Speaker 1: That's when you stop running from success to success and
Speaker 1: you start on the transcendental walk to actually experience your
Speaker 1: life moment to moment. Welcome to the Psychology Podcast. In
Speaker 1: this episode, I talk to prolific author and social scientist
Speaker 1: Arthur Brooks about finding meaning in the second curve of life.
Speaker 1: According to Arthur, the world in our biology urge us
Speaker 1: to relentlessly chase after the next win. This flawed formula
Speaker 1: for satisfaction ultimately leads us unfulfilled. To find true purpose,
Speaker 1: Arthur argues, we must break our addiction to success and
Speaker 1: confront life's hard truths. In this episode, we also touch
Speaker 1: on the topics of motivation, relationships, aging, transcendence, and love.
Speaker 1: I always enjoy talking to Arthur Brooks, and I think
Speaker 1: you will enjoy this conversation as well. So, without further ado,
Speaker 1: I bring you Arthur Brooks. Arthur, how's it going? Man?
Speaker 1: Doing great? How are you? I'm doing good. I'm doing
Speaker 1: really good. They tore up my studio here, so it
Speaker 1: looks like I'm inside in North Korean prison. But aside
Speaker 1: from that, all this well, I was gonna say, are
Speaker 1: you in a North Korea prison? I was like, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's I call it, you know, my winter break. That's
Speaker 1: like okay, well, it's okay. How's it going. How are
Speaker 1: you you know? I'm good, I'm good. I loved your book.
Speaker 1: It was so thanks. It's so necessary for so many people,
Speaker 1: especially right now during COVID. Did you when you started
Speaker 1: writing that book, was there the pandemic? No? No, no.
Speaker 1: I actually started thinking about the research project eight years ago,
Speaker 1: and then I started to write up on the book
Speaker 1: about two and a half years ago, right around the
Speaker 1: time I was leaving AI. And of course I had
Speaker 1: no idea that the pandemic was going to happen. But
Speaker 1: then what happened was that when the pandemic hit, I
Speaker 1: had time just to finish it up. And the first
Speaker 1: part is finishing up. The second part is cutting it back,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's a it's a manageable book. So
Speaker 1: it's seventy thousand words as opposed to one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand words, because you know, for this kind of book,
Speaker 1: you have to have people who don't necessarily love reading
Speaker 1: non you know, serious nonfiction. You want them to be
Speaker 1: able to read it and digest it and think about it.
Speaker 1: So it has to be a little bit shorter, but
Speaker 1: this was a pandemic project, but it predated that in
Speaker 1: a big way. But mostly because of my own life,
Speaker 1: you know, I know, I know. Well, tell me a
Speaker 1: little and the listeners a little bit about the plane
Speaker 1: ride that kind of changed your life. It's pretty poignant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this I didn't realize we're recording. We started, we
Speaker 1: started start. This is this podcast is so this story,
Speaker 1: the story for me started about eight years ago. I
Speaker 1: was still the president of a think tank in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. I was president of think Tanks started in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight. It's one of the most prominent thing
Speaker 1: tanks in the country. And what a privilege to run it,
Speaker 1: to be sure, but wow, what a hamster wheel of
Speaker 1: a job. I mean it was. I was had to
Speaker 1: raise fifty million dollars a year. I was giving one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy five speeches a year. So my job
Speaker 1: was like running for the Senate and never getting a
Speaker 1: like it. Basically it was wow. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: on the airplane all the time, and it was kind
Speaker 1: of one adventure in corporate thrill and political you know,
Speaker 1: crisis after another. Was extremely exciting. But it was it
Speaker 1: was success to success to success kind of. I was
Speaker 1: on what you and I a social scientists called the
Speaker 1: hedonic treadmill. You know, it's just what social scientists think of.
Speaker 1: It's what we call the hamster wheel, right. It's like
Speaker 1: you're running, run and run and run a run, you ever,
Speaker 1: And I was kind of getting a little bit worried.
Speaker 1: I have to say, I was in my late forties
Speaker 1: at that point. I had looked back on my bucket
Speaker 1: list which I had been putting together. Now I realized
Speaker 1: that was a mistake, but at the time it seemed
Speaker 1: like a good thing to do. And the boocket list
Speaker 1: that I put together at forty, I realized that hit
Speaker 1: everything on it. But I wasn't very happy. I wasn't
Speaker 1: very satisfied. And more than that, I was really really
Speaker 1: worried because I knew I wouldn't be able to keep
Speaker 1: this party going. And once the party stopped, or was
Speaker 1: it going to be, you know, what was going to
Speaker 1: be of my life? You know? And so I was
Speaker 1: kind of in a panic. And this was at this
Speaker 1: point this reflecting experience happened to me. I was on
Speaker 1: an airplane at night, coming from LA to Dulles to
Speaker 1: Washington Dulles and it was night time, about eleven o'clock
Speaker 1: at night, and it was dark and I couldn't see,
Speaker 1: but I could hear people around me, and I heard
Speaker 1: a couple behind me having a conversation. And I wasn't eavesdropping,
Speaker 1: but it was you'll see, you know why. I was
Speaker 1: listening very carefully, and I could tell it was a
Speaker 1: man and a woman, and I could tell that they
Speaker 1: were elderly by the sound of their voices, and I
Speaker 1: just sort of imagined that this was a married couple
Speaker 1: because of the intimacy of their conversation. I couldn't quite
Speaker 1: make out the man's words, but I heard his wife
Speaker 1: answer him, Oh, don't say it would be better if
Speaker 1: you were dead, like whoa, And then I hear mumble mumble,
Speaker 1: mumble moment, and she says, it's not true that nobody
Speaker 1: appreciates who or cares about you anymore. It's not true
Speaker 1: that you're nobody. And it goes on like these were
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, and I'm starting to get this picture of
Speaker 1: the guy in my head. He's probably somebody really disappointed
Speaker 1: with his life who was unable to achieve the things
Speaker 1: that he wanted to achieve. And we land at Dallas
Speaker 1: Airport half an hour. An hour later and the light
Speaker 1: school on. Everybody stands up, and I'm kind of curious.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a social scientist. I want to put
Speaker 1: a face to the behavior that and I look at
Speaker 1: him and I'm expecting to see, you know, this kind
Speaker 1: of a sort of a disconsolate littlement. It was one
Speaker 1: of the most famous men in the world, somebody that
Speaker 1: everybody listening to us knows. And you know, discretion prevents
Speaker 1: me from from, you know, saying who it is. It
Speaker 1: would be improper. I'll take it to my grave. But
Speaker 1: a boy did have a big impact on me because
Speaker 1: as we were going up the aisle, people were recognizing him,
Speaker 1: and the pilot as we were leaving the plane stopped him.
Speaker 1: He was right behind me and said, sir, you've been
Speaker 1: my hero since I was a little boy. And I
Speaker 1: whip around and look at him at that moment, and
Speaker 1: he's beaming with pride. Scott, and I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: so which is it? Which is it me? Which is
Speaker 1: this one or that one? Yeah, it's a half hour apart.
Speaker 1: And I thought to myself, okay, now, Number one. The
Speaker 1: idea that if you do enough, you succeed enough, if
Speaker 1: you strive enough, if you are triumphant enough in this life,
Speaker 1: if you can pocket you can bank those successes and
Speaker 1: go on to be satisfied permanently. That's wrong. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's evolutionarily wrong. There's lots of reasons why that's wrong.
Speaker 1: But this is proof that actually it's not just wrong,
Speaker 1: it's the opposite of the truth. See this guy, his
Speaker 1: successes were in the rear view mirror, and that made
Speaker 1: it all the worse. So this is and I'm feeling
Speaker 1: intellectually stimulated by this, but moren't anything else, I'd be
Speaker 1: selfish at this point, I'm thinking, so what about me?
Speaker 1: What about me? I'm no hero on the plane, I'm
Speaker 1: not some big famous celebrity. But I've tried to do
Speaker 1: a lot with my life. I mean, I've really worked hard,
Speaker 1: and I want to just I want to suck every
Speaker 1: drop of juice out of this life, to do everything
Speaker 1: that I can. But I know the party's going to stop.
Speaker 1: And then what am I going to be telling Esther,
Speaker 1: my long suffering wife on a plane when I'm eighty
Speaker 1: something years old, that I wish I were dead because
Speaker 1: all of the successes and victories in the rearview mirror,
Speaker 1: or or maybe should I get in front of the
Speaker 1: fact that things are going to change and some things
Speaker 1: are going to decline, and I'd better start looking for
Speaker 1: what success means in the second half of life right now.
Speaker 1: And I got started on a research project, and I'm
Speaker 1: telling you it was hard because for a social scientists
Speaker 1: were like you and me, it's like taking out your
Speaker 1: own appendix if you're a surgeon, just like analyzing your
Speaker 1: own life. So I didn't tell anybody about it for
Speaker 1: a really, really long time. But I think I cracked
Speaker 1: the code. I think I actually figured it out. I
Speaker 1: think I figured out the second half problem on the
Speaker 1: basis of brain science and social science and putting it
Speaker 1: together with what the philosophers and great wisdom literatures and
Speaker 1: spiritual leaders have said. And I have a blueprint for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life that I'm offering up in
Speaker 1: this book to everybody else as well. Yeah, the book
Speaker 1: reads really naturally and organically, and it flows like every
Speaker 1: single sentence falls into the next sentence, and every chapter
Speaker 1: falls into the next chapter. I'm sure that you. I'm
Speaker 1: sure the first draft wasn't like that. No one's first
Speaker 1: draft is like that never is. But when it's a
Speaker 1: personal you know how it is when you're looking at
Speaker 1: a really person. This is a diary. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is and and again, you know I've we've all written books.
Speaker 1: I mean, and this is different. I mean, this one
Speaker 1: was when I didn't know if I was going to
Speaker 1: publish this, because you know, there's a lot of personal
Speaker 1: stuff in there too. Yeah yeah, but it's you know,
Speaker 1: even your press stuff. It's not like it's that bad.
Speaker 1: It's not like you're telling us any really dark truths
Speaker 1: about your Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, so you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about it about that. It could have been
Speaker 1: a lot worse. Yeah, that'll that'll be for the that
Speaker 1: will be for the memoir. You're you're fine. I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't write anything. I didn't want my kids to
Speaker 1: read this exactly exactly. You're good. You were good, you
Speaker 1: say quote, Was there any way to get off the
Speaker 1: hamster wheel of success and accept inevitable professional decline with grace?
Speaker 1: Maybe even turn it into opportunity? You know, the book
Speaker 1: goes much deeper than just talking about turning into opportunity.
Speaker 1: It's almost like it's there's a very existential, spiritual part
Speaker 1: that it kind of shifts into as you as you
Speaker 1: read on, you know, and it gets to a point
Speaker 1: which is very constant with you, Yeah, and your values
Speaker 1: and what I know about you and and you know
Speaker 1: is this shift it sort of starts shifting into the
Speaker 1: higher realm of love, into the higher realm of finding
Speaker 1: meaning in the moments of your life. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: Scott that this is You're a Maslovian. Anybody who listens
Speaker 1: to you know, everybody, by the way, should be subscribe
Speaker 1: and listening to the Psychology podcast literally the best podcast
Speaker 1: of this. In this in this whole subject matter area,
Speaker 1: I learned as much from you as from anything else
Speaker 1: that I read professionally, because of your guests and also
Speaker 1: just because of what you bring to this and and
Speaker 1: so and you're you're a follower of Abraham Maslow in
Speaker 1: many ways. I mean you refer to him constantly. And
Speaker 1: Abraham Maslow would say, look, we start with needs, and
Speaker 1: we have fears, and life has exigencies. And working our
Speaker 1: way through these needs and fears and these pressures can
Speaker 1: lead you up this pyramid, as it were, toward what's
Speaker 1: at the top, which is other focusedness and transcendence. And
Speaker 1: so this is the ultimate fruit the adventure of life,
Speaker 1: where that adventure has got all these potholes and difficulties
Speaker 1: and suffering and challenges in it, and that's the reward.
Speaker 1: If we're going to deal with this, we're going to
Speaker 1: be fully alive and we're going to get our way
Speaker 1: through life with full of purpose and meaning. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, the reward is the transcendence. So
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that you know, that's one
Speaker 1: of the that's one of the punchlines of you know,
Speaker 1: what it means to live fully in the second half
Speaker 1: of life. Hey, Everyonan, I'm excited to announce that the
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Speaker 1: you to be a part of the transcender community. Okay,
Speaker 1: now back to the show. Yeah, it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: because I had such a deep resonance too, especially those
Speaker 1: parts of your book. I clearly just jumped right there,
Speaker 1: like I skipped like all the you know, get over
Speaker 1: the diction of success and all. Yeah, yeah, I jumped
Speaker 1: all the way into walking into transcendence. But I just
Speaker 1: resonated so much with it. You say, quote, Fulfillment cannot
Speaker 1: come when the present moment is a little more than
Speaker 1: a struggle to bear in order to attem the future,
Speaker 1: because that future is destined to become nothing more than
Speaker 1: the struggle of the new present, and the glorious end
Speaker 1: state never arrives. The focus must be on the walk
Speaker 1: that his life, with its string of present moments. Those
Speaker 1: are your words, Yeah, that's as good as like any
Speaker 1: dolly lama like that. That's beautiful. Thank you, Scott. I'm
Speaker 1: hoping that people refer to to me at some point
Speaker 1: as his holiness. By the way, the Dalai Lama blurbed
Speaker 1: the book, which I saw that it was the most
Speaker 1: the calmest blurb ever. Even I have been working together
Speaker 1: very closely for the past ten years, and he's a
Speaker 1: mentor and teacher and I love him very very much.
Speaker 1: And he agreed to, you know, put an endorsement on
Speaker 1: the front of the book which basically said, Arthur Brooks
Speaker 1: has written a book helps people help people as the agents.
Speaker 1: Like that is the calmest blurb ever. That's that's worthy
Speaker 1: of the greatest Tibetan Buddhist. Yeah, but that was beautiful.
Speaker 1: Well you wrote back to you for a second. Let's
Speaker 1: not let's not diminish what you did. You have this
Speaker 1: section called walking into Transcendence. I was like, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: but why is it so maybe maybe that's a good
Speaker 1: place to start. Now, let's back all the way up.
Speaker 1: Let's back up. Why is it so hard for so
Speaker 1: many of us, especially when our forties fifties. I'm feeling it.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling it. So I really your book came the
Speaker 1: right time in my life as well. Why is it
Speaker 1: so hard for us to walk into transcendence in that
Speaker 1: kind of second half of our life. Part of the
Speaker 1: reason is because we've been taught that the harder we struggle,
Speaker 1: the more that we strive, the faster we run, the
Speaker 1: more we're going to do, the better it's going to be,
Speaker 1: and the more satisfied will ultimately become. And a lot
Speaker 1: of that is a bill of goods. Now, it's not
Speaker 1: a bill of goods that's just brought to us by
Speaker 1: you know, the outside world or capitalism or Madison Avenue
Speaker 1: of the entertainment industry. It's brought to us by our
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology. You know, there is a phenomenon that you
Speaker 1: and I talk about as so called professionals in the
Speaker 1: field called homeostasis. Homeostasis is the phenomenon that all biological
Speaker 1: processes and emotional processes want to return to their baseline.
Speaker 1: And so when your pulse is above average, it wants
Speaker 1: it has a tendency to go back to its baseline
Speaker 1: so you don't die and you'll be ready for the
Speaker 1: next that of circumstances to exert energy, for example, And
Speaker 1: when you're emotionally out of the baseline because you're thrilled
Speaker 1: about some achievement or you're bummed out about some slight
Speaker 1: or misfortune, that you're going to go back to your
Speaker 1: baseline as well, so you'll be ready for the next
Speaker 1: set of circumstances. Now, the result of that is that
Speaker 1: you can't attain and keep satisfaction for very long. But
Speaker 1: mother Nature lies to you. Your dreams are liars when
Speaker 1: they say that if you just get that one hundred
Speaker 1: thousandth unique download of the podcast, when you finally get tenure,
Speaker 1: when you finally get that big grant, when you finally
Speaker 1: graduate from the Harvard Business School, whatever your thing is,
Speaker 1: mother Nature is saying, then you'll be happy. Then you'll
Speaker 1: be satisfied. The man on the plane should have been
Speaker 1: over the moon because he had done ten times more
Speaker 1: than I ever will and most of us all put
Speaker 1: together will, And yet he wasn't because mother nature sent
Speaker 1: him back to his baseline and there was nothing behind that,
Speaker 1: There was no achievement behind that at a particular time.
Speaker 1: And that's the conundrum that we're talking about. So when
Speaker 1: you're always racing, racing, racing, you're on the treadmill of
Speaker 1: of the next thing, the next thing, which by the way,
Speaker 1: is classic addictive behavior. You know, what we're talking about
Speaker 1: is you know, and you've talked about this so much
Speaker 1: and your show too, is about how how all addictive
Speaker 1: mechanisms are implicate dope. The dope put energic pathways in
Speaker 1: the brain that it basically it's hit the lever, get
Speaker 1: the hit, hit the lever, get the hit again and
Speaker 1: again and again and again. The same thing is true
Speaker 1: for success. This is this is why so many people
Speaker 1: are success addicts. They got to get the next hitting.
Speaker 1: It's like those primate cocaine experiments from the fifties where
Speaker 1: they self administer cocaine and do nothing else but sit
Speaker 1: in front and hit the lever until they stop eating, drinking, sleeping,
Speaker 1: and die. This is how success addicts actually work and
Speaker 1: how people actually work. I want the next satisfaction, the
Speaker 1: next satisfaction, and life tells you life lies that you
Speaker 1: do it, do it, do it, do it, and finally
Speaker 1: you're going to get the bliss. And then you have
Speaker 1: to break through to the truth. You have to to
Speaker 1: come face to face with the fact that that is
Speaker 1: actually not true. And you must be in charge, you
Speaker 1: must be the master of your own emotional fate under
Speaker 1: those circumstances. And that's when you stop running from success
Speaker 1: to success and you start on the transcendental walk to
Speaker 1: actually experience your life moment to moment. It's a different
Speaker 1: way of being. I think that for those who come
Speaker 1: from the other way of being that you describe, it
Speaker 1: can actually be boring, you know, at first, at first,
Speaker 1: for sure, it's very hard. It feels unnatural, boring and unnatural.
Speaker 1: It's correct, it's a funny thing. It's a you know.
Speaker 1: So if you say to somebody, for example, most young people,
Speaker 1: you know, my students, your students, all of our students,
Speaker 1: you'll say, do you like Instagram? They'll be like, no,
Speaker 1: do you like Twitter? It's like they're like, no, I
Speaker 1: hate Everybody says they Hey, Twitter, but it is stuck
Speaker 1: on Twitter right to say, Okay, I'll tell you what's
Speaker 1: next time you're on the train, you're gonna be looking
Speaker 1: at your phone. You're gonna be looking at your Twitter feed. Okay,
Speaker 1: turn it off, put it down, put your hands in
Speaker 1: your lap, and look out the window. And they're going
Speaker 1: to be crawling out of their skin. Doing something that
Speaker 1: they objectively like better because the natural thing feels like
Speaker 1: the unnatural thing. And this is just when when the
Speaker 1: brain is used to the constant and stimulus, and the
Speaker 1: constant stimulus is really had the first half of your
Speaker 1: life and the formula for success. You're stuck on it.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have it. You have to make a change.
Speaker 1: And that's what this book is all about, is how
Speaker 1: to get to that second curve. But once you get
Speaker 1: on that second curve, but once you practice for it,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you're twenty five or thirty five.
Speaker 1: You start practicing for it, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: good that's in your future. Yeah, for sure. And most
Speaker 1: of your book is teaching those skills to help people
Speaker 1: get get on that second curve. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about something you call the principle of psycho professional gravitation.
Speaker 1: That's kind of nerdy. I liked it. Say that's kind
Speaker 1: of nerdy. If you look at the footnotes. By the way, Scott,
Speaker 1: there's a mathematical proof of the concept. Oh, I didn't
Speaker 1: see that. Actually, I will go through my editor. I
Speaker 1: can't believe it. I will. I'm also scientist to end.
Speaker 1: I will love that So this principle of psycho professional
Speaker 1: gravitation is the idea that the agony of decline is
Speaker 1: direct by the way, I love that expression of the
Speaker 1: agony of decline, the idea that the agony of decline
Speaker 1: is directly related to prestige previously achieved and to one's
Speaker 1: emotional attachment to that prestige. I bolded emotional attachment to
Speaker 1: that prestige because I wanted to talk to you about that,
Speaker 1: and I have an idea I wanted to run a bible.
Speaker 1: I think we make a lot of noise, big hype
Speaker 1: in the psychological riture and the distinction between intrinsic motivation
Speaker 1: and extrinsic motivation, and it's never really sit right with me.
Speaker 1: It's never sit right with me. And I've been formulating
Speaker 1: a new theory of what I call value motivation, which
Speaker 1: I think is better than intrinsic motivation. And this relates
Speaker 1: to your sentence. So I wanted to kind of just
Speaker 1: talk about a nerd out of it. I see what
Speaker 1: you thought about it. It just seems like we make
Speaker 1: a lot about that distinction and intrinsic motivation being defined
Speaker 1: as are you enjoying your activity? Are you enjoying it?
Speaker 1: Are you enjoying it? Are you feeling joy when you
Speaker 1: engage in it? But I think that feeling joy when
Speaker 1: you engage in it is overrated and it just seems
Speaker 1: to me like what you're kind of getting at is
Speaker 1: something deeper than do you have to always intrinsically enjoy
Speaker 1: what you're doing. Value motivation, I think is more sustainable,
Speaker 1: and it allows you to be motivated by your values,
Speaker 1: motivated by your long term plans, desires, how you want
Speaker 1: to see the world encounter, even if you're not feeling
Speaker 1: it day in and day out, even if you go
Speaker 1: months where you're like intrinsically like, I don't feel joy
Speaker 1: every time I engage this, but I really do want
Speaker 1: this to be I know this will be really meaningful
Speaker 1: when it's accomplished. But anyway, so I'm just going to
Speaker 1: be that there and just yes, I like it. I
Speaker 1: like it an awful lot because that's really consistent with
Speaker 1: this one thing that I find in my research and
Speaker 1: that I found particularly really the course of writing this book,
Speaker 1: which is that if you're motivated by the what of
Speaker 1: your life, you know, the success, the money, the power,
Speaker 1: the pleasure, the fame, then you're going to be running
Speaker 1: on the hedonic treadmill, as we call it, and then
Speaker 1: you'll never actually be satisfied, and you'll be stuck. You'll
Speaker 1: be stuck in exactly the ways that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: But if you go from the what to the why
Speaker 1: is Simon Sinek always talks about which is so important,
Speaker 1: then you'll be talking about your values and it's not
Speaker 1: always fun. On the contrary, this is one of the
Speaker 1: things that we that you know, I teach a class
Speaker 1: and happiness at the Harvard Business School and the first
Speaker 1: day we define happiness and say, I think of happiness
Speaker 1: as having It's like food. It's made up of macro nutrients.
Speaker 1: It's not a thing. It's not just food. It's actually proteins, carbohydrates,
Speaker 1: and fats. Well, happiness is actually three macro nutrients, which
Speaker 1: is which is enjoyment, satisfaction and purpose. And the most
Speaker 1: paradoxical of those is purpose because purpose requires values, purpose
Speaker 1: requires sacrifice, purpose requires pain, and so paradoxically happiness requires
Speaker 1: unhappiness to get it because of that and that, and
Speaker 1: it can be intensely, intensely meaningful to do things that
Speaker 1: are difficult, but only if you're pursuing your why or
Speaker 1: as you would point out that you're you're serving your values. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just and your framing of that. The emotional attachment
Speaker 1: to the prestige is very interesting, right. So a lot
Speaker 1: of us probably are emotionally attached to our prestige in
Speaker 1: a way that we're not consciously aware of, and it's
Speaker 1: driving us. It's driving our motivations. So I think it's
Speaker 1: when people read your book, it might be a big
Speaker 1: dose of reality for a lot of people and they
Speaker 1: might have a lot of aha moments where they're like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's what I've been driven by. Yeah, yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: and they can What I'm hoping is when people read it,
Speaker 1: they're you know, depending on what point that they are
Speaker 1: in their life. I mean, I'm fifty seven years old,
Speaker 1: and so if people were my age, a lot are
Speaker 1: going to be perplexed by you know, Number one, it's
Speaker 1: it's why is it that it looks like even though
Speaker 1: I'm I'm in many ways the prime of my life,
Speaker 1: but my skills might be waning in a particular area.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about my ability to do a
Speaker 1: deadlift or you know, the bench press. Because you could
Speaker 1: talk to me about Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: uh weirdly, I'm a better physical shape than I was
Speaker 1: when I was thirty seven. But you know, there are
Speaker 1: certain things that I'm much much worse at and some
Speaker 1: things that I'm much much better at. And it's the
Speaker 1: same for almost everybody. So, for example, my ability to
Speaker 1: solve puzzles quickly has declined, even though I've had no
Speaker 1: cognitive decline, so it seems. And my ability to tell
Speaker 1: stories and to teach has increased dramatically. And this is
Speaker 1: a you know, this is hard for people to deal
Speaker 1: with because what makes them successful, what jumps them on
Speaker 1: the hedonic treadmill, what makes you good at what you're
Speaker 1: good at. Everybody listening to us, by the way, watching
Speaker 1: or listening to us, is almost everybody's going to be
Speaker 1: in the same boat of why would you listen to
Speaker 1: the Psychology podcast? And the answer is because you want
Speaker 1: to be a better version of you. This is, in
Speaker 1: a very real way, a self improvement podcast, but based
Speaker 1: on truth and intellect, not just shooting from the hip.
Speaker 1: That's why this is a valuable podcast. Okay, So that
Speaker 1: means that everybody who's listening to this is hugely invested
Speaker 1: in ideas to add value to themselves. People who have
Speaker 1: this in common, they find that what they're really good
Speaker 1: at is using ideas to create value. This is what everybody,
Speaker 1: all of us in this community, we have using ideas
Speaker 1: to create value. Well, you find that your speed and
Speaker 1: your innovative capacity for doing so declines in your thirties
Speaker 1: and four. So the first thing in this puzzle is
Speaker 1: why is that? And then the second thing is what
Speaker 1: are you better at that you can jump to? And
Speaker 1: that's the big mystery that I solve in this book
Speaker 1: to my own satisfaction, I hope with the satisfaction of
Speaker 1: readers as well. As you get much slower at innovation,
Speaker 1: and you get much better at at at instruction, you
Speaker 1: get much better at explaining ideas, of mixing big ideas
Speaker 1: together into a coherent story and telling other people about
Speaker 1: them in ways that they can use it. So you've
Speaker 1: got to go from software pioneer to college professor or
Speaker 1: some equivalent of that. And this is a really interesting thing.
Speaker 1: So you early in your career a good example of this.
Speaker 1: You have always done a lot of really path finding
Speaker 1: high level technical research. Do you read your journal articles?
Speaker 1: This stuff is at the forefront of what psychologists do.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to understand. You read articles. Look,
Speaker 1: we're in one. We're in a pretty small community here.
Speaker 1: I didn't know you reads and well, I mean I
Speaker 1: got nerdy journal articles too. Is how I cut my tea,
Speaker 1: you know, back in all these and I go back
Speaker 1: to my journal articles from when I first finished my PhD,
Speaker 1: and I can't literally even understand my old math. I
Speaker 1: was using early artificial intelligence genetic algorithms to model public
Speaker 1: finance mechanisms, and you know, I was publishing in these
Speaker 1: theory journals, and I can't understand my own math now.
Speaker 1: But I can write a book that takes relatively complex
Speaker 1: research and explains it of a whole bunch of different,
Speaker 1: baliant people and explains it in a way that people
Speaker 1: can understand it. This is exactly what you're doing in
Speaker 1: your podcast as well. And that's the first kind that
Speaker 1: innovative capacity is called fluid intelligence, which you have in
Speaker 1: huge amounts when you're young, and you need to jump
Speaker 1: from that curve to crystallize intelligence, which is wisdom, teaching, ability,
Speaker 1: ability to explain things to and if you're a CEO,
Speaker 1: to use other people's brilliance to lift them up and
Speaker 1: put them together in really good teams. If you're a podcaster,
Speaker 1: to take all the best ideas that are out there
Speaker 1: in the psychology world and bring them together in one
Speaker 1: place and help people explain them. That's crystallized intelligence. And
Speaker 1: so the purpose of the book is how can I
Speaker 1: how can all of us make the investments to jump
Speaker 1: from fluid intelligence to crystallize intelligence when it's time, how
Speaker 1: to know one it's time, and then how to make
Speaker 1: the jump. And the rest of the book is what
Speaker 1: are the techniques to actually get you there and so
Speaker 1: you're happier when you get there? Yeah? I love that.
Speaker 1: Did I ever send you that book chapter I wrote
Speaker 1: with Marty Seligman on Why We Age? Oh yeah, I do.
Speaker 1: I know that chapter chapter that you and Marty Seligman wrote.
Speaker 1: And when you were still a pen I think, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: when I was still an imagination Institute, we tried to
Speaker 1: review the whole literature and said, well, what do you
Speaker 1: still got when you you know, when you're older? And
Speaker 1: it's very much in that review is very much in
Speaker 1: line with a lot of oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 1: that was the stuff about intelligences from Raymond Cautel from
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies, where he was saying, look, it's
Speaker 1: just extraordinary how much quicker. And I remember seeing this
Speaker 1: with my own kids, when my eleven year old son
Speaker 1: was started beating me in checkers, and he was just
Speaker 1: much faster at seeing things in sort of hyper dimensional space.
Speaker 1: And it's not like he's Albert Einstein. I mean, he
Speaker 1: grew up to be a forward deployed combat marine, which
Speaker 1: is what he does right now, which I'm glad he's
Speaker 1: got these fluid intelligence capabilities, you know, keeping himself and
Speaker 1: us safe. But it was amazing to me that I
Speaker 1: saw that I was sort of weirdly slowing down in
Speaker 1: my forties, but at the same time I was a
Speaker 1: much better teacher year after year after year, much better
Speaker 1: writer year after year as things went by, for exactly
Speaker 1: the reasons that you and Mardy figured out. And that's
Speaker 1: that's what I talk about in the book, but most importantly,
Speaker 1: how to get there and how not to be afraid
Speaker 1: to get there, not be afraid to get there. And
Speaker 1: you know, your book is called from Strength to Strength,
Speaker 1: so in one sense you're saying from food intelligence to
Speaker 1: crystallized intelligence. But another sensor's saying, from success addiction to
Speaker 1: to what what would you say? Freedom whole freedom to freedom?
Speaker 1: You know, human freedom is so elusive and the change
Speaker 1: that we put on ourself because of the I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the funniest thing that people often think. You know,
Speaker 1: you go back to I'm older than you. So I
Speaker 1: remember when I was a kid, a really really really
Speaker 1: little kid, my dad watching some news report about woodstock,
Speaker 1: but maybe I was four or five years old, and
Speaker 1: some hippies on TV going, if it feels good, man,
Speaker 1: do it, and my dad's saying, that's just all wrong, right,
Speaker 1: And then now you know, I listen to my millennial
Speaker 1: students and friends and all that who basically are saying,
Speaker 1: if it feels bad, it's bad. You got to avoid
Speaker 1: it and you have to treat it. For example, both
Speaker 1: are wrong because Mother Nature lies about happiness. Mother Nature
Speaker 1: doesn't care if we're happy. The truth of the matter
Speaker 1: is that Mother Nature will drive us to run from
Speaker 1: success to success so that we're optimal breeding machines, so
Speaker 1: we're as attractive as possible, we have as much resources
Speaker 1: as possible, but we do not select. We do not
Speaker 1: neither sex select nor naturally select. On happiness. This is
Speaker 1: the reason, as evolved beings, as spiritual beings, that we
Speaker 1: have an opportunity and in need a responsibility to learn
Speaker 1: about the secrets to happiness success and share it with
Speaker 1: other people. Because it goes against it goes against human tendency,
Speaker 1: It really does. I feel like I'm so aligned with
Speaker 1: everything you're saying. I am so aligned and you're a
Speaker 1: conservative political It's no it's no secret that politically you're
Speaker 1: a conservative. How can it be that I and I'm
Speaker 1: politically I'm progressive, but I'm not far left. I'm more like,
Speaker 1: you know, classical liberal sort of kind of guy. But
Speaker 1: how can it be that every time we talk, I'm
Speaker 1: like one hundred percent on board with everything you say.
Speaker 1: Would we will we ever get to a point where
Speaker 1: I disagree with something with you? Like would have to
Speaker 1: get into the political to mean for me to disagree
Speaker 1: with you, like, I just feel so aligned with you. Well,
Speaker 1: to begin with, we have the same values, which is
Speaker 1: that's the humanistic values, and that's what really matters. I mean,
Speaker 1: you call it yourself a classically liberal political liberty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a classically liberal political conservative. And the classical liberal
Speaker 1: part is these Enlightenment values. So when we think about it,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that you and I like each
Speaker 1: other get long is because we both believe in the
Speaker 1: in the power of the competition of ideas to make
Speaker 1: things better. I mean, when you think about it's so interesting.
Speaker 1: Until the Enlightenment, power was everything. Coercion was everything. If
Speaker 1: there's a disagreement, coercion is the only way to sort
Speaker 1: it out. But the most as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 1: the most important thing that the Enlightenment pointed out to
Speaker 1: people and demonstrated to people is that persuasion is way
Speaker 1: more powerful and coercion because we can disagree on something
Speaker 1: and through the disagreement be both better. You know, the
Speaker 1: whole idea that we I mean, we love. Competition in
Speaker 1: politics is called democracy, and economics is called the free
Speaker 1: enterprise system, which, when properly bounded, requires that we that
Speaker 1: we cooperate with each other in ways that we would
Speaker 1: never have had to in the past. And in the
Speaker 1: competition of ideas, it's so critical. You know, I am
Speaker 1: super grateful not to be surrounded by people who agree
Speaker 1: with me. You know, I come from a family of
Speaker 1: political progressives. I learned so much from them. They're so smart,
Speaker 1: they're so and furthermore, I don't I have to I
Speaker 1: have to recognize and I I truly believe that I'm
Speaker 1: wrong on tons of stuff. I just don't know what yet.
Speaker 1: And so I need you to disagree with me on
Speaker 1: policy ideas, to disagree on politics per se. So where
Speaker 1: would we find disagreements basically is in differing approaches to
Speaker 1: serve our common values. And that's the man, that's the
Speaker 1: basis of getting better at everything and being friends. Agreed, agreed.
Speaker 1: But I keep reading. I've read a lot of even
Speaker 1: your political stuff. And you know, you wrote this beautiful
Speaker 1: book on like being a bleeding heart Conservative that was
Speaker 1: so good, That was so good. And right now, what
Speaker 1: I think we have in American politics is not classical
Speaker 1: liberal anything I think that we have. Whereas you and
Speaker 1: I would contrast as classically liberals and conservatives, what we
Speaker 1: have right now is between the left and right that
Speaker 1: are ascendant in political power, at least in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Not really in the states. By the way, there's so
Speaker 1: much more good going on in cities and states. I
Speaker 1: live in Massachusetts. We've got this great governor of the
Speaker 1: bluest state who's a Republican governor and who basically just
Speaker 1: wants to get stuff done. It's so it's a really
Speaker 1: good example of that. But at the federal level you
Speaker 1: have classically illiberal conservatives and liberals, and so that's the
Speaker 1: competition of you know, with polarization, with populism, and with coercion,
Speaker 1: and with hatred and with bitterness, and I reject all
Speaker 1: of that. I don't want either one of those brands.
Speaker 1: I find myself equally alienated from the illiberal right as
Speaker 1: from the illiberal left, because you know, in my America,
Speaker 1: the America that I love, it's a nation of people
Speaker 1: that are basically just kind of an ambitious riff raff
Speaker 1: that don't fall prey to the true big lie, which
Speaker 1: is the person in the house next to you who
Speaker 1: votes through the other party is the enemy of America.
Speaker 1: You know, it's astonishing to me that more than half
Speaker 1: of Americans, more than half of Americans today on both
Speaker 1: the Democratic or holding inside it's the biggest threat to
Speaker 1: our countries people who don't vote like them. Wow, that
Speaker 1: is a huge lie, and it's a huge mistake. And
Speaker 1: we might as well just you know, bind it up
Speaker 1: with a bow and send it as a Christmas present
Speaker 1: to the enemies of a free society. You know, we
Speaker 1: need more. I need more. Scott Berry Kauffman's telling me,
Speaker 1: I'm completely crazy about capitalism and we're going to make
Speaker 1: any progress in this country. And then but because why
Speaker 1: because we have differing approaches on how to serve the poor?
Speaker 1: You know that that's what we need. I love to
Speaker 1: go down that rabbit hole, but our listeners, can we
Speaker 1: get back to the This is the psychology podcast, not
Speaker 1: the economics podcast. There's so much there's so much depth
Speaker 1: to you, so much. I love talking to you about.
Speaker 1: But I think that we just talked about is very seguable.
Speaker 1: Is that a word segable? It is? I think? I think?
Speaker 1: I mean it's yeah, sure, it's an aphorism. I mean
Speaker 1: it's a neologism and I like it too. Higher forms
Speaker 1: of spiritual of Tian's you talk about and love your enemies, right,
Speaker 1: and which there's something you know, there's some carryover to
Speaker 1: this book when you talk about it, right, How is
Speaker 1: that in cultivating more of that in this kind of
Speaker 1: second to you know, what's the word to use? Second?
Speaker 1: What wave of your life? Second? The second the success curve,
Speaker 1: the second curve, the second curve on the one that
Speaker 1: doesn't curve down, that you can maintain that successful the
Speaker 1: absolute rest of your life, the central ingredient to it's interesting.
Speaker 1: There's a study that you're really well aware of and
Speaker 1: some of your listeners might have heard of as well,
Speaker 1: called the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is an
Speaker 1: eighty year longitudinal study launched in the late thirties and
Speaker 1: early forties. It was looking at graduates of people that
Speaker 1: were graduating from Harvard College and it was going to
Speaker 1: follow them all the way through their life. It was
Speaker 1: matched up with another study of people who wasn't just
Speaker 1: you know, Harvard men. People who hadn't gone to college
Speaker 1: have different backgrounds, and so it's demographically representative, and it
Speaker 1: looks over eighty years at what they did to wind
Speaker 1: up happy when they were old. Now, this is like
Speaker 1: a crystal ball, and I talk about it a lot
Speaker 1: in the book, and I teach you about it a
Speaker 1: lot at my class at Harvard about on the subject
Speaker 1: what can you do when you're twenty five? And this
Speaker 1: is really the big promise of the book is basically
Speaker 1: a lot of people say, I would be great if
Speaker 1: I were happy when I'm seventy five, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just have to wait and see when I get there. No,
Speaker 1: you don't have to wait and see. You don't have
Speaker 1: to get up the chance. There are some things that
Speaker 1: will be worse and better, to be sure, But there's
Speaker 1: a lot you can do when you're twenty five and
Speaker 1: thirty five and even sixty five such that you will
Speaker 1: be happier than you would have been when you're seventy five, guaranteed.
Speaker 1: And a lot of that comes out in this Harvard
Speaker 1: Grant study. And there's all kinds of things in there
Speaker 1: to do. But the number one big takeaway is that
Speaker 1: happiness is love, full stop. That's the punchline of this study.
Speaker 1: If you don't have loving relationships, you're not going to
Speaker 1: be happy as you get older, which means that you
Speaker 1: have to make all kinds of investments in love. And
Speaker 1: that means love for friends, love for your partner, love
Speaker 1: for your family, love for the divine. You need loving
Speaker 1: relationships at a very, very meaningful level. Love is expressed
Speaker 1: in your work. You know, you and I talk about
Speaker 1: your work. Why are you doing this thing that you're
Speaker 1: doing is because you want to serve. You want to
Speaker 1: help other people live. This is an act of you
Speaker 1: know the psychology podcast I Happen to Know is an
Speaker 1: act of love that's hugely meaningful and everybody deserves that.
Speaker 1: The problem is that the world's not telling you to
Speaker 1: do that. The world is telling you that. Basically, here's
Speaker 1: the world's formula, Scott, here's the world's formula. Use people,
Speaker 1: love things, worship yourself. That's the world's formula for happiness.
Speaker 1: And it's completely dead wrong. The right formula is use things, love, people,
Speaker 1: worship the divine. That's it. I love that. Those are
Speaker 1: the seven words to remember at the end of the book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: booked myself. That's the end of the book. That I
Speaker 1: was going to lead up to that. I had a
Speaker 1: whole plan where what I was going to my next
Speaker 1: question was going to be leading up. I had a lot,
Speaker 1: a whole plan to lead up to them. It's okay,
Speaker 1: it's okay, now, it's okay. But what I was going
Speaker 1: to ask you to kind of segue into that was
Speaker 1: you say that love is We just talked about love,
Speaker 1: but that you can level up from love. The next
Speaker 1: level is worship, is what you say, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to unpack that a little bit. What is worship? Could
Speaker 1: how is like when I think of that, I think
Speaker 1: of it as a negative thing actually, because I think
Speaker 1: it's like it's like too much self sacrifice. You know, well,
Speaker 1: to worship is is a is a true adoration. But
Speaker 1: this can't come from from something where in which you
Speaker 1: have a peer relationship. The biggest one of the biggest
Speaker 1: problems is interesting. You know, in my own in my
Speaker 1: own spiritual journey, I dedicate this book to my guru.
Speaker 1: And I learned my guru when I was studying in
Speaker 1: southern India with a famous, very famous yogi named Shri
Speaker 1: Nochurbnka Traman. And I was in a little town of
Speaker 1: little house and he was asking me questions. He was
Speaker 1: interviewing me, not like this. He was interviewing me just
Speaker 1: to me to be able to help me more. And
Speaker 1: he asked me about my wife and I said, I said,
Speaker 1: she leads me on paths of righteousness. I mean she
Speaker 1: reads me the holy scriptures, she helps me to pray
Speaker 1: and uh. And then he said does she love you
Speaker 1: the most? And I said no, no, she loves God
Speaker 1: the most and she's told me that. And he said,
Speaker 1: she is your guru and this is was incredibly meaningful me,
Speaker 1: meaningful to me because I realized that the secret, one
Speaker 1: of the real secrets of success in my marriage is
Speaker 1: that my wife worships not me, and and a lot
Speaker 1: of there's a lot of pressure on spouses too, for
Speaker 1: the spouse to be the beyond and all and to
Speaker 1: love the person beyond all others to the point of adoration.
Speaker 1: That could be considered worship. And it is so helpful
Speaker 1: to me that I know that with my dying breath,
Speaker 1: I will be my eyes will be on my beloved,
Speaker 1: my wife, but that I will be in the hands
Speaker 1: of God, and that she will be fine because she's
Speaker 1: in the hands of God as well. That's worship. And
Speaker 1: that is an that's an un that's a that's a
Speaker 1: disordered relationship for another person. Yeah, that is really profound.
Speaker 1: You to have the to have no ego, to be
Speaker 1: like okay with that, that like oh you you feel
Speaker 1: in God more than me, Like you're okay with it.
Speaker 1: It's like you happy? Yeah, Well, now, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's funny because at the beginning of our of our marriage,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is an evolution as we've gotten older
Speaker 1: as well, and as we've had our children, as our
Speaker 1: children have grown, and it's really helpful. It's interesting because
Speaker 1: we were explaining this to my oldest son is engaged,
Speaker 1: and we're explaining this to my oldest son and his fiance,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't quite getting through right. It sounds almost
Speaker 1: as sort of a compromise, or as if we don't
Speaker 1: love each other enough. But you need the adoration, the
Speaker 1: worship to go to an entity that's higher than higher paths. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And David Foster Wallace, by the way, who wrote famously
Speaker 1: that everybody worships something, everybody worships something. Now more dangerous
Speaker 1: than worshiping your partner, of course, is self worship. And
Speaker 1: that's the world that we're being pushed into. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're posting seventy five selfies of yourself on Instagram
Speaker 1: every day, then you're practicing a form of really metastatically
Speaker 1: dangerous self worship. So there's a lot of things that
Speaker 1: are tied up in this, but love, which is defined
Speaker 1: by Aristotle and later Saint Thomas Aquinas as to wheel
Speaker 1: the good of the other. Nothing about feelings. It's a commitment.
Speaker 1: It's the decision to love. That's why you can love
Speaker 1: your enemies, right, And that's why loving your enemies is
Speaker 1: actually possible, because it's the way that you choose to
Speaker 1: behave as opposed to the feeling that's written on your
Speaker 1: heart in any particular moment. So love, love, love, love,
Speaker 1: love in the appropriate way for people all around you,
Speaker 1: including your enemies, including your your friends, your family. Love
Speaker 1: in the right way. That is the secret to aging
Speaker 1: well ultimately, And that's an empirical phenomenon. That's what we
Speaker 1: find in the eighty to your longitudinal study that people
Speaker 1: have the most love have the most happiness. Absolutely. This
Speaker 1: stuff tails so much with my interest in Maslow's notion
Speaker 1: of being love be love, which is a higher form
Speaker 1: of love than he calls it. Unneeding love versus needing
Speaker 1: love comes from a place deficiency motivation, right a telic
Speaker 1: versus telic love in the Aristotelian framework, Right, nice, nice,
Speaker 1: All this stuff can be mapped on do to to the
Speaker 1: for sure, and he will. He and Masa drew a
Speaker 1: lot from Buddhism and from like tai Chi and as
Speaker 1: well uh and Zen ideas. So yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff is deeply connected. So what does it mean
Speaker 1: to start your vana prosta retired artist, literally retiring to
Speaker 1: the sarist. But what is that vana pasta is actually
Speaker 1: it's a it's a word in Sanskrit that actually comes
Speaker 1: from two words von and prosta. I mean to retiring
Speaker 1: and then into the forest. That's why vonaprosta it's is
Speaker 1: a larger concept. Is literally means to retire to the
Speaker 1: forest or to withdraw into the forest. But actually it's
Speaker 1: it's metaphorical and it comes from an ancient Vedic philosophic notion.
Speaker 1: This is probably at least a four thousand year old
Speaker 1: idea of a good life which should be modeled in
Speaker 1: four quarters now. According to the ancient notion is Hindu
Speaker 1: wisdom that a good life, of perfect life, of balanced
Speaker 1: life is one hundred years long and it has four
Speaker 1: to twenty five year quarters horse You know, as they
Speaker 1: say in finance, your results may vary given the fact
Speaker 1: that most people don't live to AE hundred, but the
Speaker 1: whole points you need to pass through phases. The first
Speaker 1: is Brahmasharia, which is the student phase, the phase of learning.
Speaker 1: The second is gree hostile, which is a householder phase.
Speaker 1: Build your family, work in your job, become successful, earn money,
Speaker 1: The third is called van a prasta, where you start
Speaker 1: to work backward, where you start to retire away from
Speaker 1: the earthly rewards of money, power, pleasure, fame, prestige, whatever,
Speaker 1: where you're thinking much much more about the trendscendental benefits
Speaker 1: that actually come from the love relationships in your life,
Speaker 1: such that you can do the spiritual work that's required
Speaker 1: to get into the fourth quarter, which is called sanyasa.
Speaker 1: Sanyasa is a period of real enlightenment, and in ancient times,
Speaker 1: many Hindu men would actually leave their families at age
Speaker 1: seventy five and go spend the rest of their lives
Speaker 1: at the feet of their yogi masters and the Himalayas.
Speaker 1: I mean no joke this would be. But you can't
Speaker 1: do that without twenty five years of elite training. So
Speaker 1: what this means for us today is basically, look, when
Speaker 1: you're at a certain phase in your life, notwithstanding the
Speaker 1: change in your skills, you need to start spending time
Speaker 1: thinking about the unique transcendental benefits that you can get
Speaker 1: from a contemplative life as you get older, and you
Speaker 1: need to do the work first. You can't show up
Speaker 1: at the Olympics without training. You need elite training to
Speaker 1: be able at the end of your life to attain
Speaker 1: some amount of enlightenment. And that means taking your spiritual
Speaker 1: life seriously, taking your love relationships seriously, building the root
Speaker 1: system that actually is your family and friendships that you're
Speaker 1: going to need, thinking, reading, contemplating, starting a practice of
Speaker 1: meditation in prayer, and I go through all of the
Speaker 1: things that actually go into not just in the ancient
Speaker 1: Hindu thinking, but in our modern American thinking as well.
Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense to all of us who are
Speaker 1: real moderns. You you are so good to got You're
Speaker 1: like like you're such like a good principled person, Like
Speaker 1: do you have any naughty side of you? Like that
Speaker 1: makes you more human? I mean, we don't want need
Speaker 1: to talk about We don't need to talk about it
Speaker 1: is it just tell me that meant dark thoughts. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a huge thing. But I met war with myself.
Speaker 1: You know, this is the key thing, And this was
Speaker 1: the most liberating thing was recognizing that the day that
Speaker 1: you stop being at war with yourself is the day
Speaker 1: you start to lose that that it's perfectly okay to
Speaker 1: have a dark side. What's not okay is to accept
Speaker 1: the dark side you know that, in point of fact,
Speaker 1: that the war that you have against your own dark side,
Speaker 1: this is one of the great adventures, the great joys
Speaker 1: of life. That difficulty is part of what it means
Speaker 1: to be fully alive. It's interesting. Saint aaronais this fourth
Speaker 1: century Catholic saint. His most famous saying is that the
Speaker 1: glory of God is a person fully alive. And what
Speaker 1: he meant by fully alive was not like you know,
Speaker 1: a healthy blood pressure and you know no, but even
Speaker 1: by fully alive is actually living and engaging in life
Speaker 1: under your own terms. And this is not libertinism where
Speaker 1: my own terms or if it feels good, do it,
Speaker 1: because that's not living according to your own terms. That's
Speaker 1: your lizard brain telling you how to live and living
Speaker 1: according to your urges and basist desires. No, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: Who is the person that you want to be? Who's
Speaker 1: the Scott Berry Kaufman of your dreams and living according
Speaker 1: to that? And I guarantee you it's not Scott with
Speaker 1: a boat. I guarantee you it's not Scott with a Ferrari.
Speaker 1: It's Scott who is morally elevated and transcendentally aware and
Speaker 1: lifting other people up and glorifying the divine in your
Speaker 1: particular way, and then and then and then shooting at that,
Speaker 1: day after day after day, shooting at that, shooting at that.
Speaker 1: That's to be fully alive. Well, I love that so much.
Speaker 1: But I will say so I don't come across a hypocrite.
Speaker 1: I hope to take up sailing lessons this year. It's one.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with sailing, So I wouldn't mind maybe
Speaker 1: a boat someday. But it's not the thing that drives
Speaker 1: me exactly exactly. And I don't mean to be some
Speaker 1: sort of acetic you know, that would come across this
Speaker 1: if critical. It's not like I'm walking some itinerate anonymous path.
Speaker 1: I'm a professor at Harvard University. I'm a little a
Speaker 1: privileged existence, to be sure. But you got to hold
Speaker 1: it lightly, is the bottom line. I mean, you have
Speaker 1: this fabulously important and impactful and popular podcast, but you
Speaker 1: have to hold it lightly. Yeah, because if it becomes
Speaker 1: if this success of this podcast is the essence of Scottness,
Speaker 1: trouble awaits oh for sure, for sure. Well I struggle,
Speaker 1: uh sometimes knowing what is my essence? You know? And
Speaker 1: that but that's all I'll take it's a whole different conversation.
Speaker 1: But I struggle, I mean I and I wonder do
Speaker 1: other people struggle with that? Who are successful? Like? Am
Speaker 1: I the only one? You know? I struggle sometimes to know,
Speaker 1: like who am I? You know? Who is the the
Speaker 1: real me? And and you know it's it's tough because
Speaker 1: I don't. I make the scientific case, there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as the real you. There are many, many, many
Speaker 1: sides of all of us. There is the sides of
Speaker 1: us that make us feel most creative, alive, as you said,
Speaker 1: most creative, creatively, self actualized, that side of myself. I
Speaker 1: know what I'm engaging in that side of myself. I
Speaker 1: feel more alive that I know that I know. But
Speaker 1: the question of who is the real me? Is? Is
Speaker 1: almost feels like a full's Errand you know, well, it's
Speaker 1: part of it is part of the It's an interesting thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what philosophers, particularly eighteen, nineteenth and
Speaker 1: twentieth century philosophers, have engaged with. So the concept has
Speaker 1: always been there is a true you, and you're responsible
Speaker 1: to find it, serve it more. Twentieth century philosophy from
Speaker 1: the Nihilists to the existentialists would say, there is no
Speaker 1: true you. You have to invent it, right, and it's
Speaker 1: almost neither here nor there. Whether it's existence precedes essence
Speaker 1: or essence precedes existence one way or the other. You
Speaker 1: have a responsibility to serve the highest version of yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the circumstances, and that's this unbelievable life adventure. That the
Speaker 1: great news is we get a bunch of years to
Speaker 1: do it if we so choose. But if we want
Speaker 1: to stay on the amster wheel, stay on the hit
Speaker 1: on a treadmill and freak out when when some of
Speaker 1: our abilities start to wane, and just fight like crazy
Speaker 1: and try to hide everything just with all of our might,
Speaker 1: we're wasting this opportunity to just start walking the transcendental
Speaker 1: walk into the most meaningful, service oriented and ultimately cosmically
Speaker 1: impactful part of our lives. You just made me think
Speaker 1: of something that that's that's really profound. But by the way,
Speaker 1: you just made me think that this idea of the
Speaker 1: real you. I think maybe what you're saying to a
Speaker 1: certain extent is we have to really accept that that
Speaker 1: could change throughout our lives. You know, there can be
Speaker 1: like a period from like because I look at myself
Speaker 1: some of the videos I was looking on YouTube and
Speaker 1: some of the things I did, like when I first
Speaker 1: started giving talks, and I was like, oh, that guy.
Speaker 1: But that was the real me then, And maybe you're
Speaker 1: what you're saying is kind of accepting or at least
Speaker 1: that was the best version of me then. But I
Speaker 1: think the best version be now is someone different, a
Speaker 1: different path, you know, not completely different and not like
Speaker 1: going from you know, crazy, but a different kind of
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not is interested in giving all these
Speaker 1: talks all the time and you know, being on video
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, you know certain things. But you know,
Speaker 1: now I want to teach more. I want to like,
Speaker 1: I want to like, I want to help people and
Speaker 1: mentor them. I'm much more of a drive to mentor
Speaker 1: and to help the future generation. Right, Which is, by
Speaker 1: the way, that's the core competency of crystallized intelligence, which
Speaker 1: is that that second curve. Remember, the first curve is
Speaker 1: fluid intelligence, which is analytic capacity and the ability to
Speaker 1: do a purely original work, to do it fast, to
Speaker 1: do it well. And the second half is crystallized intelligence,
Speaker 1: which is the ability to take big ideas, to synthesize
Speaker 1: them and to teach them to others in a coherent way.
Speaker 1: So what you're doing is you're recognizing and increasing your
Speaker 1: crystallized intelligence, and you're being drawn to try to develop it.
Speaker 1: I mean this and this is what people need to do.
Speaker 1: The problem is when they're a success addict and they're
Speaker 1: stuck on their first curve. They that's what got me here,
Speaker 1: That's the one I'm going to stay on forever, and
Speaker 1: I'll be damned if I'm going to actually let this
Speaker 1: thing leave you behind. And then all it is is
Speaker 1: like rage, rage against the dying of the light, which
Speaker 1: is an exercise and futility but also the recipe for misery. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I don't want to rage against the dying.
Speaker 1: I want to like meditate on the dye. I want
Speaker 1: to like see the beauty in it. I want to
Speaker 1: I want to feel wonder. I don't want to rage totally.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's different strokes and it's hard. And
Speaker 1: this is part of the problem that a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have who have a pretty I mean, you
Speaker 1: have a deeply examined life. I mean I've heard maybe
Speaker 1: think too much. Well I don't. I mean, every a
Speaker 1: lot of people think that they over think, but intellectuals
Speaker 1: in particular think deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, and and and again.
Speaker 1: One of the things that people don't realize about as
Speaker 1: social scientists that we don't do research. We do mesearch.
Speaker 1: You look at things that are you're interested in your
Speaker 1: own life and behavior. If you're somebody who's studying, you know,
Speaker 1: insects or something, you're not studying humans. But if you're
Speaker 1: a human scientist, it is because there's something about this
Speaker 1: thing in the mirror that fascinates you and the problems
Speaker 1: that you want to solve. So the fact that you're
Speaker 1: doing this and jumping in with both feet is really
Speaker 1: really encouraging because this means that you've got a leg
Speaker 1: up and there's a lot that you can teach to
Speaker 1: people about how they can make this shift in their
Speaker 1: own lives as well. Absolutely, but we need to like
Speaker 1: collaborate on something together someday. Yeah, and you're doing actually
Speaker 1: you're doing comedia. You're doing you're doing comedy classes, aren't you,
Speaker 1: I am? Is that something you want to collaborate with
Speaker 1: me on? Is that what you're saying? I love to
Speaker 1: learn more? And part of it is this I've actually
Speaker 1: done a little bit of research about happiness and humor,
Speaker 1: which is you know, Jennifer Rocker and company and who
Speaker 1: is a Standford has done some of that work that's
Speaker 1: really really interesting. But I did a column. I quoted
Speaker 1: them with a column. But the thing that I found
Speaker 1: about humor and happiness, which is quite interesting, is that
Speaker 1: there are two kinds of ways to have a sense
Speaker 1: of humor. One is to appreciate funny things, and the
Speaker 1: other thing is to say or do funny things. And
Speaker 1: what you find is that happiness is correlated is associated
Speaker 1: with the first, but not the second. Hmmm, So people
Speaker 1: who love funny things tend to be really really happy,
Speaker 1: and people who are really really funny tend to be
Speaker 1: a little less happy than the average. Is that interesting?
Speaker 1: So interesting explains you know a lot about comedians in
Speaker 1: their lives. You know, I'm a weird person because I
Speaker 1: I'm very much in this spiritual path and I resonate
Speaker 1: so deep with what you're saying. But I also am
Speaker 1: very cheeky. I also don't need to take myself that seriously.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's not at odds right, but but I feel
Speaker 1: like you often don't see that right. Like people who
Speaker 1: are like so like who they're like, oh, I am annoyed,
Speaker 1: And they don't tend to have a great sense of humor,
Speaker 1: although the Doggi Lom is a good exception. He's he's
Speaker 1: quite quite quite hilarious. But you know, I mean hilarious, wonderful, right,
Speaker 1: he's wonderful in that way. I mean, the things that
Speaker 1: he'll do. It's it's interesting, you know. I have every
Speaker 1: kind of experience with him that shows that that that
Speaker 1: spirituality and earnestness are actually antagonistic to each other in
Speaker 1: a lot. I love that. I love it. And so
Speaker 1: he'll say, you know, for example, well one time we
Speaker 1: were doing a thing in here in the States, and
Speaker 1: after we'd been working together for you know, days and
Speaker 1: days and days, it was very intense. Afterward, he said,
Speaker 1: you know, every time I see you, I want to
Speaker 1: give you something. I want to give you a gift.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, thank you. He said, but I
Speaker 1: don't own anything. And he starts rooting around in his
Speaker 1: little satchel, his little person that he carries, and he
Speaker 1: pulls out a ballpoint pen, a ballpoint pen, and he
Speaker 1: gives me this ballpoint pen and he says, I want
Speaker 1: you to have this, and it was actually kind of nice.
Speaker 1: He was a moll bloc. I mean, it's like no joke,
Speaker 1: but it was. He said, I've been carrying this for
Speaker 1: twenty years and I want you to have it. And
Speaker 1: for me, it's like the Holy Grail was like. And
Speaker 1: so I carry it with you. I do. It's actually
Speaker 1: it's not in this room, but I still do. And
Speaker 1: so I was carrying it around in my briefcase for
Speaker 1: like six months. And I was with a Catholic bishop,
Speaker 1: Bishop Robert Barron, in Los Angeles, and we were having
Speaker 1: lunch at a subway or someplace with paper napkins, and
Speaker 1: I said something. He said, oh, I want to write
Speaker 1: that down for a sermon. He says, you got a pin.
Speaker 1: And I look at my briefcase and there's my Dalai
Speaker 1: Lama pen right it out. And I say, and I say,
Speaker 1: you know you're evidence. This was a pen given to
Speaker 1: me by the Dolli Lama. Because I was kind of boasting.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sure of ashamed to say this to admit
Speaker 1: of Scott, but I said, and he says, oh, I
Speaker 1: love the Dollai Lama. He's been so helpful to me
Speaker 1: in my pastoral work. And I heard the Dollai Lama
Speaker 1: in my ear going, you know what you have to do?
Speaker 1: You gave him, I said, I said, I said, I'd
Speaker 1: like you to have that pen. So I couldn't. I said,
Speaker 1: trust me, I have to. So he takes the right.
Speaker 1: He takes the pen. And then three months later I
Speaker 1: was back in Durham Salah, which is where his Holiness
Speaker 1: lives in the Himaly and foothills where his monastery is,
Speaker 1: and I tell the Dollai Lama the story and he
Speaker 1: laughs like crazy and he gives me another pen. See,
Speaker 1: you have the second pen with you somewhere. I got
Speaker 1: the second pen and he says, you know, I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to hearing who you give this one too. But
Speaker 1: it's like this all the time. It's sort of this lighthearted,
Speaker 1: easy come, easy go. You know, he loved he has
Speaker 1: his cat. He loves his cat. He's crazy about his cat.
Speaker 1: And I one time I've asked him, we were just
Speaker 1: having lunch. I said, your Holiness, what's your cat's name?
Speaker 1: And he looks at me like I asked him, like,
Speaker 1: what's your left shoes name? Because in you know, Tibetans
Speaker 1: wouldn't name an animal. And he says no name cat.
Speaker 1: This is this is amazing inside baseball right now. I
Speaker 1: love this. By the way, Arthur, you know I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan of the di Woma and he's a wonderful man.
Speaker 1: He's a beautiful, beautiful man. Don't meet your heroes. Don't
Speaker 1: meet your heroes because they turn out to have feet
Speaker 1: of clay, you know, to quote the prophet Daniel, and
Speaker 1: he doesn't have feet to clay. He's exactly the same guy.
Speaker 1: He's a beautiful, beautiful human being who has love for
Speaker 1: everybody and wants to share it. Absolutely, I mean and
Speaker 1: I absolutely do. That is true what I said. But
Speaker 1: you didn't catch my joke because I was tell me again.
Speaker 1: Oh wait a second, you made the pizza joke, didn't you. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: you know you told me. What did that guy say
Speaker 1: to you? And all? That's all he had to say
Speaker 1: to you to get a free pen? Oh that's right,
Speaker 1: but I don't have it. You have a second, one second, one,
Speaker 1: It'll be in the mail, scot Yeah. Anyway, I'm you
Speaker 1: just did you didn't play along with this. It's because
Speaker 1: I missed it. But now I got it. No, I
Speaker 1: got it. I got it. I thought you were making
Speaker 1: that famous Ali Lama joke, which is, you know, how,
Speaker 1: what did Ali Lama say to the pizza delivery guy?
Speaker 1: Make me one with everything? Oh? Yeah, well, I do
Speaker 1: love that joke. I do love that one. I know
Speaker 1: that's not as funny as this jokes. Perhaps my favorite
Speaker 1: chapter in your book, although they're all good, Perhaps my
Speaker 1: favorite one is the one cast into the Falling Tide
Speaker 1: and this idea of womenality. Can you kind of tell
Speaker 1: our listeners a little bit about what wominality is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we've been discussing this crystallized and flood intelligence, these
Speaker 1: curves that define what you're naturally good at. Most actially
Speaker 1: easy for you that those curves, flood intelligence, for example,
Speaker 1: goes up through your teens and twenties, and it goes
Speaker 1: down through your thirties and forties. And the second curve
Speaker 1: comes up through your thirties and forties and fifties and
Speaker 1: stays high in your sixties and seventies. The trouble is
Speaker 1: that you don't just naturally fall from one onto the other.
Speaker 1: You have to make a decision because you have to
Speaker 1: do different things to get from your fluid to your
Speaker 1: crystallized intelligence curve. And that means taking a big risk.
Speaker 1: It means jumping from one set of activities, from one
Speaker 1: set of skills, from one set of interests to one
Speaker 1: set of emphasies in your life. And that transition is really,
Speaker 1: really scary. Now most people don't make it because number one,
Speaker 1: they're super good at what they were doing, so they
Speaker 1: rage to keep at it, or they're too afraid, or
Speaker 1: they don't believe there's a second success curve lurking behind
Speaker 1: the first one, or they're afraid that they won't succeed,
Speaker 1: or they're just too attached to the first set the
Speaker 1: first curve. But if you do jump, it turns out
Speaker 1: that there's this magic that happens between the curves too
Speaker 1: when you're making a shift. And I didn't know. Remember
Speaker 1: I did this research for myself and at the time,
Speaker 1: I was a CEO of this big thing tank in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And because of that, I retired. I quit
Speaker 1: my job because I wanted to get on my second
Speaker 1: curve and I knew I had the data, unambiguous data
Speaker 1: that you have to make a decision to do it.
Speaker 1: You have to start doing different things, as by the
Speaker 1: way you have done in your career the past three
Speaker 1: years that you've actually made transitions, You've made changes, and
Speaker 1: you're doing more crystallized intelligence. Now some people can do
Speaker 1: it very intuitively, like you, but most of us we
Speaker 1: don't have the gifts, and so we actually have to
Speaker 1: make this conscious decision. And so I quit my job.
Speaker 1: And it was unbelievably scary and uncomfortable. I walked away
Speaker 1: from more money than I was ever going to make,
Speaker 1: more a position. I was like the captain of a
Speaker 1: battleship in public policy. I was in the exciting struggles
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. Which I didn't always find pleasant,
Speaker 1: to be honest, but at least they were always exciting.
Speaker 1: And I walked away from these relationships with corporate CEOs
Speaker 1: and leaders and policy leaders. And I was promptly forgotten
Speaker 1: once I no longer had a position. It's not like
Speaker 1: people are calling me up to see how I was doing.
Speaker 1: And I got to Massachusetts, you know, I took up
Speaker 1: a college teaching job, and it was weird. It was
Speaker 1: like I couldn't even I was trying to sign a
Speaker 1: check after I got to Massachusetts and I couldn't remember
Speaker 1: my signature. It was really really weird because I was
Speaker 1: in this what they call a liminal state, which is
Speaker 1: from one thing to another, a transition. Bruce Filer, who's
Speaker 1: written that famous book Life Is in the Transitions, which
Speaker 1: is a really nice book. Yeah, he really is, and
Speaker 1: he's a very deep thinker. And what you find is
Speaker 1: that people go through these regularly. But this is the
Speaker 1: biggie from the fluid to the crystallized intelligence curve. But
Speaker 1: once you do it, once you jump, your life just
Speaker 1: becomes so crazy rich with opportunity because of that. Insecurity
Speaker 1: per se. There's a word in Tibetan, this bardo b
Speaker 1: a r d o, and what it means is the
Speaker 1: decision to leap at the end of your life basically
Speaker 1: to the next life. But it requires that you make
Speaker 1: a positive decision to actually make that jump, which is
Speaker 1: the ultimate kind of liminality, literally between lives, the subtle
Speaker 1: wind that the Tibetans talk about from life to life
Speaker 1: in Ramcar. Yeah, we have this aversion of that of
Speaker 1: that in our own lives. So people are listening to us.
Speaker 1: It's like, even if they're not between fluid and crystallized intelligence.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're twenty five years old deciding whether or not
Speaker 1: to quit this good job and go to graduate school
Speaker 1: or or you know, go to something that's high paying
Speaker 1: and something is low paying, or moving away from New
Speaker 1: York because you're sick of it and you want to
Speaker 1: go back to Wichita where you grew up. Even though
Speaker 1: that's not a cool thing to do. You know what
Speaker 1: you need to do is you need to consider that
Speaker 1: that jump per se is going to be really, really hard,
Speaker 1: and there's a deep sacredness in that difficulty and a
Speaker 1: profound kind of fertility and the things that it's going
Speaker 1: to make happen in your life. You're going to have
Speaker 1: unusual clarity simply because of the among other things, because
Speaker 1: of the insecurity that you're facing. Absolutely might want to
Speaker 1: double click on a distinction that you make in your
Speaker 1: book Passingly. It's kind of a throw away, but I
Speaker 1: think it was so profound and could probably be a
Speaker 1: book in itself, and that's the distinction between being happy
Speaker 1: in life versus feeling the need to feel special. It
Speaker 1: was like a throws a one line and then you're like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe you can actually care about being happy as opposed
Speaker 1: to being special. I was like, that's a book in itself,
Speaker 1: you know, like that's wow, wow. I mean, think about
Speaker 1: how many people right now with social media kind of
Speaker 1: pressures feel the need to justify their existence by being
Speaker 1: special as much as possible. Look at me, look at me,
Speaker 1: look at me, look at what I'm doing, look at me,
Speaker 1: followers I have, look at many much money I have,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Those So those two things are very very different, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. And you know, there's this desire to be special,
Speaker 1: to stand out for the crowd. And once again there's
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, if we were if one
Speaker 1: of us was an evolutionary biologist, I mean, you do
Speaker 1: a lot of evolutionary psychology, so you know, and you
Speaker 1: talk about this an awful lot that you have a
Speaker 1: you want to stand out from the crowd because it
Speaker 1: makes you It makes you better in the passing on
Speaker 1: your jeans department, in the pool of people. If you
Speaker 1: stand out, you do better. I mean, obviously, if you
Speaker 1: stand out as a criminal or a kook, it might
Speaker 1: not help you that very much. You want to stand
Speaker 1: out in a positive way. So there's this narrative that
Speaker 1: people have to stand out all the time, and they
Speaker 1: can become captured by their desire to become special at
Speaker 1: the expense of actually being happy and So I was
Speaker 1: interviewing a lady for this book, this woman who's incredibly
Speaker 1: successful Wall Street financier, I mean, just killing it. And
Speaker 1: she's in this period where she feels her skills a
Speaker 1: little bit in the cline, her decision making, the abilities
Speaker 1: are not quite as sharp as they used to be.
Speaker 1: She can tell that younger people in the firm who
Speaker 1: used to idolize her like she's missing a step there.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, she also is just very,
Speaker 1: very reluctant to make any changes. You know, her marriage
Speaker 1: is not that great, a relationship with her kids is
Speaker 1: not that great. She probably drinks a little bit too much.
Speaker 1: Her health is not as good as it used to be.
Speaker 1: And it's obvious it's like, step back from the rat
Speaker 1: race and get on point in your relationships with your
Speaker 1: children and your husband, and your relationship with alcohol, with
Speaker 1: you know, your faith journey, whatever it happens to be.
Speaker 1: Why don't you do that? And she says, because in
Speaker 1: my work, I'm really really special, and all those things
Speaker 1: you talked about, anybody can do them. And I think
Speaker 1: I just prefer to be special and happy. And I
Speaker 1: thought about it. I thought, well, you know, that's the
Speaker 1: success addicts anthem. You know when I talk to people
Speaker 1: who everybody knows, people who have had alcohol use disorder,
Speaker 1: have been addicted to drugs, and they you know, they
Speaker 1: know that sooner later they're going to have to get
Speaker 1: on the wagon, or they're going to die sooner or later,
Speaker 1: but they don't because and they know that they'll be
Speaker 1: happier if they're not addicted, or they're not actively addicted.
Speaker 1: But they prefer to be higher than happy, preferring to
Speaker 1: be special than happy. It's just the success addicts version
Speaker 1: of preferring to be high. Yes, and your book is
Speaker 1: all about a deeper form of happiness for sure, and
Speaker 1: many people ever thought they had before. Arthur, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for chatting me today and helping people overcome the
Speaker 1: striver's curse and step into a deeper form of happiness.
Speaker 1: Loved your book. It came to me at just the
Speaker 1: right time in my life, and I'm sure for a
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners it will come to them the
Speaker 1: right time of their lives. Thank you, Scott. Thank you
Speaker 1: for the work that you're doing to lift people up
Speaker 1: and bring people together. It's it's I have to say
Speaker 1: that you know you're every week you help me and
Speaker 1: I deeply appreciate that, and I'm not alone. There's many,
Speaker 1: many other thousands of people that feel the same way,
Speaker 1: So on behalf of all of us. Thank you, Thank
Speaker 1: you Artha. That means the world to me. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at thusseecology
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page thus Ecology Podcast.
Speaker 1: We also put up some videos of some episodes on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
Speaker 1: that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
Speaker 1: the show, and tune in next time for more on
Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.