Speaker 1: Welcome to Go ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. Hi Amali Wentworth
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Go ask Alli. Where this season
Speaker 1: I'm asking how do you grow a healthy relationship with ourselves,
Speaker 1: with our loved ones? With Timothy Shallow may Well, that's
Speaker 1: just for me. In this episode, we're exploring happiness. How
Speaker 1: do we grow a relationship with happiness? And what does
Speaker 1: that even mean? The search for happiness is a human endeavor,
Speaker 1: a universal goal. We all want to be happy. Scientists
Speaker 1: and philosophers have been setting the idea of happiness for centuries,
Speaker 1: and we search for constantly with our thoughts and our actions.
Speaker 1: Because in life, as we are taught from infancy, and
Speaker 1: which advertising has built an empire around, the top goal
Speaker 1: in life is to be happy. But what is happiness really?
Speaker 1: Is it that feeling that rushes over you when you
Speaker 1: achieve a goal, when you have your first child, when
Speaker 1: you love somebody and they love you back. You know
Speaker 1: it when you're happy or not, But sometimes it can
Speaker 1: be hard to define. So here's my intro. Here's the
Speaker 1: man who writes about happiness, Arthur Seabrooks. He's an American
Speaker 1: social scientist and contributing opinion writer for The Washington Post.
Speaker 1: He was a president of the American Enterprise Institute, a
Speaker 1: conservative think tank, for a decade. As of July twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: he joined the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School and
Speaker 1: Harvard Business Schools. You're written eleven books, currently writes a
Speaker 1: column in the Atlantic and has a podcast called The
Speaker 1: Art of Happiness with Arthur Brooks. So with all of this,
Speaker 1: and believe may go to his Wikipedia goes on for pages.
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to experience happiness with Arthur Brooks. Hello Arthur Brooks,
Speaker 1: Hello Ali, really happy to be with you. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen you in months. I know, I know, and thank
Speaker 1: you for saying happy. Um, have you found that people
Speaker 1: at Harvard Business School gasp when you say I'm teaching
Speaker 1: about happiness? Well, now, it's an established course and it's
Speaker 1: it's one of the most popular courses that hbs, believe
Speaker 1: it or not. So I have hundreds of students on
Speaker 1: the waiting list for this happiness class. And and it
Speaker 1: turns out, I mean, they need a lot of NBA
Speaker 1: traditional knowledge so they can get jobs in business, but
Speaker 1: they really need this because you know, I've been looking
Speaker 1: at data on our NBA graduates ten years out, and
Speaker 1: they suffer a huge amount of dissatisfaction. They get all
Speaker 1: of the things that the world promises them. If you
Speaker 1: have your NBA from the Harvard Business School, they get
Speaker 1: it and more, and they find that it's still not
Speaker 1: enough there on this kind of treadmill, and they don't
Speaker 1: know what to do. And so based on that, you know,
Speaker 1: people are looking at people who have graduated before them.
Speaker 1: They said, well, what are the lessons that we need
Speaker 1: to learn about our own lives? You know, I'm good
Speaker 1: at managing a business, but how do I manage me?
Speaker 1: How do I manage my psyche? How do I manage
Speaker 1: my heart? My relationships? And and so that's what my
Speaker 1: classes all about. It's about the neuroscience and social science
Speaker 1: of human happiness. You know, what do we know? What
Speaker 1: do we not know? How do we manage our emotions?
Speaker 1: How do we move things out of our limbic systems
Speaker 1: into our meta cognition? And how can we be good
Speaker 1: leaders to us? And how do you how do you
Speaker 1: define happiness? The first day of class, everybody comes in,
Speaker 1: They're all staring at you. How do you start. So,
Speaker 1: happiness is basically a combination of three big things. It's
Speaker 1: a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose, and they're all
Speaker 1: really different things. There's sort of the macronutrients of well
Speaker 1: being is you know, the great macronutrients and nutrition or protein, carbohydrates,
Speaker 1: and fat, and there are three of those in happiness
Speaker 1: as well. And so you know, when people say it's
Speaker 1: some feeling, it's not. It's a lot of different feelings,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of different experiences. Enjoyment is something that's
Speaker 1: pleasure plus your ability to kind of add education and
Speaker 1: and life to your pleasures. So what do you mean
Speaker 1: by enjoyment and pleasures? So let's define that, okay. So
Speaker 1: pleasure is something it's pretty an it's just something that
Speaker 1: makes you feel good, but you add human capital to it,
Speaker 1: you add you know, a little bit of sophistication to it,
Speaker 1: and pleasure can become enjoyment. So, for example, you know,
Speaker 1: drugs and alcohol can bring you a tremendous amount of pleasure,
Speaker 1: but becoming a wine connoisseur is actual enjoyment. And so
Speaker 1: enjoyment it's still extremely pleasurable, but it's a more elevated
Speaker 1: sensation than pleasure itself. Then the middle of satisfaction, which
Speaker 1: is to say, I want to be able to do
Speaker 1: something and feel satisfied as opposed to inherently unsatisfied. And
Speaker 1: the big mystery is that people, you know, when they
Speaker 1: go after money or power or or or fame, that
Speaker 1: it leaves them deeply, deeply unsatisfied. That's a that's a
Speaker 1: phenomenon called the hedonic treadmill, which is a nice metaphor.
Speaker 1: And the last is the most profound of all. Purpose
Speaker 1: is the big one, because purpose and meaning in life
Speaker 1: or how you figure out what life is all about,
Speaker 1: and that requires unhappiness. Here's the great paradox. To be happy,
Speaker 1: you also have to be unhappy. To love your happiness.
Speaker 1: You need to cherish your unhappiness and understand it and
Speaker 1: manage it. You need to be fully alive, is the
Speaker 1: bottom line. And you basically have to take those three
Speaker 1: macro nutrients and you have to get them in adequate quantities,
Speaker 1: and you have to understand how to get them and
Speaker 1: not neglect any of them. And so it's a serious business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was going to say, do you talk about too
Speaker 1: much happiness? I mean, like manic happiness, to me, seems
Speaker 1: sort of counterintuitive to what you're talking about. Well, manic
Speaker 1: happiness usually means an unbalanced profile. It usually means just
Speaker 1: tons and tons of enjoyment and not very much purpose
Speaker 1: in life. And so let's just prefer to that as
Speaker 1: your undergraduate experience. You know, when you're basically the tons
Speaker 1: of parties, tons of fun, but not very much direction
Speaker 1: and purpose and meaning in life. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: you can have all purpose and meanings like the American Gothic,
Speaker 1: you know, the guy with the pitchfork next to his
Speaker 1: grim life, all purpose and meaning but no enjoyment. And
Speaker 1: trying to find a balance between the macronutrients is the
Speaker 1: same thing that we try to do to keep a
Speaker 1: balanced nutritional profile and to stay healthy. We need all
Speaker 1: of those things that the most elusive of which is satisfaction,
Speaker 1: the one right in the middle. But getting those those
Speaker 1: ones on the sides right is really key. And so
Speaker 1: this is one of the things I talked about with
Speaker 1: my students, and I talked about when I write and
Speaker 1: when I do a podcast, is I talk about the
Speaker 1: different parts of life where you can get adequate enjoyment,
Speaker 1: a shot at satisfaction and then taking the risks and
Speaker 1: feeling the pain that you need to to have purpose
Speaker 1: and meaning in life. Yeah, because you you need sadness
Speaker 1: and anger and all those other fabulous emotions to go
Speaker 1: along with it. I would assume, Yeah, you know, that's
Speaker 1: like if you didn't if you had never seen light,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't know a darkness is. And and so those
Speaker 1: contrasts are really part of a good life. Now. People
Speaker 1: who have only sadness, who have only anger, who have
Speaker 1: these primary negative emotions and overabundance, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: something that we have to deal with. And so one
Speaker 1: of the things that I talked about a lot is
Speaker 1: how to manage unhappiness as well as managing happiness. And
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is that the you know, the modern
Speaker 1: neuroscience and psychological literature shows clearly that happiness and unhappiness
Speaker 1: are not opposites, that in fact, they're processed in different
Speaker 1: hemispheres of the brain. And that means that one of
Speaker 1: the first things when I'm doing executive coaching, you're working
Speaker 1: with people one on one, the first thing I'll find
Speaker 1: out is if they have a happiness problem or an
Speaker 1: unhappiness problem, and then you figure out which side they
Speaker 1: need to manage, and so what is a happiness problem
Speaker 1: and what is an unhappiness problem? Well, happiness is well,
Speaker 1: just so to back up a little bit, happiness as
Speaker 1: we measure it, you know, generally speaking, we do you know,
Speaker 1: big surveys. We ask people, you know, to say, all
Speaker 1: things considered, you've got ups and downs, obviously, but what
Speaker 1: number would you say is most reflective of your happiness
Speaker 1: level overall? And so I'll ask that to you, Ali.
Speaker 1: So let's see on a one to seven scale, where
Speaker 1: one is misery and seven is pure unmitigated bliss, you know,
Speaker 1: over the last couple of years, despite all the ups
Speaker 1: and downs, and you know, you and I have teenage
Speaker 1: kids and all the things that happen in life, and
Speaker 1: a pandemic, yeah, that's that, but teenage kids are worse
Speaker 1: than the pending pandemic. That, um, what what's your number?
Speaker 1: You know, what do you say? What would you say?
Speaker 1: Your number is? You know, one to seven? Five? That's
Speaker 1: pretty good, that's pretty good. So is that the number
Speaker 1: you've had your whole life, your whole adult life. Do
Speaker 1: you think that's gone up down? I think it's gone
Speaker 1: extremely up and down. I was in my twenties in
Speaker 1: a depression for six months, so and that was a
Speaker 1: one that was a clinical depression. So that's actually a
Speaker 1: medical problem. Yeah, yes, well, which which I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you about in terms of happiness. How do you
Speaker 1: you know, when you think about the whole serotonin you know,
Speaker 1: anti depressants of the world, couldn't we all just medicate
Speaker 1: ourselves into a nice happiness plateau. What we could do
Speaker 1: is we could actually find ways to greatly lower our unhappiness,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't do anything for our happiness. So so
Speaker 1: continuing on that, so you've got a five, yes, I'm
Speaker 1: about a four okay. And my wife, she's guys, she's
Speaker 1: a six point eight. Wow, I mean it's unbelievable. And
Speaker 1: also she's Spanish, so she's got a different attitude on
Speaker 1: this whole thing. So I'll say six eight, What are
Speaker 1: you talking about? Why are you with six? Asians? Because
Speaker 1: I want to be And there's a lot of wisdom
Speaker 1: to that, by the way, yes, yes, So so where
Speaker 1: do you get these numbers? How do we build these numbers?
Speaker 1: They come from three basic parts are genes, are circumstances,
Speaker 1: and our habits for happiness. Now, genes are about half
Speaker 1: of your happiness, which I don't want to be true.
Speaker 1: I hate that. I hate that too. But but here's
Speaker 1: my question about about genetics, because when I was first
Speaker 1: reading that, I thought, oh God, well, then I'm doomed
Speaker 1: because I've come from a family of depressives. You know.
Speaker 1: My mother said to me, um, why are you depressed?
Speaker 1: You know, have an English muffin, you'll feel better. And
Speaker 1: I said, is there a history of depression in our family?
Speaker 1: And she said no, not at all. I said, well,
Speaker 1: didn't all four of my grandparents commit suicide? And she goes, yes,
Speaker 1: but that's not depression. So my point is at if
Speaker 1: you're from a family that has medical depression or issues
Speaker 1: or alcoholism, then are we automatically doomed We will not
Speaker 1: ever catch the happiness we deserve because we're predisposed genetically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can have a predisposition genetically, but there's nothing that's
Speaker 1: deterministic about that. So I can have a predisposition for
Speaker 1: lots of things. You know, there's there's substance abuse issues
Speaker 1: with my family. I don't drink alcohol why because I
Speaker 1: want to keep the switch off. In other words, I
Speaker 1: want to keep that forty percent or something of alcoholism
Speaker 1: that tends to be written on the DNA someplace not
Speaker 1: expressing itself. So you've got genetics, and you've got sort
Speaker 1: of epigenetics. You've got the expression of genes as well.
Speaker 1: They're really interesting parts of life for the that are
Speaker 1: that are not genetic. And by the way, you can
Speaker 1: also have a across the population forty percent of genetic
Speaker 1: but that's not you in the same way that you know,
Speaker 1: I don't look very much like my dad did, so
Speaker 1: you know, I could have looked just like him. One
Speaker 1: of my sons looks just like me a scept that
Speaker 1: he's six ft five and his hair and you know,
Speaker 1: and he's in the Marines and he's cool and I'm not.
Speaker 1: But but we have the same basic physical features. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's uncanny. And my other side doesn't look anything
Speaker 1: like me. But they have the same genetic background, the
Speaker 1: same two parents from the same gene pooled. And you
Speaker 1: have a story about twins, right right, And that's how
Speaker 1: I've actually figure out that that your happiness is forty
Speaker 1: eight percent genetic is because when they take these identical
Speaker 1: twins that were adopted to separate families, you can get
Speaker 1: them back at age forty you can use statistical techniques
Speaker 1: to pull apart in the nature, in the nurture and
Speaker 1: their happiness. So that's forty percent genetic. And and it's
Speaker 1: really important to understand that because if you have gloomy parents,
Speaker 1: then you can understand what your baseline is probably going
Speaker 1: to be. So I have very gloomy parents and have
Speaker 1: mental health and substance abuse issues. Okay, good to know,
Speaker 1: But there's and that's where the action is. Half of that,
Speaker 1: or say a quarter, is from circumstances. And those circumstances
Speaker 1: are the ups and downs. And that's what we think
Speaker 1: is really going to be the big swinger, Like if
Speaker 1: I get this job, then I'm gonna be happy. If
Speaker 1: I it in the you know, Harvard Business School, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be happy. If I have an accident, I
Speaker 1: will be unhappy. Or if my girlfriend breaks up with me,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be unhappy, etcetera, etcetera. That turns out to
Speaker 1: be mostly wrong because the circumstances, they do affect your happiness,
Speaker 1: but they're transitory. You get over it super fast. There's
Speaker 1: a whole lot of science on why that doesn't last.
Speaker 1: The part that really really really matters that we should
Speaker 1: all be paying attention to. And these are the drivers
Speaker 1: of happiness that we can control. Are the happiness portfolio,
Speaker 1: which is about your happiness and it only has four
Speaker 1: elements in it. Your faith, your family, your friendship, and
Speaker 1: your work. Those are the big four. By by faith,
Speaker 1: I don't mean my faith or your faith, I mean
Speaker 1: a sense of philosophical transcendence, something bigger than than Ali
Speaker 1: and Arthur. And the reason that's important is because spirituality works.
Speaker 1: Spirituality or even philosophy stoic philosophy. The reason is because
Speaker 1: when you don't have that, you tend to focus only
Speaker 1: on yourself in your own life, which is like watching
Speaker 1: the same TV show over and over again every single day.
Speaker 1: It's just so boring. It's still defying. And in a
Speaker 1: sense of philosophy or the transcendent or faith or spirituality,
Speaker 1: it lets you zoom out forty feet, so you have
Speaker 1: it's an adventure. Actually, So that's family is pretty self explanatory.
Speaker 1: Friendship is something that we're in an epidemic loneliness in
Speaker 1: this country, so people have fewer and fewer and fewer friends.
Speaker 1: And then then work is really critical. Work doesn't is
Speaker 1: not any particular kind of job has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with income level or education level. It's only work that
Speaker 1: has two characteristics, which is to earn your success, to
Speaker 1: feel like you're achieving something where your skills meet your passions,
Speaker 1: and to where you can serve other people. That's the
Speaker 1: character Any job where you earn your success and serve
Speaker 1: others will give you a tremendous amount of happiness. So
Speaker 1: happiness that we should care about. Forget your genetics, Forget
Speaker 1: the fact that mom and dad we're kind of messed up.
Speaker 1: You can't do anything about that. Circumstances. Disregard them to
Speaker 1: the extent that you can, because tomorrow you're gonna feel
Speaker 1: better or worse. I think every single day about putting
Speaker 1: a deposit in these four accounts. Your faith, family, your friendships,
Speaker 1: and work. This meaningful because you're serving others and earning
Speaker 1: your success. If you put all of your energy into
Speaker 1: those four accounts and have a diversified portfolio so you're
Speaker 1: not neglecting any one of those every day, you'll be
Speaker 1: taking control of happiness as much as you possibly can.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more to come after this short break
Speaker 1: and we're back. Does money buy happiness? Money does not money?
Speaker 1: Money lowers the sources of unhappiness. And this is really interesting,
Speaker 1: and there's research on this that goes back years and
Speaker 1: years and years, but it's never been able to sort
Speaker 1: it out until relatively recently. And which you find is
Speaker 1: that people will say early on in their lives, when
Speaker 1: they don't have very much money and they're just starting
Speaker 1: out in their careers, for example, that they earn more
Speaker 1: money and they feel better, and so they say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm getting happier, and so they chase that sensation their
Speaker 1: whole life, and after a certain point that's a relatively
Speaker 1: low point, they're not getting any more life satisfaction. The
Speaker 1: reason for this is that it's actually getting rid of
Speaker 1: the sources of unhappiness. The sources of unhappiness are the
Speaker 1: things that drag you down, feeling hungry, having avoidable diseases,
Speaker 1: your children, being neglected, whatever. With a little bit more money,
Speaker 1: you can solve those problems. But you say ciate at
Speaker 1: a really low level from that unhappiness effect, and you
Speaker 1: never actually buy happiness. So at about seventy or a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars a year, you say cate the unhappiness effects,
Speaker 1: but you never get more happiness effects. But you don't
Speaker 1: learn that, and so you're going through life basically trying
Speaker 1: to get those like early hits of money and how
Speaker 1: they made you feel better, but they don't. You don't
Speaker 1: know why. Well, maybe in the next hundred thousand, maybe
Speaker 1: the next fifty dollars, whatever happens to be, then I'll
Speaker 1: finally and you never do. That's the hedonic treadmill. Run, run, run, run, run, run,
Speaker 1: run to never get ahead. I was thinking about what
Speaker 1: you talk about with work, and say you had a
Speaker 1: radio show and I called you up right now and
Speaker 1: I said, listen, you know, I wish that I could
Speaker 1: find something about what I do that would give me happiness.
Speaker 1: I don't have the luxury of pursuing passion or you know,
Speaker 1: I cut heads off fish in a dark factory. So
Speaker 1: what are you talking about. Yeah, some people have very
Speaker 1: sophisticated jobs, very high being sophisticated, high prestige jobs that
Speaker 1: they hate. One question that I always ask is who's
Speaker 1: benefiting from your work? And the one answer that I
Speaker 1: always get from people who don't like their work, who
Speaker 1: don't get joy from their work, is they don't know
Speaker 1: or they've never thought about it. And so this is
Speaker 1: one of the things that I was recommended people do
Speaker 1: is the thing who is benefiting when I know it
Speaker 1: sounds ridiculous, I know, but somebody is benefiting when you
Speaker 1: cut the head off that fish. Somebody is benefiting when
Speaker 1: you trade that stock. Somebody is benefiting from it. Imagine
Speaker 1: that person and dedicate your work to that person. So
Speaker 1: that's number one, and number two is you need to
Speaker 1: find yourself to the extent that you can in a
Speaker 1: work situation where you can be rewarded for your hard
Speaker 1: work and merit and personal responsibility, where you can be
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you're cutting heads off fishes or whatever.
Speaker 1: If you actually don't believe that you can get ahead
Speaker 1: when you do better, you're gonna be really frustrated. So
Speaker 1: this is actually a lesson for leaders as much as
Speaker 1: it is for people who are frustrated about their work. Leaders,
Speaker 1: if they want to have employees that are not just
Speaker 1: bummed out and unproductive and sabotaging the whole operation, they say,
Speaker 1: how am I going to make sure that the people
Speaker 1: who work for me feel like they have a trajectory
Speaker 1: to greater success, that there's merit that's being rewarded, that
Speaker 1: they can earn the success and how can they feel
Speaker 1: more like they're doing something good for the world, that
Speaker 1: they're providing a service that people actually need if you
Speaker 1: can provide those two things. And most cases, except for
Speaker 1: when people are really really in trouble from money, it's
Speaker 1: more important in money. And when you think about the
Speaker 1: depositing of these things for our happiness, if you're a
Speaker 1: little anemic in one area, can you make up for
Speaker 1: it in another? Yeah, for sure. You know. One of
Speaker 1: the best ways to remediate a job that's just really
Speaker 1: a drag but that you need is to find something
Speaker 1: where you're earning your success in another area. So you
Speaker 1: don't remediate the work problem with more family. You remediate
Speaker 1: the work account with a better work account. And we
Speaker 1: can all do more than one thing. We live in
Speaker 1: this hyper specialized society where it's like, Okay, I do
Speaker 1: one thing and one thing only. We have this like
Speaker 1: weird cult in America called work is Um where work
Speaker 1: is absolutely everything. All of our self worth comes from work,
Speaker 1: and the only thing we talked about at parties with
Speaker 1: other people is our work. And you go to sleep
Speaker 1: thinking about your work, and the first thing you do
Speaker 1: when you wake up in the mornings you think about
Speaker 1: and it's like, that's like a cult. It's insanity. It
Speaker 1: is a cult. I lived. I lived in d C,
Speaker 1: and I lived in Los Angeles. And when I lived
Speaker 1: in d C, you could only talk about Paul politics,
Speaker 1: And when I lived in Los Angeles you only talk
Speaker 1: about the entertainment industry. And every once in a while
Speaker 1: I would say, does anybody know a dentist? Is there
Speaker 1: anybody else health care that we can talk to? No?
Speaker 1: I know, I know, it's insanity, and it's the craziest thing.
Speaker 1: And and you know, we have a group of friends
Speaker 1: here in Boston and we have a moratorium on talking
Speaker 1: about work. You know, we get together, we talk about life,
Speaker 1: we complain about our kids. You know, we do it
Speaker 1: normal people are supposed to do. And it's just so
Speaker 1: much more enriching. So that's really really critical. So you
Speaker 1: can remediate a problem in other areas by doing more
Speaker 1: than one thing, and a classic I mean, you really
Speaker 1: hit on it. Ally, if you don't feel like you're
Speaker 1: serving others and earning your success, go help others. Everybody
Speaker 1: can help others in all kinds of interesting ways. But
Speaker 1: the biggest problem that I see for a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are listening to us right now, is that
Speaker 1: they have an undiversified and unbalanced happiness portfolio because it's
Speaker 1: all work and they're neglecting faith, family and friends, you
Speaker 1: know that, which is basically like putting your entire pension
Speaker 1: in Greek bonds. It's like it might work out, but
Speaker 1: recommend it. It's a it's a imprudent investment strategy. So,
Speaker 1: especially when'm talking to people who are really quite successful
Speaker 1: in their professions, I asked them if they're lonely, I
Speaker 1: asked them if they feel spiritually fulfilled. I asked them
Speaker 1: about you know, the quality of the relationships with their
Speaker 1: children and with their spouse. And almost always that's where
Speaker 1: I find the weaknesses. And then we put together a
Speaker 1: remediation strategy that has very specific elements to it, or
Speaker 1: there's going to be at least half an hour a
Speaker 1: day in each one of those categories that's not work,
Speaker 1: and then scaling up. Yeah, it's It's funny because I've
Speaker 1: met some very successful, famous people, you know, big names
Speaker 1: that you would go, oh my god, you met so
Speaker 1: and so, and they were miserable, And I remember thinking,
Speaker 1: how is it possible that this person is miserable. They're
Speaker 1: uber famous globally, they have more money than anything. They could,
Speaker 1: you know, buy Spain if they wanted, And then how
Speaker 1: dare you be unhappy? And then you sort of peel
Speaker 1: back the layers and you realize, well, they're all alone.
Speaker 1: And I would imagine that level of fame and fortune
Speaker 1: is incredibly lonely anyway, because you know, for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: But it was always like a head scratcher to me
Speaker 1: that the thing to keep in mind about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga last year tweeted, fame is prison. It absolutely is.
Speaker 1: And by the way, great wealth is prison too. The
Speaker 1: good four that we already talked about, faith, family, friends,
Speaker 1: and work. They have kind of their opposites, which are
Speaker 1: the bad for the things that the world tells us
Speaker 1: will give us happiness if we pursue them, but they
Speaker 1: never satisfy. But I mean, isn't the whole advertising empire
Speaker 1: built on that. I mean, if you get this car,
Speaker 1: you'll be happy, if you buy this house, you'll be happy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a conspiracy, but it's mostly a conspiracy of our
Speaker 1: nature against ourselves. Mother nature wants you to pass on
Speaker 1: your jeans, but she does not care if you're happy
Speaker 1: at all, because happiness is not an evolutionary prerogative. Money
Speaker 1: and power and fame, those are things that we pursue
Speaker 1: for evolutionary reasons, because you're gonna pass on your jeans,
Speaker 1: and marketing simply taps into your tendencies, taps into your instincts,
Speaker 1: cups into your cravings and animal desires. So the idols
Speaker 1: that you know that we search after, that we crave
Speaker 1: after that. We lust after our money, power, pleasure in
Speaker 1: fame and fame. You know a lot of people are
Speaker 1: listening like, I don't want to be famous, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you do. Because for anybody who says they don't want
Speaker 1: to be famous, they want prestige. They want the esteem
Speaker 1: of people who matter, which is an extremely localized kind
Speaker 1: of fame. And this is as old as the hills.
Speaker 1: My Mondes wrote about this in the twelfth century. All
Speaker 1: these medieval philosophers said that what we really want is
Speaker 1: truth and the divine, but those are inconvenient, you know,
Speaker 1: they're hard to get, so we'll go after money, power,
Speaker 1: pleasure in fame. And when you're meeting somebody who's really
Speaker 1: famous who's unhappy, it's because they've fallen prey to thinking
Speaker 1: that if they just get that stuff, that they'll finally
Speaker 1: find the life satisfact and that they seek, and they
Speaker 1: never will because they're on the treadmill. Run, run, run, run,
Speaker 1: never get ahead. And by the way, there's an evil
Speaker 1: guy in the corner turning up the treadmill speed the
Speaker 1: whole time. And furthermore, after a few years, they realize
Speaker 1: that they're not actually running for the ambition to find
Speaker 1: that satisfaction, but out of fear that if they stopped
Speaker 1: running it, they're gonna be like some hilarious internet meme
Speaker 1: wiping out on the treadmill, which will happen to famous people.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's all we want is for that to
Speaker 1: happen to famous people. And that is a terrible, terrible existence. So,
Speaker 1: you know, the person that you hear about that you meet,
Speaker 1: And you've met a lot more famous actors than I have,
Speaker 1: and some of them are pretty well equilibrated emotionally, but
Speaker 1: many many are not because they haven't cultivated their own portfolio.
Speaker 1: You know, people have basically said, don't waste your time
Speaker 1: on faith, family and ordinary friendships and trying to find
Speaker 1: fulfilling work. We asserve others get as famous as possible
Speaker 1: and you'll finally scratch that itch, and they're they're not
Speaker 1: very mature emotionally people, especially those who have been ever
Speaker 1: since they were young. They've just never learned how to
Speaker 1: be alive in the world, which is why you know
Speaker 1: so many of them when they're young end up in
Speaker 1: rehab and everything because they literally can't handle it. But also,
Speaker 1: you know, I was thinking too when you were just
Speaker 1: mentioning fame, that that people have a tendency when they've
Speaker 1: sort of hit that peak to not surround themselves by
Speaker 1: authentic friends and family, but they kind of create like
Speaker 1: a posse of yes people, so that they aren't even
Speaker 1: having those real relationships like you talked about, they're not
Speaker 1: having real friendships where you know, chemicals are excreted in
Speaker 1: their brain that make them feel good, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's becomes a very performed life, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And you know sometimes people will have a real epiphany
Speaker 1: and they'll say, I just I hate this and I'm
Speaker 1: actually unhappy. And that's one of the things I've dedicated
Speaker 1: myself to them. And I'm in a very privileged position
Speaker 1: to know a lot of people that have these exalted
Speaker 1: positions in the public eye with my friends up. So
Speaker 1: I'll basically say you're running in the wrong direction. You're
Speaker 1: not going to find it. You can't find it. One
Speaker 1: of the ways that I explained this, by the way, ally,
Speaker 1: is that there's a formula that's in our heads that
Speaker 1: we think is going to bring a satisfaction, which is
Speaker 1: that satisfaction is a function of all the stuff that
Speaker 1: you have. But that's wrong, because the truth is that
Speaker 1: satisfaction isn't fraction. It's actually the ratio of what you have,
Speaker 1: divided by what you want. And so the only real
Speaker 1: way to get greater satisfaction is not to maximize your hals,
Speaker 1: but to minimize your wants, is to start looking in
Speaker 1: the denominator of that fraction. Because we all remember high
Speaker 1: school fractions. When the denominator of a fraction goes up,
Speaker 1: the whole fraction goes down. And so when your wants
Speaker 1: go up, your satisfaction actually goes down. So when you're
Speaker 1: thinking about your crazings and desires and I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: that house, and I'm gonna get that car and this
Speaker 1: many followers, all you're doing is you're you're engorging the
Speaker 1: wants and the denominator of your satisfaction equation. And so
Speaker 1: one of the exerci as I do when I'm doing
Speaker 1: executive coaching is I say, okay, okay, what I want
Speaker 1: you to do is I want you to list your cravings.
Speaker 1: I want you to list your desires. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: say I detached myself from this, and I detached myself
Speaker 1: from that. And you make a verbal and even written
Speaker 1: commitment to yourself to become detached from these wants that
Speaker 1: are subjugating you. And it's incredibly freeing. They say for
Speaker 1: the first time, it's like, oh, I never thought that
Speaker 1: it's halves divided by wants. Oh, that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: And you know, things become clear after that. That's the
Speaker 1: secret of satisfaction. Actually, so things like you know, cutting
Speaker 1: off social media, shopping online, those kinds of things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. What I mean, I know, like have buddy
Speaker 1: who very successful in private equity financial guy, and he said,
Speaker 1: I know I'm going to be truly successful and satisfied
Speaker 1: when I can walk into a Mercedes dealership and by
Speaker 1: a Mercedes and cash and and and so he and
Speaker 1: he walks in, he has the cash at thirty two
Speaker 1: and he's plunks down the cash. He says the Mercedes dealer,
Speaker 1: I want my car, and is he's driving it off
Speaker 1: the lot. He's like, should have gotten the should have
Speaker 1: gotten the Ferrari. That is an example of the ws.
Speaker 1: The wants just expanding in the satisfaction equation. And you know,
Speaker 1: for most of the people listening, they're not gonna do
Speaker 1: a Mercedes in cash because most of us don't have
Speaker 1: that kind of dough. But we all can have a
Speaker 1: kind of a version of that avarice in the way
Speaker 1: that we deal with social media. So one of the
Speaker 1: first things I recommend that people do is go on
Speaker 1: to social media cleanse, you know, drop social media for
Speaker 1: two weeks and daily right how you feel once You're
Speaker 1: gonna find is that you've got cravings for the first
Speaker 1: day or two, and then, like the children's voices screaming
Speaker 1: inside your head, we'll start to get softer and softer,
Speaker 1: and by the end of your first week, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be experiencing peace. And by the end of the second week,
Speaker 1: you're going to actually say, Wow, I cannot believe how
Speaker 1: addicted I was to that in the first place. This
Speaker 1: is important because this is just another one of these
Speaker 1: sticky cravings. There's a word in Sanskrit duka, which means
Speaker 1: the sticky craving for inadequate things. There's nothing thing that
Speaker 1: that describes that more than social media in our age today,
Speaker 1: because it sums up all the things that we're talking.
Speaker 1: But aren't these all connected to two chemicals in our brain?
Speaker 1: I mean, I've always read that, like with social media,
Speaker 1: research equates it to the same chemical that's excreted in
Speaker 1: your brain when you're playing the slots in Vegas, in
Speaker 1: the same way that it does with friendship, that you
Speaker 1: excrete chemicals when you have close friendships. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: So when you play the slots or you're considering methamphetamines
Speaker 1: and you're an addict or alcohol or cigarettes or coffee
Speaker 1: in a small way, but in a much bigger way,
Speaker 1: social media you excreed dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that's
Speaker 1: the human brain uses to to hook you on anything.
Speaker 1: It's basically it helps you form habits and and and
Speaker 1: so it's a neurotransmitter that gives you a whole lot
Speaker 1: of desire, and it gives you a lot of pleasure
Speaker 1: when you meet that desire. So It doesn't give you
Speaker 1: pleasure like you get high, but just meeting the desire
Speaker 1: per se because of dopamine gives you this big payoff
Speaker 1: and you get better and better at it. That's how
Speaker 1: addiction actually works. And social media is just like there's
Speaker 1: lots you're getting tons of dopamine, but it feels like happiness.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. Yeah, it feels like you know what
Speaker 1: it feels like, the satisfaction of an urge. That's what
Speaker 1: it actually feels like. And it's extremely temporary. It's seconds long.
Speaker 1: You know that feeling when you've been looking at Facebook
Speaker 1: or Instagram or something for an hour and you're like,
Speaker 1: how did my life get like this? What's happened is
Speaker 1: that you were looking for that first dopamine feeling and
Speaker 1: you're trying to get it back for an hour and
Speaker 1: you can't after the first moment because that's not how
Speaker 1: the dopamine works. Your brain can't function that way. You die.
Speaker 1: So that's the key. And the way that you break
Speaker 1: that is by breaking any addiction, is by walking away
Speaker 1: from it and saying I will not be subjugated by
Speaker 1: my brain chemistry. I refuse. That should be a bumper
Speaker 1: sticker totally and the other way it's oxytocin. You know,
Speaker 1: the reason that we're doing a podcast. People are listening
Speaker 1: to us, but you and are looking at each other
Speaker 1: right now and zoom is because we get oxytocin by
Speaker 1: talking to each other. Gives a better conversation, and it's
Speaker 1: also more pleasurable. It's like I'm looking at my friend
Speaker 1: Alle and I get happiness from doing that because there's
Speaker 1: something in my brain going as opposed to there's just
Speaker 1: a voice. And they also say even if you hug
Speaker 1: people eight times a day, that also ups your level
Speaker 1: of oxytocin for sure. So yeah, yeah, blood oxytocin levels
Speaker 1: are maximized after a second embrace. So one of the
Speaker 1: things that I recommended everybody do during this coronavirus where
Speaker 1: there's less contact. If you're almost physically uncomfortable, it's because
Speaker 1: you have an oxytocin deficit. Even if you're living with
Speaker 1: somebody else, you don't have as much contact with outsiders,
Speaker 1: so you don't have enough oxytocin. So the person you
Speaker 1: live with, you should therapeutically hug that person for about
Speaker 1: twenty seconds every two hours, which will keep you at
Speaker 1: a much higher rate of oxytocin stimulation and you'll be
Speaker 1: miraculously happier. And by the way, if you're you know,
Speaker 1: it's good for your marriage. Well, I was going to say,
Speaker 1: George and I did this New York Times thing a
Speaker 1: while ago where they said, every day, do something incredibly
Speaker 1: loving to them. The next day, you know, embrace them
Speaker 1: for no reason, and it does work. Look, hugging works
Speaker 1: the way I rolling doesn't work in marriage. So the
Speaker 1: hugging is yeah, now you're talking about the John Gottman
Speaker 1: stuff on contempt. Yes, you know you're roalize and that's
Speaker 1: the number one predictor exactly, which made me stop rolling
Speaker 1: my eyes. We're gonna take a short break and we'll
Speaker 1: be right back, and we're back with more. Go ask Alli.
Speaker 1: I have a question about creativity because I would think
Speaker 1: that many artists, painters, writers, they would in some ways
Speaker 1: fear happiness because they would feel that it would somehow
Speaker 1: diminish their creativity. Artists feel they need to have misery
Speaker 1: and have unhappiness in order to create. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: if van God was happy all the time, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have cut off his ear. So how do you speak
Speaker 1: to artists that that are concerned that happiness will lead
Speaker 1: to an insufficiency of product. Well, so, to begin with,
Speaker 1: Van Go probably suffered from bipolar disorder, and and so
Speaker 1: when he was in the depths of despair, he probably
Speaker 1: wasn't painting at all. It was probably when he was
Speaker 1: manic that he was actually doing most of his painting.
Speaker 1: That's that's the case with a lot of people that
Speaker 1: suffer from bipolar disorder. Robert Schumann, the great composer, in
Speaker 1: a manic phase, wrote six hundred songs. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like fun, guy. But the broader point that you're making
Speaker 1: is that is sure enough that people who are highly
Speaker 1: creative and not just artists and poets, we're talking about
Speaker 1: you know, coders and editors and you know, all the
Speaker 1: people are listening to us that are an idea professions.
Speaker 1: They know there's some correlation between the depth of negative
Speaker 1: feeling and the stimulation of their creative juices. And that's
Speaker 1: not wrong. By the way, there's a great study that
Speaker 1: does content analysis on the letters of some great composers Beethoven,
Speaker 1: Franz list Wolf, Kaminous, Mozart, all of whom suffered from
Speaker 1: some form of depression. They find that a depressive episode
Speaker 1: was correlated with a thirty seven percent increase in high
Speaker 1: quality compositions. And this is a pretty interesting analysis. It's
Speaker 1: a Dutch economist who did this work. And the reason
Speaker 1: for that is because there's a part of the brain
Speaker 1: called a ventral lateral prefrontal cortex that is stimulated by
Speaker 1: clinical depression. It's also implicated in the creative process. So
Speaker 1: what you find is that there's kind of this cross
Speaker 1: stimulation that happens from these two things. It is absolutely
Speaker 1: true that you see creativity that is extremely possibly correlated
Speaker 1: with sadness. Now what that means in the broader sense
Speaker 1: is that we shouldn't be afraid of our sadness. You
Speaker 1: know what I make my students take a test on
Speaker 1: positive and negative affect and there's some that have unusually
Speaker 1: high negative affect their poets, you know, in the world
Speaker 1: needs poets. What we need to do is to not
Speaker 1: run away from our sadness. We should see that there's
Speaker 1: sacredness and our suffering. We just need to know how
Speaker 1: to manage it because when it gets out of control,
Speaker 1: it can actually create havoc in our lives and ruin
Speaker 1: our relationships and make us cocoon and destroy our executive
Speaker 1: capacity to do what actually we need to do, to
Speaker 1: exercise and to eat right and all these things. But
Speaker 1: if you can manage yourself and understand yourself, you can
Speaker 1: have these emotions which give you creativity and and make
Speaker 1: you fully human without having it ruin your life. There's
Speaker 1: a place for all of us, is the bottom line. Now,
Speaker 1: if some people pass into a little negative effect, that
Speaker 1: that requires medical attention. And the saying is always, if
Speaker 1: in doubt, check it out. But all of us have sadness,
Speaker 1: and some of us have more sadness than others. You know,
Speaker 1: some of us are a four on that one the
Speaker 1: seven scale, and that's has more sadness in the sixes
Speaker 1: and the sevens. And and you have to learn that
Speaker 1: there's a place for it in your life. There's a
Speaker 1: reason for it in your life, and you should be
Speaker 1: able to embrace it and love it well at the
Speaker 1: same time managing it. That's what it means to be,
Speaker 1: you know, a live, human, adult person. So you've given
Speaker 1: us so much to digest today. How would you answer this,
Speaker 1: Arthur Brooks, Professor Brooks, How do I become a happier person?
Speaker 1: What are maybe first steps? Listeners? Can do right now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. And now to begin with, you have to
Speaker 1: figure out whether or not the problem in life is
Speaker 1: too much unhappiness or not enough happiness. So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that you can do to lower
Speaker 1: your levels of unhappiness. You can get rid of your commute,
Speaker 1: which will lower your unhappiness. Staying away from negative people
Speaker 1: can lower your unhappiness because you know that's a contagion.
Speaker 1: Unhappiness is quite contagious. But if really it is happiness,
Speaker 1: and what we want to do is to bring happiness.
Speaker 1: Remember the first three things in the happiness portfolio around relationships.
Speaker 1: There's a guy named George Valiant who taught it for
Speaker 1: many years, and he ran this eighty year longitudinal study
Speaker 1: of people from the nineteen thirties and forties until they died,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to know what was what did they
Speaker 1: do in their twenties and thirty that predicted their happiness
Speaker 1: or unhappiness in their seventies and eighties. And he said
Speaker 1: the whole study, across hundreds and hundreds of people and
Speaker 1: decades and decades, can be summarized in five words. Happiness
Speaker 1: is love, full stop. The first three elements of your
Speaker 1: happiness portfolio are about love and relationships. Everybody I know
Speaker 1: who is insufficient happiness has insufficient love. And the reason
Speaker 1: they have insufficient love, generally speaking, is because they're not
Speaker 1: doing the work. To love is to will the good
Speaker 1: of the other. It's not a feeling, it's a commitment
Speaker 1: and it's work. The one thing to ask yourself today
Speaker 1: is do I have sufficient love? Love of the divine,
Speaker 1: love of my family, love of my friends. And if
Speaker 1: I don't, am I serving enough? There's this hack, this
Speaker 1: happiness hack, which isn't It's time immemorial, every every great
Speaker 1: religious tradition has written about this. If you want to
Speaker 1: be happier, you need to give more happiness in the
Speaker 1: way that you do that is volunteering love, whether you're
Speaker 1: getting it or not, and in the process you will
Speaker 1: become happier. Guaranteed. It's called the as if principle. Act
Speaker 1: like happy people do, which is by volunteering to give
Speaker 1: love to other people. Maybe it's volunteering in a soup kitchen.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's calling up a friend and giving them words
Speaker 1: of encouragement. Maybe it's embracing somebody even though you feel
Speaker 1: like cocooning because you're depressed. All these things that you
Speaker 1: do give the love that you want to get, you
Speaker 1: will stimulate the love in your own life. And it
Speaker 1: has a neurochemical basis to it, but more than anything else,
Speaker 1: that's a cosmic basis to it. You will get happier. Well,
Speaker 1: I can say to you right now, Arthur Brooks, that
Speaker 1: just having done this podcast with you and connected with
Speaker 1: you has made me a little little happier. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, we're we've got some oxytosin going, and
Speaker 1: we have friendship, and this is what it's all about.
Speaker 1: And every single person listening to us can get the
Speaker 1: happiness benefits by calling up a friend and talking about
Speaker 1: what matters and conspiring to make everybody else happier and
Speaker 1: more love. Thank you, Arthur, all right, thank you so much. Ali. So,
Speaker 1: I know sometimes when we think about happiness, we try
Speaker 1: to understand really what that is. And I've been meditating
Speaker 1: about the idea of happiness and where are moments of
Speaker 1: my life where I've actually felt pure happiness and listen,
Speaker 1: of course all the big milestones, getting married, having my children,
Speaker 1: but there's one moment that has always stayed with me.
Speaker 1: When I was in my twenties. I was in college
Speaker 1: and I was teaching improv to underserved children. So these
Speaker 1: were kids that lived in shelters, some of them on
Speaker 1: the streets, and once a week we would do improv
Speaker 1: class where we would just kind of, you know, run
Speaker 1: around and pretend we were monsters or princesses. And I
Speaker 1: was driving back from playing with these kids, and I
Speaker 1: was feeling so good, and then it started to snow,
Speaker 1: and then I was listening to this music box Brandon
Speaker 1: bur Concerto, and it was the culmination of all these
Speaker 1: things that just sparked a very pure happiness moment. I
Speaker 1: mean I literally almost pulled over in the side of
Speaker 1: the road and cried. And it wasn't because I won
Speaker 1: the lottery, and it wasn't because George Clooney asked me out.
Speaker 1: I literally had a feeling that was a convergence of
Speaker 1: all these wonderful things, this great music, snow, and the
Speaker 1: ability to make these children smile, so that I forever
Speaker 1: hold as one of the happiest moments of my life.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to go ask Ali join me
Speaker 1: next week when I talked about one of the trickiest
Speaker 1: relationships people have, and that is a relationship with our bodies,
Speaker 1: doctors and twins Lexie and Lindsay Kite will break it down.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast and
Speaker 1: follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali e
Speaker 1: Wentworth and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth And
Speaker 1: if you have questions or guest suggestions, I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you, call or text me at three to
Speaker 1: three four six three five six or email Go Ask
Speaker 1: Gali podcast at gmail dot com. Go Ask Gali is
Speaker 1: a production of Shonda land Audio and partnership with I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the
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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.