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Arthur Brooks - Harvard Professor & Happiness Expert | Why Everything You Think About Success Is Wrong · Success Story with Scott Clary

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What is happiness not? What do people get wrong about happiness?
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The number one reason that people aren't happier than they are is because they have the wrong
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definition. They think it's a feeling. It's not a feeling. It has emotions attached to it.
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Joy and happiness are not the same thing. Arthur Brooks, Arthur Brooks is a Harvard professor,
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best-selling author, and one of the world's leading experts on happiness and purpose.
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With decades of research into human behavior, leadership and fulfillment, he's helped
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millions reframe success and find meaning in their lives.
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We only have had the data and the neuroscience that can get behind it relatively recently.
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This is compounded by the fact that mother nature doesn't care if you're happy at all.
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So if you follow your impulses, you're going to feel miserable a lot of the time.
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The human brain says you want really four things. Money, power, pleasure, and honor.
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And this all comes from evolutionary proclivities. So the result of it is that you think,
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if I live up to those impulses, then I'm automatically going to be happy, but that's across
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circuit. His insights have shaped global conversations,
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from boardrooms to TED stages, and today he's here to share the science of living a better life.
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You can live the life that you want, but if your goal is the money, you'll never be happy.
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You actually have to work for the happiness while you do beautiful, big things.
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Happiness is love. If you don't know what to do, make the decision to love.
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Arthur, I'm really excited you're here. I want to kick this off in a sort of simple way,
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because you talk about happiness, you teach about happiness, but just in a very, very short
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sentence, what is happiness not? What do people get wrong about happiness?
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That's a smart question, because the number one reason that people aren't happier than they are
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is because they have the wrong definition. They think happiness is something that it's not.
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Specifically, they think it's a feeling when I ask my students on the first day of class,
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because after that, they know. But I lead them down kind of the primrose path. They say,
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what do you think you're studying? Kids, they're not kids, they're 28 years old,
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they're MBA students at Harvard. And I say, what do you think you're studying? What's happiness?
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And they say, whoa, I can't quite put it into words, but I know it when I feel it.
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Or it's how I feel when I'm with the people that I love. And I say, wrong.
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I mean, beautiful, but wrong. Happiness is not a feeling any more than the smell of your
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turkey is your Thanksgiving dinner. The smell of the turkey is evidence of dinner. It's not the
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same thing. The dinner is something very specific. I mean, maybe it's ingredients, maybe it's
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dishes, or maybe if you're a science nerd and a fitness nerd like me, it's protein carbohydrates
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and fat. That's what your Thanksgiving dinner is. That's not very poetic, but that's the truth.
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And happiness works the same way. It's not a feeling. It has emotions attached to it.
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Joy and happiness are not the same thing. Happiness is a discoverable,
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studyable phenomenon. It's a combination of not protein carbohydrates and fat, but rather
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enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. And each one of those things has a huge literature attached
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to it and is a big project in and of itself. So why do you think that people get it wrong so
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often? If all these smart, Harvard MBA students probably all have the same answer to your question,
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there's some sort of programming there. There's some sort of misunderstanding that's culturally accepted
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or just accepted in general. The reason is because mother nature doesn't care if you're happy.
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So for example, if we had a natural tendency to become happier, we'd put a lot more attention
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and effort into figuring out exactly what it is a studying it. Now, that said, there's a lot of
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us who are actually studying happiness. There's somebody at almost every major university on this topic.
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And happiness is the hot course at every good university these days, but that's recent.
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It's only in about the past 30 years. Before that, it was all psychoanalysts like Freud and Jung
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talking about how to not to be a completely miserable SOB. And before that, it was just
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that happiness 1.0 is Aristotle and company hypothesizing about it. We only have had the data
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in the neuroscience that can get behind it relatively recently. And this is compounded by the fact
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that mother nature doesn't care if you're happy at all. And so if you follow your impulses,
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you're going to feel miserable a lot of the time. You're going to survive and pass on your genes,
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but you're going to tend to do things that actually make you unhappy as opposed to happy. And so you
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might conclude, well, I guess I just don't get those feelings and call it a day and you don't
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need to do that. What is the, because I know that there's a variety of things you've studied about
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happiness when I was listening to one of your past podcasts, you're talking about the reverse
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bucket list. And I thought that was an interesting way to uncover what, because that kind of is
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the bucket list and achievement and hedonic treadmill and pursuing everything and anything,
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I think that's how again, we're talking about what, you know, layman just assuming what happiness
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is, even though they're incorrect, that's what they pursue. They pursue just more and more and more
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and more. So talk to me about, talk to me about where this idea for the reverse bucket list came
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from because I think it plays into this idea of what a lot of people think will give them happiness,
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but what doesn't actually give them happiness. Yeah. So I know my audience here. I know who I'm
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talking to. We're talking to strivers. We're talking disproportionately to people who are in the
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first half of their lives and they're ambitious and their hardworking is smart. And by the way,
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I completely admire that. I admire what you're doing. I admire what your audience is doing. Because
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the truth is, if it weren't for strivers and entrepreneur, we'd be living in caves. You know,
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if everybody was just kind of slackers goofing around waiting for somebody else to do the work,
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we wouldn't even have wheels and fire at this point. It was an entrepreneur who figured out the
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secret of fire and everybody listening to us is trying to figure out the next secret of fires.
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Now, and they think that if they actually get that breakthrough, if they get those resources,
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if they have the admiration of other people, if they get the recognition for the things that they're
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doing, then they'll automatically be happy. That's across circuit in the human brain. The human
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brain says you want really four things, money, power, pleasure, and honor, which is the admiration
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of other people. And this all comes from evolutionary proclivities. You know, in our ancient environment,
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you need more resources and you need to feel good. Those are proxies for passing on your genes
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and for surviving another day and getting sufficient calories. That's why modern humans who have
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the same brains and the same genes as people did 250,000 years ago that they want, they don't want
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more flints and animal skins in their cave. They want a Ferrari, but it amounts to the same thing.
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You're more likely to get mates with a Ferrari. You're more likely to get, you know, to show that
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you have sufficient resources to support a family if you have whatever. I mean, everybody understands
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exactly what I'm talking about here. So the result of it is that you think, if I live up to those
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impulses, then I'm automatically going to be happy, but that's across circuit. Happiness doesn't come
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from just serving your animal impulses. Doing the things that will make you happier, that's the
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divine part of humanity. That's living up to your moral aspirations, not giving into your animal
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impulses is the way that that works. And so to do that, you have to be very, very conscious and
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strivers more than anybody else. One of the things I find with strivers is that they believe that
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if they get more money, power, pleasure and fame, then they'll automatically be happy. And what I
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have to explain, and I'm going to tell you this, I'm going to say the sentence that actually works,
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and it's going to make you feel insecure when I say that because of one word, okay? So listen
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for the one words got. If you shoot for happiness by understanding how you get that instead,
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then you'll be successful enough. What's the word? No, the bummed you out. And not only strivers
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hear that, by the way, slackers are like, awesome, awesome. So tell me how to be happier, professor.
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Like, no, the problem for strivers is that word enough because there is no such thing. And the second
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the reason that strivers are resistant to the happiness science, it's not like going to believe it.
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They're resistant. They do believe it. They're resistant to it is because if they embrace the
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concept of enough, they've given up and they won't be hungry. And I'm here to tell you, no,
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it's actually not true. You can live the life that you want. You can be you can discover the next
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big thing. You can be unbelievably successful. But if your goal is the money, you'll never be happy.
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If your goal is the power, you'll never be happy. You actually have to work for the happiness while
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you do beautiful big things. And so that's sort of my apostolate. That's my mission. It's to spray
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these ideas because it's me too, man. I'm a lot older than you, but I'm a classic striver doing this
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and that my whole life. Number one, baby, you know, I've got my idols just like everybody else. You
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know, so I've been able to, you know, do a lot, but happiness was hard because I got this wrong
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and awful lot. So you asked a specific question about the reverse bucket list. This is an example
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of how to stand up to mother nature so that you can be both successful and happy.
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Your brain tells you that you'll get satisfaction in life if you have more more what more all of it,
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money, power, pleasure, honor, admiration, Instagram followers, whatever your thing is, right?
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But the truth of the matter is that your satisfaction is all the things that you have
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divided by all the things that you want. And the most successful people, the cases of entrepreneurs,
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for example, that amaze us the most or you see somebody who's making billions of dollars and
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they don't own a house. Have you ever noticed that? Okay, when they own six houses, you're like,
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yeah, cool. But one of them is like, yeah, of course, I rent a place. What do I want a house for?
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You're like, that's dude, that dude is awesome. And it scratches you in just the right way because
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that person doesn't just have more, but also wants less, that's the secret. You got to work the
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denominator. Haves divided by wants, work the denominator of these worldly things, which will
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free you up to do the most amazing magic that you could ever dream of. So I like that formula.
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And if we detach ourselves from all these worldly things, how do we, how do we not lose our ambition?
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How do we not lose our, because I think for a lot of people, let me, let me rephrase, I think
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for a lot of people that are kind of similar to myself and to you, even though you've done a lot
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of work, so you've detached yourself at some point in your life, your identity was tied up in your
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achievement. And I think that, and I think that it's very common for people to say, if you're going
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to build a business, you have to do it for reasons other than money. And people can buy into that
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because nobody, no, no, no, you know, entrepreneur thought leaders saying, hey, go build a business
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just to make money. Even though we all want to make money at the beginning, I think everybody sort of
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says, okay, you got to build it for other reasons. But then the other reasons are achievement are
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whatever it is. Like you mentioned a few different reasons why we build. But if our identity is
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wrapped up in this thing, how do we unwrap it? How do we decouple our identity from it?
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Yeah, so there's a couple of different things to think about. To begin with, entrepreneurs actually
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aren't very materialistic as a rule. You find that government employees, I've got the data on this,
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government employees tend to be more inquisitive and possession and money oriented than entrepreneurs
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including successful entrepreneurs. For most entrepreneurs, money is points on the board,
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it's just a way to measure how things are going. And so you could be making $5 million a year,
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$10 million a year. And it's going great. And the next year, you're in $7 million a year. After
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earning 10, you're like, that'll like it. And you're way over your needs. You're way,
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way, the reason you didn't like it is because the points were going in the wrong direction,
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which is an indicator that maybe you're not creating the value that you thought you created.
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Pay attention to the value more is the whole thing. Now, that's the first thing to think about.
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I'm actually not that worried about entrepreneurs and strivers taking my message.
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And probably people are watching us right now going, yeah, I totally agree, less wants,
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fewer wants. I want to be like that. So how the real question is not why is it so hard,
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but how do you do that? And the way to do that is to recognize that you probably have one
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idol that is your best scoreboard. And that scoreboard will start controlling you the longer you do
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it, the more the less you you pay attention to it. So even though there's, I bet you there's nobody
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watching us today who's a serious entrepreneur and ambitious person who truly cares about getting
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a boat. It's like, I mean, you'll get a boat because you can afford to have a boat and somebody
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convinces you that a boat is kind of fun, but you won't go out on it very much because what you
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really care about is your work. And then the boat will bother you because it's just like sitting there
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in Lake Havasu or something like that. And like the boat, you know, it's fine. The entrepreneur,
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I know they have the boat, they actually turn it into a business somehow and they use it to rent it
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else. Totally, totally. Let's make it into a lucrative asset. You know, let's make a generative
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at the end of the day. But there is something that is your favorite way of measuring how much value
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you're creating. And it's always one of three, maybe four things. Now, this comes from the work of
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Aristotle, believe it or not, Aristotle, who has a, as a philosopher, was way ahead of his time
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scientifically. I mean, he was just, he was actually doing natural science, not just behavioral
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science that was incredible. And all of it was brought to sort of semi-modern audiences in the
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middle ages. Most notably by Thomas Aquinas in 1265 wrote this book called Sumith Theology. I
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know you were raised Catholic. And so, you know, you kind of have this, have this reference. He's a
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great Catholic saint. But he's more than anything else for everybody. He's, he is the philosopher of
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the middle ages. And Aquinas, he, out of Aristotle, he said that human beings are all beguiled,
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which is to say that they have an idol in one of four things. And they are money, power, pleasure,
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and fame. I've mentioned them before. But everybody has their one specific metric, their one specific
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idol that they fall prey to. So everybody watching us here, especially if you're under 40,
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even more if you're under 30, if you know your specific idol, you'll recognize when you're
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falling prey to it, you'll avoid it, and you'll be much happier and more successful. So the way
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that I do this with my 28 year old MBA students is we have a game called What's My Idol to figure out
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which one it is. You want, you want to play Scott? Let's play. Let's play. Okay. You're, you're good
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sport here. So everybody in, in radio land, give a hand to Scott for playing What's My Idol in
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front? Okay. Okay. So what we're going to do here is we're going to look at those four idols.
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And I'm not going to ask you which one beguiles you the most. I'm going to ask you which one beguiles
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you the least and you don't care about. And we're going to start taking them away until we're left
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with the one that is most problematic. Now, now, or most attractive, I should say. Now, when we
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take one away, it doesn't mean you don't have it. So if you take away money, for example, it doesn't
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mean you're poor. It just means you're the most average person, totally average. Now, strivers don't
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want to be average. But if it's not your idol, you don't care is what it comes down to. Okay. Now,
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we all like all of them, but let's let's let's let's let's play. So let's think about it. Money is
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you everywhere. No money is. We all know money can do. We all kind of know money can't do.
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Power means influence over other people. You want to do stuff? It happens. It doesn't
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mean you're a maniac. It doesn't mean you're president of the United States. It doesn't mean
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you're a dictator. It means you have the ability to snap your fingers and things get done.
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Pleasure is really, really feeling good. It includes comfort, the comfort that some people
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really like that. And and and then and then fame. This is this is a little tricky. I mean, that
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that doesn't necessarily mean like internet famous, Kardashian famous. It means the right
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people respect you and admire you. Right. And so it might be you're admired by lots and lots of
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strangers. It might be like in my profession, I'm a professor, you walk into the room and
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everybody's like, oh, there's Arthur Brooks. He's the guy who's the guy who wrote that that little
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known book on, you know, tropical animal husbandry in 2003. They got referred to 14 times by the
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right people. It doesn't matter. You got your version of this, whatever it works. A fame,
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you know, is being admired by the right people. Okay. All right. So thinking about Scott's life.
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I think I already know by the way. Okay. Well, which one do you kick out? Because this is going
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to be illustrative for the audience. And I want everybody in in in radio land and podcast land to
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be playing along. So which one do you kick out? So the one the one that I immediately kick out.
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I can I kick out two or no? Well, we're going to go next to number two. So I think I think pleasure.
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I kick out first. And the reason why I kick out is because I feel uncomfortable and I feel like
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I'm not doing enough or I'm wasting my life away. If I'm not building, if I'm not working,
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even even in, you know, in my my hobbies are, you know, busting my ass in the gym. Like if I don't
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have a good workout, I feel like it's not a good day. So I don't love comfort. Okay. Comfort and
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pleasure. We kicked out. That means you got three left, which is money, power and fame, which is
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next. I think I would kick out money. And the reasoning is because the second I make money,
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I just spend it on business. I just spend it on building. I don't buy my I don't like buying
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myself anything. I think it's a waste of money. I don't I mean, I don't spend money on luxury
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really anything. If my if my better half didn't ask me to go on vacation, I probably just stay
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home and figure out how to put another 20 K into a new way to advertise the podcast or hire
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somebody new or try. So I just the money goes right back into the business. Okay. So you'd get rich.
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So you're perfectly willing. I mean, you're a podcaster and you're well known. So that's an extreme
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statement because to say that that means that the the being known part of doing this show,
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presumably you go to an airport and people recognize you. And it's like no more,
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no more of that. Yeah, but I think no more of people being like Scott's got clarity. He's got
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some gay man. Yeah, but it doesn't matter because you have to think about why I do this, right?
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So I don't I don't do this to be recognized. I do this because I get fulfillment when I see,
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so it's this started, you know, when I was very young, I used to coach tennis and I used to see
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somebody who used to come to me as a student and they learn a couple things and they'd improved
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dramatically over the course of a summer. And that to me was one of the most fulfilling
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transformations you could ever see in somebody. And why I started this podcast was to teach my
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younger self a few things that would hopefully make life easier. So I think that if the things that
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we speak about on this show actually impact people, it's great to feel recognized at the airport,
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but like at the end of the day, who gives a shit? Like if you change somebody's life,
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then that means I'm doing the good I'm doing the right work. Not just I could be known for
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a million different things. I could I could start a, you know, like a prank YouTube channel.
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I could do a whole bunch of different things that would get me known, but I feel like I'm not
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like contributing any value to the world. Got it. Got it. Okay. So what we've established
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is not that power is bad because power is not bad. When used for good, power is unbelievably
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helpful and virtuous. The problem in our lives when it comes to happiness is when we pursue
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influence for the sake of having the influence. And that's the temptation because what it means is
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the influence that you actually have is a way that you're going to be marking your success. And then
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you're going to start managing to the metric, which is what people always do. And when you manage
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to the metric, that will become the goal. And when that becomes the goal, you start to get
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unhappy. And that's what you got to keep your eye on. That's what you have to keep. And so,
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you know, somebody says, I'm going to buy your business and make you CEO and they'll be like,
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you're going to have 600 employees and you're going to like, holy cow. I'm going to be able to do
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anything I want because and that in and of itself will be seductive. That in and of itself will
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be guyle you. And that's the problem. And that's what all strivers need to be paying attention to.
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For me, number one, I kick out his power. I don't want it. Your number, your number one is my number
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four. I'm a college professor for a reason. I don't want anybody to have power over me and I don't
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want to have power over anybody else. I was a CEO for 11 years. And the thing that bummed me out
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is when people called me boss. It felt passive aggressive to me. I'm like radically non-hierarchical.
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Right? And that's just my values. It's just kind of how I see the world. I hated it. So it's easy
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for me to kick that one out. Well, you do have that's what's so ironic about this because you do
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have really don't have influence. The way that I've set it up is I have I have a non-hierarchical
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situation in my life except in so far as that, you know, I have, well, I don't even have kids
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that do what I say because my kids are grown up, you know, and they didn't do what I said when they
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were, you know, adolescents either. So, you know, and God knows my wife doesn't. So, you know, it's
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so I pretty much, I mean, we all have influence. We all have influence. People do a lot of what we say
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if we're if we're if we're if we're somewhat well known for public figures. But that's not my
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goal, man. And and money at this point, it's kind of a nice way to figure out if things are going
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well in my business. But, but you know, not so much either. And then pleasure, you know, like I'm
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in the gym every day too, you know, I'm getting 180 grams of carbohydrates. I have protein at day
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two and and and and cutting carbohydrates, even though I love sweets. I go a long time without
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feeling good. But having people recognize what I do, that's my idol. You know, this, the applause,
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that's my idol. I do 150 speeches a year outside of the university. I'm traveling constantly. I want
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people to appreciate the fact that I do this work. And that's my weakness. And look, I'm 61 years old.
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I can I can say it openly and not feel so crummy about it anymore and certainly not feel ashamed.
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And wanting to be recognized is not a vice. It's not a bad thing. It's when it becomes my goal
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in life and the measure of my worth as a person. So you so the so the lesson is you have to know
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like these can all be okay things. But just don't do just don't do what you're doing in pursuit
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of these exclusively. Probably all of them all of them in power when you have influence over other
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people and wield it for their good and go to society. Money, you can do amazing things with money
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with the admiration of other people. Look, when people admire you, they'll do what you do. And if
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your life actually enriches theirs and they act in a way that's more virtuous, more loving, more
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moral, more ethical because they admire you. That's great. And pleasure. It's great. That's how babies
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are made. I'm pro baby. But the whole point is don't let it get out of control with people who aren't
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her. Yeah. Well, the thing is these these these these these idols, they can they can actually
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they can multiply your life or they can completely destroy it. That's what so that's what's so
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difficult. The people that's what I think hard people to understand, right? They these idols
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don't have to be a bad thing. But how do people draw the line as to how much idle versus how little.
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And I think that that's what people screw up quite often. Is it your goal? Is it an intermediary
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goal to get something to something bigger, something better, something more beautiful, something
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more other focused, or is it your primary goal? That's the way to assess it. Is it your primary goal?
22:51
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Clary terms and conditions apply if you're hiring indeed is all you need. Talk to me about,
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talk to me about for people that are entrepreneurial striving people super ambitious.
24:55
Where does conquest because you've spoken about conquest and how it's like a drug, it
25:00
wears off in a few minutes. But how does conquest play into happiness? Because a conquest is not
25:07
one of the idols you mentioned, but it's something that people actively pursue all the time.
25:11
Yeah. Well, what it is is a goal orientation is characteristic of a striver.
25:17
And it's really, really important because a goal orientation, that's the essence of purpose.
25:21
And purpose is part of the meaning of life. Meaning of life has sort of three parts to it. The
25:26
coherence, why things happen the way they do, the significance, why your life matters to others,
25:31
and purpose, which is your goals and direction. Goals mean that you have an end point,
25:37
something you're trying to achieve. And that's the essence of conquest. That's the essence
25:41
of what you're actually talking about. And that's incredibly important. The reason is because
25:46
we need to make progress. We need to make, that's the reason by the way that all diets work.
25:51
Every diet works. You've done that. You've been involved in natural bodybuilding. So you know,
25:54
perfectly that you can make the scale go down in lots and lots and lots of different ways.
25:58
The problem is when you hit your goal, because once you hit your goal, that your reward is
26:03
never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life. Congratulations.
26:07
That's the same reason that Olympic gold medalists, they tend to fall into a depression in the
26:12
month after they win their gold medal, because they got there. It's terrible hitting your goal,
26:17
because you realize that the goal per se was not that satisfying. It was having the gold,
26:22
making progress toward it that really, really mattered. And so what I talk about all the time is
26:25
nothing wrong in goals, but you have to hold them lightly. Don't become attached to the goal.
26:30
Have an intention, a strong intention and a value creating process for getting there and enjoy
26:36
that process. The saddest thing I ever see are people who believe that if they finally achieve
26:41
this thing, then their life is going to be Shangri-La and they hate every minute of getting there.
26:46
It's awful. It's awful to actually see that and I see that constantly. I see people in my
26:51
profession, they're working to get their PhDs and they're not interested in what they're studying.
26:56
But they think that once they get their PhD, their life is going to be so much better and they get
27:00
the PhD and they're like, oh, yeah, I remember when I was a young professor, I was trying to get
27:06
tenure, which is like your big professional goal when you're a young academic. And I'm like,
27:12
it's going to be so great. And I thought about it in the permanent contract and I'm going to
27:16
feel so good. And I got there in the day. I got my tenure letter. My wife and I went on to
27:20
dinner to celebrate. And all we talked about was the fact that one of our kids who was really young
27:26
had bitten another kid in school that day. And that was like it. That was like it. And by the way,
27:32
a happy ending of that story, he grew up and became a scout sniper in the US Marine Corps. So,
27:36
you know, turns out that the violent ones do good for America.
27:40
I think that this idea of moving your own goalposts or hedonic treadmill or whatever you want to
27:46
call it, how do we get off that treadmill so that we don't constantly keep setting new,
27:51
setting new goals and forgetting what we've accomplished? Yeah. So the goal or the formula,
27:59
the Buddhist somehow very nice formula for this solves this problem. It doesn't solve the problem.
28:02
What it is is it's a way of living more than a hack. And by the way, when it comes to happiness,
28:09
no hacks. Just like when it comes to permanent weight loss or more muscle mass or business success
28:17
or loving your wife, no hacks. Only habits. No hacks. It's like habits, not hacks. That's the
28:23
way to think about it, right? Because everybody wants this one thing and then the internet is all
28:27
this one weird trick. And the trick. And it's like one little habit that involves changing your
28:32
life forever. And that's all that's really what it's all about. So the Buddhists, the habit that they
28:37
have in place for this is called intention without attachment. Have the intention. Understand the
28:43
direction that you're going. Make sure that the direction itself and the journey itself are
28:47
inherently meaningful. But don't be attached to the endpoint. Be like Christopher Columbus. He
28:53
thought he was going to India, right? And he got to the Dominican Republic and thought, well,
28:57
this is awesome too. The point is he had to have some sort of a straight line. That's called the
29:03
rum line and sailing. You've got to have a rum line. Be able to chart your progress. You got to
29:08
know where you're going. And wherever you get, that's where you get is the way that you actually
29:12
think about it. Now, why is that possible? And the reason is because your your life that you're
29:18
building, your ordinary life that you're building is so incredibly rich and meaningful that anything
29:24
that you could possibly get from that goal as meritorious as it is, hails and comparison to your
29:29
ordinary life. And it's really important for me. I mean, it's not the kind, you know, when I'm
29:34
releasing a book, I wanted to open a number one of the New York Times bestseller list, right?
29:37
But even if it does, that's nowhere near as awesome as my marriage. And it nowhere near as awesome.
29:45
I live with with with my grandchildren. And it's like nowhere near as awesome as goofing off
29:50
with my grandchildren. You know, I wouldn't give a month with my grandkids for a day on the best
29:56
seller list. I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it when I think about it. And so the result is I've built
30:00
an infrastructure on around my life on the basis of my faith, my family, my friendship. And how much
30:08
I actually love doing the work. That's way, way, way better than the goal, even though I recognize,
30:13
I must have a goal so that I can be directionful. I can have this kind of, I can have a goal
30:19
orientation that makes progress possible. This is you spoken about, you know, having a calling
30:24
before. This is sort of synonymous with that, right? Having a calling across your life. Because
30:28
even if you look at your, your own life, you have killed off past versions of yourself several times.
30:36
And I know you speak about reinventing yourself every, you know, seven to 12 years. When you started
30:41
out, you were a French horn player in Barcelona, making 14 grand a year. And you've killed off
30:47
several versions of yourself since then. Does that, is that the reason why calling is so important,
30:51
so that you can kill off past versions of yourself past careers and then pursue something greater,
30:56
something different or something more meaningful without, again, having your identity so wrapped up
31:00
in who you are at the moment that it sort of paralyzes you from anything else.
31:05
Yeah. And calling is really about the why of your life, not the what and how. The what and how
31:09
we're going to change. The why of your life is the mission of your life. And that's what you're
31:13
meant to do. And that's your calling. And that's bigger than your job. It's bigger than your current
31:17
enterprise. It's bigger than the number in your bank account. That stuff is small potatoes in
31:22
comparison. And so what I recommend that everybody do is to figure out what their life's mission is.
31:26
I love that. Do you think that I think I, I think I know the answer, but I'm going to ask you
31:31
anyways, do you think that people need a spirituality to find that calling or other other ways to
31:36
find what you're put on this earth to do? Like, is there, is there a science method to, to emulate
31:43
that walk that somebody could go on? Yeah. Yeah. And it does not require my faith. I mean, I love,
31:49
I'm all my Catholic faith. I'm strong proponent of it. And again, I'm not talking about the metaphysics
31:54
of what's cosmically true. It's beyond my pay grade for sure. But as a social scientist, I will tell
31:59
you there's lots and lots of ways to get that peace and perspective. What you need to do is to
32:04
transcend yourself so that the the signal to noise ratio is adequate that you can get knowledge
32:11
is what it comes down to when it comes time to get that discernment. And most people need more
32:16
discernment that they're currently getting. You need to turn down the noise so you can get more
32:19
signal. And the way to do that is to transcend yourself. There's two versions of us because of this
32:24
big prefrontal cortex in our brain that allows it's this, I mean, it has like the coolant of a
32:30
super computer with 880 trillion transistors. There's nothing like it in the universe. AI is not
32:35
going to come close. It's just not. And the result of it is this big brain that we've got is that we
32:41
have we can we have consciousness, which means I know that I know and I know that I know that I know
32:47
I'm aware of my awareness. It's this weird elliptical warp ability to know about my own existence. And
32:54
so not only am I observing the world like my dog can, but I'm actually observing me all the time
33:00
as well. That's amazing because it allows me to be the dominant species, the human beings, but it's
33:06
also a torture because you're thinking about yourself all the time. And that's the noise and the
33:11
signal to noise ratio that makes it impossible for you to listen to what you're supposed to do as
33:16
opposed to thinking about what you want to do all the time. The way to get more signal and less
33:23
noise, which is called the i-self, not the me-self, is to do something where you you purposely make
33:29
yourself little and you make the universe large. That's one of the reasons that students at my
33:34
university, they love astronomy 101. It's not because they want to be astronomers, but because they
33:40
go into class on Thursdays and they're like, I'm like having a bad time with my girlfriend and
33:46
and I come out and I'm like, I'm a speck on a speck on a speck. And it makes you understand, it gives
33:54
you clarity. It gives you clarity. You're in the i-self. The signal is up in the noises down. You
33:59
can get that through religious practice. You can get that from vipassana meditation. You can
34:03
give that from, you know, our friend Ryan Holiday talks about studying the stoics. You can get it from
34:08
studying the stoics. You can get it from listening to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. You can get
34:12
it from walking before dawn in nature every day for an hour without devices. There's a lot of literature
34:18
on that. Everything I'm talking about, I'm not just making this up. There's literature on each one
34:22
of these particular techniques, but you have to transcend yourself and get small.
34:26
Is that why, is that why when society moves more secular and there is no sort of institutional
34:33
religion and people don't really know what to replace it with? Is that why there's depression,
34:37
anxiety, mental health crisis? Is that correlated or no? Yes, as one of the reasons. So it's
34:44
related to the fact that we, people don't know the meaning of their life. You can't know the meaning
34:49
of your life. You can't know the why of your life when it's all noise, no signal. You won't know.
34:53
You're going to be chasing all kind, you're going to, you're going to be watching stupid reels on
34:58
TikTok. You're going to be wasting your life if you do that because you'll be distracted constantly
35:03
is what comes down to. And you need something where you have a transcendence like that. Now that's
35:08
not the only way. There's a whole bunch of things you need to get more meaning in your life. I have
35:11
a book coming out next April, April of 2026 called the meaning of your life, finding purpose in an
35:17
age of emptiness that talks about the neurological correlates of the sense of meaningless this that
35:23
so many people feel. And what they used to do that gave them a sense of meaning in life and that
35:28
in modern life, you don't do anymore. One of them is seeking transcendence. Another is looking
35:33
for the calling in your work. We already talked about that. Another is finding beauty, which people
35:38
just don't do now. I mean, it's really interesting. The research on music says that music is people
35:43
like it, but it's objectively less beautiful than it's been in the past. People have spend less
35:48
time in nature. You find that people, they don't understand suffering, which is one of the best ways
35:53
to find meaning in your life is understanding suffering. They try to eliminate suffering. The whole
35:57
therapy industrial complex is about I feel sad and anxious. I have to make it go away or I'm a broken
36:04
defective person, which is completely false. Are you kidding me? It means you're a human being
36:09
walking the face of the earth, falling in love. It's another way that people find meaning and people
36:13
are doing that less than they've done in the past. And so there's a suite of techniques that actually
36:18
will bring meaning into your life and the spirituality of your transcendence is one of them.
36:22
And I don't want to maybe explain the difference between happiness and meaning, like finding
36:29
the meaning of life, because to me, the two ideas almost seem interchangeable, but I think there
36:33
is nuance to what one means versus the other. Yeah. So happiness has three parts to it,
36:38
enjoyment, which is not feeling good. It really is a fully human experience of pleasure with people
36:46
and memory around it. That's that you have to enjoy your life. The second is satisfaction,
36:52
which is taking having getting a sense of joy in your accomplishments and your achievements
36:57
after struggle. Struggle is a super important component of that. And the last part is meaning.
37:02
So meaning is is a sub component. It's a macronutrient of happiness is the way that it works.
37:08
You can go a long time, because you know, you're a very self-discipline guy, as am I, as is
37:12
everybody who's watching us, because that's why they watch us, because they want
37:17
they want the habits, right? And the habits are never easy. And so you know, so they can go a long
37:22
time with that enjoyment and satisfaction, but you can't go 10 minutes without a sense of meaning
37:25
of your life and actually can't yourself a happy person. But I think a lot of people, I think a
37:29
lot of people aren't happy. That's the number one reason the data are clear that that's what's
37:36
down in the current generation. So if you look at it, there's no change in enjoyment, there's no change
37:41
in satisfaction, but, but meaning in life has tanked for people under 35 years old. And that's
37:47
the number one reason for the increases in anxiety and depression. People say it's because of social
37:51
media. People say it's because boomers wrecked everything or because houses are too expensive or
37:57
income inequality or the environment or whatever your favorite thing of the week is, uh-uh, uh-uh.
38:02
It's because meaning is getting harder to find because the practice is defined meaning are
38:07
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register to get your ticket today. This goes back to your point. Yes, you don't have to be spiritual
40:07
or subscribe to like an institutionalized religion, but they did offer some framework for meaning.
40:13
And now we don't have a blueprint or a playbook for that. And I'm I guess I'm curious, you
40:17
comment on that if you want, but I think I'm more curious about sort of your journey because you
40:21
also spent a lot of time studying Buddhism. And I think that, you know, you are probably better
40:28
qualified than most to speak about spiritual non-spiritual religious or non-religious practices
40:34
that lead to meaning in your life. So obviously there was some reason why you chose to study
40:39
Buddhism. Is there something that it's figured out that a lot of people miss? Are there other
40:45
things that help people find meaning? You mentioned like again, like walks, music, etc, etc. But again,
40:50
you spent significant time studying it. So why was that? In the same reason that I studied
40:55
philosophy or behavioral science or mathematics, it's because there's a lot to learn about the
41:02
the way that life works that I didn't know. And the truth of the matter is that the Buddhists have been,
41:07
I mean, it's unbelievable when you dig deep. Or the Hindus, for example, Hinduism is a it's not
41:11
a it's not one religion. It's really a family of religions, but it's 6,000 years old. And so when
41:17
you talk to, I have, you know, major significant Hindu teachers, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar as somebody
41:22
that has really helped me a lot, Sri Notcher of Enkataraman in Tamil Nadu in southern India has
41:28
really helped me enough a lot. But I've also spent the last 13 years working very closely with
41:32
this holiness of Dalai Lama in Tibetan Buddhism. And I've sat with and learned the techniques of
41:38
Tibetan Buddha's meditation at his monastery with his monks. And I've read a great deal and
41:44
worked with him. We've actually co-authored and made a documentary film together as a matter of
41:48
fact. And so I've learned from that friendship and seen him once or twice a year every year. And
41:53
and so doing it's made me, by the way, has made me a much better Catholic because it's helped me to
41:58
understand that how my path actually works in the context of universal ideas of what we're actually
42:06
trying to do is human beings. Now again, I'm not going to make a pronouncement about, you know,
42:10
who's metaphysically, cosmically correct on all these types of things because, you know, the truth
42:14
is I don't know. And and I can't know that's the beauty of it is not knowing but doing something
42:19
nonetheless and getting really, really great at it. It was the Dalai Lama himself who told me
42:24
he said, I want you to be a better Catholic man. That's so interesting. Because he said, that's your
42:29
path. That is your path. And and that's a beautiful thing. So yeah, no, I'm I'm up for everything.
42:34
If you put it in front of me, I'm going to study it and try to pull the best from it. Why did he say
42:38
because when you first met him, he said, hello old friend for the first time before ever even
42:42
knowing you, why did he say that? Um, he's adept. He has knowledge beyond my understanding. He's
42:50
believed by the Tibetan Buddhist to be able to satva, which is to say a living, a person with a
42:56
living Buddha nature, somebody who has transcended samsara, which is the endless cycle of birth and death,
43:03
but who chooses not to come back, who chooses to continue coming back as opposed to
43:08
achieving nirvana for the good of other people to bring other people more to enlightenment.
43:12
That's what a bodhisattva does. The great thing that we misunderstand about Buddhism in the West,
43:16
there's so many Western Buddhists and the so-called Western Buddhists and the reason that they
43:21
meditate is because they want to feel better. That's exactly wrong. The reason that you meditate is
43:26
you want other people to feel better because you want to lift up other people because you want to
43:30
create more enlightenment on earth. You want to become more effective in creating an ecosystem of
43:36
peace and goodness and love and compassion around you. That's the reason to do it. And that's what
43:41
he does as the most prominent living bodhisattva in the world. The reason of that is that he has a
43:47
cute knowledge of who we are and seeing us for the true people that we are. When he said, hello old
43:53
friend, he meant it. And from the very first moment, I felt like I was talking to somebody who's
43:59
known me for centuries. That's a beautiful. I love that. It's absolutely beautiful. I have this
44:05
thesis that is proven with no data whatsoever. But I do have a thesis that I think if people
44:12
lived in optimal circumstances, meaning they didn't have to do anything else, they weren't
44:15
worried about money or income or just surviving, I feel like most people would derive meaning from
44:20
helping other people. I do genuinely believe that if you are given the opportunity to do that and
44:25
you lean into it, I mean, for me, at least it's been probably one of the most fulfilling things
44:31
I've ever done in my life is to help somebody else go through their own problems or their own struggles.
44:36
I don't know if that's a universal feeling, but I think that if people are seeking meaning,
44:41
I think not a hack, but a very quick way to have a little bit more meaning in your life is to give
44:48
a little bit back to somebody who's struggling. I feel like that's a human, very, very, just human
44:54
nature. I don't know. Yeah, no, no, I've actually, I did a lot of research on that early in my
44:58
career. And what you find is that the number one way to reorient yourself to, to, to, you know,
45:04
reset the breakers emotionally is to, is to get into the myself, the eye cell from the,
45:11
from the me self, the fastest way to do that is to go help somebody, to go love somebody. That's
45:14
one of the reasons, by the way, that family life is so magical, you know, and that's why people who
45:19
have, you know, I know that you and your wife practice your religion. And, and the whole idea is
45:24
that you're responsible, you're her guru. And she's your guru and your marriage is an antenna
45:31
to the divine. It's like you feel God's love when she loves you. And she feels God's love when
45:37
you love her, which means you have an incredible responsibility to go love her more. Do not deny
45:42
her God's love, dude. And then by the way, and one of the number that it all ties together with
45:46
the behavioral science, you know, if you want to raise kids who are happy, you know, the number one
45:50
thing that you can do, Scott, to make your kids grow up to be happy people, love their mom,
45:56
love their mom, have them see you loving their mom. That's the number one predictor of them having
46:02
growing up and having successful relationships and happy marriages and being good to other people.
46:06
It's like it's weirdly simple, but it comes down to loving others, not loving just loving
46:11
yourself is what it comes down to. People say, yeah, you know, I live in the West and America,
46:16
and I should be going and helping poor people. And that's great. Go help poor people. Give more
46:20
money away. Do a mission trip if you want, but the poor that you have near you are your kids.
46:25
They're the poorest ones that you have near you. They're the ones who actually don't have anything
46:29
and they're defenseless without you. And taking care of your kids is so critically important.
46:33
And the number one thing you can give your kids is love and values. Love and values, man. Don't
46:38
mess it up. Don't neglect them and don't be gone all the time. And don't let them see you be a
46:43
materialistic SOB. And don't let them see you get drunk or, you know, scream insults out of the
46:48
car window at another driver. I mean, it's like, it's so weirdly simple.
46:53
So one thing that I wasn't going to go here, but I think it's interesting just because we're
46:56
sort of on the topic of relationship and spirituality. You mentioned that one of the most intimate
47:01
things that people can do is pray together more intimate than sex. And it's even more uncomfortable
47:06
because it's something that is, I don't know, just something that I think is not normalized
47:11
praying together. I think that everybody knows with your spouse, you're going to have sex,
47:14
you're going to make love. But to sit down and pray together, that's a really
47:18
meaningful event. And a lot of people get uncomfortable with it. But I don't want people to hear
47:24
that and say, well, listen, I'm not super religious. So how do I have that level of intimacy
47:28
with my spouse? Because we don't, you know, we're not devout Muslims, Catholics, Christians, Jews,
47:37
whatever. So I don't want to miss out on a huge part of life. So what do I do?
47:42
Yeah. Meditate together, read poetry to each other, do something that's truly sublime,
47:49
and it touches the soul. And where you bear your soul and she bears hers. That's what it comes
47:54
down to. Now, it turns out that if you're religious as simple because there's that, you know,
47:58
let's talk to God together. And I'm going to let you see me talking to God. That's very
48:04
uncomfortable. That's really, really embarrassing for people to be sure. But to have something that is
48:10
your link to the sublime that you share with another person and in that vulnerability, you're with
48:16
that other person together, that's when it becomes a kind of a triad. That when it becomes not just
48:20
doing the sublime, but the two of you together. And that's when your relationship can be an antenna
48:25
to the sublime. That's that's how it works. So if you're not religious, it shouldn't stop you at
48:28
all. You just got to find your thing. Three things are required for happiness, enjoyment,
48:32
satisfaction, and meaning. What happens? Because you mentioned meetings at an all-time
48:35
blow. So what happens if somebody goes through life with just satisfaction and enjoyment? What kind of
48:39
person do you turn into? You'll feel empty. You'll be a person that has a profound sense of emptiness.
48:46
You'll have a you'll always have the sense of the wanderer. Somebody who's looking for something
48:54
more. And the result of it is that you can't have the kind of happiness, the kind of peace in your
48:59
life that you actually need. And that's a huge problem. Now, I don't know. Has anybody ever
49:06
completely failed to do so? I don't know because I don't have the data on that. You know, meaning is
49:12
actually weirdly, it's the realm of philosophers, but behavioral scientists haven't touched it very
49:16
much. So this book that I'm writing right now is looking for the absolute best data for the best
49:20
scientific treatment that we can have in it. But it's hard. This is a hard thing to look at. But the
49:24
bottom line is that when I'm looking at people right now, we're going day after day week, month,
49:29
year after year without a sense of meaning in their lives. These are the these are the hungry ghosts.
49:35
You know, the Tibetan Buddhists talk about the realm of how people come back. And the hungry ghost
49:40
is kind of a hungry creature trying to satisfy an appetite that can never be met. One idea about
49:49
happiness that is that we need unhappiness to be happy. So explain this paradox because if
49:57
somebody's listening so far, they would say that, okay, I got I got satisfaction. I got enjoyment.
50:02
I just got to find some meaning and I'm good. But that's not it. Or they assume that because they
50:07
suffer from a lot of unhappiness that they can't have happiness. And and that's a misunderstanding.
50:12
I mean, a big misunderstanding of the relationship between happiness and unhappiness. They're not
50:17
opposites. We have a tendency to think that unhappiness is an absence of happiness or that happiness
50:23
is an absence of unhappiness. That's wrong. And the reason is because the experience that we have,
50:29
the feelings, the evidence of happiness and unhappiness are actually processed in different parts
50:34
of the brain physically, different parts of the brain. We have gear in the limbic system of the
50:38
brain dedicated to both positive and negative emotions. And they exist for different evolutionary
50:43
reasons that there are only four negative emotions, fear, anger, disgust and sadness. They exist
50:50
in every single person. And they exist because they're a defense system. You know, your sadness is
50:55
a defense against you ruining relationships, getting kicked out of your tribal band and wandering
51:02
the frozen tundra and dying alone. Sadness means I don't want to lose the people I love. You know,
51:06
that's that's an advanced warning system against loss, disgust against pathogens, fear and anger
51:12
against threats and the amygdala of the limbic system. And positive emotions work the same way.
51:17
Interest and joy. They say that there's some opportunities and you should approach those
51:21
opportunities. But that's what they're all for. And they're in different parts of the brain. And
51:25
the result of them is that they're separable. The average person spends 41% of their day in a low
51:31
grade positive state. They spend about 16% of their day in a more intense negative state. They
51:39
spend 33% of their time in a mixed state, which is kind of positive, punctuated by negativity.
51:46
And then about 10% of the time in a state that they can't classify. What that tells us is that
51:50
we're going we're oscillating back and forth. We're going back and forth all day long. And it also
51:55
tells us that you're not going to get unhappiness out of your life. You're going to have unhappy
52:01
emotions and you're going to have unhappy experiences and that you have two choices.
52:06
You can learn and grow from those things and appreciate them, which will make you happier
52:11
or you can try to eradicate them by going to some therapist and saying, you know, I'm all screwed up
52:17
because I'm feeling sad and anxious, which by the way, those can be medical problems when they're
52:20
exaggerated and and and dysregulated. Don't get me wrong. Clinical depression is a real thing.
52:25
I'm not making a lot of that. Anybody who suffers from it needs to go to the doctor for sure.
52:29
But the idea that when you're sad and anxious that this primafasia evidence of defectiveness wrong.
52:34
And by the way, who has the highest levels of negative emotion? Entrepreneurs. The strivers.
52:40
They're called the mad scientists of business for a reason. They have very, very intense both
52:46
positive and negative emotion and they learn and they grow from it and that winds up being part of
52:51
the the the recipe for their greater happiness. Well, I think that also most entrepreneurs and
52:57
just high achievers in general, there's a significant portion of that population is neurodivergent
53:03
some degree. Yeah. And that can compound both ways. Yeah, totally. For whatever that whatever that
53:08
means in a lot of cases, right? I mean, the truth is that there's so much that we don't know and
53:13
that we put the neurodivergent label on. We know, for example, the people that are classified
53:17
on the autism spectrum, they have unbelievably high levels of activity in the left hemisphere of the
53:24
brain. And that makes them extremely good at a lot of technical tasks. You can say, okay,
53:30
yeah, it's a disability. Oh, maybe it's a strength. People who have so of ADHD, for example,
53:36
they're they have a hard time focusing on things that they think are boring. I mean, that's that's
53:41
what characterizes the things that you and I are, you know, if you don't have that, you can do
53:45
stuff that you think is boring. But people who have ADHD, like one of my kids, but when they find
53:50
what they're really good at, they're better than the average in the population and focusing on
53:54
that thing. So everybody listening to us, if you got a kid with ADHD, your job is to find the
54:00
thing that that kid is really, really good at and likes and that kid will be a big success and a
54:05
happy person. And those people, by the way, it's like, my kid is a sniper. Yes, you know, I'm
54:10
boring. It is to be a sniper sitting in a bush. He's like, yeah, I was in a bush for five hours
54:16
yesterday in the desert. It was 110 degrees. And I had a tarantula on my arm. And like, that sounds
54:22
awful. He's like, it was awesome. It's so, but I think that that's that's the point, right? So
54:29
I think that a lot of people that are highly ambitious, again, define neurodivergent, however,
54:35
you want to define it. But if you're not aware of what makes you happy or what, what creates meaning
54:40
in your life, there's a greater chance of unchecked unhappiness, because I think you can skew both
54:46
ways to the extremes. And that's what people have to pay attention to, especially when you are
54:50
like an ambitious person. Oh, yeah. And if you let people tell you that some weird thing about you
54:56
is a disability, that can be a huge problem. If you go to the doctor, the doctor says you have
55:01
fill in the blank, you know, problem, then you're going to become that problem to a very large extent.
55:07
You know, the truth of the matter is we all have problems. We all have these these weird
55:13
characteristics to us. And yet that in our in our weaknesses, we find our strength. This is a
55:18
classic line from the Christian Bible. I mean, St. Paul says, in my weakness, I find my strength,
55:24
the thorn in my side. He was probably talking about the fact that it was epileptic,
55:28
as a matter of fact, and it's so doing he was able to connect with other people. He was,
55:32
he was witness to the fact that he had, you know, he was physically frail. And this made his,
55:39
his witness, his ministry better, but the same thing is true in your strength. You find your
55:44
weakness because you're unable to connect with other people. I tell this all the time to my,
55:48
you know, to my MBA students at Harvard, I say, you want to connect to other people's a leader,
55:52
don't tell them you went to Harvard, because this is not, this is them connecting to anybody,
55:57
except for like that, you know, the 14 people who went to Harvard. What would be what would be the
56:02
single most, I don't know, thing activity event, whatever it is that can sabotage your happiness,
56:11
you have to be careful of. And yeah, it was a single and most important thing that would sabotage
56:18
your happiness. Oh, there's so many, there's so many things that you can do wrong. Because a lot of
56:24
meaning is a quick way to, to be honest, yeah, it's not something that it's not a big mistake
56:28
that you make. Yeah. So the biggest mistake that people actually make from day to day that
56:33
sabotage is not their happiness, just their happiness, but also their success is the unwillingness
56:40
or inability to manage their emotions. So the number one thing that I teach my MBA students is
56:46
emotional self-management through management and the limbic system of the brain. The limbic system
56:51
is the console that issue talked about it a minute ago. It creates emotions so that you have
56:55
signals about what's going on around you. That's all emotions are is an advanced warning system
57:00
that something is going on that you need to pay attention to. And if the emotion is negative,
57:04
it means you need to avoid something. And if the emotion is positive, it means you need to approach
57:08
something. That's it. There's no such thing as good feelings. There's no such thing as bad feelings.
57:11
Bad feelings are more likely to keep you alive because they're a, they're a warning system of
57:16
threat. Good feelings, so-called good feelings are an advanced warning system that there's
57:21
berries on a bush or, you know, a potential mate. It's not urgent, right? Is what we see.
57:27
When people don't understand that and they become prey to their emotions, they make all the
57:32
mistakes in their life. They get into, they get into, they engage in acts of violence. They say
57:38
things that they don't want to say. They're unable to show that they have proper emotional regulation
57:43
so that they have opportunities. They make decisions that they later regret.
57:46
That's the number one thing. And so the way to deal with this is a whole suite of techniques
57:51
called metacognition where you move the experience of your emotions into your prefrontal cortex
57:55
makes you the manager of yourself. And so doing it can dramatically increase your likelihood
58:01
of making decisions that lead to happiness and then also lead to success.
58:05
Do you have a website or socially want to send people to before I ask a couple more questions?
58:09
Yeah, orthobricks.com. Orthobricks.com is where I have all my columns. It's you can follow me on
58:14
social media, Instagram is Arthur C. Brooks got to put in that middle initial because there's
58:19
probably some even more famous orthobricks who stole the handle before that. But then you can
58:24
actually see a lot of the stuff that I'm working on. Have a lot of shorts up there and kind of
58:27
give you flavor for whatever is on my mind these days. If people were going to pick up this book,
58:33
you've touched on a lot of different stuff as it relates to happiness. If people were going to
58:36
pick up this book and you wanted them to leave with one idea that would just radically change
58:41
their life. The most important thing. What would that thing be? So this book is 33 chapters.
58:46
That means short. That means they're short chapters. They're essays. It's meant to be read in
58:50
about a month. So read the book over a month, read it, you know, one chapter a day so that you
58:56
can actually think about it. Each one of the chapters has do these three things. But like remember
59:01
this. Do that. Super practical. It's all super science-based. It's a very science-based book about
59:06
how neuroscience the social science can help you do that. But here's the big idea about insights
59:11
on work and life. Your life and everybody's going to understand this who's watching this show.
59:18
That's why they watch this show. Your life is the startup. That's the whole point of the book.
59:23
It's not, I mean, I don't know what you're doing. I mean, you're doing some business. That's great.
59:27
Maybe you're setting up vending machines or opening laundromats or you can open a car wash or
59:31
maybe you're starting, you're writing lines of code. Great. But that's not the startup. The real
59:37
startup is you incorporated. And since it's an enterprise, an entrepreneurial enterprise,
59:42
and you're the founder, you got to treat it as such. What does that mean? That means you got to be
59:46
willing and able to take the right kind of risk for unusual rewards. And you got to know the
59:52
nomination of the rewards. We're talking about this in this conversation. They're not money and
59:56
power and feeling good and, you know, online platets and applause. No. It's love and happiness.
1:00:04
Are you building a life that is a lifelong enterprise where the love and happiness that you seek
1:00:11
is more and more abundantly yours or not? And if the answer is it's not, you're in the wrong line of
1:00:16
work in the business of your life. The whole point of this book that will progressively pervade your
1:00:22
consciousness is you read these things chapter by chapter by chapter is I'm the startup founder.
1:00:28
I'm the entrepreneur. This is me incorporated. What does it actually mean for me to be a happiness
1:00:34
and love billionaire? I hope by the end of the book. And I'm confident that people will know.
1:00:38
I love it. Last thing I like to ask and you know what? I'm going to tailor this question just
1:00:44
to happiness because next time we chat, it'll be about something different. But out of everything
1:00:49
that you've ever learned about happiness, say you only have the ability to pass on one idea or
1:00:55
one lesson to your kids because it's the most important idea. What would that lesson be in why?
1:00:59
Happiness is love full stop. If you don't know what to do, make the decision to love. Love is not
1:01:05
a feeling. Any more than happiness is a feeling. It's a commitment. It's an act. It's a positive
1:01:10
decision. If you don't know what to do, go love. Love somebody. Love a stranger. Love a friend.
1:01:18
Love your family. Love everybody through the way that you earn your daily bread. Love God.
1:01:23
But when you love, you've been reflected your happiness. It's the one thing you need to know
1:01:28
and the one thing in life that truly matters.