin crew, including mil La Belle, Carl Migliori, Heather Faine,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and my agent, Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos