Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Katie Kuric, and this is next question. Today.
Speaker 1: We're going to be exploring happiness because we seem to
Speaker 1: be obsessed with that as a culture. Just look to
Speaker 1: hire ed. Some of the most elite universities tout courses
Speaker 1: on happiness, the science of it, the value of it,
Speaker 1: the history and future of it. There are podcasts about happiness,
Speaker 1: whole genres of earnest TV shows built to temporarily evoke it.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at you, Ted Lasso. Why are we all
Speaker 1: so smitten with happiness? Is it because the world is burning,
Speaker 1: because we're doom scrolling, because the internet makes us want
Speaker 1: what we can't have. Let's find out. My guest today
Speaker 1: is none other than happiness expert and one of those
Speaker 1: aforementioned happiness scholars, Arthur C. Brooks. Arthur also writes a
Speaker 1: regular column for The Atlantic on happiness, and his most
Speaker 1: recent book is called From Strength to Strength, Finding Success,
Speaker 1: Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second half of Life.
Speaker 1: Here's our conversation, with all due respect, Arthur, what makes you?
Speaker 1: What what makes you qualified? And what makes you an
Speaker 1: expert on happiness? Yeah? So, I I am a PhD
Speaker 1: social scientist and I have studied behavioral economics and as
Speaker 1: social psychological principles my entire career. I started off by
Speaker 1: studying beauty and why people admire things, why people love
Speaker 1: and are attracted to beauty. Later I was studying philanthropy
Speaker 1: and sharitable giving, why people voluntarily serve other people, And
Speaker 1: I kept finding that in those two areas, the tap
Speaker 1: root was happiness. The tap root was trying to live
Speaker 1: a better life. And so I thought to myself as
Speaker 1: I as I got to the middle part of my career,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to study the main thing, the
Speaker 1: main thing that everybody wants. You know, I have the
Speaker 1: I have the skills to look at these things. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm trained and applied statistics and all of these things
Speaker 1: that people suffer through and they're getting their PhDs. But
Speaker 1: it's very easy to get kind of stuck, you know,
Speaker 1: studying marginal things. And when I started talking about the
Speaker 1: science of happiness, which there really is a huge science.
Speaker 1: I'm really bringing in the neuroscience and the social science
Speaker 1: and the philosophy of happiness, and and using my academic
Speaker 1: skills to bring these things together, I found everybody wanted
Speaker 1: to know more. And this is the magic part of
Speaker 1: the Katie. You know, we're all we all have skills,
Speaker 1: you know, we've all worked hard to be good at
Speaker 1: what we're doing. The real question for us in our
Speaker 1: careers is the why. And I got to the point
Speaker 1: in my life when I said, you know what, the
Speaker 1: why of my career is to lift people up and
Speaker 1: bring them together. And the way that I can do
Speaker 1: that is using my knowledge and my skills to help
Speaker 1: them pursue their happiness. And so I decided I was
Speaker 1: going to do that for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: Do you think happiness is the wrong word for what
Speaker 1: we're all searching for? Because it can be so fleeting
Speaker 1: and so elusive, and I'm not sure if it is
Speaker 1: even accurate in terms of what you talk about in
Speaker 1: your book, right, Yeah, I know. So that's actually that's
Speaker 1: the first issue that I raised in my class. I
Speaker 1: teach a class in the Science of Happiness at the
Speaker 1: Harvard Business School and I have a hundred eight students
Speaker 1: in about four hundred on the waiting list. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a class that obviously, hey, kids free candy.
Speaker 1: I mean they I mean, happiness is something that they
Speaker 1: think they want. And one of the the ways that
Speaker 1: I reasons I use the word happiness is to bring
Speaker 1: people in. And then when we're talking with more precision,
Speaker 1: we boil it down a little bit more So on
Speaker 1: the first day of class, I say, Okay, you spent
Speaker 1: all your elective points to get into the happiness class.
Speaker 1: You obviously must know what it is. So what is
Speaker 1: it in a cold column, which is you know? You
Speaker 1: go out and see you Okay, you know what's happiness?
Speaker 1: And they'll say, that's the feeling I get when you know,
Speaker 1: I see my family and Thanksgiving or something, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk about their feelings, and I say, no, that's not right.
Speaker 1: That's like saying that your Thanksgiving dinner is the smell
Speaker 1: of the turkey. You wouldn't say that. I mean that
Speaker 1: the smell of the turkey is evidence of Thanksgiving dinner,
Speaker 1: and your feelings of happiness are evidence and stuff, something deeper,
Speaker 1: more profound, a real phenomenon that you can study and
Speaker 1: practice and share. And then we start to develop the
Speaker 1: idea and the truth is that happiness is really a
Speaker 1: combination of three things, as a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction,
Speaker 1: and purpose. Those are the big three things that people
Speaker 1: are looking for and the truth is you need all
Speaker 1: kinds of experiences and emotions, You even need unhappiness to
Speaker 1: get those things. You need a full life, fully alive,
Speaker 1: and and the science actually brings out all those ideas.
Speaker 1: So you're right, we got to get people's attention. But
Speaker 1: happiness is a much deeper phenomenon than just hey, I
Speaker 1: feel happy. I think of words like contentment, fulfillment, and
Speaker 1: inner peace, even as happneyed as that phrases, when I
Speaker 1: think about what one's goal should be. Right, So the
Speaker 1: way to think about that, so contentment is really important.
Speaker 1: That's part of satisfaction with life. And so the key
Speaker 1: thing is that all the happiest people they haven't um
Speaker 1: and think about it kind of like the macronutrients. You know,
Speaker 1: when you say dinner is protein, carbohydrates and fat. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a clinical way to look at dinner.
Speaker 1: It's not very romantic, but you know it's like, join
Speaker 1: me for dinner of protein, carbohydrates and fat. It's not
Speaker 1: that great. But the truth is, if you want to
Speaker 1: be healthy, you need all those three things in balance
Speaker 1: and abundance. Happiness basically as a way that we need
Speaker 1: to understand how to enjoy our lives, you know, from
Speaker 1: moment to moment, and which is not pleasure. It's it's
Speaker 1: something much deeper, something much more human than than than pleasure.
Speaker 1: And there's a whole science behind that. Satisfaction is is
Speaker 1: the piece that you get when you you achieve something
Speaker 1: that you've really worked for. That's the sense of contentment
Speaker 1: with your life because you've met your goals. Now that
Speaker 1: can be a curse to Yeah, we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: later because I know I'm dying to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Saction is a real killer, but it can be. But
Speaker 1: then there's purpose and meaning and that's the that's really
Speaker 1: the deepest of all. You know, what is my life
Speaker 1: all about? You know how? What's the coherence? What's the
Speaker 1: general direction of my life? Why am I alive? And
Speaker 1: that takes a whole lot of work and a whole
Speaker 1: lot of suffering for people to understand the answer to
Speaker 1: that question, and nobody wants to suffer, and we don't
Speaker 1: need to look for it. It It will, in point, in
Speaker 1: fact find all of us. And so those three things altogether,
Speaker 1: they encompassed so many things and so many skills, and
Speaker 1: that's what's my privilege to write and teach, But I'm
Speaker 1: curious what about our society today has made people have
Speaker 1: this yearning to learn more, to do more. I think
Speaker 1: if I told my parents when I was growing up, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to be happy, and what can
Speaker 1: we do to be happy? I mean, it does sound
Speaker 1: marginally or moderately, I guess self indulgent to say to
Speaker 1: our parents generation. I think, but what is happening right
Speaker 1: now in the culture where people need this and they
Speaker 1: want it and they're yearning for it. Yeah. A couple
Speaker 1: of different things have happened along the way. And I
Speaker 1: ever remember I was having a conversation with my dad.
Speaker 1: I changed careers. I was a classical musician for a
Speaker 1: long time in my late twenties. I knew I was
Speaker 1: going to have to change careers and I told my
Speaker 1: dad I was going to do and he said, what
Speaker 1: You're successful? Things are going well, he said, He said,
Speaker 1: why do you want to do that? And I said, Dad,
Speaker 1: I'm not happy? And he said, what makes you so special? Right? Totally? Totally, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it. Well, a couple of things have happened.
Speaker 1: Number one is happiness as a science has really exploded.
Speaker 1: And two generations ago, or even one generation ago, people
Speaker 1: didn't realize that. They really thought it was a nice
Speaker 1: to have, you know, good luck, live right, played by
Speaker 1: the rules, try to get lucky, you know, when it
Speaker 1: comes to happiness. And we actually know a lot more
Speaker 1: than we did about that. In many ways, it follows
Speaker 1: the advent of care for mental illness or for even
Speaker 1: mood disorders, where you know, in nineteen fifty or even
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, people just had to suffer, and now we
Speaker 1: know that there's a lot that you can do. The
Speaker 1: happiness science is not trying to get you from behind
Speaker 1: the line of scrimmage to you know, functioning adequately. It's
Speaker 1: going for you know, people who are functioning pretty well
Speaker 1: to to be kind of fitness, you know, junkies. There's
Speaker 1: sort of people who are in good health, but they
Speaker 1: really want to work by going to the gym and
Speaker 1: getting better at that. Another thing that my parents generation
Speaker 1: thought was completely crazy. Here's the other problem. That's actually
Speaker 1: why there's been such an explosion of interest. Happiness is declining.
Speaker 1: We've seen actually happiness and decline since about and you know,
Speaker 1: you and I were you know, as like young adults
Speaker 1: and these and and you know, in those days and
Speaker 1: and I mean, that's pretty extraordinary that it would be
Speaker 1: declining at a time when income is going up, when
Speaker 1: stand of living is going up, literacy is going up,
Speaker 1: child mortality is going down. Most indicators of what a
Speaker 1: good life is are going in one direction, but happiness
Speaker 1: is going in the other directions. So you've got to
Speaker 1: ask what's actually going on and when people are I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't study air unless you don't have enough of it,
Speaker 1: and so that's a little of what's happening to I think, well,
Speaker 1: I thought that there were a lot of things that
Speaker 1: weren't going up. You know, a lot of people, uh
Speaker 1: younger generation don't feel that they'll be as successful as
Speaker 1: their perrents. They I think, worry about climate change, They
Speaker 1: worry about sort of the economy, there's so many They
Speaker 1: worry about democracy. So are these things really as good
Speaker 1: as you say they are? Well, part of the there
Speaker 1: is the difference between things getting better and what we're
Speaker 1: worried about, what we're worried about the future. And the
Speaker 1: key thing that we all know from our own lives
Speaker 1: is things can be pretty good, but if you're in
Speaker 1: bad shape for your happiness, you're gonna be very worried
Speaker 1: about the future, and you're only going to see the
Speaker 1: negative side of everything. So this is a lot of
Speaker 1: what we see. Look, there are concerns, there are all
Speaker 1: kinds of things that we need to do differently to.
Speaker 1: We do need to work on our democracy, we do
Speaker 1: need to work on on all sorts of social issues
Speaker 1: to make our world better. But when people are very
Speaker 1: fired up, and quite frankly, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people that are our age that are trying to conscript
Speaker 1: young people as kind of child soldiers into a culture
Speaker 1: war and kind of a baby boit more culture are
Speaker 1: on right and left. Let's make everybody is afraid and
Speaker 1: angry as they can possibly be. But they're they're they're
Speaker 1: willing to join up forces like that when the when
Speaker 1: the happiness is too low, when people are in a
Speaker 1: good place, they're less likely to say, look, I understand
Speaker 1: there's problems, but life is pretty good. And when they
Speaker 1: say no, everything's rotten, you know we're all going to
Speaker 1: be in trouble. You know. The truth is that young
Speaker 1: people today they have as much opportunity and actually more
Speaker 1: prosperity than people have ever had before. But it's hard
Speaker 1: to see the good things when you don't actually feel
Speaker 1: the happiness in the in life around you. Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about that. Why is happiness on the decline? If
Speaker 1: in fact things are pretty good and and the world
Speaker 1: is helping along and things are as good as you
Speaker 1: say they are, why his happiness declined. It's not as
Speaker 1: if it's great for everybody. I mean, it's like, as
Speaker 1: they say, your results may vary in almost anything, and
Speaker 1: so there's some people who truly are suffering. And so
Speaker 1: we don't want to make minimize that. Even if things
Speaker 1: are going in the right direction in terms of trends,
Speaker 1: we don't you know, individuals might have been having a
Speaker 1: hard time and there's still lots to do. So we
Speaker 1: have to emphasize the fact that things aren't perfect and
Speaker 1: we all have an opportunity to make things better. So
Speaker 1: that's really good. But what happens is when things are
Speaker 1: on balance, pretty prosperous and pretty free, but we don't
Speaker 1: see it. You have to look to other kinds of forces,
Speaker 1: and what we find is basically that we have a
Speaker 1: world that's been kind of torqued towards these idols that
Speaker 1: a lot of young people are falling prey to. Now
Speaker 1: one of the great blessings of people our age, Katie,
Speaker 1: is that there was no social media when we were young,
Speaker 1: and that means that we didn't have the kind of
Speaker 1: social comparison pressures, we didn't have the kind of materialistic pressures.
Speaker 1: We didn't have a sense that everybody's life was great
Speaker 1: and ours wasn't so good. But that's a broader case
Speaker 1: of people being induced towards these idols of money and
Speaker 1: power and pleasure and and the admiration of strangers. Whereas
Speaker 1: the one of the great things that we find in
Speaker 1: the in the Science of Happiness says there's really four
Speaker 1: big habits that the happiest people have that are that
Speaker 1: are not consistent with those idols, and those are faith
Speaker 1: or a life philosophy, or something that gives you a
Speaker 1: sense of the why of life. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be your traditional religious faith. It has to be something
Speaker 1: that's bigger than you. Family life um, and you you
Speaker 1: decide what family life means. But these are the ties
Speaker 1: that bind and don't break, and often you don't choose,
Speaker 1: and God knows you wouldn't in many cases. But there
Speaker 1: are the people who take the two am phone call
Speaker 1: friendship as in real friends not deal friends, and last
Speaker 1: but not least, it's work where you can serve others.
Speaker 1: And our our society is pushing people away from faith, family, friends,
Speaker 1: and work and toward a kind of self worship around money, power, pleasure,
Speaker 1: and and fame. And those are just unhealthy things. And
Speaker 1: that's really what explains a good deal of why it's
Speaker 1: so hard to just find happiness on your own. When
Speaker 1: we come back, did you know living in a cultural
Speaker 1: fear actually takes a toll on our happiness? Arthur Brooks
Speaker 1: has the to dote right after this, you say, happy
Speaker 1: people love people and use things. Unhappy people use people
Speaker 1: and love things, which is basically their values and priorities
Speaker 1: are clearly not in the right place. Yes, that that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's a more concise way of saying. You know,
Speaker 1: use people, love things, money, power, pleasure, and fame. Use things,
Speaker 1: love people, faith, family, friends, and work that serves other
Speaker 1: than social media. What do you think has caused a
Speaker 1: decline in happiness? Is it loneliness and isolation? I know
Speaker 1: that you started writing during the pandemic. You're column for
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. Um, you know what other factors are contributing
Speaker 1: to a decline of happiness. One is a big cultural
Speaker 1: phenomen on that's very interesting that philosophers have been writing
Speaker 1: about for many centuries, which is that you can get
Speaker 1: a culture of fear. Now, fear and love are the
Speaker 1: opposite emotions. We often think that hatred and love are opposites,
Speaker 1: but hatred is a function of fear. And we find
Speaker 1: when we look at the neuroscience of fear, it occupies
Speaker 1: it's the most it's the most prominent negative basic emotion
Speaker 1: produced by the limbic system of the brain. Everybody has
Speaker 1: heard of the amygdala as the part of the brain
Speaker 1: that actually the almond shape little things on either side
Speaker 1: of your brain in the olympic system, that they stimulate
Speaker 1: a lot of stress hormones, fight or flight or freeze.
Speaker 1: And what they do is they dominate all of the emotions. Well,
Speaker 1: the opposite most basic positive emotion is love. Fear and
Speaker 1: love or opposites. And you can have either polarity in
Speaker 1: a company or or a family or a whole country.
Speaker 1: And we've been for quite a long time and a
Speaker 1: fear polarity in our policy, in our culture, and that's
Speaker 1: hugely problematic. Look, you and I, I mean, we're established,
Speaker 1: you know, we have our families, there's a lot that
Speaker 1: we can rely upon. But even people our age have
Speaker 1: been falling prey to this. Young people, on your other hand,
Speaker 1: they're quite vulnerable to the culture of fear and what
Speaker 1: foments it. It's it's politicians that are you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I'll tell young people, you know, you are an unwilling
Speaker 1: soldier if you hate because somebody's trying to tell you
Speaker 1: that you must hate and you must be afraid. You
Speaker 1: know that person does not have your best interests at heart.
Speaker 1: They're profiting. You're not. As you know, I told us
Speaker 1: in every university campus that I go to, don't be
Speaker 1: a willing participant in the baby boomer culture war with
Speaker 1: canceling people you disagree with, you know, with actually weakening
Speaker 1: the fundamentals of our democracy. You know what you're doing
Speaker 1: is you're standing up for somebody else's values and you're
Speaker 1: falling prey to this fear. So fear in our culture
Speaker 1: is one of the biggest problems that we have, and
Speaker 1: it's especially affects young people. Well, I would say that
Speaker 1: that cancel culture movement was born on college campuses, not
Speaker 1: necessarily in the baby boomer generation, where people who Uh,
Speaker 1: didn't agree with you basically were I mean, where there's
Speaker 1: not a free and fair debate on all these issues
Speaker 1: that that you're marginalized, canceled or whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, um you know, really ostracized if you have
Speaker 1: a different point of view. So I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: agree with this baby boomer culture war that you ascribed to. Well,
Speaker 1: what I find is is, you know, sitting on a
Speaker 1: college campus that it's largely it's a lot of people
Speaker 1: my age that have been promoting these ideas for a
Speaker 1: very long time. And you know, and in creating the
Speaker 1: environment where the people who are canceling are not the
Speaker 1: people who are actually have been promoting these theories for
Speaker 1: a long time, and these ideas took a long time
Speaker 1: to take root. True. We go across generations in this
Speaker 1: and the you know, councel culture, which by the way,
Speaker 1: it transcends campuses. You know, it's interesting if you're if
Speaker 1: you're somebody with very progressive politics and you're sitting in
Speaker 1: an evangelical church for example, can so culture is going
Speaker 1: to come for you too. If you're you know, if
Speaker 1: you're trying to get ahead in in very populist, republican
Speaker 1: circles and you have more moderate conservative viewpoints, you're gonna
Speaker 1: find cancel culture as well. It's just really acute on
Speaker 1: college campuses, and most ironic because this is supposed to
Speaker 1: be the marketplace of ideas, you know, where all you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to feel safe on a college campus. Intellectually,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be like, ah, I just heard something
Speaker 1: I really disagree with and now I'm going to engage.
Speaker 1: And that's it's it's especially troublesome when on a college campus.
Speaker 1: We we will have this particular campus culture. But but
Speaker 1: it's the young people that can actually solve this problem.
Speaker 1: How do you fight against the forces of fear and hate?
Speaker 1: Because I know that you write that happiness takes work,
Speaker 1: right and discipline and focus. You can't expect it to
Speaker 1: just happen. And so for us on a day to
Speaker 1: day basis, how do we try to get out of
Speaker 1: that kind of angry, enraged state that seems to be
Speaker 1: part and parcel of our daily existence. Yeah, it's such
Speaker 1: a great question, and and here's the good news. There's
Speaker 1: actually a way to do this that all of us
Speaker 1: can practice in our own lives, and we can do
Speaker 1: it to to you know, make manifest in our country
Speaker 1: and our make our world a little bit better. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a famous um you know, Bible versus says perfect
Speaker 1: love drives out fear. But that's an ancient idea. Five
Speaker 1: years before that was in you know, the New Testament
Speaker 1: of the Bible. Lao Sue, you know, the founder of
Speaker 1: Taoist philosophy said exactly the same thing. And what they
Speaker 1: were talking about is what we have learned as social
Speaker 1: scientists and and and people in the world of neuroscience
Speaker 1: have found that these are neutralizing factors on each other.
Speaker 1: That fear will neutralize love, but love will neutralize fear
Speaker 1: as well. We don't have to fight against fear. We
Speaker 1: simply need to have more love. All right, give me
Speaker 1: an example, because this does sound sort of woo woo
Speaker 1: to me, Arthur like, so, so play this out in
Speaker 1: real time and real life. Yeah, So this is what
Speaker 1: I do when I go on college campuses. I say, look,
Speaker 1: do you want to do you want to weaken the
Speaker 1: forces of fear in your life and on your campus.
Speaker 1: You need to make friends with somebody with whom you disagree.
Speaker 1: You need to go on social media and say five
Speaker 1: loving things where other people are expressing, Hey, you got
Speaker 1: to go out of your way like a missionary, bringing
Speaker 1: love on purpose, even when it's uncomfortable. And then I
Speaker 1: take it up a notch, right, because one of the
Speaker 1: things that you see in a fear based culture very interestingly,
Speaker 1: people in their twenties today are a third less likely
Speaker 1: to say they're in love than you and I did
Speaker 1: when we were that when we were at that age
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. So so what's up with that?
Speaker 1: And the answer is fear is driving out love. So
Speaker 1: what I do is I say, Okay, do you want
Speaker 1: to treat your life like an entrepreneur, like a real startup,
Speaker 1: then the currency of the explosion of wealth in your
Speaker 1: life is actually love. And that means you need to
Speaker 1: take a risk, just like an entrepreneur does. And so
Speaker 1: all a sign him. I was doing a graduation speech
Speaker 1: not long ago, and I said, here's your homework. Friends,
Speaker 1: you've got two weeks. You need to go tell somebody
Speaker 1: that you you have to say I love you. And
Speaker 1: and again, maybe it's a family member with whom you
Speaker 1: become a strange maybe some of you're secretly in love with.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a friend and you just don't talk to
Speaker 1: each other that way. If it's not uncomfortable and scary,
Speaker 1: it's not entrepreneurial enough. And the crazy thing is I
Speaker 1: get tons of feedback saying game changer, game changer in
Speaker 1: my relationships, in my life, and in the lives of
Speaker 1: the people that I'm touching. We need more people they're
Speaker 1: willing to say, you know what, I love you. Well,
Speaker 1: that's one thing to say to someone in your family
Speaker 1: or your spouse or your friends who you don't see.
Speaker 1: But what about someone who um is angry and mean
Speaker 1: and throwing arrows and daggers into your heart? How do
Speaker 1: you how do I do agree with you that that
Speaker 1: comes from fear? This this anger comes from fear or hate.
Speaker 1: But how do you neutralize that? So that's a that's
Speaker 1: a very good question that Martin is the King answered,
Speaker 1: and you give a very fam sermon in nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: So I want to turn your attention to this subject
Speaker 1: loving your enemy. November seventeen, thank you for seven to
Speaker 1: the Dexter Street Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama that urch DoD
Speaker 1: that very famous sermon on on the Gospel of Matthew,
Speaker 1: Chapter five, verse forty four. Famous one love your enemy
Speaker 1: that we talked about. It is not merely an e
Speaker 1: multiple loves, creative understanding, good wills alone. It is a
Speaker 1: huge an individual because that's the question you're asking me, Katie,
Speaker 1: how do you love your enemies? And here's what he said,
Speaker 1: here's what Dr King said. Weird, right, Jesus didn't say
Speaker 1: like your enemies, because to like is a sentimental something,
Speaker 1: and there's lots of people we all don't like. Those
Speaker 1: are the people insulting you on social media. Those are
Speaker 1: the people who are wishing you ill. Those are people
Speaker 1: who are unfair and uncivilized. I got it, I got
Speaker 1: it in my If you've got them in your life,
Speaker 1: everybody watching us or listening to us has them in
Speaker 1: their lives. But to love is a decision, it's a commitment.
Speaker 1: It's the only way that we can actually create some redemption.
Speaker 1: So the famous philosopher Thomas Aquinas he said that to
Speaker 1: love is to will the good of the other. He
Speaker 1: didn't say it feel anything. You can. You cannot make
Speaker 1: the decision to like somebody, But you can make the
Speaker 1: decision to love somebody, because that's an action and you
Speaker 1: have to act in a particular way. It's hard. This
Speaker 1: is a hard teaching, but we're really up for it
Speaker 1: because what you find and on all of the research
Speaker 1: on this is when people start to act out of
Speaker 1: love even when they don't feel it, they actually start
Speaker 1: to do it on their own. The Dalai Lama one
Speaker 1: time told me, you know, I asked him, how do
Speaker 1: I love when I don't feel love? He basically told
Speaker 1: me to fake it, fake it till you make it.
Speaker 1: The Dali Llama. Look, he's the world's most respected religious
Speaker 1: figure and he's completely full of love. If the doll
Speaker 1: A Lama says that we can fake it till we
Speaker 1: make it and it comes to love, I gotta believe it.
Speaker 1: After the Break, It's Striver's Anonymous Arthur shares how to
Speaker 1: break a striver's cycle and find a new kind of fulfillment.
Speaker 1: That's right after this. I want to talk to you
Speaker 1: about your book because as a sixty five year old
Speaker 1: who has enjoyed some success in my life, I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: about sort of how to continue to find fulfillment. And
Speaker 1: I have the confession Arthur's I'm Katie and I'm a striver.
Speaker 1: I know you are, and I am sort of the
Speaker 1: quintessential person that you talk about in your book, someone
Speaker 1: who always is looking for the next thing. And when
Speaker 1: I saw you of that talking at the Aspen Ideas Festival,
Speaker 1: I realize this is not all me. A lot of
Speaker 1: it is sort of my brain and dopamine and adrenaline
Speaker 1: that causes me to want more and more and more,
Speaker 1: to keep succeeding, to keep striving, but to keep accomplishing, right,
Speaker 1: And it's striving me crazy. Yeah, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: you and me both. I mean it's like, look, you've
Speaker 1: had this legendary career which you continue to have and
Speaker 1: and and everybody says, look, if I could be if
Speaker 1: I could be half as successful as Katie Kuric, i'd
Speaker 1: automatically be happy. But here's the thing, here's the crazy thing.
Speaker 1: Everybody thinks they want to be happy and successful, but
Speaker 1: if they can only be one, they should be successful
Speaker 1: because then the automatically be happy, and that is incorrect.
Speaker 1: On the contrary, if you're happy, you'll feel successful and
Speaker 1: you get both. Here's the problem with that. Our world
Speaker 1: doesn't do that. Remember, money power pleasure fame. Money power
Speaker 1: pleasure fame is that it's it's and if you start
Speaker 1: to get some success, your brain changes. A little bit
Speaker 1: of brain science and and you've heard me talk about
Speaker 1: this and and it's not very complicated, but it's worth
Speaker 1: pointing out that when people are really addicted to success,
Speaker 1: their brain does more or less the same thing as
Speaker 1: when they're getting addicted to gambling or methamphetamine. You become
Speaker 1: very good at producing dopamine, which is it's called a neuromodulator.
Speaker 1: And what dopamine does is it doesn't give you a pleasure.
Speaker 1: It gives you anticipation of a reward. That's why when
Speaker 1: people get addicted to drugs or alcohol, or gambling or
Speaker 1: pornography or any of these bad things that get take
Speaker 1: over people's lives and hurt them, it's because they have
Speaker 1: all this anticipation and they get craving. Now, when people
Speaker 1: are really successful, money, power, pleasure, fame, their brain gives
Speaker 1: them dopamine in anticipation of those rewards. And when you
Speaker 1: get really good at it, because I don't know, just hypothetically,
Speaker 1: let's say you're Katie Kuric, Well, then guess what happens.
Speaker 1: A little is not enough. Your threshold keeps getting more
Speaker 1: and more and more and more. Right, the treadmill starts
Speaker 1: going at terrifying speed. You call it the hedonic tread
Speaker 1: now exactly right now. There's a process in the brain
Speaker 1: called homeostasis. It's a complicated word with a simple idea.
Speaker 1: That is to say, your brain resets, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: so happy when I get that car, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: so happy when I get that watch or that shirt,
Speaker 1: of that relationship or that achievement. And then you reset
Speaker 1: almost immediately. You think your brain tells you because mother
Speaker 1: nature lies that you're going to actually be satisfied forever.
Speaker 1: You're actually satisfied for a minute or maybe a week
Speaker 1: or I don't know, ten days on the outside, and
Speaker 1: then it's off to the races again. Run run, run,
Speaker 1: run run. That's what we all have to dominate. And
Speaker 1: people who have had a lot of success, that's great
Speaker 1: because these are the people. I mean, look, think of
Speaker 1: all the good things you've done for me, because I've
Speaker 1: been watching you for your You've informed me, you've made
Speaker 1: my life better. But that doesn't mean that along the
Speaker 1: way that has made you happy. So what we all
Speaker 1: need to do with our own kind of success addiction
Speaker 1: And nobody's watching you right now, nobody's gonna be watching
Speaker 1: your show, who's not a little bit of a striver.
Speaker 1: I know your audience that we all can actually dominate
Speaker 1: the system by not going with the flow. Your brain says,
Speaker 1: go more, do more, hit the lever, hit the lever,
Speaker 1: get the cookie. You need to stand up to that
Speaker 1: and behave in a different way. You need to do
Speaker 1: the opposite thing. That's what the research says, and so
Speaker 1: that's probably what we need to talk about. Right. What
Speaker 1: is the opposite thing. The opposite thing is not to
Speaker 1: have more. The opposite thing is to want less. Now,
Speaker 1: I know it sounds weird, but here's the way to
Speaker 1: think about it. Satisfaction finally scratching that itch, finally being
Speaker 1: satisfied is not doesn't just come from having more, doing more,
Speaker 1: seeing more, getting more. It's what you have divided by
Speaker 1: what you want. Everybody remembers a little tiny bit in
Speaker 1: the recesses of their mind about their high school fractions,
Speaker 1: and and you remember that if you've got halves divided
Speaker 1: by wants, there's two ways to increase that number. Increase
Speaker 1: the have or decrease the wants. Here's the deal. We
Speaker 1: actually have the power to want less. We don't have
Speaker 1: to become a Buddhist monk. I mean, if you want to,
Speaker 1: that's great. You know, go study in the cave, that's fantastic,
Speaker 1: or go to a you know, hill land retreat. I've
Speaker 1: done it. I recommend it. It's fantastic, But you don't
Speaker 1: have to do it. The key thing is to think
Speaker 1: about your wants, to not be managed by your wants.
Speaker 1: I have a reverse bucket list. The bucket list is
Speaker 1: all about hals. The reverse bucket list is all about
Speaker 1: wants and what I do on my birthday, Katie, and
Speaker 1: I recommend everybody is I make a list of all
Speaker 1: my cravings. Oh, finally be happy if I have this.
Speaker 1: I'll finally be happy. If my book sells this number
Speaker 1: and I have or I do this thing on TV,
Speaker 1: whatever it happens to be. Everybody's got their thing. I
Speaker 1: get the car, I get whoever. You make a list
Speaker 1: of all those cravings, and you say I might get
Speaker 1: it and I might not. Easy come, easy go. That's
Speaker 1: moved the appetite, the craving, the desire from your automatic
Speaker 1: brain to your human brain to call the prefrontal cortex,
Speaker 1: and there you can manage your cravings. If you're conscious
Speaker 1: of them, you can manage them. It's not perfect, but
Speaker 1: you'll be amazed at how much more satisfying you will
Speaker 1: find ordinary life when you looking at the small things.
Speaker 1: And look. I follow you on social media, and you
Speaker 1: know you're you're putting on social media pictures from your garden.
Speaker 1: I love that, like your flowers and your garden, Katie.
Speaker 1: I love that it's so beautiful on Instagram that you
Speaker 1: do that. That's you enjoying the small. Now to do
Speaker 1: that more, you actually have to be conscious of your
Speaker 1: worldly wants and manage them in that particular way. It's unnatural,
Speaker 1: but we all can do it. It's interesting because you
Speaker 1: talk about preparing for the second half of your life,
Speaker 1: finding success, happiness and deep purpose in the second half
Speaker 1: of your life is the subtitle from Strength to Strength,
Speaker 1: And I think you posit that you really are your
Speaker 1: most successful really by the time you're forty or say fifty,
Speaker 1: that you have fluid into colligence then and then you
Speaker 1: move to something called crystallized intelligence. Explain that Earth, because
Speaker 1: I I know what you mean, but I think for
Speaker 1: people who haven't read the book, explained what you mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there are two kinds of basic intelligence, and the
Speaker 1: world tells you you get one big act. That's the
Speaker 1: world tells you get really really good at what you do,
Speaker 1: be really successful in what you do, and if you're lucky,
Speaker 1: you can keep it going forever. You can't keep it
Speaker 1: going forever. Now, if you're an athlete, you know that, right,
Speaker 1: if you're you know, you're Tom Brady, maybe you can
Speaker 1: keep going forever. But the rest of us mortals can't keep,
Speaker 1: you know, going, And and you know, I actually have
Speaker 1: interviewed Olympic athletes and talk to people and they're they're
Speaker 1: very much in touch with the fact that they can't
Speaker 1: keep going on forever. But it's still really painful. Now.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing that the research finds is that that
Speaker 1: thinking professions, knowledge professions, whether you're a doctoral lawyer, or
Speaker 1: financial professional or an electrician or lots of things, that
Speaker 1: you tend to get better and better and better to
Speaker 1: your twenties and thirties and then max out and then
Speaker 1: you you're not quite as good as you used to be.
Speaker 1: And that's what burn out actually comes from. You know,
Speaker 1: your dentist who suddenly, weirdly at age forty five, says,
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna take Fridays off to golf. It's like,
Speaker 1: what the heck you loved being a dentist. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm just less interested. That's because your
Speaker 1: dentist isn't progressing and can't quite put her finger on
Speaker 1: why she's not as good at dentist. Thank you for
Speaker 1: a woman. Yeah, I mean, it's like, my dentist is
Speaker 1: a woman, and she's phenomenal. Right, I don't know if
Speaker 1: she's actually I don't think she's forty five yet. But
Speaker 1: the point is, I hope she reads my book. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take her copy. And so this is this is
Speaker 1: an important thing to keep our to keep our eye on,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people start panicking at this point
Speaker 1: and think, oh, oh no, Well, the truth is, this
Speaker 1: is the time to celebrate because there's another intelligence that
Speaker 1: comes in behind it that's not about hard work and
Speaker 1: focus and and you know, living on the edge of
Speaker 1: the curve, innovative capacity, working memory, all the stuff that
Speaker 1: made you good at what you did. It's about wisdom.
Speaker 1: It's about knowledge about how to explain ideas is how
Speaker 1: to teach, is to go from innovator to instructor. And
Speaker 1: everybody can do that in their own way. I've seen
Speaker 1: you do this in your career. This is the most
Speaker 1: interesting thing. What are you now, your teacher, this is
Speaker 1: what we're doing. You're introducing your audience to big ideas
Speaker 1: that can actually enrich them. What do you your your professor, Kuric,
Speaker 1: you now this is You've naturally moved on to this
Speaker 1: crystallized intelligence curve, and everybody can. There's a transformation if
Speaker 1: you're willing to take it. The people who are unhappy
Speaker 1: are living in the past. The people are happy, they
Speaker 1: jump onto this wisdom curve. I'm gonna teach, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: mentor I'm gonna lead teams. So if you're a sort
Speaker 1: of entrepreneur, that's fluid intelligence. If you're a venture capitalist,
Speaker 1: crystallized intelligence. If you're a star litigator, fluid, if you're
Speaker 1: a managing partner, crystallized You know, I used to do
Speaker 1: highly mathematical research papers on my fluid intelligence curve. Now
Speaker 1: I write for The Atlantic and I talked to you
Speaker 1: crystallized intelligence, and I'm happy. I'm happy or than i've
Speaker 1: ever been because I'm on the right curve. I think
Speaker 1: about professional athletes, I think about CEOs, I think about honestly,
Speaker 1: President Obama, Like, how do they shift from sort of
Speaker 1: being in the epicenter, the white hot center of everything,
Speaker 1: where they have huge responsibility and all lies are on
Speaker 1: them and then shift into a different mode without feeling
Speaker 1: that their best years are behind them, Because I I
Speaker 1: do think about you know, like, how do people manage that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very hard. The more success you have, the harder
Speaker 1: it is. And for a couple of different reasons, you're
Speaker 1: not quite sure that second curve is there. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're taking it on faith from a Harvard professor. That's
Speaker 1: one thing, actually jump in. That's something else. The second is,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people just love that first curve.
Speaker 1: And the reason they like it is because they get
Speaker 1: all these honors, They get all this they get all
Speaker 1: this admiration, they get all this prestige from it. And
Speaker 1: the more successful and famous you are, the harder it
Speaker 1: is actually to say goodbye to those particular things. But
Speaker 1: the happy people are actually able to make that shift.
Speaker 1: They have the presence of mind. Now. One of the
Speaker 1: things that makes it much easier is they tend to
Speaker 1: be accompanied by somebody who loves them. This is one
Speaker 1: of the things that you actually find and so whether
Speaker 1: it's a best friend, whether it's a spouse, whether it's
Speaker 1: your your adult children. You need somebody who takes you
Speaker 1: by the hand and says, you know what, and this
Speaker 1: is you know, my wife did this for me. My
Speaker 1: wife Ester we even already thirty one years now, and
Speaker 1: and and you know, she said I was retiring. It
Speaker 1: was a CEO, you know, but I did this research
Speaker 1: and I had to I had to stop because I
Speaker 1: saw the writing was on the wall. I was not
Speaker 1: getting better at what I was doing. And so I said,
Speaker 1: I gotta get on the second curve. I know it's
Speaker 1: out there. And she took me by the hand and said,
Speaker 1: it's okay. I love you. You're the father of my
Speaker 1: children and the love of my life. And whether you're
Speaker 1: successful in worldly terms or not, I love you all
Speaker 1: the same. And that is so critically important because a
Speaker 1: lot of people were stuck on that fluid intelligence curve.
Speaker 1: On that first curve, They're like, I'm nothing, I am dead.
Speaker 1: If I'm not number one, if I'm not the striver,
Speaker 1: if I'm not the homo economic aust you know, if
Speaker 1: I'm not the hardest worker in the room. Right, you
Speaker 1: need people who love you. That's really really critical. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering though, if you're inadvertently contributing to the last acceptable
Speaker 1: ism in society, and that's agis um. You know, I
Speaker 1: know that the CEO of Target just said, I'm sixty five,
Speaker 1: I'm not retiring UM And and I wonder if with
Speaker 1: this second phase of life, if you're sort of saying
Speaker 1: to the world, Arthur, you know, if you're not under fifty,
Speaker 1: you you don't have fluid intelligence, you're not at the
Speaker 1: top of your game. You need to go into this
Speaker 1: second stage of life, and you need to leave leave,
Speaker 1: leave the stage. I mean, do you think about that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I do. But you know what I actually I'm feathering
Speaker 1: my own nest as I get older. I'm fifty eight
Speaker 1: years old, and I want to be working for a
Speaker 1: long time, but where I'm best suited to work. So
Speaker 1: this is the key thing. Here's what I have this view, Katie.
Speaker 1: You know, one of I look at these Silicon Valley firms,
Speaker 1: these tech firms and social media firms and all that,
Speaker 1: and they're making all these errors that older executives to
Speaker 1: shake their heads like how do they make that error?
Speaker 1: The reason is because all fluid intelligence, no crystallized intelligence.
Speaker 1: In other words, it's all brains, no wisdom, and that's
Speaker 1: a big problem because they're making all the mistakes that
Speaker 1: that all the older guys and women they made a
Speaker 1: thousand years ago and their careers. My view is that
Speaker 1: we need way more people in positions of leadership or
Speaker 1: over seventy, that's my view, using their crystallized intelligence, not
Speaker 1: relying on their fluid intelligence. You know, that's what we need.
Speaker 1: I think every executive team, every C suite needs somebody
Speaker 1: over seventy, every marketing team, every product team, these social
Speaker 1: media companies, they need old people who actually can say
Speaker 1: and so my view is that no, on the contrary,
Speaker 1: this is the permanent employment plan for us, as long
Speaker 1: as we're actually doing it right and not trying to
Speaker 1: live in the past. Is the way that it works.
Speaker 1: The impetus I guess for this book was when you
Speaker 1: were sitting in an airplane and you were listening to
Speaker 1: a really sad and upsetting conversation an older gentleman talking
Speaker 1: to his wife saying, my life is over. I kind
Speaker 1: of wish I were dead, and you take it from there. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: you know, I was kind of a tender point in
Speaker 1: my life, you know, I had been running this thing
Speaker 1: tank in Washington, d C. It had been going really,
Speaker 1: really well, but I was wondering, you know, what is
Speaker 1: the cadence of my own life? Where am I going?
Speaker 1: Where does this I just do it again and do
Speaker 1: it again and do it again and then stop, and
Speaker 1: they just hope for the best. And you know, hanging
Speaker 1: around the house, I don't know, you know, ten years,
Speaker 1: fifteen years from hours going to go. And I was
Speaker 1: kind of contemplating that existentially, And when I heard this conversation,
Speaker 1: I overheard it. Now, as a behavioral social scientist, my
Speaker 1: laboratory is the overheard conversation. So for everybody watching and
Speaker 1: listening to us right now, if you're behind me in
Speaker 1: a Starbucks confessing that somebody broke your heart, keep your
Speaker 1: voice down because I might write a book about it anyway.
Speaker 1: So I I hear this conversation this couple behind me
Speaker 1: on the plane in this key moment in my own life,
Speaker 1: and you know, he's kind of mumbling, but here his
Speaker 1: wife's saying, oh, don't say it would be better if
Speaker 1: you were dead, And I'm like, holy moldy, I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I'm not eavesdropping, but this is big and and and
Speaker 1: and she's trying to console him, and he's really unconsolable
Speaker 1: the fact that nobody cares about him, nobody's listening to him. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we land at the air this is a night flight.
Speaker 1: We land at the airport at our destination. Everybody stands
Speaker 1: up and the lights go on, and and we turn around.
Speaker 1: I wanted to see him. I just wanted to see
Speaker 1: his face. And it was one of the most famous
Speaker 1: successful men in the world. This is somebody that everybody knows.
Speaker 1: Now why he's a hero from decades past. Is not
Speaker 1: some controversial actor you know, or you know, politician, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is this is somebody who did big things that
Speaker 1: we all admire, and and you know it's in his
Speaker 1: late eighties and and and and he's he's confessing this thing.
Speaker 1: So we're walking out of the airplane, and the pilot,
Speaker 1: you know how, they all stand by the cockpit door
Speaker 1: thing thanks for flying United folks, and he stops. The
Speaker 1: guy who's right behind me. Blowing my mind at this
Speaker 1: point because you know, the whole model of success is wrong.
Speaker 1: If I could be half as successful as that guy,
Speaker 1: I'd be automatically happy over the moon, right no wrong, okay.
Speaker 1: So he sees the guy, the hero on the plane
Speaker 1: and he says, sir, you've been my hero since I
Speaker 1: was a little boy. And I turned around and he's
Speaker 1: beaming with pride. And I asked myself, so which is it?
Speaker 1: Is it this one or the one half an hour ago?
Speaker 1: And I thought to myself, our model of success and
Speaker 1: happiness is wrong. In truth, the data are very clear
Speaker 1: that people who tend to be most disappointed with their
Speaker 1: lives after seventy and eighty are the ones who are
Speaker 1: most successful early on. And the reason is because they
Speaker 1: can't live up to their own standards. They're addicted to success.
Speaker 1: And now the party's over. And they if you look,
Speaker 1: if you don't do anything with your life, you all
Speaker 1: know when the party's over. But boy, oh boy, if
Speaker 1: you do a lot, you're really going to know. And
Speaker 1: I said, I'm going in search of the secret to
Speaker 1: be both successful and happy. And that's what this book is.
Speaker 1: It's the book that I needed in my life. I
Speaker 1: wrote it for you to um, I'm actually writing a
Speaker 1: book right now about the things I wish I knew
Speaker 1: when I was twenty five, which is the science of happiness.
Speaker 1: For the young striver that's coming next. But I didn't
Speaker 1: get that book because that book hadn't been written yet.
Speaker 1: And I and I've really lived according to it. And
Speaker 1: you can be successful and happy, but you can't leave
Speaker 1: it up to chance. I mean, mother nature is not
Speaker 1: going to take you in that direction. And so what
Speaker 1: do you think the guy sitting behind you in the
Speaker 1: airplane did wrong? What he was doing was he was
Speaker 1: reliving past glory and wishing that he could keep that
Speaker 1: alive forever. And it turns out that's very common. In
Speaker 1: the book, I talked about the case of Charles Darwin,
Speaker 1: you know, the great naturalist, and everybody knows what a hero,
Speaker 1: what a great figure he was. He buried at Westminster
Speaker 1: Abbey because he's such a national hero. He died an
Speaker 1: unhappy man, and the reason is because he kind of
Speaker 1: got to the end of his fluid intelligence. He wanted
Speaker 1: to stay on that curve. He never moved curves, and
Speaker 1: he spent the last twenty five years of his life
Speaker 1: kind of regretting the fact that he couldn't make any
Speaker 1: more progress, and he didn't enjoy his research, and he
Speaker 1: felt kind of washed up and kind of like a loser.
Speaker 1: Charles Darwin, one of the greatest naturalist scientists who's ever lived,
Speaker 1: died unhappy for the same reason that so many people do.
Speaker 1: If I could talk to any of these people, I
Speaker 1: would talk about the structure of the brain that how
Speaker 1: that the fluid intelligence goes to the crystallized intelligence, and
Speaker 1: happiness is right in front of them if they're willing
Speaker 1: to grab it and change their own lives. How do
Speaker 1: they recognize or how does anyone recognize when it's time
Speaker 1: to jump to the second curve that your fluid intelligence
Speaker 1: is drying up and you need to go for the
Speaker 1: crystallized intelligence and you need to make that shift not
Speaker 1: only in your head, but in your heart and your
Speaker 1: habits to begin with. It's a really good idea to
Speaker 1: to understand this before you need it, right, And not
Speaker 1: all of us do. I mean, it's not all of
Speaker 1: us have been able to have that, But you know
Speaker 1: everybody's listening to us who's thirty and as a striver
Speaker 1: and you know who you are right to start thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this right now, and I'm in this is
Speaker 1: a great party. But what only the crystallized version of
Speaker 1: what I'm good at? What might it look like just
Speaker 1: to kind of visualize a little bit because twenty years
Speaker 1: from now you might want to be thinking about that.
Speaker 1: You don't have to change careers necessarily, although that's not
Speaker 1: out of the question either, But what might it look like?
Speaker 1: What's your flight of fancy? What would give you joy
Speaker 1: to think about? This? Really a crystallized kind of kind
Speaker 1: of skill, that's number one. But the key thing is
Speaker 1: that that that that that people need to they'll see
Speaker 1: that they're that the fluid intelligences decline way before anybody
Speaker 1: else does, and the tell is burnout. That's the tell.
Speaker 1: You know, when people start saying, I used to like
Speaker 1: this more than I than I do. Now this used
Speaker 1: to excite me more than it does now, that means
Speaker 1: you're not making progress. People are wired for progress. Human
Speaker 1: beings get no pleasure from the status quo. We're not
Speaker 1: wired for It's very interesting, you know. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I've studied is is you know diets, diets
Speaker 1: have a failure rate, right, I mean, what industry can
Speaker 1: continue to exist? It exists on hope, not results. Now,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Dieting is pretty easy, but keeping weight
Speaker 1: off is near impossible. The reason is because you're perfectly
Speaker 1: willing to forego the food that you love as long
Speaker 1: as the CD is going down, because you know that
Speaker 1: the happiness from the scale going down is higher than
Speaker 1: the unhappiness from not eating scones or donuts or something
Speaker 1: like that. But then when you reach your goal weight,
Speaker 1: the reward is you never get to eat ever again
Speaker 1: what you like. That's not a very nice reward, and
Speaker 1: so people abandon the diet. That's all about progress. People
Speaker 1: love progress, but the status quo is terrible. So you're
Speaker 1: gonna notice, you know, maybe whatever happens to be, I
Speaker 1: like it less. That's when it's time to start thinking
Speaker 1: about the second curve. That's when it's trying to start
Speaker 1: thinking about the reverse bucket list. So you're not adding adding,
Speaker 1: adding adding, that's when it start. It's time to actually
Speaker 1: think about who's going to hold me by the hand,
Speaker 1: who is in part of my root system. That's when
Speaker 1: it's time to start thinking what are the friendships that
Speaker 1: I actually need? What are the spiritual relationships that I
Speaker 1: can actually cultivate? And if you do these things, so
Speaker 1: I wrote the book, this could be the greatest, most
Speaker 1: joyful adventure in life. This is the best time of life.
Speaker 1: But if you don't do it. It's like walking through
Speaker 1: a forest at night with no guide and no flashlight.
Speaker 1: What are things every person can do to kind of
Speaker 1: have a a more fulfilling, purposeful life, that that has
Speaker 1: more love than fear, and that that that can just
Speaker 1: sort of feed you in a way, the all with
Speaker 1: all the right things and not all the wrong things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the couple of things to keep in mind the f
Speaker 1: is that all these things that I write, all these
Speaker 1: things that I teach, that I'm privileged to be able
Speaker 1: to talk to you about, all these things are accessible
Speaker 1: to everybody. You don't need to be a nerd with
Speaker 1: the PHDU teaches at Harvard to actually learn about these ideas.
Speaker 1: I write about this in the Atlantic because I want
Speaker 1: to bring these ideas to millions of people in relatively
Speaker 1: non technical terms. You don't have to be a technical
Speaker 1: specialist to understand that. But you've got to do the work.
Speaker 1: Wishing is not enough. Just wishing you were happier, we'll
Speaker 1: make you unhappier because you'll focus on your unhappiness. But
Speaker 1: if you do the work that's habits, not hacks, committing
Speaker 1: yourself to living in a better way, in a newer way.
Speaker 1: This is magic. That's part one. Part two is this,
Speaker 1: You've got to practice these things. You can't just learn
Speaker 1: about these You gotta practice these things in your life.
Speaker 1: You get, I get. I can teach you that gratitude
Speaker 1: is one of the greatest tricks. But it's not enough
Speaker 1: for to be a trick. It's got to be a
Speaker 1: way of life. And so practice these things and and
Speaker 1: committing yourself to doing it is like going to the gym,
Speaker 1: not once, it's going to the gym five days a week,
Speaker 1: or alorities a week, or whatever happens to be, and
Speaker 1: then you start to see a transformation. You enjoy it
Speaker 1: and will last but not least, You've got to share
Speaker 1: these ideas. Look, we've talked about a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: science and very accessible terms. Here's what I would wish
Speaker 1: that will really help a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: watching us to make these ideas come to life. Find
Speaker 1: three people that you love and and if you need
Speaker 1: to watch our our conversation again and take notes and
Speaker 1: go teach these things. You know what that'll do is
Speaker 1: it will move them from an impression to the executive
Speaker 1: center of your brain. You know, becoming a teacher is
Speaker 1: the best possible way to absorb ideas. My father was
Speaker 1: a mathematician. He said, I only understood math when I
Speaker 1: had taught calculus fifty times, you know. And the truth is,
Speaker 1: we can all be happiness teachers. And the more that
Speaker 1: we are bringing these secrets in a spirit of love
Speaker 1: and sisterhood and brotherhood to everybody we possibly can, the
Speaker 1: happier we're going to get. In other words, understand practice
Speaker 1: and share. A lot of this is in the book.
Speaker 1: You talk about living in the present, but that takes
Speaker 1: this a plant, you know, and I think you say,
Speaker 1: someone said we shouldn't be called homo sapiens, we should
Speaker 1: be called homo prospective. That means we're always in the
Speaker 1: future and we're not really present right now. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And that takes, you know, take it takes a little
Speaker 1: bit of effort. There's a whole mindfulness meditation movement going
Speaker 1: on out there, but it really isn't that complicated. You
Speaker 1: gotta you have to be alive now, you know, when
Speaker 1: you're washing the dishes, say I'm washing the dishes now,
Speaker 1: don't distract yourself from everything. When you're on the train,
Speaker 1: look out the window and actually be on the train
Speaker 1: at that particular moment. That's the real magic of mindfulness
Speaker 1: that I've found, and it's really quite transformed my life.
Speaker 1: Katie's when I found because I saw theoretically in the
Speaker 1: literature is gonna make me happier, And now I do it.
Speaker 1: I go on these walks for an hour with no devices,
Speaker 1: and I smell the morning air and I stopped when
Speaker 1: I look at flowers. I'm telling you, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just it sounds so dumb. I'm a fifty eight year
Speaker 1: old man, I should know this at this point. It's
Speaker 1: just the best. When I read about that, I also thought, yes,
Speaker 1: I want to live in the moment, but I also
Speaker 1: want to care about the future. I want to be
Speaker 1: a concerned citizen who is focused on helping people preserve
Speaker 1: the planet. So how do those things work in tandem.
Speaker 1: You're much better at actually thinking clearly about a better
Speaker 1: future when you're fully present right now. The reason is
Speaker 1: because your love relationships blossom, you appreciate the things that
Speaker 1: you're actually seeing. You don't have a full appreciation for
Speaker 1: the people and the things around you unless you're fully
Speaker 1: mindful right now, and as such, you won't be able
Speaker 1: to create a future. You will be able to envision
Speaker 1: a future that actually is better than the status quo.
Speaker 1: Here's the best news about being here now. It makes
Speaker 1: you better in the future as well. A big thank
Speaker 1: you to my guests Arthur C. Brooks. You can find
Speaker 1: many of his happiness insights at The Atlantic and go
Speaker 1: check out his book From Strength to Strength to start
Speaker 1: living your best life now. Next Question with Katie Kurik
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Media and Katie Curic Media.
Speaker 1: The executive producers Army, Katie Curic, and Courtney Litz. The
Speaker 1: supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. Associate producers Derek Clements and
Speaker 1: Adriana Fasio. The show is edited and mixed by Derrick Clements.
Speaker 1: For more information about today's episode, or to sign up
Speaker 1: for my morning newsletter, wake Up Call, go to Katie
Speaker 1: Currek dot com. You can also find me at Katie
Speaker 1: Curic on Instagram and all my social media channels. For
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Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.